Agriculture 2030: Scientists’ Gift to New Farmers

Australian plant scientists in Queensland sketched a future for agriculture.

In Dr. Lee Hickey’s illustration, robots, drones, and intelligent machinery become everyday tools in the field. People rely on them to reduce manual labor and chemical inputs.

Speaking at the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, Dr. Hickey set his story in June 2030, mid‑season for winter wheat. A “new farmer” named Tim receives an early‑warning message (note: Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, so June is winter).

• One day, Tim’s iPhone 6 receives a notification.
• In the shower, Tim sees a crop‑protection alert: a drone has detected an outbreak of yellow spot in wheat. The crop‑management app recommends options; Tim chooses the optimal control and dispatches a spray drone. The drone knows every block of the farm and flies straight to the affected zone. It doesn’t spray a conventional fungicide, but a specially designed RNA product that suppresses the pathogen via gene silencing. Tim never needs to go out to the field; he saves eight hours and goes for a walk with friends.
• Meanwhile, in Dr. Hickey’s lab, an “accelerated breeding” program runs under 24‑hour light and controlled temperatures — inspired by NASA’s question of how astronauts might grow food during long missions.

“It used to take 20 years to breed a new crop variety,” says Hickey. “With accelerated breeding, we can advance up to seven generations of wheat per year. It’s a powerful tool to select traits and screen genes, cutting the breeding cycle to five or six years.”

This kind of forward thinking, he believes, will attract more of the next generation into farming and research.

His team is also looking for plants adapted to climate change. “We’ve just found a key gene that controls root length. With it, you can design crops that cope with swings between drought and waterlogging,” he says.

Hickey’s 2030 vision will likely land first in developed countries like Australia.

By contrast, farmers in poorer nations — say, Laos in Southeast Asia — are still far from Australia’s knowledge levels. In parts of Southeast Asia, water buffalo still plow fields and farmers have limited tools to handle complex weather. Today it remains hard to diffuse new technologies there.

Published at: Sep 12, 2025 · Modified at: Sep 13, 2025