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M&S trials drones to produce lower carbon parsnips

M&S trials drones to produce lower carbon parsnips

M&S has started using drones and robot tractors to produce its parsnips ahead of the festive season.

The food and fashion giant claims to be the first UK retailer to trial an “autonomous field” farming method in attempts to improve its crop quality and quantity and drive down its carbon emissions.

M&S planted its first set of the parsnips back in March in Yorkshire in partnership with its root vegetable supplier, Huntapac, with two robots used for bed forming, weeding and planting, as well as two different types of drones to maintain and monitor crop health.

The new approach helps keep carbon locked into its soil, and uses a green fertiliser and new tech that uses significantly less diesel than a traditional tractor.

As well as the carbon impact, the new technology holds other benefits including improving the quality and quantity of crop yields, the retailer insisted.

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The first lot of autonomously farmed vegetables will be sold from a number of the supermarket’s shops from November.

It marks the first M&S Food project to be paid for by its sustainability programme Plan A’s accelerator fund, which it rolled out earlier this year, “to take rapid action towards net zero through a series of innovation projects”.

M&S Food technical director Andrew Clappen said: “Agriculture is one of our biggest contributors to emissions, so it’s important that we find new lower impact farming methods.

“Trialling new ways to support our Plan A road map to net zero is an important step on the journey and 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 the sector.”

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