Is Hi-tech Agriculture Freeing the Farmer From Their Fields?

The big, blue 18-tonne New Holland T8.435 tractor is not the heaviest or the tallest in the world but its £3,000 tyres and tank-style tracks stand two metres high, it bristles with antenna and at, about £250,000, it must be one of the most expensive.

For that, the farmer gets a monster machine that is one of the first to revolutionise big farming, field by field. Its steering is assisted by satellite, it downloads data about crops and soil straight to agronomists and farm managers, works 24-7, and can link with ground sensors and drones using infrared thermal cameras and tell to within a square metre the size of a field and where the most fertile or waterlogged places are.

But the T8.435 is the very big tip of a huge change taking place in Britain’s fields. According to Ken Grimsdell, whose company is growing crops on 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) in the Midlands, a farm manager may soon be able to live and work in Germany, run machines in Essex, download weather data from the US and sell the produce on the global market.

Satellite technology can be used to map fields and identify where fertiliser is needed and exactly what part of a field needs spraying. A tractor can be controlled by a satellite, drones can fly over a crop, record pictures and send them back to the office. The technology has made for better farming. It saves time and fuel, saves fatigue and brings some cost-saving.

“Guys sitting in glass towers in the US are dreaming up the technology but it can be far too sophisticated for the farmer,” he says.

“The technology may not be compatible with the machines. There needs to be talking done between the farmer and the technologists. We have good operators but they are not in IT. You need to be a real geek to do some of it. Some technology can be useless for the farmer. We have to rein back a bit.”

The technology is not just limited to tractors however, there are machines now for just about every crop. They can be used to pick olives, grapes, tulips. A combine can do far more than cut wheat or rape. It does cereals, pulses, beans, peas, pumpkin seeds, anything…

Robot grape pickers are already being tested in the Chablis region of France, says Mark Crosby of New Holland. “Machines are now able to look at the grapes, check the difference between good and bad ones, identify the quality of the crop and its maturity, destem the fruit and grade the fruit while it is picking it.”

“This is the next great progression in farming. The digital age is coming to the farm,” says Shaun Pierce, a precision farming specialist. We will see the first fully automated farm in the next five years, he says.

“The technology for driverless, fully connected, practically people-less precision farming is on its way to Europe,” says Antonio Marzia, vice-president of Precision Solutions at CHH International, makers of some of the world’s largest and most advanced farm machinery.

Big tractors have displaced much of the rural population already. It used to be 20 men and 20 horses. Then it was 20 men and one tractor. Now it’s one man and 20 tractors.