Ten agtechs shaping Australian farming

Australian farming is getting a high-tech makeover. New technologies are changing the game, making farming smarter, more efficient, and more sustainable. The ultimate goal? For Aussie farmers to get the most out of their land and livestock. Meet 10 agtechs making an impact on farms across the country.?

1. Optiweigh

The peak national body for agritech in Australia - AusAgritech - crowned NSW-founded Optiweigh the Best Agritech of the Year at the 2024 AusAgritech Awards recently. And here’s why. The portable, automated system weighs livestock in the paddock or in a feedlot pen. With just a lick block attractant, cattle step their front feet onto the platform and their weight and NLIS tag are sent via satellite to Optiweigh’s cloud server. Farmers get all their mob and individual animal data along with a daily email showing average daily weight gain and weight information. The distinctive blue unit is dotting paddocks across Australia, and further afield. Optiweigh has units in New Zealand, Uruguay, USA, Canada and the UK, weighing over 500,000 animals monthly.

2. SwarmFarm Robotics?

Queensland-based SwarmFarm specialises in autonomous robot farming equipment. It combines an autonomous platform called SwarmBot with its own operating system, SwarmConnect. The company’s SwarmBots have been deployed across 3.2 million commercial acres, racked up 137,000 field hours and saved 3.16 million tonnes of chemicals. The Queensland-based company was founded in 2012 by husband and wife duo and wife team, Andrew and Jocie Bates on a platform they say is designed ‘for farmers, by farmers’.?

3. AgriWebb

Feed inventory? Tick. Weaning records? Tick. Spray, fertiliser and harvesting records? Tick tick tick. AgriWebb is an all-in-one software solution to make livestock monitoring and farming easier. Founded by two Aussies with backgrounds in farming and a vision for tech, the Sydney-based agtech aims to give farmers an accurate view of what’s happening on the farm through their phone. Farmers get an outline of their paddocks, where their animals are, and pretty much any other information you could think of – and farmers have been quick to jump on board. The platform manages millions of livestock across more than 150 million acres in 18 countries, with a dominant presence in Australia, the UK, USA and Brazil. In Australia alone, AgriWebb tracks more than a quarter of the nation’s sheep and cattle.

4. Agronomeye?

Agronomeye creates detailed 3D digital maps of an individual farm, overlaying many sources of data to help producers see a fuller picture of their own property. Founded in 2015, the company pivoted in 2017 from its original plan to use drones to capture high-resolution imagery of crops – the drought made it clear farmers didn’t need imagery to tell them what was wrong. Instead, its two co-founders put down a credit card at the Imperial Hotel in Trangie, buying the local cotton farmers drinks in exchange for picking their brains. And it’s paid off. The company launched its digital twin product in 2021, and is now in use across more than 2.5 million hectares in Australia. And it’s partnered with some pretty heavy hitters, including Microsoft.

5. LoamBio

Since 2019, Orange-based Loam Bio has been developing products that address the problem of too much carbon in the atmosphere and not enough in soils, where it’s essential for soil health and agricultural productivity. The company has been in the headlines recently for its world-first seed treatment that has the power to bring in millions for Aussie farmers. CarbonBuilder is a powder loaded with microscopic fungi, which when spread out over crops, pulls carbon from the air into the soil. Test-pilot, farmer Steve Nicholson from Forbes, NSW, told The Australian he could envisage a minimum extra $400,000 added to his bottom line. Not bad.?

6. FarmLab

FarmLab was founded in 2016 with an ambitious goal – digitise the Earth’s environment. It’s since developed a platform that empowers agronomists, consultants, and farmers to map, sample, and analyse the environment using cutting-edge remote sensing and digital mapping techniques. FarmLab technology is used in four countries and 4,031 farms, and has more than 45 registered environmental projects in action.?

7. FarmBot

Two things that every sheep and cattle producer always need more of: water and time. Sydney-based FarmBot helps farmers manage their water system with precision technology. Its Saas Platform gathers data points that puts farmers in the know on their water levels, cuts labour and fuel costs, improves sustainability and animal welfare and reduces carbon emissions. FarmBot has more than 20,000 units in paddocks across the country, and last year launched a U.S. subsidiary, Ranchbot – eyeing off a market 10 times the size of Australia’s.

8. Regrow

Sydney-grown start-up Regrow uses satellite imagery to measure agricultural carbon sequestration and boost crop yields. Regrow serves more than 100 organisations who have collectively invested more than $19 millions to help farmers adopt regenerative practices. These actions will abate more than 600 thousand tonnes of CO2e – equivalent to the carbon sequestered by 713 thousand acres of U.S. forests in one year.

9. Pairtree

Co-founded by a fifth-generation farmer from Molong, NSW, Pairtree aims to help farmers get the greatest possible benefits from using new technologies. How? By providing a tool to help them access, view and interpret their various data feeds and digital services more easily. Farmers pick and choose agtech devices, apps and digital services from any number of suppliers and Pairtree brings all the data and other important information together in one place.?

10. Goanna Ag

From its roots in Goondiwindi, QLD, Goanna Ag now serves over 60 per cent of the Australian cotton market, as well as 10 cotton belt states in the USA. It focuses on solving the complexities of irrigation management and helping farmers use water efficiently. With its two solutions – GoField and GoSense –? Goanna Ag’s goal is to improve their clients' water-use efficiency by over 10 per cent, delivering a net benefit of $250/hectare (2.5 acre) each season.

72pc of farmers say they currently use agtech;

A recent survey conducted by market research firm Roy Morgan reveals that a significant majority of Australian farmers are integrating agricultural technology (agtech)? into their operations.

Farm management software stands out as the most widely used agtech among Australian farmers. This software offers a range of functionalities, including paddock mapping, animal genetics tracking, feed inventory management, water monitoring, and biosecurity planning.

Following farm management software, eID tags are the second most popular AgTech. These tags, equipped with microchips, enable individual animal identification and can be read using scanning devices.

Ranked third is satellite technology, which provides farmers with detailed, real-time data on crop performance and soil variability. Precision farming, which leverages satellite data to optimise ploughing, seeding, and fertilising, is the fourth most commonly used technology.

The survey, which gathered data from over 1000 farmers across various sectors such as beef, cropping, sheep, horticulture, and dairy, indicated that 89% of respondents have used or would consider using AgTech. Notably, John Deere, Gallagher, and Elders emerged as the top three brands in the agtech market.

The findings show that 78% of farmers are currently using or have previously used agtech, with 72% actively incorporating it into their business practices. Meanwhile, 6% of farmers had tried but subsequently discontinued using agtech.

Drones, used for monitoring crop health, assessing harvest readiness, checking remote water troughs, and mustering, take the fifth spot. Remote sensors, which collect various data points such as soil moisture levels and pasture conditions and can be controlled via smartphone, are in sixth place.

The survey highlights several benefits of agtech for farmers, including reduced wastage, remote issue diagnosis, reduced labour, better insight into new opportunities, accurate record-keeping, close monitoring of large areas, improved livestock management, increased profitability, and reduced input costs.

However, high costs and lack of information remain significant barriers to agtech adoption. Two-thirds of farmers cite the expense of purchasing technology as the primary obstacle, while a notable portion points to insufficient knowledge about agtech and poor connectivity to the Internet and telephone networks.