Beef + Lamb New Zealand
Unlocking $100m of Farming Insights
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) supports farmers throughout New Zealand with science-backed resources, tools, and extension services to strengthen on-farm decisions and industry resilience.
Problem
B+LNZ invests heavily in research and extension, with over 1,300 documents, 220+ hours of media, and a wide range of farm planning tools in its Knowledge Hub. But with $100m of science-based, NZ-specific research spread across PDFs, guides, and videos, farmers often struggled to find the right answers to their specific questions quickly — especially when decisions needed to be made on-farm.
Solution
Caitlyn was embedded into the Knowledge Hub as Bella, a conversational AI assistant that makes specialist knowledge instantly accessible.
Domain intelligence
Ontology-powered understanding of agricultural nuance, like when “ryegrass” is a crop versus a weed.Comprehensive ingestion
1,325 documents (4,600+ pages) and 715 videos/podcasts processed across 15 specialist farming areas.Farmer-friendly access
Answers delivered in plain language, on mobile or desktop, with initial summaries and citations back to the original source.Tailored features
Options like larger text, voice readouts, and integration with calculators make Bella accessible to a wide range of users.
Multilingual capability
Supports Māori agribusiness and enables farmers, staff and international students who don’t speak English as their first language to get answers in their own language.
Impact
Bella unlocks and repurposes more than $100m of research, expertise and experience into practical, everyday farming decisions, saving time and building confidence when it matters most. Farmers now have quick, accurate answers to their own questions on animal health, genetics, biosecurity, and more, delivered in their own words and context.
Farmers can create bespoke resources they need from the B+LNZ wider information set, such as summaries of longer documents, checklists and guides.
At the same time, B+LNZ gains new insights into farmer needs through analytics, shaping how future research and extension are delivered.
Science-backed, NZ-specific research unlocked
$100M
Pages of research ingested and processed
4,600
Specialist topic areas covered by Bella
15
“We are putting Bella out there and it is being used in ways we never imagined.”
Aaron Meikle, Product & Development Manager
Caitlyn’s flexible white-labelling let B+LNZ embed it as “Bella,” the trusted digital farm dog farmers now chat with.
Caitlyn’s flexible white-labelling let B+LNZ embed it as “Bella,” the trusted digital farm dog farmers now chat with.
Technology
Bella runs on Caitlyn’s embeddable AI platform within B+LNZ’s secure AWS environment. By connecting over 1,300 documents and 700+ media files into one knowledge base, it delivers plain-language, source-linked answers — with features like voice, large text, and multilingual support designed for farmers.
Try out Bella for yourself at AskBella.co.nz
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