Hort Connections 2024, veg in school canteens, sensor-studded smart farm

Vegalogue is a podcast from Australian vegetable peak industry body AUSVEG. Each episode we take a look at issues affecting the Australian vegetable, potato and onion sectors, unpacking levy-funded research and meeting some of the incredible people who make up the vegetable industry.

This month, we discuss:

• The upcoming Hort Connections 2024 conference and trade show, the biggest event of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
• How to get more vegetables onto primary school canteen menus, and the changing structure of canteens that may make it possible.
• A sensor-studded smart farm that's building a model to squeeze every bit of efficiency out of chilli and avocado production.

Guests:

• Nathan McIntyre, National Manager, Events & Partnerships, AUSVEG.
• Shadia Djakovic, Senior Project Manager: Schools & Community, Healthy Kids Association.
• David de Paoli, Founder and Chairman, AustChilli Group.
• Kaushal Gunasekara, Farm Business Development Manager, AustChilli Group.

Vegalogue is the podcast from AUSVEG, the peak body for Australia’s vegetable, potato, and onion industries, where we examine the pressing issues and latest developments in our sector.

Thanks for listening! You can find out more about AUSVEG and the Australian vegetable industry at ausveg.com.au. Subscribe to our newsletter, or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or Tik Tok.

Transcript

Farmers aren't just a bloke with a busted hat on, with holes in his pants, sitting on a tractor with half a seat falling off.

We got tractors that do everything themselves, and we got to tell that message, these are the striding growers of very smart people.

Welcome back to the Vegalogue podcast, a dialogue about the Australian vegetable industry from Ausveg.

I'm Tom Bicknell.

As of this episode, we're trialing a slightly different format for the podcast with shorter, more frequent episodes.

We'd love to hear what you think.

Drop us a line at communications@ausveg.com.au.

This episode, we're getting an update on next month's Hort Connections Conference and Trade Show.

It's the largest event of its kind for the horticulture industry in the Southern Hemisphere, and Ausveg's National Manager of Events and Partnerships, Nathan McIntyre, will give us some of the highlights from the program this year.

We'll also hear about a project working to get more vegetables onto primary school canteen menus.

Finally, we'll delve into a pilot smart farm run by AustChilli near Bundaberg that's measuring everything they can stick a sensor on to help improve production efficiency.

So, now let's hear from Nathan about the Hort Connections show.

Nathan, thanks for squeezing a chat into a schedule that's pretty flat out as we approach this year's Hort Connections event.

We're only a few weeks out from the show now, and it's looking like one of the biggest ever, isn't it?

Yeah, it absolutely is.

Thanks for having me, Tom.

It's actually nice to step out for a minute and take a deep breath, so I appreciate you having me on the podcast.

What are the numbers looking like this year?

At the moment, we're sitting at just over 2,500 registered delegates, and I think we're well on track to get, hopefully, 3,500 there, including about 1,000 growers, which for us will be a fantastic result, particularly given that it's pretty challenging conditions out there for a lot of people in the farming community.

So it's really nice to see that people are rallying around Hort Connections and using it as a bit of a vehicle for a chance to have some time off farm and also a chance to hopefully get a few pieces of good information to take back with them.

And is this the largest year for the event in terms of the exhibition size?

Yeah, it is. Absolutely.

So the exhibition has grown from 360 booths last year in 2023, which was the previous largest. We're sitting in about 440 now.

So it's a significant growth year on year, which again has been a really pleasing thing for us to see that some of the companies in the supply chain have been doing quite tough this year, just in terms of general economic conditions.

So the fact that Hort Connections is still being seen to be a really valuable event to attend is really pleasing from my standpoint.

Looking at the program, what are some of the highlights this year?

Absolutely. We've got a few standouts for myself.

I'll try and sneak away and have a look at Brooke Hanson's presentation in Women in Horticulture.

The Women in Hort event is always a standout on the program and is bursting at the seams as far as attendance is concerned.

So it will be fabulous to have Brooke there.

And as an interesting tidbit, we've also got Giaan Rooney as our event MC.

So we have half of the gold medal relay winning team in attendance.

So hopefully we might better get the other two down and see how they go.

Apart from that, look, a couple of the Plenary Session speakers will be really interesting as well.

The State of the Industry program and panel session is always fantastic to get a bit of an overview of what we're seeing and emerging in the industry.

And then we'll have a few other speaker sessions in there as well with David Williams and also Craig Emerson to talk a little bit about what's happening in the retailer landscape, which is obviously very topical at the moment.

So they're probably the ones to look out for.

In addition to that, probably Lucy Bloom is another one.

At the Perfection Fresh Breakfast on the Tuesday morning will be a good way to kickstart us at 8 a.m.

on a Tuesday morning.

And wrapping things up at the end of the event, we've got the Gala Dinner.

Yes, we do. Yeah.

I'm really looking forward to the Gala Dinner this year.

We've got Fresh Select and Nutri-V on board to sponsor the Gala Dinner, and the Nutri-V products are going to be incorporated into every menu item that will be presented on the night.

So there'll be something close to 1,500 additional serves of veg provided to all attendees on the night, which will be fantastic.

In addition to that, we also have obviously the Horticulture Awards for Excellence, which will be taking place on the evening as well.

We've had some fantastic nominees and finalists this year, and we've just had the winners selected, and they're an absolute standout candidate bunch this time around, as they always are.

So really looking forward to seeing that'll play out on the night with some 1,500 attendees there that we're anticipating.

And over the years, I think it's now the eighth year of Hort Connections in its current incarnation.

Over that time, it's become something of a nucleus around which other horticulture industry events have gathered.

What are the affiliated events happening around the show this year?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's been really pleasing for us.

That's why we set it up this way, to try and encourage other industry groups to run their events.

Avocados Australia will be running their Avo Connections event on Monday, the 3rd of June.

APAL will also be running an event on Sunday, the 2nd of June, and another event on Tuesday, the 4th of June.

So there's a few things happening within that.

And then there's a range of other smaller activities that are taking place throughout the duration of Hort Connections as well, both pre, during, and post.

Oz Agritech is running their awards evening the day after Hort Connections on Thursday, the 6th of June.

So there's a lot happening.

It's going to be a busy week for all of us, but it's really good to see that there's a lot of things that are starting to be incorporated around the event, which is what we intended.

So if listeners are keen to register, where should they go?

Yeah, go on to the Hort Connections website, which is www.hortconnections.com.au, and then you'll be able to see the registration prompts pretty clearly through there.

We do have limited availability left as far as the Perfection Fresh Breakfast and Gala Dinner is concerned.

So if you are planning to attend a couple of those key events, I'd recommend doing that sooner rather than later, because they will both sell out.

Fantastic.

Thanks very much for joining us, Nathan.

Thanks, Tom. Thanks for having me.

You're listening to the Vegalogue podcast, brought to you by Ausveg.

Getting more vegetables onto the menu in school canteens is no easy task, with numerous hurdles to overcome.

But the operational structure of canteens is also changing, and that provides opportunities to do things differently.

While they're not venues traditionally known for healthy food, school canteens have an important role to play in establishing healthy eating habits in young children.

And I spoke to Shadia Djakovic of the Healthy Kids Association about a levy-funded project working to increase vegetable consumption in school canteens across the country.

The project, Education and Tools the Canteen Managers to Increase Vegetables in Primary School Canteens and Vegetable Consumption by Children, is known in short as For the Love of Veg.

Shadia, we're standing here in one of the school canteens the Healthy Kids Association manages.

Many of us might remember the canteens of our schools when we were young as being run by the school and staffed by volunteers.

Is that still the case, or are they run through different models these days?

Look, there certainly are school canteens that are still run by volunteers, but they're very rare.

Most school canteens these days are run by a PNC group, which is the school, and or run by a leasy.

So what that means is it's a catering business or a food business, which leases the space from the school canteen.

And it's like their business to sell food through the school canteen space.

And what sort of healthy food requirements do school canteens have to adhere to?

So every individual state and territory have their own nutrition guidelines, and that's set by the state government.

And it really depends on what state and territory you're in, but most states in the country run by a traffic light system, which is a red-amber green system of red foods that you sell once or twice a term or never, amber foods where you choose carefully, and green foods where you fill the menu.

In New South Wales, we've got a binary system, which is an everyday and occasional system.

So everyday foods can comprise of more than or equal to 75% of the menu, and you can't promote and advertise occasional foods.

What role would you say school canteens have in establishing healthy eating patterns with kids?

So the school canteen plays a really important role.

So what we're seeing, though, is kids are learning about nutrition in the school, in the classroom.

And the last thing that you want is for them to go out into the playground and see the absolute opposite of what's been done in the school canteen.

So the school canteen is there to reinforce those healthy eating messages that are taught in the classroom, and also teach kids about math.

So dealing with money and how manners and getting in line and all those sorts of things about food and different cultures.

So the school canteen plays a massive role and it has a much bigger potential than what has already been used.

Could you tell us a bit about your project, what you've found out so far and what the eventual aims of the project are?

Yeah, so the For the Love of Veg project is an amazing initiative funded by Hort Innovations.

And what we're aiming to do is increase veg on school canteen menus across the country.

And by doing that, we will be creating resources and developing a ready-to-eat meal that school canteens can use on their menu.

So we currently did a needs assessment, which is a survey to school canteens across the country.

And what we found is that most school canteen staff purchase their veg through major supermarkets.

So what we're trying to do is find out ways that they can save on their weekly veg shop and connect them to local suppliers in the area.

So we have started creating a distributor supplier tool, which is basically a map where they type in their postcode or their address and that links them with local veg suppliers in the area, or perhaps even a local farmer where they can get their veg from at a cheaper price.

We also try to work out what resources will assist them best to add more veg to their school canteen menus in new and innovative ways.

Could you tell me about the other organisations that are involved in the project?

So For the Love of Veg project is a collaborative project where us, Healthy Kids Association, are working with the school canteen associations across the country.

So we're joined forces with the school canteen associations in Western Australia, Queensland, the ACT and Tasmania.

And are there opportunities for vegetable growers to get involved in the project?

There are definitely opportunities for vegetable growers to become involved in the project.

What we're trying to do is connect with those local farmers or farmers that may have access to directly to schools.

So if you would like to learn more and learn how you can connect with adding more veg to school canteen menus, please give us a call.

This project is funded by Hort Innovation using the Vegetable and Onion Industry Research and Development Levees and contributions from the Australian Government under project code MT22006.

Just outside Bundaberg in Queensland is a trial farm studded with dendrometers, soil moisture probes, sap flow meters, and weather stations.

It's one of four smart farm sites established in 2019 to build a data-driven model that will allow growers to predict and manage plant health and nutrient loss more effectively.

The Bundaberg site is run by AustChilli, a major export grower of chilies and avocados, and Ausveg's Deborah Hill spoke with the grower about how the site works and what it's teaching them.

The use of digital technologies to conduct environmental monitoring can provide the tools for horticulture to manage their environmental performance, improve business outcomes, as well as environmental stewardship.

The Digital Remote Monitoring to Improve Horticulture's Environmental Performance Project is a collaboration between Hort Innovation, Applied Horticultural Research, Fresh Care, Hitachi Vantara, Land Care and Industry Bodies, Green Life Industry Australia, and the Australian Banana Growers Council, Queensland Fruit and Veg Growers, and Smart Farm Grower Sites.

Using four pilot smart farms in the Great Barrier Reef catchments across nursery, banana, vegetable, and avocado industries, the project commenced in 2020 and has funding for extension into 2030.

Initial phases of the project sought to obtain benchmark data to monitor nutrient, leaching, and water management and to predict and manage plant health.

For the vegetable sector, the AustChilli property near Bundaberg focuses on chilli production and avocados.

AustChilli is well known for its use of technology to improve business efficiencies and was keen to participate in the project.

David de Paoli, founder and director of AustChilli, says that like anything, when you grow commercially, everything from market to weather can hit you and test everybody.

By participating in this program, he hoped to smooth out some of those variables.

There's no silver bullet in any of this.

In good farming practices, there's a combination of lots and lots of things.

And so even though you've got a dead dromata on the stem of a plant or the fruit, telling you when the plant is stressed because it's trying to suck the water out of the soil and the stem actually decreases in diameter, that tells you the plant is stressed and sucking out.

The soil moisture probe tells you a story as well.

There's a lot of different instruments to give you the same data, saplometers are another one.

So that probe could be in the wrong place.

So that probe is actually sown as moist, but it could be under a dripper on a drip line.

So it's sown as moist, but the tree actually is in a dry state.

So all these instruments back each other up to give you the correct picture.

And then the modelling for that takes in different data from different points at different times, and you put it together, and it comes up with an average of what was really going on.

In essence, David is looking to use the learnings and technology from the project to give commercial outcomes that benefit the business.

According to Kaushal Gunasekara, an agronomist with AustChilli, the data and forecast can give insights into when irrigation needs to be turned on or off, or if the plant is stressed from other factors.

Kaushal also stressed that soil moisture probes may indicate wet or dry conditions, but a plant-based sensor such as a sap flow meter will give a more complete picture.

Our overall objective is to prevent the nitrogen leaching to the coral reef, but how we do that is our prime focus.

Our expected methodology is to optimise irrigation.

There are two ways.

First, reduce the nitrogen.

Second, is prevent the nitrogen that we provide to plants to get leached into the runoff as well as over-irrigation.

Sometimes runoff cannot be manipulated as in control.

If we get 100 mil rains, it's inevitable.

Say that's where we come with the ground cover trial, and all that, say we put some ground cover to slow down the water, that means it goes down instead of across.

And the second is, which is more critical one, to prevent over-watering, which means just providing enough water to be absorbed by the roots.

Second problem we identified from AustChilli's point of view is to get the subjectivity out of the equation.

That means sensor to determine how much plant needs.

The sensors decide, okay, now the plants are needing water.

Then we turn the pumps on, and then we irrigate.

And then once they are reaching the pre-determined pressures, okay, now turn off the pump by sensors rather than even in oil.

The beauty of the project is that those decisions can be automated based on what the sensors inform about the status of the plants that can be accessed by mobile devices to give staff the ability to monitor plant stress and respond accordingly.

Ultimately, it gives a more cost-effective approach to water and import management.

In late November 2023, the next phase of the project will look at the use of a ground cover and cover crops.

By using a cover crop, further prevention of leaching and runoff can be achieved while improving the soil health and lowering soil erosion.

In this instance, the cover crop to be trialled will be millet.

It's like the skin on your arm.

If you scrape your skin, you'll get a sore where you bleed.

Soil is the same.

If you have a cover crop there all the time, the soil stays protected.

Erosion, solarisation, all that stuff.

And the microbes die, or they go dormant.

So what the cover crop does, it keeps the soil cool.

It stops it eroding.

It's putting the matrician back.

It's taking sunlight.

It's taking through photosynthesis, putting stuff back in the ground, whether it's material from the root system or whatever.

And so this next project is to see what it actually does in the way of adding more value to what we're already doing.

Looking ahead, the project has indicated that the use of technology provides a useful tool to assess water and nutrient levels in the soil, as well as giving a commercial application for improving yields and reducing input costs.

David says that the learnings and principles from the project will be implemented at Auschili, with some improvements as time goes on.

Data is great, but we're full of data.

We know to make sure that data works for us, and that's by putting it through an instrument that actually converts it to an action.

So the project has done that now.

The next stage is, what do we do with it?

So the outcomes are there now, but we've got to turn it into a commercial system that growers can adapt very easily.

And it's something to be proud of, because you can tell your customers what you're doing, and they love it.

The customers today are very switched on, and when you tell them what you're doing with the environment and you're cutting costs out, we're using robots and we're using automation, they love this information.

So farmers aren't just a bloke with a busted hat on with holes in his pants, sitting on a tractor with half a seat falling off.

We got tractors that do everything themselves, and we've got to tell that message that Australian growers are very smart people.

Australian growers are probably one of the most intelligent, tech savvy people in the world.

I travel the world a lot.

I've done a lot of trips all over the world looking for this stuff.

I'll tell you what, we're up there with the best of them, and that's what we got to tell the story.

David went on to add that by not taking on the findings of the project and adopting technology on farm, growers risk being left behind, risking lower yields, higher inputs and lower consistent supply.

Far smarter, not harder, profitable.

And so we need to make sure that all the factors there, we're all working together, governments, industry bodies, such as Ausveg and HIA and the local associations, the growers, and the researchers that we move forward, adopting all this technology, this AI, all this stuff, that we can benchmark ourselves against the world.

And so then we can grow more and export.

And that gives the economy a scale there.

The Digital Remote Monitoring to Improve Horticulture's Environmental Performance Project is funded by Hort Innovation using the vegetable levy and contributions from the Australian Government under project number ST19024.

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Vegalogue is produced by Ausveg, the peak industry body for Australian vegetable growers.

You can find more news and information from Ausveg at ausveg.com.au on our social media channels or in Australian Grower Magazine.

Thanks for lending us your ear, and sorry the sign-off is so corny.