A 16-year-old from County Down is betting that his new app can rescue farmers from the soul-crushing bureaucracy that consumes their evenings. Ben O'Connor, inspired by his family's shift from beef to dairy farming near Castlewellan, has developed FarmFlow, an app designed to streamline farm management and give hard-pressed farmers their lives back.

O'Connor, who previously ran a mail-order gift business at 13, noticed the toll the switch took on his father and brother. 'It is a lot different - it's rigid - you start milking in the morning, you have to milk in the evening. There's not as much flexibility,' he said. The paperwork and compliance demands also weighed on him, especially given that Northern Irish farmers average 65-hour work weeks.

'There's a whole side of farming that the general public don't see,' O'Connor said, referring to the late nights spent on paperwork. FarmFlow aims to tackle this by digitizing record-keeping and task management, allowing farmers to complete medicine records on the move and track chores. The app is already being trialled on several farms across the UK and Ireland, with a companion campaign called the Empty Table to raise awareness about the effort behind food production.

'I love to solve problems,' O'Connor said. 'So I wanted to set up FarmFlow to sort of solve problems on our own farm and try and make it more efficient.'

One tester, Jude McClements, runs a 320-strong dairy herd with his family and milks three times a day. He praised the app for its practicality. 'Coming from a farm, Ben knew a lot of the features farmers want. You can tell that it's designed by a farmer for a farmer.' McClements, a student at Ulster University, appreciates being able to stay connected while away, checking on sick calves and pending tasks.

O'Connor, who just earned two A*, five As, and two Bs in his GCSEs, plans to continue his education but sees his future in agricultural tech. 'I think agriculture is such a traditional industry, it needs change and as more young farmers come into it, the industry will start to change,' he said, envisioning more robotics and automation.

His efforts have earned him a nomination in the Northern Ireland start-up category of the Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards. 'It's definitely really exciting,' O'Connor said. For a teenager with a knack for problem-solving, it seems the farm-to-app pipeline is working just fine.