How to get quality and quantity year after year
Agri-TechE 
What were your results like this year? Could you do better? Getting higher quality and quantity from the crop with more strategic use of inputs is one of the benefits of precision farming and a number of the most promising developments in this area are going to be presented at our next event, co-hosted by Niab: ‘Innovations for Sustainable Intensification’.
We asked Stuart Knight, Deputy Director of Niab, about the progress that is being made by the SIP (Sustainable Intensification Platform) Project 1, a research programme funded by Defra and the Welsh Government.
He explains that the aim of SIP is to provide practical advice for farmers by bringing together a multi-disciplinary community spanning academia, industry, environment and policy to look at the issues from many angles.
Alternative cultivation
We have been evaluating a range of farm management practices which could be adopted more widely. For arable, this includes over-winter cover crops, less intensive cultivation systems and using organic wastes as fertilisers. For livestock we have been evaluating reseeding of permanent pasture with high sugar grasses, improving grassland soils and grazing systems.
Improving soil fertility through selection of the most appropriate cultivation technique is a good example of how yields can be improved, environment impacts reduced and resilience to climate change increased. We are looking for these win-win scenarios and capturing the knowledge effectively.
The project has developed new approaches to measuring the environmental as well as the economic performance of farms, without requiring large amounts of new data to be collected. Work on the different study farms is ongoing, and has already demonstrated the potential for changed farming practices to help deliver SI. The results should provide growers and advisers with additional information and tools to help meet the challenges and make the most of the opportunities of sustainable intensification.
Farm profitability
Sustainable intensification is all about trying to improve farm profitability and environmental performance at the same time. Efficiency is key to both current profitability and minimising emissions to air or losses to water. Enhancing the soil and biodiversity are important environmental objectives but can also contribute to improvements in future productivity and resilience.
Stuart will be talking at ‘Innovations for Sustainable Intensification’; find out more here.
Post Overview
Agri-TechE Related Posts
Building soil carbon for healthier soils
ATW23: Heat and Drought – University of Essex
Wilder, wetter, better for wildlife – second round of Landscape Recovery
Smart irrigation becoming more attractive option for spuds
Bayer announces strategic partnership with Microsoft
“I’m not a great mover in those kinds of circles,” says William Martin, referring to his fellow presenters at the upcoming Agri-TechE 
“Innovative new thinking is integral to the future of agriculture and we see the digital overtaking the physical,” says David Hickie, Technology Lead for FMCG at PA Consulting and a speaker at the 
PA Consulting
Callum Chalmers is Business Development Manager for 
Farmscan AG is to become one of the first agri-tech companies to provide an application programming interface (API) for its software, which will open up its product for integration by other manufacturers.
“We are very close now to a true ‘connected farm’. I believe the technology and software is there, it is now just a matter of working out the bugs,” says farmer PJ Walker of RTK Farming. With three fellow farmers he has developed a system that makes GPS accurate to within centimetres. 
The big challenge for early stage entrepreneurs, seeking venture capital, is to become a compelling storyteller. To persuade a potential investor you need to create a narrative, almost like a spoken journalist, that holds the attention of the reader or listener, advises Michael Lee, Managing Director at Syngenta Ventures, who will be talking at the final of the 
To me open innovation is about accessing something similar, just more and better to what you already have in-house. For example, open innovation works well for the pharmaceutical industry, because basically the large pharma companies are looking to build their pipelines with new medicines. If they see something of interest it can be developed, trialled and distributed by the larger machine. They are better able to take a potential new treatment through clinical trials and commercialise it than an early-stage company, as they have the sales force and capability in place.
Dr Lydia Smith is Head of the 
With the introduction of molecular genetics we now have better methods for quantifying and characterising microbes, not just fungi but also bacteria, and this is giving new insights. This is one reason why soil biology is attracting renewed interest and we are currently bidding for a couple of major projects in this area.
Field pathogenomics, which uses genetics alongside traditional disease assessment to identify different races or groups of fungi, is giving new insights into rust fungi, a disease that affects cereal and wheat crops in unpredictable ways. This is enabling researchers to provide more informed recommendations to growers and industry.
Aponic Ltd has developed a soilless growing system that uses 90 per cent less water than traditional agriculture, does not emit harmful run-off into the environment, and reduces the dependence on fossil fuels. These advantages have attracted both national and international interest. 
