Connecting Growers and Technology: What Australian Growers Learned from Europe

The VegMech Project, funded by Hort Innovation and managed by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and GOFAR, supported by AUSVEG, hosted Australian growers on its second study tour.

The European Study Tour gave growers the opportunity to see technologies in real farming environments, meet manufacturers, and researchers, and exchange experiences with peers from across Australia and Europe.

The tour was about more than discovering new machines. It was about understanding which technologies could genuinely respond to the challenges faced by growers, and what it takes to move from a promising demonstration to practical adoption on the farm.

Bringing global technology closer to growers

As part of the program, two international study tours are being delivered to help Australian vegetable growers learn from agricultural technology developments around the world. The first tour took place in the United States in 2024. This second tour focused on the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, two countries with highly developed agricultural and horticultural technology ecosystems.

The objective was clear: to expose Australian growers to technologies that could potentially be relevant to their operations, while creating opportunities to share these learnings with the wider Australian vegetable industry.

The group included growers from across Australia, producing a diverse range of crops, including leafy greens, celery, carrots, potatoes, and leeks. The participants also represented a broad range of farming businesses, from smaller operations to large-scale growers, and from fresh produce businesses to farms supplying the processing sector.

Starting with real-world challenges

The technologies explored during the tour were assessed against the Australian growers’ everyday challenges, as:

• Labour: access to workers, cost of labour, time required to manage seasonal teams.
• Input efficiency: precision technologies that could help them improve the use of fertilisers and crop protection products while maintaining productivity and quality.
• Weed management, planting, and harvesting were also major areas of interest.

From farms and manufacturers to research institutions

Across five days in the United Kingdom and four days in the Netherlands, the group visited a wide range of organisations. From autonomous tractors to robotic weeding (spot spraying, mechanical and laser weeding) and harvesting solutions, every visit has sparked valuable discussions about the challenges growers face and how technology can help build more efficient, productive, and sustainable farming systems.

• The itinerary in the UK included large vegetable producers such as G’s Fresh, Frederick Hiam, PDM Produce, TH Clements, and British Leafy Salads. These visits offered insights into how production, logistics, transport, and delivery are organised at scale. The group also visited Harper Adams University and the Agri-Tech Centre at UPP, as well as technology developers and manufacturers working on automation and robotics.

• In the Netherlands, the tour included visits to Farming Revolution, EOX Tractor, Kilter, Pixelfarming Robotics, Wageningen University & Research, Trabotyx, and Odd.Bot.

This combination of farms, universities, research organisations and technology companies was central to the value of the Study Tour. It allowed growers to explore the wider innovation ecosystem rather than looking at individual machines in isolation.

They could see how technologies are being developed, how they are tested, what challenges remain, and how innovation can be integrated into broader production systems.

Looking beyond the technology

One of the most important outcomes of the tour was a more nuanced understanding of technology maturity.

Some participants arrived with strong expectations about the technologies they might see. They had already formed ideas about what could be purchased, what was ready for the market, and what level of performance to expect. The visits challenged some of these assumptions.

The Study Tour therefore encouraged participants to look beyond whether a robot works in principle. They were also considering:

• How reliable is the technology over time?
• Can it operate in different weather and soil conditions?
• How does it fit into existing farm operations?
• What level of technical support is required?
• Can it be adapted to Australian production systems?
• Does its potential return justify the investment?

As one participant put it, the tour was highly relevant “from a systems perspective” because it helped growers understand not only what is available today but also “what’s coming”.

Strong interest in autonomous and weed management technologies

Autonomous technologies attracted significant interest throughout the tour, particularly because of the labour challenges faced by Australian vegetable growers.

Participants were especially interested in solutions that could perform repetitive tasks with greater autonomy, reducing pressure on farm teams and allowing available labour to focus on higher-value activities.

Weed management was another major area of interest. Technologies such as spot spraying and laser weeding attracted attention because of their potential to improve precision while reducing the use of crop protection products and minimising disturbance to the soil.

A strong peer-to-peer learning environment

With growers travelling together for 10 days, many of the most valuable conversations took place outside the formal visits. These informal discussions allowed participants to compare their experiences, question the technologies they had seen, and reflect on how alternative solutions might apply to their farms.

The group quickly developed what participants described as a community of practice: a network of growers learning from one another and sharing perspectives on the future of vegetable production.

This peer-to-peer dimension is particularly important when considering the adoption of new technologies. Growers often want to hear not only from manufacturers or researchers, but also from people facing similar operational decisions on their farms.

The international dimension added further value by enabling Australian growers to exchange directly with growers from other countries, compare farming practices and gain new perspectives on shared challenges.

Connecting growers and technology

For GOFAR, the Study Tour reflects the organisation’s broader mission to promote and develop agricultural robotics around the world.

By connecting growers with technology developers, research institutions and one another, GOFAR helps create the conditions for more informed and more practical innovation.

The purpose is not to promote every technology indiscriminately. It is to facilitate honest conversations about what works, what needs to improve and what may be relevant to different farming systems.

The European Study Tour showed that exposure to new technologies can do more than generate enthusiasm. It can challenge assumptions, encourage critical thinking and help growers identify realistic pathways towards automation.

Some participants returned with a clear interest in investing in technologies they considered sufficiently mature. Others left with new questions and a better understanding of what they need to evaluate before deciding.

Both outcomes are valuable. Because the future of agricultural robotics will not be defined by technology alone. It will be shaped by the ability to connect innovation with real farming needs, and to ensure that growers have the knowledge, evidence, and support required to determine what is genuinely useful for their businesses.

The value of a Study Tour lies not only in seeing new technologies, but in understanding how they perform, where they fit and what it takes to make them work on the farm. By connecting growers, researchers and technology developers, the tour helped turn innovation into practical knowledge.

It also encouraged participants to question assumptions and identify realistic pathways towards automation. International exposure is an important first step, but it is not the final objective. The next challenge is to assess how these technologies perform in Australian conditions.