The future for farming systems - farm smarter, not harder

Take home message

• Future Australian agriculture will need to hone its efficiency and sustainability through adoption of new technologies and utilisation of data to increase our profitability and maintain our edge over international neighbours.
• Farming has an image problem. There needs to be a dedicated industry group that is tasked purely to promote Australia agriculture.

Introduction

Australian agriculture in the future will be about improving efficiency, sustainability and consistent supply of quality products. More emphasis will need to be placed on inputs, storage, waste, distribution and ultimately farm profitability rather than perhaps just production.

We can’t be complacent with maintaining our position globally. We need to look at enhancing it. In spite of producing food on the driest inhabited continent, on low quality soils and with major climate variability, previous reliance on water and energy to drive up yields will not be an option for the next phase of our productivity gains.

Farming isn’t about the perceived increase in the value of land anymore. It’s more about land ability to create profit over a sustained period of time. This removes the capital gain component of the land and allows the land to become a more sustainable business in its own right. We need to make the business of farming valuable and shift that focus away from the primary asset, which is the land. Expansion of farm size can then become a function of increasing profitability instead of asset accumulation.

For this to happen, more emphasis needs to be placed on farming system analysis of rotations, industry research and development (R&D), emerging data utilisation technologies, review of current farm structure and a greater emphasis on perceived social value of agriculture to the wider community.

Rotations

Controlled traffic, zero- and minimum-tillage systems have certainly changed the production reliability in our farming systems. But with it have come plenty of other issues. These include larger stubble loads that result in higher incidence of crown rot and nematodes, a change in weed diversity (e.g. Fleabane), resistant weeds and narrower erosion (wheel tracks). As we move forward, rotations will become even more important to our profitability especially in the west. As fertility declines in all areas, rotations - especially with legumes - will help reduce fertiliser dependency, improve soil structures, reduce cereal stubble and thus disease issues (crown rot, nematodes etc.).

With summer crops within the rotation, especially in the western areas, there is a clear trend towards growing quicker-maturing varieties. This will allow earlier planting opportunities, reducing the risk from heat at flowering and allowing more time to refill the profile. In eastern areas, quicker maturing varieties will allow more double-cropping opportunities such as with chickpeas.

Robust rotations will enable a greater choice of chemistry over different management zones across the farm, while also allowing the use of strategic tillage to combat resistant weeds. There will be a greater emphasis placed on residual chemistry within the rotation to complement camera spraying technologies to combat these issues. With more reliance on residuals it is paramount that rotations are more stringent in order to alleviate residual herbicide issues in subsequent crops.

Rotations assist in more efficient use of machinery and labour, especially during harvesting and planting. It also allows alternative marketing opportunities to that of just cereals.

The use of cover cropping within rotations will become more prominent after summer crops rather than long fallowing. This change from long fallows to more intense cropping systems is a direct correlation to poorer fallow efficiencies.

The current trend of more intense summer rainfall will require our soils to have more stubble and greater water holding capacities to reduce runoff and erosion, and to increase infiltration rates within our soils (70 per cent  of our rainfall is lost in our fallows).

There will be more stock being utilised as a double-knocking strategy on resistant weeds after spraying in fallows. High-intensity grazing could be implemented within the rotational system as another means to reduce resistant weed populations. “What about the fences?” you ask The technology is now available through virtual fencing utilising satellite technology. Contract grazing within this system may be utilised in the future with farmers that don’t currently run stock for this purpose

Research and development

Our agricultural R&D capability ranks amongst the best in the world. More recently, Australia has developed a strong capability in climate change research including studies on impacts, adaption and mitigation.

Research nowadays looks very different to that of the past. Today’s breeding facilities are designed to focus on drought, frost, disease, plant architecture for hostile subsoils, along with yield and quality characteristics. These new breeding facilities require software programmers, computer scientists, statisticians, crop physiologists, agronomists, cell biologists, pathologists, molecular biologists, climate scientists and geneticists. Each plays a role in development of new varieties, with an emphasis on how they perform over a range of different environments.

Agricultural research has the potential to become a significant industry in its own right. This is currently playing out in the political arena with the Australian Government’s current trend to decrease public investment in agriculture. This will result in grower contributions through the GRDC and the spend in universities etc. to be leveraged with new commercial interests and business models. These new models will fuel a trend away from pure research and develop into commercial adoption of the research outcomes. New business alliances will make money from the adoption of new technologies and will continue funding new research opportunities into the future.

Farm structures

Our future in food production will reside within our current large-scale farming systems where we have clear skills and where there is scope for increased efficiency rather than in niche foods where high labour costs and low innovation make it hard for us to compete.

The current trend in agriculture appears to be aging farmers, with fewer youth returning to the family farm. Many of those that do return have to seek off-farm incomes in order to subsidise low profit margins or smaller operations. This means more farms are incorporating their consultants, accountants, bankers etc. into the business structure of the enterprise and relying on contractors to undertake operations in order to run an efficient farming system.

There is a clear trend for overseas investors purchasing large tracts of land at prices that are making expansion increasingly difficult for family farms. To counteract this, there will be a shift needed in the structure of smaller family farms. Smaller operations may need to create syndicates or collaborative farms. This will allow more scale and efficiency throughout the farm business allowing smaller farms to compete. This model has been successful in the Mallee region of South Australia through collaborative farming, such as with Bulla Burra. It is co-owned and operated by family farming enterprises headed by John Gladigau and Robin Schaefer. This will require more rigorous farm structure and clear positions within the business for each party, but this is not unusual for businesses currently running in any other industry within Australia.

Data-utilisation technologies

Farm data will ultimately be linked through satellite data in combination with ground-truthing. This will be used as a basis for farm management decisions. We will know the detailed genetic makeup (genotypes) of our farm and the relationships these will have with the physical characteristics (phenotypes) of the farm to anticipate performance under a diverse set of environmental conditions.

Agronomists will need the traditional knowledge of cropping systems, fertiliser regimes, field pathology and so on. They will also need to know about techniques to assess crop health based on analysis of the reflectance from crops and images captured from drones and/or satellites.

In future this data will be captured from even more diverse sources. Farmers and their consultants will link this information with predictive climate models. Using those results they will make more timely management decisions such as time of planting, fertiliser application, disease management, harvest management and ultimately when and how to market the commodity. At the end of the day this will allow the producer to capture a greater share of profit margins available.

Smart farming has many hurdles to overcome. The greatest obstacle is current low profit margins and the implementation cost of these products are perceived too expensive currently. This will change as more people realise the benefits to their future bottom line, through increased efficiencies and more precise management decisions.

Who owns the data? It has been suggested that companies such as DuPont, John Deere or Monsanto could utilise this data and therefore have access to real-time information during harvest, spraying and planting operations. It would give them an unparalleled insight into production down to the farm level. I don’t believe this will be an issue, as farmers aren’t about to hand over their data for others to utilise unless it benefits their bottom line whilst making farming more efficient and easier to manage.

Technology

Once considered space age or science fiction, it is a certainty that driverless tractors are just around the corner. Robots that can target and kill herbicide resistant weeds, delivering accurate doses of fertiliser and fungicides, which in turn will cut fuel and labour costs, are now just a few years away.

Such autonomous robots will reduce the reliance on large tractors - which have high maintenance, fuel and labour costs - and also reduce the compaction footprint over our country. These new technologies alone could be utilised in the fight against weed resistance which has been estimated to cost the Australian grains industry $200 million each year. These small, light-weight robots can traverse the paddocks continuously. Plucking individual weeds or using microwave and/or laser technology would reduce the reliance on herbicides (which have a very limited life span). As the costs reduce and technology improves the adoption rates in robotics will skyrocket in Australian agriculture.

Industry promotion

Australian agriculture has an image problem at present. Ours is the most urbanised country in the world, but today’s youth aren’t aware of the careers or lifestyles offered in the farming sector. The few that do have seen some of the worst of it, or haven’t had clear career pathways and consequently leave the country for the city lights. Consequently, most Australians are largely unaware of the revolution that is occurring on our farms. Many would be both surprised and fascinated to know just how sophisticated Australian agricultural science has become and the unbridled potential it has in delivering the strong and prosperous Australia of the future.

This promotion will have to be driven by a combination of farmers, industry lobbyists and also the wider community both young and old. Currently Australian agriculture is inadequate at promoting and delivering these strong attributes to the whole community. This needs to change.

There needs to be a dedicated industry group that is tasked purely to promote Australia agriculture. In conjunction with farmers, such a group will need to promote Australian agriculture to the wider community through not only Twitter and Facebook, but also digital and print media. Presently there is a disjuncture between current industry bodies which often only work toward their own agendas rather than as one united group for the benefit of the whole Australian agricultural industry.

Historically it takes a disastrous or contentious issue to arise before we unite as a group and an industry to combat these problems. A current example is the use of the media to project into the wider community the plight of the proposed mining on prime agricultural land… A little too late??? Let’s hope not.

AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE ‘GET IT UP YA!’……FARM SMARTER, NOT HARDER!

Contact details

Drew Penberthy
Penagcon P/L
0427255752
drew@penagcon.com.au