The Kiwi Innovation Network (KiwiNet) hosted a forum in Christchurch on Wednesday 21 September to gain insights into how digital technology can improve farm, orchard and vineyard sustainable profitability and grow high tech manufacturing. The industry forsighting initiative brought together farmers, viticulturists, orchardists, hi-tech companies, researchers, and government organisations across the agricultural value chain. The intended outcome was to identify and overcome any barriers to commercial success in digital agriculture and ensure that we turn technological leadership into an innovative and world leading agri-tech sector.
David Hughes, Group General Manager Commercial, Plant & Food Research says, "By improving collaboration we can unlock significant economic value both in the primary industry, and high-tech manufacturing and ICT sectors. For New Zealand to lead the world in this area we need to ensure that the whole value chain is aligned."
Peter Barrowclough, Chief Executive Officer at Lincoln Ventures Ltd who were participants at the event says, "We understand that primary agriculture provides a good deal of NZ's wealth, but increasingly some people are asking, but at what environmental cost? Precision Agriculture offers the opportunity to 'grow more with less'. It enables us to increase or maintain production, while reducing our environmental footprint. For it to be taken up by farmers, they are going to have to see the benefits in economic terms, i.e more profit. The aim of Lincoln Ventures Ltd's research and our collaboration with Massey University is to develop new Precision Agriculture Technologies that will deliver all three benefits. Increased production, increased profit and reduced environmental impact from our farming systems. The other potential spin off from this research that we would like to see emerge is the growth of smart NZ developed Precision Agriculture technologies that NZ Agritech manufacturing companies can export to the world."
Dr Peter John, Director of Research & Commercialisation at Lincoln University says, "The workshop further enhanced our understanding of the needs of end-users – from dairy and dry stock farmers through to orchardists and wine growers. The insights gained will be used to inform and direct collaborative programmes capable of delivering on those needs".
The AIC (Australian Institute for Commercialisation) facilitated the forum with their TechClinic® approach which uses a structured environment to focus the entire innovation value chain on a specific opportunity, area or need.
Nigel Johnson, Director of Research & Innovation at the University of Canterbury says, "The value of the New Zealand agricultural sector is well known, and digital agriculture offers the scope to take sustainable productivity to the next level. New Zealand also has significant R &D and entrepreneurial strengths in the enabling fields of ICT (including wireless technologies and geospatial information gathering and analysis), sensing, mechatronics, and so on.
KiwiNet brings together the collective resources of universities and CRIs with these capabilities, as well as specialist agricultural and environmental researchers. By engaging with the ultimate users of digital agriculture (the farmers) and the commercial firms and agencies that can put ideas into the market, KiwiNet is giving the New Zealand agricultural economy the best chance of developing, adopting and benefiting from these new technologies. The Digital Agriculture forum helped develop a collective understanding of both needs and opportunities, and the will to work together."
KiwiNet was launched in July to increase the scale and impact of commercialisation in New Zealand by facilitating a more collaborative and capable commercialisation system. KiwiNet acts as a hub for commercialisation for its member organisations as well as the wider innovation system.
Ruth Richardson, Chairman of KiwiNet says, "This is a great demonstration of how KiwiNet can use its collective might in a very practical way to boost commercialisation activity and innovation in one our most important sectors. Universities and Crown Research Institutes can really lead the charge to create some positive economic shifts by being practical and proactive like this."
Bram Smith, Technology Development Manager at WaikatoLink says, "The Digital Agriculture event is just one example of KiwiNet acting to bring together research organisations and business to develop technologies that drive economic growth. Collaboration is critical and the event demonstrated the benefits of bringing together people from all along the value chain including scientists, industry, farmers and government. We see time and again that the most innovative solutions result from bringing together a multidisciplinary team of experts from disparate fields to focus on a specific sector. The key is to identify ideas with strong commercial potential and then move quickly to focus resources on accelerating these ideas to the market."
KiwiNet was originally founded by a collaboration of nine universities and crown research institutes including WaikatoLink, Plant & Food Research, Otago Innovation, Lincoln University, AUT Enterprises, AgResearch, Industrial Research, VicLink and the University of Canterbury. The founding organisations alone encompass a large proportion of NZ's science capability, with a total combined research expenditure of more than $500 million.
KiwiNet's collaborative commercialisation model enables members to share resources, networks, best practise, IP and experience to create more commercially viable IP and start-ups from research based ventures. Industry forsighting initiatives and other commercialisation events will be held regularly to maximise collaborative opportunities and knowledge sharing.
