Austrade markets Australian Agriculture 4.0

The Australian Trade and Investment Commission is focusing on Agriculture 4.0 as it markets local capabilities and products in this fast-developing area.

The Agriculture 4.0 theme will help the global agricultural sector to be more profitable, efficient, safe and environmentally friendly, according to Austrade.

“These technologies include biotechnology, smart farming, ‘precision for decision’ agriculture, robotics, sensing technology, Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity, biosecurity and food quality surveillance.”

Global companies such as Cisco and Bosch are supporting the Agriculture 4.0 push, which Austrade features in a major new area of its website (here).

Gavin Smith, president of Bosch Australia said Bosch was investing in Australia as an Agriculture 4.0 development hub for three major reasons: its rich history as a world-leading producer of agricultural commodities; the strength of its agricultural research and scientific capabilities; and the food and agriculture industry’s willingness to trial and adopt new solutions.

Smith said: “Our investments in and partnerships with Australian institutions is testament to Australia’s strengths in technologies that will lead the next revolution in agriculture.”

Since 2016 Bosch has invested $3 million in Tasmanian startup, The Yield, which measures and predicts real-time weather data at the farm, field and even plant level.

It then converts this into crop-specific knowledge that growers care about, such as when to plant, irrigate, feed, protect and harvest their crops.

The Yield managing director, Ros Harvey said: “The new app takes the guesswork out of farming. It’s an exact science.”

Kevin Bloch, Chief Technology Officer of Cisco ANZ believes that digitisation can address many of the current challenges in the agriculture sector, which lags other sectors globally.

‘Our aim is to remove some of the roadblocks such as on-farm connectivity, and to facilitate and accelerate digitisation of food production. We have initiated this in Australia, but our aspiration is global.’

Cisco is resolving the issue of on-farm connectivity through the development of its Farm Decision Platform (FDP) in Sydney.

The smart farming platform was designed as an open system where third parties only need to focus on their app or sensor – on-farm connectivity, data collection and security, is taken care of.

Picture: The Yield

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