![Young Farmer of the Year, Brad Egan, Scaddan, West Australia, delved into his family farm's data to find how to achieve more yield and profit with less rainfall and inputs. Young Farmer of the Year, Brad Egan, Scaddan, West Australia, delved into his family farm's data to find how to achieve more yield and profit with less rainfall and inputs.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/32XghFRykTWK8psrWNhdBMC/3dad7e04-6254-4649-8f4e-97f378730012.JPG/r260_390_3697_2758_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
By the end of the decade Australian grain growers could be slashing fertiliser use by 60 per cent and herbicide volumes by 77pc, thanks to artificial intelligence in new generation planters, tractors, headers and spray rigs.
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Fertiliser represents about a quarter of the variable input costs broadacre croppers outlay in a typical cropping season.
Herbicides account for about 15pc of average Australian crop enterprise variable costs.
Across the board, the saving in Australian fertiliser usage alone could be worth about $2.5 million annually, as well as significantly reducing the carbon emissions associated with fertiliser use.
John Deere's Australian and New Zealand managing director, Luke Chandler, said after generations of achieving more yield gains using more horsepower, more crop inputs and farming more land area, farmers were now genuinely capable of "doing more with less".
He told Rabobank's recent international Farm2Fork event, while driverless tractors were already a commercial reality in the US today, machinery releases in Australia in the next three to five years would further raise the bar on cost savings significantly further.
![John Deer Australia and New Zealand managing director, Luke Chandler. John Deer Australia and New Zealand managing director, Luke Chandler.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/32XghFRykTWK8psrWNhdBMC/bf80172e-0577-43a5-b4bc-558d8fd78cb1.jpg/r132_141_1566_1083_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Planting gear currently being trialled by John Deere had the artificial intelligence capabilities to place every seed in position exactly at the depth and spacing required to maximise yield, and also place a prescribed amount of fertiliser around that seed.
Selective herbicide spraying gear using camera and light sensing technology could already target individual weeds, but sprayer and fertiliser intelligence was improving even further to effectively give an individual "voice" to every planted seed in a paddock.
These precise processes would eliminate the need for traditional broadcast-style applications of key crop inputs, cutting fertiliser use by 60pc and herbicide volumes by 77pc.
"Machine learning will allow less chemical to be targeted to exact weeds, saving farmers' back pocket costs and the environment," said John Deere's aftermarket and customer support director, Emma Ford.
"Worldwide, there will be an incredible beneficial environmental impact from reducing chemical use in agriculture."
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Meanwhile, the artificial intelligence behind cruise control and parking assist in today's cars had already advanced to make driverless farm machinery a reality in North America.
This, in turn, promised big labour saving, and rapid labour training opportunities on farms in the next few years.
"New operators can be trained up quickly as good operators. Good operators can become seasoned operators," Ms Ford said.
One farming's great challenges around the world was finding labour - particularly labour to drive sophisticated machinery.
"We believe automation can help us overcome this challenge," she said.
"This is not science fiction."
![John Deere's customer support director, Emma Ford. John Deere's customer support director, Emma Ford.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/32XghFRykTWK8psrWNhdBMC/af1bf215-fd33-42fe-a72a-a2dd4a28a6fd.jpg/r0_105_1575_1138_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Better harvest yield monitoring technology would also enable farmers to monitor grain traits such as protein, starch and oil levels and crop moisture content, which they could subsequently share with potential buyers, including overseas millers and brewer, as harvest was underway.
Such valuable in-crop harvest data would also further assist farmers to make more informed decisions about input usage and planting strategies in following seasons.
Making the most of existing crop input and yield data to do more with less has turned into a remarkably profitable obsession for 2022 Young Farmer of the Year, Brad Egan.
Studying the data
He told the Rabobank event how his family had defied their banker's pressure to cut back on an expensive land rehabilitation program in their sandy West Australian cropping soils at Scaddan, near Esperance, because he was convinced he could justify earnings expectations after crunching the historic numbers from yield and input data.
Despite declining average rainfall and generally low fertility, poor carbon levels and the light soil structure, average wheat yields on the 3400 hectare property have subsequently risen 45pc since 2019.
The Egan family's decision to persist with a soil amelioration strategy to dig up and mix subsoil clay into their topsoil profile, at a cost of $200/ha, dramatically improved their soil moisture and nutrient holding capacity.
"We've brought a lot more land into production," said Mr Egan, who returned home from university to the cereal, canola and pulse crop enterprise in 2017.
In fact, one particularly poor yielding neighbouring block, which had lingered on the market for nine years before the Egans added it to their holding, was now some of their most productive country after being rehabilitated.
After manually transferring sprayer, planter and header logbook records into digital data form, Mr Egan was able to compare soil types and yields to map the farm, proving the importance of amelioration and calculating its likely profit rewards.
"We needed to get our bank manager and farm consultants to understand what we were doing to validate that gut feeling about our productivity potential really had data to support it," he said
"It's been a big initial investment, but those soils would never have been profitable without our input," he said.
The family's determination to ramp up soil amelioration work from 20ha a year to 200ha was also fueled by a realisation that cropping conditions were getting harsher and needed.
The farm had recorded five consecutive years below its 390 millimetre annual rainfall average, including three of its driest ever in 2018, 2019 and 2020, plus record frosts.
"We knew our hostile environment was forcing us to act - we had to get better at achieving more with less."
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