All posts in COALA Project

Coala Project > All posts in COALA Project

In Conversation with Tim McClelland

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

Windarra Farm is a six and a half thousand hectare property, home to Tim McClelland and his family. The property is bright with vast green fields, the bustle of working dogs, and at the right time of the year, poddy lambs. Tim is a fourth-generation farmer, his family has been responsible for Windarra Farm since…

In Conversation with Kate Finger

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

Following wide open highways and flowering canola paddocks you will find Birchip, a small town 300kms northwest of Melbourne. Along with a bakery awarded the best vanilla slice in Australia, Birchip is also home to Birchip Cropping Group (BCG). A few doors down from the famous bakery is Kate Finger’s office. Kate is a Research…

Relationship between learning about a product or service

Farmer ambivalence when it comes to new technologies

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

To adopt or not to adopt Research only translates to commercialisation when it is practically driven. In 2017 when a group of researchers from CSIRO and the University of Western Australia tried to predict farmer uptake of new agricultural practices (including products and technologies), they focused on researcher design rather than farmer uptake (Figure 1)….

murray-darling-basin-Australia-state-environment-COALA-project

Australia’s State of the Environment Report reveals ecological health of the country

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

The State of the Environment Report is Australia’s scorecard for all things environmental, delivered once every five years.The grades are in; and the nation has some work to do. This in-depth analysis of our ecological health has been compiled by more than 30 leading scientists designed to track and monitor environmental changes in our country….

AgTech-precision-agriculture-australia

Agtech in Australia

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

Agriculture in Australia Agriculture has enormous social and monetary value in Australia. Farmers grow over 90% of Australia’s domestic food supply at home, employing more than 2% of the national workforce. Australia’s population is growing steadily —at about 1.4 % per year— driving demand for Aussie-grown produce. However, a recent report raises concerns about the…

tell-us-what-you-want-COALA-project

Tell us what you want, what you really, really, want

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

What does co-creation and consulting with our end-users tell us? Many people make products before actually checking out what the people who will use this product want or need. These products don’t necessarily serve the demands they were created for. They can also have user interfaces that don’t suit the customer’s needs. Consequently, they have…

Economic-Business-Design-Canvas

Socially And Environmentally Aware Business Design

  • White Research
  • Blog
  • No Comments

The importance of understanding the context of business operation A sound understanding of the context in which projects such as COALA operate plays an important role throughout their lifespan. Successful business design activities define the commercial direction for the project and the strategy for its arrival on the market. We consider several interrelated factors that…

flooding-Australian-farm-infrastructure

Australian farms hit by catastrophic floods

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

Economic loss Australian farms are worth more money than ever before. The value of Australian agriculture in 2021-22 is expected to be $81 billion, says the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES). But this good news may not be applicable for all farmers. Farmers in the northern part of New South…

evapotranspiration-sentinel-2

Sentinel-2 satellites map crop-water use over Aussie farms

  • University of Melbourne
  • Blog
  • No Comments

European Union’s Horizon 2020-funded international project, called COALA, produced a suite of crop growth, health and water use information. We compiled this information using high-resolution multispectral images collected from space by the Sentinel-2 satellites. The data we used was collected over irrigated cropping fields in the Goulburn Valley, Victoria during the 2020-2021 summer growing season….

Earth-Observation-COALA-project

Earth Observation Road Map Part 2

  • UNSW
  • Blog
  • No Comments

Our blog last week focused on the Australian Space Agency’s roadmap for Earth Observation (EO). We first discussed how Earth observation helps Australia’s economy (even in fields you wouldn’t expect). Then we talked about the priority areas that were identified by the Space Agency. This week we are summarising the five key areas that the…