Kristen Clark of Finley has been named among the 2027 Nuffield Scholars, an honour that comes with a $40,000 bursary to conduct international research.
Ms Clark will use the scholarship to study how advanced technology and digital farm models can support critical decision-making and build long-term drought resilience.
She said dairy farmers collected a lot of data from their herds, but it had been underused and fragmented.
“It’s been a bugbear of mine for many years,” Ms Clark said.
Recent developments in artificial intelligence and predictive modelling are being integrated into systems across the world and Ms Clark will travel to Chile, the United States and China to see it working first hand.
Ms Clark said she was excited to “see what’s out there and how it could apply in an Australian context”.
She hopes her research can bring these systems into use in Australia, where they could be adapted for tasks including analysing soil moisture and water allocations to make predictions for fodder requirements.
The systems could also track the financial costs of feed and water and make predictions using seasonal outlook reports.
Another development is the use of ‘digital twins’, which is a virtual model of a farm that can be used to model scenarios and experiment with new ideas.
These models are already in use in the US and Ms Clark hopes to use her own farm, Glenbank Farm, as a test case.
Ms Clark has operated her family’s farm with her mum and sister for the past 20 years after she returned from working in engineering.
The property runs 1300 heads of Holsteins and Jerseys in a mixed system and employs 15 staff.
Ms Clark has already successfully used AI tools to develop a dashboard for her own farm that can track key performance indicators.
Five of the 14 scholarships that were awarded by Nuffield Australia were supported by the Federal Government’s Future Drought Fund.
Ms Clark expressed her thanks to both the fund and Nuffield Australia for supporting her research.
The scholarships were awarded at a conference in Darwin, where Ms Clark joined other scholars from across the country.
Nuffield Australia chief executive Andy Clarke praised this year’s cohort and the potential benefits of their research.
“A Nuffield Scholarship enables farmers to explore global solutions, and return with new ideas that shape a more resilient, profitable and sustainable future,” Mr Clarke said.