The future for technology in agriculture will not be developing a new sensor or system, it will be the re-organisation of data and how we use it. This is the assessment of O’Mara, who likened this to Henry Ford’s revolution in manufacturing: he did not change how tractors were manufactured, merely the organisation of that process.“There’s a massive challenge for agriculture to do this. Europe’s food production has stagnated,” said O’Mara. “One of the big reasons of that is the conflict around sustainable production.
The future for technology in agriculture will not be developing a new sensor or system, it will be the re-organisation of data and how we use it. This is the assessment of O’Mara, who likened this to Henry Ford’s revolution in manufacturing: he did not change how tractors were manufactured, merely the organisation of that process.
“There’s a massive challenge for agriculture to do this. Europe’s food production has stagnated,” said O’Mara. “One of the big reasons of that is the conflict around sustainable production.
“The challenge is to turn that data into useful information. The other big challenge is the cost of employment; agriculture is a low-margin business, so there’s no point developing technologies that are expensive. The next step is putting all the data together in a whole system approach and integrating that.”
He told the ASA conference in Kilkenny on Friday that there are five global mega trends that will drive change in this space:
Food and nutrition security.Climate change.Pressure on natural resources.More sustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns.Growth of bioeconomy and circular economy.The food system needs to change more radically in the coming decades than ever before (UK Food and Farming Foresight, 2011)
Sustainable intensification is the solution Teagasc put forward in its foresight plan, which identified five technology areas:
Plant and animal genomics: “What has been the game changer really has been the continuous reduction in the cost of genotyping and sequencing,” O’Mara said. “The most well-known application of this DNA technology is genomic selection. We are leading in that area of technology in Ireland, introduced here in 2009. We will probably see sheep genomic selection next year and in ryegrass breeding either later this year or early 2017.”The microbiota: This is the totality of a community of microbes in a particular organism, place or environment. “The game changer here that has really come about is our ability to study that through DNA sequencing,” said O’Mara. “It has led to really interesting lines of research. There’s an awful lot of evidence that microbiota influence your physical health and your mental health. That’s a huge opportunity for the food industry in terms of producing products for consumers interested in health.”Digital technologies: “There is no one single game changer in this, but you have the ongoing march of technology,” O’Mara conceded. “What’s happening really is that technology is getting cheaper and better. We have things like yield maps that give us a chance to manage poor spots in a field differently. We have real-time sensors with variable rate application. We have the possibility to detect weeds or other pathogens in fields. We have automated milking systems.”New technologies for food processing: Ongoing development of technologies in areas such as extraction technology, non-thermal technology, bot-transformation, biorefining, etc.Transformation in the food value chain system: “We are aware of the challenges agriculture faces, but technology can seize its opportunities and play its part,” O’Mara concluded. “One of the messages that comes out of this is the need to develop new partnerships between agri-food and ICT companies.” Read more
‘Next 35 years most important in agriculture’
Listen: introducing the prosumer
This is a subscriber-only article
SHARING OPTIONS: