If you ask Greg Mirams what technological revolution will lift agriculture to the next level, the Dunedin businessman will not mention a new generation of gene testing, a new cultivar or chemical.
Rather, Mr Mirams said the next jump in production would come from more farmers adopting technology that already exists.
The founder of faecal-egg-counting business Fecpak, Mr Mirams said for over 20 years he attended numerous farm field days but, more often than not, farmers would leave without adopting the technology on show.
Mr Mirams said there has been a disconnect between farm management and technology available, a gap he intends filling with a new business, Techion Group, which will show how technology can lift sheep, beef, dairy and deer production.
Through subsidiary company Aim (an acronym for adoption, innovation and management), Mr Mirams intends setting up a network of display farms on which product manufacturers and wholesalers can demonstrate their wares in a commercial setting and work with farmers to ensure those products are used correctly.
Mr Mirams said the project meant working with farmers who had a goal or issue, then pulling together the various commercial companies and expertise to help them reach that target.
An example of an Aim project was helping farmers finish yearling cattle to 400kg or heavier by October.
To achieve that could involve experts in genetics, nutrition, agronomy and parasitology.
Knitting all that knowledge together would be the function of Aim overseen by Techion.
Mr Mirams said often farmers would adopt one piece of technology when several others were needed to achieve what a farmer wanted.
Returning to the yearling cattle example, Mr Mirams said a farmer would need a suitable cultivar, knowledge on how to grow it, manage it, feed it and also a market that wanted the animals produced at a set time and to specification.
Equally, an Aim project could be about new methods of developing hill country or calf rearing.
Part of the project would be benchmarking the farm's performance before and after the adoption of technology.
Farmers will be required to pay for the commercial products to ensure it has some value to them, but the commercial companies will help implement it so that it is done correctly.
Mr Mirams stressed he was not competing with Beef and Lamb monitor farms, which he said had a specific role to play.
"They are total farm operations which look at everything from finance to fertiliser.
"We're about agriculture technology and whatever those are and getting the best out of them."
Getting farmers to adopt technology had been a problem, but the difference in performance between the top 20% of farms and the bottom illustrated that what could be achieved.
"If we adopted the technology we have got already, we'd have a massive lift in productivity across the board."
Mr Mirams said an innovative approach was needed.