Planting the seeds of Australia’s farming future

19 March 2019

Ground-breaking satellite positioning technology was on show today, when the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan visited SwarmFarm Robotics in Emerald, Queensland.

The farm was one of several sites on the east coast of Australia used to test how reliable positioning data accurate to 10 centimetres can be applied to a range of crop farming operations, including seeding, spraying, spreading, autonomous machinery operation and harvesting.

The testing was carried out as part of a project led by independent agriculture research organisation Kondinin Group in collaboration with Precision Agriculture and the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

The project is one of 27 from across 10 industry sectors developed as part of the trial of a Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) for the Australasian region.

Led by Geoscience Australia in partnership with Land Information New Zealand, the SBAS trial is funded by $12 million from the Australian Government and a further $2 million from the New Zealand Government. FrontierSI is managing the industry projects participating in the SBAS trial.

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