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Precision Dairy Farming Series: Farmers adopting tech – wins, challenges, and lessons | Ep. 2

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Experience the energy and insights from the 2025 Precision Dairy Farming Conference.  

This episode features Sharn Roskam and Stuart Taylor, who were part of the farmer panel. Sharn farms in Winton, Southland, with her husband and four children, milking 600 cows on a 280-hectare self-contained system. Stu is a fifth-generation dairy farmer and General Manager of Farming at Craigmore Sustainables, overseeing 20 dairy farms and 16,000 cows across Canterbury and North Otago. He combines strong farming fundamentals with a focus on people, sustainability, and smart adoption of proven innovations. 

They talk openly about their wins, challenges, and lessons learned from adopting different farm technologies. They also share how technology can improve efficiency and work-life balance – while acknowledging it isn’t a quick fix.  

View the conference highlights, proceedings and more 

Have feedback or ideas for future episodes? Email us at talkingdairy@dairynz.co.nz

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Stay up to date with advice, latest research, tools and resources. Read, browse, scroll, listen, or be there in person. Visit dairynz.co.nz/get-connected 



Conference Setup And Intros

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Talking Dairy. I'm your host, Jack McGowan from DairyNZ. This episode is part of a special series recorded at the 2025 Precision Dairy Farming Conference in Auto Tahi Christchurch. And I'm joined by two farmers who are on the ground living and breathing technology adoption every day. Shan Roscom, who farms in Southland, and Stu Taylor from Canterbury, are here to talk about the reality of making innovation work on a working dairy farm. Alright, let's start with something easy. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Sean, you can go first.

SPEAKER_01

Grew up in the South Waketo.

unknown

Oh.

SPEAKER_01

Not on a dairy farm. I graduated from Massey University, then worked for Dairy and Z. It was actually Dexel at the time. Oh, I've been there since it was Dexel, too. Dexel, then Dairy Z, and met Billy at a Young Farmer's. Yeah, within seven months we were share milking down in Southland. We've been there, I think we're in our 17th season down there now. Yeah. Have you moved around a bit? Within about 20 K's of Winton. We've gone, I think we've been on we're on our fourth property down here. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, and we've been there since 2016, I think. Right. And Stu?

SPEAKER_02

I grew up on a farm, Greeny Swamp, just north of Fungarei. So my parents share milked. They bought 400 cows through a tenniside shed. So they're doing 40 rows in the late 70s, early, early 80s. They sold um 200 cows for$150 each. Those were the days. That was the deposit on their first farm. 100 hectares they bought for$60,000 just southwest of Fungare. That's the farm that I grew up on. Went to Massey University and after Massey went and worked in the Waikito for JD and Ardy Wallace. Started as a dairy assistant and was manager after about six months. After two years there or thereabouts, I actually went and farmed in Ecuador. I went with a live shipment of cows to Ecuador and then set up a little farm outside of Quito at three and a half thousand metres above sea level.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my goodness.

Craigmore’s Innovation Strategy

SPEAKER_02

The uh hill behind the farm was six and a half thousand. So I had cows dying of altitude sickness when they carved. Oh built a little um eight-aside straight rail herringbone for five thousand American dollars. So that was my adventure piece, and then came came back to New Zealand and worked for JD and Ardy Wallace again and then worked up to assistant general manager and then spent eight years on the Wanganui coast doing um conversions on the sand country down there. That was exciting. So had a team of bulldozers and diggers were flattening out sand and then putting irrigation balls down to half a K. So we're bringing water up from 500 metres below sea level. It was amazing though you could they artesian at 80 litres a second. That's kind of the innovation piece started. So I looked at farm systems and on that sand and on that um climate, everything was slightly different. So we ran uh fescue, brome, red, white clover, plantain mix. And it wasn't just those innovations, it was total farm systems, so how we employ people and etc. So that kind of led me to Craigmore because Craigmore was uh internationally owned business and set up to empower New Zealand farmers with capital from overseas to accentuate or speed up change in in New Zealand farming. So just the experience that I had up to date and that systems uh thinking aligned uh culturally with the company as well as it gave me a platform to really uh accentuate change in the New Zealand dairy industry and and play in the innovation space.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so what's your role at Craig Moore?

SPEAKER_02

I'm a GM of farming, I run the dairy business. So about 20 uh dairy farms just on 18,000 cows. And then I've got my own personal farm down on the Ashburton coast, Wapanoe. It's an 800 cow farm there that I own with uh a business partner.

SPEAKER_00

Cool. Thank you, Stu. All right, back to you, Sean. What technology have you adopted on your farm and why did you do that?

SPEAKER_01

As I said earlier, we've got the Protrack type technology. We also have with that, we've got our body condition scoring camera.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

And then we have simple things like our milk sample. Um we can put in a little machine and it tells us what bugs it's growing for mastitis management. Through to we've got halter being our, I guess, our big ticket technology. We also had just have installed the iHootherd for lameness. Yeah. And then there's a range of apps. We've got things like track map and uh I can't I don't know what the John Deere system is, but there's a John Deere system for the tractor just drives exactly where it's supposed to drive when it's spreading the fertilizer and just accuracy around those sorts of things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So and what drew you towards technology?

Sharn’s Tech Stack And Why It Matters

SPEAKER_01

I don't want to be out on the farm for any longer any longer than I need to be. And that's not through laziness, it's just through being busy. Yeah. And if I can make the job out there more efficient to allow a work-life balance, that's pretty critical for me. Hard to let go of farming, but I'm also a mum. I'm a farmer, I'm not married to a farmer. We were both farmers before we met. Yeah, and so it's trying to enable me to have my career, have my family, and be involved. Yeah. That's a real struggle for a woman on farm, is to have a place after kids. So technology has really allowed me to have a place in the business and still know what's going on because I'm a bit of a control freak.

SPEAKER_00

Nice, and I feel where you're coming from. My my role on the farm changed a lot after having children and also returning to DNZ. Yeah. So, Stu, what technologies have you adopted? Well, you mentioned that it's Craigmore that's adopted the technology. So, what technologies have they generally got on and what drew them to that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so uh GM of Craigmore, and we've got a suite of innovations across the Craigmore farms. As I said, Craigmore was set up to bring capital to young news innovative New Zealand farmers. So the when the investors come out from overseas, they like to see the new innovation or sustainability push across our farms. And remember, I'm my business is selling milk and also selling a fund. So part of that sales strategy for selling the fund is introducing innovations or technologies across the farms. So my my rule is that you have to be operating your farm to a competent level. So you have to have high-performing teams, cows, profitable, tidy farm. And then I try and tease out of the person, the leader on the farm, what their passion is, and then try and overlay a technology across that. Sometimes they bring that that technology to me and say, Hey, I really want to do this. Sometimes I just go, Oh, you really love car furing, so let's do something around carfering. Yeah. So we're talking about electronic technologies or biological technologies.

SPEAKER_00

So interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Up in uh North Canterbury Culverden, we've got a nutrient striffing wetland and also a wood chip bioreactor.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

We've got Smack Tech in one of the herds. We've got herd eye. We're OmniEye, now the Herd Eye, Lame Cow Drafting and the Body Congress School Camera. Uh we've also got dung beetles released on farms up there.

SPEAKER_00

That's old technology but new for uh for New Zealand.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Well, in the 60s it was released. Oh, yeah. It was on my father's farm.

SPEAKER_00

Ah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Up in Northland. That was the Mexican dung beetle. So out at Oxford we've we've been running cow butcher for the last three years.

SPEAKER_00

Sorry, what?

SPEAKER_02

Cow butcher. So that's the that's the biostimulant for calves to improve their efficiency.

SPEAKER_00

A play on combucher, not cow butcher. No, no. Yeah, the abattoir.

SPEAKER_02

Spelt with a C. So that's been introduced into the calves over the last three seasons. So seeing um, you know, improved uh growth rates and better health on the farm. We've had Holter for four years, actually gone from a 500 cow farm to 800 cow farm, and now it's on a 1200 cow farm.

Risk, Simplicity, And Fit-For-Purpose

SPEAKER_00

So it sounds like a quite a broad range of tech on those farms. Now I'm gonna ask you about your own farm.

SPEAKER_02

On my own farm, I'd I've just introduced ProTrack. And I've got a rotary cow shed.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's the technology. So on my own farm, it's about having a real simple executable system. We've only just purchased it in the last four years, so there's reasonably high levels of debt. So it's a very um low-risk strategy there that we're running a really efficient, simple system and paying down debt as fast as possible.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I really like that kind of the difference in those two strategies for really good reason in terms of what's driving them to technology or not to technology yet.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it has to be a conscious decision around you don't just use technology because your neighbour's using technology. You have a conscious decision around how you want to farm and the risk profile that you've got on your farm.

SPEAKER_00

Sean, were there any unexpected challenges or surprises as you kind of went on this technology adoption journey?

SPEAKER_01

Probably not. And that's maybe because we've constantly been doing something in that space. Yeah. There's always been, oh, that looks good, let's try it. And so there's that open-mindedness to it. Some technologies have been really difficult or have actually flopped. And so there are technologies we've put in place which are essentially worth zero and burnt a hole in the pocket. But other technologies have superseded them. And I'll give the example where we had the heat patches and the and it was on colour based. And if it was dirty or there were trees, those were the things we're like, wow, okay. And so on a daily basis, we were changing our what we were doing in the paddock to try and make the technology work for us. And it was actually quite hard work. So you would wake up half an hour earlier so that you could So not really achieving the saving time saving time thing because you'd actually have clean because they if they were dirty, they were on, but they weren't on. So yeah, there were those are probably some of the ones that you just had to adapt really quickly. It was still great because it did get the cows, but you might have only had 25 on out of the 40 that were there. So yeah, technology probably surprised us more in how, for example, our first big wearable technology was cow manager, and we put that on thinking we needed a chain, you know, to help us with our fertility. But it was actually the health.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_01

It was the health that blew us away.

SPEAKER_00

So the what you got from Cow Manager that was helpful for health. Yeah, for health.

Fail Fast, Learn Faster

SPEAKER_01

So we didn't put it in for that reason, but we were pleasantly surprised by the health alerts on it. So yeah, it's probably been more of a positive whoa, I wasn't expecting that than more not really too many negatives at all, to be fair.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so it sounds like uh as one of the early adopters of technologies, you know, you are going to learn with the technology provider as well. Yeah. Um, but also you get some of the early surprise benefits too. Yeah. Yeah. Stu, have you come across any unexpected challenges or surprises?

SPEAKER_02

If you're working with the innovator, they've passed their farmlett troll stage and they're starting to introduce it into commercial scale, you're gonna get surprises. Yeah. So that's if you're at that stage, you're working with them really closely to understand what works and what doesn't work. And you're expecting failures. Well, that's actually learnings, yes, yeah, from that new technology as you introduce it. And there's the innovation itself, and then there's the farmer innovating around that innovation, microinnovations I call them. So working out how to use that technology successfully at a commercial scale. So I think you should expect all those unexpected things.

SPEAKER_00

It's part it's part of the journey.

SPEAKER_02

In saying that, if you're a fast follower or a Laggard, you should be expecting that. And Lagard's not a bad thing, that's a strategic choice.

SPEAKER_00

More cautious.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and it's it's going in and saying I want this technology to be cost effective and I want it to work every time. Yeah because I don't want any failures, I don't want any complexity.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah.

Advice For Fence-Sitters

SPEAKER_00

Cool. Thank you, Stu. What advice would you give to farmers who are sitting on the fence about adopting new tech?

SPEAKER_02

I'd be looking at my business and understanding can I handle the risk? Can I have a financial failure? Uh and if I can't, then don't touch it. Also, I'd be asking myself, why am I a farmer? And if I like simplicity and I just love spending time with cows, why bring in that complexity? Or if I just want simplicity because my focus right now is my family, and I want to be able to leave the farm and spend time with my family, then don't bring in that complexity. If you want something a little bit different, if you've perfected your system and you want your new challenge and your passion is, say, cow health, then bring in a technology that can augment or assist you around maximising cow health or cow performance.

SPEAKER_00

And Sean, anything to add?

Future Tech: Methane, N Loss, Genetics

SPEAKER_01

My key thing that I've and it's I don't know if it's podcasts, shit in, shit out. If if if you don't have control of your data, if you're trying to cover up for a poor manager or whether it's a contract market or if you're trying to cover up for failures in day-to-day processes, don't do it. Because it is not a sticking plaster. It will make an infection. It's a multiplier, isn't it? It is. You really need to be all over your records. You need to be able to look and check and make sure things are accurate because if it's not accurate, putting in a wearable or a fancy technology or anything will not help at all. Yeah. So there needs to be a genuine interest in having nice clean data and wanting to look at what you're doing and not just ignoring things. Yeah. That would be my my biggest thing is it's shit in, shit it out. So if you're not prepared to utilize the information and then don't do it. It won't fix problems. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So all the innovations are tools to use and uh are a multiplier. So if you're a a really top-notched farmer, it will make you better. If you're an average farmer, you're gonna be average still, you're gonna be slightly improved, maybe, maybe not. But if uh you're a really poor farmer, you're gonna be extremely poor farmer after introducing that technology. So it's a multiplier. And it doesn't really replace people.

SPEAKER_01

No.

SPEAKER_02

It just changes how people interact with that technology.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's a misconception that technology will solve your people problems or replace people.

SPEAKER_01

It might encourage people to stay longer. You know, it might encourage those that really love it and you've got good stuff, it may encourage them to be with you more or look for longer, or it may encourage a better employee or applicants, I should say. More applicants, but it's not a sticking plaster by any stretch of the imagination.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, thank you both. So looking ahead, if there is anything, what's the next innovation that you're keeping your eyes on?

Final Takeaways And How To Connect

SPEAKER_02

So I'm looking for technologies that improve efficiency of my farm system. So less wastage or less pollution for a similar or better output. So some really interesting technologies out there. Some of the biostimulants coming out of North America, where they'll reduce methane from cows while maintaining similar production levels. They're really interesting, up to 30% reduction. Some of the technologies, and they're starting to get a little bit out there. Amour's an interesting technology that uh mitigates end loss by spreading out urine from a cow. So that's that's extremely interesting because that could transform the dairy industry if that's successful. So you could see the expansion of the dairy industry again if if you're getting a up to 80% reduction in leaching from a technology. Like that's pretty early stages and it's still very much in the development stage, but that's a really interesting technology coming through. And then some of those genetic uh technologies. So there's one coming out of Australia where you can um flush your best cows and then genomically select the embryos in the petri dish, and then you can split that embryo into into twins, identical twins. So that's some pretty amazing technology around genetics. Yeah. So you could have say your 200 replacement calves all exactly the same coming out every year. So some of those technologies coming are just dramatic. And that's without even including the genetic engineering pieces, which um, you know, is still in play. So that'll be an interesting decision for New Zealand.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, so some pretty out there stuff that Stu's got his eye on. Sean, I clearly need to do a whole lot more reading.

SPEAKER_01

Just have a chat, Stu, I reckon. Holy moly. He has me thinking, oh, I can't wait to get my iHeard plugged in.

unknown

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Are you looking at bringing in any new tech to your farm or you feel like you've got enough for now?

SPEAKER_01

Not right now. No, no. But I definitely don't turn anything away from having a look at and analysing and see if it'll suit us. So if someone pulls up my driver's saying, I won't turn them away, I'll be like, okay, let me have a look.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Everything about it. Show me what it can do. Yeah, show me what it can do. How will it help me?

SPEAKER_00

Well, thank you both, Sean and Stu, for sharing your experiences. The takeaway for me is that successful tech adoption isn't about jumping on every new innovation, but about identifying what you're wanting to achieve in your farm and whether it's a good fit for the way you want to farm, finding the right tool to solve it. These two farmers have shown with the right approach, technology can deliver genuine value for them, but it takes time, patience, and a bit of bravery and willingness to learn as you go. Thanks for listening, Matiwa. If you'd like to get connected with DariNZ's latest advice, research, tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get connected, and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes. As always, if you have any feedback on this podcast or have some ideas for future topics or guests, please email us at talkingdairy at dairynz.co.nz. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.