Innovation in Australian agriculture

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.

• 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.