Farmers in Elmore had the opportunity to learn about some of the most newest available technologies to them recently, from preventing crime to better tracing wool bales.
Held at at the Elmore Events Centre Wool Shed, the Tech In The Wool Shed was the first event of it's kind in the region with an intention to help local farmers be as efficient as they can.
Nutrien Bendigo wool manager Nicole Davies said it was important to get more networking and information days out in communities after COVID restrictions stalled many events.
"We really thought it was time to get people together, mingle and actually see people face to face... and make connections," she said.
Ms Davies said that it was important for wool producers along with other farmers to be aware of tools that are out there to help them and was keen to hopefully run more days in the future.
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"The wool industry is known to sometimes be a bit traditional, but there is technology and different solutions out there right now, and I wanted to put them in front of people to see what we can do, make some efficiencies, have some better production and practices in the wool industry," she said.
The day had a mix of young and old farmers attending, which Ms Davies said reflected the diversity of farmers keen to learn more.
"There is a lot of generational change in farming... so it is good to see both sides of the coin of some with a bit of experience, and those with a bit of energy looking at what they can bring to their farms," she said.
Wool classer registrar with the Australian Wool Exchange Fiona Raleigh spoke about a new traceability system that records bales of wool on-farm via QR codes.
She said the system, which uses QR codes, brings integrity "right through the pipeline".
"Some of that traceability is about identifying mob information [and] your property declaration," she said.
"If we have an exotic disease outbreak we need those processes in place where we have an unique ID, a geo-location, and a time and date stamp so that in the event of an exotic disease outbreak we have full traceability."
She said the availability of technology is now at everyone's fingertips via a smartphone, and most farmers are aware that it can be used to their advantage.
"That smartphone technology has opened up the window for us to actually be able to record a QR code which is a unique number at time of pressing," she said.
"That is linked to a website, so we have the integration between e-bales, which is a bale with an RFID tag, and a QR code, and WoolClip, which is electronic specification and National Wool Declaration that then goes on to the broker, so those two get linked together."
Account executive with Agriwebb Jason Yeomans demonstrating some of the benefits of using smartphones to make better farming decisions. Picture by Philippe Perez
Account executive with livestock business management software company Agriwebb Jack Yeomans also spoke at the event on easier ways that farmers could capture data for day to day decision making.
He said more farmers are looking for convenient to give insights on performance management on their land.
"[Agriculture] is one of the oldest industries in the world, and many are quite traditional in how they track things," he said.
"Many other industries who are in similar boats have transferred across to more digital formats in the past decades, and I think farming has now caught up with those not keeping up with the times will be left behind."
Farmers in attendance learned about new advancements in protecting farmland from thieves as well as developments with electronic identification tags.
Shearing demonstrations were also held for visitors throughout the day.
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