Agritech - helping New Zealand to produce more with less

The world has a food problem. The problem is not just deficiency and inequalities, but also environmental sustainability. Technology can be leveraged to transform the Agriculture industry and bring about efficiency gains, greater yield and address the greater demographic and environmental issues facing the industry.

Population explosion is real

In 2017 the United Nations projected the world population to reach 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. The world population increases roughly by 83 million annually, in spite of declining fertility rates in many countries. That is only part of the problem. The United Nations also projects that the population living in urban areas will increase from the current percentage of 55% to 68% by 2050, further straining services and resources. Not only with this further increase inequalities, it will also require a lower percentage of rural and agricultural land to feed a larger population. 

Some of the questions that Agritech helps answer are:

• How do we increase productivity to feed the increasing population?
• How do we still produce enough food as the urban sprawl continues to encroach into arable lands?
• How do we minimise the impact on the environment?
• How do we combat climate change and issues such as declining water availability?

Adoption of emerging technologies in agriculture

The role of emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and blockchain, in transforming the industry is undisputed. How open is the agricultural industry to using these emerging technologies though? As an example, let us consider automation and AI. The Global Ecosystm AI Study, 2018 aims to gauge the adoption of AI across industries. Of the 70 participants from Agriculture, about 34% indicated a current use of AI while another 37% indicated planned use in the next 12 months. Participants with current and planned AI solution deployments, were further asked about the business solutions being addressed through AI (Figure 1).  

Figure 1: Business Solutions Addressed by AI Adoption in Agriculture

Why is agritech important to New Zealand?

New Zealand is starting to gain recognition for its innovation in Agriculture. Agritech NZ has formalized a partnership with Western Growers in the US, what this space, and New Zealand has also signed up as the first country partner to Farm2050, a collective of major global venture fund providers supporting the industry, to facilitate increased Agritech innovation. Those leading the drive are also working to evolve funding models, encourage technology providers, innovators and those leading adoption to consider the bigger picture and leverage investments for wider application and to enable scale, and to connect core elements of an ecosystem to support innovation across the country, including grassroots and government funded as well as tertiary research and development, education providers, and initiatives that facilitate knowledge sharing, co-creation and collaboration. Agritech NZ is looking to develop working groups to lead in some of these areas going forward. Other countries/regions can learn from the collaborative and innovative environment in the New Zealand agriculture industry.  

The use of technology in agricultural transformation in New Zealand is manifold and encompasses areas such as urban farming, hyperlocal growing, food science research, precision agriculture, aquaculture and genetics. But why is New Zealand so committed to Agritech? 

Upholding the Brand. New Zealand’s agricultural industry is a globally recognised brand. A reputation that embodies purity, high quality and high value. The country believes in not competing on price but on high value branded produce. According to AgritechNZ, the agricultural export sector is expanding – It is projected to go up by 8.5% in 2018, from the previous year. Technology can be a great enabler in upholding the brand, facilitating the development of innovative value-added products, and ensuring that the country is able to prove the purity and quality of its produce, through digital traceability from farm to fork.

Emerging technologies such as blockchain can be used to prove the quality of produce. Fonterra, a dairy nutrition company, has embarked on a pilot with Alibaba to explore supply chain traceability and transparency, that will give New Zealand produce an additional advantage in the global market.

Creating Sustainability. Technology can be used in a big way in agriculture for sustained improvements in efficiencies and the development of new products, and at the same time minimising impact on the environment. The Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) conducted a study, published in August 2017, on the changing pattern of land use in New Zealand. The country consists of 26.8 million hectares, inclusive of off-shore islands. Agriculture is estimated to cover nearly 53% of that land. It was reported that over the last 25 years, the most significant land use change has been a decline in sheep and beef farming, and an increase in dairy farming and forestry. The report speaks about several contributing factors, including technological factors. An example that was given is the developments made in artificial drainage and frost protection systems, which had contributed to increased viability of crops. Pastoral farming however produces methane and nitrous oxide, greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.

There are several examples that demonstrate how committed New Zealand is to environmental sustainability. There is Pastoral Robotic’s Spikey which automates the identification of urine patches on pastures and helps to minimise the environmental impact of nitrogen leaching from dairy cows and enables more pastures to grow. Then there is KotahiNet, that uses sensors and a LPWAN (LoRa) network to enable real-time monitoring of water quality along the Waikato River.

Promoting Innovation. New Zealand is committed to continuing and enhancing its track record for innovation. Innovation cannot be isolated to one industry but exemplars of innovation from a primary industry that continues to dominate exports will likely contribute greatly to promoting innovation in all sectors. To promote true innovation, it is important to develop the entire value chain - supporting on farm innovation to progress and drive greater efficiencies, food science and food innovation initiatives to produce value-added products and services, and supply chain ingenuity, to meet market needs locally and across the globe.

Cooperation and collaboration will enable investments to make a greater impact. There is also a need to ensure the pipeline of talent to work with and innovate using emerging technologies, harnessing an entrepreneurial mindset. Technological education of future generations in Agriculture is fundamental. An instance where the future generation is being educated in the Agriculture of the future is Cultivate Christchurch. It is a social enterprise working to engage and inspire at-risk youth by providing them a purpose and connection through a network of urban farms. The focus is on ‘building a self-sustaining economic model’ – providing urban farming skills to the youth, providing them with employment and supplying fresh produce to local cafes and restaurants. Fieldays, the biggest agriculture event in the southern hemisphere, and initiatives such as the Sprout Accelerator also encourage and support upcoming talent in the Agritech sector.

Technology-driven innovation with increasingly data intensive technologies will require aggregated data if it is to impact the entire economy. Initiatives such as Agrigate, a joint venture between Fonterra Farm Source and the Livestock Improvement Corporation (LIC), which aims to provide value to farmers by bringing dairy industry data together in one place, go a long way to promote the value of collaborative innovation.

New Zealand bolstering agritech with emerging technologies

New Zealand is exploring emerging technologies to help grow its Agriculture industry, with a steady focus on integrating solutions across farm operations and the value chain, as well as ensuring environmental sustainability. An ‘eye in the sky’ by way of a drone, can save days for farmers and help them in checking stock, crops, and fences, battling weeds, and even mustering cattle. Simultaneously, they can provide data to help farmers make more informed decisions around applying fertilizer, disease detection, and about managing health and safety on farms. As technology develops, AI and edge computing will be useful for greater efficiency gains with capabilities such as autonomous tractors and disease prediction, further reducing costs and increase yields.

Data sharing and integration is important for the industry and the economy, providing analytics the farmer can trust, however continues to present a challenge including the question of who owns the data and who has rights to the data. DataLinker facilitates data sharing for the primary sector for more informed decision making and to support farmers in leveraging emerging technologies, whilst enabling farmers to retain control over their information.

There is a concerted effort to promote emerging technologies in Agriculture, involving multiple stakeholders. Radfords, a technology vendor specialising in Agriculture, has recently been awarded a grant from Callaghan Innovation and will be using the funds to investigate the potential of emerging technologies such as AI in optimising and improving efficiencies in post-harvest processes to enable a more seamless connection from orchard to customer. The Department of Conservation (DoC) and Lincoln Agritech (An R&D company owned by Lincoln University) is producing an automated sensor solution for more efficient pest surveillance and reporting. The innovative device will use sensor technology to identify and differentiate between pests and native species. With field trials commencing in 2019 it will help contribute to achieving New Zealand’s goal of being predator free by 2050. Acuris Systems is applying machine learning and AI to automate orchard operations including analysing crop, detecting disease and predicting yield, with plans to also automate maintenance and harvesting operations.

New Zealand’s Agriculture industry will continue its focus on technology, in order to retain its competitive advantage in the global market, keeping in mind the changing consumer preferences, as well as the industry’s need to penetrate newer markets. Knowledge-intensive practices are fundamental for the future of agribusiness and are enabled through leveraging emerging technologies effectively. Other countries/ regions can learn from the collaborative and innovative environment in the New Zealand Agriculture industry.