Chief executive of the Cooperative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation (Sheep CRC), Professor James Rowe, has described agriculture as the ideal target for developing new big data applications to convert decades of research into usable information for farmers.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Prof Rowe told the Connect Expo Big Data Strategy Summit in Melbourne that agriculture was particularly well placed for the big data revolution due to its mixture of complex and dynamic characteristics, with farmers having to manage soil, plant, animal, climate and market interactions that all change every day.
“There is already a rich mine of data available from decades of institutional research which has not been fully exploited,” Prof Rowe said.
“The focus has now shifted from dealing with the cost and difficulty in collecting data, to the problem of how to analyse and interpret large amounts of data, and the opportunity to make the information available in a meaningful way for end users via apps.”
There is already a rich mine of data available from decades of institutional research which has not been fully exploited.
- Professor James Rowe
The Sheep CRC launched the RamSelect.com.au app last year, to help sheep producers find the right rams for their flock and their production system.
“We are now focussing on developing a second web-based app that combines big-data capabilities with deep subject knowledge, sophisticated bio-physical models and machine learning,” Prof. Rowe said.
