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As Precision Farming has developed we have seen the size of management units reduce from farm scale, to field scale and now we have the possibility of farming at the plant scale. Plant scale husbandry has been with us since agriculture first started but we have left individual plant care behind as we used mechanization to replace hand labour. This trend has continued until today as we see the equipment getting bigger all the time. The main reason for bigger machinery is so that farmers can take advantage of economies of scale: the larger area that an operator can cover in an hour, the lower the overall cost. What would happen if we considered a different approach? One that looks at the real plant requirements. One that takes into account environmental and societal needs as well? One that can utilise the latest information technologies to develop an agricultural system that minimise inputs to the plant needs and still retain high production levels. All of these features are possible today after one crucial development and that is the ability to embed enough intelligence into a machine to allow it to work unattended for long periods of time.

This presentation is designed to stimulate thought about the designs for a new agricultural production system based on small autonomous robots. Many of the traditional agricultural tasks are defined in terms of how they are implemented now. We plough, harrow and seed in ways that have nothing to do with what the crop plants actually need but in terms of how the current mechanization system allow us to carry out these operations.