The challenge
The cost of handling grain in Australia
Grain production is closely tied to climate and is one of the most volatile industries in Australia, making planning and managing a huge challenge for grain farmers and handlers. The cost of handling grain in Australia, as well as planning for harvest, transport, storage and marketing, is in the order of a billion dollars each year. Even small improvements in efficiency could result in significant benefits for our 30,000 grain growers, grain handlers and the national economy.
There was no comprehensive national system for quantifying yield and geo-locating crop areas with required accuracy at a locally relevant scale. Each operation along the grains supply chain has a unique need for customised grains information, which could potentially be met with a comprehensive grains production and forecasting information system. It would need to provide up-to-date estimates of crop area, near real-time measures of crop yield, crop yield forecasts, and estimates of uncertainty for the entire agriculture value chain.
Our response
Making better and new decisions in Australia's grain growing sector
With CSIRO's expertise in grain forecasting, climate, remote sensing, data management, software engineering, social innovation and more, we built a real-time grain forecast platform for Australia: Graincast™ to open up greater informed decision-making, such as:
- farmers being able to predict yield within-season to inform input management and forward-selling
- bulk handlers having more precise estimates of crop area and yield down to individual farm scale, allowing better planning and utilisation of transport and storage
- grain marketers being able to track and monitor the global grain supply better and take advantage of market fluctuations.
Using simple local paddock information, national high-resolution satellite and sensor data sources and CSIRO's innovative analytics, CSIRO's free Graincast™ app aimed to help growers with their crop decision-making instincts. It uses national weather and soils information to forecast soil moisture and yield for the grain crops planted.
Data is sourced the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Soil and Landscape Grid, the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator, APSIM®, and the Queensland Government.
The results
Grain forecasting on-farm, from a smart phone
In early 2020, we licensed the exclusive global rights to the Graincast™ smarts behind the app to Australian rural technology start-up Digital Agriculture Services (DAS). Therefore, we’re no longer providing Graincast™ as an app. However, DAS has incorporated the Graincast™ technology into their Rural Intelligence Platform™, where for the first time, farmers can see their Graincast™ results integrated with a range of other, publicly available agri, rural and climate risk insights.
Graincast™ provided paddock-level yield forecasts for over 400 farmers and agronomists during its four years of operation. It also won a state-level award at the Australian Information Industry Association’s iAwards competition.
The Graincast™ app enabled the Australian grain growing industry to utilise breakthrough Australian science, and now it’s evolved into something even bigger.
We are still providing national and state level wheat yield forecasts during the growing season at no cost on the Graincast™ website Like the app, Graincast's™ forecasting capability is an Australian first.