Hopefully by the time you read this, it will be out of date and growers will have received some significant rain to overcome the driest spring the country has seen since records began.
After two extremely wet years and a reasonably damp winter, farmers across the country welcomed the dry and sunny start to the 2025 season which provided ideal conditions for drilling, planting and crop establishment. However, while those blessed with moisture-retentive soil such as the deep Lincolnshire silts are still okay, many other vegetable growers, particularly those of crops such as salads and onions, will have had to irrigate to get crops established, and, at the time of writing (21 May), many are now hoping for some rain.
While many larger growers will have access to plenty of water in their reservoirs, such an early start to the irrigation season is bound to create nervousness about what might happen later in the year, particularly if we have a sustained hot dry summer. Water companies and the Environment Agency are already talking about the potential for water restrictions, and with river levels across the country well below normal for the time of year, abstraction is unlikely to be an option.
Not even the first meeting of the National Drought Group has brought on rainfall, although the official drought forecast is still currently medium, that could change depending on what the Met Office’s forecast change in weather systems over the Bank Holiday weekend and subsequent half-term week brings. It may not be universally popular, but those in our industry will be hoping for the expected ‘spells of rain, which may be heavy at times’.
There is no doubt about the impact that robotics, automation and artificial intelligence are starting to have on farming. Yet for every success story, there is at least one failure, and visual selection and hand harvesting is said to be one of the most difficult tasks for robots to undertake. However, given the labour challenges horticulture faces (both in terms of availability and cost) it also represents one of the biggest potential wins for the sector.
Therefore, news that Muddy Machines is ‘winding down’ as it cannot attract the necessary funding going forward will be disappointing to many. Despite trials with Cobrey Farms for a number of years, the company’s asparagus harvesting robot is still a long way from being commercial, and while company founder Chris Chavasse appears to have criticised the lack of investment (despite being awarded almost £2.5 million in grant funding), with such tight margins growers simply can’t afford to invest in unproven technology, creating a Catch-22 situation.
Muddy Machine’s weren’t the only company developing an asparagus picking robot, and many will now be looking to see whether Cambridge-based Autopickr continues to develop its Gus robot for the crop, or whether it is now focusing on crop such as grapes and daffodils as recent news stories have suggested.
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