On-farm agtech: Sungold Field Days panel told of challenges and hurdles

FARMERS want to be able to farm with data and less “gut-feel”, an agtech panel was told in Warrnambool last week.

FARMERS want to be able to farm with data and less “gut-feel”, an agtech panel was told in Warrnambool last week.

But connectivity constraints, the cost of agtech and the need for a fast payback due to its highly depreciative nature continues to be a challenge at farm level.

The panel of Agrimac machinery dealership owner, and mixed farmer, Hugh McEachern, Larpent dairy farmer Lachie Sutherland and ANZ agribusiness head Mark Bennett discussed the challenges and hurdles to on-farm adoption of agtech as part of a forum at the Sungold Field Days.

Mr Sutherland told the crowd if he had “an open cheque book” for investing in technology, he would concentrate on something that would primarily increase profitability and viewed pasture growth and consumption to be able to provide the biggest gains in his dryland farming system.

Farming “by instinct” and what he had learned, he said “dash-board monitoring” to provide real data for decisions such as fertiliser applications and sowing times would assist his business.

“Better knowledge on what I grow and how I feed it to my cows and how the cows use it,” he said.

Mr Sutherland also said he would seek more individual and accurate information about cow health, implementing technology to monitor cows to enhance reproduction and better identify illness.

But Mr Sutherland was realistic about the use of technology on farm and said the strong focus in dairy on low production costs meant there hadn’t been a lot of investment in technology.

He indirectly used evolving agtech through service producers such as contractors employed for sowing.

Mr Bennett said data and technology would take farmers from “intuitive decision making” to more “driven by numbers … where you don’t have to second guess the gut feel”.

“You could start to trust other members in your business to run it,” he said.

“Get out of your business and think more strategically about the way you run it.”

Mr McEachern said future agtech developments would be more “precise”, for example the placement of seed and application of fertiliser.

Connectivity was bought up as an issue, with problems accessing emails and markets. “Farmers like myself should be able to market my product directly without having to leave my house,” he said.