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Digital Agronomist helps unlock data

Peta and Tim Neale, director and managing director of DataFarming. Agtech company DataFarming is among the beneficiaries of the GrainInnovate venture capital investment initiative.
Photo: DataFarming

DataFarming

DataFarming has developed the Digital Agronomist, a cloud-based soil and crop monitoring tool. It provides access to satellite images that show crop normalised vegetation difference index (NDVI) through the growing season. It also provides applications for soil mapping, yield monitoring and variable-rate applications of nutrients and crop protection products.

Grower benefits

Growers can use these data layers to manage variability in their paddocks. They can also add pay-per-use service tools such as auto-zoning, Rapid-EM soil mapping,  high-resolution satellite imagery, weed detection, yield mapping, and a view of paddock performance over multiple years to optimise the timing and rate of their crop inputs. The technology can also be used to inform crop establishment, in-season fertiliser applications and harvest timing. This supports more targeted inputs, improved cost management and more consistent yields.

GrainInnovate impact

DataFarming has indicated it may have been unable to continue product development without GrainInnovate investment. The total net benefit was calculated over the program period and 30 years into the future from GRDC’s DataFarming investment. This produced a benefit to cost ratio on GRDC’s investment of 13 to 1. (This excludes costs outside the GRDC investment value and excludes accounting for realised value of a return on investment.)

The GrainInnovate investment also allowed DataFarming to attract essential funding from other investors and bring the Digital Agronomist to market.

Outcome

DataFarming has become a market leader in innovation and sees the potential to reach 60 per cent of Australian grain growers in the medium term. It is now expanding the product into precision weed and disease mapping and management.

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