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SMART farmers becoming early adopters of emerging technology

Announcement posted by Parsec Communications 19 Jul 2016

Attendees at the Rural Focus Symposium in Armidale, NSW on 28 July will visit the UNE SMART Farm to see the latest technology to improve farm efficiency.

The University of New England has transformed 'Kirby-Newholme', a 2900 ha commercial farm located 10 km north west of the campus, into a SMART Farm (Sustainable Manageable Accessible Rural Technologies Farm) and the Rural Focus 2016 symposium aims to improve the link between commercial enterprise and the education and research provided by UNE.

The symposium is organised by the Robb College Foundation and combines speakers from industry and the UNE in three themes of agri-business models; employment and careers; and technology and efficiency.

Professor David Lamb will head-up the technology presentation. He leads the new UNE SMART Farm research facility and specialises in precision agriculture. He will present the latest uses of stock, water, soil and tree monitoring and management systems that can be operated remotely and lift the efficiency of modern farming.

Posing the question, “Are you tech-ready?”, Prof Lamb will highlight some leading technology under study and use by industry, Cooperative Research Centres, and research divisions of the UNE and CSIRO who are jointly working at the farm.

‘The challenge of lifting production yields with more efficient use of farm inputs including management time is a primary driving motive for our research’, says David, who is a Science Director in the CRC for Spatial Information and currently serves as Australian representative for the International Society for Precision Agriculture.

The $2m Centre was opened last year by Federal Agriculture Minister Hon. Barnaby Joyce. Attendees will see the enhanced infrastructure and technologies that give students and visiting researchers hands-on experience with modern technologies that aim to revolutionise the way farms are managed.

SMART Farm serves not only as a test site for new technologies, but also.to provide access to the latest data streaming from a range of field, animal and machinery sensors. The farm was the winner of the 2014 Innovation Awards for Research & Education.

The SMART Farm Innovation Centre (SFIC) serves as a research, education and outreach facility for UNE-led global advances in agriculture research and development.

Primary producers, agricultural suppliers, policy makers, rural investors and agriculture students are all expected to attend what should be a highly informative symposium.

To register for the symposium, please go to www.une.edu.au/ruralfocus . The symposium precedes the Farming Futures Careers Expo held on campus on 29 July.

Prof Lamb is scheduled to present about innovation in agriculture to the NSW Farmers Annual Conference in Sydney at 1.20 pm on 20 July which will be streamed live at: http://www.theland.com.au/NSW-farmers-conference-2016