The time is now for UK Ag-tech entrepreneurs drive farming forwards
Sam Watson Jones
Towards the end of 2016, I had a pivotal conversation with Professor Simon Blackmore, then at Harper Adams University. Simon is a leading thinker in the world of robotics for agriculture and I was talking to him about the potential for highly accurate, small robots for farming.
Part way through the conversation, he said something that changed my life:
“I’ve been around the world talking to farmers about this technology, and they all want it. I’m convinced that the market is ready. All of this technology has already been or is being developed in universities, both here and elsewhere. But the trouble is that none of the big machinery manufacturers want to develop it. What is needed is an entrepreneurial business to sit in the middle, between technical possibility and market demand, to make this stuff a commercial reality.”
I immediately thought, “this is what I want to do,” and four years later, now with a team of 30 people and still growing, it is what I am still doing as co-founder and president of Small Robot Company.
I was reminded of this conversation as I listened to some of the recent conversations between farmers around the transition to a post-Brexit world for UK agriculture.
Too often I have heard the phrase “farmers are led by policy.” The implication being that we have to wait for policy to take shape before we can make a plan for the future.
Surely we’re focusing on the wrong thing here. Policy is important, subsidies are important, but policy and subsidy agreements will not drive farming forwards nor find the solutions to farming’s problems.
DroneAg is a UK based team of farmers, agronomists, drone pilots and software engineers that provide drone training courses and easy to use software solutions.
Ag-tech entrepreneurs will drive farming forwards, and entrepreneurial businesses will come up with the solutions that will help UK farming thrive.
Only startups with a strong involvement from farmers will be able to create the transformative change that farming calls for. This is an opportunity for more farmers to start ag-tech businesses and for more graduates from our great agricultural universities to be at the forefront of these Tech businesses.
The UK is in an incredible position to become a true leader of the 4th Agricultural Revolution. We have truly world class agricultural universities, great farms and farmers, highly productive land and a huge variety of crops. We are fantastic at innovation and ideas.
We are not very good at commercialising our ideas. Farmers have a chance to change this.
Farming is a unique and fragmented industry. It is very difficult for complete outsiders to understand how change needs to happen and to persuade farmers of the need to change. Outside perspectives are important, of course. My co-founder knew almost nothing about farming before starting Small Robot Company, and now he is quite the expert and even occasionally comes up with good ideas. The combination of insider and outsider is important in creating change.
Small Robot Company is only looking at a tiny slice of the whole pie at the moment, and we are far from the only farmer-led company in this space - Dynium Robot, Hectare, DroneAg, Stable and others are good UK examples of farmer-led ag-tech startups.
The industry is experiencing massive change. It is awash with opportunities for people from all sorts of backgrounds: robotics, mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence, plant biology, data science, experience design, sensor development… … the list could go on and on.
Central to all of these opportunities has to be farmers directing this effort towards areas where the technology has the biggest potential for positive change and meeting market demand.
So if you’re an ambitious, driven farmer don’t waste that talent sitting on some committee to shape future government policy - go and build a startup, go and team up with an entrepreneur who is working in this space, go and find any way that you can to support the creation of something that can transform this industry.
That is how our industry will thrive. The time is now.
