Agriculture is on the brink of an upgrade. An increasing number of producers are becoming skilled at deploying precision agriculture technologies and the amount of data generated on farm is increasing

exponentially. Farm machinery, sensors and digital technologies are now generating large volumes of data about the status of soil, water, crops, animals and pasture. This growth in data, currently stored on and off farm on laptops, in spreadsheets, with consultants, in machinery and in supply chain data centres means that agriculture is well placed to benefit from what is commonly described as Big Data, or more precisely Big Data Analytics.

Big Data analytics promises significant productivity and profit benefits for Australian producers and the emerging “AgTech” industry is pushing producers to do more with the data they generate on farm. Unfortunately, this has resulted in many competing products and conflicting messages to producers leading to confusion and paralysis, and this is exacerbated by the noise in the market place as vendors compete to gain market share of their products and producers worry about making an expensive mistake. 

Through Precision to Decision project research, it has been observed that there is a clear digital skills and capability gap within the Research Development Corporations (RDCs) and in the early stages of the industry value chains. RDCs and producer consultants have, to date, failed to develop the key skills in Data Science and Technology that are required for the digitisation of their industries and to take full advantage of Big Data.

Additionally, this skills gap has resulted in a visible vacuum of digital leadership across the Australian agricultural industries. Historically, producers and value chain organisations have leant heavily on their industry bodies and consultants for advice and direction on key industry topics. For digital, the usual sources of advice are currently coming up short.

The result is that producer businesses lack the key digital skills and capabilities required to benefit from Big Data. Worse, based on the findings from eight producer workshops, a cross industry survey of 1000 producers and individual producer interviews it is clear that they also don’t know where to start or where to invest to take advantage of the benefits of Big Data and other profit building Digital technologies. The RDCs, industry bodies and value chain participants are not communicating a common “north star” value proposition for Big Data to their producers.

RDCs must quickly address this lack of digital leadership within their industries as machinery, sensor and technology providers – both existing and new to agriculture – are moving the sector towards digitisation regardless of RDC policy. In the absence of cohesive industry digital strategies, RDCs risk being locked out of future market decisions and unable to influence the digital enablement of their industry as the commercial market consolidates and industry leaders emerge. 

There is an opportunity for RDCs to accelerate the creation of industry digital strategies by collaborating on the core components of digital enablement. Particularly through co-investing in and sharing knowledge on common platforms, capability, change process and language. Without a cross industry whole-of-Agriculture digital strategy it will be difficult for RDCs to clearly communicate the benefits of digital enablement. This is currently seen in the number of levy payers missing out on co-investment opportunities that span industries, particularly those with mixed production systems.

Competitors in international markets may also leapfrog Australian Agricultural industries as they execute established digital strategies. While not affecting the Australian domestic market, this has particular implications for Australian Agricultural export activities.

Finally, inevitable, ad-hoc digital and Big Data projects both current and future will be delivered into value chains by the RDCs. As these products and services become established it will become harder for the participating RDCs to collaborate on common platforms to optimise value for their industries and levy payers.

The BDRA provides a framework to assist RDC projects with needs in Big Data collection, storage and analysis. To achieve this, the BDRA guides solution architectures by assisting with requirements definitions and identifying appropriate strategies and design patterns for Agricultural Big Data challenges.

It is important to note that a Reference Architecture for Big Data provides just one of the elements that is required to successfully transform Australian Agriculture into a data driven industry. Other elements such as Strategy, Culture, Governance and importantly the change management of each of these have been found to be equally important.

The reference architecture can facilitate collaboration between RDCs by creating a common language and approach when addressing Big Data challenges.

Research undertaken for the project, has surfaced a number of potential initiatives that can be adopted by the agricultural sector in Australia. These initiatives facilitate collaboration between the RDCs to define digital strategy and increase the velocity of adoption of agriculture decision support tools based on Big Data. These are detailed in the following recommendations arising from this research.