Winning a Three Grant for Small Businesses helped James Power get the right technology for AgriGuardian, a business start-up that aims to keep all those living on farms safer.
Having grown up on a dairy farm, it’s a topic that’s close to the Waterford man’s heart.
Although Power studied aeronautical engineering in Limerick and worked for a number of years in the aviation sector, it was studying for a farm safety course in his spare time that provided the inspiration for AgriGuardian.
“Ireland’s farm safety campaign is one of the most successful there is, in so far as everyone knows the dangers of being on a farm. But I saw the statistics in relation to farm fatalities hadn’t changed since records began – it was a straight black line of between 22 and 33 a year,” he recalls.
That’s a major problem. “Farming is the most dangerous industry when it comes to fatalities, with around 50 per cent of all annual workplace deaths being in agriculture.”
By digging deeper into the figures, he saw that half of fatalities relate to children under 16 or people over 65. “These are the most vulnerable farmgoers,” says Power, who decided to give up his job to pursue the issue. “It was as data-driven a problem as it could be, so I thought let’s use 21st-century technology to solve it,” he says.
We’ve been blown away by how much time and help [Three’s team] have given us
His research showed the three main factors contributing to on-farm fatalities are machinery, livestock and falls. In HSE fatality reports, one phrase occurs time and again, he says; “I didn’t know they were there”.
That’s a fact he knows first-hand. “As a four-year-old who is 4ft tall running up to your dad on a tractor, you think your dad will hear you. But with noise interference from air conditioning, the windows often up and the radio on, it’s harder than ever to hear,” he says.
He set up AgriGuardian in April 2021 to develop an app that alerts farmers and their families to precisely where people are on their farm. The app works via mobile phone, but also by wearable devices, similar to a wristwatch, for younger children who don’t have phones.
It allows the “guardian” to draw safe zones on an online map of their farm, such as the house and or garden, as well as to virtually ring-fence danger zones, such as the slurry pit, the field in which the bull is or water hazards.
“You can have as many zones as you need. If a person leaves one zone and enters another, all guardians are alerted, and not just with a ping, the sound is similar to an alarm clock that will go off until it is deactivated,” he says.
AgriGuardian also features a proximity alert, which goes off if a vulnerable user is within 30m of a guardian, who may be driving a tractor or moving livestock, and not be aware they are in the vicinity.
A third feature is “anchoring”, a reverse proximity alarm that goes off if the person the guardian has “anchored”, or is minding, goes further than 30m from them.
The product is being launched at the Ploughing Championships. Winning a Three Grant for Small Businesses was instrumental in getting it to this stage. It included the Three team’s expertise in identifying the correct internet of things SIM cards for the devices. Crucially, this kept the price of the wearables low. “We don’t want anyone to miss out on this because they can’t afford it,” says Power.
“The support and guidance from Three has been worth more to us than the money. They have been fantastic. We’ve been blown away by how much time and help their people have given us,” says Power.
Find out more at three.ie.