There are challenges now facing the sector, which probably weren’t as apparent prior to covid-19. Peter Wren-Hilton
fact that many people who work in the agritech sector grew up on farms and so there isn’t that kind of distance between technology and farming.” He says the message got good feedback and since the pandemic broke out interest in NZ has grown thanks to the apparent success in stamping out the virus and limiting the death toll. “In some ways that presents us with an opportunity which we’re keen to see how we can leverage. “Within the past week I’ve had separate conversations with the United Kingdom, Ireland, North America, Australia and Singapore. There’s a lot of interest in what we’re doing.” Flagship projects like NZ’s involvement in Farm 2050, an initiative launched in 2014 by Google chairman Eric Schmidt to find new technology to produce more food sustainably to feed a projected global population of 10 billion, are still on including a three-year series of field trials to be done here.
Agritech New Zealand tells the story of how cultural awareness of the land and that many people who work in the agritech sector grew up on farms so the distance between farming and technology has reduced.
“One of the short-term challenges is that some of the offshore companies that were looking to come into NZ, like Syngenta, Corteva and Bayer Crop Science, are working through how they can operate in a NZ environment when potentially a lot of their folk will be offshore but in terms of the core fundamental planning, that’s ongoing.” Another of the projects identified in the transformation plan, the establishment of a robotics academy to help NZ become a world leader in this field, is also still on the drawing board. “Right now some research is being
undertaken, led by MBIE, to understand what is NZ’s capability from both a research perspective and a company perspective and once we’ve done an audit on our capability we can begin to frame what an academy might look like.” In July Agritech NZ will hold workshops in Hamilton, Auckland and Lincoln to which industry and researchers in the agritech sector will be invited to talk about what support they need to realise their export ambitions. Government representatives will also be there to listen. And the plan will be launched in July. n
New Zealand is involved in Farm 2050, an initiative launched in 2014 by Google chairman Eric Schmidt to find new technology to produce more food sustainably to feed a projected global population of 10 billion.
DAIRY FARMER
July 2020
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