Australia: Ag-Tech Companies Told to Adopt 'Sharing Attitude' to Their Technology

By North Queensland Register

A leading young South Australian farmer says innovation is being slowed because most software and data platforms developed for agriculture are held behind copyright walls, writes Vernon Graham at North Queensland Register. Andrew Sargent wants the walls ripped down and for Australia to adopt an open-source culture in agricultural software and data.

He says everybody would benefit from farmers to developers, manufacturers and research corporations. Sargent, who crops 2,000 hectares of wheat, barley, lentils, canol, and oats near Crystal Brook with parents Malcolm and Jane, won a Nuffield Scholarship to travel overseas last year to look at the potential of the Internet of Things (IOT) for Australian farming.

He had initially thought Australian farmers were being left behind in the race to harness the IOT but after attending a few conferences he found they were near the head of the field. So he started looking at the business model behind agtech and how agriculture went about sharing software, data and collaborating on projects.

Continue reading at North Queensland Register.