Judy Kennedy

As a teenager at boarding school in Perth, Matt Haggerty clearly remembers having ‘lots of arguments’ about why his family’s system of farming in Western Australia’s (WA) Central Wheatbelt was a viable alternative to conventional methods. Today, he’s devoting his time to learning about, and practicing, Natural Intelligence Farming, and educating customers about the system’s benefits.

Ticks; a tiny but mighty pain for the Australian beef industry, taking a $146 million-dollar bite out of the sector every year.
But after more than 18 years research which began in the Department of Primary Industries & Fisheries (now in the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries/QDAF), a vaccine is showing powerful potential to disrupt the life cycle of the cattle tick.
University of Queensland scientists Professor Ala Tabor and Dr Hannah Siddle of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation share how they’re set to test their vaccine on 40 cattle in a proof-of-concept trial for commercial adoption.

A $60 million investment program designed to galvanise the research and adoption of agritech in regional farming areas has been launched by Charles Sturt University, Australia’s largest educator of agricultural students.

Pairtree Intelligence co-founder Hamish Munro is fast running out of voice as he responds to an avalanche of interest from the global launch of agtech innovation, Pairtree Pipes, at the evoke^AG. event in Adelaide last month.

As the MC for evoke^AG.’s second Investor Pitch Dinner, Tenacious Ventures’ Sarah Nolet remarked on how much things had changed since the previous evoke^AG. in 2020 and its first Investor Pitch Dinner. Australian agritech has gone from aspiring to be a global player, Sarah says, to ‘fully established, proving to the world that we’ve arrived and we’re here to stay’. So where are Australia’s areas of global advantage, and what’s the key to maximising the future for the agrifood tech ecosystem?

Specialising in nutrient extraction technology to convert food waste into useable ingredients, has paid off for Whole Green Foods. The Western Australian startup is now raising a $2 million bridging round, with processing expansion plans and heavyweight partnerships on the horizon, such as Simplot and Ferrero – set to catapult success.