Every odd-shaped, idle or under-used block holds a better future - apples, truffles, solar, mānuka, goats, agritourism, something that returns on your investment and lasts. ruru helps you find your land's best use, turn it into a plan you can act on every day, and line up the money and the experts to see it through.
The 5 ha that just gets topped. The gully in gorse. The flat earning grazing money on ground worth far more. You can feel what it could be. What's missing isn't knowledge, and it isn't care - it's a way to turn that feeling into a plan that actually works, the confidence to back it, and someone beside you through the long years before it pays. ruru helps you dream it, prove it, fund it, then do it - season after season. Built for exactly this kind of block - small, steep or odd-shaped, the country the big farm tech skips - and it runs from the phone in your pocket, no expensive gear required.
Nothing in nature is instant. A good rural project is years of work and real money before the land pays back - and so much can go wrong on the way. ruru is with you for the whole arc, so the dream becomes a plan, the plan gets funded, and the plan gets done, season after season, until it comes true.
We weigh everything your block could become against what matters to you - an income, regenerating the land, something to hand on - and land on the use worth backing. Independent: no crop, product or input to sell you.
Fundable and livable: the establishment programme, the years to first harvest, the numbers and the honest risks - sourced and conservative. The document a bank funds, and the one-pager - for the fridge door, and for telling partners, whānau and stakeholders the story at a glance.
Matched to every fund a NZ landowner can reach, and the right independent specialist at the right moment. We prepare the paperwork and stay beside you through the long climb to harvest. You make the calls.
Not maximum production. Your best use - and everything it takes to get there.
A handful of quick taps - and only the ones that fit you. We come back with a personal read: the kind of future your block could carry, and what it would take to get there. The more specific you are, the sharper the read.
It helps us pitch the timeline and the succession side honestly - a 30-year project reads differently at 35 than at 65.
This matters more than almost anything else here - it opens whole families of funding a standard plan can't reach, and it changes how the plan is built.
Pick all that matter. "Best" means whatever you decide it means - and it shapes the whole plan.
A rough sense of the contour is plenty - if you give us an address we read the detail from the maps; from a region alone, this helps us a lot.
A real soil test sharpens the read. No test is fine - we model it from S-map to start, and can help you arrange one.
Pick all that apply. It tells us where to put the weight.
A ballpark is fine - it just helps us frame the funding mix. Tap a range, or put an exact figure below.
This is the key that unlocks your read. With it, ruru pulls the public records for your property - LINZ titles and parcels, S-map soils, and NIWA and MetService climate - so the report is about your actual block, not a generic one. A street address gives the sharpest read; a postcode or region still works. How we handle it →
We need at least a postcode or region to read your land.
That email doesn't look right - mind checking it?
Free, no account. We only use your details to reply about your land - never sold, no spam. How we handle your data →
This is the sample artifact, made real. Because ruru holds your record as you go, it becomes a real plan, not a hopeful spreadsheet: the document a lender underwrites, and a single page for the fridge door to keep the family going through the long years.
The render a financier underwrites: applicant and property, land and soil, the establishment programme, market and people - then the numbers, multi-year P&L, balance sheet, cash flow, capex, a debt schedule, the J-curve, funding scenarios, and the funding that lowers the cost of the lend. This is the artifact that unlocks the money.
See a sample plan for bank fundingThe owner's render, made for the wall. Why it matters, the climb from planting to full harvest, the season's rhythm, and what to remember when it's hard. Not for the bank - this is the one the family looks at over breakfast through the years before the trees pay.
See the fridge-door pageWant the whole venture on one business page instead? There's a Lean Canvas too - same numbers, a different one-pager.
The honest part: tree-crop development is capital-hungry.
All in, the orchard costs about $465k over eight years - capex, establishment costs, and interest while the trees grow. The bank lends the $235k of capex (about 44% against the land); the household carries the rest until the crops pay. That is exactly why the plan models the household's finances as carefully as the land's - and why it ends on the funding that lowers that cost.
And it sells through numbers, not hope: via a chestnut collective and an aggregated truffle pool, identified forward demand runs to roughly 15× this block's mature output - including a standing export order no single grower could fill.
Illustrative throughout. Figures sit at the conservative end of published NZ ranges (MPI, Land Use NZ, NZ Avocado, NZ Tree Crops Association, NZ truffle research), and every assumption in the plan carries its source.
One system across the whole arc. Everything known about your land becomes a plan a bank can fund - then keeps proving it once you are funded.
ruru starts from what is already known - the public record (LINZ, S-map, NIWA), your farm's own history and records inherited from past owners, and any consultant work already done. Where a decision needs ground truth, ruru asks for just that: a walk of the block with your phone, a drone pass, a soil test, a weather station - each becoming dated, located evidence a plan and a funder need.
ruru weighs every use the block and you could really support, and lands on a best use worth funding. Independent: no crop or product to push.
The plan, the funding you qualify for, and the applications prepared for you. This is the part that gets you moving.
the spearheadOnce funded, ruru helps you deliver what you promised - records, compliance, the season - and sell it forward through the collective.
after fundingPoint the phone at the land. ruru reads what it is seeing, joins it to what the public record, your farm's history and prior consultant work already know, and hands back a mini report. Every capture after it sharpens the picture. This is the SEE layer - useful, but the cheap part. The value is the plan and the funding it unlocks.
Anyone can hand you a photo and an opinion. ruru's value is the knowledge underneath it: four databases built for New Zealand land, two forecasts that change the decision, and a companion that keeps working when the coverage doesn't.
A living record of what actually works on land like yours - matched to your soil, contour, climate and region - and, just as important, what quietly fails, so you don't learn it the hard way over five lost years.
Real market intelligence: prices, sales volumes and the channels that actually buy. So "best use" is backed by the return you'd genuinely get - not a hopeful number on a page.
The full map of NZ funding - banks and their products, grants, council works, MPI, whenua Māori funds, conservation and carbon - what you qualify for now, and the one change that unlocks more.
Hundreds of rural consultants, region by region - and the independent specialist matched to your decided use, brought in once the dream is concrete. Never a single-crop or fertiliser adviser steering the whether.
Weather is hyper-local - one paddock logs 29 mm while another ten minutes away gets five. ruru tunes the forecast to your block from your captures, your neighbours', and the public record, so you see the frost, flood and dry coming for you.
A tree crop is a bet on a market years away. ruru forecasts forward - what avocados, truffles or mānuka honey are likely to be worth by the time yours is ready - so you plant for the market you'll harvest into, not today's.
Built on the public record, deep expertise across every crop, animal, soil and machine, and everything known about your own place, ruru becomes an assistant you can actually lean on. It organises your week, knows when the digger's service is due and what this block needs next, and answers the questions you'd otherwise sit on for weeks.
Sit with it at the dinner table; take it out into the paddock. And because the plan and your records live on the phone, it keeps working when the signal doesn't.
Getting through the funding maze, and knowing which specialist to call - and when. This is the part ruru knows cold, and takes no product position in: we've nothing to sell you but the plan. Here's how we handle each.
Most farmers leave money on the table because the funding world is a maze: dozens of schemes, each with its own forms, criteria, timing and order of approach. Miss the sequence and a grant closes, or a bank wants a farm plan you haven't built. ruru holds that map so you don't have to - and turns it into a short list with the next step on each.
The funds your land and plan already meet - with the amount, the document ruru prepares, and the next step. Money you can act on.
The funds one defined step would unlock - and the exact change that opens them: a farm plan first, a governance resolution, an erosion area mapped. No guesswork.
Best use and fundability are the same question, asked twice.
There are hundreds of rural consultants, and the good ones are worth every dollar. But a kiwifruit consultant tells you how to set up kiwifruit, not whether you should; a truffle specialist assumes truffles; a fertiliser-backed plan recommends more fertiliser. So the order matters. First you decide your best use, independently, with ruru. Then we match you to the specialist who can deliver that decision - to advise on the how, never to choose the whether.
We hold a curated network of independent specialists across the country, and surface the few who fit your decided use, your region and your stage - not whoever paid to be listed.
A specialist costs real money, so timing matters. ruru flags exactly when one earns their fee - the inoculation programme, the freshwater plan, the governance pack - so you spend on advice only when it changes the outcome.
You decide whether. The specialist tells you how.
The plan told the bank something would happen. ruru helps you do it - and proves it at every drawdown, review and audit. The tools below come into their own here. Tap any to see more.
Say yes to the plan and your calendar, tasks and materials build themselves. The right job, for this block, at the right moment - prioritised by season, weather and what the funder expects next.
ruru maps and numbers every tree from the phone - offline, no survey gear. Scan a tag and a single photo or voice note populates the care history, the spray diary, the harvest record, the grade and the compliance report together. One capture, read many times - and the yield record a buyer and a bank trust.
NZGAP, a Freshwater Farm Plan, GROWSAFE and spray records compile themselves as you log the work - not as a weekend lost to paperwork. These records are also the evidence your bank's annual review and any buyer's audit draw on, so the review confirms current data rather than scrambling to rebuild it.
Weather is local - one paddock logs 29 mm while another, ten kilometres off, gets five. ruru tunes the forecast to your block from your captures, your neighbours', and the public record, so you see it coming.
But it rains on you. And blows, and frosts, and bakes. ruru sees it coming for your paddock, not the region.
Pre-sell part of your harvest before it is out of the ground, and sell the rest at harvest. ruru pools many small harvests into the reliable volume a real buyer needs - and the forward demand that makes your plan's revenue line credible. This is the long game, and the reason the plan can promise a market, not a hope.
ruru is the per-farm engine behind you, never a rival in front of you. It activates idle land into new members and helps your existing growers fund the expansion you both want.
Approached only in partnership - tikanga-led, on your terms. ruru is a tool for kaitiakitanga and ahi kā, never a substitute. You own your captures, your plans and your data; mana motuhake stays with you.
Illustrative user stories. The kinds of land, and the kinds of people, ruru is built to serve.
Lance and Robyn's saffron tests premium grade and the buyer wants more than they can grow. Profitable, but cash-tight. Because ruru has been in place all along, it already holds the operating record - and builds the artifact a lender needs: a bank-ready plan, plus the sustainability-linked rate that lowers what they pay.
A grower the bank likes becomes a grower the bank can fund.
A whanau trust holds land across many titles - some commercial, much of it dormant. ruru reads the whole estate, plans a best use for each block, and builds the governance pack that opens MAPIP feasibility and Whenua Māori funding a standard plan can't reach.
A best-use plan, with the funding only whenua can unlock.
Steep, eroding back country that cost money to graze. ruru maps the erodible area, produces the farm plan that makes council works and Hill Country Erosion funding claimable, and plans the flats for a use that services the lend.
The funding match turns a liability into a funded plan.
Craig manages property; Fiona nurses. Their forty hectares mostly just sits there. ruru reads the block, lands on a best use, and lines up the money - or lists it, tagged with what it's good for, for a grower who needs it.
Idle ground becomes a funded plan, or a grower's new block.
Everyone told Kevin he was mad - macadamias, on that block? He'd walked every row until he knew which trees were racing away. But you can't sell conviction forward, and a bank can't lend against a hunch. ruru turns what Kevin sees into a record a buyer trusts and a plan a bank can fund.
Conviction becomes evidence, and evidence becomes capital.
A real buyer at a real margin, and the cheapest capital to get there - more value staying with the grower, without over-relying on a single buyer or the next glut.
Right for the land: biodiversity, soil, water and carbon. Regeneration counts as a productive use - and often opens funding a pure crop can't.
Built to endure - for the family, for the whenua, and for the future. The measure is whether the land is handed on in better heart.
ruru exists to help quiet land come back to life - a living for the people who work it, a home for nature, and proof a country can be more productive and more alive at the same time.
ruru helps every farmer find their land's best use — and lines up the money to make it happen: the grants, loans and cost-share they qualify for, plus a plan a NZ bank will fund. We do the homework and the paperwork, and then provide them with SaaS Calendar, Tasks, Compliance modules to help them deliver the plan. We will then use our proprietary forecasting to compile a forward-market to help them sell what they produce. The core is built and beta-tested with small-block farmers; the raise funds the NZ launch and growth and sets the platform up for international expansion.
That password didn't open it. If you've been given access, check the spelling - or email emailteamruru@gmail.com.
Don't have a password? We'd genuinely like to meet - email emailteamruru@gmail.com and we'll share the deck and open the room.
Last updated: 18 June 2026
ruru.land is operated by BigSmallFarm Limited ("ruru", "we", "us", "our"), a New Zealand company at 63 St Marys Road, St Mary's Bay, Auckland 1011. We've written this in plain English because you deserve to understand it. Everything here is one document - Privacy, Terms of Use, Security, AI & Data, and Data Residency. Questions? Email privacy@ruru.land.
This explains what we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and your rights.
We do not sell your data, and we don't share it with advertisers. We use a small set of third-party processors, each bound by terms that restrict how they may use what we send them:
| Processor | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | AI processing for the read, plan and companion | United States |
| Netlify, Inc. | Application hosting | United States |
| Stripe (planned) | Payment processing - only once paid plans launch | United States |
Wherever you are, you can ask to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, object to certain processing, or withdraw consent. Email privacy@ruru.land and we'll respond within about 20 working days. If you're in New Zealand and unhappy with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; in the EU or UK, to your local data protection authority.
We use essential cookies for sign-in and sessions, and Google Analytics to understand how the site is used. We don't use advertising cookies or tracking pixels. You can block or clear cookies in your browser, and opt out of Google Analytics using Google's opt-out tools - the site still works.
Disclosed because the current site loads Google Analytics. If your live analytics setup changes, update this section to match.
ruru is not intended for anyone under 18, and we don't knowingly collect their information.
If we make material changes we'll post the new version here and update the date above, and email you where appropriate.
By using ruru.land you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.
ruru helps New Zealand landowners find the best use for their land, turn it into a fundable plan, line up money and specialists, and deliver it through our app and companion. The 60-second check is free; some features may be offered on paid plans in future.
You're responsible for keeping your login secure, for activity under your account, and for making sure the information you give us is accurate. You must be 18 or older.
Use ruru only for lawful purposes. Don't upload unlawful or infringing content, attempt to gain unauthorised access, transmit malware or spam, scrape the platform by automated means without our written permission, or try to reverse-engineer it.
You own the content and captures you create or upload - your photos, records, soil tests, answers and plans remain yours. You grant us a limited licence to store, process and display them for the sole purpose of providing the service to you. You're responsible for ensuring you have the right to share anything you upload.
This is important. ruru's land reads, best-use recommendations, plans, market and weather forecasts, funding matches and any figures are decision-support and general information only. They are not financial, investment, legal, tax, valuation or agronomic advice, and they are not a guarantee that any bank, grant or fund will approve you, or that any yield, price or outcome will be achieved. Forecasts are estimates and can be wrong. Always get your own independent professional advice before making decisions - the decisions, and their consequences, are yours.
ruru uses AI to help produce reads, plans and suggestions. Review everything before you rely on it. We don't warrant that AI-generated content is accurate, complete or fit for a particular purpose.
ruru does not lend money. Banks, grant bodies, councils, consultants and other specialists we help you reach are independent third parties; we're not responsible for their decisions, advice or services, and we take no product position or commission in what we recommend.
ruru is currently free and paid plans aren't live yet. When they launch, they'll be billed through Stripe on the terms shown at sign-up, and refund and cancellation terms will be set out at that point.
BigSmallFarm to confirm refund and cancellation terms before charging.
We aim for a reliable service but don't guarantee 100% uptime, and we're not liable for losses from interruptions.
We may suspend or close accounts that breach these terms or are used fraudulently. You can close your account at any time by contacting emailteamruru@gmail.com; see the Privacy Policy for what happens to your data.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, ruru is provided "as is", and we're not liable for indirect or consequential loss. Nothing here limits rights you have under the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act or liability that can't be excluded by law.
These terms are governed by New Zealand law, and the New Zealand courts have jurisdiction.
We take the security of your data seriously, and we believe in honest disclosure - what we do, and what we're still building.
Data is encrypted in transit using TLS (HTTPS), with no plain-HTTP fallback, and encrypted at rest by our hosting provider using AES-256.
Access to your account is protected by authentication and server-side sessions. Within ruru, access to your plan and records is governed by role-based permissions.
ruru staff do not browse the content of your plan or land records through any admin interface. If we ever need to access your content for a genuine support reason, it requires your consent and is logged with a timestamp.
Captures and plan data are stored on your device and synced to your account, so the companion keeps working out of coverage. They remain yours.
| Service | Role |
|---|---|
| Anthropic | AI processing (no training on API data) |
| Netlify, Inc. | Hosting (United States) |
| Stripe (planned) | Payment processing - once paid plans launch |
Found a security issue? Please report it responsibly to security@ruru.land. We won't pursue legal action against good-faith researchers.
In the event of a data breach affecting your personal data, we'll notify affected users and, where the breach is notifiable, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, without undue delay - and explain what happened and what we've done about it.
ruru uses AI to power your land read, plan and the in-app companion. Here's exactly how that works with your data.
ruru uses Anthropic's Claude, accessed through the Claude API.
Data sent through the Claude API is not used to train or improve Anthropic's models - this is a contractual commitment in Anthropic's API terms. Anthropic processes the data to return a response, subject to a standard short safety-retention window, and no longer.
When an AI feature runs, we send the land and plan content needed to generate the response - for example your answers and property details. We minimise what's sent and avoid sending your name, email or other identifiers where we don't need to.
The AI assists - it drafts reads, structures plans and answers questions. It doesn't make decisions for you, doesn't publish or share anything on its own, and doesn't learn from your data to answer someone else.
AI-generated content is there for you to review, edit or reject. The plan remains yours throughout.
Where your data lives, and what that means depending on where you are.
ruru's application is hosted by Netlify, Inc. in the United States, and AI processing happens in the United States. When paid plans launch, payment data will be handled by Stripe in line with Stripe's own residency policies.
NZ and Australian users are covered by the NZ Privacy Act 2020 and the Australian Privacy Act 1988. Cross-border transfers to the US are permitted under both, provided adequate protections are in place, which we maintain with our processors.
EU and UK users are covered by GDPR. We rely on Standard Contractual Clauses with our US-based processors as the legal basis for transfers. For a Data Processing Agreement, email privacy@ruru.land.
Local NZ data residency is on our roadmap. If it's a hard requirement for you, get in touch.
Working draft for BigSmallFarm Limited. One item still to settle before relying on it publicly: the refund and cancellation terms, once paid plans launch. Worth a review by a New Zealand lawyer.