Tech rising – Tillage & Soils

And that role is likely to increase in future as early adopters of the technology help prove that the tools work and can make positive contributions to the farm’s performance.

The extent to which this is the case is revealed in a new survey commissioned by crop production specialists Hutchinsons.

Nick Rainsley, the company’s Head of Marketing, says the survey was completed so the company had a better insight into farmers’ views and preparedness to use the technology.

The information gained will help the company further develop its Omnia digital service. This aims to help farmers consider all relevant data to help make cropping plans and business decisions.

For the survey, Hutchinsons selected 200 farmers with over 100 hectares of arable crops, these being a combination of specialist arable and mixed farming units.

Among its key aims was discovering whether farmers were early adopters; more result focused or just cautious:

“The research lends weight to the role digital technology is going to play in the future of UK farming, says Mr Rainsley.

“Half of the respondents said digital technology is going to be of increasing importance in farming, and this rose to nearly two thirds among the largest farms.

“A large majority see data driven decision making as important in the future”.

The most widely used tool is auto-steer, which 76% of respondents report using.

That is significantly more that the next most important tools – variable rate application of fertiliser and variable rate drilling (42% and 41% respectively).

A smaller, but still significant, proportion (21%) were also using variable rate spray applications.

In addition, farmers reported using services like weather apps to obtain localised forecasts and What3Words to help plan farm operations.

For the future, the survey suggests that tools that help farmers cope with increasingly variable

weather will be key, as 72% of respondents cited changing climate as their biggest future threat.

One respondent’s comments provide a clue as to why that is: “We used to get one bad weather year every five years; now we seem to have one good weather year in five”.

Other pressures identified included high input. costs (56%); market prices (51%); the pressure on profitability (48%) and weed control (40%).

The key drivers for use of the tools were seen as the potential to achieve cost savings (78%); the scope for yield improvement (53%); and efficiency savings (52%):

“They want to be able to drive costs out of the business and improve productivity, and are asking how digital technology can help them improve”.

But there are some key barriers to adoption, the most notable of these being the cost (70%).

Respondents also had concerns over whether there would be any return on investment (48%); and expressed worries about complexity (37%) and the difficulty of integrating different software systems (35%).

The latter point was particularly important to larger scale farmers, who might be using a range of different systems that needed to be combined for full farm record keeping:

Cambridgeshire farmer David Hoyles, whose family run a 700 hectare unit near Wisbech where they grow arable crops, roots and vegetables, started using this generation of tools nearly 20 years ago.

Their first innovation was using auto-steer “to help us drive in straight lines”.

They then moved on to data collection, which he admits was not accurate enough in the early days but is much improved now. As a result the data gained is playing a key role in the farm business.

That is making everyone’s job easier, he said, and enabling the business to work as part of a farm group that co-ordinates input purchases and completes its own field trials.

By adopting “my John Deere” in 2010 he says they have been able to save fuel and make the drivers’ workloads easier. Introducing things like yield mapping has also helped make field work more efficient, and they also use technology so they can scan crops themselves in cloudy conditions when they cannot use satellite images.

And the technology plays a crucial role in their water management:

“We have reservoirs, and we need to be able to measure how much water we abstract and how much water we apply to crops.

“Water quality is also important, so we use conductivity meters. That data is important when we are selling water to other users”.

The technology also enables them to calculate how much their use of solar and wind power – of which they were early adopters – has enabled them to reduce the business’ carbon footprint.

“Across the whole survey, more than a quarter cited solution integration as being important in the future. In fact, it was the number one requirement”, says Mr Rainsley.

He also found encouragement in the fact that three quarters of respondents expressed a good level of confidence in using digital technology:

“The pandemic possibly accelerated people’s confidence. For such a large percentage to feel reasonably comfortable with the technology is very positive”.

As well as the barriers previously identified, respondents also highlighted lack of knowledge and related issues as being problems:

“We should be mindful that nearly a third of the felt they were insufficiently aware of what was available, and around 20% said a lack of time, insufficient training or lack of technical support were also barriers”.

Nevertheless, he says adoption of the technology was now embedded in UK agriculture and playing a role in helping farmers manage their businesses.

There remain some variations between farmers partially based on personal preferences but also on farm sizes:

“Early adopters tend to be more positive about digital technology.

“Staffing challenges were more relevant to the bigger farms, and not surprisingly they rated work and resource planning as being a more important area that digital technology could improve than the rest of the respondents”.

And one thing to ponder for staff working on those bigger farms: 18% of respondents said they had considered the role that autonomous vehicles might play in their business.