Is the UK ready for new challenges in food production?

The Financial Times yesterday had a 'Big Read' article about the transformation of food production by new technology. Like all FT articles on new technology, it's a bit 'gung ho'. It doesn't consider that many farmers may be resistant to new technology or may not have the resources to acquire it. Nevertheless, it makes some good points.

The central thrust of the article is to be found in a sentence some way down: 'Once an unfashionable backwater, agricultural technology has started to capture the imagination of investors.' It reckons that 'annual global investment in food tech, from farm management systems to robotics and mechanisation, more than tripled to $10bn' in the five years to 2017. The main areas of innovation are identified as gene editing, artificial intelligence and digital technology.

Consumer demand is, as always, of key importance. As the populations of developing companies become wealthier, they demand protein products, especially meat. The total amount of meat consumed globally is forecast to rise by 76 per cent by 2050. But, as we know, meat production is not good news for climate change (fossil fuels, methane), nor is increased red meat consumption good for health.

Coincidentally, The Economist has a big feature on the vegan trend. Veganism as such, it concluded, is a niche market, but large numbers of people who are not vegans or vegetarians are interested in healthier eating which has led to an increased demand for plant based products.

One of my concerns about Brexit was the impact of the loss of migrant labour on fruit and vegetable production in the UK. Food miles issues can be exaggerated: it makes more sense to produce tomatoes in Spain in the winter than to heat glasshouses around Littlehampton.

I am somewhat sceptical of claims made about automated picking. The FT notes, 'Given that fruits and vegetables are not of uniform shape and ripeness, the technological challenges are extensive. On top of the mechanical dexterity and spatial cognition that the machines need to demonstrate, researchers hope that AI can help them to learn to pick only the ripe fruit and vegetables.'

The FT rightly praises what is going on in the Netherlands in this area, particularly in 'Food Valley' near Wageningen University (it is, of course, as flat as a pancake). When I was doing research on biological alternatives to chemical pesticides, I was impressed by the way in which the Netherlands was ahead of the curve. As the FT notes, 'The country has made food science one of its strategic priorities and hosts one of the world's most efficient agricultural systems.'

Among the advantages that the Netherlands has is Rabobank, one of the biggest lenders to the food industry and a central location in Europe with an excellent port in Rotterdam.

The FT notes, 'Some investors believe that the food business is about to face the sort of disruption that technology has based on hosts of other industries.' Is the UK ready? Is domestic policy prepared? I doubt it.

The limits of new technology

The new conventional wisdom is that agriculture is on the verge of a fourth revolution and that once the UK has Brexited this digital revolution can get under way in earnest, supported by domestic policy and unshackled from the CAP.

I am no fan of the CAP, but I think that some caution is necessary. One farmer commented to ‘Yes, however, there are challenges with farmers getting to grips with the very many and varied types of tech, as my latest tractor testifies, I am generally mystified by the number of possibilities and so find myself being overwhelmed. Tech needs to be simple and intuitive. It’s also expensive.’

Appropriate policy could, of course, help with the question of expense. But much of the AI and digital tech is still at a relatively experimental stage and not ready for on farm use.

Of course, farmers have been using data from near earth satellites for some time and that is now being supplemented by more fine grained information from drones. That enables decisions to be made, for example, about what quantities of fertiliser or agrochemicals are to be applied where with both business savings and environmental benefits.

It is also claimed that machinery using AI can spot when strawberries are ripe and ready to be picked. A downward facing camera is used. However, the berries still have to be picked by hand.

We do face the challenge of producing more food from a given area of land and in an environmentally friendly way. Technology is the key to sustainable intensification. But we also need to think more broadly. Should we try and move away from meat heavy diets which require large quantities of animal feed and livestock that produce methane, a particularly damaging climate change related emission?

Robots ahoy!

Harrogate: We don't value the soil to the extent that we should argued Clive Blacker of Precision Decisons Ltd. at a seminar om Precision Farming and the Hands Free Hectare at the Great Yorkshire Show, The trend towards even bigger machines was driven by a number of factors and they caused soil compaction.

He envisaged a future with swarms of small robots and their tractor outside looked dinky and not a threat to anyone. Fortunatey, the tractor is now driving in straighter lines than last year.

How soon commercialisation could occur was uncertain with cost a key factor. However, there could be contracted weed removal services.

Shortage of skilled labour was a constraint, but Brexit would get rid of people who weren't interested in learning or training, The project was intended to appeal to the younger generation.

Insurance was an issue. Who was to blame if the owner changed the programme and the machine crashed? Or supposing it was hacked into and went walkabout?

It needs to be remembered that new technology has to be socially acceptable. Someone was telling me about a robot that would trundle round the countryside zapping weeds with a laser and no doubt announcing 'This vehicle is exterminating'. Would you like to meet that walking your dog?

Can new technology solve labour shortages in farming?

There is considerable interest in the potential of new technology for making farming more productive and less reliant on difficult to obtain labour. I think that the development and application of these technologies should form a key part of a domestic agricultural policy post Brexit, but no one should pretend that they offer a quick, readily available and affordable fix.

Big farms already use semi-autonomous satellite-guided tractors and combines, which can drive in straight lines without overlapping. However, these big machines also tend to compact the soil, affecting its long-term viability and plant growth.

Harper Adams University, using government funding from Innovate UK, have adopted machinery to drill, spray and harvest crops autonomously using open source software, cameras, lasers and sensors. They used drones and scout vehicles to monitor the field and collect data by bringing back soils and crop samples.

The first crop is slightly wobbly where the tractor failed to keep to its line. The first hands free crop is expected to yield only 4.5 tonnes per hectare, compared with 6.8 tonnes using conventional methods.

In the horticulture sector, where labour problems are particularly acute, machines to pick strawberries and apples are being deployed, but they pick at only one third of the rate of a human and miss 15 per cent of the crop. Moreover, the machines can cost something approaching £200,000. Most farmers reckon that their large scale deployment is at least a decade off.

However, it is clear that one narrative that is being put forward (see Matt Ridley in The Times today is that access to cheap labour has held back the introduction of new technology in British farming.

The deputy president of the NFU has told a meeting at the Liberal Democrat conference that future growth in agriculture will be driven by overseas labour. There was no sign of government action on labour and trade issues: Lack of action

Match fit for Brexit

Wyn Grant with Professor Rob Edwards (left), chair of the Farmer-Scientist Network at the Great Yorkshire Show.

'Match fit for Brexit' was the theme of a seminar sponsored by the Farmer-Scientist Network of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society at the Great Yorkshire Show, chaired by the writer and led by James Severn and Richard King of farm business consultants Andersons. They are offering a 'Match fit for Brexit' business review to farmers for £650 plus VAT.

Andersons realistically see area payments ending and they see the following possible forms of support in the future with a budget half of the current one:

• A wildlife and landscape scheme, agri-environmental, building on the platform of current schemes such as environmental stewardship
• Support for hill farmers which could be in the form of an area payment
• Productivity (research and development, knowledge exchange, training, capital investment
• Food promotion at home and abroad (my question here would be, is this cost effective?)
• Revenue insurance to guard against price volatility (I remain sceptical about whether this is the solution)
• Natural resources, focused on water and soil in catchment areas (more than one farmer I spoke to at the show highlighted the problem of soil exhaustion)

One point made in discussion was that the payments available in agri-environmental schemes might not be sufficient to motivate farmers to participate.

Andersons used their three 'model' farms to predict the impact of Brexit. (Note that their profit figures are after making allowance for 'drawings', i.e, a wage for the farming family). The arable 'Loam' farm makes a healthy £248 per hectare a year at the moment. This would go down to £108 in 2025 with good access to the EU and still over £60 with poor access. (My view is that cereal farms with no stream of income from non-farm businesses, which is the case for many of them in East Anglia, would be particularly exposed to price volatility).

The Freisian dairy farm makes a modest £4.4 per hectare at present, this would go down to £3.4 under good access and a bare margin of £0.6 per hectare under poor access.

The 'Meadow' mixed farm, which it was admitted in discussion, is not a well-run business, makes £35 a hectare at present. This would be a loss of £72 per hectare under good access and a big £233 under poor access.

The core message was that farmers should not worry about the figures they can't control like the Brexit negotiations and focus on how well prepared their own business is prepared to respond to the impact of change (albeit that the form of that change is very uncertain). There was a time window for adjustment, given a relative status quo over the next few years and a boost to prices from devaluation. Farmers need to step back from their businesses and review them. For example, farms need to look at their debt structure. Could machinery and labour be pooled with neighbouring farms?

There was some discussion about whether Brexit could lead to land abandonment, but it was felt that most available land would be farmed by someone who could do a better job with it. There was scepticism about whether there will be a big fall in land prices or rents given all the factors that are in play apart from CAP support.

Drones and precision farming

The following session dealt with this topic with speakers from Newcastle University. Precision farming was defined in terms of more correct decisions per area of land or unit of time.

Drones can provide very high resolution images across a wide spectrum, more so than near earth satellites, and they can fly under clouds. However, they cannot be used in anything more than light rain or winds above 23 mph (and winds are often higher above the ground).

The sophisticated cameras cost more than the drones, the cost of which is falling. A question that arose was whether the information gathered for an average sized farm for about £100 would bring a sufficient return in terms of lower inputs and higher outputs.

Different versions of food futures

Earlier this week I went to a very interesting workshop on future global food systems. As is inevitably the case, two different versions of the future emerged.

One view is that in order to feed a growing world population (of which anything between 1 billion and 3.5 billion are under nourished and 0.83 billion underweight) we shall have to continue to rely on intensive systems of food production and make greater use of new technology.

An alternative view, which was developed rather more in the discussion, was that we were going to hell in a handcart and the present system of production is unsustainable in terms, for example, of the demands it is making on soil and water and its contribution to climate change. We rely on too narrow a range of plant and livestock species and overlook crops which could be safely grown several times in one year (although whether people find some of these crops palatable is another question).

Of course, how one moves to a different system is a more challenging question and it struck me that there was an element of naivety in some of the suggestions put forward. Urban agriculture such as growing mint in a suburb of Rotterdam may have educational benefits, but it is not going to start to feed large cities. If diversity is the enemy of capitalism, as was argued, how is one going to get round that given the structural and lobbying power of big business? How can one cope with the power of supermarkets which tend to make cosmetic changes in their offer to reflect concerns? One answer that was suggested was to convert consumers into citizens in relation to food, but that has its challenges.

I would suggest that sustainable intensification offers a possible way forward. I know that it is greeted with scepticism both by environmental lobbyists, who see it as a stalking horse for GMO, and by farmers who tell me that they don't understand what it is. What it involves is an acknowledgment is that we are going to have continue with intensive farming (although not everywhere) but it has to be done in a more sustainable way by using inputs in a much more careful way. Drone technology, for example, opens up new possibilities in precision farming, making it possible to avoid the over use of fertilisers.

One also has to recognise that business is not a homogeneous entity signed up to a common agenda and that some businesses are concerned about the possible impacts of unmitigated climate change, notably the insurance industry which plays a key role in the Aldersgate Group which is a coalition of businesses, NGOs and others: Aldersgate .

Where I would agree with many of the speakers is that the analysis of power relations is of crucial importance in understanding how systems of food production operate.

The promise of precision farming

It has been estimated that the use of precision agriculture technology could increase yield on any given farm by about 10 per cent, compared with average global annual crop yield increases of about one per cent. Tractors that map fields, drive themselves and precisely calibrate their movements to within inches to minimise wasted fuel, fertiliser or seed are increasingly becoming a standard piece of kit.

Auto steer has been around for about 15 years, but the focus is increasingly on remote sensing and data collection on the dozens of variables, from soil moisture to nutrient levels, that influence success in modern farming. Agricultural companies are trying to make better use of the vast caches of data that farmers generate in areas such as yield and soil mapping, although some farmers have privacy concerns and want to limit the amount they share with big companies.

Monsanto recently spent nearly $1bn acquiring data science company Climate Corporation. Companies clearly see commercial opportunities in relation to climate change, but there is controversy about whether weather derivatives have the market smoothing effect that is claimed for them: Climate data