Precision agriculture has led to amazing gains for farmers, but there is still huge potential for more transformative innovations if some key challenges are overcome.
This was one of the themes of the Society of Precision Agriculture Australia's annual expo held at McLaren Vale on Thursday.
Describing the state of play in the PA sector, SPAA president Philip Honey said the industry had reached an interesting point.
He said "remarkable advances in technology" has revolutionised farming practices in the past decade, allowing farmers to optimise inputs, minimise waste and enhance productivity.
Satellite imagery, sensor technology, drones and data analytics were only a few of the springboards that had propelled farming into a new era, but Mr Honey said there were some challenges that remained.
He said interopability between various technology and its providers was an issue that SPAA and the wider agricultural industry needed to address "head on" if it was to harness the full potential of precision agriculture.
"By fostering collaboration among our stakeholders and developing standardised protocols, we can unlock the true power of data-driven decision making and drive further innovation in our industry," Mr Honey said.
While automation offers huge upside for farmers, with the promise of increasing efficiency, reducing labour costs and workforce challenges, and improving resource utilisation, Mr Honey believes it important that the emerging technology is made accessible and affordable to farms of all scales and enterprise.
He said that sustainability also had to be at the heart of all future precision agriculture endeavours.
"Through the use of precision agriculture, we can play key role in meeting the growing demand for food, while at the same time minimising our ecological footprint."
Sustainability is very much a key consideration behind precision agriculture's future in Europe, according to expo presenter Jon Medway.
A senior research fellow in spatial agriculture at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Dr Medway shared insights from the global agriculture robotics event FIRA 2024 he recently attended in Toulouse, France.
He said controlling weeds and pests without the use of chemicals was very much the focus of many of the precision agriculture applications and machines.
"Chemical usage was front and centre for most of the applications because their regulations are getting tighter and tighter," Dr Medway said.
While Europe's stringent regulatory environment is a big driver of its precision agriculture sector, Dr Medway said shared challenges including workforce issues were also a key driver.
He said shared goals like improving farm profitability and making compliance easier through data usage were also common drivers.
While there are similar goals driving precision agriculture adoption, there are similar barriers preventing that adoption too.
Dr Medway said connectivity was a global challenge, while European farmers considered training the number one limitation to introducing technology on-farm.
Dr Medway believes data use by the farming sector is still lagging as a result of some of these limitations, but the possibilities are endless if they are addressed.
In an interesting insight into the adoption of robotics in France, Dr Medway said the dairy industry was leading the way with 18,000 of its 54,000 dairy enterprises using robotics to an advanced level.
Of 59,000 vineyards, 112,000 cropping enterprises and 30,000 horticultural operations, only 600 were utilising robotics, the qualifier being one sensor.
Dr Medway said the vast majority of farms using robotics were interested in weed control.
