Holmes Institute HI6008: Digital Agriculture Case Study Analysis

This case study examines the burgeoning field of digital agriculture, specifically focusing on its growth and impact within the Australian agricultural sector. It highlights the positive trends and redefinition of farming practices through the integration of advanced technologies. The study explores how v...Read More

Running head: CASE STUDY: DIGITAL AGRICULTURE
CASE STUDY: DIGITAL AGRICULTURE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1CASE STUDY: DIGITAL AGRICULTURE
Literature Review
The prospects of Digital Farming are growing positively and redefining farming in
various places across the globe. In the Australian context digital farming is witnessing a steady
growth with various local companies rising to explore the prospects of digital farming. The latest
in technological resources are being utilized by some of the biggest companies in Australia to
manage farms more efficiently. Australia agricultural sector is vast, with many farm
communities operating together to supply their produce effectively to the various supermarkets
(Zhang et al. 2017). The farm economy of Australia is largely based on this demand supply
relationship between the farms and the urban markets. The demand for fresh farm produce is
increasing in the country along with rising demand for more organic produce (Ayre et al. 2018).
In this case digital farming becomes important as it can boost the agricultural productivity of the
country to suit the rising demands. It helps to apply the precision location techniques and real
time data gathering devices to help in taking effective decisions at the right time in farming.
Various organizations have realized this opportunity to provide their digital farming services. As
a results the number of digital farming enterprises have increased in size and scope in Australia.
It has been found in the recent studies that digital technologies can enhance agricultural
production in Australia. The Australian government has already started to fund a rural
developmental project that considers the effective utilization of digital farming practices to
increase farm produce. The R & D project is named the Accelerating Precision Agriculture to
Decision Agriculture. The CRDC or the Cotton Research and development corporation is leading
the project that involves another 15 rural research and development corporations
(Farminstitute.org.au 2019). The focus is on improving the prospects of agriculture in Australia

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and reducing the challenges limiting productivity. It has been estimated that effective digital
farming implementation can increase the value of Australian agriculture by 25%. The cost
savings in terms of labor from automating certain labour oriented functions were found to be
around 7.4 billion dollars. Biosecurity and market access enhancements were estimated to benefit
by around 1 billion dollars (Farminstitute.org.au 2019). Hence, the prospects of digital farming
for the Australian agricultural sector were found to be good. Some of the other companies that
were doing essential work in the field of digital farming were Precision Agriculture, CSIRO and
Digital Agricultural Services. These are some of the organizations that are doing essential work
in the field of digital farming. The presence of these companies are important for the effective
growth and development of digital agriculture in the country.
Precision Agriculture specialize in proving essential technical frameworks for digital
agriculture. The company is working in the areas of digital farm mapping, GPS farming
guidance, surveillance programs for crops, productivity assessment for farms, yield mapping,
management of water and surface water and farm trials of the techniques
(Precisionagriculture.com.au 2019). Similarly another company that is engaging in digital
agriculture sector is the Digital Agriculture Services (DAS). The company provides data and
analytics services to various farms across Australia. The company has facilitated the creation of
the DAS rural intelligence platform. The system helps in recording ground level data that
ultimately helps to understand the character of the agriculture that can be enhanced through
digital agricultural techniques. The services that are offered include geo-locate, productivity
assessment, value and growth prediction and the effective analysis of the past, present and future
of agricultural (Digital Agriculture Services 2019). The company with the support of CSIRO
science is helping to understand digital agriculture in better ways. The rural intelligence platform

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is highly accurate, rural specific and cloud based, making it an effective tool for the analysis and
evaluation of the prospects of digital farming (Whannell and Tobias 2015). The services make
use of digital rural valuation, farm insights, portfolio assessment and rural property reports. The
company CSIRO is doing similar work in the Australian digital farming sector. The CSIRO is
the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. The organization is working
with another company, Ceres Tag for the development of special ear tags that can provide
valuable information about livestock. The results were improved management of the paddock
and livestock across the Australian farms due to enhanced grazing management, location and
operations. Moreover, the company is using precision agriculture to enhance farm produce. This
includes viticulture, broadacre cropping, farming of dairy and sugar and assessment of important
environmental risk factors that can affect the agriculture (www.csiro.au 2019). The organization
is doing important work towards developing better ways to tackle the challenges of landscape
variability. CSIRO is focused towards improving the yield of the farms through finding better
technology to tackle the factors that limit the yield in different farms. The company has
prioritized the usage of GPS, geographical information system, variable rate systems, yield
monitoring systems and soil sensors. The idea is to generate better information and then utilize
technological resources available to effectively manage these aspects (Jakku et al. 2018, July).
It can be seen that that all the companies that were discussed are taking effective
measures towards determining better value farm produce. The technological resources being
used are helping to improve the productivity of the farms. The most important findings that are
coming out of the entire process are in regards to the effective measures that can be utilized to
make the farms more effective in providing maximum produce. However, at the same time, the
digital agriculture organizations are focused towards utilizing organic techniques to improve the

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production capabilities of farms. The emerging companies in the sector are finding better ways to
improve agriculture that do not involve harmful chemical processes.

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References
Ayre, M., McCollum, V., Waters, W., Samson, P., Curro, A., Nettle, R., Paschen, J., King, B.
and Reichelt, N., 2018. Exploring the value proposition of digital technologies in smart farming:
an approach co-designed by agricultural advisors. In 13th European International Farming
Systems Association (IFSA) Symposium, Farming systems: facing uncertainties and enhancing
opportunities, 1-5 July 2018, Chania, Crete, Greece (pp. 1-17). International Farming Systems
Association (IFSA) Europe.
Digital Agriculture Services, 2019. Digital Agriculture Services. [online] Digital Agriculture
Services. Available at: <https://digitalagricultureservices.com/platform>
Farminstitute.org.au, 2019. [online] Farminstitute.org.au. Available at:
<http://farminstitute.org.au/LiteratureRetrieve.aspx?ID=162387>
Jakku, E., Taylor, B., Fleming, A., Mason, C., Fielke, S., Thorburn, P. and Sounness, C., 2018,
July. “If they don’t tell us what they do with it, why would we trust them?” Applying the multi-
level perspective on socio-technical transitions to understand trust, transparency and benefit-
sharing in Smart Farming and Big Data. In 13th European International Farm Systems
Association Symposium (pp. 1-5).
Precisionagriculture.com.au, 2019. News | Precision Agriculture. [online]
Precisionagriculture.com.au. Available at: <https://www.precisionagriculture.com.au/news.php>
[Accessed 8 Jun. 2019].
Whannell, R. and Tobias, S., 2015. Educating Australian high school students in relation to the
digital future of agriculture. Journal of Economic & Social Policy, 17(2), p.61.

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www.csiro.au, 2019. [online] Available at:
<https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/AF/Areas/Sustainable-farming-systems/Precision-
agriculture?ref=/CSIRO/Website/Research/AF/Areas/Digital-agriculture/Precision-agriculture>
Zhang, A., Jakku, E., Llewellyn, R. and Bake, E.A., 2017. Surveying the needs and drivers for
Digital Agriculture in Australia. Accelerating Precision Agriculture to Decision Agriculture:
Enabling digital agriculture in Australia. Farm Policy Journal, 15(1).