A consortium of leading agritech companies has joined the Australian Agritech Association (AusAgritech) to become foundation members.
The group features start-up technology companies, scaleups and sector leading firms from around the country, who are keen to develop a strong and vibrant ag technology ecosystem in the national interest.
The new recruits to the industry advocacy body include AgriDigital, AgriWebb, Ceres Tag, Cibo Labs, DataFarming, Farmbot Monitoring Solutions, LX Group, MaiaGrazing, MAIT Industries, Optiweigh, Pairtree Intelligence, Platfarm, Proagrica, Regrow, SapienTechnology, Swarm Farm Robotics and The Yield.
These firms will work with AusAgritech to bring influence in federal and state politics for better policy and engagement with portfolios across the whole farm technology industry, as well as energy, technology and trade sectors.
Agtech is a $500 billion a year sector globally.
AusAgritech chairman, Andrew Coppin, said the organisation's target was to tap into at least $20b of that turnover to bring higher productivity and efficiencies to Australian farming.
Agtech businesses would also bring more skilled jobs and career opportunities in regional Australia, as well as leveraging already exceptional research and farming practices to drive more revenue for the economy.
Australia had potential to be an ag technology world leader and with stronger sector leadership and a vision for enhancing its relevance nationally and internationally.
The alliance members would seek to leverage and access capital, skilled workers and create stronger collaborations across the sector.
"These great thought-leading companies in our sector are committed to delivering exceptional technology for Aussie farmers and exporting it to the world," he said.
"They are already actively enhancing our productivity and supply chains and are key to driving adoption to deliver changes that will impact our agricultural productivity and farm outputs well into the future.
"In doing this they are all material contributors to achieving the National Farmers' Federation target of $100b farm output by 2030.
"It's a pleasure to welcome them all as foundation members who will help us shape best practice policy, data usage, farmer adoption and engagement, investment and international awareness of our sector."
Mr Coppin said while there were many strong state-based agtech initiatives already emerging, those efforts had to be part of a national agenda in a sector that was industry led.
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