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AUTOMATION AND MACHINERY
Australian farmers are leading the charge to adopt new innovations in precision farming to optimise yields, maximise resources, and minimise costs. Democratised access to accurate positioning, sensor technologies, and other components is transforming approaches and strategies. Farmers can now adopt sophisticated technologies without having to master them and this is driving agricultural innovation. The next generation of smart farmers are building technology for themselves By Mark Winton
Wales and systems to track cattle across massive ranches in Queensland. Those use cases obviously have diverse requirements but the ability to create tailored solutions and hardware is driving innovation. Precision farming is a growing market. Accord- ing to Grand View Research, an American market research and consulting firm, the Australian smart agriculture market generated a revenue of US$1.61 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach US$4.92 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 15.2 per cent during the 2026-2033 period 1 . Build versus buy The addition of robots and greater numbers of auto- mated and autonomous devices are helping farmers to break the traditional lock of having to buy equip- ment that integrates with a vendor’s tractor and invest heavily in products that can be onerous to
The next generation of tech-savvy farmers are ap- plying a new wave of outback ingenuity to design and develop machines and solutions that meet the exact needs of their terrain and farm types. They’re looking beyond the offerings of traditional equip- ment providers and applying their own abilities to create customised, automated, and even autono- mous vehicles and systems. Owners of farms are increasingly turning to grandchildren who have learned artificial intelligence (AI) expertise and are designing and specifying farm robots and mecha- tronics systems to perform specific tasks. They’re achieving this by using off-the-shelf com- ponents and buying-in sensors, single-board com- puters (SBCs), and connectivity modules to create bespoke robotic machines that meet their unique needs. We’re seeing customers developing machines that operate in vineyards in southern New South
1 https://www.grandviewresearch.com/horizon/outlook/smart-agriculture-market/australia
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