Key points
- Jonathan is helping Australian farmers succeed by developing AI models to better understand production and sustainability.
- With his teammates, Jonathan is building maps that chart Australian wheat production beginning in the 1990s.
- Jonathan is the 2025 Nuffield Australia CSIRO Fellow, which promotes innovation in Australian agriculture through research and global study.
Jonathan Richetti grows plants in his computer. As a research scientist, Jonathan is creating models and running simulations for agricultural decision making.
In the past, farmers had to rely entirely on hard-won experience and instinct. Jonathan's artificial intelligence models can help save time and money by identifying what factors contribute to production and sustainability.
“I loved nature and technology documentaries when I was growing up, so that might have planted a seed," Jonathan says.
“Perhaps that curiosity about nature and love for technology combined explains my passion for agricultural systems."
Digging into digital dirt to help farmers
Jonathan works mainly with the grains industry and broadacre agriculture. He believes agricultural decisions can be improved in many areas. For example, farmers could benefit from improved information to guide their mid-season fertiliser decisions.
Currently, Jonathan is investigating changing Australian wheat yields and water productivity. He's looking for links to help farmers and agricultural producers get better outcomes in the field. He and his teammates are building maps that illustrate Australian wheat production trends beginning in the 1990s.
"With our platform, we’ll be able to quantify how yields and some sustainability metrics have changed in the past 30 years,” Jonathan says.
"Then we’ll link this data with changes such as sowing times, fertiliser management, or adopting precision agriculture approaches.
"This information will help identify the main drivers of positive change, tracking what contributed most to improvements in production and sustainability," he says.
Sown in the Americas, flourishing in Australia
Jonathan grew up in Brazil, near the Argentinean and Paraguay border. After achieving his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Brazil, Jonathan did part of his PhD at the University of Florida. He then moved to Australia as a CSIRO CERC fellow in 2019.
He sees a lot of similarities between the three countries and a lot of differences, too. All three export a lot of food and compete in the global market. For example, Brazil competes with the USA on soybean exports. All three compete with beef.
"Australian farmers work with much harsher conditions than those in the USA or Brazil. Soils are much poorer, and less rainfall means we have one crop a year in most of Australia, compared to multiple crops in other places," Jonathan says.
Another difference is in subsidies.
"Australian farmers receive among the lowest subsides in the world, with considerably more available for agriculture in the USA. Brazil lies somewhere in the middle, with more subsidies than Australia but less than the USA."
When arriving at a new agricultural system, Jonathan tries to understand it by asking three key questions:
- What are the system’s main drivers?
- What challenges must it overcome to evolve?
- How does this region contribute to feeding the world?
Cultivating creative solutions through diversity
The most interesting part of Jonathan's job is the people he meets. And because he works with diverse data sets, he often needs to ask them lots of questions. These conversations have taught him that diversity fosters creativity.
"The more different ideas with different connections and backgrounds are put together, the more creative the outcomes are. It is as simple as that: to solve our current problems, we need diversity," he says.
Jonathan believes it’s critical to have people you can trust and ask for advice that are outside your ‘bubble’.
“Sometimes, we think we need to sort something out by ourselves, or we’re not good enough. That is rarely the case, being able to ask for help is a good skill to have.”
It's a skill Jonathan will use more this year.
A fellowship fostering global connections in agriculture
Nuffield Australia awarded Jonathan the 2025 CSIRO Fellowship. The scholarship program enables research on topics critical to Australian agriculture’s sustainability and advancement.
Nuffield’s Global Focus Program (GFP) sees recipients visiting several countries in six weeks. With a focus on practical learning, leadership development, and building networks across the world, the initiative ultimately boosts innovation in Australian agriculture through a new generation.
Jonathan joins 24 other Australian scholars from diverse agricultural fields. They will travel together and learn about agricultural systems in different political and social environments. When they return, each shares their findings with Nuffield Australia and the wider agricultural community.
We look forward hearing about Jonathan's global knowledge harvest.