In this first episode of my new podcast, Agriculture Reinvented, we explore what digitalisation and big data have to offer agriculture, in conversation with Richard Tiffin, Chief Scientific Officer at the UK agri-food data company, Agrimetrics.
Richard first described in big picture terms what it is that data can bring to farming. So he describes how we can access a whole lot more data than ever before, across whole fields, farms, landscapes, regions and countries, for example using satellite technology. Advances in new analytical methods, such as AI and ML, can then get to work to analyse those data, sift out noise, and help make new advances in understanding.
We then went on to discuss applications in a farm setting. Richard gave the eg of new pressures on farms not able to apply pesticides in a prophylactic way, both because of new consumer sensibilities, and because of worries about pesticide resistance. Big datasets, coupled with AI and ML, can provide an EWS that a wind-borne pest is prevalent in the local landscape, or likely to appear. You can then combine that knowledge with an understanding of soil type, watercourses, legal requirement and weather, for farmers then actively to manage that outbreak, if necessary.
We talked around issues around adoption: Richard described how digitalisation technologies have to make it easy for non-tech-savvy farmers to supply data, almost without realising it. And we discussed briefly the need to attract new, digitally skilled developers into the industry. And we explored whether there were examples of hype in the application of digitalisation and AI, in the field of agriculture, example making excessive claims, say in the field of robotics.
But, before all of that, I asked Richard to explain the core visions that fired up the founding of his company, eight years ago. It turns out there were two “realisations”, as he called them. It turns out Richard was inspired by a desire to avoid a 2008-style financial crisis, in the food system, and a need to overcome fragmentation in the food sector, to speed up adoption of digital technologies.