These innovations and more will take centre stage for the first time in Victoria with the National Renewables in Agriculture Conference 2025 in Bendigo on July 23.
The conference will bring together farmers, energy experts, researchers, industry leaders and government representatives to explore the practicalities, opportunities and challenges of renewable energy in agriculture.
Among the speakers is Gippsland dairy farmer Sandra Jefford, is working on a controlled microgrid, using solar, to irrigate her property.
She can monitor how much solar is powering her operations and how much is exported to the grid.
“We save significantly on power costs depending on the season,” Sandra said.
“We’ve added more irrigation over the years which has increased our power needs, so we will be adding more solar to one of those sites in the coming months, and potentially more in the future. It just makes business sense to do so."
Also speaking is Victorian pig farmer Caleb Smith.
He has embraced the concept of a circular economy as a core part of his operations, capturing pig effluent to create power, which is helping to reduce their electricity bills.
Delegates will be able to visit Caleb’s farm for a tour of the biogas generator.
“Quite often farmers would like to do something like this but they don’t,” he said.
“I think the reasons we don’t often is because of the unknown. What we don’t know is scarier. So speaking about what we have done and having people come and see how simple it and showing it can be done will hopefully encourage others to do the same.”
New Zealand farmer Mike Casey will talk through his journey to electrify his farm, having the first electric Monarch tractor in the Southern Hemisphere. He has recently installed batteries on his farm and converted a ute to electric.
“We have a 6ha cherry orchard in Central Otago with 21 electric machines that saves about $40,000 a year in energy costs, which is a huge amount of inputs,” Mike said.
Conference founder Karin Stark says momentum is building across the sector.
“Farmers are increasingly turning to renewables to tackle the challenge of rising diesel and electricity prices,” she said.
“But there’s still work to be done in making the right technologies available and ensuring regional contractors and services are equipped to deliver.”
The conference will also explore agriculture’s growing role in decarbonising the electricity grid.
“We’ll be discussing the evolving distribution network and microgrids, and the potential for smaller, distributed solar projects on farms — say 5MW systems — feeding directly into the local network,” Karin said.
“There are also emerging opportunities for farmers to be paid for providing energy services as new markets develop.”
For more information, go to: www.renewablesinagconference.com.au
