Podcast: Dyson's Automated, Self-sustaining Strawberry Farm

In this episode, we discuss how Dyson - the company best known for their vacuum cleaners - has created an automated and sustainable farm to harvest the best possible strawberries with the least amount of environmental impact.

This podcast is sponsored by Murata Europe. 

EPISODE NOTES

(6:11) - Engineering the Fields: Dyson's Leap from Gadgets to Agriculture

This episode was brought to you by Murata, the market leader in leading-edge electronics components. Click HERE to learn more about their award winning soil sensor that is helping farmers increase their yields by 60% while reducing their water and fertilizer usage!

You can also learn more about the impact of the soil sensor from the case studies on increasing potato yields and stabilizing green pepper harvests.

Transcript

What's up folks? You know Dyson, the company that makes super fancy, kind of expensive fans, vacuums, hair dryers. They've pivoted from suction to sowing and not sewing machines. I'm talking farming. So, they're taking tech genius that they've seen and other areas of high technology and applying it in agriculture, trying to make food that tastes better and is better for the environment and is profitable for farmers to make. I think it's interesting. So, let's jump into it.

I'm Daniel, and I'm Farbod. And this is the NextByte Podcast. Every week, we explore interesting and impactful tech and engineering content from Wevolver.com and deliver it to you in bite sized episodes that are easy to understand, regardless of your background. 

Daniel: What's up peeps? Like we said, we're talking all about Dyson who took innovation from vacuums, electric cars, hair dryers, and it's now going to revolutionize the world of farming. But before we get into that, we've got some exciting news, folks.

Farbod: Yeah, we have a new sponsor today, Murata.

Daniel: Murata.

Farbod: And Murata's an interesting one because they just touch so many different technologies. Like if you're in your car listening to this podcast right now, it's very high likelihood that they have created the capacitors that are powering that interface that you're using to listen to us talk.

Daniel: Yeah, well let's say, right? Murata, who are they? Market leader in cutting edge electronics components. What does that mean? They design electronics components, they produce them, they deliver them, and the one part that I really like about where they choose to focus their efforts is, and they say, in innovative solutions that change the world, and they truly mean it, right? That starts in automotive places. They make medical devices, et cetera, and also a ton of really, really cool sensors. An example of which is their soil sensor, which by the way, we had the awesome opportunity to speak with Juli Ban, who's one of the product managers on that soil sensor.

Farbod: Absolutely. And we got to learn so much about the genesis of the product. It has a great story behind it.

Daniel: We love tech with good stories.

Farbod: We really do. That's one of our favorite things on this podcast. But the farmers who were impacted by the tsunami damage in Japan in, I think, 2011, the salinity was impacting the rice fields and they were like, well darn, if there was some sort of a sensor that could have provided that feedback and allow us to like remediate all this, that'd be great. And that was the origination of this idea of the soil sensor. Now, Daniel, what is this soil sensor and what does it do?

Daniel: Well, they started, like you said, in the field with the soil sensor, trying to make an immediate response to tsunamis in Japan. But now they've developed the sensor and it's an easy to install, more durable sensor than anything else on the market. It's got an app pulling data from the cloud, makes it really easy for farmers to check their phone and see what's going on in their fields. One of the cool things I noticed is it proposes irrigation plans and proposes fertilizer plans as well, based off of data that it's observed to try and optimize for yield. So basically, what that means as a farmer, key takeaway, you can save how much water you're using, you can save how much fertilizer you're using, because the soil sensor tells you the exact correct amount to maximize your crop yields, meaning you get the most alive, viable, sellable crop out of all the plants that you plant in your field. You don't use too much water; you don't use too much fertilizer. That's kind of hard to tell unless you have an instrument like a soil sensor to tell you exactly what to use.

Farbod: For sure. And it looks like they really consider their end consumer here, right? Like the farmer's feedback, there's case studies that we're going to link to the show notes along with the description of the product itself. But the farmers are like, we love that this thing just kind of works out of the box. We take it out. It's very robust, because the environment that you're farming in, that soil, there's moisture, you don't want your electronics to go bad. They're like, we just put it in the ground. We don't have to worry about any extra infrastructure. We get this cool app. And like you said, it just provides us with the feedback like, hey, with your current irrigation plan, you're using too much water or too much fertilizer. Here's what you should be doing to increase your yield by projected this much. And by the way, the projected this much, that's not trivial either. One of the case studies with potatoes, they had gains up to like 60% increase in the yield.

Daniel: That's a huge deal. If you're a farmer, right, just by installing this piece of technology and listening to the insights that it gives you, you can immediately increase 60% your yield. That means a 60% increase in revenue. That means a 60% decrease in losses. That's a huge deal for farmers.

Farbod: But then the world as a whole, right, 60% more food on the table. And that matters a lot because we have a growing population problem that we should be able to support and feed.

Daniel: Exactly. That's what I was going to say is it goes back to what we said at the beginning. We're excited about Murata because they make tech that changes the world.

Farbod: Direct impact on your day-to-day life.

Daniel: Obviously, what we talk about on this podcast, we try to select tech that's interesting and impactful. We think Murata checks both of those boxes. They're this soil sensor, it seems maybe kind of mundane at the surface, but like you said, there's a lot of climate change going on, turning arable farming land into desert. So that means we have less farmland than ever to produce our food and we also have the highest population ever on the earth. So how do we solve that problem? We can use things like the soil sensor. One of the things that I thought was interesting to mention as well is they make a big deal about how it addresses a number of the different UN sustainable development goals. Did you know what those were before?

Farbod: I did not, I didn't know there were a thing before this actually.

Daniel: But it's awesome, a bunch of the different countries in the UN basically aligned and said like, these are the top things we need to focus on to make sure that we can keep living life on earth way, way, way long into the future in a sustainable way. And this soil sensor addresses three of the top sustainable development goals including reducing hunger to zero. Making sure that we have clean water, right? We reduce the amount of fertilizer that's running off into our water supply and then also making sure that we have sustainable life on land. And obviously that's a big part of being able to have food growing up growing in our land that we can rely on.

Farbod: For sure. And folks again already mentioned it, but as always, we're gonna make sure that everything is accessible. Where do we put it?

Daniel: Exactly. If you're interested in any of this, right, we've got case studies. We're going to have a link directly to the soil sensor. More information on Murata. We'll have it linked down in the show notes. Check it out.

Farbod: Absolutely. Now let's, let's dive into today's article. Dyson and farming. How do we get here, Dan?

Daniel: It's crazy. We were going from, from suction, right? Making vacuums and hairdryers into sowing, right? You know, planting seeds, using technology to revolutionize the way that we farm.

Farbod: Before we jump in actually, there's a video of James Dyson talking about the field and it starts out with him saying, yeah, you wouldn't expect an industrialist like me to be here. So, I love that how they're like self-conscious of how people just don't expect us from a company like Dyson, right?

Daniel: Well, one of the things that's really interesting is like James Dyson is the namesake for Dyson. This kind of reminds me of like a story that you'd hear when there's a hostile takeover like, Oh, Dyson's been quietly accumulating shares in this company. He's going to go buy it, you know, take it over. In this case, Dyson's been quietly accumulating farmland in Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, all over England, all over the UK, over 36,000 acres in farmland. And it's far from he says it's far from his side project. It's now a passion project demanding most of his attention to try and integrate all this cool stuff and high tech that he's learned through creating vacuums, fans, electric cars, taking all that stuff from high tech and putting all those into sustainable practices to try and redefine farming as we know it.

Farbod: And they've kind of taken the same approach to farming that James Dyson took towards vacuum cleaners all those years ago, right? And that's experimentation. Let's try stuff out and see what works best for us. Let's like, just there's available technology. Let's tweak with it. Let's see if we can make any sort of improvements on this. And they've done quite a lot. This is like a pretty impressive operation they got going on. And at a basic level, they acquired these lands. They cleared the ditches. They got the waterways working right. They drained the field. So, they had good farming land. And then they started planning out how they were going to actually utilize the field that was available to them. One thing I want to note out right away, it doesn't really impact the meat of the story that much, but I really appreciated it from I think the what 36,000 acres of land that they had, they allocated 4,000 of that to just be like untouched natural wilderness.

Daniel: So, it's like 10-15% of the total land mass.

Farbod: It's not negligible, that's actually like a decent chunk. And the reason James Dyson was saying they did that is because they want that natural habitat to thrive and show that good farming doesn't have to cost us like the preservation of our ecosystem, right? So those insects the bees the small mammals that are living in that environment actually hate help like nourish the land that they're using for farming.

Daniel: Yeah, it makes sense, right? It's a handshake between the current residents of that land, let's say, right? The bees the pollinators like you said small mammals and stuff that live nearby the birds, etc. You're not getting rid of their habitat. You're providing them the opportunity to live in wilderness it also benefits by pollinating the crops and helping them stay healthy.

Farbod: It's just a refreshing take in comparison to the, I don't know, sometimes if you're flying over Midwestern United States, you're like just factory farm after factory farm. Yeah, it's very like maximalist. Exactly. Let's use every single, yeah.

Daniel: Every single ounce of this land we can.

Farbod: And ironically, I think this approach might end up with better yields and more sustainable yield than what we're used to. I've talked about this, the background enough. Let's get into the juicy bits. Take away.

Daniel: Well, I would say like this is probably representative of a lot of the cool technology trends we've been seeing across all of agriculture. But like you said, Dyson's all about experimentation, finding the right mix of different technologies to throw at it. I feel like he's throwing the whole kitchen sink. And we're gonna go through the full laundry list of all these things that they're doing. I feel like they're throwing the full kitchen sink of technology at farming to see what sticks. And one thing I wanna note is I listened to a podcast episode with the, it was an interview with their head of agriculture. And he said like, their books are completely open and you can go check it out. I looked at it on Dyson Farming's website. You can see their crop yields. You can see their profit statements. They're trying to prove that technology is meaningful, is a meaningful investment for farmers to make and that they think you can run a profitable farm better than ever, even with the investment required to introduce some of this technology. So, I think it's really awesome. They've open source their books, so to speak, to talk about it. But I just wanted to mention that before we talk about each of the things that they do, if you're interested in agriculture or you're a farmer yourself, you can go look at their books and see what's making an impact and what's not to understand that. At a high level, they are focusing on soil regeneration, biodiversity, energy generation, and then they also have a greenhouse and produce a bunch of other crops. So, they're trying to like use technology to holistically make farming better, reduce their carbon footprint, make it more sustainable, produce better tastier food, and do it in a way that actually makes farming more profitable for farmers. Because right now, especially in the UK, they call it, I think it's a BPS, it's like a government subsidy to help those farmers stay alive economically, because the way that they're farming right now isn't economically feasible. Very similar in the US and in other parts of the developed world where we're using taxpayer dollars to subsidize these farmers because we need the food but the way that they're doing it isn't profitable. Dyson's trying to show us that using technology, you can flip that narrative on its head. And they're trying to produce this farm that I think doesn't rely on these BPS, handouts from the government to make it profitable, which is awesome.

Farbod: And let's get into the sauce here. How are they accomplishing this? Well, I think a good first step would be talking about the allocation, a certain chunk of this farmland is actually allocated to growing what you mentioned as like low carbon crops in our earlier conversation before the podcast started. So that's things like I think corn and even weeds if they grow in there, they don't even care about managing.

Daniel: I think they said it's like 70% corn in this field that they dedicate for their anaerobic digester.

Farbod: There we go, the anaerobic digester is the key to everything else that happens here. So, they're growing these crops, they harvest them. After they've been harvested, they kind of pack them away until they start to rot, or they've rotted for a while. Like they start fermenting. Maybe fermenting is a bit of a natural word, I don't know. They take the rotting produce, and then they put it in these vats and start processing it. And as it processes, it gives off this gas. The gas is captured, and the captured gas is going to generators that generate electricity that power 10,000 homes nearby.

Daniel: Yeah, it powers the farm, all the farm's operations. And in addition to that, another 10,000 homes nearby. So, one of the things they mentioned is, it's less carbon intensive for them to like grow these crops, anaerobically digest them, produce the electricity from this gas. It's less carbon intensive for them to do that than it is for them to take energy from the grid, which is pretty impressive.

Farbod: But they don't stop there, do they?

Daniel: I would say, yeah, because the output of this actually isn't fully electricity, right? There's also a lot of byproducts here that's heat. And you're like, man, like maybe that's a wasteful product. In my mind, I think back to thermodynamics in college, like if you have heat as any of the byproducts here, that's actually probably a loss in the system, right? It's a loss in efficiency. It's undesired. But they flip that narrative on its head by repurposing a lot of that heat toward really useful things on the farm as well, right?

Farbod: Absolutely, yeah. So, they have one of the things that they grow on these farms is grain. So, they have grain silos and they redirect a portion of that heat to dry out the grain that's in that silo. Awesome. But they don't stop there. One of the most desired fruits I would say across the world is strawberries. Now strawberries require a very specific environment to be successfully grown in. And that's why we in the West import our strawberries. Unless you have a greenhouse. Now what's needed in a greenhouse? Heat. You need heat. So, Dyson has a, I think 13,000 acre strawberry greenhouse and they have 750,000 strawberry plants in there. Sorry, 14 acres actually.

Daniel: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I think you added a thousand there, but it's all right.

Farbod: Yeah, I'm seeing so many thousands. It's going back and forth. But they got 14 acres of strawberry greenhouse, 750,000 strawberry plants, and they're redirecting that waste heat to the greenhouse to heat it up instead of again pulling energy from the grid and I don't know using some sort of ventilation system to regulate the temperature which is pretty impressive.

Daniel: And one of the things that's really cool about that strawberry greenhouse now that we're on it, my understanding is that they don't use any pesticides, they don't use any herbicides, these are completely organically grown strawberries. They said that they're tastier than any strawberry you've ever had. They're safer to eat than any strawberry you've ever had the entire cultivation process is managed by robots and by bugs. So, they take advantage of robots for things like planting and picking. And they also have a robot with a UV light on it that goes in and tries to kill all the fungus that's growing on stuff. In addition, they also leverage specific, I think the pests that they're trying to get rid of are aphids, right? They're trying to get rid of aphids. They, they use other insects that eat aphids and they're using robots to help release these bugs on the plants to help kill the pests and eat them. I mean, it's like, it's incredible. It seems incredibly futuristic, but it's actually a really awesome demonstration of using all this technology in a way that they say, you know, with their proof of concept could help farmers grow strawberries in a more profitable way than they're currently doing it, which is insane.

Farbod: Let's talk about how they are getting the best strawberry. So, they have these robot strawberry pickers that go down each row of strawberry. They look at each individual strawberry and they're like, is it peak deliciousness yet or not? And they do that by visual analysis. So, they're looking at how far recessed every seed is, how perked up the side leaves are. And if it has reached those conditions, then it picks it and it sorts it out. And just as a quick statistic, this data was made available last month. So, two months ago These robots picked two hundred thousand two hundred thousand strawberries. And this is like twelve or no sixteen robots that are doing all this work. That is that's quite impressive.

Daniel: Yeah, pretty crazy.

Farbod: And you know every time we chat about automation we talk about robotics, the conversation of well like the damage that this is gonna do to human labor. Like let's take that into consideration I if I'm not mistaken there is to some extent a shortage of folks that are able to do this kind of labor. And as our demand for crops is increasing, we're probably going to need more automation to complement the work that human beings are doing. So, I don't think this is a complete replacement of human farmers, but just like combines and tractors and stuff made our lives easier and required less human labor, I think that's how these robots are going to be utilized as we move forward.

Daniel: And one of the things that they mentioned is really interesting is like, because you mentioned right, the temperature, especially in the UK, right. Being pretty far north from a latitude perspective, the strawberry growing season is actually probably pretty short there, just the summer. By using the extra heat from their anaerobic digester in their greenhouses, they're able to keep a warm growing season for like a majority of the year, which extends the strawberry growing season. They say massively reducing the need for imports. So, imagine like trying to import food from another part of the world and all the associated food safety concerns that come along with that, the degradation of the quality of the food, but especially the carbon footprint of transporting strawberries from across the world when you've got the ability to grow them right where you are in your hometown for the majority of the year.

Farbod: Absolutely. And if you're going to extend this to other crops, which by the way, they do grow like barley, wheat, potatoes, sugar beets, peas, also gives you a sense of supply chain stability, right? So, if you're depending on wheat imports from a country that for whatever reason, the Evergrande ship got stuck and now we can't import what is needed to make bread, which a lot of people depend on, at least now you have setups within your own country that you can depend on that have predictable outputs because you've automated so many things, right? And that's awesome. But before we move forward, one more thing I wanted to say is, we talked about this set of crops that were getting processed and then their gas was used for this process and that's how we got it, the strawberries. Well, what happens with the remnants of that? You got the sludge that now has water in it. Well, they actually extract the water out, the water is reused where possible, but then that remnant is actually very nutrient rich still and that's used as fertilizer back on the field. So, you have like a complete cycle of nature providing you with the necessary resources to power your plant and farm strawberries. And then even the excess is used to grow more of those plants that either go into that process or just result in potatoes that people eat on their dinner table.

Daniel: Oh, and one of the other things they mentioned is they obviously like only 15 acres of their 36,000 acres of farmland is dedicated toward this greenhouse. Another 4,000 acres is associated for that wilderness, wildlife protection. So, with the remaining like 20-30,000 acres that they have, they're doing traditional row farming, growing crops in rows like corn, like wheat, et cetera. So, they're growing those crops out on that land very traditionally, if you were to look at it, driving by, let's say. But they're using some pretty unique practices there as well. One to try and minimize waste. One of the things that I think is really interesting is they have over 10,000 sheep and cattle that they use that as a matter of like soil regeneration. So, think about if you have any leftover crop, instead of letting it go to waste, they use it to feed these livestock and these livestock are kept alive because there's nutrients, but then they also do nutrient cycling. So, their manure is used as fertilizer in the soil. The sheep and cattle walking around helps aerate the soil. So, you don't have to like use a giant machine tiller to keep the soil very aerated. And then they also in specific crops, I think they mentioned potatoes is one that they can use it on. They like basically release the sheep onto the field and the sheep eat all the weeds, which helps increase the yield of growth of the crop that they're trying to target and grow, while also still feeding the livestock, which is pretty awesome.

Farbod: And limiting the need for herbicide, right? Yeah. Which also pretty nice. And as a last bit, the byproduct of the sheep and cattle they're eating and grazing on the field is that their byproduct is very microorganism rich.

Daniel: Yeah, the cow pies, the metal muffins.

Farbod: You said it, yeah. It's very nutrient rich, again, it's all a cycle, it comes back into the earth, which is great. And all that biodiversity, which is helping preserve the land and keep the crops growing as expected, just results in a healthier soil, which just results in better food.

Daniel: Well, and healthier soil that doesn't require chemical fertilizers.

Farbod: Correct.

Daniel: And you mentioned a little bit when we were talking about using livestock to minimize the amount of herbicides and pesticides required. Again, I was listening to a podcast episode with their head of agriculture. One of the cool things that they mentioned is in addition to using livestock to help with pest control, they also are using robots for pest control, especially in the row crops corn and wheat, how they are planted and grow in rows. You've got wide enough rows where you're able to send a robot in between the lines of crops. They're using robots for herbicide application there as well. And one of the things they mentioned is, I think their golden scenario is when they've got brown and green contrasting. So, when their cameras on the robots are able to contrast the shape of a leaf, a green leaf of a weed against brown, the soil behind it, so it can tell very clearly what shape that leaf is, it can identify over 99% of weeds and apply chemical herbicide on there to kill those weeds without it affecting the actual crop.

Farbod: So just blasting everything, they're targeting it.

Daniel: Which is, I feel like that's probably the traditional solution, let's say. And so, they're able to minimize the amount of chemical herbicide that they use. They were able to reduce it by 90% using these robots, which is pretty incredible, obviously from an, from a health standpoint for people eating the crops, right? Make sure you don't end up with any herbicides in your body unintentionally. It's good for the environment because those all end up running off into water supply. And on top of all that, again, they're trying to make farming profitable for farmers again. Imagine using 90% less of this expensive herbicide chemical. You've saved a ton of money there as well.

Farbod: Absolutely.

Daniel: Which it feels like a win-win-win for the environment, for the consumer, for the farmer. And Dyson's, I would say very overly aggressive use of technology is trying to be a proof of concept and demonstrate to people as a pioneer, hey, this technology is beneficial. Hey, here is a way for you to do farming in a new way that's healthier for the environment, that's more profitable, that's better for the consumer, makes tastier food, lower impact on the environment from a carbon perspective. And at the end of the day, they're even producing energy that goes back into the grid, which is pretty awesome.

Farbod: I was going to say it's time for the so what, but you just kind of knocked the so what out of the park, my friend. That was pretty solid. The only thing I wanted to add onto that is, I'm loving the harmony between Dyson engineers and farmers. James Dyson said, yeah, like we have Dyson engineers showing up to the field, actively working, trying to improve the technologies that we're using here. But at the same time, we have farmers that have a lot of experience that we don't as engineers, giving us feedback on potential areas of improvement as well. And what we should be focusing on versus what we should just not care about too much. And that was pretty nice to see. With that said, I think it's time for a little recap.

Daniel: Yeah, I'll wrap it up here, man. You know, Dyson, the company that makes awesome hair dryers and vacuum cleaners, they've gone from suction to sowing now. This tech genius is transforming the future of farming. They're trying to use all these sorts of high technology and apply it in the realm of agriculture, which has largely been neglected from a robotics and computer vision perspective. So, they're using smart farming, using technology to make farming better for the planet. One of the things that they're focusing on is healthy soil, biodiversity, healthy plants, happy animals, etc. And they're also using excess energy from the plants to turn waste crops into electricity to support the farm and the surrounding neighborhood. And on top of all that, they're able to create tastier food longer times around the calendar. So, they increase the length of the growing season, reduce carbon impact of the farming. And honestly, they say it's like the most delicious produce they've ever tasted with less environmental impact. And all of that is based on this harbinger technology, Dyson, the same guy that made the bladeless vacuum and bladeless fans and bladeless hair dryers, taking awesome high-tech technology and turning it around and flipping it on its head to be used in agriculture.

Farbod: You'd love to see it. You know, I can't convince myself to get a Dyson hairdryer, but Dyson strawberries.

Daniel: Yeah.

Farbod: I could definitely see myself doing that.

Daniel: Maybe.

Farbod: Yeah. I think that's about it, yeah?

Daniel: Yeah, let's wrap it up.

Farbod: All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening, and as always, we'll catch you in the next one.

Daniel: Peace.

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The Next Byte: We're two engineers on a mission to simplify complex science & technology, making it easy to understand. In each episode of our show, we dive into world-changing tech (such as AI, robotics, 3D printing, IoT, & much more), all while keeping it entertaining & engaging along the way.