How to Automate Innovasea Farm360

The stock in a sea cage cannot be counted by looking

A sea cage holds more fish than anyone can count. The figure in the file is an estimate carried forward from a stocking event, moved every day by what was fed, what died and what grew, and every other decision on the farm gets made against it.

Farm360 is where that figure lives. It is cloud software for the owners and operators of fish and shrimp farms, and it reached Innovasea by acquisition: it was Aquanetix first, and plenty of farms still call it that. It sits inside Innovasea's Realfish Pro platform alongside the environmental and biomass tools, but it is used and sold as farm management software in its own right.

What it holds is the daily life of a site. Real-time collection of data on feedings, fish health and environmental conditions. Stock management kept current daily rather than rebuilt at month end. Production planning that sets out harvest and stocking plans. Full traceability from stocking through to the batch that leaves. Automated business intelligence reporting sitting on top of all of it.

The feed bill and the harvest price are settled off the farm

The farm controls the fish. It does not control much else that decides whether the year works.

Feed is the largest cost and it is bought off a supplier's ordering site, where prices and lead times move. The mill confirms a delivery window and somebody checks it against what the silos hold and what the growth curve says the next fortnight will eat.

Health has the same shape. Water samples and health counts go to a laboratory, and results come back on the laboratory's own site days later, one page per submission, with nothing on them saying which cage they belong to. Somebody opens each one, works out the match, and sets it beside the treatment plan. At the other end, the processor books harvest slots on its portal and returns grading and settlement in a format that will never line up with yours, and the certification body a buyer insists on keeps audit dates and certificate status on a third site again.

Innovasea Farm360

Harvest slots checked against real biomass What the processor's portal has booked, set beside the biomass and average weight each cage is actually tracking towards.

Laboratory results matched to the cage Health and water results collected from the lab's site as they publish, each one tied back to the cage and sample date it belongs to.

Feed ordered against the growth curve Mill prices and lead times read on a schedule and held against the tonnage the plan says the site will eat over the next fortnight.

Farm360 reports on whatever reaches it

The software covers more of the day than a farm coming off spreadsheets expects, and that deserves saying before any criticism of it.

Data entered anywhere updates for everyone at once, so the feeder on the barge, the site manager and head office are not arguing from three different stock figures. The stock status is maintained daily. Production planning turns it into harvest and stocking plans, and the platform carries long-range forecasting for feed quantities, operating costs, fish growth and sales. Traceability follows a batch end to end. The reporting and visualisation are automated, covering fish health, feeding, biomass and environmental conditions.

That is a genuine system, and inside Realfish Pro the environmental sensors and cameras feed straight into it. But it remains a farm's record of a farm's own site. It has no way to open the feed mill's ordering page, no way to read a laboratory result the morning it publishes, and no way to see what the processor's portal says about next week's slots. The information is not missing. It is on somebody else's website.

A harvest plan that already knows the processor's schedule

The cage record is the fixed point here. What is worth changing is how much of the outside world reaches it before a decision gets made.

Say the processor's portal is read every morning and the booked slots are set against the biomass and average weight each cage is tracking towards, so a harvest that needs moving becomes a conversation on Tuesday instead of a scramble on Friday. Say the laboratory's site is checked as results publish and each one is matched to its cage and sample date, so the page in front of the fish health manager is current rather than a week behind.

The supply side works the same way. The mill's order page checked against the tonnage the growth curve calls for, with the shortfall named before the boat schedule makes it expensive. The certifier's own site read each month for the audit date and certificate status, so nobody discovers a lapse the week a buyer asks. A weather and algal bloom forecast read each evening against which cages are carrying the most stock, so the call about feeding or moving comes with the right cages already named.

The outside sites get read between feeds

Not one of those needs an integration built. They need a browser, a login and somebody free at the hour the page updates, which on a farm is nobody.

WebRun is the browser. It signs in as you, on the schedule you choose, and reads the mill's order page, the laboratory, the processor's portal and the certifier's site, then puts what it finds where the farm will use it: a sheet, a message, a line ready for the cage record.

Collecting runs unattended. Anything that writes to a stock or health record, or that messages your veterinarian, the mill or the processor, is drafted and waits for a person. Treatments, withdrawal periods and harvest release are decisions about live animals and about food, so they stay with somebody qualified to make them. The cards below are where fish and shrimp farms usually begin.