At the end of the gold rush back in 1877, my family had their land resumed to make way for the Gosling Creek reservoir in Orange, at a time when broadacre wheat production was booming.
They soon settled 10 miles north-east of the nearby town of Cumnock, at a place that became known as ‘Catombal’ – a Wiradjuri word for sheet of bark – which is what the house was made of. The mountain range behind the house was later named ‘Catombal Ranges’ and is a key part of my story.
I’m very proud to be a fifth-generation farmer. Growing up on the family farm means farming is in your blood, the dirt under your fingernails and the tan on your legs from the bowyangs and the sunburnt V on your chest from your open top button.
The valuable lessons from my grandfather and father are in my mind, and the records are in a paddock book somewhere.
One lesson that was passed on but rarely discussed was that farming isn’t just about making money in any given season; it’s about building a legacy for future generations.
It’s about making the farm more sustainable both economically and environmentally, and I reckon that’s a huge driver for most family businesses.
My grandfather and father lived through the ‘green revolution’ of the 20th century that saw massive increases in agricultural production, through the development of high-yielding crops, better livestock breeds and the use of fertilisers, pesticides and machinery. It was the era of grow as much as you can without understanding the cost to the environment.
Now we’re a quarter way through the 21st century and the ‘green revolution 2.0’ is well and truly upon us. This time the tectonic shift in farming practices is being driven by digital technologies. They have the potential to increase efficiencies, boost productivity and be gentler on the environment – a legacy that will serve future generations well, IF we can get it right.
‘200 More Season™’ is focused on the undiscussed issues today that will drastically affect a farming family’s legacy. Agtech adoption isn’t about throwing out the old knowledge handed down, it’s about using and recording knowledge in a digital and shareable way to benefit today and future generations.
Imagine if great-grandad’s old notebook had given you an easy-to-use digital record of exactly what happened with the temperature, rainfall, humidity, soil moisture, the way different wheat varieties responded to different inputs and the impact that had on yields in minute detail.
Now think about ways to record every detail of every aspect of farming, including livestock treatments, growth rates and genetics, then having the ability to use that information in new ways. That’s a big part of what agtech, and the creation of a digital legacy, is about.
Most agtech suppliers now allow you (as a farmer) to share your data. This is the critical first step in recording today’s activities for future analysis and insight, which will unlock future tools specific to your farm.
Data will be like interest in the bank, the more you have and the more it compounds,
the better off you are.
We can see several immediate opportunities where good, clean and complete data can be utilised today, like benchmarking, crop disease modelling, compliance, emissions calculations and automation. These and more new applications of data services will become critical tools in the short to medium-term.
‘AI’ can mean artificial insemination or a chemical active ingredient, but nowadays it also stands for Artificial Intelligence and is very topical at the moment. In essence, Agentic AI uses computing power to calculate and predict results based on multiple variables; essentially, thousands of questions will have an agent processing each question at the same time. In agriculture, that’s what farmers have always done, but AI has the potential to do it far more accurately based on facts (actual historic data), not an educated guess and gut instinct.
Soon, AI will help agronomists calculate exactly which inputs to use on a particular crop at exactly which time and in which weather conditions (also taking the rain forecast and current soil moisture into account) to achieve the best and most profitable result. But these calculations can only be as accurate as the data fed into them.
The term ‘Co-Pilot’ is used to describe how Agentic AI can be introduced with maximum benefit and minimal risk. Essentially, your trusted agronomist will be able to access their ‘agronomically trained’ Co-pilot as a junior agronomist who will continually run scenarios and options, improving your cropping plan and profitability daily.
But same as today, the senior agronomist will have the final say and continue to run the scenarios until they are fit to be recommended to you. 20+ years of agronomic experience will quickly qualify the confidence and/ or errors within the AI advice, which good training will overcome over several seasons.
Just as agronomists and consultants give better advice the more they know about your operation, as AI develops, producers with the best data, most relevant to their situation, will benefit from new service opportunities from agronomists.
Down the track, these same agronomists and consultants will be the ones to train and verify AI-generated plans and models, training them in real time, in daily activities by accepting or re-running the model with more prompts and information. The more seasons the data has been recorded for and the longer the training process on your farm, the better the result for the planning tools of the future. This approach will allow agronomists to more actively manage your operation, by remotely accessing and monitoring crop health, growth stage development and issues like frost, disease and pest risk.
I started Pairtree in 2018, to help farmers overcome the issue of manually entering and re-entering data, the burden of recording & reporting compliance and juggling multiple log-ins to only see part of the picture. I know what a pain managing data can be, and like so many farmers, I wanted to get out of the office and back onto the farm.
Now in 2025, Pairtree is starting the ‘200 More Seasons™’ campaign to engage farmers to explain how detailed farm data is a truly valuable asset that compounds in value as the seasons pass. We are looking to work with the industry leaders who have the same vision of moving agtech away from point-based solutions to enabling an interconnected future, where each piece of the puzzle completes the greater picture.
I reckon agtech needs to do a better job of speaking ‘farmer’ so farmers understand that digital technologies will not only help them today, but the data generated will form a ‘digital legacy’ to benefit generations to come, so that our kids and our kids’ kids can walk the same paddocks and be thankful that we embraced the future today.
For me, when I see the Catombal Ranges from anywhere in the district, I think about my forebears who moved there almost 150 years ago. I marvel at how much farming has changed since then, and wonder what ‘200 More Seasons™’ will have in store.
For those within the industry who want to join this conversation and work to help farmers through this complex and confusing ‘entry’ phase of the ‘Green Revolution 2.0’, we encourage you to reach out and join the conversation.
200MoreSeasons™ – ©Kindly reproduced in collaboration with The Lightwood Consultancy.
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