Agtech - So What?

Anika Molesworth is a passionate advocate for sustainable farming and climate change action. She can be heard on stage and in classrooms in Australia and abroad on the balance of rural landscapes and includes managing climate risk in agricultural systems.

Anika's PHd work takes here between cropping systems in the Riverina in NSW to the rice paddies of SouthEast Asia looking as aspects of sustainable agricultural development.

In this episode we talk about managing climate risk and how Anika's family experience taking on a property in far west NSW sparked her interest in this style of agricultural study. We also look at the differences she sees between the Riverina and South East Asia and what we can learn from each other. We also touch on technology of course and its role in managing climate risk and its barriers to adoption.

This is our first of four episodes in partnership with the Australian Farm Institute on the theme, "responding to climate risk".

You can read more about Anika here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anika-molesworth-93519187/?originalSubdomain=au

And watch her TEDX Talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8R3Al3fgNE

Follow Anika on Twitter

Lachlan Sutton, Agribusiness Manager for Southern Cross Farms, has been involved with agriculture for his whole life. He was born and bred on his family's sheep and wheat farm, worked in various rural services roles for over a decade with Elders, and now looks after agtech for the Corporate farming outfit Southern Cross Farms.

Southern Cross Farms is an agricultural management business, over 2000 ha in size, with a particular focus on citrus and wine grape production, as well as almonds and avocados.

In this episode, Lachie shares his views on the differences (and similarities) between family farms and corporate farms in terms of how they think about adopting new tech. He also has tips for farmers of all types that are thinking about agtech: build relationships, simple is best, and don't forget about support!

Lachie on LinkedIn

Lachie's Southern Cross Farms profile

Lachie on Twitter

This episode is part of the "getting agtech ready" theme, brought to you in partnership with Decipher (www.decipher.com.au).

Find more episodes at https://www.agtechsowhat.com/ or @agtechsowhat on Twitter.

Tim Rethus and his family are cropping farmers near Horsham in Victoria who have made a commitment to "sustainable, low cost farming". As early adopters and innovators, the family has always been on the cutting edge of building and buying agricultural technology.

Now, as the skills and experience of two generations combine, Tim has some valuable insights to share about adopting (and building) new technology, where to look for inspiration, and how to make the decision to shift to a whole new farming system.

To see a picture of the incredible planter Tim mentions plus a summary of Tim's insights with additional links and resources, visit

https://www.agtechsowhat.com/bushtechpodcast/2019/4/30/episode-38-tim-rethus-getting-agtech-ready-1

You can follow Tim at @TRethus on Twitter.

This episode is part of the "getting agtech ready" theme, brought to you in partnership with Decipher (www.decipher.com.au).

Find more episodes at https://www.agtechsowhat.com/ or @agtechsowhat on Twitter.

Sarah here with a quick update on what's new and coming soon at AgTech - So What!

Angus Street - CEO, Auctions Plus

This week AgTech So What? Comes to you live from the Sydney AgTech Meetup. Sarah Nolet hosts a conversation with Auctions Plus CEO Angus Street.

It's one of the Top 10 websites visited every day by rural Australians, AuctionsPlus has used simple technology to redefine livestock trading.

Founded in 1986, its fair to say AuctionsPlus has been well tested in the market and has seen some changes over that time in the AgTech and startup scene in Australia. Remaining a privately held company, Auctions Plus is now facilitating more than $630 million worth of livestock sales annually. In July 2018 AuctionsPlus appointed Angus Street as their new CEO. Having worked within the organisation as the Sales Manager he knows every inch of the business and it shows in this conversation with Sarah Nolet.

The Startup Phase is gruelling and AuctionsPlus has experienced exponential growth due to as Angus describes it 'the perfect spot where the value proposition met market conditions'. Now that they enter the next phase of growth how does the organisation navigate the changes. How do they keep culture in tact, and the agility to continue to innovate? 'No way in hell are we going to be corporatised' is Angus's response!

More about the Sydney AgTech Meetup group

More about AuctionsPlus here

Follow Angus Street on Twitter

Connect with Angus on LinkedIn

Follow AuctionsPlus on Twitter

Follow AuctionsPlus on LinkedIn

This week's conversation is with Leeton, NSW based managing director of I-AG Pty Ltd Anthony Rudd.

Anthony Rudd has a unique insight into the integration of machine automation and data adoption in agriculture and has worked in this space for John Deere Australia, a Chinese company and also in software writing and development.

In 2008 Anthony was employed as John Deere Australia's first ever integrated solutions manager. The concept was extremely new but it had been tested in the United States. Basically his work involved joining technology to the dealership and then to the grower, so essentially moving from machine guidance to full automation and then into integrated data.

He tells Sarah Nolet that his company I-AG is busy working with an external partner developing software that will hopefully unlock the efficiencies in the space at the moment.

"We've built the base software, so it will ingest data from anywhere and any type you can store it safely and you can share it safely with whoever you want to share it with at the moment, in a few weeks we will have the map generation module available."

Anthony's website explains that "I-AG specialize in providing data and software solutions tailored to suit your individual operations. From simple data management all the way to building complex software to enable you to access the data you need instantly and easily enabling our clients to make quick informed decisions based on what their data is telling them."

You can find more information on I-AG here

You can find I-AG on twitter here

You can find Anthony here on Twitter.

View Anthony's LinkedIn Profile here

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://[email protected]

The Digital Ag Collective can be found https://digitalagcollective.com/

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

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

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