Smart Farms in Qld leading to greater innovation in agriculture

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Smart Farms leading the way as Qld commits to fostering greater innovation in agriculture

As the host state partner for evokeAG. 2025, the Queensland Government is committed to fostering greater innovation in agriculture that supports sustainable economic growth, and the ongoing development of Smart Farms.

Digital technologies at Gatton Smart Farm include intelligent apps, robotics, autonomy, and sensors, and non-digital innovations such as protected cropping structures, fresh produce packaging, machinery, and biotechnology.

The Queensland Government commits to fostering greater innovation in agriculture, with Smart Farms leading the way and breaking new ground.

With strengths in Research and Development, commercialisation and extension, the government is keen to explore partnership opportunities to position Queensland as a global leader for AgTech and innovation.

In 2024-25, Queensland’s Department of Primary Industries (DPI) will manage RD&E investments of more than $160 million, delivering impact to a range of industries across a variety of climatic systems including livestock, aquaculture, cropping, horticulture, forestry, timber and food processing.

Queensland’s Smart Farms key to a dynamic innovation culture

With its diverse climate and production systems, Queensland is fast becoming a dynamic hub for innovators, industry and producers to develop and test cutting edge technologies in agriculture, and leading the way are the state’s revolutionary Smart Farms.

Established in the past three years in key research facilities at Emerald, Gatton and Redlands in the Brisbane suburb of Cleveland, the network of Smart Farms is a key element of the Queensland Government’s plan to boost Queensland’s primary industries output to $30 billion by 2030.

The farms have been set up in Queensland Department of Primary Industries’ research facilities, and rather than a ‘cookie cutter’ approach, each Smart Farm reflects the needs of its local stakeholders.

“Growers told us that they needed DPI to be looking over the horizon, focusing more on digital AgTech and providing places for collaboration with AgTech developers and industry.” Ian Layden, DPI’s Director Vegetable Systems and Supply Chains RD&E, Horticulture and Forestry Science.

At work on the 860-hectare Central Queensland Smart Cropping Centre at Emerald.

Robotics, protected cropping and connectivity offer gains on Smart Farms

Digital technologies at the Smart Farms include intelligent apps, robotics, autonomy, and sensors, and non-digital innovations such as protected cropping structures, fresh produce packaging, machinery, and biotechnology.

“At the $9 million Gatton Smart Farm, we’re testing AgTech solutions for in-field, protected cropping and supply chain systems, while the 860-hectare Central Queensland Smart Cropping Centre at Emerald is focused on improving connectivity, to help capture, manage and leverage data to promote better, smarter decisions,” Mr Layden explained.

“At the Redlands Research Facility in Brisbane, the focus is on delivering robust and timely datasets to underpin market access protocols for horticulture and increase understanding of fruit fly and other key pests. These programs are being delivered through collaborations with Federal and state governments and Hort Innovation.”

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Award-winning Ag Tech Showcase makes industry impact

A highlight of the Smart Farms initiative was a two-day AgTech Showcase at Gatton Smart Farm in November 2024, which attracted 1000 producers and won Hort Innovation’s 2024 Industry Impact Award.

“We saw that there was an unmet need for field events and that’s the other bonus, that these public facilities enable more challenging events to happen because we can bring a whole range of stakeholders and equipment providers together,” Mr Layden said.

As a result of the Showcase success, DPI and Hort Innovation took 17 vegetable growers from Australia to the United States for FIRA, the global event showcasing autonomous farming and agricultural robotics solutions.

“These initiatives gave us unique access to international tech developers and growers. It’s important to engage with those companies, as well as our own domestic developers, to highlight the fact that there’s a viable market in Australia for new technologies.

“Another highlight was an episode on ABC TV’s Landline program on commercial growers adopting the first automated, solar powered seeder and weeder in the southern hemisphere, which was tested on the Gatton Smart Farm and with local producers.

“It was a two or three-year effort to get to that point, and I think they’ve done up to 400ha of automated process now, so that’s quite an achievement,” he said.

Smart Farms such as Gatton Farm, are starting to build real momentum.

Focus on connectivity in Central Queensland

At the Central Queensland Smart Cropping Centre, consultant Sonya Comiskey from Pine Tree Projects is managing DPI’s flagship FarmTechConnect initiative – a nine-month pilot program that is working with producers to investigate attitudes to connectivity and technology to drive AgTech adoption.

“The project aims to create an uplift in agtech adoption in Central Queensland by helping producers overcome connectivity issues and other barriers to adopting agtech solutions,” explained Ms Comiskey.

“We do this by providing tailored advice from agtech experts, a facilitated approach to identifying problems and solutions, face to face and virtual learning opportunities, peer support and networking. Participants in the project become local agtech influencers in the region.

“A lot of people think that connectivity is just the ability to connect to the outside world through the internet or by mobile, but it’s a lot more complex than that. On-farm connectivity is about how systems talk to one another,” explained Ms Comiskey.

“How does the accounting system talk to the yield mapping system, which is at a different level? And it’s about human connectivity too – about how farmers engage with fellow producers and the wider industry.

“In addition to DPI’s FarmTechConnect project we’ve started a survey to put shape around what the AgTech ecosystem looks like here, mapping out producers’ perspectives, attitudes, and motivations around tech adoption. No one has ever done that before.” Sonya Comiskey from Pine Tree Projects.

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Encouraging peak AgTech adoption to meet economic targets

“Through a structured process, we can identify what areas can benefit from adoption of tech, and how connectivity enables that tech adoption, and use this to accelerate the uplift of adoption,” Ms Comiskey said.

“We’re also using the CSIRO ADOPT model, designed to predict how a tool will be adopted, which enables us to work out what does the journey to peak adoption of broad AgTech look like? How long does it take, and if we were to tweak a few things, could we do it faster?

“We know the Queensland Government has a target to boost farm gate production to $30B by 2030, so by assisting producers to get the benefits from AgTech, it helps us achieve those targets.”

Ms Comiskey added that the Central Queensland Smart Cropping Centre was also praised for providing producers with the opportunity to do some ‘tyre kicking’.

““At the Central Highlands Development Corporations Ag Tech 2024 event, the Central Queensland Smart Cropping Centre demonstrated a SwarmBot from SwarmFarm Robotics autonomously towing an electromagnetic (EM) mapping machine, to show growers that they could map soil autonomously and collate data with satellite imagery from DataFarming to build a picture of what their soil looks like,” she said.

“The farmers could talk to the developers and see how dashboards could be integrated with various platforms to get better value out of information and data, through tech stacks, so they can pick the eyes out of it for their individual businesses.

“It’s very difficult for an individual primary producer to do that type of RD&E on their own.”

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evokeAG. theme ‘Common Ground’ rings true for Smart Farms

The main case study from FarmTechConnect will be released at evokeAG.’s Brisbane event in February, with detailed producer case studies to follow throughout the year.

Sonya Comiskey appreciates the evokeAG.  2025 theme, ‘Common Ground’, which signifies a call to action for the global agrifood community to come together, break down silos, and work collectively to shape a resilient and sustainable future.

“It’s a really great theme for us, because Smart Farms are ‘common ground’ for the region and the community. They are a meeting place for everyone. Just to have people engaged in that is awesome.”

A highlight of the Smart Farms initiative was a two-day AgTech Showcase at Gatton Smart Farm in November 2024, which attracted 1000 producers and won Hort Innovation’s 2024 VISY Industry Impact award.

Team effort required, in a race against time

When considering the challenges in accelerating adoption of AgTech, Ian Layden is reminded of the introduction of Controlled Traffic Farming in the 1990s, which was met with some hesitancy before being widely adopted.

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“Automation sounds neat, and it is. It’s the transformation that we need in Australian systems, but integration into current processes needs to be achieved by a group of people – economists to assess ROI, researchers, farmers etc.

“It’s about efficiency of operation, better crop intel, and using that data to get better product on time. That’s what we’re digging into now – what’s the impact of integrated high-end tech and where does it make the biggest difference?

“Smart Farms enable us to roll tech out onto commercial farms, and we can put that ROI stuff on the table, which is also really powerful for AgTech developers – to know how to price their offering.  The pressures on farming from a profitability point of view are well known, and we don’t have time to wait another 10 to 20 years for adoption.

“Smart Farms are starting to build real momentum. We’ve had producers make instant investment after seeing ag tech working locally, and we want to continue this momentum.”

 

 


Tickets are now on sale for evokeAG. 2025 to be held on 18-19 February 2025 in Brisbane, Queensland. Following a sell-out event in 2024 we are encouraging delegates to secure their tickets, flights and accommodation early.

We look forward to seeing you in Brisbane for evokeAG. 2025. In the meantime, catch up on the other conversations about sustainability, climate resilience and the role of agtech in meeting those challenges from here.

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