The rise of the machines

Flying fruit-picking robots; battery-powered telehandlers; hydrogen-combustion engines – the pace of change in relation to agricultural machines is astonishing. Machinery companies are constantly innovating to problem-solve for the farmer and the contractor. Developments in electrification, alternative fuels, data-fuelled precision agriculture, and autonomous machines are all playing a part in dealing with labour shortages, time shortages, environmental consequences, rising costs, and more.

A recently published report in the UK, entitled The Future of Agricultural Machinery featured some interesting commentary and observations from top industry professionals there. Looking specifically at tractors – obviously of great interest there and, of course, in Ireland – a common view expressed in the report is that bigger is no longer better.

“The sheer weight of the machines is compacting the soil and diminishing soil health and their fuel-guzzling engines are also becoming an issue due to their environmental impact and increases in red diesel prices and regulations. Crucially, these big machines are not suited to precision work. They are designed to cover as much of the field as possible and as quickly as possible,” the report stated.

Some companies like New Holland and JCB are addressing the fuel-consumption concerns with the former launching the first-ever T6 methane-powered tractor, and the latter developing a hydrogen-gas-powered combustion engine. But what about the size issue?

Small and autonomous

The Hands-Free Farm at Harper Adams is a reasearch project that is farming 35 hectares of land using nothing but autonomous machinery with zero human input, the report states. Obviously, this farm is on a much smaller scale than most in the UK especially, and in Ireland, but Kit Franklin, principal investigator of the Hands-Free Farm explains: “Our tractor is 40hp and the implements are two metres wide. I’m not sure what the optimum scale for the machinery is yet, but we do know you don’t need to be using machinery of 600hp plus in the UK.” Such machines, he says, are needed in North America where they are pulling equipment that is 30m long but not in the
UK with 6m pieces of machinery at the back. Kit believes that the future involves lots of small, autonomous machines working
across the farm.

Chris Wiltshire, who is the UK and Ireland marketing manager at John Deere says in the report: “Concepts such as autonomous tractors and machine electrification have been the talk of the farming community for years. But these ideas are evolving at such a rapid pace, the cutting-edge innovations being developed by the world’s leading brands are coming sooner than you think.”

Belinda Clarke, from Agri-TechE, adds: “The mood music in agricultural machinery is that we are all heading towards autonomy.” But are we playing that tune here in Ireland?

Limited

Machinery editor of Irish Farmers Monthly, Noel Dunne, who is the only Irish member of the European Tractor of the Year judging panel believes that autonomy has a somewhat limited place on most Irish farms, specifically in terms of tractors, or other larger bits of kit. “On some tillage farms, maybe, and in horticulture, autonomy is growing, but with the standard size of farms and standard practice of farms in Ireland, I cannot see it fitting in on a mass scale,” he says.

President of the Farm Tractor and Machinery Trade Association (FTMTA), Karol Duigenan, agrees: “As far as I know, there is nobody in the bigger sectors using anything that is autonomous. Those who are getting into these machines would be the vegetable growers and fruit growers. You are probably seeing it in the amenities area too, with grass-cutting machines but not in tillage.

“The problem here in Ireland, unlike in the UK where you could have 5,000 acres or more in just one block, is that a farmer here who has 2,000 acres, is probably driving 40km to get to it all, as it could be in 30- or 40-acre blocks. The farmer here would have to drive the autonomous machine there, wait for it, and transport it home again.” Unless you have a large land parcel, autonomous tractors or larger machines may not work so well here, he says.

‘Let your imagination go wild’

But Diarmuid Claridge, general manager of Pöttinger Ireland is open-minded about the potential of agri-machinery autonomy in Ireland. “If you let your imagination go wild for a minute and think of the craziest thing possible, it will happen. It might not be in your lifetime or in mine, but it will happen because that is the way things are progressing. If you go back 30 years, who would have ever thought that there would be a robot hoovering your house or mowing your lawn. Driving a car – whether it is lane assist or cruise control, you are so close to being fully autonomous.

“A lot can happen in 10 years, especially in this area of food production and with such food demand. We literally cannot feed the world as it is, so we will have to find ways of being more productive with fewer people and robotics is, without a doubt, going to come into play more in farming. They are already milking cows."

Diarmuid continues: "I think there will be autonomous tractors. People say that Ireland is too small, but I think it is only a matter of time. I think the landscape in 100 years’ time will be very different to what it is today. As autonomy develops further, the requirement for high-horsepower tractors, in my opinion, won’t be there.

“I think you might have smaller robots, like the size of a remote-control car, for example, and you might set down 12 of these in your field, and they will cover the field all night, and they will go back to a base station, collect their seeds and go off and plant their seeds. Or they will be doing the weeding in the field. I don’t think that tractors will be the size that we have today, because we have to look at the soil health and prevent soil compaction, so there will have to be smaller machines.”

What’s the alternative?

What is more of a priority for Irish farmers right now, Karol says, are alternative-fuel options and how soon they might be available, but it is very early days in this regard. “We are not developing the biogas, for example, on a large enough scale. There is a lot of talk about synthetic fuels [those with fossil-fuel properties but produced artificially] but whether these are viable is another thing.” Currently, Karol says, diesel is still the only fuel in town and he doesn’t see that changing in the next five to 10 years.

“There is interest there [among farmers] but only if it can offer the same kind of performance as a diesel-combustion engine, but the availability of these alternative fuels, as well as the infrastructure to produce and store them is limited.

Noel references the recently opened Solar Capital Investment Scheme under the new Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme (TAMS) 3. “What dairy farmers are telling me now is that if electric tractors start coming into play, if electric telehandlers start coming into play – and we have some there at the moment – if they can link into the grid for that electricity, it could be a way to go.

“Currently, in the Irish market, there is only one electric tractor available – a 24hp Farmtrac tractor, which is no good to a dairy farmer now. But that's something that maybe could change in the future.” TAMS 3, Noel feels is encouraging Irish farmers to buy more high-end pieces of equipment and kit, aiding the practise of precision farming, which for some farmers is more important right now than an electric, alternatively fuelled or autonomous tractor. Maybe less is more? Maybe smaller is bigger? Time will tell.