Stephen Burns (Senior Project Manager) had a great visit to Loch Etive a few weeks ago where he discussed how we would be working with DawnFresh Seafoods as part of our satellite farm network. Dawnfresh is one of the UK’s largest producers of fish and seafood, and the largest trout producer in Britain. Projects discussed included wireless connectivity across the loch to collect sensor data such as water quality and fish health.
Satellite Farm Network
Thirty-two commercial farms have signed up to form the Agri-EPI Centre satellite farm network. They have been carefully selected to provide a wide geographical spread within the UK and give a representative cross-section of UK agriculture. Poultry, pigs, dairy, sheep, beef, cereals, vegetables, horticulture and fish farming are all represented.
Agri-EPI’s Satellite Farm Network can be of benefit to its customers is by providing huge potential for large scale field trials, creating opportunities to benchmark and gauge the commercial impact of new technologies as applied to real world production systems.
Perhaps the most important role that the network plays, is the real connection it gives to industry. Not only does this provide a stream of ideas and problems that farmers have encountered in the field, it also represents an invaluable source of industry knowledge and experience that can feed into other activities.
The list of putative projects continues to grow and it will be very interesting to review the impact of the connected satellite farms on the Centre’s performance in a few years. The satellite farms themselves will continue to be independent, production-orientated businesses throughout. The Agri-EPI team believes this production focus is important and will enhance the commercial impact of the Centre’s work.
~ This synopsis was extracted from an interview with Agri-EPI that was published in the Food and Science Technology Journal in August 2017.
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