Enough data isn't the same as useful data

If you ask most producers if they've got enough data, they'll say yes. Ask them if any of it actually tells them something useful about their own operation, and the answer changes (fast!)

That question followed Will Onus through most of AgTech26 in Emerald last week. He flew in that morning through some of the thickest fog he'd seen from a plane window, barely making out the ground until the plane was nearly on it, which felt like a fitting start to a day spent among farmers trying to see clearly through a lot of noise of their own.

Will was on a panel with Hamish Munro from Pairtree and Eitan Dan from CropX. AI came up early, the way it does everywhere at the moment, and one of the more interesting threads out of that discussion was water. In parts of the US, data centres and farms are increasingly drawing on the same reserves. Eitan mentioned, anecdotally, that some tech companies over there have started funding water efficiency work for the farmers sharing that resource with them. It's a dynamic to keep an eye on, given something similar could easily start playing out here too.

Nicola Jones-Crossley from Quantum Australia asked what turned out to be the best question of the day: what data is actually missing right now, for farmers and for the supply chain around them?

Will answered from both sides of what he does. What's available now, through ag data platforms and the odd bit the supply chain shares back, is useful, but it mostly sits at the day to day level. What's still missing is the bigger picture: regionally specific, commodity specific insight that shows a producer how they're actually tracking against others running a similar system. That doesn't exist yet. It isn't a case of nobody wanting it, it just takes a lot of producers contributing data over time before that picture starts to mean anything. It's something Will thinks about often at Ruminati, and the direction he'd like to see the whole industry moving in, not just Ruminati on its own.

Thanks to Kara-Glenn Worth from the TNQ Drought Hub for moderating, and to the Central Highlands Development Corporation for putting on such a good day.