BBSRC Professor visits Harper Adams

Posted 18 January 2012

Professor Douglas Kell, Chief Executive of the BBSRC, visited Harper Adams University College recently to learn about research activities and in particular, precision farming.

He toured the campus to meet with staff and view facilities related to the subject of global food security.

Following the visit Professor Kell wrote in his blog:  “This was thus an exceptionally interesting visit. Without seeking to pick out specific areas, I note that Harper Adams runs the only UK degree courses in Agricultural Engineering, and I saw some very interesting work at the interface of engineering and agriculture, especially in the areas of using modern technology to plant, sense, weed, and harvest agricultural crops.

“The whole area of ‘precision agriculture’ is going to provide an important contribution to increasing the productivity of food and non-food crops, and we can expect it to expand significantly.

“Another very interesting and important area was represented by the OpenFields project. This seeks to make available, in an accessible and structured format, the many and dispersed outputs of agricultural research (sensu lato) in a manner somewhat akin to that available for biomedical publications via UKPMC.”