Educational resources

These resources were produced as part of a collaboration between ACPA and GRDC. The PA Lab continues to make them available for widespread use in the agriculture and education sectors as an output from the GRDC National Strategic Initiative on PA (SIP09) and the Next Steps in PA program.

The History of PA in Australia

Precision Agriculture (PA), in its current form, has a long history of innovators and pioneers with a single aim of improving agricultural management. Australia remains at the forefront of the development of PA tools and practical applications, not the least because of our unique range of production conditions.

Undoubtedly the application of PA continues to be a general success in Australia despite the fact that some products or techniques have not been adopted or remain ahead of their time.

Development opportunities are naturally opening in areas which better quantify small-scale variation and allow such information to be usefully integrated into management decisions. Sensing systems, analytical procedures, software, agronomic understanding, robotics, human resources will all provide areas for PA to continue the transformation of agricultural management into an increasingly resource efficient, less risky, societal endeavour.

View A Review of the History of PA in Australia and some future opportunities (24.7MB).

It is a presentation that outlines the significant developments in Australia. As a caveat, it could be considered grain-centric and, no doubt, incomplete.

21 Steps to PA in Australia

A decision tree which requires a positive or negative answer to decide on an individual incorporation path. A Plan for Incorporating Precision Agriculture into Australian Farm Management has been devised to assist Australian farmers. It begins with the decision whether to move into some form of vehicle navigation aid. While the use of vehicle navigation aids is generally recommended as the initial step, the use of the later stages of the plan do not necessarily require such systems (e.g. small farm size and turnover may preclude such initial purchases but not the possibility of improving management of variability).

Download (1.2MB PDF)

Site-Specific Crop Management (SSCM) for Australian Grains: How to Begin

A simple explanation of the processes that may need to be considered in the introduction of SSCM in Australian grains. SSCM needs to be tailored to individual farms and fields, but a general plan to help choose the options that best fit local conditions and situations is supplied here.

Download (1.6MB PDF)

Precision Agriculture: Education and Training Modules for the Australian Grains Industry

Rationale for the modules

These modules have been developed for the GRDC in response to an identified need for information on Precision Agriculture (PA) tools and techniques to be made more widely available to graingrowers and others in the grains industry. The development process has been mindful of the great variety of existing PA knowledge levels and information requirements within such a diverse industry. To this end, the modules were designed to be interacted with at multiple levels to suit the skills and needs of different target audiences (growers new to PA, advanced growers, advisors, dealers, technology manufactures etc.).

Format of the modules

The education and training modules have been compiled to provide information on the major topics considered relevant to adopting PA in the Australian grains industry. They are intended to be a resource for individual education, for use in developing training workshops or combining with established training materials. Each module focuses on a particular PA subject area and is delivered in up to four sections:

• Basic information – an overview of the important topics in the subject;
• Advanced information – a more comprehensive treatment of the subject including expanded detail on the important topics;
• FAQ – common questions, exercises and handy tips; and
• Supplementary information and archive – reference material to provide further detail or background knowledge if required.

Individuals can delve to the level of detail they require from each module. Training coordinators can choose the combination of subjects, specific topics and appropriate level of information in each to suit the knowledge of the trainees and the specific goal of a training program. The material in the Basic, Advanced and FAQ sections is provided in ‘open access’ form. The text, figures and tables can be freely extracted and used in other presentation formats.

Accessing the modules

The modules are provided individually here with the image content in a compressed form. The total download for the set is 127 MB. A full resolution set on autorun CD can be obtained by contacting the PA Laboratory