Using the Internet to benefit rural Australia
David H White, Roger Bradbury and Kim Malafant
Bureau of Resource Sciences, P.O. Box E11, Queen Victoria Terrace, Canberra, ACT 2600
ACS Canberra Branch Conference: MULTINET'95
Abstract
Australian farmers typically have to cope with a highly variable climate, substantial distances to domestic and international markets, and declining terms of trade. The lack of domestic subsidies to inflate the price of agricultural products means that most farming systems are low input and, particularly in the more arid regions, very extensive.
Government policy is to assist farmers to become more self-reliant in coping with the variable climate and fluctuating market prices, to facilitate and protect the export of agricultural products, and to foster the development of more sustainable agricultural systems. In this paper we show how the Internet can be used to assist in getting critical information to land managers and to facilitate communication in rural areas. We also describe how the Bureau of Resource Sciences, in particular through its National Resource Information Centre, is participating in the assembly and distribution of information that can benefit rural communities.
Rural Australia
Australian agriculture is characterised by a highly variable climate, ancient fragile soils, and generally low inputs. There are three main zones: the high rainfall zone, the wheat-sheep zone, and the pastoral zone, the first two being nearer the coast where there is a substantial diversity of farming systems. These zones extend from the northern tropical and sub-tropical regions dominated by the summer monsoons, to the southern winter rainfall regions, the pastoral zone in central Australia being typically arid or semi-arid.
The tyranny of distance is very real for many individuals and families within the rural community, affecting their education, social life, access to information, and distance to markets. Improved telecommunication and transportation systems are helping make life in the outback much more tolerable than in the past.
Computer technology is making slow but steady inroads to aid information access and decision making on the land. A range of software products is available, ranging from climate analysis and financial packages to more sophisticated biophysical and bioeconomic decision support systems (e.g. White and Shelley 1993; White et al. 1993b).
The Internet offers an opportunity for the public and private sectors to greatly improve the range of available information and communication opportunities for people on the land. It also allows rural scientists, economists and policy makers to be better informed as to the prevailing biophysical and socioeconomic conditions throughout the country and also overseas.
The Bureau of Resource Sciences (BRS) is a Division of the Department of Primary Industries and Energy (DPIE). The role of BRS is to support the sustainable development of Australia's agricultural, mineral, petroleum, forestry and fishing industries by providing scientific and technical advice to government, industry and the community. The National Resource Information Centre ( NRIC) is a research facility within BRS. Its aim is to improve the utility and timeliness of the information base for drawing up policy and making decisions for the ecologically sustainable development and management of Australia's natural resources.
A current initiative is the development of World Wide Web nodes to the Internet. Through these nodes DPIE (PIENET), BRS and NRIC plan to inform the wider Australian community of analyses and trends in national and international scientific research that affect Australia's resources.
Repositories of information on natural resources
Australia has well established national programs to survey and monitor the state of its natural resources, environment and economic systems. Agencies involved include the Australian Geological Survey Organisation, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), the Australian Centre for Remote Sensing, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Survey and Land Information Group, the Bureau of Meteorology, the CSIRO, State Departments and the universities.
The management of these data generally falls to the research centres that collect them initially. CSIRO is reviewing its biological data holdings and strategies for managing them. The Environmental Resources Information Network ( ERIN ) within the Department of Environment, Sports and Territories (DEST) is helping to coordinate data sharing, especially for rare and threatened species. Its Web node may be used to access information on Australian flora and fauna resources.
Complex computer-based directories of resource and environmental information, and the policy structures necessary to ensure the information is shared, are being developed. A National Directory of Australian Resources, managed by NRIC, has been established to help in their creation (Shelley et al. 1994).
Access to relevant climate information
The rural sector is the most climate-sensitive sector of the economy. Producers need advance warning on extreme weather conditions (e.g. rain or frost) to plan their daily activities, and seasonal outlooks to plan their management strategies (e.g. whether or not to sow a crop, or destock an area of land). The Commonwealth and State governments need historical climate, current weather and seasonal outlook information to develop and implement policies that promote self-reliant farm management and ecologically sustainable development, to assess the severity and extent of extreme climatic events such as drought, to provide ongoing management advice to the rural sector, and to estimate levels of production and the implications these have for trade.
Computer software and the Internet can assist management and policy decisions in many ways. The Internet enables direct access to historical and near real-time climate data from the Bureau of Meteorology ( BoM ) and other climate data providers. Data are currently available using anonymous ftp (file transfer protocol) through arrangements with the National Climate Centre within BoM. In the near future users should be able to directly access climate data held in BoM's ADAM database (Lee 1994).
Both BoM and the Drought Research Group (DRG) of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (QDPI) produce maps of historical rainfall (quantity or decile) data. These may be for any State of Australia, or indeed the whole continent, and for different periods of time ranging from a month to several years. The QDPI maps are currently available to government clients using anonymous ftp through arrangements with the DRG. Historical climate data for specific sites may then be analysed using specialist climate software such as QDPI's Rainman (Clewett et al. 1994), or CSIRO's MetAccess (McCook 1992). The data may also be used as input to a variety of agricultural systems software to estimate the combined impact of climate variability and management strategies on farm productivity in different environments (e.g. White et al. 1993a, 1993b). These software tools may also be used to estimate probable impacts of climate change and appropriate mitigation strategies on agricultural productivity (McKeon et al. 1993; Boag et al. 1994).
A great deal of climate and seasonal outlook information is currently available via Infofax from either BoM (019 725 200) or QDPI (019 725 300). Some of this is already available through the Internet. Alternatively, one may view seasonal outlook indicators such as the Southern Oscillation Index or Sea Surface Temperature anomalies in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific via direct access to the World Wide Web nodes of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA ) in the United States. The DRG of QDPI is also developing systems that integrate satellite data, pasture growth models and seasonal outlook information to produce feed deficit and land degradation alerts (Brook and Carter 1994).
The Internet may also be viewed as a source of prototypes of climate-related products of value to agriculture. For example, the High Plains Climate Center displays maps of the U.S.A. showing spatial distributions at a point in time of precipitation, ambient and soil temperatures, the Palmer Drought Severity Index, crop moisture content, wind chill and fire severity. The Center also produces maps containing estimates of the growth stages of corn, sorghum and soybean crops based on their phenology. These products may be shown to policy makers and land managers in Australia to determine whether comparable products are likely to be of value here.
Access to land resources information
The Australian Surveying and Land Information Group ( AUSLIG ) is Australia's national mapping and surveying agency and is part of the Australian Department of Administrative Services. AUSLIG provides a range of mapping, surveying, land/geographic information products and services for government and industry customers.
Geographic (mapping) information available from AUSLIG includes: digital mapping information (GEODATA and MAPDAT - medium and small scale topographic data, digital elevation model data, administrative boundary data, resource and environmental data); printed maps (NATMAP and AUSMAP), atlases and aerial photography, satellite imagery from the Australian Centre for Remote Sensing (ACRES); and geodetic data.
Land resources information is computed as GIS databases covering Australia at continental scales (Bowyer and Veitch 1994). More than 20 physical, biological, climatic and social themes are established including bedrock and surficial geology, soils, infrastructure, and population distributions. Natural hazards and mineral potential are also represented. All can be reviewed from a land use suitability perspective where differing management scenarios can be compared. Digital versions of soils and geology datasets are available from NRIC.
Landcare is a Commonwealth Government initiative that has received considerable community and State government involvement and support throughout Australia. It aims to encourage the establishment of Landcare groups that will foster sustainable land management practices. BRS has developed a geographic information system to assist in evaluating progress against the goals of the Decade of Landcare plan and the objectives of the National Landcare Program (East et al. 1994). As a consequence of this work, maps showing the extent of land degradation problems, together with the location of Landcare projects to address these, will shortly be available on NRIC's Web node.
Access to market intelligence
The United States Department of Agriculture ( USDA) uses global climate and remote sensing data to assess agricultural productivity and market opportunities around the world. It is questionable whether the marginal value of such intense global surveillance would warrant a major investment in this area in Australia. Farmers already get a reasonable level of market information through the media; they can also respond to changes in world prices for agricultural products which are usually a reasonable indicator of what is occurring overseas. Nevertheless, the 'net' does allow individuals to carry out their own market intelligence by tapping in to a great deal of climate and agricultural information at the regional level in the countries of our agricultural competitors. For example, USDA market information can be obtained via institutions such as Pennsylvania State College of Agricultural Sciences (telnet to psupen.psu.edu) or Cornell University .
Likewise the Web can be used to assess climatic conditions in most agricultural regions of the world. It can also be used to monitor political issues such as the progress of the U.S. Farm Bill through Congress, details of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( GATT) , and activities of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Agricultural discussion groups
The sustainability of commercial agriculture is a common theme on parts of the 'net', though the quality of the discussion varies considerably. Conference areas include susag.forum, lg.lcare and misc.rural. Pegasus Networks, which supports the Australian Computer Society's ACS-Link, also supports LandcareNet in conjunction with the University of Melbourne's School of Agriculture and Forestry (Hawkins et al. 1992; Hoare 1995), and CouncilNet which allows access for a number of rural communities.
Other groups expected to use the 'net' in the near future include the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science (AIAS) representing professional agriculturists and Australian Accredited Agricultural Consultants (AAAC), and the National Farmers Federation. The Department of Primary Industries and Energy (DPIE) is also sponsoring a number of telecottages in rural communities to foster use of computer and related telecommunication systems (Crellin 1993; Graham 1995).
Debate between agricultural producers at both the national and international level may be followed by accessing conference areas such as misc.rural, dev.rural, susag.forum and Landcare. Professional agriculturists are also using LISTSERV file servers such as SUSTAG-L, IRRIG-L, and AGENG-L that support Bulletin Board-type discussion groups on sustainable agriculture, irrigation and agriculture engineering respectively. These may be accessed by typing SUBSCRIBE discussiongroup-L firstname lastname as a command in an email message addressed to listproc@listproc.wsu.edu. Undoubtedly the range of LISTSERV-based discussion groups will increase substantially in the future.
Accessing information on rural research
The Australian Rural Research in Progress (ARRIP) database is available, along with comparable databases from overseas, on Silver Platter's Agrisearch CD-Rom. It is also accessible, together with the Australian Bibliography of Agriculture (ABOA), on Info-one's AgRound CD-ROM, and via Ozline , the National Library's network of bibliographic and directory databases. Agricultural libraries in universities and institutions around the world may be accessed via Not Just Cows , a guide to Internet/Bitnet resources in agriculture and related sciences.
Scientific publications are already appearing on the net, an excellent example being Baker and Brinegar (1994). Those of relevance to Australian agriculture that are already on the net include Bullen (1993) and Bowyer and Veitch (1994).
In conclusion
The Internet provides many opportunities for agribusiness and rural communities. It will facilitate communication not only within rural Australia, but with the rest of Australia and throughout the world. It will facilitate decision making on the land, commercial transactions, and access to a wide range of private and government services. It is already making possible the integration of diverse information on climate, natural resources, social and economic changes, and rural markets.
Realisation of this potential will require significant commitment by the Commonwealth and State governments and the private sector, including upgrading the telecommunications infrastructure as required in remote areas, packaging the relevant information and making it accessible to rural communities.
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Dr David White is a Senior Principal Research Scientist in the Agricultural Production & Natural Resources Branch of the Bureau of Resource Sciences. He is a member of the Australian Computer Society, a committee member of the Modelling and Simulation Society of Australia, and principal editor of Agricultural Systems and Information Technology. He has published extensively on drought, climate change, livestock production and management, crop-livestock integration, and applications of information technology in the rural sector. He was awarded a Fellowship of the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science for his work in simulating and analysing agricultural production systems.
Dr Roger Bradbury is Director of the National Resource Information Centre (NRIC) within the Bureau of Resource Sciences. NRIC's mission is to improve the utility of natural resource information for decision making, particularly through enabling technologies in key areas of spatial information systems, spatial databases and directories, decision support systems, visualisation, analysis and modelling. As a marine ecologist, Dr Bradbury has worked at the Australian Institute of Marine Science on the large scale spatial modelling of marine ecosystems. He is also a Director of Australian Marine Science and Technology Ltd, Australia's foremost marine science and environment consultancy, specialising in projecting leading-edge technology and science into the Asia-Pacific region.
Mr Kim Malafant is Manager, High Performance Computing, of the National Resource Information Centre within the Bureau of Resource Sciences. He is an applied mathematician and computer scientist specialising in advanced computing platforms and high speed networking.