With farmers' use of chemicals and fertiliser being scrutinised by consumers, neighbours and local authorities, the onus has fallen on farmers to prove they are acting responsibly.
Besides, given the cost of chemicals, it was common sense to ensure it was applied efficiently and according to guidelines.
The global positioning guidance and mapping system company, TracMap, was the marriage of founder Colin Brown's former life as an agricultural consultant and chance.
"I was always aware New Zealand agriculture had a problem around proving environmental compliance.
"Here was a potential solution."
In less than five years he has taken an idea and commercialised six products, dealt with production issues and weathered a global recession which required finding outside capital, but the company has finally started making a profit.
To Mr Brown, the business was a simple equation - confidence in a system he believed in and knew worked.
Late last year, TracMap was rated the eighth fastest growing company in the Deloitte Fast 50, in part acknowledgement of the fact the company started from a very small base.
In July 2006, TracMap employed three people.
Today it has 16 technical, software development and administrative staff based at their Mosgiel office and sales staff throughout New Zealand and in Australia.
The list of products has grown, but stem from the same rugged, simple-to-use system initially built for fertiliser and chemical applicators who work on hill country.
Mr Brown said GPS technology was not new, but competing products for agriculture tended to be complicated and applicable only to the square, flat rangeland of Australia, Canada and North America where tractors had to be driven accurately and slowly.
New Zealand paddocks were not usually square, but with pockets of steep inaccessible gullies or faces, outcrops of bush or rocks, all of which the TracMap system took into account while mapping and recording where and when a vehicle was operating.
It also took account of the fact New Zealand fertiliser and spray trucks travelled faster than vehicles on flat range land.
TracMap guides an operator as they apply a product to a paddock, ensuring there is no overlap while recording data such as application rates, date and time.
It also provides a safety net so the same paddock was not given repeat applications, meaning an inexperienced operator could do the job.
Mr Brown said TracMap's secret was its simplicity and ruggedness, traits which have been adopted in subsequent versions built for the aviation, farming and utility sectors.
But all of this was a long way off when, in February 2005, Mr Brown casually visited Thomas Electronics in Dunedin as he waited for his car to be serviced.
He had recently resigned as a farm consultant from PGG Wrightson and on visiting the store learnt it was for sale due to the owner retiring.
By May, Mr Brown had bought the business and tasked his staff to start looking at GPS guidance and mapping systems for agriculture.
The first prototypes were tested and given approval by local fertiliser and spraying contractors, and 18 months later commercial units were installed in trucks.
Manufacturing problems almost sent the company broke, but Mr Brown said support and patience from customers gave them time to find solutions.
"The product hadn't been built to the specifications we had specified.
"We were saved because when they worked, the drivers loved them," he said.
By May 2009, Mr Brown said half the country's fertiliser trucks used TracMap systems and about 20% of spray applicators.
New market opportunities started to open as word spread, with farmers requesting a version.
Mr Brown said 20% of fertiliser was applied by farmers so they modified the contractor version to provide features such as proof of placement and to ensure there was no product overlapping during application.
"It means you can put a boy on a tractor after milking to spread urea to your specification."
In early 2007, they adapted a system for helicopters, again built around that initial robustness and simplicity, but also adapted to New Zealand's rugged terrain.
"When you are trying to dodge gullies, creeks and no-spray zones and, in some cases, big areas, functionality is the difference.
"There is nothing on the market with our functionality."
The hardware was the same as fertiliser and spray trucks, but the software had to be built from scratch.
There were about 20 units in New Zealand agricultural aircraft and units also in Australia, South Africa, Russia, Bulgaria, Canada, Mexico, South America and Alaska.
Mr Brown said this market had huge potential, with firefighters in the United States interested in seeing if the units were applicable and a distributor interested in supplying TracMap products.
Mr Brown said the company was growing nicely, with October 2008 recording some of its strongest sales.
However, just a month later it recorded some of its poorest sales.
The recession again almost sent the company under, but Mr Brown was able to find two new investors who kept the company solvent and allowed it to continue with a pruned product-development programme.
In late 2008, it released a system for managing irrigation systems to ensure irrigators were moved to the right place at the right time so water was used efficiently.
This was followed by a colour-coded farm mapping system that made it easier to instruct people which paddock they had to go to.
Farmers were requesting a dairy effluent management system, and last autumn the company launched a product that shut down automatically if it detected a fault and which recorded where it had been and when.
The company's latest foray has been into the utilities market, with a tool that ensures contractors go to the correct place for jobs such as mowing verges or pumping stormwater sumps, while also providing proof they have met their contractual obligations.
They have been working with utility companies on both sides of the Tasman to develop the system.
Mr Brown said there was plenty of room for growth in all the markets they operated in, but especially utilities.
There was also potential to improve on the existing systems, such as having contractors share information if, for example, two fertiliser trucks were working on the same property.
TracMap had established itself niche markets, and they were where Mr Brown said the company would stay.
The company was now starting to make money.
Significantly, potential customers were calling and placing orders based on Tracmap's reputation and recommendation - the product was selling itself.
Mr Brown said the past five years had gone faster and the business further than he had ever foreseen.
The next family of products was targeted at precision agriculture, allowing farmers to apply varying rates of fertiliser or chemical within the same paddock according to soil type or crop health.
Product research was not cheap, and TracMap had budgeted $1 million for its development.
