The push for Australian farmers to have the right to fix their own machinery has been in the headlines since a leading manufacturer reached a deal with farmers in the United States of America in 2021. Andrew Cooke and Andrew Skinner argue ‘the right to repair’ shouldn’t just apply to farm tools like tractors and headers, but also to data. They say while few producers are also technologists, every producer deserves to control and re-use their own data.
Developing innovative solutions and technology to make agriculture easier, more profitable, or sustainable is one thing, but getting farmers to use it is often a challenge. A new initiative by Farmers2Founders (F2F), is focused on breaking down the critical barriers to agtech adoption by putting the farmer first, building connections and removing some of the risk.
Addressing labour shortages; meeting the rising protein gap; and biosecurity solutions to safeguard Australian agriculture. These are some of the challenges and opportunities that are being tackled by 40 agrifood tech companies selected in the 2023 AgriFutures evokeAG. Startup Program.
Waste warrior and insect farming pioneer, Olympia Yarger of agritech startup, Goterra, has earned the 2023 ACT Australian of the Year award for her commitment to tackling climate change. In this Humans of Agriculture x evokeAG. collab podcast, Oli Le Lievre unpacks Olympia’s diverse and entrepreneurial life experiences.
Jack Carmody is the manager of Prenti Downs, one of Western Australia’s largest and most remote cattle stations. Jack has created a system, supported by the nbn® network, that delivers high-speed Internet to the homestead — and allows him to monitor livestock in the most isolated pockets of his one-million-acre holding.
Andrew Bate has been sowing the seeds of the future of farming for the past decade, as Co-Founder of agritech company, SwarmFarm Robotics that’s now leading the world in the development of on-farm robotics. The AgriFutures evokeAG. Startup Program success story and Central Queensland grain farmer will lead a panel of experts exploring the future of autonomous agriculture at evokeAG. 2023.
As the MC for evokeAG.’s second Investor Pitch Dinner, Tenacious Ventures’ Sarah Nolet remarked on how much things had changed since the previous evokeAG. 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?
