A PASSION for regional connectivity and farming innovation has landed a New England professor an international accolade.
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Armidale-based Professor David Lamb is the first Australian ever to receive the 'Pierre C. Robert Precision Agriculture Award' from the International Society of Precision Agriculture.
With a degree in physics, Mr Lamb said he had spent his 25-year career applying science to help farmers get the most out of their crops.
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"Australia is one of the most challenging places to grow food," Mr Lamb said.
"Our farming environment provides a great opportunity to test and validate agtech aimed at improving water and fertiliser use, efficiency, sustainability, productivity and workflow."
Mr Lamb championed the launch of Australia's first SMART Farm, a site where new technologies can be tried and tested in a commercial environment, at the University of New England and more recently the Global Digital Farm at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga.
In the 1990's precision agriculture didn't even exist as a discipline, but now Mr Lamb said marrying STEM and agriculture was a vital move for future farming.
Sensors to measure soil moisture, livestock trackers, climate forecasting tools and GPS mapping of crops is all thanks to the development of precision agriculture.
"It's not only about recording the here and now... it also allows you to keep a record of what has been," he said.
"It allows farmers to have the ability to have comfort about what's happening now but also comfort from understanding what the implications are of things like rainfall and water on farms."
While Mr Lamb said he was "chuffed" to win the award he said it was a real win for Australia's role in pioneering precision agriculture. "At the end of the day I didn't do this alone," he said.
"I'm absolutely carrying this on behalf of, of the half a dozen highly esteemed and really important peers of mine in Australia that have also done the job."