Current and future agricultural practices and technologies which affect fuel efficiency

Current and future agricultural practices and technologies which affect fuel efficiency

The report investigated how fuel efficiency could be improved in agriculture, providing signposts for future research and development, with the objective of informing agricultural equipment manufacturers, dealers and agricultural support organisations. The farming practices of precision agriculture, controlled traffic farming (CTF), direct drilling and minimum tillage, energy independent farms (EIF), hydroponics and vertical farming were established as priority topics for research and development. As were the technologies of hydrogen fuel cells, electric vehicles, automatic boom and variable rate application. Fuel efficiency improvement in the priority topics was high, ranging from a 20% fuel efficiency improvement in automatic boom technology and variable rate application, to an improvement in fuel efficiency of over 100% in hydroponics and vertical farming when compared to current arable farming. The priority topics ranged from being commercially normal practices from the present with direct drilling and min-till, to fifteen years or more in the case of hydrogen fuel cells, CTF and EIF.
Certain topics outside the top eight should be investigated further, due to their ability to provide a fuel efficiency improvement of over 20%. These topics were alternative methods of woodchip drying in the forestry sector, hybrid and contour mapping. The first could provide fuel efficiency improvements of up to 100%. Contour mapping could be straightforwardly integrated into the agriculture sector. These topics are recommended for further research and development.

Report for Efficient20 - European Commission research group improving agricultural efficiency by 2020.