The ‘Accelerating Precision Agriculture to Decision Agriculture Report’ (‘P2D’) was launched this week at the ABARES conference in Canberra by Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, the Hon. David Littleproud MP. It makes 13 key recommendations, including the creation of a Digital Agriculture Taskforce, to increase farm profits through better decision making and improved efficiencies.

Unconstrained adoption of ag tech in all its forms can grow the industry by 25%; that’s almost $20 billion dollars annually. As one of only three universities in the project, UNE was at the forefront of this report- contributing substantially into all the four theme areas, and in particular undertaking and writing the ‘Telecommunications Review’. Owing to the timeliness of the telecommunications work, that review was pre-released in October last year. Overall, the project was unprecedented in that all 15 RDCs joined forces to co-fund the project (matched funding via the Rural Research & Development for Profit Scheme).