Digital Irrigation Advisory Systems: Enabling Extension and Advisory Services for Agriculture’s Digital Irrigation Transition

While Australian farmers have access to some of the most sophisticated digital technology in the world, many farmers face challenges in accessing timely and targeted advice and support to realise its full potential. There is a clear need for expert, coordinated support from advisors and extension professionals working as ‘innovation brokers’ to help irrigators make their farms work smarter in the age of precision irrigation. This project will work with irrigators, advisors, agtech suppliers, and industry bodies to identify and scale up best practice in advisory and extension support to irrigators exploring and implementing digital technologies across the Murray-Darling Basin.

About the Project

Agricultural technology has developed at a rapid rate over the past few years, with an ever-growing range of monitoring tools, control systems, and software platforms that help irrigators monitor, schedule and manage their planting and watering in increasingly challenging conditions. Yet despite huge technical advances – and studies suggesting significantly higher yields can be achieved with less water – the impacts and benefits of digital tools and technologies can be challenging for both advisors and irrigators to fully assess for individual businesses. 

The Digital Irrigation Advisory Systems project sets out to increase the capabilities of agricultural extension and advisory service providers (sometimes called ‘innovation brokers’) who play a critical role in the co-design, implementation, and updating of tailored technology systems. The project will analyse current skills, gaps and opportunities across the agtech supply chain in order to co-develop and trial a range of different advisory service business models to help advisors provide the most effective support to growers making the transition to digital irrigation.Up to now, many advisory services have been directly linked to hardware and software purchasing, with less advice targeted to help growers develop and manage solutions designed for their specific crops, conditions, and challenges. There is growing consensus that greater collaboration between different agricultural sectors will lead to more informed investment decisions, greater water savings, and broader digital technology uptake across the Murray-Darling Basin.

Outcomes

The project has identified four main advisory service types supporting the adoption of agtech in the Murray-Darling Basin: Research and Development Corporations (RDCs), government agencies, fee-for-service advisors, and retailers who sell technology and provide a certain level of product-focused advice. The project will work with each of these four provider types to evaluate the efficiency and benefits of their advisory models, as well as adapting and innovating new practices.

The first of these trials is underway in Toowoomba, where the project is evaluating the value and benefits offered to farmers by the Agri-Business Development Institute (ABDI). In its second and third years, the project will roll out three further trials of alternative advisory and extension models, in order to gain a comprehensive picture of the most successful and replicable business models employed by innovation advisors.

The project will be coordinated out of One Basin’s Griffith and Mildura hubs, where it has the support of two post-doctoral fellows. Each of its four advisory and extension model trials will be guided by a working group, to collaboratively test the reach, impact and efficacy of the model in the field. This process will inform the development of a database of best-practice service models to support agtech adoption for different agricultural sectors, a handbook of tools and methods to determine returns on investment, and recommendations on education and training to address key skills shortages among advisory professionals.The project will also engage with First Nations groups through One Basin’s First Nations representative groups in Griffith and Mildura, to incorporate specific First Nations needs and challenges into new models for digital advisory services. Project lead Margaret Ayre has long experience working with First Nations groups in Indigenous water management planning.