Arable
Robots on arable farms are ‘now an economic reality’
• Driverless tractors make financial sense • Findings based on real-life experience • Smaller farms can be more competitive
family farms, say researchers. Technological advances mean me- dium-sized farms can now grow arable crops at almost minimum cost levels using autonomous equipment, accord- ing to a paper by scientists at Harper Adams University.
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Published in the journal Precision Agriculture, the study says using ro- bots could mean greater independence for farmers, an opportunity for small- er farms to be more competitive and less need for growers to “get big or get out” of arable production.
The paper is the first of its kind to be published in a peer-reviewed jour- nal. Based on the university’s Hands Free Farm experiment, it is the work of four scientists – James Lowenberg-De- Boer, Richard Godwin, Karl Behrendt and Kit Franklin.
Crop robotics
Professor Lowenberg-DeBoer said: “The Hands Free Farm is a great place to study the economics of crop robot- ics, which is presently a very sparse- ly researched area. “As far as I can tell, this is the one place on earth – certainly with- in the public sector – where you can get information about a whole cycle for comparing results of the kind we did, particularly with autonomous equipment.” The researchers used data gained from the Hands Free Farm to show how crop robotics could be applied to arable agriculture – drawing upon ac- tual field experience and real-life data unavailable to many other studies of crop robotics.
Prof Lowenberg-DeBoer said: “Be- cause the Hands Free Hectare used retrofitted conventional equipment, we know the costs of each piece of that equipment – you can work that out using the cost of the convention- al equipment. “It is a much better place to set out
28 ANGLIA FARMER • AUGUST 2021
rable crop production using ro- bots is now an economic reality – and could boost incomes on
this kind of analysis from. The idea was to produce an economic study to help engineers and investors establish the best use of this equipment. “Much of this technology is becom-
ing readily available and is almost there – and the Hands Free Farm showed it was possible.”
The study confirmed that the cost of farming with the autonomous equip- ment used on the Hands Free Farm was substantially lower than on con- ventional farms. This was because the equipment involved is smaller and used far more extensively.
Modest investment The paper says: “The ability to achieve near minimum production costs at rel- atively smaller farm sizes, and with a modest equipment investment, means that the pressure for farming busi- nesses to continually seek economies of scale is diminished
“This provides the opportunity for
modest size grain enterprises to be- come profitable instead of being a life- style choice.”
By reducing the need for labour and equipment investment, these small- er enterprises could be combined with livestock, on-farm value added activi- ties or off farm employment to provide enough income for family needs, sug- gests the paper.
Prof Lowenberg-DeBoer added:
“People who talk about autonomy sometimes say ‘but what about all those people who will lose their jobs?’ – but in arable agriculture, those jobs have already gone.
“What autonomy can do is help cre- ate new opportunities. With autono- mous equipment, for instance, it will be possible for many more farms to be- come organic. “With autonomous equipment, and
a little bit of artificial intelligence, you can create machinery which enables farmers to do things at much more com- petitive prices.
“So if the policy framework around autonomous equipment is well-aligned, it can help to create new opportunities for farming – and new opportunities for young people.”
The Robotti driverless tractor made its UK debut earlier this year at Home Farm Nacton, Suffolk.
Much of this technology is becoming readily available
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