Work that stays with the question long enough to be useful.

Australia's Digital Product Passport ecosystem for livestock is technically well-defined, and not yet operational at scale. Through AgTrace Australia and the Australian Agriculture Traceability Protocol, the industry has aligned to an open, UN-compatible architecture where each animal can be represented as a verifiable credential rather than a static record.

The Digital Livestock Passport

At the core is the Digital Livestock Passport, which extends the UN Transparency Protocol's product-passport model into a livestock-specific schema. The passport is structured as a JSON-LD credential, so the data can move between systems without being retyped. Each passport carries standard credential elements — issuer, validity, and a subject representing the animal — anchored to Australia's NLIS system.

A modular data model

The model is granular on purpose. Identity, provenance and classification sit in one object. On top of that, other parties can attach:

• Performance and physical traits aligned to industry standards
• Health interventions, including dose rates and withholding periods
• Traceability events along the chain
• Emissions and sustainability claims, separately verifiable from the base record

Where it stands

The specification is still in draft, and the hard problems are operational: consistent identifiers, farm software that will actually issue a credential, and trusted digital identity for the organisations signing them. The opportunity is animal-level, machine-readable proof for market access, compliance and "tell once, use many times" data. The risk is a model that stays elegant and unused.

Discuss a similar question →

A 12,000-hectare mixed-farming operation across three properties in central NSW was running seven disconnected software platforms — paddock mapping, grain marketing, weather, machinery telematics. Data lived in silos. Decisions were being made on intuition where an integrated picture should have existed.

The manager knew the tools were there. What was missing was a view of how they did, or did not, connect.

What we did

Two weeks on site, mapping every digital touchpoint: who uses what, when, why, and what data moves between systems. Operators, agronomists and the back office. The result was a blueprint of every system, flow, integration and gap — twelve places where someone was retyping a number that a system already knew.

What it changed

For the first time the operation could see its digital architecture, and the one it actually needed. Three integration points were worth doing first. A single view of yield, weather and machinery was prototyped before anyone committed to another platform.

Map an operation →

Across agricultural technology projects, the recurring failure is earlier than the code. It is a misunderstanding of how an operation actually works. Most products are designed from the outside — built around an assumption of what a farmer needs, rather than observation of what people do between dawn and a handover.

Three gaps

The products that stick start with the operation, prototype with the people who will use them, and solve one job properly before they expand. They fit the existing week before they try to replace it.

That is the order Fodder works in. Understand the operation. Design the system. Only then is anyone ready to build.

Pressure-test a product →

Export markets are asking for a story that can be checked. Traceability requirements, buyer standards and geopolitical risk are arriving as operating constraints, not as branding exercises. The producers and processors who will be ready are the ones who can produce a claim without rebuilding their week around it.

This briefing follows what Australian exporters should be able to show, what the current systems can already support, and where the gap is still a research problem rather than a software purchase. It is written for people who have to decide what to instrument now, and what can wait.

Commission the briefing →