The Future of Farming: A Crucial Crossroads at the European Elections

The Role of Technology in Modern Agriculture

In response, Phillips said, the essential recognition should be that technology will be part of agricultural sustainability. “If we're not going to use a conventional pesticide, what actually can we offer to farmers to tackle weeds in corn, for instance?” she asked.

Technology could provide many options to maintain or increase yields while moving away from harmful practices. One example Phillips cited is soil health profiling: providing precision mapping and analysis of soils to understand down to a very detailed level where fertilisers need to be applied and where they don’t, thus saving farmers money on inputs.

Another area, for which Phillips said an EU “dedicated framework” is needed, is biocontrols, or products based on natural micro-organisms or microbes used to combat pests. At present, biocontrols are treated in the regulatory process like conventional pesticides and take five to seven years to pass through checks and come to market. In the United States, the same process takes two to three years, providing a greater investment incentive for companies compared to Europe, she said.

Modern digital predictive tools also have the potential to make a huge impact on farming, said Thomas Zoellner, co-founder and secretary-general of FarmTech Society, a non-profit that works on controlled-environment agriculture (CEA). Even 20 years ago, computer modelling that overlaid meteorological information with crop-disease data did have striking predictive impacts, he said. In one comprehensive series of trials, 16 over 3 years, such modelling reduced the need for chemical fungicides by 49 per cent. At the time, understandably, this was seen as clashing with the business model of suppliers of pest control companies, at the time the industry did not see any value in the use of data applied decision-making tools (and the actual use of data) but needed to sell greater volumes of conventional products. Today, the emphasis on sustainability and the recognition of the value of data in digital decision-making tools are certainly becoming mainstream as an important service selling analytical and modelling decision-making tools and new business models to farmers, this type of technology is now ready for much more widespread adoption and needs to be supported and recognized by regulators.

Meanwhile food production from controlled environment agriculture, such as greenhouses — an area in which Belgian and Dutch growers are world leaders— enables the very precise use of inputs and allows plants to grow with a reduced exposure and the risk of disease, Zoellner said. Vertical farming in which even the amount of light plants are exposed to is controlled optimally; is a similar development. Such types of food production might be removed from traditional images of “natural” farming, but they mean “you can grow in a very predictable way; thanks to a wholesome biomimicry application,” This EU-developed technology has the potential to enable wider agriculture to adopt the advantages in the indoor young plant propagation, being transplanted later on from inside to outside at a robust stage to grow out in the field in a shorter period and less need for pest control and resources such as water and fertilizers. Zoellner added.

Overall, the main focus should be “convincing people that innovation is part of the solution” to the massive sustainability issues in agriculture, Phillips said. The next European Commission should “focus on the carrot rather than the stick in the next mandate.”

An Ageing Business

Zoellner said that technology could also help with a huge issue for agriculture: the age profile of farmers.

This is a “global problem,” he said. “The average age of a European farmer is 67 years and many of those farmers have no successor,” he said. Though more technological approaches are making inroads, “there’s still a huge amount of farmers out there who are analogue 100 per cent.”

The digitalisation of farming could help to create a new notion of farming or farmer that could bring many more potential workers into the business, where new career opportunities will open up, he argued. This should be a task for the new European Commission and European Parliament — to “give that a vocational track, because agriculture is really a vocational profession.” Such an approach could help make greater use of digital technology in farming more mainstream — and overcome a current impasse in which take up of agricultural innovation is happening only slowly.

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