Toby Whatley wins the 2025 Omnia Digital Farming Award
Farmers Guardian head of machinery Toby Whatley has won the 2025 Omnia Digital Farming Award.
Presented at the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists Harvest Lunch, the award recognises articles on the use of technologies and digital tools that help improved productivity, sustainability or profitability across any farm business in any sector.
The wider scope attracted 20 entries with a judging panel consisting of last year’s winner Mike Abram, Nick Rainsley and Nick Strelczuk from sponsor’s Hutchinsons, along with expertise from Siafu PR’s Niamh Tye and freelance journalist Paul Spackman, sifting through the diverse range of articles to choose this year’s winner and runner up.
Toby’s article for Farmers Guardian was praised as a unique and original piece of journalism, in which he instigated and followed an agronomy trial through a season to test a manufacturer’s claims about a piece of precision fertiliser machinery.
Toby clearly explained the trial and results, giving readers a comprehensive and independent overview of Kverneland Pudama system, which the manufacturer claims allows a 25% reduction in starter fertiliser without any impact on maize yields.
“Importantly the article offered a balance assessment of whether maize growers should consider investing in the equipment, making it stand out from many other articles in the field,” the judges concluded.
Runner up was Lucy de la Pasture for her deep dive into how artificial intelligence (AI) is helping to maximise new green-on-green weed control opportunities for spot-spraying weeds. Published in The Tech Farmer it looked at ‘how’ the technology worked, providing an interesting insight into how AI systems are trained.
“The piece included excellent technical detail with good, practical examples of what it might mean on farm,” the judges said.
Lucy de la Pasture, highly commended in the BGAJ Omnia Digital Farming Award 2025
