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Farming's Long-Awaited Tech Glow-Up · What the Flux

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  Speaker 1: This is What The Flux. I'm Larissa and it's Wednesday
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  Speaker 1: the 2nd of September. Here are the three biggest news
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  Speaker 1: stories today. For our first story, Ingham's, Australia's largest chicken producer,
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  Speaker 1: is warning poultry prices will rise. Ingham's CEO said the
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  Speaker 1: increases related to bird flu, inflation and the Middle East
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  Speaker 1: conflict have driven costs up by $ 130 million. For our
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  Speaker 1: next story, ANZ, one of Australia's big four banks, is
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  Speaker 1: reportedly considering taking over Judo Bank, its smaller rival focused
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  Speaker 1: on business lending. ANZ allegedly held talks about acquiring Judo
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  Speaker 1: after predicting house prices would fall 11%, meaning the bank
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  Speaker 1: needs to diversify its portfolio. And for our final story, OpenAI,
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  Speaker 1: the owner of ChatGPT, has revealed the company's advertising business
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  Speaker 1: hit $ 1 million USD in annual revenue, OpenAI is selling
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  Speaker 1: ads to help boost revenue ahead of a potential IPO.
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  Speaker 1: In this series, Going Deep, we'll be doing bite-sized explorations
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  Speaker 1: into the most interesting industries, businesses, and economic events in
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  Speaker 1: Australia and around the world. For today's episode, we're looking
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  Speaker 1: at AI, but not the version you're probably thinking of.
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  Speaker 1: We're looking at the version that actually keeps the world fed.
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  Speaker 1: In particular, how a New Zealand startup built a $ 2
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  Speaker 1: billion business by putting a GPS collar on a cow,
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  Speaker 1: and why that might be one of the most important
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  Speaker 1: tech bets of the decade. In this episode, Brett and
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  Speaker 1: Justin explore why agriculture is one of the least digitized
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  Speaker 1: industries on earth, despite feeding 8 billion people, and whether
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  Speaker 1: the AI farming dream is finally real. Over to you,
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  Speaker 1: Brett and Justin.
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  Speaker 2: Thanks, Larissa.
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  Speaker 1: Amen.
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  Speaker 3: Over the past four years, we have seen AI improve so,
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  Speaker 3: so fast. Yep, we've seen it write emails that sound
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  Speaker 3: suspiciously like you.
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  Speaker 4: Pretty impressive.
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  Speaker 2: We've seen it be able to superimpose your face on
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  Speaker 2: a Spider-Man image. I know you love those ones.
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  Speaker 4: Very cool.
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  Speaker 3: We've seen it compose entire songs, meaning anyone can now
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  Speaker 3: describe themselves as a music producer. Yeah, and all this
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  Speaker 3: stuff is pretty amazing, but most of the world's AI
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  Speaker 3: headlines are about productivity tools and image generators and chatbots.
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  Speaker 4: But, Jazzy Boy, let's.
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  Speaker 3: Wander out of Silicon Valley for a second and into
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  Speaker 3: a haddock, because agriculture is an industry we don't talk
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  Speaker 3: about nearly enough.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, farming is nearly a $ 4 trillion global industry.
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  Speaker 3: It's core to the world's economy, right up there with
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  Speaker 3: roads and ports and power grids.
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  Speaker 2: One in four workers on Earth, or 26% of the
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  Speaker 2: global workforce, earn their livings from agriculture.
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  Speaker 4: And right now, over 700 million people are undernourished.
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  Speaker 2: So, B-Man, we've got fewer farmers, more mouths to feed,
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  Speaker 2: and somehow we're expecting the mouths to keep mouthing.
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  Speaker 3: And despite all of that, agriculture remains one of the
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  Speaker 3: least digitized major industries on Earth.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: For a long time, AI in farming hasn't seen a
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  Speaker 2: significant change.
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  Speaker 4: In fact, ag tech... became a bit of a graveyard
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  Speaker 4: for new investments.
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  Speaker 2: Back in 2023, it fell 51% because startups collapsed and farmers,
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  Speaker 2: they walked away from the tech.
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  Speaker 3: Then a guy from New Zealand looked at a cattle
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  Speaker 3: farm and thought, what if the cows just knew where
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  Speaker 3: to go?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that guy's name is Craig Pickett, and the company
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  Speaker 2: he founded in 2016 is called Holter.
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  Speaker 4: The product appears pretty simple.
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  Speaker 3: It's a solar-powered GPS collar you clip onto a cow,
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  Speaker 3: which is connected to a smartphone app.
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  Speaker 2: From that app, a farmer can move entire cattle without
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  Speaker 2: moving from their couch.
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  Speaker 4: We're talking no fences and no sheepdogs.
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  Speaker 2: So how does it work?
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  Speaker 3: Well, it uses vibrations and audio cues to guide the herd,
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  Speaker 3: or what they call the cowgorithm. Yeah, it's a bit
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  Speaker 3: like reversing your car towards a wall. The closer you get,
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  Speaker 3: the faster the warning sensor beeps become. That's basically how
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  Speaker 3: the collar works. As a cow approaches the virtual boundary,
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  Speaker 3: Here's directional beeps.
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  Speaker 2: Need to move left? The left side beeps. Need to
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  Speaker 2: move right? The right side beeps.
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  Speaker 3: And here's where things get juicy because in March of 2026,
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  Speaker 3: Holter raised 220 mil led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund
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  Speaker 3: at a $ 2 billion valuation.
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  Speaker 2: And hey man, when Peter Thiel backs a company this aggressively,
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  Speaker 2: it usually means he sees an industry-sized opportunity.
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  Speaker 3: The problem is that agriculture has seen plenty of shiny
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  Speaker 3: new technologies come and also go.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, because unlike other tech apps, farmers don't really have
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  Speaker 2: much tolerance for failure.
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  Speaker 3: You see, the risk for farmers is that they rely
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  Speaker 3: on new tech, and if it doesn't work, it can
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  Speaker 3: cost them their livelihoods.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Research found that some vineyard owners took three years before
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  Speaker 2: they trusted an AI recommendation enough to act on it.
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  Speaker 3: What happens when the internet drops or when farmers become
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  Speaker 3: reliant on the tech and it changes its pricing or
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  Speaker 3: when it gets acquired by someone with different priorities?
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  Speaker 2: Nobody wants to wake up and see their herd suddenly
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  Speaker 2: disappeared because the collars have malfunctioned.
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  Speaker 4: So we've spoken about Holster's success so far, but what
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  Speaker 4: about the industry? Where's it at?
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  Speaker 2: Well, across farming, AI is starting to do some pretty
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  Speaker 2: cool things.
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  Speaker 4: Tell me more.
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  Speaker 2: Well, there's new AI systems that have been developed that
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  Speaker 2: use cameras to identify individual weeds and spray only the
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  Speaker 2: weeds with herbicide. Instead of the entire field. Less herbicide
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  Speaker 2: means lower costs, less environmental damage, healthier soil.
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  Speaker 3: Then there are AI-powered drones that can detect disease in
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  Speaker 3: apple orchards before a human can even see the symptoms.
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  Speaker 2: With accuracy levels around 95%.
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  Speaker 3: So the common thread across all of this is that
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  Speaker 3: the remaining workers in agriculture can suddenly do the work
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  Speaker 3: of many more people.
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  Speaker 2: And if you get one farmer to manage 10 times
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  Speaker 2: the land with the same hours, you effectively expanded the
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  Speaker 2: entire global.
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  Speaker 4: Food system without expanding the workforce.
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  Speaker 2: And this is why we're seeing such growth in the
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  Speaker 2: global AI agriculture market.
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  Speaker 3: The AI agricultural market is still pretty small, just under
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  Speaker 3: $ 2 billion in 2023.
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  Speaker 2: But it's projected to hit over $ 8 billion by 2030
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  Speaker 2: and growing at 25% year on year.
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  Speaker 3: So most of what makes headlines in AI is technology
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  Speaker 3: that helps us do something clever, but is kind of
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  Speaker 3: not critical.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like?
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  Speaker 3: Better emails, snappier images, faster spreadsheets. And that stuff is great,
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  Speaker 3: but it doesn't keep people fed.
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  Speaker 1: No.
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  Speaker 2: But when a single farmer can manage 10,000 head herd
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  Speaker 2: from their phone, the opportunity starts to change.
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  Speaker 3: The optimistic view is that AI becomes the thing that
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  Speaker 3: lets a generation of smaller farms survive.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it means those farms can feed more people, keep
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  Speaker 2: grocery prices from spiraling.
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  Speaker 3: The less optimistic view is that ag tech has promised
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  Speaker 3: the world before and left investors eating a bit of dirt.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, B-Man, we've seen AI transform a number of industries,
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  Speaker 2: so it's very, very possible that agriculture could be next. Fluxam,
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  Speaker 2: we hope you enjoyed our deep dive on farming's long-awaited
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  Speaker 2: tech glow-up. We hope you enjoyed the whole series with
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  Speaker 2: our in-conversation interviews and our bite-sized explorations into the most
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  Speaker 2: interesting industries, businesses, and economic events in Australia and around
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  Speaker 2: the world. From next week, we'll be back to regular
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  Speaker 2: programming on the pod. Thanks for listening, and we'll see
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  Speaker 2: you next week.