What do you think of when you picture farming in the future? Many of us would imagine driverless tractors or robots picking fruit.
But, the "hands-free" farming envisioned by Charles Sturt University and Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre is focused on much more than automated vehicles or machines - they also want to offer farmers more data than ever before to help improve productivity and sustainability.
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Together CSU and Food Agility CRC are putting their vision into practice by creating a Global Digital Farm (GDF), Australia's first hands-free commercial farm.
The property, a 1900 hectare enterprise which includes broad acre crops (wheat, canola, barley), as well as a vineyard, cattle and sheep, will be located at CSU's Wagga Wagga campus and built over the next three years.
CSU Professor of Food Sustainability Niall Blair said the unique project, funded by CSU and Food Agility, would arm Australia's primary industries workforce with knowledge and technology in crucial fields like data analytics, geospatial mapping, remote sensing, machine learning and cybersecurity.
"We know a lot of industries are being disrupted through innovation and technology and we want to embrace that and be part of it," Prof Blair said.
"Just like what we've seen in some parts of Australia with hands-free mining, we think there's a role for hands-free farming in the future."
Prof Blair said a major part of the farm's role would be to link different pieces of innovation together to show how technology can be applied to the whole farming system.
"There's nothing worse than 20 different log-in pin numbers or codes, there's also issues farmers have around data protection and ownership, and there's a lot of new technology that's yet to be proven," he said.
"We're looking for things that make farming easier, and actually extract the value out of it, rather than make things more complicated."
The future already exists in pockets but our aim is to bring it all together.
- Professor David Lamb, Food Agility Co-operative
Prof Blair acknowledged that the "farmer's footprint", a set of eyes checking livestock or walking a row of crops, would never be replaced. But he said they were attempting to fill in some of the gaps in farmer's knowledge, with a focus on data-driven decision making.
"It's trying to take the expertise and commitment of our farmers, and provide them with a lot of tools to be able to see things they haven't been able to see before," Prof Blair said.
"What's happening underground, what's happening overnight, what's happening when the farmer's not there.
"We can be more precise, more informed and run some scenarios, so we can see what would happen when we tweak things, without the risk."
The Global Digital Farm initiative will be led by Food Agility chief scientist Professor David Lamb, a leading Australian expert in precision and digital agriculture.
Education, research, showcase and commercial value
Prof Lamb said there would be four purposes of the farm.
Firstly, it would be a "living and breathing, outdoor, farming classroom" for CSU students who account for a quarter of Australia's agriculture graduates and a 'landscape laboratory' for researchers.
Secondly, it would showcase the future of farming to communities, including farmers and grower groups.
It will also act as an innovation site, for example allowing machinery manufacturers to test new products under real conditions, and lastly it is a commercial farm, and must prove its value in terms of commercial and sustainable production.
Prof Lamb said the farm was not just about "robots chugging around the landscape."
"It will certainly feature machines doing a lot of the tasks humans can do, but you'll never take humans out of the equation," he said.
"It really is about collecting data from the farm, from sensors on troughs, gates, cattle, soil and even the crops as they grow - collecting all of that live intelligence to make decisions around farm management and even where the farm product goes."
"It could be your soil moisture sensors, that are giving you a living and breathing soil moisture map, or sensors indicating if you are within the right biomass range to move your cattle on or off paddocks, which could be activated by remotely opening and closing gates," Prof Lamb said.
"The future already exists in pockets but our aim is to bring it all together."
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