John Chinn explains the huge importance the Agri-Tech centres will have on the UK agriculture industry and the desperate need for an 'industrial revolution'.

UK agriculture badly needs an 'industrial revolution' of its own. We need to be creative and radical and we need to adopt new technologies and move towards increased automation today, not tomorrow. This is because productivity in UK farming over the past 30 years is low and has been accompanied by a 1 % per year decline in UK self-sufficiency in food. To tackle this, the Government has invested £68 million in four agri-tech Centres, all with the same vision. CHAP, CIEL (Centre of Innovation Excellence in Livestock), AgriEpi (Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre) and Agrimetrics {Data Centre) want to bring all members of our agri-food industry together, to drive technology innovation as the way to achieve step-change improvements in our farming productivity.

CHAP {Crop Health & Protection) has been set up to do what it says on the tin - that is to revolutionise how farmers manage crop threats, including pests and diseases, both in the UK and overseas.

CHAP has 11 Founder Partners, made up of industry players and research institutions and, together, it aims to develop, adopt and exploit new agri-technologies and practices. We ask 'what is the need' and we answer that question by pulling technologies from the lab to the farm and through the supply chain. The fact is that climate change and a range of other factors, including an anticipated population growth (50 billion by 2050) and the degradation of ecosystems is making it increasingly difficult to meet the global demand for food in a sustainable way. To feed the growing world population we must increase our crop yields and this, in turn, will mean that we need to make significant progress in both fundamental and applied science of plants, microbes and soils, including protection from economically damaging pests, pathogens and weeds.

CHAP Chairman and Herefordshire farmer, John Chinn, said 'Technology innovation is the way to achieve real step change improvements that can make the difference between being a cottage industry and a global leader. The future is not just about driverless tractors, automation and robotics. I suggest that by 2030:

It will be unacceptable to use a prophylactic spray across the whole of a field. We will rely on targeted agrochemical applications applied on a reactive basis.

The norm, even for vegetable production, will be no till or min till farming. This will improve soil health and protect against soil erosion and dirty water run-off.

We will have developed automated pest and disease recognition and diagnostics - before symptoms are even visible to the human eye.

We will see increased use of biological control of pests, weeds and diseases.

Crop modelling and the interrogation of big data platforms will result in increased crop yields and quality.

The science, technology, surveillance and automation for this progress is being developed by CHAP and the other Agri-tech Centres working in unison'.

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