Kevin Prince has wide experience of farming and rural business in Hampshire, where he lives near Andover, and across southern England as a Divisional Partner of Brown & Co.
I am known for being what I like to call a "late adopter" of technology, which I think paints a picture of a sensible, slightly risk-averse but prudent person.
Others at work (and everyone in my family) would describe me as a complete Luddite.
It is true that I still prefer a carburettor to fuel injection, and a wire cable to an electric relay, but that is usually because I like to be able to theoretically know how to repair something even if I have no intention of ever doing so!
I realise that the above personality flaw has got worse with age, and I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago when I was asked to submit a compensation claim to one of the statutory bodies for crop damage (caused by them driving all over a client’s field whilst attempting to fix a fault).
When I first started work this job involved a good pair of walking boots, a pencil and notebook, camera (either SLR or early digital) and a road wheel which would clog up with mud and jam solid every eight or nine steps.
So, as I handed over the plan of the land that had been affected to one of my colleagues, I anticipated a sigh and an eye roll as they realised that they would have to spend a whole day pushing a muddy wheel around whilst trying to juggle a notebook at the same time as taking photographs.
Instead, this news was met with a smile and a cheery suggestion that the day after may suit them to do it.
The reason for this optimism is that now, instead of taking a whole day to measure the bare patches of crop, the young surveyor will stand by the roadside as a pre-programmed drone takes off, flies the fields in question, records the damage and returns to its starting position.
The data is downloaded in the office and the areas worked out in mere minutes rather than hours.
The drone can be used in farming for far more than saving me a walk, it can measure plant health across fields, identify drainage or irrigation problems and, I am told, even count the number of pumpkins in a field!
The result of this technology is, as with so many other innovations in agriculture over the last 20 years, that fewer man hours (and therefore of course fewer men or women) are needed to grow the same amount of food.
This is a fact and the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.
However, the end result is that an ever-smaller proportion of the country’s population has a direct connection, and therefore the innate understanding that follows that connection, with animals or crops produced for food.
This worries me in terms of future national policy and the country’s attitude to the (few) future farmers that will follow.
My worry is that future generations will not value food in the same way that the generations before us have.
At least, being such a Luddite I am not on any social media and so cannot digitally track any changes in the national zeitgeist.
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