Green machines: sowing the seeds of farming 4.0

At the inaugural Future Farming Technology event, held recently in Birmingham’s NEC, the primary message was loud and clear: agriculture in its current state is broken. Practices largely unchanged since the 1960s have seen arable farming in particular stagnate and yields across the globe plateau. Farmers paint a picture of an industry over reliant on chemicals and gigantic machinery that’s squeezing the life out of once-rich soils. But a wave of new technology is helping the sector reverse the decline.

“We’re part of a global trend in how farming is changing,” said Sam Watson-Jones, co-founder of UK agritech startup, Small Robot Company (SRC). “We think that arable farming in its current form doesn’t work.”

As a fourth-generation Shropshire farmer, Watson-Jones is speaking from experience. He says yields have remained static for more than a quarter of a century, despite the UK using over a million tonnes of herbicides and fungicides each year.