WHILE everyday technology from smart phones to smart TVs has become a common part of our modern lives, the revolution that technology has delivered to Australian agriculture has been largely an untold story.
Not anymore.
The University of New England has unveiled plans for Australia’s first ’SMART’ (Sustainable Manageable and Accessible Rural Technology) farm precinct to be established near Armidale, which will showcase the latest agricultural technology, side-by-side with the next big technology gadgets.
Professor David Lamb said the technology deployed on the working farm would be accessible at the SMART Farm’s central hub.
The $1.8 million managers’ building/visitor centre will co-ordinate and display the range of technology deployed across the research facility and working farm environment both to SMART farm visitors and online anywhere in the world.
“One of our biggest challenges will be to anticipate which emerging agricultural technology will take off and which ones will end up being parked in the shed,” Professor Lamb said.
“But that’s part of the SMART farm’s work, using real world Ag practices to put technology to use in a research environment.”
Prof Lamb said stage one of constructing the SMART farm would be taking the central hub online at speeds up to 10gbps.
“While that sounds like a massive capacity now, who can say what inventive and creative uses our research team might want to test or investigate tomorrow?” he said.
“It’s not beyond my imagination to consider a time when we might think of 10gbps as being a skinny pipe.”
UNE’s SMART Farm is due for completion in December.
