Grain Automate

Grain Automate at a glance:

Global market growth projection: The global market for autonomy and intelligent systems is expected to experience significant growth, with projections estimating that it will reach a substantial $272 billion by 2027.
Desire for blue sky investments: Growers have an increased appetite for high-risk, high-reward research and want research that delivers potentially transformational gains through digital technology, machine intelligence and machine automation.
Paving the way for autonomy: Grain Automate will include RD&E investments across three pillars to prepare Australian grain growers to take advantage of machine autonomy as it becomes available.

Grain Automate is an innovative, five-year initiative developed by GRDC to accelerate the adoption of machine automation, autonomy, and digital intelligence technologies by Australian grain growers.

Between 2023–2028, $35 million will be invested into Grain Automate for a portfolio of new Research, Development and Extension (RD&E) investments, enhancing GRDC’s existing precision agriculture, digital agronomy, and advanced analytics programs.

By the end of the initiative, the goal is for 80 per cent of Australian grain growers to be equipped with the knowledge, skills, data, infrastructure, and governance requirements to successfully integrate autonomous field-based agricultural machines within their farming systems and businesses.

It is projected that the global market for autonomy and intelligent systems will reach $272 billion by 2027.

Australia is excelling at boosting the productivity of its farms and businesses, with our estimated Total Factor Productivity (TFP) surpassing that of the US, France, Canada and Argentina.

This performance is attributed to economies of scale, efficiency in input use and a focus on cutting-edge RD&E, and GRDC is committed to continuing to contribute to invest in this key area.

Programs

Grain Automate reflects growers increased appetite for high-risk, high-reward (blue sky) investments in this space and as such, will focus on three primary programs:

Program one

Paving the way for autonomy: which aims to ensure growers have the training, knowledge, skills and infrastructure to integrate fully autonomous machine capabilities within their farming systems.

Program One is officially underway and focused on providing the building blocks to create a strong foundation in precision agriculture for growers.

Key elements

Under this first program, there are three key elements:

1. Developing capability, awareness, and preparedness for autonomy among growers

Developing an extension strategy to deliver outputs that focus on evaluation, education, peer-to-peer, communications and university extension – all aimed to grow the knowledge, capacity, practical skills and confidence of grain growers in the transition to automated agricultural practices autonomy and intelligent systems.

2. Analytics to support peer-to-peer learning and community acceptance of machine autonomy

Gathering data by supporting peer-to-peer learning via autonomy in practice and using this data to gain an understanding of the drivers for community acceptance of autonomy, as well as the social and economic benefits of autonomy in rural communities.

3. National coordination to monitor the effectiveness and impact of the investment

The National Coordinator will have responsibilities that span all three programs of investment. However, the focus of the role will be in the coordination, quality assurance, and monitoring of demonstration, training, extension, and communication activities delivered in each GRDC region.