Smarter crop farming combats weeds, insect pests, and plant diseases by combining current technologies such as AI-based monitoring, robotics, and next-generation biotechnology with healthy and resilient agricultural ecosystems. One Crop Health, a new research collaboration centered at the University of Copenhagen, aims to reduce pesticide use by establishing sustainable agriculture for the future.
In keeping with the age-old adage that “prevention is better than cure,” more sustainable ways should await farmers in the future without compromising productivity, according to the researchers directing the recently launched One Crop Health study project.
Backed by DKK 60 million (€8.05M) from Novo Nordisk, researchers from the University of Copenhagen will gather knowledge over the next six years to develop smarter agriculture that is both sustainable and able to produce enough food for the world’s growing population in a collaboration with researchers from Aarhus University and Rothamsted Research in the UK.
For many years, growers have relied on pesticides to control disease, pests, and weeds, resulting in global crop output losses of one-third. At the same time, predictions indicate that we will require 60% more food than we do today by 2050.
Pesticides, on the other hand, endanger human health, the environment, and biodiversity, and there is growing public and political pressure to limit their usage. Recently, the drive for healthier and more sustainable crops prompted EU policy intentions for a 50% reduction in pesticides by 2030. These plans have been put on hold after farmers raised concerns that pesticide reduction could make farming unprofitable by reducing output.
So, can growers halve their use of pesticides without the profession becoming unproductive and the world running out of food? This is the central question that One Crop Health seeks to answer.
Today’s crops are characterized by attempts to make crop production more efficient for thousands of years. In the process, many crops have lost their natural defences against pests, weeds and diseases.
Paul Neve
Making pesticide reduction profitable for farmers
“The political controversy, farmer and industrial concerns, and regulatory ambiguity all point to the need for greater research to facilitate this shift. Most farmers desire to use fewer pesticides, but there is a need for research to show how this may be accomplished while maintaining healthy, high-yielding, and lucrative crops. The One Crop Health project aims to bridge the gap by developing research that puts the drive to reduce pesticide use on a scientific foundation, which will eventually help farmers make the rational decision to help reduce pesticide use,” says Professor Paul Neve from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences.
According to the project’s principal researcher, a viable shift is conceivable by adopting a more holistic approach to farming.
“Generally the focus needs to move away from solving individual problems by way of a few blunt tools like pesticides. Oftentimes, this approach creates new problems elsewhere, which then also need to be addressed. Planting fields densely to avoid weeds is another example of this lack of oversight, where the misguided solution ends up creating the optimal conditions for fungi and diseases instead. We need to get better at understanding entire ecosystems and then make use of all of the modern tools available,” says Professor Paul Neve.
“If we can create healthy ecosystems that will reduce the numbers of pests, weed and diseases, it will simply reduce the need for spraying. We can largely replace the remaining need with other tools, for example, AI-based monitoring and modelling can help to inform where and when pests need to be controlled and new solutions such as bio-pesticides can be used to achieve that,” he says.
Natural defenses have been replaced with chemicals
The resilience that results from healthy ecosystems can reduce challenges that are currently solved by means like pesticides.
“Today’s crops are characterized by attempts to make crop production more efficient for thousands of years. In the process, many crops have lost their natural defences against pests, weeds and diseases,” explains Paul Neve.
According to the researcher, tomorrow’s growers can improve their plant protection by studying how nature does it. Here, beneficial microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi guard against diseases, and healthy crops are more competitive with weeds. At the same time, pests that harm crops will be more effectively managed by their natural enemies.
“If you think of the field as an entire ecosystem that needs to thrive — hence the name One Crop Health, we believe you get a preventive overall effect. At the same time, modern knowledge and technology can, for example, change the basic need for pesticides. Whereas entire fields are sprayed today, drone surveillance will allow us to only target where weeds are a threat to the crop, or not at all, and let robots do the work instead,” says the professor.
100 farmers to help researchers
“Part of the project is about working with farmers, using their fields to discover smart solutions, so future agriculture can be based on the best possible knowledge,” says Paul Neve.
They will start by gathering data from scratch, in conjunction with 100 farms spread evenly across Denmark and England.
“We begin by asking farmers about their existing difficulties, how they plan to address them, and what works and what doesn’t. We will add our professional understanding of ecosystems, contemporary technology, and procedures to this knowledge bank, with the goal of being able to provide farmers with a lot of knowledge and actual approaches after six years,” says Paul Neve.
Drone data and models will predict field needs
The final prong in the effort to achieve a holistic understanding comes from broad knowledge and modern technologies that provide access.
In an interdisciplinary collaboration with the Department of Computer Science at University of Copenhagen, a group of computer scientists will translate information from surveillance with modern technologies such as drones, and on that basis design so-called digital twins of farmer’s fields.
“They will provide a kind of model that can predict how fields will behave, the needs that are just around the corner and how different solutions will affect the fields,” Neve explains.
In the second half of the six-year initiative, 11 Ph.D. students will learn about specific solutions in their various concentration areas.
“When the six years have passed, it is important for us that we have integrated data and new tools in a holistic way, providing farmers with concrete methods that they can use to solve their challenges in everyday life more sustainably without compromising productivity,” Neve said.
