A Review of On-Farm Telecommunications Challenges and Opportunities in Supporting a Digital Agriculture Future for Australia

Abstract

In 2016 the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture and Water Resources initiated a Rural Research and Development (R&D) for Profit Research Project entitled "Accelerating Precision Agriculture to Decision Agriculture". One of the aims the project, and hence the purpose of this review, is to deliver "recommendations for data communications to improve decision making-or decision agriculture". During the period of August 2016-June 2017, a series of eight workshops, numerous phone interviews and site visitations around Australia sought to understand the current status of on-farm telecommunications at the farm level in support of a digital agriculture future. This review has sought a 'producer-eye' view, seeking to understand the dimensions of key enabling telecommunications utilized by producers, factors constraining the uptake or adoption of available enabling technologies, as well as investigating the future telecommunications needs and opportunities. Information has been solicited from not only producers, but also providers of technologies and data services to producers, as well as those developing those technologies and services. The timing of this review could not have been better. In the period 2010-2014 the notion of telecommunications as a 'critical infrastructure' for rural and regional Australia, and in particular in agriculture has well and truly taken root. Momentum has grown such that during this review period a number of national inquiries concerning telecommunications have been initiated, and in some cases completed. Many of these outcomes have been echoed by contributors to this present review, and while it is not the purpose of the review to duplicate the work of others, any outcomes provided at the 'producer' level that speak to these higher level reviews have been retained to provide granularity; a 'coal face view of the world'.