Artificial intelligence is removing the "tyranny of distance" that has held back New Zealand's primary sector and will let years of shelved research reach the market far faster, NZ Young Farmers chief executive Cheyne Gillooly told a media roundtable at a Cloud and AI Day hosted by Amazon Web Services in Auckland, Farmers Weekly NZ reports.

Gillooly said a large body of research in dairy, sheep and plant genetics is "sitting on shelves" around the country. "The pace we are able to innovate and generate new products that come from the land means we can unlock the value that's been sitting there for decades," he said, adding that steps that once took years to get research to market could happen "in seconds, potentially". With consumers valuing trust, health and land-based products, he said, "New Zealand is sitting on a goldmine."

Farmers described how data has already changed daily work. Carey Pawson-Edwards, stock manager at Lone Star Farms, said he moved from checking lambs one by one to an auto-weigher that assesses 1,400 at a time, and from plate meters and a tow-behind C-Dax machine to pasture-cover data on his phone through Halter. "Instead of looking at 1000 lambs in a mob, we're looking at 1000 individual animals," he said.

Ravensdown chief digital officer Mark McAtamney said nutrient management is changing the same way: blanket applications and paddock-by-paddock soil tests are giving way to measuring zones within paddocks, raising productivity while keeping an eye on the environment.

Gillooly said the next generation of farmers, highly connected through devices and the Young Farmers club network, is already turning these opportunities into action.

Photo: Halter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Source: Farmers Weekly NZ