Pete Lewis:
Welcome to Co-Operative Conversations, a livestream series where we connect you to the real stories of Australian primary producers who are working and growing together in co-operatives. Despite all the trials and tribulations that involves. Hi, I’m Pete Lewis, and one way or another I’ve been helping Australian farmers tell the great stories of food and fibre production here for the past 25 years. We’ve just been chatting about how co-operatives can contribute to the future of farming, which is a great springboard to talk about the state of play with regards to technology and data sharing in farming. And to help us tease through those very, very important issues today are three outstanding agribusiness leaders, working with co-operative farm models.
Pete Lewis:
I’m delighted to welcome from Victoria, Phillip Guthrie, partnerships and innovation lead with the Birchip Cropping Group, Wally Newman, way over in Western Australia, a third generation West Australian grain farmer. Great to see you again, Wally. Former chair of CBH and of course, a grain farmer of some note. Kelly Pearce is joining us. She’s an agricultural scientist, farmer, and director of Wheatbelt Science, and of course, every time we do this, we enjoy the company of Melina Morrison, who is the CEO of the Business Council for Co-operatives and Mutuals. Welcome one and all and thank you very much for your time.
Pete Lewis:
Before we start, if you’ve got a burning question as a result of tonight’s topic, ask away to our online team via our chat box which is located to the right hand side of this screen. Don’t forget, you can also vote for a question via the vote button. Obviously the more votes, the more likely we will try and get to that question. And it’s our intention to get to as many of those submitted questions as we can in the time allowed. Right. To kick us off, Kelly, you’re a scientist and I expect the value of data would get you interested in the agribusiness space. Set the scene for us, give a bit of a flavour for us, an overview of the state of play when it comes to data sharing by Australian farmers.
Kelly Pearce:
Thanks, Pete. Look, the Australian data landscape is certainly one of flux at the moment. We’ve got a few hurdles, but I think if we as an agricultural industry think quite collaboratively and strategically, we’ve got some big opportunities ahead of us. Probably the key issue at the moment is that we as farmers collect an awful lot of data. Whether it’s third party software, Excel or raw data, but we’re not able to do a lot with our data. It’s very difficult to analyse and to actually action the data that we collect on farm, and probably one of the key reasons for this is that we’ve got a lot of problems with interoperability and aggregation of our farm data, and it’s really limiting how we can actually use our data.
Kelly Pearce:
And look, for me, I guess as both a farmer, as a scientist, I really want to be able to move towards data sharing system where basically that they allow good facilitation and exchange of high quality shared data. And the fact is that the technology to do this does exist. There’s very few examples of this actually being done in Australia or internationally. And a major hurdle to that really is around governance and the legalities, and we’ll certainly talk about that more later. But I think capturing the benefits of shared data will certainly come in the form of the development of tech, particularly around computational computing techniques, like artificial intelligence and machine learning and predictive analytics, which are really data hungry processes. They require a lot of shared data to work and without data sharing, we’re not going to be able to realise the potential of these technologies for our farm businesses.
Pete Lewis:
Look, you’ve got in this space, obviously a lot of rugged individualists and I guess there is always a tendency for people who are on the edge of a good idea, or at least think they are, to want to hold onto that information very tightly. Does the co-operative approach tend to tease a bit of that information and that data out of people more readily than perhaps other structures?
Kelly Pearce:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, the co-operative structure I guess has a level of … An ethos of trust around it. People will be happy that their intentions of sharing data are the same as those within the co-op model of those who are sharing and controlling and owning the data as well. Absolutely, the co-operative model is a really valid model for any future data sharing arrangements.
Pete Lewis:
Phillip, as Kelly has very eloquently laid out for us, by the sound of it, data sharing isn’t terribly developed in Australian agribusiness. What your view is as the situation in Australia compared to the rest of the world, and can you give us any international examples where data sharing is going pretty well?
Phillip Guthrie:
I think in some ways we’re up there with the best in the world, particularly around the theoretical applications, the data. We’re thinking with that about how it could be used to support research and development. We seem to be a little bit further behind in terms of our thinking around why farmers would share that data, why they would take the time to collect that and then pass that on, which means we’re not really in a position to be able to enact a lot of those ideas to really build on that thinking. As Kelly said, a lot of data is being collected on farm, but not a lot of it’s being used at the moment. Where it is being shared or being collected and shared, it’s being shared at an industry, a personal level or a one on one level, rather than at an industry wide level.
Phillip Guthrie:
You have researchers contacting individual growers or clusters of growers, rather than large groups of growers. That really increases the cost of complexity of data collection and our ability to do anything with it. It’s a fairly time consuming, expensive process at the moment, where it doesn’t need to be. The countries that are leading in this space rarely have … They have access to incentives. They’re more incentivised. They have subsidies in place or various systems and processes that mean that growers are collecting and sharing that data, which we simply don’t have.
Pete Lewis:
And where internationally are they doing it perhaps better, and perhaps where could we look to learn from?
Phillip Guthrie:
The two examples that spring to mind are JoinData in the Netherlands, so a number of Australian organisations including DPIRD over in WA are already working closely with JoinData. The other is the Grower Information Services co-op which is based out of Texas in the United States. Both of those have been around for quite a while. Both of them are also at a point where they’re starting to partner with some fairly large industry and technology players, and that means they can bring better service to their growers and better access to products and services.
Pete Lewis:
Wally, to you now, you’ve been at the farm face to use an expression, for many, many years, and you have a pretty good feeling for how technology progressively has changed the way you go about farming.
Wally Newman:
Yeah, I’ve been involved in I guess technology right from when I first started. Always had an interest in it, and last year I was very lucky to go with Brad Plunkett from DPIRD in Western Australia here, and we went to Michael Cook’s University in Missouri, and we did a co-ops course while we were there on co-op stuff but there was other guys there from all around the world, and in particular from the Netherlands and a couple of dairy farmers there, and we were looking at what we call SuperNet here in Western Australia, where we were looking at putting fiber optic cable throughout the wheatbelt to get really good communications for data transfer. And so we’re very keen on that. We’ve mentioned these couple of guys from the Netherlands and they put us on to JoinData, so Brad and myself followed up with that and then we had Sener Celik, who’s the CEO of JoinData, and he was going to come out to the BCCM Conference, but unfortunately he didn’t get there.
Wally Newman:
But he did come over by teleconference and they’ve been at it for about five years. There’s a lot of things that get in the way of data information, that you don’t even think of. They’ve mastered most of the obstacles in that process, and who has access to it, and how you can actually gain from putting the data into the co-operative, and they’ve refined it to a point that it’s really ready to go and they’re looking at going worldwide. We were looking at some sort of sister co-op here in Western Australia, so we can use their processes and virtually we’re away straight away. Being a co-op, of course, they’re interested to share the data because the more data they’ve got, the better decisions they can make and it helps us, as well. There’s a lot of stuff.
Wally Newman:
On my own farm here, we’re using communications, we’ve got WiFi over 20,000 acres of land here, so we can have live streaming video, and we also have what we call low-ran, which is for monitors for flow meters, whether gates are opened or closed, how much feed’s in stock feeders, water tank levels, all that sort of stuff.
Pete Lewis:
Melina, it doesn’t really matter where good ideas come from, but it is quite amazing that a country like the Netherlands, the size of a postage stamp, leads the world in so many agricultural innovations and bright ideas. Why is that? What are they onto? What are they drinking or what are they growing there that really gives them this kind of global outlook from a place which produces you would think, such a tiny amount?
Melina Morrison:
Yeah, well Pete, they are a small country but they’re great cooperators. In fact, they’re really one of the founding places for producer owned co-operatives in the world. It was a bunch of Dutch farmers that got together to set up their own bank, realising that you could control the capital, that you’re going to invest in your farm businesses and you don’t have any shareholders or other people clipping the tickets along the way, that it’s going to be better for you as a farmer. That bank grew into Rabobank, which I’m sure most people are familiar with. It’s the world’s largest agricultural bank and still proudly owned by Dutch people. Not only farmers, but Dutch citizens. They’ve also founded some of the great farmer owned mutuals in insurance, like Achmea.
Melina Morrison:
I guess they know what a lot of farmers in Australia know, that if you can control the supply chain, particularly if it’s paddock to plate, then you’re going to be able to have, as Kelly said, enhanced control of the governance and the parameters for the use of the things that you produce. If you think about a grain farmer, they produce grain, but they also produce the data about the grain that they grow. So, supply chain control is pretty fundamental to controlling the parameters of the use, the valuating part of farming.
Pete Lewis:
And of course, you mentioned Rabobank. Just up the street of course is one of the real powerhouses of international agricultural research and development, the University of Wageningen. So, they’ve got every side of it covered. Phillip, one of the common criticisms that we allude to a little bit earlier is that data collection and sharing tends to run counter-intuitive to what most people think of when you get onto a good idea. You keep it to yourself. With your knowledge of multiple co-operatives, how do successful ventures engage through trust to share that knowledge and spread it around as Kelly mentioned earlier?
Phillip Guthrie:
I think the starting point is understanding what they’re doing, understanding what their objectives are and the value proposition that they bring to their members. The notion of the value, the notion of coming together to achieve something you can’t achieve on your own, that you may not have the resources to achieve on your own, is absolutely critical. Starting at that value point and then building from there, looking at the systems and processes you need to develop, to be able to capture that value, to be able to make sure that that value’s shared equally among the various participants, is very key.
Pete Lewis:
Wally, a lot of it must also come down to trust.
Wally Newman:
Yeah, trust is one of the problems that even JoinData run into, that at the end of the day, it gets back to benefit. When you totally own and control the system, you’re the sole beneficiary of all the output, then that gives the growers a lot more confidence in putting data into the co-op, and I think data hasn’t really taken off here in Australia to the extent it has in the Netherlands, but without doubt, it’s the next big step in agriculture, bar none. Communications and data is going to keep us in front so that we keep up with the rest of the world. You look at America and the Netherlands, even in Europe, I’ve got a lot of ex trainees from Europe. They’ve got up to 1000 megabits a second download speeds, and they can fly a drone over the field, spot all the weeds, then send another drone out to spray the individual weeds, and virtually they’re organic farming, because they’re using virtually no chemicals.
Pete Lewis:
Kelly, can this stumbling block be fixed? I mean, how can you encourage members, particularly members of co-operatives, to be a little bit more caring and sharing when it comes to data?
Kelly Pearce:
Well, I think farmers, Phil and Wally have also said this as well, they have to be persuaded that they can actually see a value proposition from sharing data. That data sharing is actually going to benefit their business, their family and their community, and we also as farmers, need to be able to see that the data sharing systems that we use are mutually beneficial, they’re equitable, and they’re controlled, and this is where the co-operative ethos are probably really relevant. But I actually see as I’ve mentioned earlier, huge opportunity in value as a farmer from data sharing systems that enable tech and better research, and I’m really excited to know how data driven decision making can complement and value add the decisions I already intuitively make within my farm business.
Kelly Pearce:
But for me as both a scientist and as a farmer, I’m acutely aware that the data that I’m making decisions from is only as good as the data from which it’s derived. For me, I’m not just here to try and persuade farmers to think about data sharing, but to also think about the collection of high quality data into the future, and to also have more active conversations around data storage and ownership and integration. Because as an industry, if we want to move forward, we’ve got to address these issues and we’ve got to ensure that our data’s being managed competently and equitably, and we all understand our obligations.
Pete Lewis:
It’s often an issue that like taking a sip from a fire hydrant, you’re going to end up with so much data, how can it be I guess assembled, stored, retrieved, in a way that will make meaningful differences down on the farm? Who’d like to have a crack at that one? Phillip?
Phillip Guthrie:
Sorry, I’m focusing on the previous question, and there’s a little bit I should have added there if you don’t mind.
Pete Lewis:
Yeah, most definitely.
Phillip Guthrie:
One of the key things for organisations, for co-operatives to do whatever in this space, is to involve their members in decision making. They have to have the governance in place, they have to be clear about their objectives, they have to be transparent about their activities and their practices, and we’ve seen with co-operatives in the past that don’t do that. They tend to fall apart reasonably quickly and quite publicly in some cases. I think it’s also important that members of the co-operative have the ability to opt-in and opt-out. They have a choice of when they provide their data, what they provide their data for, and how that data is used. Just expecting it to provide it carte blanche and the co-operative can use it as it chooses is not necessarily going to work.
Phillip Guthrie:
What I’m very clear on and very clear on coming from our members is what we can’t afford to do is try and legislate or regulate and force farmers to produce their data or provide their data. This would probably do a lot of damage and set our efforts back by years, if not a decade or so. I think it’d be direct admission of the organisations involved that they didn’t have a clear value case that encouraged growers to voluntary provide their data. It’d almost be a tacit admission that creating value for farmers wasn’t necessarily their main priority. They were looking in other places, so again, be very clear about the objectives. Who’s going to benefit and how that’s going to occur.
Pete Lewis:
Melina, what can farmers do to protect themselves and make the most of their data resource?
Melina Morrison:
Well, one thing that they can do is to try and prevent the speculation on the data that they produce. Phil’s just been saying, and is quite correct, that in some cases co-operatives do fail spectacularly. But really what causes a lot of corporations to fail is speculation, as we saw in the GFC. Co-operatives are not alone in being very I guess in the zone of failure, as well as success. Speculation is when it comes to data, is really when information is traded or monetised without the permission of the owners of that data, or in a way that they might not agree to. Co-operatives are a legislative … It’s a legal model that can create some parameters around the use of the data.
Melina Morrison:
So, provided you’ve got the good governance to run the co-operative well, then you can actually have more control as an owner of that data, and co-operatives existing to benefit members, rather than return capital gain to shareholders mean that the benefit of the data usage is going to be more in line with the owners’ intention.
Pete Lewis:
Kelly, is the case of Cambridge Analytics a good example of a horror story in this area, where technology and data sharing went wrong?
Kelly Pearce:
Yeah, look, absolutely. I mean, it’s a really good example of our data being used inappropriately. But in terms of ag data, I mean, one way to think about it is that a lot of our AG data has economic uses. Secondly, when any intellectual property is applied to the farm data that we might generate on farm, whether it’s raw or from a third party, once it’s aggregated or derived or in some way intelligence tied to it, we as farmers don’t usually own that data anymore.
Pete Lewis:
Phillip, I know that you’re working on a wide range of data sharing projects, data driven agricultural risk management. It starting with Regional Development Victoria, and has continued with BCCM and Food Agility. Can you briefly give us a bit of a handle on what you’re doing and how it will help primary producers?
Kelly Pearce:
Yep. We’re currently working with a range of partners across Australia to investigate a project called the Food Agility CRC, to pilot a grower owned and operator data marketplace, using a co-operative structure. We’re starting off with 30 growers in each state, so New South Wales, VIC, WA. The intent is to really demonstrate that we can develop a value case for growers, we can identify a value case, we can collect, collate the data, store it in a secure repository, share it with other parties in a way that is traceable and secure, again, to minimise the data being misused. And then investigate the various governance structures, operating structures, legal, IP requirements, around that data, storage of that data, and use of the data, and a business model to make that self-sustaining.
Kelly Pearce:
The intent is to open up grower data to make that available, not to try and lock it down, but we’re trying to do it in such a way that growers have sovereignty over that data, that we address that issue of value, we address that issue of trust, and that we can ensure that that data is used for the purposes it was collected for, and for the purpose it was provided for, not for any other purpose, and it doesn’t come back to harm growers at the end of the day.
Pete Lewis:
How long is this going to take to create and roll out and I guess more importantly, be adopted?
Kelly Pearce:
That very much depends on the funding structures and how the funders choose to move down this path. We think that in the first instance, we’re looking at a six month process for working with growers to identify their priorities, to collect, collate the data that needs to be used or to address those priorities and to identify some initial research projects. There’s an existing data repository, we’ve partnered with Telstra to use their data hub as part of this, that needs some customisation. The business side, the business model side probably another 6-12 months. We’re anticipating probably 18 months minimum through to about two years before we have a pilot that we can put forward and say, “Look, this is working. Now we’re looking to expand on this and recruit more growers.”
Pete Lewis:
Thanks Phil. Look, just a reminder, we are running a poll with today’s co-operative conversations and the poll question is what is the biggest benefit that internet connectivity has brought to farming? You’ve got a range of options here from planning capabilities, data information, precision farming techniques, monitoring expertise, communication, market data, and time saving. I suspect if you asked a much younger sum group of people living in rural, regional or remote Australia, they would also say being able to get onto Netflix and Stan. But click on the poll in the live chat to the right of this screen and select your answer. Now, moving along now, the co-operative model obviously, and we touched on this a bit earlier, seems to be a great starting point for data sharing, given the collaborative thrust of its systems and its processes. Melina, is this what’s happening in actual fact? Can you tell us a little bit about why the co-operative model is probably good for sharing data than say a different, a company structure?
Melina Morrison:
Well, I think the experts on this call have said a lot about the benefits of data sharing where there’s strong governance models and supply chain control I guess. We’ve all heard of those stories about farmers ripping the motherboard out of their John Deere tractors and things. I guess there are issues around trust and what we don’t want to do is have agriculture step back from the necessary technological innovation that Kelly’s spoken about, that’s going to enhance farm productivity, help us solve some of the food security issues around the globe, and make sure it’s more sustainable to farms. We need to bring those two aspects together.
Melina Morrison:
It comes down to objectives. A company exists to, and is required legally, to maximise profit for shareholders and sometimes those shareholders are not the same as the owners or the customers, such as in the case of farm data. So, a co-operative can be one model. There are still challenges to overcome, but it can be one model of allowing the owners of the data, the producers of the data, to also control all aspects of the data usage, and keep the objective on maximising the benefit to the members who in the case of a farm co-operative, are the agricultural producers. It’s a different objective. Not speculating and trying to maximise profit from data, but trying to optimise the sharing of the data. I suppose that’s the difference, but then it also involves a lot of other stakeholders, as Phillip and Kelly and Wally have talked about.
Melina Morrison:
How do you actually work with other people and bring in the investment that you need to be able to scale up that technological innovation? You’ve got to be able to share outside of the co-operative as well, and bring in other partners.
Pete Lewis:
Kelly, just remind us how data sharing can really unlock value in farming.
Kelly Pearce:
Well, I guess the huge opportunity with data sharing is the opportunity to accelerate and evolve ag tech, and ag tech commercialisation to the point where it can help us to enhance farm productivity. We now have this amazing opportunity to pull apart massive, mind boggling arrays and collections of shared data for insights and trends, like we’ve never had before. The opportunity say in areas like micro climate forecasting, where farmers might share weather data, and that will allow for perhaps the development of algorithms that will underpin really good climate forecasting within our business. There’s a huge opportunity.
Kelly Pearce:
If we look at the sharing of say yield data and output data, soil testing data, Earth observation data, huge opportunity to improve yields and outputs. I mean, even within the livestock sector, they’ve made massive gains from sharing data through the increasing of accuracy of breading value. So, there’s massive opportunity within our sphere. I mean, the other one I can think of off the top of my head is phenomics, where we use new data techniques to identify and visualise the performance of genes, and we combine that with metadata and historical data to improve crop performance. Massive opportunities within the AG sector in areas that we’ve never, ever had the opportunity and a lot of that is being realised, particularly through advancements in data science. If we’re sharing data, we can actually realise those opportunities.
Pete Lewis:
In the grain game, a lot of people have been looking over the paddock for many, many years at the Birchip Cropping Group, innovation and the way they’ve gone about their thing. Are they waiting for some real positive steps and indications to come out of Victoria to give another pump prime in this area? That’s for you, Phillip.
Phillip Guthrie:
Sorry. Look, I think what we’ve got is we’ve got two critical elements that we need to address as part of this, and that a co-op structure is good for us, and this will come up again and again and again. And that’s the notion of valuer trust. Farmers need to see or be able to see that they’re getting value from their data, and they need to trust that when they provide that data, it’s going to be used appropriately. We have a bit of a catch-22 situation at the moment where we need to generate value, we need to demonstrate value, but to demonstrate value we need to collect data. But to collect data, we need to show value. We need to break that cycle somehow to give growers the confidence that the effort they’re putting into investing in these technologies, collecting the data, transforming the data, cleaning the data, is worthwhile.
Phillip Guthrie:
But the second side of things that we have is we have this risk/reward calculation going on where we have this uncertain reward. It’s been dangled in front of them by industry and has been for the last 30 years, about how valuable their data is, what they can do with it, how great ag tech is. A lot of our farmers would see they haven’t yet realised that. And on the other side, you have this very real risk that as you mentioned earlier, that Cambridge Analytica showed, of the potential misuse of data and what can be done. We have an uncertain benefit with a very real fear, which is not a good combination. I know a lot of other organisations and a lot of other states, a lot of other parts of the country are working on this from similar angles.
Phillip Guthrie:
I think where we’re slightly different to where most of those organisations are playing is we are fully focused on grower value. Yes, we realise that this has significant value down the value chain, but that other organisations in the grain sector and other agricultural sectors can benefit from this, but that is all reliant on growers surrendering that or sharing that data in the first place. It’s fantastic to talk about the opportunities, it’s fantastic to talk about how we could use it, but we have not addressed that fundamental problem with how we get our hands on it. I think that’s where this collaboration with the other states is really critical, and that’s why on what would be the third or fourth time around the merry-go-round to create something like this, we seem to have a little more traction than before.
Pete Lewis:
Wally, you’re a believer. Do you need to beat the drum a bit louder or what has to happen?
Wally Newman:
Yeah, I think without doubt, once growers see the benefits, it’s like I guess when GPS first came in, I was one of the first in the district to have it, but within five years, nearly everyone had it. Once people see the benefit of those sort of technologies and the advantages, at the end of the day, it’s dollars in the bank. That’s what you’re looking for, what’s going to make you more productive to be able to compete in the world market. In agriculture, that’s very competitive because our soil types are nowhere near as good as what they’ve got in the Ukraine and Russia and even most of the rest of the world’s a lot better than the soils we farm here. Especially Western Australia. So we’ve got to have everything going for us to be able to compete.
Pete Lewis:
To the issue of governance now, which we have talked about already, but maybe to tease it out a bit more, clearly governance is going to be crucial when it comes to collecting, sharing, owning, and commercialising data. Phillip, how do members of a co-op safeguard that resource and what can protect farmers in that space?
Phillip Guthrie:
The simplest way to safeguard your data is not to share it, and that seems to be the predominate thing that’s happening at the moment. You have isolated areas where the rest is being shared. It may be shared within a small group of farmers or within a small co-operative, but outside of that co-operative, nationally, across the value chain, it’s not necessarily occurring in the way it should. If we want farmers to share their data, then we need to really better understand and put in place the relevant technical legal, legislative protections, to protect their data from misuse or abuse. We need to ensure that of this $20.3 billion that the AFI P2D report is saying can be created, that farmers are getting their fair share of that, that it’s not just another commodity that they’re taking all the risk producing for someone else to value add and make all the money out of. Those are the absolute keys for us.
Phillip Guthrie:
For members of the marketplace itself, when this is running, it’s about knowing what they want to achieve. Keeping themselves informed and what is happening, the opportunities they have, and be involved in decision making. I don’t think in this particular iteration of a co-operative, it’s a set and forget where you can just hand your data over and go, “Thanks very much.” You need to be, to be extracting complete value from it, be quite involved in running this and its operations.
Pete Lewis:
That eye watering number really just tripped off your tongue. It’s probably worthwhile just reiterating that. The commercialisation precision to decision report by the Australian Farm Institute identified 20.3 billion can be added to the gross value production of Australian agriculture through data opportunities. It’s a significant value added step, isn’t it, Kelly? That is right there and ready to activate.
Kelly Pearce:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, huge opportunity within the data sharing scene, to really capture that value for growers.
Pete Lewis:
And Wally, you’ve seen obviously a wealth of changes in your space in terms of big advances in technology and knowledge sharing over the past decade. What’s next? What’s the next big thing that you see and what’s the future of co-operative AG tech?
Wally Newman:
I think that we’ve had communication and been able to transmit data. As that gets better and better, we’re going to have more and more data, and the ability to be able to store it and utilise that data. I think that’s the next big step, is getting the benefits from all the data that we’re generating and linking it in with weather data, for instance, so we can predict what the crop yield’s going to be six months in advance so you can do all your planning for companies or co-ops like CBH. If they knew what the crop was going to be within 2 or 300 ton out of 16 million ton, then that gives them a huge advantage in planning and they always overestimate, so they spend a lot more money than they need to to do a harvest. Just more accuracy at predicting what the future’s going to be on what’s happened in the past.
Pete Lewis:
So, Phillip, on the question of commercialising this, you guys are pretty active in encouraging your members along in this space. Is that going to be a priority?
Phillip Guthrie:
Difficult question. Data only has value when it’s used. Other than that, it’s just a series of numbers in a spreadsheet or in a database. You can only extract value from data when it’s being used. I think again, to reiterate, the first step is about gaining value for farmers, from their data on farm now. A lot of farmers have been collecting data since precision ag became a thing in the early ’90s. And yet, 30 years later we’re still in a position where less than a half of grains farmers are particularly active in the precision AG space.
Phillip Guthrie:
We have a large number of growers who have gone into the precision AG space and then left, and not carried on with it because they couldn’t see any value or they couldn’t see how they were extracting value from it. So, commercialisation starts on farm. Commercialisation starts with growers being able to extract value from that. And then it’s a process of understanding what the problems are we’re trying to solve and developing products and solutions and research that meet that. The problem we have at the moment, particularly in the AG tech space, and the startup space in general, is there are a huge number of solutions being developed that you would say are in search of a problem. Someone’s had a bright idea, they’ve developed the technology, they’ve marketed it as the next big thing, farmers look at that technology and see absolutely no way to apply it, no way to make money out of it using it on farm.
Phillip Guthrie:
They may explore it and abandon it. So, what we’re trying to do through the marketplace is close that loop, close the gap between farmers and researchers, close the gap between farmers and product developers, so that when these things hit market, when we have commercial products or research come out of companies or out of RDCs on farm, that we’re very clear about the application of it. We’re very clear about how it can be used, how it’s going to benefit farmers and the value they can extract from it.
Pete Lewis:
And Kelly, you’ve identified some stumbling blocks to this, but do you also see some real green shoots in this area, some optimism?
Kelly Pearce:
Absolutely. I mean, frequent conversations I have with Phil, as we talk more about this ag data marketplace that Phil’s working on, I’m honestly enormously excited because morally as a farmer I feel it’s the right path to take to ensure data sharing is done right in Australia. I mean, I really do believe that if we get the right technical and legal provisions in place, we’ll have an incredible system that Australian farmers can leverage from, and certainly we can pull in all these amazing, clever people that are out there, that aren’t necessarily in ag at all, whether they’re the data scientists or software engineers, app developers, who can actually come in and actually really help us to identify and address our pain points. Like, we’ve never had this opportunity before like we do now.
Pete Lewis:
That’s a very good point. Melina, you work across the whole range of co-operatives in your role as CEO of BCCM. I’m sure you’ve been involved in a whole series of data related conversations. Do co-ops have an advantage in terms of supporting farmers to get resources together, to bring in the latest tech? Are they better positioned or are they more nimble in this area?
Melina Morrison:
Well, one thing that they do, I guess, is that they’re great investors in infrastructure. CBH is one of the great investors in Australia in agricultural infrastructure right at the big end, of talking about ports and locomotives and silos, and really things that need deep pocket investment. But there’s a lot of investment in digital infrastructure that’s required to advance this technology for the benefit of farmers and the economy, and society. And I think that’s one opportunity that co-operatives have got. They can scale, they can spread risk, so take it at the farm level, take it up to the level of the co-operative, the capital that’s required, and scale the investment so that things can be done collaboratively that you wouldn’t be able to do as an individual farm business.
Melina Morrison:
That said, it’s deeply complex and it requires a lot of money and a co-operative also, as a separate legal person, can enter partnerships with other parts of the technology world, including those elements of optimising the data, translating it from the raw data, as Phil said, into something that’s meaningful and useful. There’s also an opportunity for farmers to use the co-operative as the legal vehicle that’s going to enter into partnerships that are going to actually make the data and the technology manifest as something that directs benefit back to them.
Pete Lewis:
So, there is help at hand for those people wrangling with this issue, and to help upskill their members when it comes to tech and the data space.
Melina Morrison:
Well, again, this is the partnerships. We’ve heard from Phil, the partners around their project in Gippsland, with the Birchip Cropping Group. It’s not just down to the farmers, and actually just reflecting on the previous conversation about how you actually get farmers to appreciate and see that there’s benefit in using their data. Co-ops are about self-determinism and they’re about enlightened self-interest. Co-ops can’t do this on their own. There’s a whole range of partners that are required to try and educate agricultural producers, I guess, that there is benefit, investing their data and time and their capital in this. And that’s down to all of the partners, the researchers, the scientists, the technology providers, our peak agricultural bodies. I mean, how do we actually see this value? There still seems to be a disconnect there for farmers. “What’s in it for me?” That question has to be answered.
Pete Lewis:
I think a very wise man once said in the racehorse of life, always back self-interest. It’s always trying. Listen, I want to thank all of you for your contribution today. It’s been a wide ranging and somewhat roaming discussion, but I think you’ve really hit some strong points and I think your personal experience and insights have been very valuable. I’m sure the folks at home have enjoyed it as well. It’s clearly a conversation that we need to have on a national basis, and certainly within the ag space. Absolutely essentially for the future of sustainable and successful and profitable farming, dare I say.
Pete Lewis:
Now look, this live stream, Co-Operative Conversations, is part of the Co-Operative Farming, a new online educational resource for farmers. Also through Co-Operative Farming, fishers, foresters, as well as members of co-operatives, can access educational bursaries to cover up to 90% of course costs for relevant co-operative education. You can upskill and get money for it. You can jump online at coopfarming.coop to learn more about that, and you can email Co-Op Farming at coopfarming@bccm.co. I want to thank once again, everybody for being part of today’s discussion. Wally out there in the West, Phillip in Victoria, and thanks again to Kelly, as well, and of course always Melina, it’s great to have a steadying rudder keeping us pretty much along the pre-determined path that we need to do.
Pete Lewis:
And speaking of moving out to sea, next month we’ll be … Later this month, we’ll be talking to Roger Long from the Lime Coast Fishermen’s Co-Op. The Lime Coast Coast Fishermen’s Co-Op is locally owned. It’s operated by 27 local fishing family businesses, just two years old this co-op. It started out of necessity, as inevitably they always do, and it has grown to become a very important part of this local community. We’ll be hearing about the many barriers that they’ve had to overcome, how they’ve learned to trust one another and trust certainly got a kick around today, enough to pull their capital, and the benefit it’s had to their businesses and obviously flowing onto their local community.
Pete Lewis:
For all the details of the episodes that are coming up go to conversations.coopfarming.coop, and remember of all these series are available both now and in a live streamed sense, and on-demand. Once again, thank you very much for joining us and we’ll look forward to seeing you next time. (silence)
