Kaniva's Jonathan Dyer and Harrow's Michael Craig were presented with the scholarships in Launceston, Tasmania, on Thursday.

Nuffield Australia provides Australian farmers with an opportunity to travel overseas on an agricultural research scholarship.

Mr Dyer is involved in a West Wimmera family farming partnership that specialises in broadacre grain production on about 2200 hectares.

The family grows a mixture of bread and durum wheat, canola, lentils, faba beans and chickpeas.

Mr Dyer said he would use his scholarship to focus on big data, which describes the ability to capture and store large volumes of information and analyse it to solve complex problems and gain business insights.

"It is now possible to collect large amounts of sensory and spatial data on-farm at little cost some examples include weather data, harvest yield information, soil type maps, soil moisture and temperature probes and machinery performance data," he said.

He said big data could help farmers make better and more profitable decisions.

"I would like to look at who owns the data farmers generate and whether they can take ownership of that data to create value from it.

"If third parties have access to farmer-generated data, I'd like to see how it is stored and protected and whether others can use it to profit at a farmer's expense."

Mr Dyer said he planned to visit the USA, Canada, Germany and South Africa on his travels.

Mr Craig is general manager of Tuloona Pastoral, a mixed broadacre livestock and cropping enterprise, consisting of 18,000 sheep, 500 cows and a 1400-hectare cropping program.

He said with high production costs, a tough environment and small population, Australian sheep producers faced the challenge of being profitable while providing consumer value.

"If the forecasts for climate change and global development trends are right, then Australian sheep meat products will increasingly become a semi-luxury protein source, requiring new ways of thinking about our supply chains," he said.

"I will be looking at whether additional value can be distributed equitably through the supply chain to improve returns and vertical linkages, particularly in the context of Australia's climate variability, production scale and ability to adapt."

Mr Craig hopes his wide-ranging topic might assist the industry to foster alternative models to current methods of supply chain value transfer.

He plans to inspect supply chain models in the USA, New Zealand, Europe and the UK.

Past Wimmera Nuffield scholars include Dean Johns of Dooen in 1999, Steven Hobbs of Kaniva in 2003 and David Jochinke of Murra Warra in 2006.

Member for Mallee Andrew Broad was also awarded a scholarship in 2006.