Stores to start selling food farmed by robots

Supermarket will begin a trial using the technology to find and eradicate weeds as well as planting seeds

BRITISH supermarkets are to start selling food farmed in the UK by robots for the first time, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Waitrose will use autonomous farm- ing robots to analyse, plant and protect crops from weeds at a farm near Stockbridge, Hants.

In a three-year trial, the robots – named Tom, Dick and Harry – will start cultivating fields used to grow wheat for bread and flour sold in Waitrose.

The robots, developed by Shropshire-based start-up The Small Robot Company, uses artificial intelligence to scan thousands of pictures of a specific field, which allow them to spot weeds and plant seeds in the best location.

Farmers on the 4,000-acre Leckford Estate hope that the new technology will cut costs and improve yields – something they claim needs to happen if subsidies and the supply of European workers are affected by Brexit.

Andrew Hoad, head farmer on the Leckford Estate, said the project was “hugely exciting” and would help improve the economics of UK farming after the loss of EU agricultural subsidies.

“The months ahead are going to be challenging for everyone,” he said. “Great innovation sometimes comes out of complex challenges.”

Waitrose hopes to eventually extend the robots to assist in the production of rapeseed, used in canola oil products.

One of the robots, known as Tom, is able to spot weeds by travelling across fields and taking thousands of pictures.

Artificial intelligence software uses GPS and pattern recognition software to tell the robots and farmers where exactly there are weeds and how many of them are in a field. This means pesticides can be accurately placed directly on the individual weeds by the farmer, rather than spraying a whole acre.

Previously, farmers would have had to pay a specialist agronomist to survey and analyse the land.

Additionally, another larger robot called Dick, which is about the size of a small car, will be told where the weeds are and autonomously remove them.

Harry, the final robot, will drill and plant seeds, as well as replace seeds that have not germinated.

The robots will first be used to conduct farming in the supermarket’s wheat fields, and if the trial goes well, they will then harvest rapeseed.

Sam Watson-Jones, co-founder of The Small Robot Company and a fourth generation farmer, believes that the pressure from Brexit has caused farmers to innovate, and adopt new ideas.

He said: “We’re on the cusp of a fourth agricultural revolution, taking farming into the digital age, with British ideas and British technology at the helm.”

The robots are expected to start work in February when the wheat fields will start to be prepared for the first harvest of 2019.