Drones And AI To Help Deliver Marks & Spencer’s Parsnip Revolution

Who would have thought that a humble root vegetable would be at the cutting edge of food technology and agri-tech? But that honor goes to parsnips, cultivated with the help of drones and AI and which will arrive on the shelves of a British supermarket for the first time before year end.

U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has confirmed that successful initial results from the first retailer run 'autonomous field' trial will see the retailer selling lower carbon parsnips, which will be available later this year.

In partnership with long-term supplier, Huntapac, the first fully autonomously farmed parsnips will be available in selected M&S stores this November. To create the lower carbon parsnips, the teams brought together advanced technology to farm with a significantly lower environmental impact.

That technology included two robots for bed forming, planting and weeding, two different types of drone to monitor and maintain crop health, and the latest scientific testing on soil health and carbon impact, according to M&S.

And the company isn't shy of making bold statements about the initiative, adding: "Much like when agriculture moved from horse and plow to mechanical tractors, these latest technologies offer a future of farming that will aid farmers, create more highly skilled jobs in the industry and attract new talent."

The team has adopted what it calls a 'minimum till' approach to help keep carbon locked into the soil, a green fertilizer plus the new tech, which uses significantly less gas than a traditional tractor to reduce carbon emissions. The green fertilizer is produced with a lower carbon footprint than traditional methods and works by removing nitrogen dioxide from the air and converting it to nitrogen, which is used by the plants for photosynthesis.

Initial data has shown a 46% carbon reduction compared with standard methods and has other benefits including improved quality and quantity of crop yields. AI was used to monitor and improve crop health and autonomous technology can reduce weather impact.

M&S said that this meant that despite the wettest prior six months in England since 1871, in March the team was able to plant the field with the autonomous robot, which would not have been possible with a traditional tractor. This has also contributed to an increase in quality and number of parsnips and reduced waste, with a 16% higher yield of grade one vegetables compared to Huntapac's other parsnip fields.

M&S Plan A Initiatives

The field also includes various measures from M&S' Farming with Nature program to improve the biodiversity of both wildlife and the soil, including 'agrisound' boxes, which monitor pollinator numbers with specialist listening devices situated on the farm, and wildflower borders.

The parsnips are being grown in Yorkshire in the north of England and will become available in selected M&S stores in November.

The trial was the first M&S Food project to be funded by the M&S Plan A Net Zero accelerator fund, which the retailer launched to find innovation projects to enable rapid action towards net zero to meet its Plan A sustainability goal of being a Net Zero business across its entire supply chain by 2040.

"Projects like this help us move towards being a Net Zero business across all our operations and entire supply chain by 2040, whilst focussing on the quality of produce that M&S is famous for," Andrew Clappen, Technical Director at M&S Food, said.

"This project has helped deliver more parsnips at M&S quality, a carbon reduction and brings together new technologies which if adopted more widely would create more highly skilled jobs and attract new talent into