Item 6 is the debate by individual Members under Standing Order 11.21 on precision agriculture. I call on Lee Waters to move the motion—Lee.

Motion NDM6143 Lee Waters, Huw Irranca-Davies, Simon Thomas

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Recognises the enormous potential benefits of the application of ‘big data’ in agriculture.

2. Notes the growth in research and development in precision agriculture as a way of increasing yields, maximising the use of scarce resources and minimising the use of harmful chemicals.

3. Calls on the Welsh Government to develop a strategy to put Wales at the forefront of the development of precision agriculture.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Ddirprwy Lywydd. I must confess that the looks on many of my colleagues’ faces when it was announced that we were having a debate on the application of big data in agriculture could be best described as puzzled, but I can assure the Assembly that this is not the result of some esoteric whimsy on behalf of the sponsors. The practical implications of big data in farming are huge. Precision agriculture is about innovation, productivity, software and skills. This is not some obscure tech project; this goes to the heart of some of the most pressing challenges we face, like austerity, food security and climate change.

We are generating, capturing, storing and processing data at speeds never before witnessed. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, once claimed that every two days we now generate the same quantity of information that was created between the dawn of time and the year 2003—every two days. The total amount of data being captured and stored by industry globally is doubling every 14 to 15 months. We’re approaching the point where we’ll be able to code nearly everything we do. The challenge for our and future generations is to exploit the power of big data to improve our lives—to harness the algorithm.

Joyce Watson took the Chair.

Precision agriculture is at the vanguard of this data revolution. It’s a rapidly developing area where information is being applied to food production and land cultivation to dramatically improve productivity and reduce harm to the environment. In arable farming, for example, this approach enables farmers to gather a wealth of real-time information: water and nitrogen levels, air quality, disease—data that isn’t just specific to each farm or to each acre, but to each square inch of our farmland. Using this information, algorithms can tell the farmer exactly what each square inch of land needs and when and, with pinpoint precision, produce the maximum possible yield.

Will the Member give way?

Indeed.

I thank very much Lee Waters for introducing this debate and securing this debate and also for giving way here. But, would he agree as well, in his opening remarks, that this is also an issue of social justice? Precision agriculture and all it entails can confuse people, but it’s actually been identified as part of the solution of how to feed that estimated growing population—to 9.1 billion by 2050. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it’s one of the tools we have to feed that growing population.

I completely agree that it is has multiple benefits, both in terms of food production but also in reducing environmental harm, which also helps some of the poorest in the world by mitigating the impacts of climate change.

Now, not only do these precisely applied algorithms mean that less stuff is going in, at a reduced cost to both our farmers and, with fewer harmful chemicals, the environment, but more stuff is coming out, precisely as Huw Irranca-Davies just intimated. Research has shown that precision agriculture could increase crop yields by as much as 67 per cent. At a time of spiralling global food and water insecurity, figures like these matter. In New Zealand, farmers have developed a way of taking micro-measurements of vast swathes of farmland to identify how much grass is in the paddock so that dairy cows can be distributed most effectively for feeding. It alerts farmers to the amount of feed they have and identifies low-production areas that need intervention—for example, more fertiliser. By feeding their animals more efficiently, kiwi farmers have helped increase exports to China by 470 per cent in one year—a clear economic payback for knowing the precise location and concentration of grass in a field: the application of precision agriculture.

There are pockets of innovation across Wales, in our further and higher education institutions. I recently met with the principal of Coleg Sir Gâr in Llanelli, Barry Liles, who told me about how one of their campuses is already reaping the benefits. At their farm in Gelli Aur, near Llandeilo, in the Carmarthen East constituency, they’ve enjoyed significant efficiencies in milk production, maximising the use of grass and minimising the input of expensive feed. They use satellite imagery to measure field sizes and allocate grazing allowances to their herds. Grass-growth data are measured weekly by plate meters, recorded on a smartphone app and synchronised to a web recording programme. They’re also trialling satellite navigation in experiments with precision fertiliser application. In Aberystwyth University, the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences have been involved in cutting-edge developments in forage grasses. Now, it may sound a little remote, until the practical ramifications of this research become clear. These grasses have demonstrated exciting promise in flood mitigation, something that has been on our minds a lot this week.

We haven’t begun to scratch the surface of the potential of precision agriculture for Wales. I spoke last week about the public workshop I held in Llanelli recently, designed to help develop a jobs blueprint for my constituency, and the overwhelming consensus was that we need greater ambition for the area if we are to withstand coming economic storms. And that’s not just true of my constituency, it’s true across Wales. And precision agriculture presents us with a prime opportunity to demonstrate this ambition.

One of the industries that will likely bear the brunt of Brexit is our food production and manufacturing sector. The removal of the common agricultural policy and the likely imposition of food export tariffs will hit our farmers hard, and we need to prepare for this and to find new, imaginative, innovative means to drive growth in this critical sector—a sector that quite literally puts food on our tables. The market disruption prompted by what is commonly called ‘the fourth industrial revolution’ offers us also an opportunity to do just that: to reimagine the Welsh food economy, to establish Wales as the UK’s western furnace of innovation and industry, all whilst strengthening our resilience to some of the biggest global challenges we face.

We should, we need, to be all over big data like a rash. The cross-party motion before the Assembly today calls on the Welsh Government to develop a strategy that will put Wales at the forefront of the development of precision agriculture. I would urge Ministers and Members to invest energy and enthusiasm to do just that. Thank you.

I’d like to call Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, acting Presiding Officer. It’s a pleasure to take part in this debate, albeit a little sooner than I thought I was going to be taking part in the debate. I do declare an interest, being a farmer, and just in case I do stray into areas that people might think conflict with my interests, I do put that on the record.

On our farm, in the Vale of Glamorgan, we make great use of satellite imagery and controls of pesticides and fertilisers; nearly all the tractors we use are satellite guided, so when you’re putting the fertiliser out, a certain part of the field, for example, will have a greater dose of fertiliser than the other part of the field, because the imagery is showing that that piece of ground is more fertile than the other. Twenty or 25 years ago, you’d just go into a 10, 15, 20-acre field and you would put a uniform rate across that field, not really knowing whether you were having the impact that you required. And, obviously, there’s the leeching effect that that nitrate and other components of that fertiliser has on the environment. So, there’s an economic benefit back to the business but there is also an environmental benefit back to the business.

We debate much in this Chamber, and very often some of them are the same old problems that we are debating within this Chamber, but by debating this debate today, which as the mover of the motion highlighted—at first you think, ‘What a quirky debate. What are they talking about here?’—actually we can have a huge impact in this area because the land mass of Wales is predominantly agricultural. We have such a varied agricultural industry. We have the arable areas around the coastal regions, we have the livestock sector, and I see the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire is here, which has one of the highest densities of livestock farms anywhere within the United Kingdom. We also have a growing renewables sector making use of our land area, and also the management of flood prevention and environmental gains that can be had. So, really, when you look at the mix of agriculture and the use of agricultural land in Wales, considering the size of Wales, we have a huge spread of opportunity to actually push the boundaries of this new technology, and patent and develop that technology here in Wales.

It was quite appropriate—the intervention that was made by the Member for Ogmore—to point out that we are living in a world with huge population growth, and yet the challenges to the natural resources of this planet have never been as great. You have vast areas of the globe that are turning arid because of water problems and are the source of conflict in many areas. You have the western democracy, shall we say, or the western economies, that historically have provided huge quantities of food through their support of the agricultural industry, but the productivity of the agricultural industry, especially in crop production in particular, really hasn’t moved for the last 20, 25 years. If you look at wheat production, for example, because the genetics of the wheat season have been brought forward, they have not really kept up with the potential and the demand that we need to create to sustain a viable food production base for the ever-growing population of the world.

The motion before us today does put the gauntlet down, in a friendly way, to the Welsh Government, and to our higher education and further education institutions, and the industry itself, to rise to the challenge and the opportunity that actually is there to develop these new growth areas. It’s not just in the production of crops. In livestock production, in particular, big data can make a huge improvement in the profitability and efficiency of the livestock sector, from the genetics that have proven to deliver better livestock animals back to the farm gate, to also the assessment of the meat that comes from those animals when they are processed in the processing plant. In New Zealand, for example, much of the grading work that is undertaken on the carcases of the animals is undertaken electronically now, rather than by the human eye, thus reducing the disparity, shall we say, that very often does happen when the human eye is relied on and the demand that the abattoir might have to what the producer needs, thus providing a consistent level of return back to the primary producer to have the confidence to invest in that livestock sector.

So, this is a really exciting area and we have pockets of real innovation going on in our HE and FE sectors across Wales—Gelli Aur has been talked about; Aberystwyth is another beacon of excellence that we can look at—but we do need to have, as the motion calls for, a plan from the Welsh Government as to how it’s going to harness this research and development moneys, along with the facilities that exist within the research sector in Wales—. I have a limit on my time, but I’ll happily take the intervention.

My apologies, I don’t intend to intervene too much. But would he agree as well that one of the exciting opportunities of this, with the exponential growth in big data, is actually what we could do on the environmental aspect, because the endless rounds of inspection, inspection, inspection and monitoring, monitoring in the traditional form could be, to some extent, done away with by the accuracy of the big data monitoring of what is actually happening on the ground?

There is huge scope for that, and as someone, obviously, who has been regularly inspected, having been in farming for 25 years, I see the pros and cons of that because the landscape is a moving feast, and the rigidity very often of a snapshot from a Google image or something that inspectors are relying on does cause some problems very often. But there is scope to improve that aspect of it as well.

I do welcome the motion before us. I believe we could have filled a lot more time looking at this particular aspect, because I do think that it’s a genuine area that Government can make a big difference in, the industry can make a big difference in, and our research and business sectors can also deliver for what promises to be an exciting and dynamic century in the world of food production and, indeed, the availability of new technology.

It’s very interesting to hear the explanation of Andrew R.T. Davies about the work he’s doing in this area. As Huw Irranca-Davies and Andrew have pointed out, it is a way of maximising yield without the use of chemicals, and intelligently harnessing the power of nature. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, food production must increase by 60 per cent to be able to feed the world’s growing population. Big data is a powerful, evidence-based tool for long-term sustainable development by improving the economic opportunities for farmers, as well as the health of consumers.

We saw what happened in Zimbabwe, where critical levels of crop failure in 2013 put over 2 million people at risk of chronic malnutrition. Big data can help prevent those sorts of things from happening, both by foreseeing the weather conditions that produce that crop failure, but also mitigating and producing alternative ways of dealing with the problem. I’ve spoken many times about the horticulture trade deficit we have in the UK, and particularly in Wales, and this is one of the ways in which we could very efficiently become self-sufficient in horticulture, as well as using it as an export market.

I just want to focus on two countries that somewhat dominate the horticulture market, and have used big data very effectively. One of them is Chile, which is at the very southern end of South America. Its horticulture region is concentrated in the province of Valparaíso, from where more than two thirds of the country’s horticultural production is exported. Chile accounts for 50 per cent of the fruit exported from the southern hemisphere, and it is a relatively small country in terms of land mass. If you compare that with 1990, when their share was only 25 per cent, it’s now the No. 1 exporter of fruit in the southern hemisphere. So, there’s been an absolutely massive transformation of that industry. Worldwide, agriculture accounts for around 70 per cent of all fresh water use, but around 60 per cent, I understand, of this is wasted. So, by using big data to manage water effectively—. It was shown in Chile that by using irrigation researchers, they slashed their water use by 70 per cent in blueberry farming by using a network of wireless sensors. This is Chile’s third-largest fruit export, so, obviously, with massive savings like this, and two thirds of the world’s water extraction now being consumed by agriculture, smart water management systems won’t just be in demand, they’ll be absolutely essential.

The second country is much closer to home, in Holland, the Netherlands. It’s one of the world’s largest exporter of horticultural projects, and at some times of the year it’s supplying nearly all the fruit and vegetables for most of Europe. Holland has 44 per cent of the worldwide trade in flowers, but also, through the use of hydroponic greenhouses, accounts for 50 per cent of the value of all fruit and vegetables produced in Holland. They have used big data to boost their productivity and safeguard their crops from unpredictable climate. The use of these hydroponic greenhouses has massively increased their food production. They’ve used data to analyse and balance their soils, and made effective use of natural fertilisers, so that they’ve refined their farming techniques through a green revolution, rather than adding more and more commercial artificial fertilisers. It makes plants less vulnerable to soil degradation and unpredictable weather by using these very large greenhouses, which you can see if you fly over anywhere in Holland. It means that horticulturists have more control over the conditions, which allows them to drive efficiency, reduce waste and expand production beyond the natural seasons. These hydroponic greenhouses really do offer precision horticulture, which I feel we really ought to be able to replicate here in Britain.

So, I think this is a very important area that we need to be looking at, and I think that, having talked to the farming unions, their members are very open to new ideas, because they absolutely understand that change is on the way, inevitably, as a result of Brexit, and this is a really important and useful moment to give farmers the tools they need to diversify and to give them a guaranteed income.

I’d like now to call Neil Hamilton.

Thank you, acting Presiding Officer. What an interesting debate this has been, and I’d like to congratulate Lee Waters on adding this intellectual veneer to our proceedings. It shows what a credit he is to our old school, and I’m sure Adam Price will agree on this what a great contribution it is making to the proceedings. Of course, my own contributions tend to cater for the rougher end of the oratorical market, but I’m very pleased to take part in this rather more high-level discussion.

I have to admit I knew little about this topic until I researched it after the motion was put down on the order paper. But it is absolutely a very worthwhile thing for us to debate, because it’s yet another refutation, I think, of the Malthusian fallacy and shows that the limits to human ingenuity cannot be foreseen. And, as a result of the massive increase in population that we’ve had in our lifetimes, and the population increases that are in prospect, we will need to make massive increases in food production, and almost everybody who’s taken part in this debate so far recognises what a massive contribution big data can make to alleviating problems of poverty and hunger in the world, and I’m sure we all accept that.

And, certainly, as the western world focuses less and less upon labour-intensive production, the use of technology is becoming even more important. It was very interesting to hear a practical farmer’s account, from Andrew R.T. Davies, of how this has affected his business over the course of the last 25 years. I think it’s very encouraging for us all that an industry that has, in the past, been regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, is, at the very lowest level of individual operation, now being able to take advantage of these techniques, which few of us, I think, would be able to explain how they operate to anybody else. It’s very easy to see the effects; it’s very difficult to understand the science and technology that goes to back them up.

But, it is interesting that it is transforming our lives in so many different ways. I was very interested to hear what Jenny Rathbone had to say also about the way in which these techniques are being used in Holland, and some very interesting facts that she gave us about the proportion of the world trade in flowers and vegetables and so on that small countries are responsible for, which gives us, I think, great hope for thinking that, as the decades unfold, countries that are currently enveloped in the most desperate poverty will be able to improve the lives of their citizens in ever-growing numbers. So, it’s a spirit of optimism, most of all, that I think will emerge from this debate this afternoon.

What is interesting is how affordable this technology is also, when you consider the costs of capital-intensive production in years gone by and how impossible it was for small businesses to afford similar techniques that are transformative in their effect. Small businesses—and farmers are the ultimate small businessmen in this country, and particularly in Wales—are able to take advantage of these new techniques in order to improve their businesses and make them more productive. So, I’m very pleased to make a contribution to this debate, even though I can add nothing by way of knowledge to what has been discussed, but once again to say how important it is that the Assembly should, from time to time, have these consensual debates so that we don’t always have to engage in knockabout and beat each other up in the Chamber. Once again, I’d like to express my gratitude to Lee Waters for adding so much to the quality of what we do.

I’d like to call Simon Thomas.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer—

DPO dros dro neu beth bynnag ydych chi ar hyn y bryd—

Member of the Senedd:

Chair.

Chair, yes, whatever. Thank you. I am very pleased to have an opportunity to speak in this debate and spare Lee Waters too much embarrassment for being praised too much by Neil Hamilton, I am sure. So, I thank him myself and add to that. I think what’s important in this debate is that we realise that this is already happening and agriculture is a mix of heritage, art and a lot of science and technology and industry. The industry bit is already driving this. As Andrew R.T. Davies said, most farmers will have GPS of some sort on their tractors already and will be able to do some sort of modelling like this.

What we really are calling for in this debate is for the Welsh Government and for all of us to be at the forefront of this technology. In looking at how all this started I came across the first use of a unmanned aerial vehicle, which we’d now call a drone, to survey farmland in the United Kingdom, which was back in 2008. It was a joint research project between QinetiQ, which is Aberporth for those who know it, and Aberystwyth University, looking and surveying whether fertiliser applications were needed regarding the nitrogen levels of soil, and that was being done from the air. So, we’ve been there from the start here in Wales with the technology, the higher education institutions and the farmers working hand in hand, and now is the opportunity to move on for this next part.

I think those of us who did study history rather than agriculture nevertheless will remember ‘Turnip’ Townshend, the reasonably well-known, hopefully, instigator of the first agricultural revolution that we had in the United Kingdom. He introduced the Norfolk crop rotation system, which then fed the industrial revolution. Without ‘Turnip’ Townshend we would not have had the industrial revolution because we simply couldn’t have fed the growing populations of our cities that then led on from that.

We are seeing that now back in Wales. This is what I like about this: this is the combination of the old and the new together. Members of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee who visited Bryn Gido farm near Llanarth in Ceredigion will remember the young farmer there, Anwen, who was looking at how she could improve her pasture for sheep. She was planting swedes, not turnips, but swedes for the sheep. Simply by planting the swedes, knowing the soil condition and knowing the grass growth, and in liaison with Aberystwyth, with the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences, knowing what grass to plant, when to plant it, how to plant it, and grass following swede in different fields, simply by doing that, the reduction in her cake costs had been enormous. From going through a very precarious existence she was in a much more sustainable one. That’s a traditional sheep farm, which you would not think when you look at a debate that says it is about big data and precision agriculture. You don’t think that’s about sheep farming, but it is precisely about sheep farming. And, in the same way as reflecting what Andrew R.T. Davies said about New Zealand, she was looking at the breed of sheep and the breeding of sheep and doing that then scientifically as well. That’s something you can do in one farmhouse on a hill in Ceredigion and it’s something that can be done throughout Wales now as we improve our farm data.

It’s already been said how big data can assist us in this with weather, soil and air quality, crop maturity, equipment, labour costs, and all the savings and the investment that can result from that. But the real thing that I think I want to emphasise at this stage of the debate is that we do need something to be put in place in order for small farmers in particular to access that. What I don’t want to see happening within big data and precision agriculture is a similar situation that arose with GM. We’re not going down the GM route today, but GM started as a big corporate kind of process that told farmers how to farm and said you could only use certain fertilisers, you could only use certain pesticides, and it drove from a top-down approach that simply led to rebellion and unhappiness amongst farmers and then, of course, in consumers as well who didn’t think that that was the kind of food that they wanted to see. So, in order to avoid that, we have to involve farmers themselves in the planning of big data and that’s the point that I think Welsh Government can lead on.

So, for example, if we’re going to have big data, they have to be stored. If they have to be stored, then access to those data and how the data are used—the moveable feast of the landscape, as Andrew R.T. Davies referred to it, I think—. Farmers have to be confident that those data are going to be used in a productive, useful way, not to penalise them, but in a way that helps them, together with their neighbours, to grow their farm businesses. So, who owns those data is important, as are how you liaise with HE institutions about the use of the data and whether the supercomputers that are being developed in our HE institutions now can be utilised for this purpose as well. I think that’s going to be an essential aspect.

The other one, to turn to a more mundane but very important point, is that 13 per cent of our farmers in Wales today don’t have reliable access to the internet, and 60 per cent only have connection speeds of 2 Mbps. You can’t do big data—you can’t put up a drone—with an internet connection like that. You can’t maintain your information, share it and learn from each other with those sorts of access. So, big data have to go in hand with good high-speed internet access and mobile access in many farms as well.

I think there’s huge potential for green skills—the growth of green skills—in the Welsh economy. Only 27 per cent of farmers do have formal training, but for the new generation coming in, of course, it’s nearly 100 per cent. This is a farming tradition in Wales that is keen to learn and keen to use their skills, and this is a real example of where Wales can lead the way.

I’d like to call Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Thank you very much, Chair. I just want to briefly endorse the final point made by Simon Thomas. I’m grateful that this issue has been aired in the Assembly and I welcome that very much.

Innovation is something that I am generally eager to see us do more of in Wales. I think there’s something about the size of Wales and the scale of Wales that makes us an ideal place to innovate in a number of areas. I think, given the importance of agriculture as part of our social fabric here in Wales, that agriculture is a clear area for innovation. Of course, as we’ve already heard, there are plenty of examples of great innovation taking place, including in our HE institutions.

There is a benefit to this innovation in economic terms. Agriculture and those who rely on farming for their livelihoods do have to do more with less these days, as do people in all areas. Technological developments and innovation in agriculture are going to allow that to happen. Farms where you had a host of servants working and doing that legwork are a thing of the past. The ability of the farmer these days to get more for less is more important than ever. Of course, there is an environmental benefit to this too, as we’ve heard, and a benefit in terms of feeding our population.

The point, as I’ve said, that I want to make is similar to the one Simon Thomas made. It’s easy to think of rural Wales as slow-moving—somewhere that’s beautiful, but very far from the innovations of the twenty-first century—but that isn’t the case, of course. If we are looking to attest the position of rural Wales and our agriculture industry in this era of innovation, we must ensure that the connections are there so that people can share data and information, and I do think that this is a peg, once again, on which we can remind decision makers, either in Government or outwith Government, that we must consider our rural areas as areas where it is just as important, if not more important, to ensure that those connections and links are available. Physical links aren’t as obvious in rural areas, but the digital connections are crucially important, and I think that that, in and of itself, is important as we discuss the innovation that’s required in rural Wales.

I now call on the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths.

Thank you, Chair. I’m surprised that Lee Waters had some puzzled looks, because after you raised this with me during one of my questions sessions a couple of months ago, I had lots of people come up to me about precision agriculture. So, I think it’s really good that we’ve got this opportunity to debate this subject further today.

Simon Thomas mentioned in his remarks that there is a great deal of activity going on in this area already, so I just want to set out the work that is going on and the support that the Welsh Government is giving to it.

Innovation, as in all walks of life, really, is absolutely vital for agricultural systems to deliver improved productivity and efficiency and, of course, it continues to happen at a rapid pace. Progress in technologies available to our farmers means that there are opportunities for incorporating smart sensors, high-precision positioning systems and satellites into farming practices to reduce inputs and target them to where they’re most needed.

The revolution in precision farming started in the arable and horticultural sectors with systems to target crop inputs and harvesting. Nowadays, as we’ve heard, there are also systems to support livestock enterprises that, for example, utilise sensors, monitoring activity, health and production.

All these new technologies are driving the phenomenon known as big data, which is the capability to extract information and insight where previously it was not economically or technically possible to do so. Systems such as remote monitoring sensors, global positioning systems and DNA technology now have the capability to generate vast amounts of data at high speed.

Agrimetrics is the first of four centres being established as part of the UK Government’s agri-tech strategy. That will support the revolution in the use of data science and modelling right across the food system sector. Integrating data across the agri-food supply chain, from farm production to the food industry, to retailers and consumers, are all aims of Agrimetrics. The Welsh Government is working closely with our stakeholders and delivery bodies to maximise agri-tech research income into Wales.

So, what is the value of big data? Precision farming technologies offer us opportunities to collect data from multiple sources, which then create large, robust data sets. These data can be interrogated and translated into knowledge that will drive the next wave of innovation on farms. Farmers will no longer be dependent on spreadsheets of data from their own enterprises; they’ll be able to then take advantage of both national and global data.

Amaeth Cymru, the strategic framework partnership group, which is chaired by Kevin Roberts, brings together key stakeholders and the Welsh Government to work in partnership and develop the strategic direction for Welsh agriculture in the lead up to and post Brexit. I see the work of this group as vital in achieving our long-term vision for Welsh agriculture, and this work has become even more important and urgent in light of the referendum outcome.

Amaeth Cymru is developing a strategic road map for Welsh agriculture, which will set out how we intend to deliver our shared vision for Welsh agriculture going forward. One of the key considerations for the group will be future opportunities around research and development.

So, as I said, there is a great deal of activity being undertaken currently. Through Farming Connect, Welsh Government is actively engaging with precision agriculture and establishing projects to demonstrate their benefits to a wide-range of farming systems. I would encourage farmers and foresters keen to know more about precision-farming technology and techniques to apply for funding through the European innovation partnership to further develop their ideas.

Precision-farming techniques help farmers to select and apply the right inputs at the right time and at the right application rate. So, it’s really important that we have those targeted inputs; it can also save money too. For example, at one of our Farming Connect focus sites in south Wales, there is a project looking at the use of tractor-mounted nitrogen fertiliser sensors, which enable the sensitive application of nitrogen according to variation in cereal crop colour. The technology is billed as having the capability to be more accurate in terms of nutrient application than existing GPS technology.

Another example: at a Farming Connect innovation site in Aberystwyth, we have a research programme project aiming to improve the understanding of animal behaviour and metabolism, whilst increasing productivity and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. For those Members who attended the Royal Welsh Show, at the Farming Connect stand, I met with the people who were running this scheme and listened to the benefits from them and, if there is any evaluation I can bring forward, I’d be happy to do that.

So, in addition to the 12 Farming Connect projects specifically looking at precision agriculture across Wales, we also have the Welsh Government’s sustainable production grant that’s supporting a number of Welsh farmers to make the necessary investment to modernise and improve their on-farm inefficiencies. I think the point that a Member raised about small farms—I think it was Simon Thomas—is really important also. We need to make sure that they’re not left behind in this technology.

So, these and other initiatives already under way, I think, will put Wales in its rightful place: right at the forefront of the development of precision agriculture. Diolch.

I thank you and I will now call on Huw Irranca-Davies to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Chair. Can I say what a good debate this has been? We’ve had seven contributions, including myself, plus, of course, the Cabinet Secretary, and I’ve been struck by the level of consensus on the potential for this technology in Wales and, as Lee Waters, who introduced the debate, says, to use this, as I think his phrase was, ‘western furnace of innovation’. I think he’s right, and Lee reminded us about the benefits that this technology can yield: potential crop yield improvements, environmental, benefits to farmers’ income both in this country and, as Jenny Rathbone also said as well, internationally as well. Where people are on a much more subsistence level of farming, the benefits could be, arguably, even greater. He talked about the innovations at Coleg Sir Gâr and at Gelli Aur farm and at Aberystwyth University—it’s great to pass by, actually, where those trials are taking place in Aberystwyth University on forage grasses—and the innovation that’s already going on and the potential of the application here in Wales.

Andrew R.T. Davies reminded us, in fact, that some of this technology is already routinely in place, and GPS technology is used by many, many farmers nowadays—the use of satellite imagery for precision application of fertilisers. He urged us to rise to the challenge to develop these new growth areas, which was a common theme across many contributors today—indeed, I will give way.

I’m now moving on in life at the princely age of 48, and, as my sons keep telling me, I should be put out to pasture, so much so that our latest bit of big data kit, called the Scorpion, they keep me well away from for the damage I might cause with that. But it’s an important point that we need to be educating and allowing people to develop through the industry so they can make use of these data, because there’s no point in having them if you can’t use them.

Very much indeed. A point well made, which others have said as well. This has to be a collaboration between Government and industry—big industry, small industry—academia, research units, but also those front-end practitioners, the farmers themselves in the field, which I’ll turn back to in a moment.

Jenny Rathbone my colleague talked—. And I thought it was a lovely phrase that she used, I think it was ‘intelligently harnessing the power of nature’, what this is about, getting more from less: less petrochemical input, less soil erosion, less soil impacting. A much more intelligent approach to farming that can, as was said by other contributors, sit well alongside—Simon Thomas went into this—traditional forms of farming. It’s not that one is to the exclusion of others; they can actually be well integrated.

Neil Hamilton, in his contribution, talked about the Malthusian fallacy, but also talked about the potential of this. Interestingly—I know we disagree on this, but one of the potentials of this technology is to drive production back into those areas that are currently, through climate change, being impacted by desertification, denuding places that were the food baskets of the world, or flood inundation on a regular basis. That’s the potential these have.

Simon Thomas took us back to the long-distant history of 2008, and the first use of a drone by Aberystwyth University in applied research on agricultural innovation. He also reminded us that it is about this marriage with traditional farming and the need to involve farmers themselves in taking this forward.

Rhun ap Iorwerth used the classic phrase—yn Gymraeg, however—of ‘the size of Wales’ and the fact that, because we are small and we are dynamic, we can be, actually, the test bed of this technology. But I’ll return to that, because I think there’s stuff that we can do on collaboration, as well, right across the UK—and within Europe, curiously enough.

The Cabinet Secretary—it was great to hear her talk about how this could embed itself within the agri-food strategy here, within the road map, going ahead, drawing our attention to the European innovation partnership funding that’s currently available and the sustainable production grant, and other support that is currently there to help farmers apply and develop this technology, and she usefully turned our attention to the fact that this is already being trialled on things like nitrogen fertiliser applications as well.

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

I just want to turn, and I’m not sure, madam deputy speaker, how many minutes we have—

Keep going—I’ll tell you when you sit down.

Thank you very much. In which case, I’ll try and rapidly do it. I had a wonderful visit—I think it was about two years ago, maybe three years ago—to Harper Adams University, the National Centre for Precision Farming. Tremendous work has been done there in their agricultural engineering innovation centre, and you will see the application of this, the big data, the internet of things. [Interruption.] You will see—okay—the strange high-tech end of this, with robotic machines with nobody on them working their way up the fields, individually singling out weeds to apply the right treatment to, individually applying nutrients in certain areas as well—very cost-effective, and using the technology that’s currently available. That’s why I say that, actually, some of the innovation within this should actually be done not only within Wales but actually across the borders, sharing that collaboration across universities and others right across the UK. We have the ability in Wales to do this, and also by sharing our know-how elsewhere.

You look at the European-funded Copernicus satellite system and the ability that that has got now for exactly what Andrew R.T. Davies was saying: that we can zone down onto individual farms, not just the hectares and the acres, but the inches, in terms of application of fertiliser and so on, and to sustain certain crops. The GaugeMap is an interactive map, using open data, which provides updates on river levels and flows and groundwater data across England and Wales. Plantwise: a global programme using open data, which is something we haven’t touched on today, to help farmers lose less of what they grow to crop pests and diseases by providing an online and offline gateway to diagnostics, pest tracking and best practice in farming.

All of these are possible, but we do have challenges. I’m keeping my eye on you, madam deputy speaker, just to make sure that you don’t suddenly shout me down. There are challenges. One of those that’s been identified is that there are very few data scientists or persons who know how to create and execute the algorithms necessary for analysing these large amounts of data. That’s an area that we can definitely lead in, as Lee Waters was saying. There’s often a common mismatch in the scale, precision and accuracy of data coming from different sources. Now, this mismatch can create an erroneous picture of what’s actually happening in different fields. And, of course, big data need to be quality-controlled before they’re used in these algorithms. If this is going to be smart farming, let’s make sure that the inputs are as good as the outputs in the actual field.

So, there’s far more that I could say, but I know that time is running out. I do want to just flag up the Welsh Government’s open data plan, which could contribute to this; the Atlas of Living Wales and the national biodiversity network, which could contribute to this within Wales; the Lle geo-portal, a partnership between Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales—it’s a hub for data and information gathering on a range of topics, mainly around the environment; and more and more and more.

This has been a cracking debate, with a great deal of consensus. Let’s grab the opportunity here in Wales, but also grab the opportunity in working in collaboration with people right across the UK. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Object. Therefore we’ll defer voting under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.