Ag Tech Sunday - Who will be first to the Ag Tech moon

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By Scott Mckinnon - Agtech/Agribusiness professional | Director Ag Institute Australia. 

Everyone has one or two ‘go to' movies, and they have probably changed over the years as you experience more of life's events and can relate to different things. One of my favourites is ‘The Dish', an Aussie movie that is loosely based on true events, however sprinkled with subtle and not so subtle humour and great characters. It was a family event when we were living in Switzerland and got a little homesick, to watch The Dish and The Castle. The Dish is great as it is set in Parkes, Central Western NSW, and not far from my hometown of Trangie. The scenery, sounds and characters are all so close to home.

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I watched it for the umpteenth time the other night (yes that is a real word)! It portraits the story of the Parkes telecommunication dish that played a part in the television coverage of the landing and moon walk in 1969, 50 years ago this year. This time while watching it and in between laughs, I had an epiphany, my word of the year. In the late 60's space and technology race, the US really did capture the world with the moon walk. Thousands of people, millions of dollar, trillions of work hours went into one single mission. Get us to the moon, and most importantly back to Earth, one of the many great quotes of the movie.

It is probably more impactful now than it was then, as we can watch the entire event in replay, examine the politics, business, technology and sacrifices it took. At the time the media detail, and timeliness of information, was much less than today. Today we are bombarded with every detail milli-seconds after events happen. I look at the news now and see nothing engaging and all-encompassing like the moon walk, coming out of the US. Mostly it is the latest reality TV show or political tweets, or talk about the wall. As people we have done walls before – haven't we learnt from history. The Great Wall in China, Hadrians Wall in the UK, and the Maginot Line in France, all different times in history and all had varying degrees of success and failure. They are now relegated to history lessons and tourist buses.

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What we do learn from history, is sometimes great things come from simple starts. Vincent Van Gough was quoted as saying, "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together." I get excited when I see innovative things come from the Agtech space. Agriculture is such a diverse sector, diverse in productivity, creating thousands of animal and plant derived products, and diverse in geographies, environments and experience. Today there is no NASA of Agtech and there is no moon walk mission. Agriculture is a bit more analogous with Jupiter than Earth. Jupiter has up to 79 moons. There are several companies who want to be the Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Afterlife of Agtech. It will be interesting to see how they go with no single ‘Moon Walk' style mission clearly visible yet. Many are heading off with their rockets loaded up, in a vast array of different directions. In complete contrast there are thousands of other companies, businesses and individuals pitching in to solve the millions of little challenges the Agtech mission. A lot of the key solutions are being developed, not in tech labs, but in back paddocks, tractor cabins and farm workshops. These are todays version of the backyards and basements of Silicon Valley of the 80/90's computer revolution.

It wasn't Apollo 1 that got man to the moon it was Apollo 11, and hundreds of trial runs in between. As Agtech heads off in different directions to land on 79 different moons, the key to acceleration will be to share technology across the sectors so each mission can fail, learn and then succeed much quicker. This will provide a quicker, safer and cheaper ride for our customers which is good for the whole community.