A decade ago, Deloitte’s “Short Fuse/Big Bang” report predicted that digital disruption would create a profound shift of between 15% and 50% in key business metrics for various Australian industries. This transformative change, referred to as a ’big bang’ situation, included disruption factors like a change of revenue channels, operational digitisation or cost structures. The Agriculture sector was recognised as having a considerable capacity for digital transformation and disruption that could reshape the industry.
Yet within the report, agriculture was categorised as having a ‘long fuse’ before we would see this disruption. It was noted that heavy regulation, high government involvement and low digital literacy were common reasons for the lag in digital enablement.
Flash forward to current times and the sector is building foundations to grow upwards to $100 billion by 2030. To achieve this, the Australia Federal Government, via its Ag2030 Strategy, is focussed on increasing productivity, profitability, and sustainability – enabled through investments in digital agriculture and technology adoption1.
In summary, there is great momentum across the globe in driving impactful data exchange initiatives in the Agrifood sector. The Australian agrifood sector is experiencing its own digital overhaul. Key insights from the initiatives in the UK and Ireland suggest that building trust, transparency, and human-centricity into the design and implementation of data exchange initiatives are critical to success. These themes are expected to continue to dominate the digital transformation of the Australian Agrifood sector as the industry moves forward.
To achieve the foreshadowed ‘big bang’ digital disruption sooner rather than later, we must collectively take action to drive positive data exchange initiatives for agriculture in Australia. Together with our industry stakeholders, technology providers, and the government, we have the opportunity and capabilities to make change for the common good of all.
This blog post was inspired by the recent ‘Industry Exchange Webinar’ hosted by Deloitte Australia. In this write up, I summarised the insights and real-world use-cases presented by Deloitte representatives from Australia, UK and Ireland, along with a guest speaker from Agrimetrics in the UK.
[1] Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Delivering Ag2030, 2022, https://www.agriculture.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/delivering-ag2030-april-2022.pdf
[2] Based on Deloitte’s analysis of consumer company executives on accountable sustainability, Apr 2022.
[3] Agrimetrics, https://www.agrimetrics.co.uk/company/about
Author:
Amanda Har - Director, Consulting (Deloitte Australia)
Contributors:
Mason Davies - Partner, Digital and Data Transformation (Deloitte Australia)
Heather Reed - Partner, Data & AI (Deloitte Australia)
Brian Callaghan - Director, Cloud and Engineering (Deloitte Ireland)