A farmer was leaning on his field gate, looking out over his animals, all scattered quietly around the field in the sunshine. He was pondering the choices of every family farmer these days. Since actual commercial farming is gradually becoming impossible on UK family farms, he was wondering whether he should become a subsistence farmer—by turning the farm into a Trust and then leasing it out as a subsidised wildlife conservation area, a subsidised carbon offset forest, or a subsidised solar farm. If he did, he, and eventually his son, would then be free to earn more as night stackers in a supermarket than he ever earned from farming, and besides, the hours would be fewer and he might even be able to go on holiday for once in his life. If you can’t beat ‘em, perhaps he should join ‘em.

Just at that moment, silently, a very shiny, £200,000 electric Range Rover pulled up in the lane behind him. The driver got out and opened the back door. The passenger in the back slid round in his seat to pull on £500 worth of wellies to match his £1,500 worth of all-weather clothing; then he picked up his iPhone Pro and approached, carefully stepping over a cowpat in the lane.

Without so much as a “Hello,” the stranger said, “Is this your field?”

“It be,” replied the farmer.

The stranger said, “Listen—I have a proposal. You won’t believe this, but I can tell you exactly how many adult goats and baby goats you have in this vast field. If I tell you how many, and only if I am 100% right, would you give me one? My daughter is having a show-and-tell at her private academy and I thought it would be rather nice for her to take a baby goat along.”

The farmer, amused, replied, “Certainly—you might as well try. They cost me more than they are worth these days, anyway. OK, go ahead and tell me how many there are in this field. If you are correct, exactly correct, mind, I’ll let you take your pick.”

The man smiled and lifted up his iPhone Pro. It immediately unlocked using facial recognition and opened a connection through a secure VPN pipe. Now connected to his encrypted private server, his custom personal digital AI agent assistant answered the call. After making his request to his assistant AI, the AI agent immediately instructed an integrated cluster of networked custom AI agents to gather intel. One crawled the government agencies at the speed of light to scrape all available data on the farm after instantly locating it by GPS, using an atomic clock accurate to three billionths of a second. Another accessed all available up-to-date satellite imagery of the whole area, whilst yet another filtered all available present and historical information on the farm and farming practices in the area from applicable agencies including DEFRA, APHA, HMRC, RPA, FSA, WOAH, NOAH, and the FBO.

Rapidly assembled in nanoseconds, all of the amassed data was Blowfish encrypted and bounced in a blockchain-secured package via a satellite connection to the Starlink satellite constellation and down to another AI agent running on the xAI supercluster in Memphis. Within seconds, that AI cross-referenced all of the harvested data points and used YOLOv5 AI to count the animals in the satellite imagery, using pixel counts to separate age groups. After redundancy and error checking, a LLM AI created an in-depth report that was real-time re-encrypted and flashed back via satellite to the secure server, where the stranger’s personal assistant AI agent used a specialist LLM to optimise and create an executive summary of the report, which it then read out in a relevance cascade as the man listened intently to it through his EarPods.

Only two minutes later, the man said to the farmer, “You have exactly one hundred and sixty-seven adult goats and ninety-three baby goats in this field at this moment, which equates to 67% fertility compared to the UK national average. I can also tell you the precise size of the field to the nearest square decimetre, its actual and target carbon footprints, its P and K nutrient needs to achieve a 2+ target, its optimum yield in grass solids per 24 hours, how much the animals eat to the nearest kilogram, and even tell you what you will get for them across every market in the world if you sold them today at the current exchange rate.”

“That’s amazing,” said the farmer. “You are exactly correct—I counted them myself only half an hour ago. Your other figures are likely spot on, too. And I am as good as my word—go ahead and choose one.” He watched as the stranger signalled to the driver, who unfolded a protective polyurethane sheet and smoothed it out in the back of the posh Landy. Then he put on plastic gloves and a disposable apron, picked up the nearest animal, and laid it carefully in the car. He pressed a button, and the tailgate silently closed. He removed his gloves and apron, putting them into a brown paper bag marked “recycle,” and ran a small battery-powered vacuum cleaner over his clothes to remove any remaining hairs.

The driver held the passenger door open for him, and as the stranger went to climb back in the car, the farmer said, “Hold on a mo’. Fair’s fair. If I can guess what you do for a living, will you give my animal back?”

The stranger grinned confidently. “Why not? I’m pretty sure you’ll never guess what I do for a living, so yes, if you can guess exactly what I do, I’ll give you your goat back.”

Without any hesitation, the farmer said, “You are the Secretary of State for DEFRA, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.”

“Goodness me. I am extremely impressed,” said the stranger. “You are absolutely correct. I had no idea that you country people out here in these remote places were so aware of us and who we are in our positions of power at the top. Our election message that Labour is the party of the countryside must be getting through to you people. However did you guess?”

“That’s easy,” replied the farmer. “You turn up uninvited with a bloody chauffeur, a red tie, and you block my lane. You assume control of our meeting without so much as a “Hello.” Your impressive car, driver, and fancy rural gear tell me you are a bureaucrat and indicate your pay grade too. Your gear is all spotless and little used, so you are top of your heap. Without any consultation, you come up with a one-sided hustle disguised as fair competition, already thinking that you will win because you assume your fancy gadgets know more than me. You treat my precious animals like some trifling child’s plaything, and then you have the brass neck to claim some of my property for nothing while using untold millions upon millions of pounds’ worth of global technology to tell me something that I already know and don’t need you to tell me.

And, by the way, the animals in the field are sheep, not goats.

Now give me my dog back.”