Friday, March 29, 2024

Untapped potential for agri-tech

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New Zealand’s agri-tech sector has untapped potential for export earnings, according to the Digital Nation report, but a Massey expert maintains there is still at least as much opportunity at home as abroad.
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The agri-tech sector has enjoyed annual growth rate of 4% in recent years. It was identified in the inaugural NZTech Digital Nation report for the potential to make an even greater contribution to the country’s economic well-being. 

The report gives a comprehensive picture of the technology sector’s overall contribution to the NZ economy which has been growing strongly, contributing $6 billion to exports last year compared to dairy and tourism’s almost equal $12 billion apiece.

Of those tech exports, agri-tech contributed $1.2b or 20%.

But Massey University professor in precision agriculture Ian Yule said it was time for technology to broaden its application beyond the immediate farm environment, to be relevant and useful across a wider spectrum of needs. 

“If you look at precision agriculture, what a lot of it is about is what is happening onfarm. But we need to get beyond that, it almost needs another name, something about ‘digital agriculture’.”

The challenge for the sector was to extend beyond farms into catchments, regions and even globally with applications, he said.

“So much of what it may do on farm goes beyond the farm and up the value chain, there is a lot of potential there to use it for traceability, proof of source and biosecurity uses, that we could still do.”

He acknowledged the challenge with agri-tech applications was that despite there being many uses, determining where the costs fell was a challenge.

“Everyone wants to put the costs on someone else, but who is going to get the benefits of its use?”

As technology increased and more internet-enabled equipment was used, he believed life on the farm risked getting more complicated.

Some emerging technology that could unlock some of the paradoxes of technology included work Massey University was conducting with a Fenix hyper-spectral imaging system, the only one of its kind outside the United States and Europe.  

Purchased for $500,000 as part of the Primary Growth Partnership to study better hill country fertiliser application, the machine provided intense detail of a farm when it was flown over one, down to grass cultivar type, fertility status and feed quality.

Yule said such technology had the ability to transcend the farm gate, with data invaluable for almost every point of contact for a farm business.

“It is also that ability to revisit the farm easily, and see how the data you collected earlier has changed. This is a real contrast to conventional research where we build and experiment, collect data and then trickle down our findings. With this we can keep going back to look at the data and it is available on so many different levels.”

Agri-tech tools also needed to more closely account for how farmers viewed their farm businesses and that farmers operating at one tier of success may not view their operations and absorb information the same way as those on another, he said.

“We have a PhD student looking at this with hyperspectral imaging, as to why it is so different to previous approaches.”

Telecommunications Users Association of NZ chief executive Craig Young said despite the robust agri-tech sector, connectivity in rural areas still needed to advance further to fully recognise the potential.

“We are still waiting for an announcement on the Rural Broadband Initiative 2 to find out where the $150 million from that will be spent.”

The NZ Tech report touched on earlier Coriolis Research work that noted the agri-tech export sector remained short of its potential, with an unlikely trade competitor in Israel exporting 10 times more agri-tech than NZ. 

The agri-tech sector has been identified as the largest tech investment sector in the world, outstripping the financial technology sector with 2014 investment estimated at US$2.36 billion.

For NZ the stand-out areas for agri-tech exports have been animal health products, machinery or systems and fencing products which collectively account for $900m of total exports. 

While NZ is enjoying some double digit growth, sales to unlikely countries like Canada (24%pa) and Saudi Arabia (10%), the competition from trade partners was fierce and ongoing particularly from Israel, Ireland and the United States. 

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