A Cornish farmer is trialling a number of agri-tech related initiatives in partnership with the University of Plymouth, which are designed to improve soil health, including the use of a robot dog to extract and measure data for the trial.
Collaborating with not for profit organisation, Innovative Farmers, and Farm Net Zero, Malcolm Barrett from St Tudy, has trialled methods of sowing maize that minimise ploughing, including using “strip till” machinery that disturb the soil in strips rather than ploughing the entire field.
Typically, heavy ploughing occurs on tillage farms to produce the fine seed bed required for the cultivation of maize, which is easily outcompeted in its early stage of growth.
However, extensive ploughing can degrade and compact the soil, resulting in excess run off which raises the risk of water pollution in rivers.
This is a notable challenge for farmers in the south-west in particular, where large quantities of maize is grown to feed livestock.
Since reducing the use of the plough on his farm via a variety of min-till methods, Barrett has seen improvements in his soil with less flooding occurring and more worms.
Malcolm Barrett said: “We’re learning more about what the soil can do for us, and what we can do for the soil. It’s helping everyone by helping the environment and we’re getting huge benefits on our farm too.
“If we can understand our soil and our crops more, we can farm smarter by targeting our approach.
“Having thousands of data points from the robotic sensors helps to build a whole picture to see if there’s certain areas that need attention and single out management practices that work.”
Robots
The University of Plymouth has pioneered research into agri-tech innovations, such as this trial, designed to improve land and water management.
This includes the development and application of sensors that estimate soil organic matter and moisture levels, using natural radioactivity signals that come from all soil minerals.
These sensors have hoisted onto robots designed to reach even the most hard-to-reach of places and programmed to travel slowly with greater accuracy in mind in a bid to than create more consistent data, mitigate the risk of human error and reduce the work of the farmer.
One such robotic form deployed in this manner in the trial is a robotic dog, which was constructed by the company, Robotrik, in conjunction with the University of Plymouth.
“This trial has meant we can get our science out of the lab and test it in a real-world setting, feeding back into other research programmes we’re working on. In this field lab, we’re using robotics to deploy soil assessment solutions that the world could take on.
“It’s great to be working with real farms – co-designing research questions with farmers is really important as it makes the technology we develop genuinely useful,” director of the Sustainable Earth Institute, Prof. Will Blake, said.
The data produced by this technology can then be used by farmers to assess the efficacy of their farm practices and identify potential areas of improvement.
