21
the australian farmer
industry whereby technology is enabling value creation in high-value products. Examples include disease monitoring in shellfish to reduce cost of clos- ures; and blockchain technology in the cherry market to improve biosecurity, improve supply chain efficiency, and reduce the incidents of unnecessary prod- uct recalls. WHAT THEN IS THE ROLE FOR “DIGITAL FARMERS”? While patchy success has been enjoyed in the uptake of digital farming innovations, most of the above business models remain cases in which farmers are recipi- ents of digital products rather than co-developers. In the past, they have been privileged with innovations being introduced to them, with supported learn- ing. Change was seen as the role of government extension services, and for many this echo persists. We think this needs to change, particularly in coun- tries like Australia where public- ly-funded agricultural research and extension is diminishing. Signs of demand for pivoting away from government-funded agricultural science in Australia included organisations like the Grower Group Alliance in West- ern Australia, where innovation needs are being placed into the hands of producers, as well as the Co-operative Research Cen- tres (CRCs) whereby research is funded through co-operation between Private Industry and Government. While such prom- ising structures are on the rise,
agriculture remains the least digitised of all sectors in the US and Australian economies viii ix . While no one wants to distract farmers unnecessarily from their core business, their participa- tion is paramount. It is import- ant that farmers engage in the development of business cases to help adopt digital technolo- gies in ways that advance farm management and supply chain performance alike. How can this happen? The key is to develop digital skills amongst producers and their partners through farmer-cen- tric organisation, such as we’ve developed for on-farm experi- mentation. Not that farmers themselves need to become digital specialists, but rather that they engage closely with the pro- cess to ensure that management evolves through technology. This will not succeed through top-down, externally driven pro- cesses similar to the government
extension services that were widespread until the 1990s, but through the growth of endogen- ous, farmer-driven, digitally-en- hanced business use cases that meet the requirements men- tioned in (3) above and deliver value along the supply chain x . For this to occur, farmers and their consultants must imitate what other industries are doing and prepare to allocate time and money to engage with innov- ation ecosystems in ways that support the evolution and scal- ing up of successful digital busi- ness models. The top-down/bottom-up concept xi is drawn from market- ing science whereby new product development executives have determined what consumers need and have set manufactur- ing and service provision in place to align with market forecasts (i.e. top-down). The bottom-up approach flips this logic on its head to suggest that consumers
Powered by FlippingBook