Future farming: John Deere, Goanna Ag, Grassdale reveal latest projects

From inversion warning systems to prevent spray drift and pest detection apps to fight insects, to robotic dogs and labour-saving autonomous tractors, companies revealed plenty about their product pipelines.

A project to deliver a hazardous inversion warning system for growers could be finished in time for the 2022-23 summer cropping season.

Weather and networked data (WAND), which is part of a five-year partnership between CRDC, GRDC and Goanna Ag, features a network of 100 high calibre inversion towers located from Emerald to the Victorian border.

Towers are being spaced between 40 and 70 kilometres apart depending on the topography.

WAND will provide a weather forecast on expected weather conditions and hazardous events across the next 24 hours to underpin planning.

Goanna Ag CEO Alicia Garden said the network should be fully deployed for the upcoming season.

"Data from WAND is being made available through both a web page or an app which will be live from November," Ms Garden said.

"We've got about 65 per cent of the network either fully built or partially built at the moment and our aim is to have it fully deployed just in time for the summer cropping season this year.

Ms Garden said growers and spray applicators would be able to access that information at no cost and they were looking to work with other partners to deliver the information to ensure ease of access and assimilation into farmers' everyday farm management routine.

The Cotton PestDetect App will have more functionality built in by the end of 2022, according to its developers.

The app is a digital tool to assist with sampling for silverleaf whitefly nymphs by providing image-derived insect counts using a phone camera.

The software is based on research and development undertaken with support from CRDC by Dr Derek Long and Dr Alison McCarthy from the University of Southern Queensland Centre for Agricultural Engineering in partnership with DAF and CottonInfo.

Mr Long said the capacity to detect viable from non-viable nymphs was underway and was expected to be completed and incorporated into the app later this year.

"That means we have the entire decision support tool, where we have both the total number of bugs and the total number of healthy bugs," Mr Long said.

"We've had a positive experience doing this additional functionality to the app because it's been really easy to use.

"You just press the leaf up against the phone and it comes into nice, easy focus. I look forward to putting it in the public domain later this year."

After switching on one of Australia's biggest organic fertiliser production facilities near Dalby in July, Grassdale Fertilisers has revealed for the first time that a second plant is on the cards.

The company, which uses manure from major shareholder Mort & Co's feedlot to produce an organic granule, is looking at a factory to accompany its proposed feedlot near Rockhampton.

In July, Mort & Co announced it had partnered with Rural Funds Management Limited to develop a 36,500 head feedlot at Gogango, which it hopes to open in 2024 following the Rookwood Weir completion.

Technical manager Kyle Merritt said the company was currently working on the details.

"Were looking at putting another granulation facility near Rockhampton at another Mort and Co feedlot," Mr Merritt said.

"... We're at the late stages of commissioning the actual plant. The demand has been excellent, and largely driven by high fertiliser prices and the trend towards carbon farming.

"As for more factories, I think that would probably be on the table."

Spot the robotic dog has been around the construction industry since 2019, but it made its agricultural debut at the conference.

Spot is a collaboration between Trimble and Boston Dynamics to deliver an integrated solution between robotics and data collection systems.

The 32kg, 1.1m long robot has been designed to make inspections safer and more efficient, with operators able to schedule missions for Spot to collect photos, thermal images, point clouds, and other critical data.

Trimble Asia Pacific sales director Adam Wall said they wanted to show that the company innovated in multiple industries.

"Spot the dog has a survey application, but there are potentially future agricultural applications that robotics could be utilised and that's been a real draw card for people to come and see spot and experience what Spot does," Mr Wall said.

"There's quite a lot of cross pollination between some of the innovation that Trimble has done in other sectors and other industries and some transferability to potential opportunities within ag."

Bayer revealed it will be launching its FieldView digital platform in Australia in late 2022.

Subject to regulatory approval, Bayer is also looking to deliver XtendFlex cotton in 2023. In addition to a Roundup, growers will have the ability to spray two other herbicides over the top of the crop - glufosinate and dicamba.

ThryvOn, which had a steward commercial launch this year in the United States, is also looking promising for Australian markets.

"ThryvOn is the first ever biotech trait for sucking insects, so it's a real game changer," Bayer Asia Pacific field crops agronomic systems lead Dr James Neilsen said.

"This is a product that we've been looking at here in Australia over the last few years - getting some preliminary data and understanding its performance."

HT4 cotton with fourth generation herbicide tolerance is also in the pipeline. It will have the ability to use five different modes of action over the top of the cotton - glyphosate, glufosinate, dicamba, plus HPPD and PPO chemistry.

"When we look at the Australian weed spectrum, we're really excited about what that can do," Dr Neilsen said.

Bollgard 4 cotton is also being investigated, with preliminary work underway.

"The team in the lab in Toowoomba had the opportunity to look at this at a lab level before and we put data into the advancement decision about what trait are we taking forward," Dr Neilsen said.

Ever since John Deere US unveiled its fully autonomous tractor at the Consumer Electronics Show 2022 in Las Vegas in January, farmers around the world have been wondering when they can their hands on one.

Igino Cafiero, CEO and founder of Bear Flag Robotics, which was acquired by John Deere in 2021, has also put a lot of weight behind an autonomous future, saying the company plans to have a fully autonomous corn and soy production system by 2030.

Speaking at the cotton conference, John Deere production system manager Steve Young said Australia would also see autonomy make its way into its cropping systems, but wouldn't be drawn on the timing.

Mr Young said they planned to automate other jobs or other production systems beyond tillage - field preparation, planting, application spraying and harvest.

He said in the future, there would be opportunities for specific forms of machines to suit other applications.

"Potentially, you get different forms of machines. This is going to happen as autonomy matures. And potentially you start to integrate other technologies as well, like electrification over time," Mr Young said.

The system manager said autonomy was going to be a huge leap forward for agriculture.

"It's going to unlock value I don't think we even truly understand yet," he said.

"Labour savings is really going to be a benefit of autonomy. Time is something I think we're underestimating - we'll have more time to spend on higher value functions within agriculture and within the farming business."

Mr Young said growers should start to prepare for this journey now by digitising the farm - equipment, people, fields, products - and getting connected.

"I know connectivity in Australia in particular is challenging, but it's going to be the foundation for autonomy in the future."

He said RTK boundaries and documenting data were also critical for the future.

"Data is going to become the fuel that will drive an autonomous future, so it's important that we start now to make that leap towards autonomy a little bit smaller."

Read more