Agrimetrics: the first Centre for Agricultural Innovation is open for business

Today (Monday 26 October 2015), George Eustice MP, Minister of State for Farming, Food and the Marine Environment and George Freeman MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Life Sciences, officially launched Agrimetrics, the world’s first Big Data Centre of Excellence for the whole food system.

Agrimetrics’ founding partners, Rothamsted Research, the University of Reading, the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), hosted the launch of the first Centre for Agricultural Innovation created by the UK government through Innovate UK under the UK Strategy for Agricultural Technologies.

Agrimetrics will support a revolution in the use of big data science in the agri-food industry and contribute to a highly intelligent, productive, efficient, resilient and sustainable system.

The Centre, which will work with all business and universities, will engage with partners throughout the food system to enable detailed and collective understanding of the needs of farmers, food manufacturers, food retailers, consumers and the environment through the use of big data and analytical tools. This high-value collective information, will allow the identification of opportunities for innovation projects among the partners.

Life Sciences Minister George Freeman MP said: “We are investing in the use of data in agriculture to transform the way crops and livestock are grown and bred. Using data we can identify new genetic traits, spray only crops with disease, and use less water and energy for modern lower input farming. The expertise we’re supporting at Agrimetrics will position the UK a world leader in this fast emerging field and improve agricultural sustainability and productivity.”

At the core of Agrimetrics is a big data science platform. The platform will include all of the necessary software tools that make possible the integration of data according to users’ needs. Datasets from around the world will be used for this purpose. By working with and up-skilling the industry on data and data analyses, Agrimetrics will be helping to de-risk the investment required by the supply-chain.

Farming Minister George Eustice said: “British farmers are increasingly making use of data to help them manage and grow their business, from predicting weather trends, to assessing soil qualities and using the very best feed types. This new technology has contributed to efficiency gains and will help us drive up the value of our food and farming industry, already worth £100 billion to our economy.This new centre, funded as part of the government’s Agri-Tech Strategy, provides even greater opportunities to utilise this valuable resource. Taking ideas from the laboratory to the farm and improving productivity of farming is all part of our ambitious long-term vision for the future of farming”.

George Freeman MP, parliamentary under secretary of state for life sciences, and George Eustice MP, minister for farming, food and the marine environment, officially launch the agrimetrics centre.

George Freeman MP, parliamentary under secretary of state for life sciences, and George Eustice MP, minister for farming, food and the marine environment, officially launch the agrimetrics centre.

Professor Richard Tiffin, Chief Scientific Officer of Agrimetrics, said: “The food and farming industries face unprecedented challenges. For example, farmers throughout the world have to make decisions for effective management of costs, ensuring returns and safeguarding the sustainable use of land. These decisions are taken in an uncertain economic environment whilst dealing with inherently difficult to predict conditions e.g. weather due to climate change. Agrimetrics will enable the gathering, processing and availability of big data in a way that will support decision making processes for the realisation of new opportunities and better use of scarce resources”.

Ian Meikle, Head of Agriculture and Food at Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency, said: “Using Big Data will give the agricultural sector the evidence-based edge. The insights from this can drive productivity and growth in the sector, benefitting the economy and consumers.”

“Modern technology is flooding the food and farming world with data. The key challenge is to fairly share and efficiently process it into information farmers can use to improve the quality and quantity of their outputs in sustainable ways that benefit both themselves and society. SRUC is delighted to support Agrimetrics in this endeavour, which is in line with SRUC’s reputation as a knowledge exchange organisation” added Professor Alistair Stott, Head of Future Farming Systems Group at SRUC and member of the Agrimetrics executive team.

“The development of Agrimetrics will support innovation in agricultural research and its translation to improve the productivity, efficiency and sustainability of UK agri-food production systems. The integration of large datasets at this unprecedented scale will bring together resources from a diversity of areas including crop and animal breeding, agronomy and farming systems. This will enable opportunities for the UK food sector to lead in and benefit from the new revolution in agriculture informatics” said Professor Mario Caccamo, head of Crop Bioinformatics at NIAB and member of the Agrimetrics’ executive team.

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