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Innovation in Australian agriculture
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Australia has a long tradition of innovation in agriculture. Graeme Philipson looks at the current state of play, and how the state and federal governments are fostering the country’s innovators.
In the South Australian outback in 1976 a young apprentice named Richard Smith invented a remarkable device. It became known as the stump-jump plough, because its blades had the ability to jump out of the earth if they encountered an underground obstacle like a tree stump. After the obstacle was passed, the blades re-entered the soil and kept ploughing.
The stump-jump plough, perfected by Richard’s brother Clarence, revolutionised farming in parts of Australia where the land was rocky or beset with gnarled and hard-to-move stumps from the Mallee tree, a hardy eucalypt common in the drier parts of the country. The plough is regarded as the archetypal Australian agricultural invention, and is a prime example of the endlessly inventive nature of Australian agriculture.
Agriculture in Australia has to be innovative to survive. Australia’s farms are today amongst the most productive in the world, largely as a result of a willingness – often born of necessity – to do things a different way. Now, in the 21st century, Australian agriculture has adopted innovation as its mantra, with a range of initiatives from business, academia and government to look for new ways to make things happen.
Foremost among these initiatives is FIAL (Food Innovation Australia Limited) – a government funded and industry led research initiative to facilitate collaboration and innovation in agriculture and food production.
The Australian government also produced the major agricultural competitiveness White Paper in June 2015 to examine practical initiatives that will enable a stronger Australian agricultural industry. It includes $4 billion in investment, and a plan to shift the focus of agricultural research in Australia to the development of on-farm technologies and programs that improve farm gate returns.
Then in May 2016, an Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into agricultural innovation made 17 recommendations on areas such as the greater use of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones), greater funding for STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects in agricultural education, the establishment of national agricultural data sets and benchmarking and regulatory reform in gene technology.
Another recent report, by private industry group StartupAUS and consultancy KPMG, found that agricultural technology – which it calls AgTech – has the potential to give Australia a $100 billion agricultural industry by 2030, double what it is now.
Called ‘Powering Growth: Realising the potential of AgTech for Australia’, the main thesis of the document is that AgTech is critical in building Australia’s agricultural industry. The report limits the term AgTech to the early stages of the agriculture value chain, which continues all the way to the consumer – ‘from paddock to plate’, as the industry jargon has it.
“The customer ultimately drives change by providing the demand for various types of food, the source of food, how food is delivered and limitation of wastage,” says the report. “Improved connectedness across each link of this chain will enable farmers to be better able to provide a sufficient and sustainable food supply to meet customers’ needs.
“AgTech, biotech, genetech, foodtech and food ecommerce are all important elements of the integrated value chain. AgTech specifically, though, operates almost exclusively in the initial input and production phases.”
The report defines this as the ‘pre farm gate’ stage. There is a lot of activity in improving technology and productivity later in the process, through the efforts of such organisations as FIAL – which is managing the new agricultural growth centre that is part of the government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda – but AgTech is defined as being limited to the early part of the process.
The report gives a number of reasons why this early stage is important:
- It directly contributes to a more productive, sustainable and customer focused industry
- The area is relatively immature in both development and adoption
- There is great potential for AgTech to be a new competitive advantage for Australia as an exporter and producer
- Ag Tech contributes to more effective use of inputs on farm and reduces food wastage
- There is a growing global investor community.
StartupAUS CEO Alex McCauley says this is the first vertical market report that his organisation has produced. “We are trying to identify areas where Australia can make a difference. Many people don’t associate agriculture with technology, but it is one area where Australia potentially has a great competitive advantage.
“And agriculture is a key driver of Australian exports. Technology has always played an important role in increasing agricultural output. We have an extremely valuable opportunity here to develop technologies that make a real difference to the economy’s bottom line, while also helping rural Australia realise the economic benefits of the digital technology revolution.”
The idea that Australia can become a supplier of quality food to Asia’s emerging middle classes is taking hold in Australia’s agricultural industry, and there is an increasing discussion about how best to realise this potential.
The report makes a number of recommendations, including:
- Establish an independently-administered fund designed to make AgTech more affordable to industry
- Develop a marketplace for AgTech products
- Establish a network of AgTech hubs
- Establish a joint R&D fund with leading global AgTech players
- Develop a national AgTech strategy
- Provide direction to university and research bodies centred on the commercialisation of technology and shorter grant periods that encourage agile testing.
More than half Australia’s food is exported. Export earnings from farm commodities will be around $43.4 billion in 2016, with agriculture comprising 15 per cent of all merchandise exports. But Australia’s agricultural productivity growth, once around 2.9 per cent per annually, has fallen back to 1.4 per cent in the last decade, below the global average of 1.7 per cent.
AgTech is a way of redressing the balance, says the report. “AgTech has the potential to be a leading source of technological manufacturing, exporting high tech products to a global agricultural market in need of innovative solutions to meet exploding demand for food.”
Australia’s state governments are all keen supporters of agricultural innovation. Their initiatives include:
New South Wales
The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) is working with various industry and academic partners to develop products including livestock management in sheep, aerial drones, decision support tools via smartphone apps and satellite based irrigation management systems.
The DPI is also working with the University of NSW, US technology giant Cisco, CSIRO IT hub Data 61 and NSW Farmers to develop Innovation Central Sydney (ICS), a connected community focused on cloud, analytics, cybersecurity and Internet of Everything (IoT) platforms for agriculture. The DPI and Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga also operate the Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation to support partnership between all groups.
Victoria
Agriculture Victoria Services, a government owned company established to provide a commercial interface between government and the agricultural industry and to commercialise government-funded research, is working on a number of projects including livestock tag and trace and a pasture reader.
Regional Development Victoria (RDV) and Food Source Victoria are encouraging agribusinesses to work together to drive growth in exports and jobs. A state government Horticulture Innovation Fund offers R&D grants of up to $50,000 for the sector to adopt new technologies, improve productivity and increase innovation.
Queensland
The state government has established a $4 million technology commercialisation fund aimed at attracting private sector capital into agricultural R&D. In April 2016 the inaugural Advance Queensland Innovation and Investment Summit included a spotlight forum on agricultural technology.
The government, in partnership with CSIRO, James Cook University and QUT, has also developed a ‘digital homestead’ near Townsville to evaluate and demonstrate technologies that enable better decision making on farms, leading to improved productivity and profitability.
South Australia
The state government is funding agricultural research, including a project looking at the benefits of sensors and web-based and wireless technologies in reducing grain crop loss and improving biosecurity issues. The eChallenge AgriFood and Wine program enables agricultural innovators to test their ideas, with access to funding and investment.
AgInsight South Australia is a data portal, available in six languages, to help domestic and international investors identify business opportunities in local agriculture. It received the 2016 South Australian Premier’s Award for public sector digital innovation and the 2016 Australian Government ICT Award for geospatial excellence.
Western Australia
The government’s Royalties for Regions program has funded agricultural technologies, including electronic flock management, a web portal to share value chain data across the sheep industry and the eConnected Grainbelt project, which is aimed at improving profitability and connects all parties and information to support growers.
Tasmania
Sense-T applies data from sensor networks to provide shared data analysis and research for better decision making, improved productivity and sustainability. Developed in partnership with the University of Tasmania, CSIRO and the Tasmanian government, Sense-T has been widely applied to agriculture and aquaculture.
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Trace minerals are required for optimal growth, reproduction, and immunity. Optimising trace mineral status relying solely on oral supplements across a herd may fail because of variation in individual intake and reduced absorption due to antagonism of other ration components and minerals. The use of injectable trace mineral supplements has been associated with positive reproductive outcomes including improved conception rate, increased odds of pregnancy and greater final in calf rate. A study conducted on 2,168 dairy cows, administered injectable trace minerals, four weeks prior to calving and again four weeks prior to the start of mating showed treated animals had a 3.3 per cent greater final in-calf rate, and a reduced time from start of mating to conception, compared to control animals 1 . The Importance of B12 Dr Carl Eden, Technical Services Veterinarian with Boehringer Ingelheim says “Vitamin B12 is sometimes referred to as a ‘super vitamin’ because it is only required in very small amounts but vital to many essential metabolic pathways. However, demand for B12 can vary considerably during the year and we see serum levels of B12 fall at critical times, such as the first few months after calving.” Vitamin B12 contains cobalt, so deficiency in cobalt can lead to deficiency in vitamin B12 because ruminants get most of their B12 as a byproduct of ruminal fermentation where the bacteria in their rumen assemble B12 from cobalt for use by the cow. Sub-optimal trace mineral and vitamin B12 status at calving, mating, and drying off has been shown to negatively impact growth, reproduction, and immunity. Using a trace mineral injectable containing vitamin B12 can improve trace mineral and vitamin B12 status at these critical times. Marks-Min with Vitamin B12 – The Evidence In the largest trace element study to date, Marks-Min Injectable Trace Mineral with Vitamin B12 demonstrated remarkable results when compared to a reference trace mineral injection. “Given the differences between Marks-Min and other products on the market, we wanted to generate a compelling data set to demonstrate how effective it was compared to the pioneer product. We entrusted this work to a third-party research company” says Dr Eden. “We chose farms that were at the top of their game from a reproductive perspective. We made sure that the farms had no evidence of trace element or vitamin B12 deficiencies or excess.” Across all outcomes of interest, Marks-Min demonstrated clear non-inferiority when compared to the reference product. Outcomes measured included submission, pregnancy and conception rates, and six week in-calf rate. Marks-Min demonstrated it is highly suited as an alternative treatment to the reference product. Reference: 1. Hawkins, D., and B. V. S. Franklin. New Zealand Dairy Veterinarians Newsletter 24 (2007): 12-16 Company website: livestockfirst.com.au Company email address: CustomerCare.Australia@boehringer-ingelheim.com Company video: https://vimeo.com/1138807630?fl=pl&fe=cm
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