Finalists from as far apart as the Adelaide Hills and Jundah will be pitching their innovative agtech concepts before a global audience when they take to the stage at Beef Australia.
Among the entrepreneurial beef-centric ideas that will be competing for the $10,000 prize when they appeal to the largest gathering of beef industry stakeholders in the southern hemisphere are livestock movement apps and a pig trap.
Beef Australia chairman Bryce Camm was a driving force behind the establishment of the pitching competition and is thrilled to see its growth in 2021.
"I rely on agtech in my own business operations and understand its value," he said.
"Beef Australia plays a vital role in supporting the launch of new technology for our industry, and Pitch in the Paddock exposes members of the beef supply chain to the technology and innovations that are in the development pipeline.
"It's a unique way for innovators to connect with both farmers and investors, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to hearing firsthand what is ahead for our industry."
Range of finalists
The full list of finalists includes Rob Stewart's castration knife handle; Emma Black and Shannon Speight's Black Box Co software; Jack Travers' Truck Trapper app; Tim Gentle's FarmXR spatial computing idea; Nick Seymour's floating water level sensor; Tyrone Davis' pig trap; Linda Woodford's AXIchain livestock movement app; Megan Miller's Herd XL decision-making tool; and David Philpot's Mapipedia web platform.
They were judged the best among the 34 per cent increase in entries, one of which came from Europe as well as throughout Australia.
Learning how much grain was being consumed by pigs under the cover of dark in feedlots was behind the entry from Rockhampton's Tyrone Davis, who will be pitching his prototype for a modern pig-catching trap.
"Agtech isn't necessarily about high tech," he said. "What I've done is take the manual labour out of something that's an underlying problem in the beef industry."
He said his lightweight collapsible design made moving traps a three-minute job, and was just as useful in sand as on hard dirt.
"You could use it to respond to attacks while turtles are nesting, where you have to move quickly, and where you can't drive steel pegs into the ground," he said.
Mr Davis, who has been trapping pigs for many years, said he'd caught 148 in one night once, which showed him how much something versatile was needed.
"I used to construct feedlots and could see pigs come in to clean up feed bunkers of grain," he said. "People aren't seeing how much money is being lost to pigs this way."
Out at Jundah, Megan Miller has been working on an app that is a series of calculators that make spreadsheets available on a smartphone or laptop.
"It combats diminishing margins by using calculator tools to make better decisions in the paddock," she said.
"You can work out trade calculations for example.
"There's nothing similar available as an app that puts it all in one place, that's intuitive."
High profile judges
The 2021 judges include David Halpern, Microsoft; Bevan Slattery, Cloudscene, Superloop, Megaport; Alex McCauley, StartupAUS; Luke Chandler, John Deere; and Bruce Creek, Thomas Elder Consulting.
According to Mr Creek, agtech is going to gain more traction as the efficiencies are displayed to the end user.
"Labour is costly and staff are getting harder to find - this situation is being displayed by our fruit industry through to station hands and manager positions on livestock properties," he said.
"We see some of the more common tech solutions saving labour and running costs, using tank monitors and auto water systems.
"What about when we can accurately measure biomass of grasses and can assist with grazing management decisions with trigger points to be made on drought conditions.
"This is a great space to be in when you can objectively measure and take out emotion."
Alex McCauley, StartupAUS CEO, said technology was often seen as a disruptive force, changing the way that economies operate.
"When it comes to agriculture it should instead be seen as a productive force - enhancing output, efficiency and return for producers.
"If Australia is to meet our ambitious aspirations for agricultural exports over the next decade, we need to make sure we're unearthing and investing in the right technologies to enable the sector to grow.
"This is critical to our ongoing prosperity."
Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud congratulated Beef Australia for its role in driving industry innovation.
He said Pitch in the Paddock was allowing Australia to set up world-class innovators that would drive strong productivity growth.
- Wednesday, May 5, The Pavilion, 3-5pm