A YORKSHIRE farmer is about to begin a world-wide tour to look at the way new technology can cut farmers' costs and benefit the environment.

Clive Blacker of White House Farm, Newton on Ouse, York, will visit the United States, Australia, France, Germany, Denmark and the Czech Republic over the next year, on a study tour financed by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society.

He will look at "precision farming" systems where satellite technology and satellite mapping are used to work out the potential of each part of a field.

The system can be accurate to within two inches in an area the size of several football pitches.

Mr Blacker will demonstrate the latest in precision farming technology, relating to crop mapping, guidance systems and application techniques in the Barclays Alternative Farming Centre at the Great Yorkshire Show, at Harrogate from July 13-15.

Nigel Pulling, chief executive of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, said: "Clive's studies will not only be of benefit to his own business, but also to to other farming enterprises. The society is keen to support the introduction of new technology to the industry, especially when there are environmental as well as agricultural benefits."

Mr Blacker said the Vale of York had dramatic soil type changes over small areas. "This technology allows us to assess the potential of a tiny area within a field, and matches that potential to seed rate and fertiliser rate," he said.

"It means we don't waste seed or feed on a poor section of the field but, at the same time, we don't underfeed an area that could produce more, given the right treatment.

"It has financial benefits for the farmer, but huge benefits for the environment in that we don't apply fertilisers that the plants cannot use which then run away into rivers.

"Satellite monitoring is year-round. We start by soil testing, then we have precision sowing, followed by precision fertiliser application.

Finally, when we harvest, the combine measures how much grain is produced, and that gives us the starting point for the next year so that we continue to fine tune the system.

"This is a system we have been using on our own land for the past seven years, now I want to learn more from farmers in other countries and take what we are doing a step further."

Mr Blacker, 32, was educated at St Olave's and St Peter's Schools in York before attending Harper Adams Agricultural College in Shropshire, where he gained a Higher National Diploma in agriculture, specialising in crop growing sectors.

A keen member of the Young Farmers' Club movement, he is a former chairman of the Easingwold YFC.

He farms with his father, Mike, and brother, Dave. The family farm consists of 600 acres of owned land and a further 1,600 acres of contract farmed land growing cereals, sugar beet, oilseed rape, and grass.

The Blackers also run a contract business which specialises in crop spraying, variable rate fertiliser application, and nitrogen application, combine harvesting and sugar beet harvesting and drilling.

The family dries and stores grain for a local grain merchant, Argrain, and is also host to both the York and Ainsty and Bilsdale Hunt point to points.