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Australia must find a way to take advantage of the opportunities offered by AgTech – but it needs to remove some of the barriers standing in the industry’s way first.
That’s the feedback from a group of ANZ agricultural customers and business owners after they saw world-best practice firsthand on the recent ANZ agri delegation to Asia.
Speaking to bluenotes during the delegation, Citrus Australia Chair Tania Chapman said the infrastructure needed to support AgTech has the potential to provide huge cost and efficiency savings to the sector – and increase profitability
“One of the biggest things in not just my industry but agriculture in Australia is the very high cost of production that we have,” she said. “So we need to find way to uptake the new innovations, the new technologies to gain some efficiencies in that.”
" In terms of agtech and implementing that into a marketplace, China and Japan have us hands down."
Johnny Tran, Comfresh Group Managing DirectorThe need for far greater capital investment in agriculture was a key finding of ANZ insight Greener Pastures. The report found Australia will need A$1 trillion in additional capital investment to achieve $710 billion in agricultural exports between 2011-50.
Comfresh Group Managing Director Johnny Tran said while Australia has been quick to adapt to new technologies in some areas, it remains behind in other vital ones.
“In terms of farming techniques and technologies we’re adapting, that we’ve learned from other countries… yes we are that one step in front,” he said.
“One of the areas that Australia is lacking compared to China and Japan is probably ecommerce. China and Japan have us hands down – especially China. There’s such a huge opportunity to learn from these countries about the ecommerce market.”
Primary producer Nathan Stoll said there we clearly barriers which needed to be removed before some of the world-leading tech could be implemented in Australia.
“First and foremost would be data flow and speed of data flow and communications,” he said. “That’s an issue we’re going to have for a long time.”
Watch the video above to find out more.
Simone Stella is a bluenotes contributor
The views and opinions expressed in this communication are those of the author and may not necessarily state or reflect those of ANZ.
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Work needed to fulfil agtech promise in Aus
2017-06-20
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