What is Agri-Tech?

Norfolk Country farm estates could greatly benefit from using agri-tech systems, a council report suggests.

17:11 23 January 2019

A recent report by Norfolk County Council’s Digital Innovation and Efficiency Committee says that farm estates can boost their productivity and efficiency by taking advantage of agri-tech systems. Providing examples, the report said that ingested sensors can be used in tracking cattle, robots in driving tractors and autonomous machines in picking fruits.

 

Part of the report reads: “Agri-tech has been identified by the government as of national importance and one of the world’s fastest growing markets,”

 

“Norfolk’s expertise in food, plant and health science, combined with an innovative farming community, offers business extraordinary potential to contribute to that growth.

 

“Although tools and technology have always been used in farming and agriculture, modern ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) sensors, low-cost drones, low-cost big data systems, cloud services and a healthy, competitive supplier market mean that agri-tech is now able to make a real difference to the effectiveness of the industry.

 

Councillors are set to meet on Wednesday to “further investigate the opportunity to promote the use of agri-tech” to the 145 tenants of the County Farms estate.

 

Committee chairman Tom FitzPatrick said: “It is really important that we support our local agriculture in Norfolk to embrace new technological opportunities so that they can remain competitive with the rest of the market.”