A Cornish farmer is experimenting with innovative strategies to enhance soil health while tackling erosion and flooding, with robotics playing a key role in monitoring his progress.

Malcolm Barrett, based in St Tudy, is part of a group of farmers across Cornwall trialling ways to reduce ploughing while sowing maize. One technique he has tested involves using ‘strip till’ machinery, which disturbs the soil only in narrow bands instead of ploughing the entire field.

Maize requires a fine seedbed to establish, as it struggles to compete during its early growth stages. Traditionally, heavy ploughing has been used to prepare the land, but this practice can degrade and compact the soil, increasing the risk of run-off pollution into rivers.

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This issue is particularly significant in the South West, where maize is widely grown for cattle feed. Degraded soils often wash onto roads and into rivers during rainfall, exacerbating flooding and pollution problems.

Malcolm’s adoption of various minimum-till techniques, supported by Innovative Farmers, has reduced his reliance on ploughing.

He has observed benefits such as less flooding and an increase in earthworm populations, which are indicators of healthier soil.

The trial has attracted the interest of the University of Plymouth, which has joined as part of its research into how agri-tech can support sustainable land and water management.

The university is developing sensors that measure soil organic matter and moisture levels using natural radioactivity signals emitted by soil minerals.

These sensors can provide real-time, field-wide data, allowing farmers to assess the effectiveness of their practices and improve soil and water management.

Unlike traditional soil testing, which involves sending a few samples to a lab and waiting for results, these sensors can offer instant insights from hundreds of data points across the entire field.

The technology has evolved to integrate with robotic platforms, enabling sensors to collect data more accurately and consistently than manual methods.

Robots can be programmed to move slowly and precisely, reducing the workload for farmers and advisors while generating high-quality data.

Malcolm explained: “We're learning more about what the soil can do for us, and what we can do for the soil.

"It's helping everyone by helping the environment and we're getting huge benefits on our farm too. If we can understand our soil and our crops more, we can farm smarter by targeting our approach.

"Having thousands of data points from the robotic sensors helps to build a whole picture – then we can see if there's certain areas that need attention and single out management practices that work.”

Professor Will Blake from the University of Plymouth added: “This trial has meant we can get our science out of the lab and test it in a real-world setting, feeding back into other research programmes we're working on.

"We're using robotics to deploy soil assessment solutions that the world could take on."