Five steps to future-proof Irish agri-food
Environmental concerns around climate change, water quality (and quantity, in many countries), resource limitations, and the increasing resistance of pests and diseases to control agents are challenging the sector.
Technology has a key role to play in ensuring that farmers, and food companies, can meet these challenges.
Technology is not the whole solution, but it is part of the solution.
Teagasc’s ‘Technology Foresight’ report, published last Tuesday, has identified five technology areas that will enable the agri-food sector to better tackle climate change, and wider sustainability concerns, while promising enhanced living standards and quality of life.
Plant and animal genomics is the first area. Knowledge of the genotype (i.e. DNA) has improved our ability to breed superior animals and plants.
Continued improvements, and cost-reductions, in the technologies underpinning this (genotyping and sequencing) will lead to even greater advances in the coming years.
Ireland is well-positioned.
The Teagasc potato-breeding programme uses DNA markers to identify new potato varieties that are resistant to a damaging pest, potato cyst nematode.
Ireland was also the second country to introduce genomic selection into its dairy cattle-breeding programme, and Ireland is now involved in the most comprehensive DNA analysis of its cattle herd, with one million cattle to be genotyped by 2017.
That’s one in six of the cattle herd.
The second technology area is the microbiota. This is the community, or collection of microorganisms, that inhabits our gut, cattle guts, the soil, etc.
There is now a strong body of evidence that the microbes in our gut influence our health and mood, and there is also strong evidence that the foods we eat affect the microbes in our gut.
Therein lies a huge opportunity for the food industry to develop new, high-value products that positively impact our health and mood by modulating our gut microbiota.
Can equally significant opportunities be found by studying cattle and soil microbiota?
The third area is digital technologies. The world is quickly digitising everything that it can. So, tractors now can have guidance systems that steer with an accuracy of +/- 2 cm, and could soon be driverless.
We can measure pastures from space.
Using smart sensors, we can monitor when cows are eating, walking, lying, ovulating, calving, or we can have them milked by robots.
We can measure the water content of soils using sensors. There is no shortage of data. The challenge is to integrate and analyse this data, so farmers can makes decisions that improve the profitability and sustainability of their enterprises.
The fourth area is new technologies for food-processing.
The food industry is positioning itself away from being a provider of food and beverage to a nutritional and health provider.
There is a range of technologies under development for processing of foods to make them safer, and to improve their nutritional value and functionality.
These technologies will not just have to be better than existing technologies, but they will also have to lead to fewer by-products, as we move towards a zero-waste industry in the new, circular economy (where a by-product from one industry is the starting raw material for another).
These technologies will also have to satisfy discerning consumer who desire minimal processing, as well as safety and nutrition.
And, of course, food will have to remain tasty. So, sensory science will be important.
The fifth area is transformation in the food-value chain.
In the same way that Henry Ford changed the motor industry by developing the assembly line, which was not a new technology, just a different way of doing things, we could see radical reorganisation of the food chain.
New supply chains have emerged in other industries, such as Uber and Hailo in the taxi industry, and Airbnb in the hospitality industry. Retail and distribution is changing.
It is hard to foresee how the food chain will change, but, no doubt, it will.
One evident trend is that consumers are seeking more information on how, and where, their food is produced, and their wishes are transferring back down the production chain to farmers, and impacting how they raise animals and grow crops.
These are all exciting areas of opportunity. Delivering on the potential will require investment in research, and replenishment of scientific resources in the public system (Teagasc and the universities), which have been weakened by the moratorium of recent years.
More than anything, it will require imagination, partnerships, and leadership to position Ireland’s agri-food industry as the most technology-driven agriculture in the world.
Given the strong research base in the country, as well as the density of technology industries here, Ireland is well-positioned to make this leap.
