AIN'T GONNA WORK ON CAIN'S FARM NO MORE:

Robots will become common on farms, says Simon Blackmore, head of engineering at Harper Adams university in Shropshire, who is developing an autonomous strawberry harvester which could make redundant many in the army of Eastern Europeans who come to Britain each year for casual work.

"I think automated logistics will open up many things in agriculture that could never be done before. Little robots will be used to weed and spray fields. Drones could pick up canisters of spray and resupply them. Robotics will replace the seasonal workforce and the new workforce will need new skills.

"Big tractors have displaced much of the rural population already. It used to be 20 men and 20 horses. Then it was 20 men and one tractor. Now it's one man and 20 tractors."

Blackmore sees big data, machinery, climatology and agronomy all combining to increase productivity and reduce labour costs. "The technology is all here now. What was developed for very big farms is now applicable to mid-sized ones. But farmers don't want decisions to be made by machines. They want help making decisions," he says.

He thinks the era of giant machines on the British farm may be passing. The problem, he says is the weight of the machines which are compacting the land so much that bigger tractors are needed.

"Up to 90% of the energy going into cultivation is there to repair the damage caused by machines. If we do not damage the soil in the first place, we do not need to repair it. Horsepower does not help when weight is the problem."

Precison farming will become more sophisticated, he says. "Machine vision will recognises the leaves of the plant in real time and record the position. Micro dot sprayers put chemical only on the leaf of the plant, saving 99.99% of the volume used."

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