DAS STARTED HERE

This startup maps farms from space

In a world increasingly marked by extreme weather events, it’s no wonder that farmers – part of one of the most vulnerable industries on the planet – need all the reassurance possible to ensure the continuity of their livelihoods.

Earlier this year, the Australian government’s first National Climate Risk Assessment found that over the next few decades, Australia is likely to see an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as wildfires, heatwaves, drought and flooding.

This has the potential to lead to banks and insurance companies ceasing to service areas that are more vulnerable to extreme weather events.

A key challenge facing financial services and agri-enterprise is the accurate quantification of climate change impacts on industries such as agriculture and farming. Lack of access to real-time data hampers their ability to make informed decisions, develop effective risk management strategies, and ensure the resilience of their portfolios against the potential financial repercussions of climate-related events.

This is where DAS (Digital Agricultural Solutions) comes in. Launched in 2017 in partnership with CSIRO, Australia’s national science and research agency, DAS aims to change the way banks and other financial services evaluate risk when lending and investing in businesses most impacted by natural disasters.

“Our platform is the connection between finance and farmland, an extremely important relationship that is under threat from climate change, productivity and secondary perils,” says DAS’ Sarah Gorman (Head of Growth), a serial entrepreneur who founded her first venture aged 25.

“Imagine if you could know instantly how any rural land will perform – its value, its productivity, its risk and sustainability,” Sarah says. “Before we set up DAS, there was no location intelligence that gave organisations, including farmers, an accurate picture of the active state of play for rural businesses.”

This includes having no idea of a property’s exact dimensions and locations of buildings, or a realistic sense of what farm is growing what and where.

Now, DAS can provide that data by deploying satellite technology to map the type of crop growing in every paddock on every farm across the country, as well as assess each property’s productivity and its resilience to fire and floods by using decades of historical yield data.

But it’s not just financial services that benefit: Sarah says one of the company’s major clients, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), uses DAS to understand the growth and spread of as many as 10 different crops, including wheat, barley, canola, oats, chickpeas, fava beans, lentils, field peas, lupins and vetch, a major source of hay in Victoria and South Australia.

“DAS gives the ABS and many other government departments location details beyond the state level, helping them form a complete picture of a sector worth billions of dollars,” she adds.

Banks and insurers are also signing on. ANZ Bank and Rabobank are all working with DAS, as is insurer IAG to better manage financial risk.

DAS’s ability to provide instant property reports that include flood and fire risk, historical productivity right through to the types of buildings on the land is an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to invest in a rural business, be it a mega farm or a hobby farm.

“By creating new science we have enabled any farmer or investor with rural assets to use our platform to access historical data of their farm from day one,” Sarah says.

Establishing the company in Victoria has also been hugely beneficial, with Sarah citing the state as one of the “strongest ecosystems for nurturing its startups globally”.

“DAS was in the winter 2020 Startmate cohort,” she says. “We applied and were chosen out of hundreds with that cohort. The program was hugely important to our thinking, growth and traction – and even the team.

“Startmate and Blackbird teach you what great looks like, challenge you, and force you to upskill fast via rapid iteration and thinking.”

Sarah says that LaunchVic’s efforts to make Victoria the state for start-ups is paying off.

“I’ve spent 10 years in Singapore and what I see now in Victoria, particularly when it comes to LaunchVic and its ability to bring investors and clients along, is incomparable,” she says.

“We are living in a special moment in Victoria’s history.”

With about seven million people – or 28% of the Australian population – living in rural or remote areas, it’s integral they have access to tools that will not increase the resilience of current businesses, but also instil confidence in future generations to establish new ventures.

“Why should people get penalised with an interest rate that is higher than in urban areas because the risk cannot be rated in the same way as living in the city?” Sarah says.

“At the end of the day we don’t want to see a world that is uninsurable – we want to see fairer finance options for those living rurally.”