The young and the digital

Chair Warren Parker says the challenge is getting more young farmers, for whom digital is a way of life, into the sector, but at the same time making digital easy for older farmers to use.

His comments came at a function at Parliament in Wellington, where Pamū guests were treated to a taste of some of the new consumer products is has developed using sheep and deer milk. They also offered beef and venison options as well.

At the function, Parker noted that digital is just a major extension of traceability, which he says provides proof of what happens on farm all the way through to the consumer.

"We now have to prove we are reducing our agricultural emissions, outcomes in terms of water quality and a whole raft of other factors demanded by the regulators."

He says while there are tools available to measure all these inputs on the farm, farmers have to spend endless hours inputting data into multiple entities, which is time wasting.

"Their inputs don't get separated into silos. So, when a farmer thinks about planting a riparian margin, they see themselves contributing to carbon sequestration, adding to biodiversity, improving their water quality and showing their customers that they are a good steward of nature."

Parker says work is now being done to set up a system whereby muliple agencies can, with the permission of a farmer, access the data from them rather it having to be sent to them and others. He cites technology such as Block Chain as an example of an enabler for this.

He says, with modern technology, farmers should be able to input data on their tractor or from other sensors on the farm. However, Parker does aknowledge that one of the roadblocks to this is slow download speeds in many rural areas - something he says the Government and the telcos are trying to remedy.

"The idea of this rapid data capture is to give time back to farmers, rather than taking it away, as is often the case today," he told Rural News.

"The key to this succeeding is greater collaboration right across the primary sector. Pamū doesn't have all the answers, but we are happy to share our knowledge and get back ideas from farmers."