Digital Opportunities in Agriculture

Partners Influencing Digital Productivity: Agriculture

November 22, 2013

Professor Mike Keppell Executive Director

Australian Digital Futures Institute Director, Digital Futures - CRN

Overview

nDynamic landscape nDigital citizenship nFacilitating mobility nVirtual extension nConnected learning

Dynamic Landscape

Horizon Report

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5AZzOw7FwA

Will 3D Printing Change the World?

Connectivism‣ Knowledge has changed to

networks and ecologies (Siemens, 2006).

‣ Need improved lines of communication in networks.

‣ “Connectivism is the assertion that learning is primarily a network-forming process” (p. 15).

Digital Citizenship

What is Digital Identity?

nSafe and engaged digital citizenship

nAppropriate and responsible technology use

nDigital wellness

nhttp://digitalcitizenship.net/Home_Page.html

What is Digital Identity?nHow you portray,

represent yourself online

nRich ways of communication

nDigital etiquette

nDigital ethics

Digital Identity Spaces

Digital Footprints

I can see a day in the not too distant future (if it’s not already here) where your “digital footprint” will carry far more weight than anything you might include in a resume or CV (Betcher, 2009)

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http://chrisbetcher.com/tag/digitalfootprint/

Digital Literacies

Rapport with technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk

Digital Literacies

nLiteracy is no longer “the ability to read and write” but now “the ability to understand information however presented.”

Wheeler Digital Literacies

n Social networking skills n Transliteracy skills n Maintaining Privacy n Managing Identity n Creating content n Organising and sharing content n Reusing/repurposing content n Filtering and selecting content n Self broadcasting

!!http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/what-digital-literacies.html

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/

Europe - Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2012n 73% of EU 27 households had access to the internet n A lack of skills is the second most important reason

for not having access to the internet n Only 53% of the labour force - confident that they

had sufficient digital skills to change jobs. n Age, gender, and education remain the key

challenges. Older people, women, those with lower levels of education tend to have lower level digital skills.

n http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/scoreboard_digital_skills.pdf

!!!

Literacy is a contested conceptnThere is currently no universally accepted

definition of media literacy, information literacy, digital literacy, or even of “media” itself.

nThe digital divide is much more than a ‘technology access’ divide; without the skills to use the technologies an even greater divide emerges – the information literacy divide.

n http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/unesco_mil_indicators_background_document_2011_final_en.pdf

Digital Futures - Collaborative Research

Network !

Research Capacity Building

$5.1 million

Partnership with ANU & UniSA

91 Researchers

5 projects

Leadership Development Program

Project 1: Facilitating Mobilityn Developing an evaluation framework for mobile learning

!

Goal: This project will form the foundation for a program of research in mobile learning that will support exploration of the changing nature of learning in a connected age.

Project 3: Virtual ExtensionnInvestigating the impact of a web-

based, 'discussion-support', agricultural-climate information system on Australian farmers' operational decision making

nGoal: To develop and test the effectiveness of a technology rich learning environment to help farmers make complex decisions around climate risk management.

The Australian sugar industry is strongly influenced by both the impacts of daily weather and also seasonal climate variation. The success of the sugar industry depends heavily on capitalising on the opportunities and minimising the risks associated with climate variability along the supply chain. The excessive rainfall events and climate of the 2010/11 season have highlighted the critical need for improvement in more consistent and reliable delivery of accurate and useful climate forecasts with the aim of minimising the risks associated with sugar delivery and harvest management along the supply chain. Sugar production in Australia mainly occurs in discontinuous regions spanning 2100 km along the coast of eastern Australia within 50 km of the coastline. This region experiences extreme seasonal and annual variability in temperature and rainfall. Much of this inter-annual variability is due to the Pacific Ocean El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon.

The ability to more precisely forecast the extremes in our seasonal climate patterns for all key sugar growing regions and to fully develop knowledge on how this relates to industry planning is of vital practical and financial importance to the Australian sugar industry.

Targeted support tools and systems Development of appropriate decision support planning tools for 'harmonising' sugarcane harvesting management along the supply chain (managing the timing of production, harvesting, storage and logistics planning) through the provision of improved seasonal climate forecasts of relevance to all sectors in the sugar industry value chain to facilitate more dynamic and adaptable harvesting management plans.

Broader global cane production assessment Provision of global sugar production assessments to enable the Australian sugar industry to take advantage of global supply/demand conditions.

Development of longer term climate scenarios Development of longer term climate scenarios/projections (e.g. up to 2 years) that will incorporate advances developed at the UK Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Research (UKMO) and Australian Bureau of Meteorology, made relevant for both Australian and global sugar producing regions.

Communication and delivery tools Develop new methods in communication systems in order to deliver model outputs (harvested cane, seasonal forecasts and decision support planning tools) via targeting workshops, training and extension plans.

Targeted climate forecasting for key sugar producing regions

Provision of regularly appraised and improved 'targeted' forecasts for nominated key sugar producing regions at weekly, monthly, seasonal, and up to 6-9 month lead periods at mill-level area scales. • This will include the initiation of new processes

that will enable the provision of warnings and alerts of extreme events (relevant to breakdowns and other stoppages, to be defined by the industry) - updated with the provision of improved models as they become available globally and on a regular basis as determined by QSL.

Supporting Decision-Making in the Sugar Industry with Integrated Seasonal Climate Forecasting

භ Roger C Stone1 භ Shahbaz Mushtaq1 භ Torben Marcussen 1 භ Neil Cliffe1 භ Lynda Brunton 1

භ Yvette Everingham2 1. ACSC, University of Southern Queensland (USQ) , Toowoomba, Australia;

2. James Cook University (JCU), Townsville, Australia

Harvested cane forecasting Develop appropriate climate forecast methods that also incorporate utilization of a discounted base approach). • This will involve the interaction of crop models

with advanced climate forecast systems (at a number of scales), with further validation using Geographic Information Systems/Remote Sensing (GIS/RS systems).

• This will provide significantly more reliable, accurate and useful forecast systems in regards to (i) tonnes of harvested cane (ii) potential yield, and (iii) Commercial Cane Sugar (CCS). Furthermore, it also involves validation of mill-level sugarcane crop forecasts.

Research objectives

Introduction

Acknowledgements: • Queensland Sugar Limited (QSL) for providing funding associated with this research. • The Collaborative Research Network for Digital Futures.

Integrated climate – crop simulation model system required to provide detailed yield forecasts. Courtesy: Y. Everingham

Project 5: Connected LearningnAgricultural digital literacy

n Identifying opportunities and ways forward

n Intelligent knowledge management n Using technology to collate and synthesize

existing farm data to inform decision making

n Intelligent eExtension n Using farm input data to profile information needs

(Known/Unknown) on farm – improved extension services tailored to needs

National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FIvfx5J10

The Digital Rural Futures Conference 2014 Hosted by the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba

25 – 27 June 2014 Regional Futures - maintaining healthy, resilient and vibrant regional

communities. Agricultural Futures - increasing productivity, sustainable use of resources and

embracing digital technologies to optimise Australia’s farming future. Digital Futures – building capacity to design and utilise emerging digital

technologies and embrace their opportunities

The conference is a Regional Universities Network (RUN) initiative

For more information now, visit: http://www.usq.edu.au/digital-crn/drf-conference

Official Conference Website: (Go Live from December 2013)

http://www.usq.edu.au/digital-rural-futures/