AgBot: How farmer's son, 8, set world record for ploughing with the help of a robot

His father, Peter, combines assisting his brother Stuart with the family farm at Old Byland at busy times with his management role at AgXeed UK that specialises in autonomous farm machinery, in particular the AgBot range.

“We have been ploughing for 3,000 years,” says Peter.

“While there has been a huge amount of technological progress, the lead to full autonomy is only just coming around the corner and can now signify what it can bring to agriculture in terms of quality management, better fuel consumption, faster completion rates and less manpower.

Peter says that his son was wholly responsible for the new world record which he set at Birch Farm, Stonegrave when the AgXeed Agbot 5.115T2 autonomous tracked tractor paired with a Kverneland five furrow reversible plough ploughed 51.8 acres in 24 hours in April without human intervention, other than refuelling.

“Chester mapped out and executed what was required for the AgBot tractor to go out and plough in a day what, particularly in Ryedale, is far beyond the capabilities of most average farmers.

“One of the best ploughmen in the area has been ploughing at Nunnington for 40 years and told me he has never managed as much as that, and yet with the AgBot an eight-year old boy has done it.

“We were preparing the AgBot for the Cereals trade show and the stage was set to provide material for it. Peter Armitage a local farmer at Stonegrave had a 110-acre field going into maize and that’s what we used.

“Chester used a handheld GPS receiver. He walked around the field and marked the field corners, the boundaries and he also mapped in the only landmark in the field, an elevated stone.

"He then loaded his data into the AgBot’s portal and from there he chose which way he wanted to plough the field, loading the width of the implement and had worked out it would take 14 seconds for the plough to turnover at the end of each run.”

Peter is justifiably proud of his son’s achievement.

“There have been all sorts of science projects from universities and research institutes on autonomous robots but this is the first unsupervised robot in the world that you can leave and is fully safety approved and insured for unsupervised autonomy.

"For the purposes of this event we were with it for the duration, and was monitored by cameras front and rear and at any point we could have managed remotely. Other than a fill up of diesel at 3am it completed this all by itself.

“Ultimately the loading of the plough, the mapping of the field and setting it to work were all Chester’s doing.

"He unloaded the tracked AgBot from the trailer using remote control, reversed it up to the plough, connected the spool valves, and handled the digital side as well.”

Peter says his son is very much a typical lad who enjoys his sport, while having shown a great leaning towards technology in all areas.

“Chester plays rugby for Malton. He also enjoys quad-biking and motorcycling, but he is also very much into his digital and technical side of things.

"He has been flying drones over agricultural equipment for several years now. He’s certainly showing himself to be more of a digital man than a shepherd.”

Peter always worked on the family’s Valley View Farm when he was in his teens and is still involved today but was drawn to the technical and technological side of farming, which he says that after a slow start on take-up of such as autosteer in the early part of the 21st century is now advancing much more, even in Ryedale.

“I moved to London to be a technical trainer for New Holland before returning to Yorkshire to work for Trimble in 2008, when GPS was frowned upon by agriculture.

“Nearly all farmers were curious about engineering and technology in agriculture and how it makes things easier, but initially it was incredibly expensive and was ridiculously overpriced for the size of many farms in Ryedale, but that has begun to change and driving from Nunnington to Helmsley one day last year I passed 4 autosteers using Trimble navigation.”

Despite this most recent advance and Chester’s world record, which was witnessed by James Witty of the Society of Ploughmen, it has still taken nearly 20 years for autosteer acceptance to reach a more mass market and Peter doesn’t have a crystal ball to predict when ploughing AgBots might take their share.

“It’s difficult to say. There are 100 AgBots presently running around the world that have been sold commercially. We’ve a long way to go but there are government subsidies, grant funding starting to come through to assist.”

The Robinsons farm across 225 owned acres at Old Byland and rent about 1000 acres of grass.

It’s a mixed farm of around 90 acres of cereals, with the other 135 acres made up of seasonal rotational or permanent grazing.

“We have 600 ewes and also have store lambs that we over winter. Our breeding ewes are Mule X Suffolks with our fat lambs going into Darlington. Lambing is split around potato planting.

"We lamb in March and May. Potatoes are planted in April. Our cattle enterprise is in fattening 200 head. Stuart likes to run continentals but presently we have a broad mix of everything due to calf prices. They’re mostly bought from Carlisle.

“Because of my involvement with AgXeed I get more involved with the farm at peak times. Stuart also plants potatoes for Stephen Rooke.

"It’s a shared workload for us, which includes raising our four children, lambing, feeding cattle, spraying and fertilising. There’s contract harvesting for Stephen too, while also getting our own crops in, getting baled and putting crops back in.”

Sally, Stuart and Peter’s mother, who runs six bed and breakfast cottages at Valley View Farm that she has built up since the mid-80s and her well-known ladies bra business Ample Bosom, is also based at the farm.

Peter says the children – Stuart’s sons Theo and Albert; and his son and daughter Poppy and Chester – are all 10 years of age and under but are all keen on farming and farm technology, and that the Chancellor’s recent ruling on Inheritance Tax is a major cause for concern for the next generation.

“Stuart’s boys are 100 per cent passionate about farming already. Farming runs in both sides of our family for generations, historically buying more land across the North York Moors and near Middlesbrough until father passed.

“We’re actively reviewing how it’s going to work, what we can do to mitigate the new ruling’s effect. It’s a nightmare. We’ve been on seminars, at gatherings and our accountants and solicitors are currently working through it all.

“Perhaps Chester could work with a new AgBot that could get rid of this current government.”