Satellite imagery showing harvested paddocks in grey and unharvested in green on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. Image: DAS

A NEW offering from software development company DAS (Digital Agriculture Services) is set to deliver insights into two of the great unknowns in Australian agriculture: the grain-hay split, and harvest progress.

Using satellite imagery and machine learning, it will see deliver twice-weekly hay and harvest reports as an add-on to its winter crop estimates.

While wheat, barley and   as Australia’s three major winter crops can be cut for hay, DAS head of earth observations Sam Atkinson said oats is where an insight into the grain-hay split is expected to come into its own.

DAS is promoting its latest offering as helping traders and bulk handlers get a better handle on grain and hay coming the market’s way in close to real time from Australia’s 1.69 million or so paddocks.

Mr Atkinson said the hay and harvest reports will also provide insights to organisations like insurers and state-based fire-management agencies with a vested interest in knowing what is still standing in the paddock throughout the national harvest.

Expanding platform

DAS was founded in 2017 in partnership with CSIRO, and its satellite imagery in conjunction with machine learning provides insights from the farm through to the national  .

It offers rural data insights free of charge to growers and rural communities, but its broader insights are by subscription, and its

The DAS platform recognises 10 winter crops: wheat; barley; canola; oats; chickpeas; faba beans; lentils; field peas; lupins, and vetch, a major source of hay in Victoria and South Australia.

“Particularly for the oat industry, we’ve never had a broad and quantifiable handle on what’s happening like that before.”

Mr Atkinson hay and harvest data will be delivered initially in report and spreadsheet form broken down by crop type and region, from August 15.

“Things can start pretty early in Central Queensland and we’ll be monitoring harvest from then… and following it as harvest and hay cutting moves south,” Mr Atkinson said.

The hay and harvest data is expected to be particularly useful in seasons that throw up unwanted events such as widespread frost that can prompt wheat and barley crops planted with grain in mind to be cut for hay.

Likewise, a wet end to the growing season can promote a weed burden too great to be controlled in crop, which could push more area than intended into hay rather than grain.

“For these kinds of events, this hay and harvest report will be really useful.”

The other is rain at harvest, and Mr Atkinson said intelligence from DAS’ latest offering will provide an indication of how much standing crop is at risk of downgrading.

Mr Atkinson said fragmented supply chains make some regions harder than others to quantify in terms of harvest progress and how much crop is still standing.

“Where we’re relying on disparate sources of information…and where bulk-handling is less concentrated, there are some real information gaps.”

Broader applications

Mr Atkinson said DAS’ hay and harvest report will be of use to the livestock sector by indicating fodder availability with regard to what has been dropped for hay, and the new function will also have applications outside agriculture.

These include being a resource for state-based fire authorities which are constantly monitoring fire risk.

“Crop type and size, and harvested or unharvested area, is part of what dictates the fuel load in any district.

“The five mainland state fire authorities are already using our data, and harvest tracking will further enhance their work to improve fire danger ratings and emergency response.”

Mr Atkinson said the insurance and seasonal-finance sectors have also shown in interest in knowing the split between standing and harvested crops through the spring and summer months.

“Once a crop is harvested, it is no longer at risk from a crop insurer’s point of view, and it is at much less risk from the financer’s perspective.

“The question is: Why carry risk on your books through to January if the crop was harvested in October?”

Mixed start evident

In contrast to platforms which incorporate satellite imagery to assist with individual on-farm decision-making, DAS’ niche is helping off-farm decisions, as used by companies servicing vast cropping areas of Australia.

“We don’t produce products to sell to farmers.

“We’re looking at aggregate statistics that are not personalised; we very much focus on getting accurate agricultural statistics in Australia.”

While ABARES, private forecasters, and some state governments issue crop area and production forecasts from sowing time onward based on their own area estimators and yield models, DAS relies on being able to identify crops in each and every paddock.

DAS digital specialist Jennifer McMaster and chief product officer Sagit Shiran with DAS’ Startup of the Year award.

“Most of New South Wales, and Queensland too, has reached that point, whereas with the southern states, and South Australia in particular, it might be another 3-4 weeks before the view is really clear because of their much later start.”

“That’s why our first national estimates for canola were released last week.”

DAS delivers its first canola estimates in mid-July each year, and all other crops follow from mid-August.

The company was last month named Startup of the Year in the Governor of Victoria Startup Awards, and is in the Australia and New Zealand Climate Tech 100, which lists the most promising companies working in climate technology.

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