THE principal of a new online marketplace business designed to help farmers and agricultural firms quickly source short-term labour has won the Westpac Innovation Challenge.
Ella Shannon from AgTasker has won a $40,000 cash prize and a six-month placement in the BlueChilli accelerator program to develop her online service to help farming businesses access much-needed labour in a fast, transparent and cost effective manner.
The challenge, launched in June, asked entrepreneurs to develop new concepts and ideas which would give agribusinesses a competitive and sustainable edge.
"Our second Innovation Challenge has focused on the agricultural industry - the backbone of the Australian economy - which has shown exceptional resilience and growth during a period of immense change," said Westpac's digital business banking head, Kalpana Gee.
She and six other judges assessed final presentations from five digital start-up business this week.
"AgTasker has potential to completely change the way agribusinesses access short term labour in Australia and overseas markets," she said.
The online service includes a reviewing and profiling system which allows farmers to examine job candidates and ensure they have selected the right person for the job.
Ms Shannon, from southern NSW, now lives in Sydney, but has a background in agriculture having worked on farms and in agribusiness investment funding.
Her AgTasker business has a suite of advisors backing it, including family and corporate farmers, regional communities, and human resource management and funds management specialists.
Westpac's national agribusiness manager and judge Steve Hannan praised the high standard of the five finalists' ideas and the response and passion from the start-up community.
"We received more than 130 impressive applications and the top five ideas have shown us revolutionary ways in which we can use new and innovative solutions to help our agribusiness customers" he said.
"Australia has a strong history of agricultural and food research and development which has fostered cutting-edge farming techniques, technologies and a sophisticated use of biotechnology.
"The innovation challenge has uncovered entrepreneurs that will add value to the long-term sustainability of the industry."
Fellow judge and Australian Farm Institute executive director Mick Keogh agreed it was encouraging to hear the finalists pitch their concepts to help agricultural innovation and make a tangible difference to the industry.
Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has also applauded the high calibre of new innovations across a number of industries that have come through Westpac's Innovation Challenge.
The other four finalists were:
- Cameron Clark is with FarmChem, a NSW dairy innovation group, which questions current farm practices and debates ideas associated agriculture and increasing resource use efficiency through use of current and emerging technology.
- David Gregory, an eCommerce graduate, is developing Livestock Connect, an online marketplace which enables farmers to link with livestock agents and abattoirs for live, up to date pricing and availability data when selling livestock.
- Bertram Ostendorf and a team of agricultural environmental and spatial researchers from Adelaide University are developing drone technology to provide early detection of virus infections of individual grapevines.
- Glenn Vassallo and David Rubie have founded the Smart Shepherd livestock monitoring system to provide less intrusive, cheaper ways to improve animal welfare, reduce stock losses and increase genetic performance.