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NSW Farmers to Get Cutting-Edge Tech to Fight Weeds

NSW Farmers will benefit from $24.2 million for cutting edge technologies to manage the state’s worst weeds threatening agricultural production. The funding boost under the NSW Weeds Action Program will also increase awareness, management, and surveillance of weeds through local council support while providing farmers and other land managers with expert advice, weed identification, and management options during property visits.

The region’s Agriculture Minister stated that the investment would modernise the state’s biosecurity systems. He noted that the government is putting smart technologies in place which will tackle weeds brought on post-drought, bushfires and floods.

The NSW Weeds Action Program is a key initiative of the State Government’s NSW Invasive Species Plan, which aims to reduce the devastating impacts of weeds on agricultural production and the environment.

According to a report published recently by the Department of Primary Industries, weeds are estimated to cost NSW over $1.8 billion a year ($1.3 billion to the farming sector), not including social and environmental costs. They reduce the viability of primary industries, threaten the survival of native plants and animals, reduce the natural beauty of our state and impact our health and well-being.

The NSW Weeds Action Program is the NSW Government’s initiative to reduce the impact of weeds in NSW. This report details investment between 2015 and 2020.

In 2015-2020, the NSW Weeds Action Program provided $57.6 million to reduce the impact of weeds in NSW, attracting $108.2 million in partner contributions. Property inspections, training, extension, compliance, planning, coordination and control occurred in each region of the state. Activities aligned to the goals of the NSW Invasive Species Plan – working towards prevention and eradication of new weeds and building people’s capacity to manage weeds.

Preventing new weeds provides a 100:1 return on investment. With hundreds of weeds already established in NSW, priorities for government investment sit with preventing, eradicating and 100:1 containing new weeds in the early stages of invasion where the return on investment is greatest.

The management of widespread weeds is supported where it provides greater benefits, increases effectiveness or targets effort to reduce their impacts. In 2015-2020 the Program targeted $14.6 million to prevent the establishment of new weeds, avoiding $1.46 billion in potential lost production and control costs to NSW communities.

The New South Wales Weed Risk Management (WRM) system is a tool developed to assist weed managers in NSW to determine priorities for weed management at state, regional and local levels. The WRM system is used to evaluate priority weed species in NSW.

The WRM system has been developed by the NSW Department of Industry and Investment, and collaboratively with various stakeholders including those represented on the Noxious Weeds Advisory Committee. The system was developed by reviewing WRM systems currently in use throughout Australia and adopting relevant components of these.

This WRM system is consistent with the National Post-Border Weed Risk Management Protocol (Virtue et al. 2006). Along with that protocol, this guide was written using the South Australian (Virtue 2004) and draft Northern Territory (NTG 2009) systems, with modification as needed for NSW.

The NSW WRM system aims to provide a standard, nationally accepted and transparent process to help make decisions about the introduction, prioritisation and declaration of weed species. It has been designed as a decision support tool for:

  • deciding which plants should be approved for release in NSW
  • identifying which plants require further research prior to release in NSW
  • prioritising weeds for the allocation of limited management resources
  • determining the appropriate legislative status for undeclared naturalised plants
  • reviewing the legislative status of currently declared weeds.

The NSW WRM system has been designed so that it can be applied to several geographic scales, for example, it can be applied to the state of New South Wales, to regions or catchments, or individual Local Control Areas, and may even be applied to individual land management units, for example, a farm or a National park.

New South Wales contains a vast diversity of primary industries, biogeographic regions and differing population centres. Each of these must be protected from the negative impact of weeds so that economic, environmental and social values are retained, and even enhanced for the future. The NSW WRM system seeks to provide a framework in which decisions can be made to achieve this goal.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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