Digital Agriculture: A Tale of Unrealised Expectations?

Digital agriculture has attracted plenty of excitement in recent years from investors – close to USD30B a year so far and increasing, pandemic notwithstanding. The vision of drones zooming over Australian rural landscapes to detect crop nutrition status or of robots tending vertical farms make a good story. And though narratives are powerful influencers for change as pointed out by Nobel Laureate Robert Shilleri, many are built on uncertain foundations.

We, too, like these ideas and have no doubt that digital technology will ultimately deliver major change to Australian agriculture. But what will this change look like to Aussie farmers, and how can they meaningfully engage? In the absence of concrete analysis, narratives can evaporate and leave people disillusioned, creating a problem for those doggedly pursuing authentic progress.

Agriculture, we know, has enormous potential for productive change through digital technology. But clarity is needed to explain how change is likely to occur, what drives and what obstructs change, given the peculiarities of agriculture and the array of factors to consider. Here we attempt to demystify the process of digitisation for Australian agriculture to establish a solid basis for expectations.

We do so by:

Defining the potential for digital agriculture globally as food systems respond to growing demand; Explaining common causes of failure; Identifying the different pathways to success - how they work and how they can be realised in Australian agriculture; and Finally, we focus on what farmers can expect from these changes, and what they and their partners need to do to lever the power of digital for sustainable growth..