Equipment loan website eyes growth

Farm gear sitting idle could be earning cash, according to a couple who have won support for their peer-to-peer platform startup.

Necessity is the mother of invention but in Scott Cameron and Alexandra Tully’s case it was necessity, mum and dad, and a missing rotary hoe that set them on the path of innovation.

Cameron and Tully had just moved house in Palmerston North when they came up with the idea for their farmer-to-farmer sharing service, Gear Hub.

They needed the rotary hoe and other bits and pieces to do landscaping, but the hire place was an hour round-trip away and they didn’t know anyone in their new area to borrow from.

Sharing the frustrations with their rural parents, Cameron and Tully learnt they had the same problem. They were finding it difficult to get contractors out for small farm jobs and the equipment they had was outdated and inadequate.

The pair has this month launched Gear Hub in Manawatu¯ and has plans to expand into Taranaki, Hawke’s Bay and Wairarapa. By mid-2020, they hope to cover all of New Zealand.

‘‘We want to grow pretty quick because the farmers we’re talking to can see a need for items, but also costs are rising on farms. So being able to do it cheaper and have an income through idle machinery – there’s a double benefit,’’ Cameron said.

The project has secured support from the Rural Innovation Lab, which is helping with mentoring and sponsorship.

Rural Innovation Lab chairman Mat Hocken said out of 50 applications, Gear Hub made the top 10 at which point Tully made a pitch to an independent selection panel.

Gear Hub was one of four projects to secure support.

Farmers using the online service create a profile and make listings for items they have available for hire. Items are free to list.

A booking calendar in the site means it is clear if the item is available and for how long.

Borrowers put in a request, which is accepted by the owner, and then payment is made through the website and an invoice is issued. Gear Hub’s fee is 15 per cent of the rental fee.

The owner decides the fee for their equipment and can accept or deny any requests to use it.

‘‘If, for example, it’s a seed drill and they know that they’re putting a crop in, in October, they can block out the full month of October,’’ Cameron said.

Insurance had been a potential barrier, but Cameron said Gear Hub included an option to add insurance costs to an item. ‘‘So you can just click and add, pretty much like a rental car.’’

Tully built Gear Hub’s website, which was now taking listings from farmers, and a Facebook page. In time, the couple also hopes to create an app.

Hocken said he expected Gear Hub to find a growing market with lifestyle blocks. ‘‘There’s probably an expanding niche there.’’

Cameron is a business development officer at Fonterra and Tully is a dietician with her own business, Eat Up, in Palmerston North.

Beckie Trigg grew up on Auckland’s North Shore and never considered she would be fattening lambs on a city-owned farm one day.

Auckland Council has been advertising jobs at its farming operations that could be filled by former city-kids like Trigg.

So how do you get a job managing sheep run by the big city? You might not need as much experience as you would for other farming jobs.

Trigg is a community ranger at Scandrett Regional Park, about an hour north of Auckland city. As a child, she used to go camping in Auckland’s regional parks. She stepped her interest up a notch by being a summer ranger with the council while she was at university.

Summer rangers join the parks for three months to help out with visitor numbers over the busy period.

On the summer programme Trigg, who has a degree in science, picked up farming skills, ‘‘mainly around animal welfare and handling and how to work safely in the yards’’, she said. ‘‘From then, I learnt the rest of it on the job.’’

Auckland Council has farming operations covering

1430 hectares at 19 regional park locations in what the council says is one of the world’s largest urban farming enterprises.

Combined, the farms have 6650 sheep and 1200 cattle, some of the stock is for breeding and some is for finishing.

Farming operations manager Garry Hewson said managing the council’s park farms was, ‘‘sort of like running 20 run-offs really’’. The rangers were parttime farmers, Hewson said.

Much of the rest of the work involved dealing with the public and undertaking conservation efforts. And the farmers aren’t all farmers, Hewson said.

‘‘They are a complete mixture. We have experienced farmers, real crusty ones from the back of Wairoa, right down to people who have no farming experience and they are learning on the job,’’ he said.

Hewson said the council was setting up a new farm management team and was advertising new roles for 700ha of farm blocks that it was setting up. Living on-farm was not always an option for city shepherds but Hewson said workers had accommodation available, which was negotiated as part of their contracts.

The house at Scandrett is leased by a previous owner and Trigg commutes to the park from Wenderholm Regional Park, about 30 minutes away.

Hewson said having farming blocks all over the region allowed a certain amount of freedom. ‘‘We can move our stock around quite a bit,’’ he said. ‘‘We don’t have to sell our capital stock if we get into [weather] trouble like an ordinary farmer does. So we can move our stock across a huge area from Warkworth all the way down to Kaiaua.’’

Trigg happily spends a lot of time at Scandrett working on her own. ‘‘I get a bit of support from the farming co-ordinator for stuff that I might need a couple of us to help with, like drenching,’’ she said. Trigg manages 20 heifers and she fattens up to 250 lambs to hogget stage. She looks after five visitor baches, two homesteads and their gardens. She also organises volunteers who help with trapping pests and other small jobs.

Along with stock-handling skills, most urban farmers needed people-handling skills too, Hewson said.

‘‘You are potentially shifting stock with people walking around and some people have dogs as well.’’

And that most sacred of rural rules – always close the gate behind you – is not understood by everyone.