Tech expo shows how radical approaches can transform farming

Farmers need to be prepared to adopt radical new approaches to farming to reap the full potential of current and future agritech developments.

That was one of the messages from the closing panel discussion at the recent Future Farm Technology Expo, on how technology will transform farming in the next 10 years.

Abby Rose, a farmer, technology developer and co-founder of the Farmerama podcast, said that new technology would liberate farmers from the limitations imposed by the requirements of tractors and combines.

See also: How to avoid drone insurance and licensing pitfalls

She said intercropping – growing more than one crop in the same field – and integrating trees with field crops were examples of approaches new technology could support.

“We need more diversity,” she said. “The more diversity you have in a field, the less likely it is to be taken down by pests or disease.”

Kit Franklin, who led the high-profile Hands-Free Hectare project at Harper Adams University, agreed that multicrop fields were an interesting opportunity.

Franklin’s team has just embarked on a new Hands-Free Farm project, extending the Hands-Free Hectare concept to a 35ha field. He said, in future years, the team may try to grow multiple crops in 2m-wide strips in the field – for example, wheat and beans.

Andrew Lazenby, chief executive of both the Royal Agricultural Society of England and Innovation for Agriculture, agreed that the focus of new technology should not be on incremental improvements.

“We have to get away from this idea that the future is all about how we get an extra tonne of wheat yield or an extra kilo of liveweight gain,” he said. “We’ve got to use the technology to make sure we are doing the right thing, on the right piece of land, at the right time.”

Ben Scott-Robinson, co-founder of The Small Robot Company, said the start-up was making good progress towards its vision of treating individual plants rather than entire fields or sections of fields.

Dan Halliday, head of digital and precision solutions and telematics at New Holland parent CNH Industrial, predicted that robots and smart use of data would take off on high-value crops, such as champagne grapes, in the next 10 years. But he said tractors and other more traditional kit would still have an important part to play for some time.

More than 2,000 farmers attended 30-plus presentations, panel discussions and live interviews during the two-day event, held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.