ABE 111 | INTRO TO ABE

CONTRIBUTION OF ABE TO FOOD SECURITY

AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
 Reference

Agricultural Engineering: a key discipline for

agriculture to deliver global food security

A status report developed by IAgrE in response to the

UK Government's Foresight Project: Global Food and
Farming Futures
 Managing Extreme Rainfall Events

The Challenge: On susceptible soils, slope, row-orientation and agronomic

practices can combine to concentrate runoff and facilitate gully formation.
On such terrain, during extreme rainfall, unless practical remediation
actions are taken, the risk of soil erosion with associated on-field and off-site
impacts is extremely high.

The Solution: Here a geotextile lined grassed water way has been designed
and installed to control runoff and erosion from an asparagus field. This is in
combination with on-field measures aimed at promoting infiltration and
thus minimizing the risk of runoff generation. The resultant combination of
on-field water management and engineering options reduces both water
runoff and associated soil losses to acceptable levels.
 Improving agricultural efficiencies
(Yield Mapping)
The Challenge: Fields are not homogenous yet traditionally, agro
chemicals have been applied in a blanket fashion yet ideally, should
be applied only where needed.
The Solution: By precisely measuring and recording the flow of grain
through a combine harvester at the same time as recording the
machine’s movement through the field, it is possible to produce yield
“contour maps”. Data from these maps can then be used to determine
what in-field treatments are needed with appropriate reduction in
agro-chemical usage.
 Improving agricultural efficiencies
(Automatic Steering)
The Challenge: Along with the introduction of new technologies comes increased
operator fatigue as the need to monitor many parameters leads to information
overload.
The Solution: Using satellite guidance (gps or global positioning systems) permits
automatic steering leaving the operator to focus on equipment and performance.
This leads to immediate and tangible benefits including:
• Elimination of overlaps/underlaps
• Savings in fuel, time and costs
• Reduced machine wear
• Reduced operator fatigue
• Reduced soil compaction with fewer tracks
• Controlled traffic farming
• Better crop establishment
Depending on the gps system used, accuracies within 1 cm are achievable.
 Nurturing the world’s resources
(Sustainable Structures)
The Challenge: To design and construct a river crossing for horses in a
National Park that does not intrude on the landscape and is built with
sustainable materials.
The Solution: Using an innovative method of stress laminated timber
arch construction using short lengths of plantation timbers minimizing
the use of less sustainable materials.
 Nurturing the world’s resources
(Precision Mobile Drip Irrigation)
The Challenge: Applying irrigation water accurately and efficiently to a
crop without expensive permanent in-field irrigation installations.
The Solution: Combining drip irrigation with a mobile centre pivot
irrigator means that water can be applied precisely where it is needed.
Losses to wind and evaporation are minimized which can result in
exceptional irrigation application efficiencies (>90%).
Add the continuously variable speed of a hydrostatic wheel drive
transmission together with computer-based irrigation scheduling and
yield increases and reduction in water used can be expected.
 Appropriate Technology
(Post Harvest Handling and Storage)
The Challenge: The cooking tomato commonly known as Pomme d’Amour is considered
the most important vegetable grown in the northern part of the island of Mauritius and is an
important part of the traditional diet. Almost all the crop is grown by small farmers for their
family and to sell in the local markets with two or three harvests a year.
Local solutions to problems are often rough and ready but only require modest changes in
practice to achieve major effects. Traditional handling methods resulted in post harvest
losses through mechanical damage, moisture losses and disease damage impacting
adversely on fruit sale price.
The Solution: Here, a traditional inappropriately sized deep wooden box constructed from
rough sawn timber is replaced by a relatively cheap alternative. Shallower open sided
smooth plastic crates stored off the ground on wooden pallets resulted in reduced
mechanical damage, lower storage temperatures and improved moisture content.
In the field, the crop needed to be harvested and put in the shaded immediately and
covered as it was brought to the farm.
The result: The eventual percentage of top price fruit was increased to 60% from 25% and
the cost of the plastic trays paid for in one to two harvests depending on the market price.
 Minimizing soil Compaction
(Rubber Tracked Machinery)
The Challenge: Increasing machinery and implement weights can
result high in high ground contact pressures with resultant soil damage
particularly in unsuitable ground conditions.
The Solution: Replacing wheels with rubber tracks spreads the machine
load over a much greater area and can give a higher level of tractive
efficiency over a wider range of soil conditions.
 Minimizing soil Compaction
(Controlled Traffic Farming)
The Challenge: Unplanned largely random field traffic can result in soil
damage over significant areas of the field. Any soil compaction can
impede crop growth and yield. It can also reduce water infiltration,
which in turn can lead to runoff, pollution of water courses and
enhanced flood risk.
The Solution: Use of controlled traffic farming systems (CTF) has shown
improvements in wheat yield of between 5 and 15%. The principle of
CTF is to concentrate wheel tracks of field operations to about 25% of
the field rather than the 90% of “conventional” random traffic.
 Appropriate Technology
(Conservation Tillage)
The Challenge: Conservation agriculture requires the soil to be kept
covered and for seed and fertilizer to be placed with a minimum of soil
disturbance. The conventional plough remains popular but continues
to wreak immense damage on agricultural soils.
The Solution: “no-till” planters cutting through the surface vegetation
and deposit the seed and fertilizer at the depth and placement
required.
 Outline

1. The Context
2. The Challenge
3. The Vision
4. The Evidence
5. The Benefits
6. The delivery
The context – global food security is a priority programme for the
UK with multi-agency involvement

The Foresight Report “The Future of Food and Farming” highlights the
impact of several pressures on the global food system, and pinpoints
five challenges (balancing future demand and supply sustainably;
addressing the threat of future volatility in the food system; ending
hunger; meeting the challenge of a low emissions world; and
maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services while feeding the
world) that will need to be met if major stresses to the food system are
to be anticipated and managed. The key public sector stakeholders in
food and agriculture have recognized the importance of addressing
these challenges and have established a multi-partner Global Food
Security (GFS) programme.
The challenge – agricultural engineering is an important discipline for innovation
and delivery of solutions to a wide range of food security challenges, and needs
to be recognized as part of the UK strategy

Agricultural engineering is an applied scientific discipline, often

narrowly associated with farm machinery, but actually now much
wider, embodying systems approaches to assess overall impacts
through life cycles and addressing key questions associated with the
interface between agriculture and the environment, and global
concerns for environment, food supply and people. It has contributed
extensively to soil management, land development, mechanization
and automation of livestock farming, and to the efficient planting,
harvesting, storage, and processing of farm commodities. This wider
view has led to the subject area being increasingly referred to as
agricultural and biosystems engineering.
The challenge – agricultural engineering is an important discipline for innovation
and delivery of solutions to a wide range of food security challenges, and needs
to be recognized as part of the UK strategy

The agricultural engineer recognizes the importance of multidisciplinary

approaches to deliver solutions and brings to the partnership expertise
in tackling problems at full scale, in real time and on real-life systems,
together with a good understanding of the underlying biological
system and the implications for practical application. The approaches
used share much common ground with environmental concerns, and
the development of methods and systems to deal with complexity and
uncertainty is a major scientific challenge. Agricultural systems are
often sensitive to many environmental variables, and solutions
frequently involve understanding, monitoring and controlling complex
processes in order to improve productivity and minimize environmental
emissions and impacts.
 The vision – UK engineering research and innovation can contribute improved
agricultural productivity and sustainability in the UK and globally, through new
insights and implementation of improved agricultural systems and technologies

This vision for future farming

systems highlights opportunity
areas in science that can
deliver future technologies. The
science can develop both from
underpinning advances in
engineering disciplines per se
and from cross-disciplinary
research.
 Highlight Opportunities

- Precision crop management

- Precision livestock farming
- Intelligent postharvest and supply chain
 The evidence – justification of vision through examples of
successes and future prospects

The agricultural engineering community in the UK has been actively

addressing a wide range of problems to provide better understanding of
agricultural systems and to deliver new and improved technologies that will
increase productivity, reduce unwanted environmental impacts and
optimize system performance.
- Computer vision and machine guidance for weed control
- Robotic milking leading to precision livestock management
- Arable crop sprayer technology – delivering novel technology and
systems
- Machines for soil management
- Conservation agriculture: the future of smallholder farming
- Improved soil Management to Reduce Runoff and Flood Flows
 The benefits – outcomes that can be expected from realizing
agricultural engineering advances, for key stakeholders

The opportunities for engineering contributions to advance global food

security will come from the new approaches and technologies
indicated in the vision section, together with more integrated
approaches to putting existing knowledge and technologies into
practice, both at home and internationally. Engineering innovations
and research alongside advances in biological science will provide
many novel ways forward.
Challenge A: Balancing future demand and supply sustainably

Engineering innovation is going to be a critical contributor to delivery of

agricultural outputs under the imperative of sustainable intensification.
Translating knowledge into practice is a major benefit from a strong
engineering sector, from science through to the maintenance and
management of equipment on the farm. New science and innovative
technologies will open up new practices that will both increase
production and reduce or reuse waste streams.
 Enhanced crop productivity and quality through precision
farming advances

Developments in precision farming are already supplying considerable

insights into the variability of current production systems (yields can vary by
a factor of two in different regions of the same field) and the scope for
more precisely controlled input (at scales down to a few metres or
individual plants) to deliver benefits in increased productivity, reduced
inputs and lower environmental impacts. Timings and quantities of fertilizers
and pesticides can be adjusted to match current crop state locally, and
can be coupled to predictions of future changes in growth rates or disease
pressure. The techniques will influence future advances in application
technologies, and in crop management regimes that are adapted to
minimize GHG emissions from soils. Better planning and scheduling of
machine operations has the potential to reduce costs by 25%.
Improved animal health and welfare through real time monitoring
and diagnostics

Real-time monitoring and interpretation to highlight risks to health and

welfare can improve productivity and quality, while also addressing
welfare and environmental impact issues. Biosensors to identify
changes in physiological state or exposure to pathogens will become
feasible for use in intensive systems, and even in extensive ones through
the use of remote tracking and monitoring systems. Improved dairy
cow fertility management through oestrus sensing has been estimated
to be able to deliver 15% reduction in methane emissions, for example.
 Better use of irrigation water to support production

With increasing demand for food, and climate change generally

making rainfall less reliable, the role of irrigation in food production will
inevitably have to increase. However this raises serious challenges due
to the competition for water resources. A primary focus of irrigation
engineering will therefore be the delivery of systems that are both more
efficient and more robust, and globally will emphasize systems that use
relatively small amounts of water to support rain-fed farming rather
than smaller areas of total irrigation.
Challenge B: Addressing the threat of future volatility in the food
system

Volatility comes from macro-economic and political issues, but

increased focus on information and intelligence at all stages in the
farming and food cycle will help identify when conditions may be
heading towards such difficulties. Increasing efficiency across the food
chain will increase buffering of stocks.
Better understanding of the impact of changes in regulation or
incentives through the development and use of farm systems
models.
. The government-mediated shifts in production when biofuels became a priority
highlight the importance of understanding all the strands in the production systems
and ensuring that decisions on optimal approaches do not neglect secondary
effects. Agricultural engineering studies incorporate life cycle assessments and other
modelling tools, and have previously highlighted risks associated with pesticide taxes
and other measures that might have positive environmental goals but be very blunt
instruments when trying to achieve those goals. Such integrating studies are already
showing the constraints on manipulating agricultural systems to meet emissions goals
and can also support new approaches to delivering value from all harvest outputs,
with waste streams being able to contribute to soil sustainability and energy
production within food production-driven farming systems. Systems models and
operational research provide scope for clear assessments of the impact of new
technologies on sustainability ahead of the introduction of new technologies, and
can link directly to the challenges associated with the delivery of sustainable
intensification.
 Enhanced scale and quality of commodity storage to
buffer supply and reduce volatility

The basic principles for effective management of postharvest systems

are well-known, but there are still major failings in all parts of the world.
Implementation of existing technology, supplemented by current
advances in ICT systems that allow integrated systems of monitoring
and remote fault identification offer new opportunities to enhance the
success of effective storage regimes, and encourage more investment
in facilities that will provide buffers against local or regional disruption of
supply. Technologies to provide dedicated energy supplies, through
solar energy or other local generation, can ensure that resilient systems
are available.
 Challenge C: Ending hunger

Global support for agricultural sustainability is not just a matter of addressing only the
poorest farmers. It must also address sustainable support systems for production
methods that are accessible to poor farmers, as well as improving infrastructure and
information systems within an efficient market for inputs and outputs. Agricultural
engineers have worked closely with aid agencies, national and international research
and extension agencies, and NGOs in developing technologies that have maximum
local benefit. Key areas in recent years have been postharvest systems, soil
management particularly in relation to water harvesting and soil sustainability
(conservation agriculture), chemical application, and ergonomics, which can have
great value especially to ensure that technology is well matched to labour availability
and particularly gender issues. As economies grow, transition through mechanisation
and intensification offers opportunities for improved management but can also lead
to poor practice. This can be through inefficient use of agrochemicals, poor soil and
water management, and inefficient use of tractors and machinery, all of which could
pose significant risks to sustainable farming systems. Agricultural engineers have a vital
role to play alongside natural scientists in ensuring that sustainable agricultural systems
are developed that can feed the world.
 Sustainable advances in subsistence and stakeholder
farming through Conservation Agriculture, appropriate
mechanization and improved infrastructure and support

Conservation Agriculture (CA), a suite of practices developed to provide

sustainable cropping intensification whilst protecting and enhancing the
natural resource environment. The agricultural engineering challenge is to
promote local industries and nurture the nascent agricultural engineering
sector in developing countries.
Other technologies will also provide access to information and markets.
Sensing methods can provide guidance on optimal management of
resources, for example using a sensor device that gathers data on air
temperature, humidity, air pressure, light, soil moisture and temperature. This
information is crucial to making key agricultural decisions about planting,
fertilization, irrigation, pest and disease control and harvesting9. Mobile
telephony is opening access to market information and improved post-
harvest decisions. Investment in infrastructure by governments and in supply
chains by the private sector can provide the momentum for real change.
 Empowerment of women and communities through
appropriate ergonomically-optimised engineering

Engineering has already recognized the importance of ensuring

technologies match the capabilities and systems of the user. This is a
vital step in empowering people and addressing gender issues relating
to both existing and new technologies
 Reduced wastage in food supply chains through
appropriate technology and education

Existing knowledge and technologies for postharvest and food chain

management of commodities have the potential to deliver significant
reduction in wastage, with parallel impacts on economic returns and
food availability. A major shortcoming is the availability of technical
training and appropriate management support to provide robust and
resilient systems.
 Challenge D: Meeting the challenges of a low emissions world

Renewable energy production, energy use for land management and

environmental control and emissions from the biological processes on
which farming depends are all integral parts of the global farming
scene, and it is clear that concerns about energy demand and climate
change require that improvements are made. Engineering advances
to optimize performance will be crucial if agriculture is to play its part in
averting damage to climate and environment. The complexity of
farming systems makes an interdisciplinary approach to these problems
essential, and combinations of new biological concepts and new
engineering technology are needed.
 D1: Reduced emissions from livestock and other waste

Effective management of livestock waste seeks to maximize the

utilization of plant nutrients and soil improvement whilst minimizing the
risks of pollution and damage to the soil through compaction. This
requires increasing precision in terms of application timing relative to
soil conditions, plant growth stage, and the potential for water
pollution. More precise placement within the soil and closer matching
of nutrient supply to plant requirements will decrease pollution risk.
 D2: Reduced energy use in farm machines through
improved engines and power management

Agricultural tractors and self-propelled machines rely heavily on the diesel

engine for motive power, but impose different requirements from those of
other diesel uses, making economy and exhaust emission control more
challenging. These differences include higher load cycles, more sustained
and often continuous full power operation and cooling concerns due to
slower vehicle speed and often dusty operating conditions. Due to the
unique operating conditions within agriculture, more sophisticated and
expensive technologies have been adopted to meet the legislation. The
result is that new tractors and machines are very economical and clean,
though at considerably increased cost. In addition to engines,
manufacturers have been developing machines and perfecting systems
with a keen focus on productivity, economy and reliability.
D3: Ability to predict major interactions between management methods
and emissions for intelligent regulation

Mathematical modelling of farming systems has demonstrated the

value of investigating how changes in practice, often with an objective
of improving the environmental footprint of farming, can result in
counterintuitive negative impacts through the ways in which farmers
will react to maximize profits, and the limitations of manageable
regulatory instruments. Continued development of these approaches
will deliver benefits to policy makers by highlighting issues in areas such
as life cycle impact, scope for pesticide reduction, and the value and
damage associated with shifts to biofuel production.
 Challenge E: Maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem
services while feeding the world

The competing requirements of preserving biodiversity and the

environment while enhancing productivity present an opportunity for
the implementation of advances in farming systems. Technologies that
improve precision and control in farming will have immediate potential
to reduce unnecessary impacts. Understanding the interaction
between management processes and farming systems, including soil
and water processes, will ensure that proposed novel or adapted
technologies can deliver real benefits.
 E1: Reduction in pesticide applications and off-target losses

Advances in application methods and the use of precision farming

technologies will be critical to the delivery of a smaller footprint for
pesticides on the countryside and natural communities, both as point
source and diffuse pollutants, and as risks to bystanders and operators.
Understanding how delivery can be made more precise and dispersal
off-target can be minimized will be a continuing challenge. The
opportunity for plant scale operations, suggested by current
developments in weed control, is just one area in which engineering
advance will deliver benefit.
E2: Enhanced soil quality through better control of land management

Better understanding of how to minimize damage and to retain soil

quality through optimal operations can enhance soil quality and
energy use reductions of 10 to 15% have already been demonstrated.
Effective management of residues and no till techniques can
encourage higher returns of organic matter to the soil, with consequent
benefits for water retention and productivity.
 E3: Improved surface water management and drainage to
reduce flood and pollution risk

Surface drains could now be designed to minimize any obstruction to

field operations, and be used to manage run-off and filter solid
materials in ways that can enhance natural habitats. Grassed areas,
constructed wetlands and other storage areas might also be linked to
irrigation reservoirs. The practice of reducing runoff rates through local
detention storage to reduce peak runoff rates in upland areas could,
with development, be extended to other grassland areas. This should
be feasible, without major effects on grassland productivity, by
controlling both surface and subsurface drain discharges. Scope also
exists in some lowland grassland areas to utilize these as temporary
flood storage areas, allowing the peak flow in the main drainage
channel to be reduced.
 The delivery – current state of play in UK agricultural engineering,
including the industry and education and training, what is missing and
what needs to be achieved to deliver the vision

This report has demonstrated the opportunities for, and the inherent
capability of, agricultural engineering to contribute significantly to the
challenges of sustainable food production and global food security. If
the UK is to play its part in this global challenge and secure commercial
opportunities, the relevant skills and resources must themselves be
sustainable and ‘fit for purpose’.
 Recommendations
- The contribution of engineering needs to be more widely recognized in
meeting societal challenges in global food security and contributing
to economic growth.
- to develop the important opportunities for education, research and
training in engineering for agriculture.
- establishment of a research theme or platform for ‘engineering for
agriculture’ that can compete on equal terms with other research
communities and is appropriately managed.
- encourage the farming industry and the agricultural engineering business
community to work with the innovators and educators to establish an
appropriate focus for innovation that brings together the needs of
agriculture, novel engineering and business opportunity.
-
 Activity

• Select five positions from the listed recent ABE

careers and search on the duties and responsibilities
for these positions.