New technologies to change Farming in a big way - By Sam Watson Jones

These are changes that are going to be brought about by the development of new technologies which have the potential to change farming and the way we live our lives forever.

And all of these changes have the potential to be huge opportunities for any farming business, regardless of location, scale or soil type.

The key differentiating factor determining the success or failure of farming businesses will now be the mindset of the person operating the business. If farmers have a collaborative and open mindset, characterised by embracing change, by committing themselves to growing beyond their comfort zones and by thinking beyond the boundaries of the farm, they will be successful. If farmers have a fixed mindset, characterised by thinking that the future is going to be a linear extension of the past, but thinking that marginal gains and cost savings are the only levers they can pull and by not thinking beyond what is immediately in front of them, they will ultimately fail.

I am going to very briefly discuss three huge technology trends and outline the opportunities that they present to any farm business. Any one of these trends could completely change your business model and deliver huge growth for your business. I am not going to dwell excessively on what each of the technologies is and how they work. There are others who are far better qualified to do that than I am and I do not pretend to be an expert.

What I am able to do, however, is explain why you should care about how the world is changing and why it is relevant to you.

Robotics will be the trend which is most familiar to you and which therefore requires the least explanation. Here, robotics refers to a smart autonomous machine, often used to carry out a task previously completed manually by a human being.

Robotics is likely to be the first of the new technologies that you see entering farming. Indeed, many farms already have robots carrying out jobs on farm. Robots will play a significant role in the way that farms develop over the next decade, but I believe that the current conversations about robotics in farming are not thinking big enough.

Firstly, and most obviously, robotics enables the automation of on farm tasks which are repetitive, labour intensive and do not add significant value to what is being produced. This automation will enable a small, but relevant, reduction in cost and an increase in efficiency. However, automation is just the first step towards something much more significant, which is digitisation, as I have discussed in previous blog posts.

Even though robots will start out by automating tasks which could have otherwise been carried out by humans, very quickly they will enable a huge increase in the accuracy of farm tasks, far beyond anything that has previously been possible. On an arable farm, the way in which robots carry out planting, weeding, spraying, fertilising and eventually even harvesting, will rapidly become so much more accurate than is possible in today’s systems with today’s machinery that the robots will effectively be carrying out a completely different task, and they will be doing it at far lower cost than is achievable today.

Small Robot Company’s “Harry” seed drill, for example, will need to be comparable to the job carried out by a conventional seed drill before it is readily adopted by farmers.

However, the speed of improvement of the robotic drill and its ability to vary seed depth and spacing depending on soil type, soil nutrients or intended market will quickly exceed what is possible in the current state. Perhaps of most significance, however, is the increase in the frequency and accuracy of crop monitoring that robotics and automation will enable. “Tom”, the autonomous monitoring robot created by Small Robot Company, is an example of a robot which will enable a field to be analysed and understood on a plant by plant basis, an exponential increase in the amount of data that is gathered and processed on a farm. It is logical to say, therefore, that robotics will be the means through which we are able to realise an exponential improvement in our decision making and farm management. Much of this change will be guided and augmented by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

AI refers to the ability of a machine, a robot; for example, to process and analyse large amounts of data and to use this data to make decisions.

Artificial Intelligence is relevant to farmers and to the practice of farm management because it enables farmers to elevate their understanding of their farm and the quality of their decision making far beyond where it is today. At the moment, the quality of the management on a farm is limited to the experience and understanding of the farm manager. A farmer who is particularly aware of and interested in the latest techniques, who reads widely, who attends many different conferences and who adopts an attitude of continuous learning and development will make better decisions than a farmer who does none of those things.

However, an individual can only absorb and retain so much information. If they are sensible enough to surround themselves with a good team, in the form of an agronomist for example, and highly competent and experienced staff, then they can lean on the intelligence and experience of all those people as well as upon their own and it seems logical to assume that the quality of their decision making will increase. Now imagine that everyone in the team, the farmer, the agronomist, the farm team, could double the amount of information that they could absorb every year, do you think the quality of the farm management and the quality of the decision making would improve? It seems likely.

Now imagine that the farm manager and his team could absorb, analyse and rationally prioritise all of the information that was available anywhere in the world on the crops that they were growing, on the soil they were growing in, on the markets they were selling into. This is what Artificial Intelligence enables, and the applicability of AI will be accelerated by the adoption of robotics.

To use the example of a decision on whether to spray a field with a fungicide or not. At the moment, an agronomist or farm manager will walk into a field, take an overview of the field, closely examine a handful of plants, assess the risks (either increased or decreased) posed by the weather conditions and the topography of the field, they would factor in the cost of the spray against the likely marketable yield and price. Finally, they would think back on their experience in the past of other similar situations and make an informed decision. There is an awful lot, therefore, going on in the heads of the individuals involved. In an AI driven operating system, that decision making becomes a lot more powerful. Imagine the same situation but instead of looking at the field as an average, each individual plant and its vulnerability to the disease is analysed. The AI driven operating system will be analysing huge quantities of data all the time. It might make a different assessment of risks present to the plants in one part of the field than in another part of the field, and therefore present a different spray recommendation. Analysing each individual plant, it would be able to make a far more accurate assessment of the yield potential of the crop than would be possible with the human eye, and it would be able to analyse far more market data to understand what the likely revenue of each square metre is and therefore the implications of a decision to spray or not to spray.

Now, this is the bit where it gets exciting because what we are going to see is a convergence of technologies with AI operating alongside robotics to dramatically improve the way that we farm. “Dick”, a micro-spraying and laser weeding robot created by Small Robot Company is an example of this. Robotics will enable much more data to be gathered much more accurately, but Dick, operating alongside “Wilma”, SRC’s AI driven operating system, will allow that data to become truly actionable. Not only will we be able to monitor a field on a plant by plant basis, we will be able to treat on that basis too.

However, the most significant difference that an AI operating system will enable comes in the last part of the agronomist’s decision-making process, when they think back on their previous experience. The human being learns primarily from their own experiences, so the farm manager or agronomist is limited by the number of similar situations they themselves have experienced. Through reading widely and interacting extensively with a wide network of professionals, they can increase this learning somewhat by benefiting from the experiences of others. It is nothing, however, compared to the exponential learning potential of an AI operating system which will eventually be able to globally learn from every growing season in every country on the planet simultaneously, through an interconnected network of AI operated machines.

Blockchain is possibly the least familiar of the three, but it could be the most disruptive of the lot. Blockchain is a digital record of a transaction between two parties. Once the transaction has been made, there is a permanent record which is visible to anyone.

This sounds simple, but it is revolutionary. It will probably impact farming in more ways than I am capable of foreseeing at this moment, but here are some initial thoughts. If, as farmers, we are able to collect digital data on what is in our fields and to create a record of that, our ability to accurately increase our yields will increase. We will also be able to much more accurately record what is harvested and in our stores. Once blockchain technology becomes widely adopted, which it will within the next decade, it could enable a much greater level of transparency as to what has been harvested, which in turn would reduce speculation because there is a much greater awareness in the market of the true supply and demand situation, which in turn would lead to far more accurate and fairer pricing. It is debatable as to whether this would lead to an increase or a decrease in the opportunities available to farmers, but it is surely good news for the global food supply chain, particularly the poorest in the world who can be severely impacted by food price volatility.

The next step that Blockchain would enable is disintermediation. An order for something produced by a farmer would be placed on blockchain by the consumer, processor or retailer who wanted to use it, a price would be offered and the farmer would have the ability to fulfil that order directly without the need to go through an integrator. Blockchain could enable the removal of all “middle men” from the agriculture industry.

We are all human! Let’s focus on what we are uniquely able to do. It is up to you to decide whether you think these trends are positive, negative or a blend of the two.

It is up to you to decide how they are relevant to you and your business and how you will make the most out of them. You may have a completely different interpretation of how these trends are going to impact farming, and you may well be right.

What is for certain is that the technology is already changing farming, and the pace of change is accelerating. Human beings still have a crucial role in how we produce and consume food and farmers have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this.

Unfortunately, much of farming in its current state is much of farming in its current state is not based on what humans are uniquely able to do

Human beings are not uniquely able to drive machines or to carry out repeatable tasks. Humans do not have an unlimited store of patience to carry out repeatable tasks with unerring accuracy. Those tasks could be carried out more efficiently and more safely by machines.

Humans are, however, uniquely able to be creative. They are uniquely able to build relationships and trust with those they interact with. They are uniquely able to tell stories.

This is what farmers need to focus on.

At Small Robot Company, we are about 50% subscribed on our Farmer Advisory Group, a group of 20 farmers who are our first customers. One of the main benefits of getting involved with this as a farmer is that it will massively increase your knowledge and understanding of the latest technology trends transforming your industry, some of which are described above.

This understanding has the potential to give you a huge competitive advantage over the vast majority of your industry, who are passively waiting for this technology to be developed by others, rather than placing themselves right at the centre of the design process.

Get in touch with me today at sam@smallrobotcompany.com to find out how you can make the most of the exciting new opportunities the future is going to bring.