Smart Farming: leveraging the impact of broadband and the digital economy

Abstract

Australia's agricultural and upstream service and processing industries face a range of new opportunities and challenges. There is growing global demand for food and the National Food Plan has scoped the opportunity for Australia to increase the value of its agriculture and food related exports by 45% by 2025. In order to realise this opportunity, Australia needs to increase its level of innovation and improve productivity in the agribusiness sector. It must needs to do this through better use of its finite resources through the adoption of more environmentally sustainable farming practices. This situation requires that Australia's rural sector must make a step change in its productivity. CSIRO's Sustainable Agriculture Flagship has set a national goal of increasing of increasing productivity in the sector by 50% by 2030 while reducing net carbon emissions per unit of food and fibre by at least 50 per cent between now and 2030. The rollout of Australia's next generation broadband network and the growing impact of the digital economy through the adoption of smart digital services has the potential to help the rural sector meet its productivity and sustainability challenges. ... In order to demonstrate and evaluate the impact of these developments, CSIRO has helped establish a series of smart farming initiatives throughout Australia. The Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI), a collaborative research run by CSIRO has worked with the University of New England (UNE) to set up the demonstration Kirby Smart Farm in Armidale in northern NSW to explore and demonstrate the impact of broadband and related digital services for Australia's rural sector.