3rd CENSIS Technology Summit, 6 Oct 2016
Technology & Innovation Centre, Glasgow G1 1RD
Session 3: The Connected Business
Dr Dave Ross, Interim CEO, Agricultural Engineering Precision (Agri EPI) Centre, Edinburgh.
A trained engineer, Dave began his career in the defence sector designing electro-
optic systems. He moved to agricultural engineering and technology in 1990, taking the opportunity to return to his roots having been brought up on a mixed/dairy farm.
His work has included systems for crop monitoring, post-harvest quality, livestock-related technologies, automatic handling, grading and disease control methodologies, and crop monitoring/pest control techniques.
More recently Dave has developed novel processes and products in the meat quality and animal monitoring sector, leading to (patented) commercial products, and separately, projects relating to greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture, including designing the award winning Greencow facility. A recent focus is on the exploitation of emerging technologies for precision agriculture applications. Much of the work has been communicated through journals, conferences, grower/producer meetings and the farming press.
He has lead a number of large (>£1M) projects in the area of new technologies for agriculture and the food supply chain. Dave is developing the Agri-EPI Centre business to make it an internationally-leading centre for engineering and precision technologies for the agricultural and primary food processing sector.
Tech Summit Presentation
Title: Agri-EPI Centre: Sensing challenges and opportunities for the global agri-food sector
Precision farming and engineering is one of the fastest growing ‘agri-tech’ subsectors and is already worth over £1 billion to the UK economy. It is a key ‘enabling technology’ supporting the UK agri-food industry, which covers everything from agriculture to final retailing and catering, and is estimated to contribute £96 billion to the economy and employs 3.8 million people.
Agriculture faces significant challenges, most notably to feed a rapidly growing world population, in a sustainable manner. There is a strong need for R&D to help address these challenges, and particularly the development of new Agricultural-Technology (Agri-Tech).
The new Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation (Agri-EPI) Centre has been established with £17.7m UK government investment to help provide engineering and precision agriculture solutions for the agri-food industry. By bringing together leading organisations in all sections of the supply chain it will become a world-leading centre to benefit the livestock, arable, aquaculture and horticulture sectors.
The Agri-EPI Centre seeks partnerships to work together to develop novel solutions to national and international agri-food problems. Find out more about the challenges faced by agri-food and understand how your company could get involved.
Further Information