Keeping up with technology to maintain and improve processing and food safety standards can be challenging. This particularly applies to food premises and equipment where it’s usual to have multi-year maintenance and capital investment programs that can soak up valuable funds.
Two opportunities for government grant funding came across the Dairysafe desk recently and we are pleased to share them with you.
The Federal Government will open a third round of its popular On Farm Connectivity Program shortly, where farmers can receive a 50 percent rebate on approved technology, and delivery will be in 2025 and 2026.
The $20M program is aimed at improved adoption of ag-tech solutions to improve productivity and efficiency and is out for consultation. Round two, which offered up to $30K in rebates, closed within two weeks and had the following objectives:
- Extending digital connectivity and taking advantage of advanced farming technology.
- Enhancing primary producers’ capacity to implement digital agribusiness solutions through improved connectivity.
- Capitalising on the agricultural sector’s potential for increased productivity and growth.
- Supporting access to new communications equipment by offsetting some of the cost.
Read more about the program here.
“At Dairysafe, we are supportive of activities that improve automation of data collection and in particular milk quality reporting, improving food safety outcomes and making auditing more accurate,” said Alistair McFarlane, CEO of Dairysafe.
The SA Government Department of State Development’s Manufacturing Technology Adoption Program is open now. This program is aimed at helping South Australian manufacturers improve their productivity and competitiveness through technology adoption..
Small and medium sized enterprises are invited to apply for up to $50,000 in matched funding to support the adoption of innovative technologies such as Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytic, blockchain, augmented and virtual reality, additive manufacturing, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), optics and photonics.
“While technology project budgets are likely to be much larger than this, some government funding may help get the project across the line,” Alistair said. “We encourage dairy businesses to review this quickly as the closing date is 28 February 2025.”