V.DIG.0017 - Carwoola date leverage (Pilot) for research and extension activities (Update)
| Project start date: | 24 June 2019 |
| Project end date: | 16 July 2021 |
| Publication date: | 16 August 2021 |
| Project status: | Completed |
| Livestock species: | Grain-fed Cattle, Grass-fed Cattle, Sheep, Goat, Lamb |
| Relevant regions: | National |
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Summary
Digital farms are important for the longevity of Australian red meat supply chains, whether that be to inform consumers of our credentials (CN30 and Beef Sustainability initiative) or to improve business productivity. This project will purchase and install technology, to allow integration and evaluation of digital farm requirements at Carwoola as part of the digital agriculture pilot study. Pairtree is a universal dashboarding platform that can centralise any operational data set and visualise the data in a simple to use and understanding interface. This project trialed this technology.
Objectives
The objective of this pilot project was to better understand the opportunities, once converged data is integrated to a single site; and the future capacity to utilise data convergence platforms like Pairtree, for industry research extension. Specifically this project:
1. Develop and road test an offering that makes the IoT data available for future research and extenstion activities.
2. Discovery, R&D and program options, requirements gathering at MLA, (Including Sheep and Version June 2019 Page 4 of 8 Cattle CRC, NSW DPI outcomes), identification of additional opportunities if further works are carried out.
3. Integrations of data sets (Intially 5)(Wk 2&3), ie: (Data farming (5yr NDVI STACK),
ZeroHarmFarm (WHS), Farm Service Manager (machinery maintenance), ASKBILL (flystrike, cold snap warning etc), Agriwebb (Stock management and movement) IPL Soil Tests (long term NPK levels (paddocks with multiple tests)).
4. R&D computation model, from MLA extension materials, from available web, IoT or other digitally accessible source.
5. Pilot example, with 24 months evaluation, of integrating a select number of MLA past
research programs to the Carwoola IoT output data to ascertain the potential of further
research and extension opportunities.
Key findings
The key results include:
• Research and extension computations can be computed on the fly with localised real-time data sets from the farm, that the levy payer is operating within.
• There is a significant process to curate, normalise and make available disparate data sets for wider industry use, But it is possible.
• There is considerable work still to do, within identifying key research extension options and the best User interface (UI) or User Experience (UX) to propel adoption.
• That producers (levy Payers) and Agtech solution providers can both benefit from data centralisation and convergence. Saving industry costs, time and physical and financial resources, whilst also providing flexibility of choice and a greater value proposition for each solution.
Benefits to industry
This project has tested and proven that there is potential to supply meaningful research and extension services to levy payers, through tailored and customised approaches. A key benefit to industry will be that localised (on-farm or specific supply chain) data can now auto populate extension services. Essentially ‘The Last Mile’ or delivering directly to the consumer (farmer) is always the hardest step to deliver, this project has shown that there is capability there to deliver, the question is now, ‘HOW TO’?
Also that visualisations or recommendations from the extension can be tested in a MVP type approach with iterations of the same outputs to be tested by the user for better User interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) outcomes, thus creating potentially greater adoption levels.
MLA action
The learnings from the Carwoola Digital demonstration farm project has helped shape the MLA Digital Agriculture business plan. A need has been identified to further test AgTech which is market ready with producers in real world situations to identify the use cases and value propositions of the solutions beyond the simple demonstration of them. This is guiding the current and future MLA investments in this space.
Future research
There are numerous research opportunities from this projects direction that can potentially positively impact the red meat industry. These may include, but not limited to:-
• Identify key industry calculators, algorithms and computations that may be tested under licence for localised real-time decision support,
• Identify key industry problems where multiple data sets are required to provide insight or operational support to levy payers,
• Review UI and UX preferences for industry specific bodies of work and how they can be re- delivered, tested and improved upon. Is there elements of Gamification that can assist uptake?
• Review the different red meat species and production systems to develop more tailored extension services. Essentially utilising geographic location of sites to drive dynamically targeted and timely (seasonal) suites of services that levy payers can easily access.
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For more information Contact Project Manager: Darryl Heidke |
