Making sense in the cloud: Farm advisory services in a smart farming future

Increased use of data from smart farming technologies presents an opportunity for farmers to better understand their farm systems, and thereby improve outcomes for productivity, sustainability, and animal care. A research gap exists regarding the impact of data-driven smart farming on the relationship between advisors and farmers, and advisors and farm data/technology. Therefore, we asked: how are farmers and advisors interacting with data-driven smart farming, and what are the implications for farm advisor capability and roles in a future where farmers use more data-driven smart farming? We studied advisory roles, advisor-farmer interactions, and new technologies in the context of three case studies: i) automated cow body condition scoring in New Zealand; ii) precision grazing management in New Zealand; and iii) the Soil Water Outlook tool in the Australian grains and lamb sectors. We propose a conceptual framework involving on-farm adaptation, learning, capability development and organizational roles. The findings show that smart technologies exhibit potentially disruptive features for farm management, necessitating greater input from a farmer’s advisory network to facilitate optimal farm system adaptation. This has implications for the nature of the advisory relationship, where advisory capabilities evolve to include skills on determining technology value propositions alongside farmers and new skills are built for linking data to better decision-making on farm. This paper contributes to improved understanding of how back-office advisory roles may move from information gathering, to remote data interpretation due to data-driven smart farming. We identify the advisor’s role in acting as a sensemaker in the smart farming innovation system, rather than a promoter or barrier to technology uptake. Further adaptation of advisory practices is required to enable greater value from data-driven smart farming to be captured by farmers.