Do we need another agricultural technical revolution to feed the World?

Change, evolution or revolution, is something humanity has always driven. The agricultural revolution of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were impacted by a number of factors, changes to land ownership, new growing and breeding methods and new technologies. These factors are the same today. Agriculture has continued to evolve, however, with the increasing pressures brought on by population growth and climate change the pace and impact of this evolution needs to be proportionally greater.

There is no single answer to securing our ability to feed the world, now or in the future, there will need to be a combination of changes by all, public, private and academic to deliver a positive and sustainable outcome. These changes need to be open, democratised and impactful.

The impact of technology in agriculture.

Technology-based solutions, initiatives and projects are already available to help address some of these challenges; including robotics, internet of things, sensing, satellite and drone monitoring, utilising a wide range of analytics and an increasing need for artificial intelligence. As with most solutions, these are to address a specific set of business challenges.

Is this a problem? Yes and no. Each solution is being developed in isolation, based upon an organisation’s knowledge, skills and capability, being marketed as the “killer app” to address an agricultural challenge. This delivers high levels of capability and quality; however, it introduces a new set of considerations such as adoption, scale and interoperation.

Producers of all types need assurance that a solution will deliver a business benefit, be it improved yield or quality, reduced operating cost or management of risk. Adoption of a technology that does not provide positive results will be highly damaging, offsetting this with operational trials is a possible way of mitigating these risks, but it comes at a cost. In addition, adoption of any new technology also needs to address the change in farm operations and impact to the producers, operators and wider labour force.

Learning to evolve from other industries.

How do we take this melting pot of challenges and move forward? Do we need that revolution?

Drawing on an example from other industries:

• Finance and personal banking; the operational savings of banks moving from a traditional bricks and mortar to a digital infrastructure, driven through self-service was an evolution driven by technology advances and adoption. This evolution has been supported and driven by both consumers, providers, industry regulators and government. This aggregation of effort has delivered the first-class banking systems that we have today in the UK.
• Manufacturing Industry 4.0 is another evolution-based example taking advantage of technological advances to deliver improved value and operational efficiencies for manufacturers and the supply chain through greater digitisation. The initiative combines and is supported, by academia, industry and governments across the world. It supports any manufacturer in evolving their individual capability based upon its principles, to ensure that any manufacturing organisation is well positioned for future change to the core of their business.

Given what has happened in other industries, and with the critical nature of the agricultural industry to the economy, a new approach to transformation needs to be considered.

Building upon individual organisations ability to bring technology led innovation to market is at the core. Interoperation between systems, allowing easy and secure data exchange to enable the trading markets and supply chain, requires a level of standards that will open the opportunity for collaboration and improvements.

Industry adoption of standards will provide a framework for delivering a more complete solution, working in tandem with governments and academia. The focus of any standard supporting any solution, should be seamless and completely transparent to the producer, deliver no cost burden and focus on promoting improved yield and reducing operating cost.

Revolution or evolution?

The agricultural sector, is constantly evolving. The introduction of technology to deliver positive change is far from uniform or consistent, but it is happening. Is a revolution required? NO! However, faster evolution and adoption of the technologies supported by all aspects of the agricultural sector, working with industry bodies and governments is essential. The experiences of other sectors and their positioning for future change should be a beacon for future agricultural technology and its adoption.

To deliver the ability to feed the world we need to continually evolve integrated solutions that have beneficial impact to the improvement of farm and land yield and increasing operational efficiencies. Technology will be at the core to this, and with effective coordination and cooperation by all involved, such as governments, industry and academia, delivering this should be seen as a high priority for future food supply security.

NextGenAgri is working with the SOLVD project to explore how high impact crop yield can be delivered using image analytics through a combination of satellite and drone technology, and in field sensing combined with crop growth characteristics and historical yields.

Blog written by Gill Nunn, Founder and CEO and Peter Norton, Director of Business Development at NextGenAgri.

Can SOLVD help you?

For further information or to discuss your specific requirements, contact SOLVD@wlv.ac.uk or visit www.wlv.ac.uk/SOLVD.