Tough questions prompt revealing answers for agtech
No speeches, no rehearsed responses, just honest answers to tough questions that focused on the future of food production, and the part that agtech innovation will play in it.
That was the brief for evokeAG. 2025’s Tough Questions session, where a diverse group of panellists provided frank and fearless answers to provocative questions that focused on four key threads – Economics & Trade, Innovation & Future Technology, Sustainability & Environment, and the Workforce & Skills Gap.
Read on to find the answers to some of agritech’s biggest challenges.
Q: Do we have a workforce vision and strategy, and who’s in charge of it?
Jo Sheppard, CEO, Queensland Farmers Federation
I think this points to a bigger question – do we actually have a national workforce strategy and a vision for all sectors? We need a national strategy to address workforce attraction and retention for all industries, and ag would have a very strong seat at that table.
Without that overarching support network, it’s really difficult for ag as one sector to innovate and lead in that space. At QFF I’m seeing a great initiative called SmartAg Queensland funded by the State Government. It’s a collaboration between Cotton Australia, Queensland Fruit & Vegetable Growers and Canegrowers, and we’ve delivered workforce skills training to over 1200 people in just over eight months, with a 99% completion rate. Absolutely incredible.
Adam Fennessy PSM, Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
The national government does have a role to play with agricultural workforce issues. The Australian Agricultural Workforce Forum has met five times in the past year. It commissioned the Jobs & Skills Australia Food Supply Chain Study because we need the data to tell us what and where the workforce needs are in horticulture, meat and livestock, dairy, grain etc., and then how do we work with Universities, TAFEs, schools and industry to meet those.
We’ve kicked off a new program called AgCAREERSTART which targets university students and puts them on placements across the ag sector. We’ve had about 130 university students go through so far and we’ve got another 50 or so this year. That gives them real life experience.
Tessa Cook, AgriFutures Horizon Scholar
Entering the ag industry as a young person is very difficult. I’m a fourth-generation beef producer and I struggled to find a way in. The careers counsellors at school constantly told me to be a doctor or nurse, I was never pushed into agriculture. It was my passion that led me to qualify as a veterinarian. Having a pathway into ag in schools is what we need to focus on.
Andrew Bate, CEO, SwarmFarm Robotics
What happened to ag colleges? They’ve disappeared. I keep meeting young kids who want to get into ag but they need a bridge, to work out what area they want to be in – is it livestock, is it irrigation, is it horticulture or agronomy? And to build a skills base. Ag colleges used to provide that pathway and there’s nothing that’s replaced them.
Andrew Bate on the panel at evokeᴬᴳ⋅ 2025
Q: How does Australian agriculture build true trade resilience – do we need a new strategy for diversifying export markets and reducing reliance on volatile global players like President Trump’s US?
Anthony Lee, CEO, Australian Country Choice
Look, we’ve always had something going on globally, we’re a net exporter. You’ve got to have diversification in markets, you’ve got to have diversification of product. If you are too over-indexed into one market, you’re asking for trouble. And we need to constantly innovate, to come up with new products that aren’t on the market today, so that demand for our product is always there to draw in opportunities.
Professor Jacqueline McGlade, Chief Scientific Officer, Downforce Technologies
I’ve noticed around the world that countries are ill-prepared to change the diversity of goods that are going out of their country. Australia is literally at the cutting edge of a lot of climate issues, therefore being ready for what the rest of the world is going to experience gives you an advantage.
Do we have the kinds of foods and crops that will be required by the rest of the world? We don’t. But where best to try them but here, with some of the best farmers, who are going to make a success of the crops and products that meet the global demand for food? Grow the things we know we’re going to need in the future. Politicians are very fickle, they come, and they go, but farmers stay. Make friendly advances and keep the channels open but be careful.
Prof. Jacqueline McGlade in action at evokeAG. 2025.
Q: Agritech promises to solve farming’s biggest challenges, yet funding seems to favour shiny ideas over proven impact. Are we chasing hype over substance? And how can startups cut through the noise to secure investment for real world solutions?
Andrew Bate, CEO, SwarmFarm Robotics
I think we’re all guilty of putting too much emphasis on ‘Someone raised money, they’re successful’ and that’s BS. All that really matters is, are you building something that farmers want, and are they prepared to pay for it? That’s how success should be measured.
We need to dismantle the way we do research with universities in this country. We talk about needing more R&D, but R&D are like oysters and custard, they don’t go together. Research is new discoveries, new science, things that Universities do. Development is taking an idea and getting it ready for industry so it can be commercialised, and universities don’t do that.
Until we split those two things, we’re going to see research happening but farmers not benefiting and then ag techs not being able to grow and scale.
Reality is there’s not huge cheques being written by Australian investors. To raise money to expand you have to go overseas to raise larger rounds.
But if we can optimise our development completely separate to research activities, we can accelerate smart thinking and develop the opportunities so Australian agritech can get to the next stage. Agritech is ultimately another export industry, like beef and coal, that brings income and opportunity back into Australia and I think that’s what we’re missing. We need to start thinking about Agritech is its own export industry to truly deliver the potential for our nation.
Q: How are governments meaningfully collaborating on the global stage to implement and measure sustainable agricultural solutions, and beyond carbon credits, what emerging innovations in regenerative agriculture, water cycles and land management will drive real impact and financial incentives for farmers?
Prof Jacqueline McGlade, Chief Scientific Officer, Downforce Technologies
Governments have a role to create the space in which we can operate, and they go down the prescriptive route at their peril. Create the space to allow new ideas to emerge, work collaboratively and actually bring those into the marketplace.
A couple of examples – in the fibre industry, we’ve been talking about consumer demand to know where things have come from. If you were waiting for publicly funded research you’d still be waiting, but Good Earth Cotton’s FibreTrace gives the consumers what they want. We need government to recognise that you can get sustainability and be economically successful.
I would also point to the new banking arrangements that Oxbury Bank launched with Downforce, which provides a transition facility – who doesn’t want to get a loan to take the hit while you make the transition? I can tell you the demand from farmers is there. For six to eight years, you get a facility, no service fee one over base point.
And we need insurance to be able to play its role, to de-risk the transitions we’re going to make.
Anthony Lee, CEO, Australian Country Choice
Win-win outcomes is what we need and they’re there. You improve the health of your soil which improves the health of your legumes, pastures, timber, you improve the performance of your livestock – it’s good for the environment and your business.
What I see as the problem is measurement at scale. How do we, on a two-million-acre property where we’ve done some wonderful things, viably measure the outcome of that? And I feel like the tech needs to catch up with how we measure that and then if we can quantify that that works, we can roll out those best practices more broadly and get the incentive for it.
Adam Fennessy PSM, Secretary, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
I know taking into account the needs from small farmers to large businesses, it’s a case of know your number and measure what matters. How do you measure your own business impacts and your carbon footprint? And how do governments make it easier, not harder, to use the one tool or a consistent tool to measure farm level carbon footprints? We’ve invested a lot of money in that so that businesses aren’t chasing a whole lot of competing measurements. And how does that link in with what’s coming out of the European Union and North America?
Tough questions panel discussion at evokeᴬᴳ⋅ 2025. Pictured from left to right: Jo Sheppard, Prof. Jacqueline McGlade, Anthony Lee and Elizabeth Brennan.
Q: Why is ‘wages are too high’ so often the default excuse for businesses in Australia? Instead of fixating on labour costs, why aren’t more business leaders focusing on innovation, productivity, research and development and competitive advantages to drive growth?
Anthony Lee, CEO, Australian Country Choice
Labour is the biggest line item in the P&L so it attracts the most attention. More importantly, it is easier to add 10% to your revenue than take 10% off your costs. There’s an unlimited opportunity to value-add our product.
We think we produce food and fibre but there is so much more that we produce out of the crop or out of the animal that is great for society – we’re powering airlines, we’ve got cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, and that comes from the ag tech of understanding that. So, control costs as best you can, but the upside is revenue opportunity.
Jo Sheppard, CEO, Queensland Farmers Federation
You can’t discount wages, but the elephant in the room is the industrial relations system in Australia, which has become so complex that it is actually untenable for most businesses. If we want to increase value without cutting costs, we need to prioritise looking at the red tape that all businesses are now wrapped up in when it comes to managing their workforces. If you’re in an industry like horticulture and reliant on a fairly casual workforce, the recent IR reforms at a federal level really make it very difficult for your business.
As a first step I’d like us to look at our IR system, cut the red tape and make it more sustainable, more tenable, more workable, so that we can create a value proposition in terms of workforce, and bring workers and employers closer together and not drive a wedge between them.
Jo Sheppard in action on the panel at evokeAG. 2025.
Q: As automation and digital technologies revolutionise agriculture, boosting efficiency and reducing workforce needs, what must be done to ensure the benefits of ag tech innovation flow through to sustaining jobs, services and vibrant rural communities?
Andrew Bate, CEO, SwarmFarm Robotics
People say robotics take jobs away, but no-one’s every bought one of our robots and fired someone. I see an opportunity to revitalise regional Australia and get more young people engaged in ag. We need this technology to engage the next generation. We built a model for SwarmFarm that scales globally but also scales regionally.
We believe in Right to Repair. It’s about independent support models where people can choose to repair their own robots, or other businesses can set up locally and become support agents and provide service for our technology as it rolls out around the world.
What it allows is small, medium, and large businesses out in regional and rural towns to provide a support service that’s far beyond what we see in traditional dealership models. That gives our towns more opportunity to grow.
We’re going to see this proliferation of ag tech, robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence, we’re going to see more uses for ag tech and need more specialists in our regions which will grow the opportunity for businesses to thrive in the regions, and I’m pretty excited about that. We’re really passionate about building rural communities, to get more people engaged in agriculture.
Tessa Cook, AgriFutures Horizon Scholar
What we need from ag tech is that collaboration with primary producers about the holes in the market that they need filled. Can these ag technologies actually work in a rural environment, and once they’ve been established, there needs to be support. If it’s set and forget and there is no support when things go wrong, I think the future’s very bright where ag tech is concerned.
Tessa Cook in action on the panel at evokeAG. 2025.
Prof Jacqueline McGlade, Chief Scientific Officer, Downforce Technologies
I think we should be far more discriminatory about how we use tech. When you have AI that’s driven by experience, working from the ground upwards, you wouldn’t have the systems we have today. We can design more intelligently the kinds of automation we want on the farm, and that’s not necessarily driven by software that comes in from somewhere else. Question what you have and make it fit for purpose.