Agrihack is a two-day Hackathon event in Australia that focuses on hacking problems faced by the agriculture sector.

Looking to become an annual event, Agrihack 2018 brought together over 35 organisations to create seven different solutions to three tricky problems.

This event will be more than a traditional Hackathon, but rather an annual event to bring innovation to regional Australia and further connect the entrepreneurial ecosystem of metro areas to rural developers and disruptors.

Agrihack 2017: farming hacked

Code Club Australia’s national programme manager Nicola Curnow explains, “We help out on the first day of the event, the kids’ day. And the second day and third day is a Hackathon for adults.”

“The kids visit a farm in the morning,” Nicola continues, “do a design thinking challenge with the sponsor of the event, and then participate in our coding workshops.”

Challenges are set and teams (with representatives of each interest group) are given 48 hours to create a solution. Cash and mentoring prizes will be awarded as well as the opportunity to further your idea. Bringing together farmers, software and web developers, agribusiness professionals, and academics (among others), sessions have been previosuly facilitated by Hackathons Australia.

Nicola also explains that “in Australia, connectivity is a big issue, [so] almost everything was offline.” The Code Club day mainly used Scratch, but “a small group of advanced kids… did a Raspberry Pi / Sense HAT program about weather.”

The Hackathon challenges were: reducing stored grain spoilage from high moisture, measuring the live weight of meat chickens to prevent overfeeding, and assisting the handover of farms and fisheries from the older to the younger generation. You can see the winning solutions at the Agrihack website.