Katrina Treen Swift

Katrina Swift

AI and a lighter touch to production in scholar's sights

Treen Swift and her family farm as many as 13 different cereal, oilseed, pulse and fibre crops on 4,000 hectares near Parkes in Central West NSW.

Treen will study these opportunities as part of a 2024 Nuffield Scholarship supported by GrainCorp.

“Artificial intelligence will be integrated into our businesses and lives in the next few years. We have a window of opportunity to develop agriculturally applicable capabilities as an industry that are tailored to our issues and productivity. I am keen to see improvements in biodiversity monitoring, crop inputs and management of data gathered in the course of our routine operations, to drive better economic and environmental decisions on-farm."

She says artificial intelligence, as well as effective management of human resources in agricultural businesses, will help drive innovation and the development of innovative products.

“We need to make sure that farmers can engage with and shape the regulation that is coming their way, from both an economic level and as custodians of our land for future generations. The digitisation and interoperability of our farming data is the first step to enable machine learning and AI to be integrated into our supply chain."

Treen will travel to the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, the US, Canada, Israel, and Japan, as well as domestically within Australia, to research the capture and use of artificial intelligence in the supply chain. She is particularly interested in travelling to European countries, as regulation forces growers there towards non-chemical means of control, increasing the demand and urgency for AI development.