[Fleecewife]

I'm currently doing one of the online free courses I do on the subject of how farmers the world over produce food sustainably ie without damaging the environment, the workforce or ones pocket.  We have got onto the development of high tech solutions to some of farmings problems. We have touched on the use of drones for things such as finding areas of pasture damage and overuse, cameras with apps to decide of there is so much tail biting amongst pigs that they need more toys ( I would have though go and watch your pigs in life rather than looking at a camera, but who am I?), tech to discover the sex of eggs in the shell so male chicks don't have to be culled (or fed to snakes), semen sexing so get mainly female calves in dairy herds, so male calves are not culled and incinerated - this is the one I think is brilliant and of genuine usefulness.  There are loads of examples of where IT and engineering, mechanics and technical knowhow could be used to design useful systems for both large and small scale farming.


My question is, does anyone with that sort of background, who has chucked it all in for a rural life, or uses their skills simply to bring in some cash to support their smallholding venture, does anyone actually invent things to help them around the farm?  Apparently agriculture is crying out for people who know about farming - livestock, arable and market gardening - and who also have skills in the areas mentioned, to put those skills to use to invent systems to 'future proof' food production.
I have a sneaky feeling that BigAgri doesn't think small farmers have the brain power even to use high tech equipment - we are all wallowing in ignorance and 


What do you think?

[pgkevet]

I'm not quite sure where you're going with this. A horsedrawn plough must be hitech to a guy scratching a groove with an antler and a JohnDeere 18 furrow jobbie would look crazy to the guy leading the horse.
For a smallholder the likely economic sales to another smallholder for that JohnDeere would be pitiful so smallholder hitech will be yet another app because they are unlikely to invest in even simple things like growlights and thermostatic seed incubation except for the ocassional enthusiast into hydroponics.
Anything in the area of genetics is going to be beyond a single guy in a shed and anything computerised is going to be uneconomic in a small scale - well apart from something simple with a raspberry pi to switch stuff on or off or set conditions.
What you'ld need is an epiphany - something cheap enough that no-one knows they need.

[chrismahon]

As a retired Design Engineer/ Plumber my focus is on saving money and time and improving the land to make it fit for use. Things I make are usually to avoid buying them, rather than being significantly better than what is available. Maintenance and repairs take a lot of time as does simply managing what resources we have and the list of future 'projects' grows ever longer. Perhaps one day I'll invent and build something significant?

[Anke]

I use laprascopic AI a lot for my dairy goats (allowing me to keep genetic diversity without having several males on the holding) - and while the semen sexing is advanced for dairy cattle, it is not even thought of for goats (and it would be too expensive to develop as most goat dairying is done by smallholders in developing countries, who won't be able to pay the higher price such semen would command). Goats semen is also a lot more fragile than cattle.

Also I think on the whole semen sexing issue, we should move backwards as it would be to multi-purpose livestock anyway, so meat, milk and wool/skins are useful in a sustainable way and male offspring would be as useful as females. But I think big agri is not thinking along those lines as profit margins are all that is important... so I would think moving low-tech and low-impact rather than high-tech and labour intensive is the way to go for animal husbandry.

[Fleecewife]

I think you're right about an epiphany [member=16228]pgkevet[/member].  But I could have such an epiphany, for example that what I really needed was, say, an interactive pop-hole on my hen house which would let in my hens but not rats or foxes, but I wouldn't know how to go about inventing it.  Of course something similar has already been invented for letting cats in through their own cat flaps and keeping other cats out, but that's the story of my invention life  .  I don't think anyone has developed such a thing though for hens.......


But say it was something new, then I would have had the idea and identified the need, but it would take someone who understood the mechanics or knew how to develop a computer programme that would need to be set up.  It's a bit like the engineer who invented an indwelling drain for babies and people with hydrocephalus.  The doctor explained to him what the problem was with his new son, he thought about it and went home, applied his engineering knowledge, and came up with the gadget which now gives normal or near normal lives to so many people born hydrocephalic.


[member=23925]chrismahon[/member], you can have my henhouse pophole idea to play with 


[member=3211]Anke[/member] I see the problem with semen sexing and its adaptation to goats and smallholding, and that is of course the major hindrance to R&D of any idea for smallscale farming. What you say is something I didn't know though.  It wouldn't be very useful in sheep either, would it, except dairy sheep but they are few and far between.
I think what I am driving at is that BigAgri isn't going to bother inventing stuff for small farmers, or adapting big ideas either, but then there's nothing in it for inventors to get going with small farming ideas either.  I thought there could be a place for someone with past knowledge and expertise to come up with new inventions.


The course is about feeding the world both now and in the future.  Allegedly, there is enough food produced worldwide today to feed all 7.5 billion of us.  It doesn't happen though because of 'food loss' (at production level), food wastage (at retail and consumer level), politics, war, supply chains - oh we have lots of excuses for the millions and millions of people dying of starvation in the world today. Unless a huge decision is taken to restrict population growth both of births, and perhaps bumping off grannies like me at 60 (   I think that's a joke  but maybe not) then there will be 9 billion of us soon.  So 'future proofing' food supplies by whatever methods we can come up with is what we are aiming for and current suggestions on the course are high tech.  So my idea is to increase the efficiency of small scale food production as well as large scale, as it seems that only large scale is considered worthy of investment for the future security of food production.

[Anke]

Starvation of the general population even in the case of sufficient food production isn't new - the Irish potato famine was totally avoidable, as Ireland continued to export grain to England while the small farmers (who were on poorer land and so couldn't grow wheat etc) starved to death. It was all about profit even in those days...
As to can people produce enough to feed the world - with a change in agriculture away from intensively farmed livestock to extensively farmed (cattle, sheep and goats, as well as poultry), to returning swill feeding for pigs, and using the good quality land for intensive horticulture (and move away from mainly grain production for livestock) there is enough in the literature to convince me that it is possible. But such solutions are not high-tech or instagrammable, or high profit for that matter ...

[Steph Hen]

I believe there is enough food to produced to feed the world but it's not sustainably produced so either way, stuff needs to change a hell of a lot.
The aim is farmer-less farming; robots and auto tech will do the bulk of the work, overseen by a few human technicians. This stuff gets green lights because it can be super efficient, very targeted eg, fertilisers and inputs and cides put only where needed. It's good because people don't want to do the dirty, hard agri jobs so now they can all get jobs behind desks and answering phones and get sore backs and rsi wrists that way instead.
This model bothers me. I'm stuck in the past. I think most food should come from as close to where people live as possible. Even if it's an organic apple from New Zealand, stored in a net zero carbon warehouse I am still essentially against it being sold in shops in Scotland. As I don't think paying someone to plant the odd tree to theoretically off set hundreds of miles of transport is as good an option as simply not selling apples from other side of the world.
I think small producers are important and should be more so than they are at the moment.
As for the tech, you're right; it's focused on larger scale production and tends to be a trickle down to small farms rather than starting with them in mind. Money speaks. I kinda think breed genetics is one of the best things small producers do and should do, although I'm always a bit sceptical of breed standards and shows as I worry people spend too much time getting the perfect colour or confirmation rather than production, hardiness, temperament, etc. 

Your idea for a sensor flap for chickens is great! I'd only thought of various ladders arrangements where too heavy an animal (fox) would tip some weighted rungs down or something (ideally with a cage trap below!). Never thought maybe hens could wear a sensor and door be closed to everything else, it's good!

Scottish enterprise are meant to be quite good at sorting out funding and experts to help with new ideas.

[Fleecewife]

Hi Steph
I'm with you on this and this is what I have been contributing to the online course in fact, and a large proportion of fellow students are of that mind too.  But, being a bit of a science fiction fan I rather like the idea of all large scale food production being done by robots, as at the end of that wonderful film 'Silent Running' (I did read an excellent book once where the robots were farming humans - great!) But certainly all green food should be produced locally to where it will be consumed.  I don't even begin to understand the international trade in foods, which seems to be controlled by political wheeler-dealers and bears little relation to what people actually want or need.  As for off setting carbon by someone else planting trees for you, that makes a mockery of the whole idea.  For small scale farming, I do think there are a few minor tech ideas which could make life easier.  Lots of people already use cameras linked to their computers for watching lambing, farrowing etc and it's that sort of idea which is a real help.


Thanks for your support of my pophole idea.  It just leapt into my mind while I was typing, as I had been speaking to someone who had to buy her neighbour a hightech cat flap to keep her bully cats out from terrorising the neighbour's gentle little puss.  Mr F suggested a microchip for the hens, which would be neat.

[pgkevet]

There's nothng new about locking flaps working on microchips and in bulk such chips are ...well..cheap as chips. I'm not sure about the detection range of current ones but ideally for hen use you'ld want to attach to a leg ring so easy to re-use and save money. For completeness you'ld power the cat flap from a small roof solar panel - likely one of those used to top up solar lamps and add a cut-off into the circuit so it can't open from before dusk to after dawn. And you'ld still find limited sales at a circa £100 price point or a 10 hen kit.
I'm close to my tirade re imported food. One of the biggest issues UK is our national debt and gov keeping getting it bigger for vanity projects and consultancy fees and recovering from poor decisions made for political expediency (PPP hospitals etc). We go ban nasty slug baits here and then import food where such stuff is freely used or where so-called 'organic' is fudged. All because people are so spoiled they want cheap out of season stuff and too lazy to pick our own. One way round it would be local and national collection points - cos I'm not the only one who gets surplusses of stuff that he can't give away and internal UK postage costs mean you can't send it to friends for less than they could buy similar locally.
There is no excuse for importing apples or pears or nuts 0 they all grow here easly and can be stored long term in the right conditions.
We have the same political nonsense in manufacturing- cars for instance where the engine block is cast in one country, shipped to another for machining, shipped to a third for assembly into an engine and shipped elsewhere to actually put in the car. It's done to spread the largess of jobs and finance amongst euro countries with no regard for the carbon footprints of shipping. Exactly the same as air freighting raspberries around the world - stick a carbon penalty on them and price folk out.
Back when i was 14 I worked a summer in a 4acre holding that grew toms that time of year. About an acre of glass and part of a collective. The holder could buy glass house components from the collective at bulk discount and pass his produce to the collective for them to make up a load and sell. There was a bunch of these 4-acre plots and each guy could grow what he wanted but generally they grew early broad beans on 1 acre then a follow crop. The glasshouses grew lettuce followed by toms and folk kept a few pigs and grew say strawberries on 1/4 acre.. that sort of thing. It was a good living even if not extravagant. each plot had a small house and had originally been set up post war or demob chappies who had come from Poland and other countries to fight and wanted to stay. And some ex POW's/
rant over for the moment.

[Fleecewife]

I enjoyed the rant - tell it like it is pgkevet        I agree and could rant on for ages too.


I just had an idea about the pophole - wouldn't having a house full of microchips mean the pophole stayed open all the time, or do they only work close-up as with sheep eartags?

[pgkevet]

animal microchips work by a detector sending a signal which energises the end coil, uses the power from it to broadcast it's id number then picked up by the detector. It's very low power and the hand scanners in Vet Offices have trouble from more than an inch or two away. I doubt tha the range on a cat flap is more than 6". Indeed it might be an issue that hen doesnt position itself well enough. Ideally a low leg ring and a detector in the floor in front of flap (but then doubtless you'ld need one each side. It'd be a case of playing with the thing and possibly dismantling one or two - real back garden shed fiddling.

[arobwk]

 Goodness me [member=4333]Fleecewife[/member], what have you unleashed ! This thread is a bit of a read !!

[Buttermilk]

My neighbour designed and built just such a bob hole into his hen house about 15 years ago.  They have given up keeping hens now though as birds of prey picked them off as they pecked around his orchard.

[Fleecewife]

My neighbour designed and built just such a bob hole into his hen house about 15 years ago.  They have given up keeping hens now though as birds of prey picked them off as they pecked around his orchard.

Did it work or were there problems, can you remember?

[Womble]

The thing is, it's one thing inventing something and quite another marketing it and making a profit  .


For example, after scalding myself really badly whilst sterilising a  tty awful lamb tube feeder last year, I set about designing a really good one. It's great, and I would tell you all about its amazing features, but actually I might well do something with it eventually, so....


Anyway, standard tube feeders retail for £5. Now let's assume that the shops can retail my whizzy improved version for £10, and that each one costs £2 to make and £1 to distribute. The retailer is going to want a couple of quid too I guess, and there's also a couple of quid of VAT, but that still leaves me a pretty impressive £3 profit on each one sold.

So, minimum wage is £8.21, which is roughly £14K p.a.. Divide that by £3, and I only need to sell 4,800 of them a year, every year to make the same as stacking shelves at Asda.


Anyway, in the end I ran my scalded hand under cold water for a while, tubed the lamb and then went back to stopping chemical plants blowing up. I guess that just seems like an easier way to make a living?