Hands-free farming has sweet taste of success

The field of barley at Harper Adams University, planted last year and up to now left unsullied by human hand, has now been gathered from the field and is now waiting to be malted and turned into beer.

“The barley looks good – you wouldn’t tell it apart from regular barley,” said Martin Abell, from project partner Precision Decisions. “We hope to malt some and make it into a Hands-Free Beer. We have breweries in contact with us, we just need somebody who can malt it for us.”

Supping a pint made from the barley would prove a satisfying conclusion to what has been a ground-breaking project in the fields of Shropshire. Researchers Kit Franklin and Jonathan Gill joined up with Mr Abell to plant, cultivate and harvest the crop without ever setting foot in the field over the last year.

Drone technology and GPS-assisted, remote-controlled tractors have been used to drill, plant and spray the crop, and now a remote-controlled combine harvester has been through the field to bring the crop home.

The research team are still calculating the outcome of the project, but the crop is expected to deliver just short of five tonnes of barley per acre.

That’s below what many farmers would expect to bring in from their fields this year – last year’s national averages were between 5.6 and 5.9 tonnes per acre – but it’s still a successful outcome for a project that has seen the trio involved learning on the job.

“It’s slightly below conventional yields, although we did plant our barley comparatively late,” Mr Abell said.

“As our tractor didn’t quite drill in a straight line and didn’t spray in straight lines we have lost some crops, so it maybe wasn’t actually a hectare-worth. We have only had a year, so we had to learn as we go along – we’d love the opportunity to go again.”

He added: “The harvest has actually been the smoothest operation we have done, which is amazing really.

“We have spent all year wondering how we are going to do it but it’s been the smoothest thing, and the best-operating robot. We have learnt a lot as we have gone, and as we have gone we have had more time to understand what we need to do, and to learn the quirks of the project.”

The team have used open-source equipment, and adapted it to tractors and combines to allow them to complete the work.

Existing technology has been put to use and adapted for the purpose. That has included using drones to look over the fields, small remote-controlled buggies collecting samples from the fields, and adapted software driving the tractors to ensure nobody has trodden the sacrosanct soil during the lifetime of the project.

Mr Abell said: “Not everybody is in love with the idea, but I don’t think any new idea comes out without some kind of controversy.

“Strangely it’s the younger ones who are more sceptical. The experience of the older guys is that they have driven tractors and see it is not the best use of their time, and they would be better monitoring and making decisions about crops rather than driving up and down in straight lines.

“The younger generations maybe see it as a threat, as automation has the potential to change their job role.

“It’s not going to happen overnight. We have only set out to prove that it is possible.

“Commercial businesses are interested in what we are doing but at the same time I firmly believe they are already working on this technology.

“It’s a matter of when they release it, and whether the market is ready rather than whether the technology is ready.

“It’s Kit and Jonathan’s baby, and they set it up with the whole intention of being able to talk about it and inspire the younger generations to be involved in farming and engineering.”

Now the project is complete the trio are free to walk on the field once more – but it’s proving harder than you might expect.

Mr Abell added: “I have spent a year walking down the sides and peering in – it has become a thing, you don’t walk on that field.

“Hopefully if we can go again it will be foot-free for another year.”