Agtech - So What?

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

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.

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.

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

As a child Mark Mortimer didn't like computers. It's a different story now - Mark has evolved to become an early adopter of technology in the field of sheep genetics and stud breeding in Australia. Computers have changed his livelihood.

Mark speaks with Sarah Nolet from his farm office at Albert near Tullamore in Central West New South Wales, Australia. It's a family farming partnership with his father and brother and it's Mark's job to look after the businesses genetics, so sheep genetics, embryo's and semen for clients. He see's it as his responsibility to stay at the cutting edge of the industry, genetically.

You can find Mark on Twitter @sheepGeekCP

Carl Lippert is a American dairy farmer and AgTech developer. He's one of the only people I know who has qualifications in dairy science and computer science.

Right now Carl is busy as the co-founder of new Ag Tech company FeedX which will become an app for US dairy farmers. It will be a one-stop shop where farmers can calculate, source and deliver feed from paddock to farm.

The platform is a partnership of 2 startup's in the animal feed space, Carl's FeedMNGR app and e-commerce marketplace feedforless.com and will include additional aspects to help farmer and suppliers source and buy feed.

They describe it as, 'a holistic set of solutions designed to increase efficiencies in how farmers and feed manufacturers interact to create a win-win scenario'.

Carl will be pitching their work at the US based Farmers Business Network Farmer2Farmer conference.

Find Carl on Twitter @CarlLippert and @feed_mngr

Learn more about Carl on LinkedIn

Chris McLoughlin, organic mushroom farmer, Mycelia Organics

Chris McLoughlin's forae into farming is a great example of a new generation of investor backed agricultural innovation.

Chris has always had a fascination with soil, dirt and technology and his organic mushroom operation, Mycelia Organics is a mixed of all these things. With a whole lot of self education on the internet, including some online courses he has taught himself how to operate an organic farm that answers what supermarkets and consumers want.

Chris tells Sarah Nolet he didn't necessarily have a specific hankering to buy a mushroom farm but when the opportunity presented itself, with investor backing, Chris jumped at it. In the space of three years since the inception of his company, Mycelia Organics has become the largest organic mushroom farming company in Australia and Chris supplies 90% of the market and sells to more than 600 retailers as well as major supermarkets.

Chris on Twitter

Mycelia Organics website

Chris on LinkedIn

Just a quick note to say we will be back soon with more great episodes and amazing guests

Dr Jaci Brown is a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO, and an expert in weather and climate science.