SCOUT for Australian Farmers

WHat is scout?

• identify local technology and innovation gaps
• scout for relevant solutions and opportunities and
• trial them in local, real-world conditions.

Why this program is needed

Australia is a leader in developing cutting-edge agricultural technologies (agritech), but due to the size and variability of Australian farming, adoption of these technologies are often slow.

Project focus

SCOUT supports farming systems groups and other local advisors to: 

• understand which technologies are available to target key farm management areas 
• trial technologies in local conditions, building out suitable trial protocols, economic assessments, and technical packs 
• support farmers to make informed investment decisions in new technologies. 

SCOUT also builds capacity in the Australian agritech industry. With Australian agriculture making up around 2% of global agriculture, it is not a priority market for global agritech companies – which means we get new products, models and technologies years behind the US and European markets.  

Australian agriculture is large, diverse, and economically challenging for new companies to survive in – as a result, our homegrown agritech companies are world leaders, but are often finding it easier to break into the US market than our own.  

SCOUT partners these leading companies and high-potential emerging technologies with Australia’s farming system and grower groups — local farmer-led innovation networks — to ensure these technologies are fit-for-purpose faster, and that farmers have the information they need to know if the technology is the right fit for their farm business.

How does SCOUT work?

Leveraging farmer-led innovation networks 

There are dozens of farmer-led groups, known as farming systems and grower groups, who partner with local farmers to identify innovation gaps and scout for solutions.  

Many of these groups were established over 20 years ago and have hundreds of farmer members who participate in on-farm trials, peer to peer learning, capacity building, and community building activities.  

SCOUT is a farming system group led program that seeks to build the confidence of these groups and their farmer members to leverage on-the-ground insights and expertise to ‘scout’ for the high-potential technologies and strategies to keep Australian farms productive, sustainable, and resilient.  

In short: farmers opt in to be members of these groups to trial new products and learn in a peer to peer setting, farmers established these groups to support each other and SCOUT was designed to support their journey into agritech.  

Identifying high-potential technologies 

Farming systems groups are provided continuous feedback from their farmer members, along with delivering formal consultation processes to ensure their projects reflect the key priorities of their farmer members.  

SCOUT supports these teams to turn these insights and years of experience, including understanding local systems and conditions, into the foundations of their technology scouting.   

Building the capacity of these valuable on-the-ground teams to find relevant technologies and understand if they address the key needs of their farmers is a core activity of the SCOUT program.   

SCOUT combines technical expertise and real-world experience with peer to peer learning to build the confidence of these teams to understand: 

• the potential and availability of current, new and emerging technologies – where do we find them? How do we know if they are worth investing the time in for Australian needs?  
• how technologies are developed and validated – what are TRLs? What is a stage-gate process? How do we trial new tech? 
• and what information that farm businesses need to see before making an investment decision – what is the ROI? Is change management required? What skills and capacity is needed on farm to get the most out of this tech? 

Technology readiness levels (TRLs) 

Related projects

• SCOUT for the Riverine Plains
• SCOUT: Rainstick
• SCOUT: Pairtree Intelligence 
• SCOUT: GoannaAg 
• SCOUT: Loam Bio