Three farming technology projects are set to receive a share of £9.13 million in government funding aimed at helping them to carry out research.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced the funding for the Agri-Opencore, AG ARC and Potato-LITE projects today (Friday, March 24).
The funding will support these projects developing robotic crop harvesting for horticulture; an autonomous system to change cows’ bedding to improve their health, welfare and productivity; and a more environmentally friendly approach to potato cultivation.
The three projects will receive the over £9 million in funding as part of the UK government’s £270 million Farming Innovation Programme.
Farming Minister Mark Spencer said that it is important that the government continues to fund projects like these as it supports farmers to “deliver sustainable food production and protect the environment”.
“Innovation, research and development will help keep the sector at the cutting edge of technology as we look into the future,” he said.
Interim executive director of healthy living and agriculture of Innovate UK, Katrina Hayter, said: “These projects have all demonstrated not only an innovative solution to a real-life, on-farm problem, but also the value of partnerships and collaboration between different sector experts.
“For novel technology to truly succeed, it needs the input of the farmers themselves for the day-to-day realities of its use.
“We’re really pleased that these partnerships have this idea at their core, and we now look forward to working with them as they develop their solutions further and bring the benefits to life.”
Agri-Opencore
The Agri-Opencore project, lead by APS Produce, has been awarded £3.8 million to accelerate its delivery of robotic crop systems for horticulture.
The funding will be used to help the project create the world’s first open development platform for agri-robotic crop harvesting.
The government said that the open development platform will enable multiple organisation to contribute, allowing cross-sector collaboration and demonstration of technologies on English farms.
The government said that contributors to the project hope it will accelerate the adoption of robotic picking by two years.
Phil Pearson from APS Produce said the project is an “exciting and vital project” for the fresh produce industry.
“It promises to deliver the significant progress required to automate fresh produce harvesting in the UK,” he said.
“As this work brings leading technology providers, Dogtooth, Xihelm and Wootzano, with the academic excellence of the University of Lincoln team, we can expect significant progress towards autonomous harvesting.”
AG ARC
The AG ARC project, led by Garnett Farm Engineering, has been awarded over £2.5 million towards the development of it autonomous cow cubicle bedding unit.
Cow comfort, it said, is a key factor in reducing the chances of cows suffering from mastitis with dry and clean bedding and careful management on cubicles being vital.
Currently, the changing of bedding must be done manually by farmers but the project aims to develop an intelligent robotic cubicle bedder to monitor and respond to key sensor data to optimise the dispense of bedding.
Andrew Garnett of AG Products said: “We look forward to collaborating with the University of Liverpool on this exciting project to further enhance our cattle bedding solutions to farmers, improving cow welfare and productivity.
“Our passion for innovation has seen the recent launch of the AG Duo; the AG ARC will further revolutionise the industry’s approach to cattle bedding.”
Potato-LITE
The Potato-LITE project has been awarded £2,830,000 to explore optimised systems for potato cultivation.
It aims to transform potato tillage through developing new cultivation equipment and systems and deliver this through a partnership between:
- PepsiCo;
- McCain;
- Grimme;
- Strawson Ltd;
- JRO Griffiths;
- H Sutton & Son;
- JM Bubb & Son;
- Cranfield University;
- Harper Adams University;
- CHAP.
The project is focussed on reducing the depth, intensity and number of operations required aimed at improving soil health and reducing the enviornmental impact of potato production whilst also reducing costs to make the potato sector more resilient and sustainable.
Shaunagh Slack, the project lead for Potato-LITE at PepsiCo, said agriculture is core to the company’s business and it believes that sustainable agricultural practices are pivotal in protecting and enhancing natural resources.
“Through Potato-LITE, we have a unique opportunity to form a leading industry and academic partnership to transform potato tillage and quantify the benefits on soil health and greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.
“This four year research project will enable the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices among UK farming communities as we work towards a net zero future.”
