[Music]
welcome back from the lunch break
our next speaker is lindsay jackson she
will be speaking on integration data
sharing open source and the ag tech
startup ecosystem
lindsay is a technology entrepreneur
with specialty skills in governance
strategy and regional development
after her talk lindsay will endeavour to
allow time to respond to all of your
questions
and failing
time she will be present in the post
talk chat
over to lindsay
excellent thank you so much for having
me it's such a pity that we're not in
person and i have no idea who's in the
room um i have covered so it's very
lucky that i'm not in the room um i'm
one of the statistics of the global
pandemic um something kind of ironic
about that though um just as i talked to
you about ag tech and the stuff that
i've been doing over the past couple of
years
and some of the opportunities that um
that i see for the regions but also that
have dramatically escalated for the
regions thanks to covert
and so
um the the effects of that for anyone
that doesn't live in the regions or
hasn't had a lot to do in the regions is
that what covett has done is
dramatically shifted the way that people
work together uh and engage online
across all sorts of organizations so we
know that because we've seen our own
businesses do that and and other
organizations
but it's really happened rapidly within
regional
australia
one of the benefits for it is it's made
regions more accessible than they ever
have been
and it's also meant that people at
different levels of government industry
business are really listening and
talking to regions as well
so it is a really exciting time for ag
tech i'm going to talk about the the the
lay of the ag tech land um and then i'm
going to get into some specifics about
the um about the uh
the app that i have um and some of the
collaboration that we've had to do to
start to bring all of the different
components of the agtech ecosystem
together
um so i'm the co-founder and cto of
platform although we're just going
through a process at the moment where i
take over as the ceo of platform
which is really exciting because that
allows me to um to take the technology
that we've built so far um to adjust the
strategy and to broaden the approach
that platform is so from something
that's been developed for the
viticulture sector to something that's
broader uh and then to go forth for a
raise which is always an exciting part
of the startup journey for anyone else
that's that's in startups as well
so it should be fun
all right let me get my talk clicking
so why am i talking to you today i want
to convert you to ag tech ag tech needs
new developers more developers great
developers uh we also need to be
training up the next generation and we
need to be imparting digital skills on
people that do not have digital skills
that need them
people like agronomists and
other other different jobs and
opportunities for the regions
um and just to advocate for the
innovation that's happening and because
the open source community and the
learnings and the collaboration that
informs open source is really what's
needed in ag tech and it also fits
really nicely with the way that regions
and regional people work anyway um so
when i fell into technology 15 years ago
it's been in open source and my
background before going into tech was
around um
small town renewal economic development
in rural communities how we keep and
attract young people to to communities
uh all of that uh really you know how we
how we build bonds and opportunities in
communities and so when i fell into open
source it was such a great example of um
of community openness and transparency
information sharing and importantly
communication as well
so the things that you're already doing
because you're part of this community
are things that um
that can that can benefit the regions
but there are elements that they do as
well
and ag tech's important because we need
to feed people in a changing world
climate um and i won't talk a lot about
uh climate change tech but it's
interrelated with with ag tech
and and so worth uh worth having worth
thinking about those connections
um
2020 february 2020 i got platform into a
thrive svg vent ventures uh ag tech
accelerator so a global accelerator
program um one of the outcomes from that
was supposed to be going to salinas near
silicon valley in the middle of 2020 for
a big forbes ag tech demonstration day
um of course the global pandemic hit and
that changed the the world um but i was
still fortunate enough to be a part of
that accelerator program
so yeah really interesting to be working
with like global ag tech leaders people
that are ahead of uh people that are
that have big roles in cyro and some of
these other uh organizations as they are
also terrified about the the global
pandemic and what we've all had with
um
just for people in the chat yeah drop
sorry about that uh just for people in
the chat love if you could tell me when
you hear the word term ag tech what is
it that you think about um because i'm
gonna take you through some of my
favorite ag tech companies in australia
right now and you're going to see that
it is actually incredibly broad
one of my favorites is swarm farm um so
this is a farm out in emerald huge broad
acre cropping like they have machines
that push machines to
to get their machinery bigger and bigger
to harvest big swathes of land but the
impact on that land and the compaction
on the soil um was really causing damage
and bigger machines were not going to be
able to we're not going to improve
anything to do with the the soil quality
um so where they've gone is small bots
so these are actually lots of little
bots that um that can be deployed but
then they can also be their
configuration can be changed you can
take different components of them you
can turn them into sprayers or you can
turn them into little harvesters or
whatever it is you can go through
vineyards you can go on crops um so
these are one of the best companies in
the world that is actually creating bots
for a commercial market
a lot of stuff that's still happening in
ag tech is conceptual and it's not
necessarily ready for scale
um but this company in emerald so these
are their open positions at the moment
they're looking for senior software
developers mechatronics engineers
computer vision engineers
growing up in regional south australia
these were not the sort of jobs that i
was told or that we were told were
available to us
you could be a doctor you could be a
nurse you could be a teacher you
certainly could not be a computer vision
engineer and live in the regions
so just incredibly exciting stuff
incredibly exciting transformation
um it's also around food and food
proteins
so the the next stage for food
production and for me production is
going to be more akin to brewing beer or
brewing spirits uh it'll be stuff in
bats and that's where we will be um
where we were
trading our meat on our protein products
um this is a this is an example of a
tech startup that i really like um but
it's a good example of how uh wealth is
also driving uh some of the funding that
goes on into uh into ag tech at the
moment especially at the the lower end
um what these guys do is they get um
they get the they get proteins meat
proteins and then they manufacture that
protein in the lab so they do stuff like
goat prawn galapagos turtle all sorts of
stuff so not necessarily something that
you're going to see at the big
supermarkets anytime soon um but another
another another interesting uh
innovation and direction of where this
stuff's going
food waste and bugs are going to be big
and super hot over the next decade or so
um goterra is a canberra startup um
olympia yaga is one of the most exciting
entrepreneurs that we have in australia
she's got funding recently through grok
ventures which is uh mike cannon
brooks's fund from atlassian who's doing
a lot of funding in
for the for the australian ag tech
sector um she's got these pods that can
go to different locations put bugs in
the pods feed the bugs bugs break down
all of the all of the all of the food
waste take the bugs out use the bugs use
the fly larvae for animal proteins for
proteins putting it in dog food all
sorts of stuff like that um so so moving
towards that uh those micro um
localized micro approaches where we
which also fit really nicely for that
potential of how we can see the regions
where we're developing localized systems
to manage um the the waste and other
things that we're producing
so super exciting there
satellite imagery is really one of the
big ones particularly within viticulture
horticulture
and crops stuff so stuff the satellite
imagery that we're getting from space is
able to tell us a lot that's going on
at the at the plant level but also at
the soil level that imagery resolution
is getting better and better
even looking at things like looking at
the
potential for carbon and being able to
track carbon uh look at carbon
percentages in the soil just from using
satellite technology
um so this is an example of the sort of
imagery that that we use in in the app
that i have
where people want to start to move to
precision agriculture
so rather than say spreading this entire
block uniformly you can start to define
key areas and say okay we want to target
something here or what is this blue like
what have we got going on here do we
have a water leak or do we have some
other thing that's going on what's
happening at the fringes
and that's really helping to
for people to be able to target improve
quality and yield
on on their land production
which really if we want to be producing
more on existing soil it is this uh
approach to nurturing nurturing soil
minimizing uh the inputs that we're
putting as far as fertilizer fertilizers
and pesticides but also maximizing the
impact of where we do spread those
things um so i think that's super
exciting
um this is a really this is a really
cool organization that is um basically
strapping gopro cameras onto autonomous
bots or little vehicles little gators
taking them through uh different crops
this one's vineyards but they also do
like strawberries and other hawk crops
and then they run ai and the ai then
tells you what it what are the different
elements of the crop
of the plant at different times
so when you do that for example you can
look at the percentage of shoots that
are on something and then you might say
okay well if we reduce if we shoot thin
and reduce by 25 then at the other end
when we start to get fruit we're going
to maximize our yield because we're
going to um be able to rather than
having lots and lots of foliage and lots
and lots of small fruit you can
concentrate that down so you get more
concentrated bigger bigger fruit um so
this this uh this company is also really
cool they're based in tasmania
um but there is a conflict between the
best interest of farm but is there a
conflict between the best interest of
farmers and innovation
and we know in tech that there usually
is
um one of the real pushes that you're
really seeing is um data is the new oil
generally um this this real data this
real interest in grabbing as much data
from all of these different machines and
systems as as companies can so who is
going to own farmers data
but what are what is the benefit at the
same time what is the benefit of shared
data and shared approaches to data um so
it's something to be cautious of but
also
there's there is
also potential opportunity
but you're really getting big companies
here like um like bosch they call their
system open and neutral and
collaborative so they're using a lot of
the terminology that comes from the open
source community
but i would argue that this that this
system is not open source or the element
of open source may exist but also the
commercialization of data is uh
absolutely at the forefront of of what
it is that
this company is doing for better or
worse i'm not making a judgment on it at
this point
uh ibm uh who are sponsors of linuxcom
thanks for that um are also i've sat in
with um with people from ibm as they
presented to growers in the riverland in
south australia to talk about putting
their fruit on the blockchain
um that was a couple of years ago that
project in south australia didn't didn't
go anywhere
but this uh push still to be able to put
commodities on blockchain is very much
uh still live within within the industry
at the moment
this was recent this was just a last
month i think bayer and microsoft
partnering to build cloud-based digital
tools so you're really seeing this theme
of these big companies and partnering
with with big tech providers to uh to
start to
uh to start to
create data partnerships
now this is a really cool um i should
pop this in the chat actually this is a
really cool talk um
uh this is sick codes who is an
australian based uh researcher um who
did a talk for defcon
who did a talk for def con um around
uh hacking john d attractors and some
kch tractors so there was a group of a
group of uh ethical hacking researchers
that wanted to look at the
vulnerabilities of of tractors
um
some of this i think some of the the
learnings and some of the discussions
have evolved since this talk um but
he's a really really great guy for being
really interested in um what is you know
what is pretty um
uh
pretty kind of um
uh
what's the word what's the word when
people aren't very educated on something
um about the you know so it's all pretty
new like this stuff's all pretty new and
green and some of the vulnerabilities
that actually exist within john deere
are vulnerabilities that mean that um
that they are able to then say lock down
um or they use those exploits for access
around their right to repair stuff so
farmers not being able to uh get in and
to repair their own tractors
um sorry i mumbled i've mumbled on this
one a little bit but um but i guess the
the real point is that this is an
example of how the um ag tech scene is
still undercooked when it comes to
um when it comes to ethical hacking and
when it comes to
systems that are safe and secure
here's a couple of examples that he sent
me of different display screens so this
also gives you a little bit of an idea
about the different sort of display
screens and setups that we're also
talking about when we're talking about
uh when we're talking about ag tech as
well
um there is definitely moves within the
sector to be doing something about this
um and about data sharing and to be
setting ethical standards uh for farmers
and
having a farm data code for ag tech
developers to be following in
partnership um with with um
with organizations as well so creating
ethical ethical data sharing is is very
much um very much at the forefront of
farmers minds in particular
um probably the one thing that i have to
apologize for that i didn't progress
from getting sick was to follow up with
how the agstack foundation is going
i do have a couple of contacts from
twitter but this is the linux foundation
um setting up the agstack foundation um
so i'd really encourage everyone that
has an interest to follow up with this
to find out how it's going to find out
how projects are going
it feels to me just from the outside
looking like uh it needs a little bit of
love um and and some ideas and some
opportunity to to go through it um but i
think that the importance of keeping
this stuff open source and creating
shared infrastructure and data standards
is is really important so i'd really
encourage everyone to get involved
so what am i doing about this now i'm
going to chat to you a little bit about
two projects one of them is uh platform
so this is um this is the the the
application that um that my organization
has built and then i'll talk about uh
collaboraculture which is a
collaborative
piece of work that we've done with the
the sector
um so i showed you some pretty crappy
device oh you know some pretty basic
display screens uh the premise of
platform is that it works on smart
devices um so from the app store from
the app store um
and it can just be used on uh phones and
tablets so you know really really about
that democratization of technology a lot
of the stuff that's in big tractors so
big tractors have big tech that tech
costs thousands of dollars when you
start to get down to about under 100
horsepower for smaller tractors those
tractors don't have any technology in
them um so right around the world we've
got people that are driving tractors
without any technology and within
australia particularly in say the
viticulture sector those tractors are
small and there's not a lot that's going
on in them um this is such a nice
picture i think because you can see that
when you're in the middle of the
grapevines it's really easy to lose
orientation of of of where you are
so what platform is is a geospatially
based tasking and tracking system
um that allows you to draw in your
geographical assets for your property so
the the vineyard in this case drawing in
the vine rows
um and then you can define the areas of
work where you want certain work done
and when we look think back about that
that map that i showed that heat map you
can define what they call prescription
zone areas
um define what sort of work rates you
want in those areas and then when the
tractor operator is out in the field
they are then being tracked using the
gps of their phone or an extender if
they've got one um to show them where
whereabouts they are in the field um so
it really is and and the extension for
platform going forward is to move out of
just vineyards into
any application where we would like to
look at look at the landscape and the
assets within it and then define define
work in a geospatial sense so you get
this really nice component of data
shared data
mapping map assets and then and then the
the the gps tracking of those of those
assets
uh so this is just like one of the nice
slides um so here what i've got is uh
the raw row model of you know what are
the what are the vines uh what are the
the lines that make up the vines how do
we then operationalize them and then how
do we use them into how do we put them
into something a bit more sophisticated
um one of the tools that we use is map
box um and so mapbox has been really
useful not only for us but also as a way
to encourage other companies that want
to integrate with us so whether or not
they're drone providers or they have
drone imagery providers or they have
satellite imagery uh to say okay well
rather than necessarily connecting
directly with us per se you get your
stuff into mapbox and then we can pull
it out of mapbox
um because the reality is that you've
got all of these startups that are all
quite small none of us have the money to
be able to integrate directly in with
all of the these um other companies and
providers particularly the ones that
aren't at scale
um
but using uh using something like mapbox
is that intermediary means that you can
encourage the investment to go
for the development investment for
people to connect into something that
others are going to be able to use um so
it's a really useful way to start to
quickly encourage building out an
ecosystem and and a set of set of
standards
um and then what we're looking to do is
to use some of the cool features like
map box so um so you know when you can
start to do route navigation for example
uh what does root navigation look like
within the farm or within within the
within the within a vineyard
um this is open street maps they're
sorry this picture's a bit uh it hasn't
got much definition in it but the other
thing that we've been thinking about and
and working with the opengis community
is just okay well what we're actually
when we know the rows we also then know
the tractor paths and those tractor
paths are kind of like roads so we're
starting to develop extra um
geographical assets within properties
um and then looking at the
how they then fit within something like
openstreetmap um because we have this
challenge of um you've got farms for
example that haven't had they've they've
always had surveying and now they'll
have really detailed maps or you know
they could have been surveyed years ago
but you have big pieces of paper and big
maps but there's nothing that's actually
nothing's digitized so how do we move
the sector towards having something
digitized
and that's just not for our application
that's for all sorts of applications
that are going to benefit from getting
they're getting um these these farms
mapped in a digital way um so what are
the ways that you can kind of do that um
that can be shared um that could be um
maybe created within the the commons uh
get agronomists out to be to be doing
this mapping uh training up young people
for example being getting them to do
mapping and then where are you gonna put
that map information
um so part of what we've been looking at
is um the the appropriateness of street
map for some of those elements
and then talking to the sector about
that as well
one of the benefits then as you start to
look at as you start to think about
these things as roads is you can also
look at road at what already occurs
within um technology around roads and
ordering uh ordering um
ordering rows and ordering information
like streetscape information um so one
of the one of the talks that we took a
lot of inspiration from i should put
this slide in sorry i haven't um was a
person called emily eros who did a talk
for one of the phosphor g conferences
on um street sign matching curb street
sign matching so they have this they
have these issues in big cities like new
york where amazon or whoever pulls up
and then they just drop all of their
packages on the side of the road and
what they need to know is what the
parking um restrictions are for that
that that road like that they don't want
to park somewhere where they own where
they are only let apart for two hours
when really they need four hours so that
mapping of putting that data and that
information on at elements along the
curb or along the street
we've then drawn from to be able to say
well we're going to take that same
approach we've got these elements that
are coming from
from ai and identifying where we've got
uh certain features of a plant or
certain elements on a plant how are we
then going to accurately take that and
then map that within our vineyards so
that we can actually direct work there
so that's been a really cool way of
thinking about
um thinking about vine about the
vine rose as as a street and then
looking at um looking at data matching
uh to
to those vine rows
um so then how do we get to this
connected data data sharing feature um
so even the way that platform works is
we want to be able to connect all of
these different elements via an api
sometimes i do this
talk to not very technical people so
that asks me what an api is um how do we
how do we bring all of those different
elements together um through apis
well what we really realize that
particularly within viticulture for
example is we actually didn't even have
an agreed um approach as to what a
vineyard was
um and so without even the sector really
being clear on what it was that a
vineyard was how do we propose that
developers are going to be able to
create a data model around that let
alone a data model that's interoperable
that will mean that we can share data
information
um so one of the cool things that we're
in that we did was got a bit of funding
um from one of the state government
organizations in south australia and we
started this project called
collaboration this website's built in
drupal which is open source as well
and we built this built this website um
to uh to start to bring different people
together put start to put resources and
information um about what other people
were doing both nationally
internationally
what people were doing in other
industries so people had done um data
mapping element projects around the um
around the broad acre sector but they
hadn't actually done it within
the culture we did was then we had a
series of workshops and we're bringing
all sorts of people together into these
workshops um it's one of the really
interesting things about ag tech is
you're building a movement and you're
taking uh lots of different groups of
people that are at different uh
different uh positions or mindsets or
whatever uh along with you i guess at
the center to that is the farmer or is
the grower so you know they're the one
they're the ones that you're kind of
wanting to take because you're wanting
to firstly create products that are
useful and going to be used um but also
to get uh
and that they will then want to use and
contribute and that are fit for purpose
so you have them um then you have
developers that want to be building
stuff for ag tech because it's really
cool then you've got your different
industry bodies like one australia or
your state government authorities
government whoever it is um and everyone
is at a very different position around
what it is that they think is important
and in some cases they've also been
doing this stuff for a really long time
as well so for example within the
viticulture industry
measuring area or talking about work
area defined by blocks so a big might be
like 30 rows of grapes um that's how
most things had been measured and when
you think about the tech behind it it's
kind of easy to just draw a box and then
say here's a block do this work on a
blog so a lot of things had been a block
level um but if you think back to that
image from the uh from the the vineyard
with the the ai
when you really want to start to get
down to the plant level or you might
want to be able to get down to an
individual shoot level so you actually
need to be is taking another step deeper
and looking at the geographical assets
around say
um
your posts and your rows and uh and and
understanding those elements there
so rather than kind of jump in and build
something
um we we made sure that we stayed
restrained um and resisted kind of some
pushes within the ag tech within people
that were already building out stuff in
ag tech to just look at the logical data
model um so we we wanted this to be
technology dependent a lot of stuff that
happens in ag tech is still built using
um using excel and that's that's totally
fine um but what we came up with as a
sector was this data model around the
the key elements of the vineyard um and
the the attributes that that made made
that made those work um and we worked
with john bryant who has been heavily
involved in the phos 4g movement um for
for many years particularly within
australia um so we really took an an
open source approach to this information
and as such we've also published this
stuff into github so we've made sure
that everything that we've done we've
put back out into the commons and then
slowly slowly nudging other
organizations to also give up some of
their shared information or we've just
gone and taken it um so like the grape
the grapevine varieties um one australia
had that in a pdf document i just sort
of spent like you know a few hours
taking it out and just typing it all out
so that it could be put into
not yes not code per se but um but to be
able to be be able to be put into git so
that other people could pull it out and
slowly through doing that and really
through taking a lead on this stuff
we've been able to kind of like push at
them for other bits of data set
information so this geospatial boundary
data that they've they've put together
um they've they've given they've openly
given that to us um
this is one of the management zones
around um
phloxera which is i think that's a
fungus actually um so when there's like
fungal zones so that's a really nice
example of information that yeah the
grower wants to know that but that also
has to be reported to vine health
australia so that there are not
outbreaks that are going on in other
areas so again when we go back to that
data who owns that data and what data is
useful to the commons we are collecting
information when we start to collect
information in the paddock that is
useful for other sectors so how do we
set up systems so that we don't have to
hand over everything to vine health
australia there's a lot of stuff they
don't need to know they just need to
know the the information that matters to
them so it really takes a takes a big
conversation um some stuff's been hard
to get out particularly if it already
exists within a system things like um
chemical spray information and stuff
like that so we just we've just been
slowly slowly working uh on the benefits
of um of
putting this information more publicly
um it's we sort of didn't really
appreciate it at the time but it has
also become quite a global project
where we've got other countries that are
also taking this and then applying it
not only from a country level um but
also
some of the big companies um like big
tractor companies are also taking that
model and then implementing it in in
their own way as well
so it's really has been about getting
those uh key building blocks together um
to share that across the sector
um oh my talk's actually a little bit
quicker than i thought um so i'd really
encourage everyone to follow up with the
agstack project uh find out where they
are up to
um and to think about how to support
innovation and capability that's uh
that's going on in the regions
um i do have time for questions i could
have added a little bit more in that for
you
oh i can't hear you greg
yeah mike was muted
okay thank you lindsey
we do have one question
first of all do you feel like farmers
and other land experts are at risk of
being exploited by the shiny promises of
technology and tech companies
or
are they coming up to speed about the
potential pitfalls
i think that one of the real things to
understand um there's
for people that aren't farmers or aren't
growers there can be this miscon
misconception that farmers aren't very
tech and in some cases they're not so
one of the things that you've got to be
careful of for example when you say
developing a product that a farmer might
only use once or twice a year is if you
change that user interface
then the next year when they go to use
it you're going to cause a lot of
frustration because they've forgotten
how to use it
but farmers it's their business and in
some ways they have like quite a lot of
downtime because of the seasonality of
their work so they're doing a lot of
research they've seen a lot of stuff a
lot of this stuff before
you can't talk to farmers about robotics
like fruit picking robot machines and
autonomous tractors that are just going
to be retrofit and kind of you know
drive through drive through lands um
they've seen all of that stuff uh before
and they've you know they've they've
been to conferences and they've seen
stuff where they've been talking about
it for a really long time
um so you can't underestimate that um i
absolutely think that there is a data
suck that happens
around the world in different ways i
mean if we think about our cars for
example and this the way that the the
way that um the the data and the
information that cars are going to be
able to collect and that they're going
to then be able to share with
manufacturers or share with whoever and
as consumers we're not going to
necessarily have a whole lot of control
over that i think that same sort of risk
is the risk that will face farmers
with their machinery depending on what
it is that they buy or whether or not
they want to go down that road
so one of the things we say those john
deere screens that i was showing you um
they fetch thousands they go for
thousands of dollars because people
actually like the they like stuff that
they can get in and fix
old tractors without any tech are are in
high demand because they can get in and
then they can fix stuff themselves
so i think that that right to repair um
that right to repair movement
but also people wanting um real
understanding around their data and
information um is is really going to be
going to be fundamental and if you don't
take that approach then tools will lose
trust quite quickly
and once you lose trust within
that that community um you're really
going to struggle to to gain any
traction uh from from then on um which
is why i think that uh that shared
openness and and being really clear
about what the different players within
an ecosystem are looking for and what
they're wanting to share
but also then making sure that products
are well built is really fundamental to
ensuring integrity and trust within that
entire system
okay
so there are no further questions if you
have nothing else to
say to wrap up we could end this
how do you feel
uh i don't mind i don't mind um yeah i
mean feel free to give me any feedback
um i was sort of conscious that i kind
of didn't go into any of the
sort of techy things about how we share
some of the assets within mapbox and
what it is that is occurring when we do
that when we're collecting data and then
sharing that data um so i could have
could have made that a little bit more
more geeky
but any questions or if anyone wants to
chat about any of this stuff
it's one of my favorite things to talk
about so always happy to chat
okay that can be done on the post chat
channel
post talk channel
thank you uh we'll end the session there
okay thank you bye