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.