Fourth-generation farmer and agricultural consultant Georgia Pugh has a passion for innovation and technology which improves efficiency, sustainability and profitability in the livestock industry.

Although not a fulltime farmer, Mrs Pugh maintains an active interest in the family’s 4000ha property in Narrikup, a small town between Albany and Mount Barker in the Great Southern region of Western Australia.

On the mixed cropping and livestock farm, the family runs 12,000 sheep and 1,200 cattle and breed purebred Gelbvieh and Gelbvieh composite cattle — Summit Gelbvieh Stud.

“We’re a family farming contingent led by my father John and mum Kim and we’ve had women farming for generations in our family,” Mrs Pugh says.

“It is a love of nature, a love of animals and being able to give back and care for the land. We have a lot of sheep and cattle, which we really care about and do our very best to run well.”

Mrs Pugh graduated from The University of Western Australia in 2015 with a double degree in Agricultural Science (with First Class Honours) and Commerce majoring in accounting, entrepreneurship and innovation.

She now works for neXtgen Agri International and has been driving the adoption of agricultural technology in Western Australia, including on the family farm.

Mrs Pugh specialises in providing strategic business and livestock breeding advice, as well as agricultural technology adoption support to optimise farm performance and operational efficiency.

Mrs Georgia Pugh is proud to be making farming more sustainable and efficient

“Farmers have always been investing in genetics and we can help them accelerate their genetic gain, but technology is something that livestock farmers in particular have found more daunting to adopt,” she explains.

The youngest of four girls, who is now a mother of two, says the average age in the livestock industry is 52 — 12 years older than the national average for other occupations, and while historically it's not been a super tech-savvy industry, that is changing which is encouraging to the next generation of farmers.

“If I show my kids some of the apps available, they think they’re so cool and it makes them more likely to want to get involved in agriculture,” she says.

The new technology has helped make record-keeping, information-sharing and decision-making a lot easier for livestock producers.

“On the family farm we had a whiteboard in the workshop with numbers written on it,” she says.

“Now you can use an app that gathers information from smart collars, smart tags and drones that tell you how many animals are in a particular paddock, how many days they have been in there and when they are due for a shift.

“Sensor cameras on water troughs and in paddocks can tell you how much rain there has been so you can calculate how much pasture you’re going to have and the food that will be on offer.”

Career options in the industry are growing as new technology continues to be developed, but Mrs Pugh says there are still many lessons to be learnt.

“A lot of the agtech is coming from start-ups and aren’t earning much money yet,’ she explains.

“They want the feedback to understand what they can do to help — having the feedback from the farming community, good or bad, is invaluable.”

Mrs Pugh always knew the career path she wanted to take and believes mixing good business practice with the analytical scientific aspects of agriculture has helped her excel in her chosen industry.

“I always had a strong agricultural muscle being a country girl and actively involved in the industry, but I’ve worked on building my business muscle a lot,” she says.

“I want to make everyone’s life easier and as a result make farming more sustainable and efficient.”

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