A different mindset will need to be adopted if the primary sector is to take advantage of emerging technologies that will change New Zealand’s food production systems.
This new way of thinking might need to include funding certain technologies to accelerate their uptake, AgriTech NZ chief executive officer Brendan O’Connell said in a webinar on how New Zealand could shift to smart farming.
O’Connell said he is aware of how long it has been since subsidies were removed and the free market has built a huge foundation for food production in NZ.
“It’s the strength of NZ that’s got us here, without doubt, but what got us here won’t get us there and I think some of the challenges we have got are going to require a level of acceleration that needs to move faster than pure economic market demands.
“We need to look at doing things very differently in terms of the rate on which we take on technology and the rate in which we really embrace what a shift to smart farming means,” he said.
The webinar, organised by Lincoln University, examined how NZ can farm smarter as the world struggles with higher food demand, increasing climate change-related issues and shrinking farmland availability.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will have a massive impact on the planet, – greater than breakthroughs of the past such as refrigerated shipping. It is also a massive component of smart farming, he said.
His prediction is that AI will enhance genetic developments.
“By 2030, most genetic developments will be driven by AI. Algorithms will be informing many daily faming decisions.”
He predicted the long-awaited methane-reducing vaccine for livestock will be ready by then and widely available by 2035.
“It’s moving faster than we thought.”
By 2035, he predicts, all livestock improvements will be AI-derived and algorithms will inform almost all on-farm decisions along with human decisions.
“All farm advice will be entirely hybrid – it will be human and machine informed.”
All food claims will also be verifiable by data by 2030 and by 2035, this will be a cost of doing business.
From a regulatory standpoint, markets are moving much faster than regulators are both here and globally and this is being seen in corporate sustainability requirements around Scope 3 emissions, he said.
Plant and Food New Zealand sustainability director Roger Robson-Williams said farming has always required smartness to do it well.
He said there are two aspects in shifting to smart farming: the massive expansion in technology that might be able to be applied to farming and the imperative to farm smart without harming the planet.
If the availability of new technology is the opportunity, the risk the world is facing is the crisis around the threat of the impacts of climate change, he said.
Robson-Williams said it is not a case of just trying to save the planet.
“It’s a question of preserving the possibility of prosperity of future generations. This is about the ancestors we want to be because the planet will trundle on with or without us perfectly well.”
It will require difficult decisions and behavioural change.
While farming impacted the environment it is also increasingly recognised as part of the solution to climate change, he said.
Robson-Williams highlighted two pitfalls as more technology becomes available: the Jevons Paradox, where an increase in efficiency in resource use generates an increase in resource consumption rather than a decrease, leading to a possible decease in environmental benefits.
The second pitfall is techno-optimism, where solutions are seen as silver bullets. While he hopes there will be technological solutions to enable smarter farming, betting the house on unproven technology is extremely risky.
