Summary

This project plans to build the skills and abilities of all students completing Agricultural pathways within our school. Many of these students will transition onto farms across our region in the future, either as trainees, employees or future farm operators. The results of our research project will be made available to community members and presented to the Manjimup Chamber of Commerce and Southern Food and Forrest Council as part of an Agriculture, Business After Hours opportunity. Students will learn how to interpret the soil moisture data and how to use this in irrigation decisions by engaging with Curtin researchers and the knowledge developed in the On farm water demand project and the role of agribusiness data in defining the value proposition of engaging with this Ag tech to support decision making. This facilitated adoption approach will reduce some of the barriers to adoption of Agtech for the students.

Program

AgriFood Innovation

Research Organisation

Manjimup Senior High School

Objective Summary

An expected outcome of the AgriFutures Technology uptake program will be that students will have a much greater knowledge of effective water use practices. This has the desired benefit of flowing through to local producers and an improvement on farm with a reduction of overall water usage and in addition to this less water being lost due to evaporation. This will be achieved through a range of trials, comparing automated watering to manual watering practices, identifying optimum watering times and conditions to minimise water loss, utilising the existing weather station to monitor evaporation rates and wind conditions to ensure that these are achieved. This will occur across both spring and summer crops to show the different parameters associated with a range of different crops and conditions.