Often at a GRDC Grains Research
Update, there'd be international
speakers who share their experience
and knowledge.
At the Goondiwindi update, one
speaker who shared his international
experience did so from a very
different perspective as a
Fullbright scholar.
The purpose of the Fulbright was
really trying to understand
the landscape for agricultural
technologies where new technologies
are emerging, how those technologies
inform future challenges both on
a global scale, but also
how those technologies will inform
some of the challenges that we have
at the farm level as well.
The study tour was a quick four
month trip to attend Texas A&M
University and see where European
agtech R&D is heading.
As Professor Baillie told the update
audience, the focus of his mission
was game changing technologies
in agriculture.
There's been large investments in
agricultural technologies in the
last five to six years and in fact,
last year there was as much as 20
billion dollars invested
in agtech. And if you go back
probably six or seven years ago,
that was probably only about two or
three dollars billion. So there's
been a rapid investment in agtech
globally.
And one of the things I wanted to do
was look at what's fuelling that
investment, where are those
technologies are being developed.
And one of the things that underpins
this story is the the growing
trend, I guess, in terms of our
population growth and that by the
end of the century it's likely to be
11 billion people.
And so what that says is if
we want to save the world in terms
of food and and other resources,
we need to produce 50 per cent more
than what we're currently producing
now.
Where will the 50
per cent growth in food production
come from?
In Australia, arable land is
a finite resource,
but how we farm makes a difference.
While larger farms are generally
more productive, adoption of
technology and innovative farming
practises is related to
increased productivity and
farmer profitability in the order
of 20 per cent. if
all farms performed this well,
output would increase 18 per cent
and farm incomes 24
per cent.
While increasing farm size can drive
economies of scale of
key importance is matching
inputs such as labour and
machinery to the size of
a farm business to maximise
profitability and rising
productivity helps offset falling
terms of trade.
Where there's still a challenge is
yield gap, the difference between
potential and actual yield.
In most developing countries, it's
greater than 50 per cent.
And under that, for exporting
nations like Australia.
Wider adoption
of agricultural technologies will
have the greatest impact on closing
that gap, according to Professor
Baillie.
Well, I guess, you know, if you
think back in history, there's
been waves of technologies being
developed and we can go back to what
we call the first revolution, which
was really around mechanisation.
But then there was the you might
recall, the Green Revolution and the
Green Revolution was in the 60s.
And that was the introduction of
irrigation fertilisers and ag chem
to get large increases in
production. So we had something like
three times increase in production
through the Green Revolution.
And then more recent times, we've
had genetics and we've had
precision agriculture and
conservation farming and those sort
of things. But the next wave or the
fourth revolution is around,
I guess, electronics, digital
agriculture, automation, robotics,
those sorts of things.
Professor Baillie told delegates ag
machinery manufacturers are not
only developing autonomous
machinery, they are working towards
making it possible for multibrand
machines to talk to each other
via the cloud.
And a visit to the Agritechnica
Trade Show in Germany
gave Professor Baillie a chance to
see some of that latest agricultural
technology.
And this is some common thinking
around where tractors
and machinery is likely to go
from a European perspective.
And this is what they call their
swarm farm initiative,
but also in particularly in Europe.
There's a trend, if you like, to
going towards renewable energy.
And so the tractor here on the left,
the blue tractor, is being run
on biogas,
biomethane, I should say.
And the operating costs are about 30
per cent less and 80 per
cent reduction in overall emissions.
So there's also a focus not
only increasing our productivity on
farm profitability,
but also looking at some of the
environmental benefits impacts
as well.
From what's happening in Europe,
Professor Baillie's update
presentation moved on to global
investment.
Agfunder is a US based
investment platform that brings
together venture capitalists and
innovation opportunities and
annually reports on agrifood
investments globally by
grouping technologies into various
categories.
This provides a good sense of agtech
developments and emerging
technologies.
Ag biotech is one of the categories
in particular.
The thing I wanted to point out here
is the development of microbiomes
and large investments in
this space around seed coating so
that they identify
naturally occurring microbiomes and
incorporate that into seed coatings
to provide some sort of beneficial
to the plant.
Gene editing is also part of the mix
in this space.
And this is where you're trying to
get the the the plant to exhibit
different traits without actually
genetically modifying the plant.
Another category in this fourth wave
world is the Agri-Business
Marketplace, which is seeing farmer
to farmer networking broaden.
The interest in this category, if
you like, is where a farmer might be
able to identify where they can
get the cheapest, cheapest
drum of Roundup.
So a little bit like a Trivago
for for identifying the best
price, if you like, for ag
chemicals.
For farm management software, the
focus at Agritechnica
was on data collectiveness.
Tractor manufacturers and third
parties such as AgriRouter
are leading the charge.
In robotics, the way ahead is
machines that will go beyond
automating a process.
There's a couple of development
pathways here.
One is around improving
the performance of current
machinery, so adding more and more
features to current machinery
versus smaller multiple machines
that are modular and and
consist of robotic swarms.
So the idea here is moving from
highly automated
machinery via artificial
intelligence to fully autonomous
systems.
Professor Baillie's presentation
finished on novel farming systems,
which looked at ways of intensifying
production.
If you look at some of the vertical
farming operations that are
currently underway, 95
per cent less land, 95
per cent less water and 10
times more yield with no pesticides.
And these systems are really highly
automated.
What broadacre farmers can take from
such novel farming systems
is the recognition that agtech
is changing farming and
the type of people who support
agriculture in the future.
Agtech companies in the US are
interested in artificial
intelligence, and they are looking
to align
their operations with skill sets
that are normally seen in Silicon
Valley in those places.
And so you're seeing a change of the
sort of people that might be
employed by those companies in the
future.
But that also informs the sort of
people that might be employed on
farm in the future as well.
Professor Craig Bailey from the
University of Southern Queensland.
And this video is one in a series
of update videos recorded
at the 2020 GRDC
Grains Research Updates.