State agencies ‘squeezed out’ IT companies
Kingswood Computing and AgriNet say competition from Teagasc and ICBF has become the biggest challenge to their companies, and have called for better balance between public and private providers in the farm information technology sector.
They say there were six private companies operating in the farm software sector 10 years ago, but four have been “squeezed out”. Kingswood was the first company to sell farm management software to farmers. AgriNet dates from 1994.
Between 1998 and 2003, the two companies pioneered IT training for farmers, building up a client base of about 8,000 farmers using their software for applications such as financial, animal, grassland, and tillage record-keeping and management.
“In the past five or 10 years the number of services provided by the State has increased significantly. Everything we have been doing is now being done or will be done by the State,” said AgriNet technical director Barry Lynch, when he and Kingswood Computing managing director Gerry Lynskey recently addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
“There are farmers who will ring me to say they do not need to pay their annual subscription to me because they are no longer going to use my software. When I ask why, they say they can use agfood.ie, ICBF HerdPlus and Teagasc for their accounts, that they have a solution offered by the State,” Mr Lynch told the committee.
“We are keen to explain that we are working in a toxic environment and want to know whether the committee is interested in redressing the balance,” he said.
“We need to ensure the balance between the public and private sectors in the farm information technology sector is right. We do not think it is balanced,” he said.
According to the two companies, the Department of Agriculture has encouraged and funded its subsidiaries to become involved in replicating commercial farm software — not software required for legislative purposes — that Kingswood and AgriNet have been providing for the past 20 years.
The “State” software is introduced to about 9,000 farmers taking part in the dairy efficiency and beef technology adoption programmes, which together attract up to €31 million of annual funding, and also through promotion of ICBF’s HerdPlus.com website in agricultural colleges.
According to Mr Lynch, “One will not find reference to commercial farm software in any of the scheme documentation for either programme. We are suggesting to the department that a small change in approach is required to achieve some balance.”
