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TL Tracey Lefroy On Agtech - So What?

“When we first started talking about data centers two years ago their requirement for water was mammoth. We're now looking at closed-loop systems, so the requirement for water is lower, but the requirement for power is bigger. In WA that's actually awesome, because water is our issue and we've got plenty of wind, plenty of solar. One of the ironies of successful farming is that the farm gets bigger, so there are fewer people there. Is this the opportunity to revitalize regional communities?”

Agtech - So What? · Alternative Proteins · November 2026

“When we first started talking about data centers two years ago their requirement for water was mammoth. We're now looking at closed-loop systems, so the requirement for water is lower, but the requirement for power is bigger. In WA that's actually awesome, because water is our issue and we've got plenty of wind, plenty of solar. One of the ironies of successful farming is that the farm gets bigger, so there are fewer people there. Is this the opportunity to revitalize regional communities?” — Tracey Lefroy, Agtech - So What?

Context

Asked about opportunities over the next five to twenty years given AI and data centre demand, she sees regional Western Australia as a natural home for data centres and frames them as a way to rebuild towns that have shrunk. It lands in a week of heavy AI infrastructure spending news.

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Transcript

Agtech - So What? Around 39:11 into the episode
Tracey Lefroy

…you have to host renewable energy transmission lines because it's good for the environment i think that that's quite a hard sell and you almost create that animism type concept because you can't see what's in it for me which is a little bit of a selfish comment but it's an understandable one

Sarah Nolet

…the energy conversation isn't going anywhere the renewable conversation hopefully isn't going anywhere for australia i mean data centers and more energy requirements i'm curious what are some of the five 10 15 20 years out what's on your mind as potential opportunities or challenges coming there

Tracey Lefroy

so i think data centers are in the press a lot at the moment particularly with the federal government opening their office for ai but with regard to that i think it's again a space that's moving really quickly so when we first started talking about data centers two years ago their requirement for water was mammoth we're now looking at data centers that are more a closed-loop system so the requirement for water is lower but as a function of being a closed loop system the requirement for power is bigger wa that's actually awesome because water is our issue we've got plenty of wind plenty of solar so we can create the energy if the technology is getting to the point where the water requirement is lower i actually think that that's awesome so in terms of opportunity for regional areas i love the concept that we're decentralizing our industry and you know data centers in regional areas i think it really makes sense i think it would be phenomenal we have a lot of land we have a lot of wind we have a lot of sun we don't have a lot of water but what can we do about technology solves for that one of the ironies of successful farming is that the farm gets bigger so there's less people there so your regional community is diminished is this the opportunity to revitalize regional…

Sarah Nolet

huge thanks to tracy for so generously diving into the details about her experiences setting up renewable energy projects on farms the first thing that piqued my interest about tracy story was her instinctive response to bring neighboring landowners together to approach the negotiation as a…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Agtech - So What?

“What struck me first was the asymmetry in the approach. There were three people who came at first. This was a team who had done this dozens of times. They'd approached multiple families over multiple years, over multiple projects. We'd never done this. That gap in knowledge and experience and even in project literacy was real and huge, and you start feeling a little bit like you're on the back foot.” — Tracey Lefroy, Agtech - So What? “I'm not pro-development, I'm not anti-development, but if development is coming, how do we leverage it to the best of our ability to have that legacy impact? If you can find the pieces of the puzzle that are common to everyone, you're going to have more constructive conversations than trying to say to someone you have to host renewable energy transmission lines because it's good for the environment. That's quite a hard sell.” — Tracey Lefroy, Agtech - So What?