TECHNOLOGY
Breaking tech barriers By Tony Benny
Research shows there are numerous barriers to the uptake in technology by farmers and many of these are interconnected.
F
armers’ reluctance to share data is slowing the adoption of technology that could help transform New Zealand’s food production systems to be more sustainable, resilient and consumerfocused, a study by researchers from AgResearch has found. The study was part of the New Zealand Bioeconomy in the Digital Age (NZBIDA) project, which aims to test if digital technologies can provide new solutions to many of the issues that farmers face today. The research team reviewed academic literature and identified at least 22 different barriers to the uptake of technology that NZBIDA project lead Mark Shepherd says includes data collection, new analytics, models, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning.
“Research shows there are a whole range of barriers,” Shepherd says. “For example, the technology has to fit in with the farming system and I think there has to be a demonstrated value from using it. I think at the moment there’re not that many proven value propositions. “There need to be more examples of where the tech has made a difference so that people have got the confidence and can see how it can work for them.” He says many of the barriers are interconnected and overcoming them won’t be straightforward. “You might think ‘if we crack this barrier, that’s the solution’, but there might be underlying issues. First of all, you need to understand the interconnectivity and then the opportunities that we’ve got,” he says. One surprise finding is a feeling
among some farmers that the adoption of hi-tech farming affects their sense of identity. “There is a sense of potential loss of connectivity with the land or just loss of identity as a farmer and the fear of being at the mercy of a big technology provider where you don’t have much say other than using their technologies,” he says. Other barriers are technical but one of the biggest is reluctance among farmers to share their data. “The real value of tech is the ability to collect data, the ability to combine different types of data and get more out of combining those data sets but the concern is how will this data be used? ‘If I share it, will I lose control of it, could it be used against me?’,” he says. “Of all of the barriers, I think that’s the key one and it’s one of the most
Technology for farms is being developed at pace, but uptake has been slower than expected.
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DAIRY FARMER
September 2021
