Growth industry

From the pasta shortage at the local supermarket to the growing popularity of allotments, the UK is beginning to recognise the grim possibility that the age of cheap and plentiful food is coming to an end.

And while here in the well-fed West this spells minor culinary inconvenience or Sunday-supplement friendly lifestyle changes, the problems are more keenly felt elsewhere.

Last month, in his first major speech, Prof John Beddington, the government’s new chief scientific adviser, claimed the impending food crisis is the biggest challenge facing humanity. He warned that due to a combination of decreased rainfall, extreme weather events linked to climate change, and a world population expected to grow from six to nine billion by 2050, many developing world countries are once again staring into the abyss. And this time the West may be too worried about its own food supply to help out.

This is because at a time when more space is required for cultivation, the amount of available land is actually decreasing. Urban sprawl, the burgeoning biofuels industry and the growing appetite for meat among the emerging middle classes of south-east Asia, China and India are all limiting the amount of land available for food crops.

Experts agree that the world food supply needs to increase by 50 per cent by 2050, so the pressure is on the farming industry to come up with solutions. And engineering endeavour, which has walked hand-in-hand with farming since the dawn of organised society, has a tremendously important role to play.

One of the most promising developments is the emerging area of precision farming, where GPS-guided agricultural machines, armed with a detailed knowledge of a field’s varying characteristics, place seeds, fertilisers and nutrients where they are needed most.

Mark Moore, head of precision farming at tractor manufacturer Massey Ferguson, explained the theory. ‘We’re starting to tailor our inputs according to crop needs rather than taking the traditional blanket approach. For example, depending on soil fertility some areas of a field are better at producing a return than others. Having identified those more fertile parts we can increase profitability in those areas and apply inputs accordingly.’

Although the idea is not new, agribusiness consultant Neil Cameron believes precision farming is finally coming of age. ‘People have been playing around with it for years, but in the last 18 months we’ve hit a place where the equipment’s got cheaper, and the accuracy has got better and better.’

While this has much to do with the ever-improving resolution of satellite systems, one of the main reasons the approach now holds such promise is the advanced performance of today’s agricultural machines.

Today’s tractors, mainly GPS-guided and able to steer themselves, and combines have relegated the driver to the role of passenger. And there is more to come.

Earlier this year, agricultural machinery giant John Deere took the technology a step further with the launch of iTEC pro, a system that automates not only the steering, but also all of a tractor’s operations. ‘Pretty much from the moment you enter the field and set to work the operator is just a passenger,’ said Mark James, the company’s product manager for agricultural management solutions.

Moore sees similar trends on Massey Ferguson’s machines. ‘We’re very close to total autonomous vehicles,’ he said. ‘The operator doesn’t have to do much until something goes wrong.’