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On the farm, autonomous robots are equipped with a seed drill that places crops in 2-metre-wide rows and a combine harvester that collects the plants once they mature. This year, the university ran a trial with half a hectare of repeating rows of wheat, barley and beans.

“We’ve been able to plant those crops as separate strips and then tend them as separate crops,” says Franklin. That is hard to do with conventional farm machinery, he says. The crops have a beneficial impact on each other, with beans drawing nitrogen – which wheat and barley require to grow – down into the soil and storing it, he says. “The one is potentially feeding the other.”
–New Scientist