Hi everyone. I’m Jess Fealy for those of you who don’t know me, my hubby and I farm at Blue Sky Produce in Mareeba and I’m very passionate about the Future Agro Challenge Australia event which I’ve been involved with for the last couple of years. So last month I was lucky enough to head over to Greece and attend the Global Future Agro Challenge event, which our Australian Future Agro Challenge feeds into. Now we were really thrilled to have SwarmFarm Robotics who is our winner, our Australian winner from last year, based out of Emerald, come over to Greece and they took part in the pitch competition, battling it out for the title of Global Agripreneur of the Year. It was amazing to kind of see the quality of competitors that are working in the ag and farming startup space and to see the real diversity and variety of ideas that are coming out all over the world, that are working in this space.
And to see Andrew Bate pitch Australian agriculture. So it wasn’t just his business, but it was the terrific things that we do in Australian agriculture to the world. And they took out third place, which was a really well-deserved spot for them. And I think even more so highlighted to the rest of the world that Australia’s really one of the players in this ag-tech ag startup space and to keep their eyes out for us. So we had David Davies the year before who was the founder of AgUnity, a take out the number one position of Global Agripreneur of the Year. So we’re producing some really top quality startups and ag innovators out of Australia and I’m really thrilled that they come to the Tablelands and pitch in our competition and locals up here get to see that quality of business. So come along to the Future Agro Challenge!