Agriculture in the next 100 years

CornishTone

Member
BASIS
Location
Cornwall
Agriculture in which country?

Britain...
IMG_1497333602.939386.jpg


The rest of the world...
IMG_1497333638.157018.jpg


??? :cautious:
 

willy

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Rutland
Agriculture in which country?

Britain...View attachment 534518

The rest of the world...View attachment 534520

??? :cautious:




Think i prefer britains option. Can see it now ........a few sheep, a crook(just for show) .chewing on a peice of straw and drinking a cider. While the walkers, cyclists and doggers look at me with contempt. But at least i wont be stuck in an office playing computer games with giant remote controlled vehicles.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
Think i prefer britains option. Can see it now ........a few sheep, a crook(just for show) .chewing on a peice of straw and drinking a cider. While the walkers, cyclists and doggers look at me with contempt. But at least i wont be stuck in an office playing computer games with giant remote controlled vehicles.

You are too near Rutland Water to admit to doggers :eek::rolleyes:
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
The bubble will burst soon. A tedder costs as much as a tractor did 30 years ago, a tractor costs the same as a house......all on finance.(n)
As said earlier, bigger and bigger with large ' company ' farms, with a few ' museum ' farms in between.
 

CornishTone

Member
BASIS
Location
Cornwall
Think i prefer britains option. Can see it now ........a few sheep, a crook(just for show) .chewing on a peice of straw and drinking a cider. While the walkers, cyclists and doggers look at me with contempt. But at least i wont be stuck in an office playing computer games with giant remote controlled vehicles.

:ROFLMAO:

But you don't need to go to all the hassle of owning sheep to be viewed with contempt by walkers and cyclists!

As for doggers, I thought they were lovers not haters?!
 

Dave645

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
N Lincs
It's always tricky looking this far ahead, my best guess will be war and starvation, I say this because food shortages are key triggers of wars
And because history always repeats. Climate pressure in the Bronze Age caused the wars in the video above.
Screen_shot_2012-10-06_at_11.14.04_AM.png

flutuations in globle conditions have triggered wars in the past, and caused mass starvation, even if man made climate change, was not real which it's unlikly to be, climate swings natural or man made will disrupt food production in traditional farming methods, so to avoid this we will see indoor climate controlled food production becoming far more main stream, leaving farming to struggle on as best they can. Food will become more expensive, but the further down the road we get the more we will try to rectifi any mistakes we have made with influencing the climate, this will mean a long term move from fossil fuels is very likely so we will all be living in the interstellar future (it's a film), where between climate change and crops breaking down to disease, food will be scarcer than it is now.
We will look back on now a 100 years from now and call it a golden age, where we had antibiotics and food to waste.

Or we just continue to get break through after break through, and it all goes indoors, as climates changes what we can produce outdoors and we still keep feeding the world, we are producing outdoor what would normally only grow now 1000 miles south now, and 1000 miles south can only produce what's grown 1000 miles south now, and the equator zone where food production is very difficult will grow in size over time. But we innervate and survive.
In the end only time will say how the dice land, but it could lead to interesting and difficult times in my life time.......
 

RobFM

Member
I spend a lot of time thinking about this topic - some great opinion here already - will try not to repeat. All of this is prediction and opinion mixed with having an overview of how things have happened in other industries (manufacturing) and the studies being conducted all over the world.

Technology is coming at this sector. Developed world farming will be the place that takes advantage of this and will lead the charge in refining techniques, making the machinery more reliable, driving down prices on the road to mass production. Early adopters will seem crazy (as they do in any industry) until they prove they are making more money.

I think commodities markets as they stand will be overhauled and traceability of what has happened to the produce being more important; the internet enabling these deals to be done without traders.

Earth Observation (satellites, high altitude drones and balloons etc) is becoming more and more prevalent, ever cheaper and more 'real time' at a time when computing power and image recognition has never been cheaper. Farming will leverage this to spot problems as they happen. Connected devices in the field can manage moisture, temperature, pathogen detection and deploy targeted sprays.

Battery powered solar crawlers the size of dining tables will wander up and down arable land day and night tending crops, weeding and measuring on a plant by plant basis. In field robots monitoring animal behaviour and health beaming data back to base.

Livestock will have fitbit-style health monitors/implants and we will see a reduction in disease outbreaks.

Weather forecasting will be increasingly accurate and we may even be able to control parts of it.

All that was said above about soil health and study will come to the fore, for instance the soil flora and fauna (yeasts and funguses) and what it is that makes a soil good at growing what. Increased knowledge of the hundreds of variables on farm and what does and what doesn't make a difference.

Alerts from computers that are choosing the best days to do what operations and in time lots of these operations will need little to no human intervention. Lots of this stuff has to come from an opening up of anonymised data effectively increasing field trials from a few hectares to hundreds of thousands.

I think to that there will be a move to eat efficient protein; animals that make protein quickest. This starts looking like insects, molluscs and squid. So who knows what a maggot or squid farm looks like?

I love to chat through this stuff - it's my favourite thing to do! I am giving a quick talk about some of this stuff on the NFU stand tomorrow at Cereals...
 

farmerfred86

Member
BASIS
Location
Suffolk
We all got stung a few years ago with the 'growing world population will need food' mantra that was going to be farmings saviour. That so far has shown to be a load of balls.

I think you're right. And I think we are still being fooled by this. No nation can afford to have hungry mouths... There will be wars before we get to that, and plenty of government intervention before we get to any wars...

Farming is going to be far more mechanized (robots) and controlled. The seed/chemical companies and grain merchants are really in control... farmers are quickly becoming the simple labor/workforce in the middle.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.9%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 63 34.2%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.3%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.3%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,287
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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