The pursuit of better farming, and futures, through tech

Ever since he was young tinkering with early versions of PCs, Dhaya Sivakumar knew he had a fire for tech. And even though his first job was in the travel industry in the late 90s, it was a role that was a mix of IT support and finance. After about three months, though, he just wanted tech. “Travel was one of the first industries to go through such disruption, and I got to be part of it understanding how a business works, how technology supports it, and getting my hands dirty to try and change things,” he says.

But travel was always going to run its course, knowing he wanted to immerse himself in as many industries as he could. “I made a conscious choice early on to change industries every three to four years and I think that served me well,” he says. “I’ve never been in the same industry twice because you learn different things in different industries. I’ve always been hands on, building stuff, and as I’ve gained experience and had some great mentors and leaders, I’ve picked up certain business traits. Ultimately, I think ‘customer first’ works best with a technology background.”

Now as CIO at agri-tech and herd improvement co-op LIC, which empowers livestock farmers by delivering superior genetics and technology, Sivakumar keeps systems up to date by spearheading initiatives to improve productivity and sustainability, as well as promote data interoperability through technologies like MINDA, a herd management system app dairy farmers use to track animal behavior and performance. But he’s also mindful of imparting the need for purposeful work. “People need to believe they’re doing something important — that’s our mission,” he says. “People want to be part of something, they want to belong.”

Looking at operations and thinking how things could be better adds to the inherent plate-spinning nature of the role, as well as having to continually sell to staff, board, and management around possibilities and what can happen in the future. “But you also have to look at what you’re doing now and what you’re managing,” he says. “You have to be a little schizophrenic being in a CIO role.”

In the end, it’s about finding a balance between opportunity and risk, and having those conversations with the board and exec teams because not everybody is a tech expert. “They need to be aware of both sides,” he says. “If you just talk to the board about shiny new opportunities, they’re not aware of the risk, and that’s dangerous. And if you just talk about defending what you have and not looking at how to grow it, that’s also dangerous. You have to give both equal airtime.”

O’Sullivan and Sivakumar also discussed how a CIO is only as good as the team, and justifying high expectations for long-term partnerships. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On investment priorities: I’ve been at LIC for less than two years so I can only take credit for some things. There’s been a lot of amazing work done by lots of people before me. Everything we do is for genetic gain. And over the last couple of years, we’ve spent a lot of time and invested a lot into building new platforms to make sure that genetic gain can happen. We’re launching some new products now, which allows our farmers to look at the genetic evaluation. And that’s all on the back of the work we’ve done with some of our new tech, and we’re proud of where we’ve got with our new digital platforms. That’s been key. The other parts have been MINDA and our data interoperability. In the agri tech sector, there’s been a lot of noise about interoperability and we want to make sure we have it across agriculture. So our key product guys and engineers have made MINDA integrations a lead in regard to wearables, providers, farm automation — you name it, we make that happen now. So it’s been an amazing journey. One side is data science and making sure the platform is there and ready, and the other is around MINDA and data interoperability.

On the tech strategy: I’ve taken the same approach over the last 10 to 15 years, which is to park technology for a moment and get in front of customers. If you’ve got customer empathy and you know what their problems are, you know what has to be done. Then you look at the macro level, what New Zealand’s problems are as an agri sector or dairy industry, and then you can start working out where we fit. So we need that carried from a business perspective. Then we support that through technology. This stuff is so entwined now. When I first got to LIC, I spent a lot of time with the tech team, but probably more with shareholders, farmers, and directors in the senior leadership team. I then took that time with myself and my wider team to be with our staff up and down the company, just looking at our depots, operations and our sales team to see what they’re doing. Once you’ve done that, you can form a view of what’s important and what you need to focus on, and prioritize from there. I think of myself as someone who joins the dots. We’ve got lots of smart people across the executive table and in our board, but there needs to be someone to pull it together to say this is how we’re going to focus technology to deliver. At our heart, we’re a data science and genetics business, and that’s how technology should work.

On emerging technologies: Like everybody else, where we’ll spend a lot of time and probably a lot of investment is in AI. I think where we’ll most likely use it is with our scientists in terms of genomic evaluation, how it could help them, and the approach because it allows them to process much more data. Looking ahead, we’re building a strategy around our enterprise systems and our back office. And there are opportunities for tech to make some of the systems we run for our customers much smoother. We have trucks up and down the country that process milk and other samples, and running all that can be a bit clunky. Automation with the help of AI can improve that. So I spoke with the CEO about a farmer who used ChatGPT to look at breeding traits and genetic evaluation — and he found that on his own, and it worked. So it helped him make decisions on the farm. So the more you think about that kind of tech, the more it’ll be embedded in our software to better the lives of our farmers.

On launching IT careers: There’s a gender imbalance and it starts at school because, unfortunately, girls and boys in tech classes doesn’t always work, and girls are put off. That has to be sorted out. Tech and coding is an uphill battle from an early age for girls and the education sector needs to address it. The part that’s really close to my heart, though, is the diversity of people entering the system, but representation among Māori and Pasifika is poor. I see a big problem coming for New Zealand, when we have lots of higher paid tech workers and then a lot of other people who find it very challenging. Unless we do something, we’re going to continue this big inequality problem. At the moment, a lot of people don’t understand that tech careers are even possible. So it’s for us as tech leaders to get out there and promote what’s possible. I’m a gamer, so we run gaming club events on Fridays and Saturdays in South Auckland and in West Auckland, and get groups of kids together to play games and learn about tech. Then they start getting a passion for it. Also, influencing the parents has been really important to help them understand that tech careers are within reach. How we do that at scale is the challenge. We just need to do more.

On leadership: Early in my career, I was very conservative, building out spreadsheets and checking everything a thousand times before I did anything. I’ve changed a lot. I probably lead far more by intuition and relationships now. So I want to make that my performance with my direct reports. I look at my team and think someone here should be able to replace me when I eventually leave, so what’s it going to take for them to do that? Everybody’s different in their leadership journey, but my number-one rule is to always tell my people that what we do is just a job and they shouldn’t worry about it being the be all, end all. Have a balanced life, trust your intuition and have a go at stuff. I think the worst thing people can do is not be themselves, and try and design themselves to be this perfect thing that doesn’t exist. Trust yourself and have a balanced life. Ultimately, it always comes down to people. You can have the perfect plan on paper, but if you can’t communicate that and sell it, it won’t work.