Our Focus supplement this week looks at the developments taking place in the world of agri-tech. It’s a fast-moving area with huge potential. The new area of drone technology and its application in the monitoring and precision treatment of crops has the potential to dramatically reduce inputs and, in doing so, address environmental concerns.

On the livestock side, there are potential gains from new technologies in relation to monitoring herd health and animal performance.

Farmers have always shown a strong appetite for new technologies, especially those that reduce labour and/or costs at farm level. It is important that we keep abreast of these technologies and ensure legislation at EU level keeps pace to safeguard their adoption.

Meanwhile, an issue that will undoubtedly come to the fore in the years ahead is the volume of data being collected about Irish farmers and where the ownership of this data lies. It will have a commercial value and therefore we should be examining what structures need to be put in place to ensure that this data remains in the hands of an industry good organisation.