TL;DR

A farmer in Cornwall is using AI cameras to monitor bee behaviour and a robot to manage his lavender fields, in a University of Plymouth project aimed at bringing AI-powered farming tools to smallholdings that have been largely left out of agricultural technology advances.

What’s Happening

Ian Sexton’s farm in Callington has become a testbed for AI in small-scale agriculture. Cameras and sensors placed around his beehives capture activity including fights with wasps and the waggle dance bees use to share pollen collection sites.

Pollen gathered in sacs on the bees’ legs has been identified and traced to the specific field where the insects collected it. The University of Plymouth analyses this data using AI to monitor bee populations and health — information that could prove valuable as climate change puts pressure on pollinator numbers.

Geoff Hardman, chair of Cornwall Beekeepers Association, said: “The future of bees is definitely under debate because of the changes in climate, so anything we can do to keep on top of that and have better managed and healthier bees [is good].”

Robotics for Crop Management

Sexton is also using a robot in his lavender fields that can plan, weed, spray, and collect soil information. For a sole operator managing a diverse smallholding, the practical value is immediate.

“There’s such a need because there’s just one of me here and there are so many jobs to do, and the changing weather patterns means there’s less time to do it,” Sexton said.

Bridging the AI Gap in Agriculture

Jake Shaw-Sutton, a director of Robotrix and lecturer in applied robotics at the University of Plymouth, said AI is already embedded in large-scale industrial farm machinery but has not reached smaller farms.

“AI has changed so many different industries but it hasn’t in farming yet,” he said. “Using AI gives that power to farmers to make better, more informed decisions.”

Looking Forward

Shaw-Sutton plans to release the data collected freely, making it available to other small-scale farmers. If this model works, it could help bridge the technology gap between industrial agriculture and the UK’s smaller farms — many of which face the same pressures of labour shortages and unpredictable weather but lack the budgets for commercial AI tools.