This year will be a "great year" for farming as it tinkers on the verge of the next farming revolution, according to a robotics company.
Farming is set to go digital in 2018, with the UK seeing agritech finally move from field trial to field.
Agritech start-up the Small Robot Company predicts that the technology will be commercialised within three to five years and mainstream at scale within ten.
It says commercial field trials that demonstrate robotics’ potential at scale will be completed within the next growing season.
Harper Adams University is at the forefront with such technology, with its robots and its Hands Free Hectare autonomous farming project.
“2018 will be a great year for farming. Profit, yield and the environment have been ongoing worries for years - and now there’s Brexit to contend with too,” says Sam Watson Jones, co-founder of agritech start-up Small Robot Company.
“But finally there’s light at the end of the tunnel. We are on the verge of the next farming revolution.”
'Much broader ecosystem'
The agritech company predicts that robotics are only the "first piece of the puzzle" in a much bigger picture.
It says the fully-fledged digital farm will comprise a "much broader ecosystem" encompassing robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence.
Ultimately, this will end in the "Digital Transformation of Agriculture", and this will unlock the potential for exponential improvements in farmers' ability to collect, process and act on data.
One way in which it could change the productivity of farms is to free the labour up from tasks which do not add value and give more farmers more opportunity to move up the value chain.
The driver for all this change is the growth in artificial intelligence. In the agricultural industry, it is expected to grow exponentially, reaching a global worth of $2.6bn by 2025, new figures state.
According to the new research report on the "AI in Agriculture Market by Technology - Global Forecast to 2025", the market is expected to grow by 22.5% to reach $2.6bn by 2025 from $518.7m in 2017.
AI in the UK
The British government, in its Industrial Strategy, has put AI at the heart of its growing productivity aims.
It wants to make the UK the world’s most innovative nation by 2030 by capitalising on AI and a "new industrial revolution".
The government has committed to investing £725 million over the next 3 years to achieve this.
A new £500m project has been announced in Cambridge which seeks to cement Britain's position as an innovator in the growing agri-tech industry.
The development will accommodate up to 4,000 employees, and will bring together agricultural and tech companies to spearhead a centre of global agricultural innovation and productivity.
