Farmers getting a 3D 'digital twin' of their farm to help with management

New company Agronomeye gives farmers a tool kit to trial farming and land management decisions on a computer screen before deciding what to do in the real world.

Managing director Stu Adam, Sydney, spoke to Stock & Land at the recent Future Ag Expo in Melbourne.

"It's a really, really detailed scan of the whole farm from fence line to fence line, the height of every single tree, the topography in really granular detail," he said.

"We don't farm in 2D but a lot of information that farmers are given, they're a single map in a 2D sense.

"Our aim is to bring some of the detail across the whole farm down to something that's practically useful for day to day decisions as well as long-term trends and baselines."

Mr Adam said the Agronomeye platform gave farmers a digital replica of their real farm.

"It's about what you can poke and prod that digital replica to help with decision making is really what an ag twin is," he said.

"You can ask questions in a digital environment before committing to it in the real world.

"It's about understanding all the things you could do and letting them help you decide what you should do."

He said these decisions could be about where the best place to put a new fence was or where would be most suitable for constructing a dam.

"How does the topography, the erosion risk, water modelling, drive a decision there?," he said.

Mr Adam said the software could then communicate the decision the farmer made to someone, such as a contractor, who wasn't sitting next to them.

"It's really about giving all of the details to farmers and giving them agency in some of those design projects," he said.

"Ultimately, it's about enabling farmers to go and take action that's going to fundamentally improve the landscape."

He said such work had a major role in on-farm carbon projects.

"Understanding the state of vegetation is a really important first step," he said.

The Agronomeye digital farm twin showed the depth and height of all trees and vegetation on the farm.

In this way, it could help design carbon projects or build evidence for grant eligibility.

He said it could even be used for accessing green finance.

"Everybody is really worried about the green washing element and data can really solve for that," he said.

He said the digital twin gave both the farmer and the project financier comfort in their backing of such work.

Mr Adam said the software could also improve land before or after a major weather event.

It can map what the response to a weather event might be, such as extreme rainfall, and determine how exactly it would affect production.

The tool could show farmers if they needed to change something in the underground landscape so as to avoid the worst effects of such an event.

"It could prevent that from happening the next time this weather event occurs," he said.

He said the Agronomeye 3D map would also be used in land valuations, under the due diligence process.

It would show what the opportunities were within the land asset and what natural capital carbon opportunities could be leaned into.

Mr Adam said ultimately, the platform "completed" the data loop for farmers.

He said data on a farm was created through the mapping, it was analysed by the Agronomeye team and then made ready for farmers to consume.

Capturing or mapping the data came at a cost of $1.50 a hectare to $20/ha, depending on the size of the farm.

He said all sorts of farmers had been interested in the tool - those new to farming and people farming a long time and who wanted evidence for understanding their natural capital opportunities.