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There’s limited commercial value in it so it gets turned back into the soil as a waste product. With improved monitoring and measurement and real time decision making, there’s big opportunity there. IoT can also be used for more predictive disease modelling. The conditions of the day has a big impact on what pest or disease might attack a farmer’s Vines in the following days. It’s being aware of that and saying, “Hang on, based on the conditions, do I act, don’t I act, or is the season actually going to deal with it itself?” How important is industry collaboration for you? Collaboration is essential. With APIs being far more accessible that is a good common meeting ground that provides the capacity to bring a lot of information together. For us, we’re dealing with soil information, weather information, satellite imagery, as well as on-farm collected data and trying to bring them it all together for analysis. Then you’ve got the collaboration on the hardware. We need to look at the different brands and how they’re connected to different connectivity sources and then how that links together. If a farmer has invested in brand X for all their irrigation, but then the pump manufacturer doesn’t talk with the hardware measuring soil moisture, you’ve got a problem. We need to make sure that as we go forward there’s an openness and inter-operability between different hardware and software providers.

Number two, ensure that you clear the market and understand the landscape. Who else is doing something out there that’s similar, or maybe the same, as what you’re doing? The last thing you want on your day of launch, or just after the day of launch, is a nasty cease and desist letter on your doorstep that prevents you from getting to market. And number three, ownership and asserting your intellectual property rights over your invention, over your idea, over your brand to ensure that nobody else can come in and step on your territory and misappropriate your idea or your invention.

How do you use IoT in your soil advisory business? How soil performance is monitored hasn’t changed for the last hundred years, until now. IoT provides visibility into soil’s changing behaviour and characteristics, whereas it was previously viewed as something quite static. In fact, there’s a whole lot of dynamic factors that change throughout the season. The climate is changing above the farm, so it’s hot, cold, wet, dry, and that affects how the soil behaves. If we can get visibility throughout the year on what the climate is doing and what the soil is doing in real time, we can start to make real time decisions rather than waiting to collect harvest and yield data at the end of the season and saying “Oh, that’s a bit like 2008, I reckon we should manage it this way.” How do you think IoT can improve outcomes for farmers? First, there are skinny margins in agriculture. You need the volume to make profits based on slim margins. Any sort of edge that IoT can provide that could either save an expense in the field or help a farmer make better decisions is only going to make things better. Depending on seasonal pressures, a large proportion of some horticultural crops – up to 40 to 60% - does not leave the farm gate despite being a good, edible product overall, because of a certain blemish or some other quality issue.

How do you think the industry can get more farmers embracing IoT?

Speaking of protection, what are the top three pieces of IP advice you would give to a business planning to commercialise their innovation? Number one is confidentiality. Ensure that you have clear confidentially agreements around your idea when you’re talking to investors, collaborators, or others who are going to help you develop your prototype. This ensures someone else doesn’t run away with your idea or that you don’t destroy the novelty and your ability to patent your invention if you tell the world about it without that NDA or confidentiality agreement in place.

A lot of agtech is chasing that disruptive technology. For the

farmer and farm advisor, it needs to be enabling before it’s disrupting. I feel like there’s a need to build trust first, help the farmers do what they’re doing better, we don’t need them to be doing something different just yet. Potentially there is, but it’s just building that stepping stone. Do you see new business models developing where IOT is provided as a service, rather than famers outlaying the cost and management themselves? Yes there is a space. Especially on larger farms, to get the visibility you need to make meaningful decisions, there is indeed a large capital expenditure. Farmers need to deal with and work out the best strategy to address cost, such as leasing plans or writing the cost off against their farm. There is a position for someone else to come in between and provide that service. The biggest issue to work out is who owns the data. What’s one piece of advice you would give emerging agtech companies? Figure out the core element of what you’re trying to do and really hone in and make sure it’s the bit that excites you, gets you out of bed in the morning, and really drives you and is a true solution for the end user. And then you’ve got to work out how you’re best going to protect and market that.

EDWARD SCOTT Partner, Field Systems

Edward Scott is a soil systems scientist involved in the Australian agricultural industry and a Partner at Field Systems, the South Australian soil technology, land management and field advisory consultancy. Originally from a grazing property on the Fleurieu Peninsula of SA, Ed is very active in agribusiness, rural industry development and the scientific pursuit of soil management. Within Field Systems he has developed patents for soil algorithms in precision agriculture and soil amelioration for nitrogen management in cropping systems.

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