Welcome to the fourth agricultural revolution

three and a half years ago

i came very close to having a car crash

it was 5 45 in the morning and i was

driving to work

and if you live in the uk and are crazy

enough to be up at that time

there’s a program on the radio called

farming today and i was listening to

that

half asleep they featured on the program

the oxford farming conference which is

the center point of the uk’s farming

industry

where representative of the biggest

farms farm businesses and even

government ministers

come to talk about the industry that is

farming

the theme that year was the future

and i listened to a vaguely interesting

interview

with the head of a large tractor company

and they were talking about the future

as they saw it

vast vehicles delivering incremental

efficiency

for the industrial process that is

arable

farming these vehicles were becoming

driverless

which meant that more could be done by

less people

whole fields could be sprayed faster

plows could go deeper

drills could chuck seed into the ground

faster or with fewer

or even no people which was fascinating

stuff

but then the next interview was with the

professor

from the agricultural university in the

rural

north west of england in serious

considered tones

professor simon blackmore spoke of a

revolution

he started by politely refuting the

value of big industrial vehicles

he even questioned that farming is an

industrial process

at all farming he said is not about the

cranking out of a crop

farming is about the caring for plants

and each plant

despite centuries of driving towards

uniformity

is still different so instead of

treating the field as a single data

point

and the uniform application of chemicals

and fertilizer

we should be looking at each individual

plant

and caring for it at that level

this is not the work for big industrial

machines

this is the work for small precise

accurate vehicles

this is the work for artificial

intelligences

this is the work for robots

by using these robots we could only use

the chemicals and fertilizers

on the plants that needed it by using

these robots we could not only produce

more food

but we could make the whole system

sustainable as far as i could see it

this was the future it was the future of

food

it was the future of the environment it

was the future survival of mankind and

they’d all been defined

by those serious studious tones

that was when i nearly crashed the car

that

was my moment of change so i guess right

now you’re wondering

what do you mean the future of food

surely farming’s pretty good right we

all eat in fact

more people eat more food now than they

ever done in the past

and food poverty while still bad has

dropped by 70

since 1945. then at the end of world war

ii the third agricultural revolution

really kicked off and between 1945 and

1995

average wheat production in some places

more than doubled

industrial farming in europe and north

america went from producing three tons

per hectare

with small tractors and small fields

sometimes using horses

and small a few chemicals to eight

tonnes per hectare

in massive fields with large tractors

and the heavy use

of chemicals and fertilizers but

meanwhile

across the majority of the world the

people who can’t afford to buy the

machinery

who had a farm too small to use these

massive vehicles

lost out the majority of farms in africa

and asia for example are not

hundreds or thousands of hectares they

are five hectares

or one these hundreds

of millions of farmers largely missed

out on those advancements in yield

and then even in europe and north

america

the improvements stopped since 1995 the

trend line

for wheat production in the world has

flatlined

and big agriculture the multi-billion

pound

revenue companies that make the

machinery and the chemicals that drive

the modern industrial agricultural

process

have been trying to fix it as i

mentioned from the start they are

ramping up their industrial processes

in the only way that industrial

companies know how by making things

bigger

and faster and more and as a result

things are

changing over 40 percent of the world’s

fields are degraded and that

is just getting worse soil compaction in

the uk is costing

1 billion pounds a year in lost earnings

since 1961

soils have lost 30 percent of their

carbon

and nitrogen the uk

loses 2.2 million tons of soil

a year straight into the rivers and then

into the sea

why well to put it simply these big

attractors crush the soil

they turn the soil into a hard rock-like

substance that simply cannot support

life

so to counter this farmers have to plow

they have to turn over the soil and

break it up

but by doing this they release all the

lovely top soil

with all its lovely nutrients to the

wind and the rain

where it is washed or blown away

it also destroys all exposes to

predators

the worms and the beetles that create

nutrients

and eat the pests when you lose these

nutrients

and these natural defenses you have to

apply chemicals

herbicides pesticides fungicides and

fertilizers

and they are ever more expensive

so farmers all farmers

are slowly going out of business in fact

the third agricultural revolution that

views food

as an industrial process is dead

the system where greater production and

greater efficiency

is driven by bigger machinery and more

chemicals has

stopped working the wasteful

unsustainable mass production of food

needs to be replaced replaced with a

system that is precise

and accurate and efficient

a system that knows every plant and

understands

what that plant needs a system that both

increases food production

and reduces chemicals a system that

feeds the world

but does it sustainably welcome

to the fourth agricultural revolution

so let’s go back to that near car crash

so as soon as i got into work i

emailed simon by lunchtime we were

talking and i was inspired to think

about how it could be possible

to make this vision of light precise

robots on a farm

into a reality this really kicked off

when a couple of months later he

introduced me

to sam a fourth generation arable farmer

sam saw the problems first hand when he

returned

to his family farm he saw that their

yields hadn’t increased since the 90s

and then their costs had doubled he too

could see the damage that was being done

and had been inspired to think

about how this old system could be torn

up

and done in a radical new way it took

one call between us for us to realize we

were two sides of the same coin

we could both see the massive problem on

the farm

but what do farmers think so my

background is in user experience and

this helped me to realize that the

technology is all very well

but if people don’t want to use over it

doesn’t work for them then they won’t

adopt it

so if sam spent months finding out six

months

on the road sitting in farm kitchens

just listening

what were their fears what would they

trust how do they feel

about the potential of technology how

open were they to adopting it

and the results were staggering to us

farmers were not the luddites that i’d

assumed

they understood the technology and no

one knew better

than the stresses that were being put on

the soil and the environment

some of these farmers viewed their lives

on the farm

as 40 experiments and want nothing more

than those experiments to make things

more efficient and more environmentally

friendly

but they simply don’t have the money to

buy

new farming machinery that may or may

not work

nor could they afford the machinery that

would be superseded the following year

or might break down

all be the target for thieves so

we came up with farming as a service

a model that wasn’t based around the

machinery itself

but around the outcomes the machinery is

designed to provide

a model that doesn’t automate a single

function

but delivers a healthy crop at the end

of the year a model that is paid for

per hectare a model that farmers can

trial

easily with no risk

but most importantly a service that

cares for a crop

by understanding each individual

plant and to make this model work we

realize

that we would not have to have one

single purpose robot but three distinct

robots that did three distinct

drops i would like to introduce you to

tom

dick and harry a service of precise

and lightweight robots that don’t

compact the soil and carry out all the

processes of planting and monitoring and

caring for the crop

right up to the point of harvest tom

lives on the farm collecting data

all day every day data on each

individual crop plant

the soil the weeds the pests and the

diseases

tom works completely autonomously

navigating the fields

and returning to its kennel at the end

of the day to recharge

and share the information that he has

captured

dick is a crop care robot sent out to

the farm

only when necessary who kills the weeds

using electricity

treats individual plants against pests

and diseases and feeds

only the plants that are hungry

because dick only kills the weeds that

actually threaten a crop

while plants can be left to grow

stopping the imbalance caused

by green deserts of crop fields

because dick only sprays the plants that

need fungicide or pesticide

huge amounts of chemicals are saved and

invertebrates

can thrive harry plants

each seed individually at exactly the

right depth and exactly the right

spacing straight

into the previous year’s stubble with no

ploughing and no tillage

by not disturbing the soil it is

retaining up to four tons of carbon in

the soil that would have been released

by planning tom dick and harry are

nothing without the brains of the

operation wilma

and wilmer turns the information from

tom into instructions

for dick and harry wilmer uses ai

to sort through all the data and work

out which plants are healthy and which

need help

wilma shows the farmer what is happening

and provides us

with a global view of the progress of

all the crops

together tom dick harry and wilmer

can make a huge difference they can

reduce chemicals and energy usage by

over 90

they can bring the level of co2

emissions down from around five tons per

hectare

to actually sequestering carbon in the

soil

tom dick and harry can make farms

profitable again

across the world because we can deliver

this service without farmers

having to buy the technology we can work

with farmers

of any size no matter where they are in

the world

which means that this revolution can be

global

small robot company is one of hundreds

of

agritex startups from around the world

most of those are focused on the fourth

agricultural revolution goals

of precision and accuracy and

sustainability

and with the farmers support and the

support of the governments

and you we can change farming into a

sustainable

carbon positive benefit to mankind and

the world we live in

we believe that we can make all these

farms environmentally sustainable

we believe we can make those farms

carbon positive

we can turn farmers from being the

villains of the environmental crisis

that we find ourselves in

into being the heroes that they truly

are

but most of all in this time of

unremitting negative news

when it is difficult to know how one

person can make a difference

we think our three small robots have one

more job

they can bring hope thank you

you