WHAT DID WE HEAR AT THE 58TH READING AGRICULTURAL CLUB CONFERENCE ON TECHNOLOGY IN AGRICULTURE?

This was a great evening for an event that has a long and distinguished heritage going back almost 60 years.  The recently held 2024 event was as well attended as any in the last 5/6 years, with an audience of well over 100 made up of students and staff from the THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE, POLICY AND DEVELOPMENT (SAPD) at the University of Reading and members of the Institute of Agricultural Management Thames Valley Branch.

My role on the evening?  Simple - to chair the Q&A session after three excellent presentations from Ed Ford of Dyson Farming , Laura Bouvet from Agri-TechE and then Dr Gopal Kutwaroo from Tech Sense City.

With such a good panel of speakers and questions coming in from the floor thick and fast once we got going - this was a real pleasure.

Across the evening, a wide range of points was made about the role and future impact of technology in the agri food sector.  It would be impossible to capture all the wealth and knowledge that the panel shared with us, but some of the most important elements of what was being said to me seemed to include:

• all industries are embracing the role of technology. Whilst there are some great examples of this in agriculture and farming, as a general comment, the agri food sector is still behind the game in this respect in comparison with other areas of the economy
• the main driver for the uptake of new technology in farming will be the need to gain and retain competitive advantage. Those that embrace the benefits that tech can bring will generally thrive – whilst those who do not might find the future much more challenging
• there can be a wide range of other benefits that can be gained from the use of better and enhanced tech, such as improvements to biodiversity, reduced agri input usage, more precision-based farming applications and techniques, improved soil management, the use of robots and satellite/drone technology - all leading towards better overall food security and resilience
• at the same time, adopters of new technology need to be clear about what business problem/challenge they are addressing. They need to avoid the “tech hype” and carefully assess their expectations of this, the internal business culture and technical skills that might be required to make any such new initiative work.  As with all good projects, a strong sense of leadership from the top is required to make it all happen
• digital unification is on the way, but this needs a full supply chain approach covering suppliers, farmers, co-operatives, food processors, retailers and wholesalers.  This sort of approach, however, can help tackle the challenges being seen as a “perfect storm” that UK farming finds itself in at the moment
• across the UK/EU, there are some 6,000 agri tech start ups looking for funding - it is likely that at least 80% of these will not come to fruition. Millions, if not billions, of pounds and US$ have been poured into projects such as #vertical farming but already we are seeing a high degree of business failure in this sector all around the world. High energy costs do not help of course at the moment, but one of the key success factors is having a very strong customer base for the products being grown and a high level of market and customer understanding, beyond just being on top of the tech
• there is a need to have a long-term view of the benefits of the use of agri tech going forwards - this might involve developing a 10 year plan which makes the next 5 years and more a very exciting time to be involved with farming as the landscape will inevitably change hugely in this time
• there is a good deal of work going on in the use of robotics, but the full use of this technology in farming and post-harvest functions is still at least 5 years way and robots will never totally replace human inputs - even robots need managing from time to time!
• agri tech is no “silver bullet” for the challenges faced by UK farming, but the development of gene editing is a major step change in how we produce in the UK and the opportunities this type of technology can bring are significant
• there is probably more support for the development of agri tech projects from the UK government than ever before but at the same time, the role of entrepreneurial private finance should not be overlooked at all

 All in all, a great session. Well done to the students for organising this event – a very enjoyable and interesting evening and here’s looking forward to the 59th event this time next year.

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John is a Divisional Director with Promar International the value chain consulting arm of Genus ABS Genus plc and a Visiting Lecturer at THE SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE, POLICY AND DEVELOPMENT (SAPD) at the University of Reading