Wiley recently attended the Ridley Australian Prawn Farmers Association (APFA) Symposium in the Gold Coast. AFPA is the leading industry organisation for prawn and shrimp farming in Australia, an industry with a value of circa $85 million.
The industry focuses on providing high quality and high value product to the Australian retail sector and is supported by world-leading researchers. The annual Symposium is the pre-eminent forum for Australian prawn farmers to gain new knowledge. Wiley attends events like these to stay on top of industry trends, future insights, develop our connections and to be able to share knowledge with our networks.
The APFA symposium highlighted that the industry is bounding towards technological innovations, with a keen interest from the audience on ways to create greater efficiencies through technology. There are many realms to be explored with blockchain enabled supply chains, augmented reality and AI to assist the industry in taking their next big step forward.
Dr George Chamberlain, who is President of the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA), a science-based non-profit organisation, gave a keynote at the Symposium. Dr Chamberlain assured the room that the GAA were already investing time and resources in understanding and developing technology to implement for industry-wide progression. Dr Chamberlain’s interests focused on delivering policies, standards, and technologies to improve sustainability and therefore enable aquaculture to feed the world.
Wiley’s Chief Future Officer, Brett Wiskar presented at the conference. Brett was technology focused with a keen eye on the industrial market over the next 15 years. Brett presented on key technology innovations that are driving disruption in all industries across the globe and what was driving the change. He shared insights with the audience to questions such as; what parts of the food supply chain we know will remain and which parts will be reborn? How will the industry adapt and remain in control of its destiny in a world of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous systems and emerging markets?
Brett Wiskar’s AR slide
The audience displayed particular interest in Brett’s thoughts on Augmented Reality and its possible implementations for the future in prawn farming. There’s potentially exciting times with machine vision for keeping pests away from prawns, something very topical after the white spot outbreak that has plagued Queensland recently.
Brett said, “It was fantastic to share a room with an industry that is very ready to take their next steps into the future. With processes and systems ripe for evolution in technology backed with data, I can’t wait to see what happens in this space in the next 2-5 years, let alone the next 15. We at Wiley intend to be as involved as we can with this industry, assisting our clients and peak bodies to take their businesses into the future.”
