7 May 2024
Damian Pendergast, a Rural Supplier and Nicole Frost, an Agricultural Advisor have a combined 52 years’ experience working in the agriculture industry. The pair initially joined forces to create a fee-for-service agronomy company offering advice for farmers. Through
this venture, they identified a missing link between advisor, rural store, and farmer in terms of product supply, product awareness, and time management. They founded PEAK Pasture & Livestock (PEAK) in 2022.
Damian Pendergast, a Rural Supplier and Nicole Frost, an Agricultural Advisor have a combined 52 years’ experience working in the agriculture industry. The pair initially joined forces to create a fee-for-service agronomy company offering advice for farmers. Through this venture, they identified a missing link between advisor, rural store, and farmer in terms of product supply, product awareness, and time management. They founded PEAK Pasture & Livestock (PEAK) in 2022.
PEAK takes a systems approach to evaluate the performance of pasture-based livestock operations recognizing that interactions are interconnected. Through the development of an online tool, PEAK aims to optimise the organisation of livestock producers’ annual calendar of activities. This ensures that the appropriate products are available when needed and in the desired format, enhancing efficiency and productivity.
This tool is intended to assist with the management of animal health and agronomy supply, by linking calendar activities directly to their preferred retailer. Once the required products are entered, the program automatically calculates their total required products for the year, allowing for quantity edits to be made at any time. Additionally, the calendar allows PEAK to send monthly reminders to its users to order required stock.
Since the disruption to agriculture input supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicole and Damian have heightened their focus on proactive supply chain management. As the owner of Omeo Rural, Damian has first-hand experience with forecasting difficulties due to the reactive nature of the supply chain. The impact of this flows onto wholesalers and manufacturers alike and appears to be worsening.
Nicole and Damian intend to leverage their expert knowledge of the agriculture industry and their strong customer relationships, to develop a tool which proactively manages farm inputs to maximise their availability. Their vision includes expanding both nationally and internationally, as well as diversifying into broader categories within the agricultural sector.
Nicole learnt about the AgTech Seeds program through a weekly newsletter from her local Victorian Government economic development officer. Since Nicole and Damian have built their calendar and tested with their farmer customers, which has proven very successful and a great start, to further develop their business, they felt they needed a better understanding of how to grow and scale their business. They joined the fourth AgTech Seeds cohort in 2024 to learn about funding opportunities and to further refine and scale their business model.
As a result of the program, Nicole did some recommended reading on extracting value from customer conversations. With this knowledge, Nicole and Damian, who speak to clients daily, have been able to reframe their questions and gain a much deeper insight into their clients’ business.
Looking back on the program, Nicole and Damian found themselves increasingly discussing their learnings from the AgTech Seeds Program in their daily meetings and conversations. They are grateful for the outstanding network they have created during this “intensive” yet “motivating” program. Throughout their AgTech Seeds experience, the duo have implemented various suggestions from their mentors which were described as “eye-opening” and “insightful”.