Agtech - So What?

The Digital Ag Collective with Kelly Pearce and Tanya Kilminster from the West Australian wheatbelt. This podcast conversation is about the development of an Australian farmer owned and controlled group that utilises and shares the most relevant data systems and programs available in the Ag Tech sector. Kelly Pearce and Tanya Kilminster both live and farm in the West Australian wheatbelt. More notably they both hold Agricultural Science PhD's with the CSIRO. In their chat with Sarah Nolet they explain the climatic and economic imperatives that are changing the way farmers in their regions conduct business. Tanya works with the WA Department of Agriculture and Food and says, "in the last decade we have really had some challenges from a climatic and economic point of view - so every decision we make has to be really critically thought out. We really need to utilised the data available us to make much more informed decisions. From about 2010 onwards we have had some really 'doozey's' of seasons and so farmers have really challenged us as a Department for solutions." Both Kelly and Tanya have been interested in making better use of the business intelligence becoming available to their own farming systems and found that once they delved deeper they became frustrated with what they found. This has led to the establishment of the Digital Ag Collective (DAC). "We went to Sydney and we put a call out there for data scientist, analysts, IT experts come and meet with a group of WA producers who are really interested in pursing technology for data integration and business intelligence and we were overwhelmed with the response," says Kelly who is the Collectives chairperson. Kelly says the aim of the DAC is to, "drive industry wide, producer led frameworks and standards for providers to incentivise and allow us the opportunity to give our experience, to be involved in the assessment of these technologies, share our pain points and help co-develop solutions together." "What we are proposing that farmers are a critical part of the solution and that tech needs to be developed from the ground up." Right now the Collective is busy working out who are their best collaborators and partner as well as setting up their right legal entity to allow for a true hub of business intelligence - that is owned and run by farmers. You can find Kelly here on Twitter You can find Tanya here on LinkedIn For anyone interested in more information about the Digital Ag Collective you can email Kelly at http://pearcekelly@bigpond.com The Digital Ag Collective can be found https://digitalagcollective.com/

14 Mar 201942min

EvokeAG LIVE Special! In this Episode of AgTech So What we take you to a panel Sarah hosted at the recent Agrifutures EvokeAG Event. Get ready for even faster, smarter farms. Precision farming, using satellite imagery and drones to monitor crops along with farm-management software tools to maximize decisions are powering smarter farms. Uptake of these and other AgTech innovations are set to expand with the imminent introduction of faster, cheaper connectivity. Panel members: • Anastasia Volkova - Flurosat • Flavia Tata Nardini - Fleet Space Technologies • Jonah Williams - Airbus • Will Wells - Hummingbird Technology • Martin Clough - Syngenta

9 Mar 201948min

This week we come to you live from EvokeAG. EvokeAG is an exciting event showcasing the best of the best hosted by Agrifutures. Sarah Nolet hosts this panel on Alternative farming - a new frontier. With global population expected to reach 10 billion people in 2050 and urban sprawl encroaching farmland how do we maximize dwindling resources to feed everyone? Farming practices are undergoing a radical transformation to produce more from less and make the most of what is there. Panel members: • James Pateras - Modular Farms • Dror Tamir - Hargol FoodTech • Olympia Yarger - Goterra • Emma Parsons - Agrigate

3 Mar 201945min

Matt Roesner is the technical director for his family's machinery business Roesner Pty Ltd. based in Harvey, Western Australia has been in existence for more than 100 years.. The Marshall Multi Spread was the first Australian multi purpose fertiliser spreading machine spreading lime and gypsum at the same time. Since that time 10,000 machines have been built by Matt's family. Matt says, "we've stayed relevant by spending a lot of time getting to know what our customer base wants and what their needs are. I think one of the challenges these days is the cost of capital equipment, it's continually rising and they are spending large amounts of money on machinery that can only be used for a few months of the year and so we have concentrated on building something simple, that is easy to maintain, that will last multiple seasons and has a long service life." These days the business is reputable as a leader in the development of agricultural technical data. A few years ago the business built a mobile app for IOS and Andriod to send out calibration data to its client base. "We got a really good response and so we decide to build a variable controller app for an Ipad and there was immediately a lot of interest in it too," says Matt. "We see the importance of the data ecosystems that exist around our products is important to the growth of our business so in March 2018 we purchased the Precision Agronomics Australia business, based in Esperance, WA and formed the i4M (Internet For Machines) brand - with the aim of having flexible and open systems that are simple and cost effective and independent from other brands. Our whole plan is to be able to have equipment talking back to the internet to allow applied data usage." Matt speaks with Sarah about the importance of the agricultural agronomist keeping up with the rapidly developing pace of technology, why he's eagerly awaiting the arrival of artificial intelligence and, the opportunity for Australia to become leaders in autonomous agriculture and how trust between growers and service providers will be pivotal in the evolution of data use in precision farming. Download the Marshall Multi Spreader App here Watch the Marshall Multi Spreader YouTube Channel here Learn more about the Marshall Pty Ltd business at roesner.com.au

25 Feb 201949min

Jennifer Medway, Sheep farmer, Gunning NSW Manager for research and innovation with AgriFutures Australia. Jennifer Medway is a 5th generation farmer from Gunning in southern New South Wales running a sheep and wool farm with her Mum, Dad and Husband. In this podcast Jen shares her perspective as a farmer, who's also had career in agricultural policy and governance and now agtech. She explains how she uses a combination of these pursuits to leverage technological progress within the farm business, board rooms and in her role as manager for research and innovation with AgriFutures Australia. Despite the drought, their farming operation continues to scale driven and inspired in part by the MLA's Producer Innovation Fast Track program which has enabled the adoption and utilisation of tagging, profiling and data management technology to build the best flock they possibly can. It means a lot of investment in new machines, consultants, tags, technology and time but has completely changed their growth mindset. To enable to set-up of their new system, the business has worked closely with agtech and providers such as MerinoLink (EID's), and ClipEx (infrastructure). Jen lovers her work AgriFutures for its diversity and she says there is much 'horizon scanning.' Her portfolio the National Rural Issues program is the perfect fit for her to leverage her experience in farming and policy issues. Jennifer Medway - LinkedIn Emerging Opportunities - AgriFutures Australia

28 Jan 201946min

Viv McCollum and Margaret Ayre We're trying something new on the podcast today - a joint conversation with two admirable women in the Ag Tech space - Viv McCollum and Margaret Ayre. Vivienne McCollum is the founder of agricultural consultancy AGKServices (AgKnowledge) and has been heavily involved precision agriculture for about 18 years (before smartphones and in some instances the internet!). She shares her insights into the role of young people in the adoption of precision agriculture in Australia, as well speaking about what advisors are struggling with. Viv also speaks with Sarah about the tools available to help farmers adopt and get greater value from innovative precision ag in their individual farming operations. Margaret Ayre is a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne and more recently she's been working the faculty of Science's Rural Innovation Research Group. Margaret shares her insight into the importance of the qualitative and emotional side of agricultural innovation, things like trust and confidence and the pivotal role they play in tech adoption in agriculture. University of Melbourne Rural Innovation Research Group Research Paper, Key Findings: Stimulating private sector extension from Australian Agriculture to increase returns from R&D.

22 Jan 201957min

Rob Sharkey describes himself as a farmer, podcaster and an outfitter. He's a grain farmer from Illinois in the Unites States and has morphed into somewhat of a social media celebrity in Agriculture circles for his commentary and questioning on rural issues. Rob has an inquisitive take on his commentary and tries to incorporate humour and a bit of cheek into his works on his blog, podcast's and occasional TV show as well as 12K following on Twitter. This conversation explores what he's learnt about podcasting and voicing his opinions to the public - as well as his opinion on how to bridge the rural urban divide through the media. This is Rob's website sharkfarmer.com Rob's podcast The Shark Farmer comes out each week - he can also be found at the Farm and Rural Ag Network. His second podcast is the What the Farm podcast.

13 Jan 201955min

Will MacSmith is a farmer from Manildra in Central West New South Wales. Will and his business partner Hamish are trying to develop a system to realise profit margins for sheep through the collection of real time data of feed efficiency and conversion for individuals rather than the mob. They're doing this through trial and error in confinement and feedlotting on Will's family farm where he's been living and working for the last 10 years. Over a period of two years they have been building a facility, using microcontrollers, that measures individual feed intake and live weight at the same time, in real time. "Every time the animal leaves the stall where they feed from that piece of information gets sent to the cloud and allocated against that individual animal's tag number," says Will. "We had sheep in the feedlot and we would have varying levels of performance and we found that using growth rates as an indicator for performance was a bit flawed, and doesn't really tell you much about feeding efficiency and cost efficiency." It's about finding better ways to feed, and better varieties of feed and also looking at the effects of environmental factors such as shearing or heat or lack of water and measuring that against cost benefits and of course they also consider genetics. Will also says similar systems that are already available on the market are cost prohibitive for most farmers. "At this stage in Australia we can't really get around the cost of labour for the construction of individual stalls on a large scale. At the moment the question probably is, 'would it be cheaper to build it overseas." Will is working with feed companies interested in comparing and monitoring their feed products and he says there is a lot of interesting coming for sire evaluation and the genetics side of the industry as well. In this podcast, will also speaks about pushing the Ag industry in Australia forward, and the challenges of ageing demographic in farming. Will is new to Twitter and so the best place to contact him or his business partner Hamish is via email william@crownagriculture.com.au hamish@crownagriculture.com.au

6 Jan 201946min