Edinburgh conference focuses on precision farming

technology: European experts in precision farming techniques gather for conference in Edinburgh

Scotland’s farming workforce needs a skills overhaul if the industry is to benefit from developments in precision farming technologies.

Wayne Powell, SRUC principal and chief executive, said Scottish producers had huge opportunities to drive productivity and profitability thanks to new farm technologies.

But without changing behaviours and encouraging people to think differently about the skills and knowledge they need to work in agriculture, those opportunities would never be fully grasped.

Speaking at the opening of the European Conference on Precision Agriculture in Edinburgh, Professor Powell said: “We have exponential developments in knowledge and understanding, and at the same time we have demands on how to apply this knowledge in new ways.

“(To be a success) it requires new ways of working, new collaborations, changes in behaviour and a real focus on step-changes rather than what we have done in the past.”

He said the biggest change had to come from reshaping agricultural education so that new entrants came to farms with knowledge of how to use technology, as well as understanding how to apply the data it gathered in a practical way.

“One of the biggest impediments of things changing with precision agriculture is the skills base of our workers,” he added.

“If we couple that with whatever happens with Brexit, the likelihood is we will have to make a higher proportion of our indigenous population to have higher levels of skills.

“That means we will have to focus on the careers and training opportunities.”

He said future training needed to focus on vocational and practical skills, as well as the traditional skills that have always been important.

“Industry needed to design a curriculum that was not only responding to what was happening, but also at the forefront of ensuring a work-ready population,” said Prof Powell.

Meanwhile, precision agriculture should not be viewed as a ‘quick fix’ for Scotland’s farming industry to overcome challenges around efficiency and productivity, according to an expert in farm technology.

Ian Yule, professor in precision agriculture at Massey University in New Zealand, said many developments in smart technologies had significant potential to help create more sustainable and profitable farming systems.

But he said questions about affordability and how useful some precision farming tools were to farmers still needed to be answered.

Speaking at the Edinburgh conference, Professor Yule said researchers had to do more to understand the purpose and value of each application they were developing.

He said: “We shouldn’t be adding lots of costs to farming (with developments in precision technology). It may be technically exciting, but we have to drive out costs.

“(Developers) need to make sure the technology is affordable and adds value to farming operations – we have to be very clear about what we are offering and why.”

Prof Yule said it was important that scientists, policy-makers and industry did not think that precision technology held all of the solutions to the problems facing agriculture and food production.

Instead they needed to find ways to work collaboratively on long-term projects to find solutions which were cost-effective for farmers.

“We’ve got to be very careful. There’s a growing tendency for politicians to want quick solutions, and innovation has become a buzz word,” added Prof Yule.

“We know the technology is capable of giving us the answers we need, the challenge now is to develop systems that farmers actually want.

“There’s a glitz factor in a lot of technology, but there’s more hard work to be done to get it right.

We need public-private research partnerships over longer periods if we want to achieve more sustainable solutions.”

He said some of the biggest practical gains for farmers around precision technology lie in automation, as well as adding value through the supply chain.

Picture: Getty Images. A flying copter with raised chassis and a camera filming in the countryside. Technology such as this and drones are playing an increasingly important role in farming.