Anika Molesworth is enjoying experimenting with drones on her family’s farm at Broken Hill but the sheep are not cooperating. “The drones are not quite a toy but we are trying to work out how to make use of them,” she says. “So we are flying them out to the paddocks and checking where our sheep are and where the goats are.” Disappointingly, the animals do not seem to regard the drones as alternative sheepdogs. “They haven’t been terribly obliging – yet,” says Molesworth, who is studying for her PhD in agriculture climate science. The 29-year-old farmer looks forward to seeing continued improvements in technology, genetics, robotics, automation, which she says will make farming more efficient, easier and kinder on the natural environment.

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