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Welcome to In-Orbit, the fortnightly podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world.
[00:00:00] Dallas Campbell: Hello and welcome to In-Orbit. It's the podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world, Brought to you by the Satellite Applications Catapult. I'm your host, Dallas Campbell and in today's episode, we're going to be delving into the intersection of agriculture and space technology. I'm joined by Tony Higson, Business Innovation Manager, Sarah Cheesborough, Earth Observation Consultant, both from the Satellite Applications Catapult, and we also have Phil Bicknell, the CEO of the UK Agritech Centre. Now, agriculture. It is the backbone of our food supply, but it's currently facing numerous challenges. challenges, as I'm sure you're aware, particularly with its complex supply chains. By leveraging satellite imagery, remote sensing and data analytics we can optimise resource use and streamline supply chains, ultimately creating a more resilient, a more efficient and a more environmentally friendly agricultural system. Welcome to the show everyone, It's lovely to have you with us. We've got Tony, Sarah and Phil. I thought just before we sort of unpack all this and talk about the subject, let's briefly introduce ourselves and just a little bit about who you are, what you do, the kind of area that you work in. So let's start with Sarah, Thank you for joining us, Sarah, Nice to see you.
[00:01:30] Sarah Cheesbrough: Great, thank you for having me.
[00:01:31] Dallas Campbell: It's a great pleasure. So tell us a little bit about what you do. You're the EO consultant. So presumably that's Earth Observation Consultant at the Satellite Applications Catapult. So what does a normal day for Sarah entail?
[00:01:44] Sarah Cheesbrough: So, yeah, Earth Observation Consultant. I sit within the Geospatial Intelligence team at the Caterpillar and we do a range of things. My job is sort of half split between technical Earth observation roles, so that's looking at satellite data images which have been captured by satellites of things which are happening on earth and sort of, we do a lot of supporting businesses in the use of that data, exploring with governments on how they can use that data. So it's very much in a consultancy type way, exploring the new data, which is coming and how we can also use all the data, historical data in new ways as new technologies come in.
[00:02:20] Dallas Campbell: Great, Well, thank you very much. We've also got Tony Higson. Tony, thank you very much for joining us. You're the Business Innovation at the Satellite Applications Catapult.
[00:02:30] Tony Higson: I am and I manage an environmental space living lab, which is effectively a group of companies and academia bodies that have come together. through funding from government to deliver a support service into Agritech, which is technology developers looking to design solutions in agriculture. So towards food markets and food security. We also cover sustainability markets and environmental markets as well And yeah, we use lots of different services and technology experts to deliver that support, but I'm sure we'll go into more depth for that later.
[00:03:04] Dallas Campbell: We will. Hey, what did you say, living labs? Is that what it's called?
[00:03:07] Tony Higson: Yeah, one of the main focuses of the labs is that we have real world test environments, which basically means that we've got land in farms, on water, in grasslands and wetlands, so that we can allow people that are designing technologies to test them in real world environments.
[00:03:21] Dallas Campbell: Okay, got it. Thank you very much for joining us and finally, we've got Phil Bicknell, Chief Executive Officer at the UK Agritech Centre. Phil, thank you very much for joining us.
[00:03:30] Phil Bicknell: Great to be here, and thanks for having me along. What do we do at UK Agritech Centre? So, from my perspective, we kind of take food for granted a little bit, right? We kind of assume that it gets produced in a field somewhere, ends up in a supermarket or in a restaurant, we buy it, we consume it and actually, it's a huge amount of logistics effort that goes into that really complicated supply chain, to use the industry jargon. Look, our role is how do we make that simpler, more effective, improve it, applying technology, science and innovation.
[00:03:59] Dallas Campbell: That is very well said, actually that's a brilliant place to start, thank you, Phil, because it's almost like magic. It's a bit like electricity, you know, you turn on the switch and lo and behold, the light comes on, and so food has got to that point where we just, well, I don't know about you, but you just sort of forget where it comes from. You just take it for granted and it just appears on the shelves in Tesco and actually when, you know, when we had the pandemic a few years ago, it was a really good example of just how fragile those supply chains are. Something happens and the whole show falls apart. How did it get so complicated?
[00:04:32] Phil Bicknell: Some of it is scale, right? So, here in the UK, we are, what, 60 percent self sufficient? There, thereabouts? So, we're reliant on a host of imports to feed us. The supply chain, the global food base, things move around the world. We've got some really big businesses that operate across international boundaries and you know, that's been the direction of travel, and it's where we've got to. Look, I'm talking to you from a farm in Warwickshire, cattle that I've got in the field here, effectively, at one point, they'll end up in Morrison's or in Marks and Spencer, go back 30 years, they'd have been in the local butcher. That local butcher doesn't exist anymore.
[00:05:07] Dallas Campbell: I suppose my question is how this term, supply chain, obviously we're talking sort of global, I mean, we're going to focus more on sort of local supply chains, I know, but sort of globally, we don't think of local anymore, Everything seems to work globally now, doesn't it?
[00:05:21] Tony Higson: Absolutely, yeah and I think that one of the key things for me is there's a disconnect between the food on our plates and where it comes from, the processes that are used to farm it and people very much trust supermarkets now as to the quality of the food that's in front of them and I think what's interesting now is there's starting to be a turn towards these local supply chains away from global ones to enable us to have a closer connection to our food and understanding of the health benefits and that of those supply chains.
[00:05:48] Dallas Campbell: You know, what might be useful? How would we define a supply chain?
[00:05:51] Tony Higson: I suppose in simple terminology it would be how your food gets from farm to fork. So it's the suppliers, the processes, the regulations and everything that's involved to enable that food to be grown, through to being promoted to be consumed.
[00:06:07] Phil Bicknell: And I throw into the mix, there's, you know, as a modern agricultural industry, we're relying on a chunk of inputs as well, whether that's kind of fertilizer, whether it's fuel, whether it's feed, we need those inputs as a farming base to be able to turn crops into food ultimately. So it's complex and one of the things that I'm really pleased about actually is some of that complexity is starting to be recognised, but also how systems interact as well. There's a whole kind of reassessment about the environmental impact and sustainability of those systems, which is a good thing and I think particularly as we start to look at technology's role within that and innovation within it, some huge potential to help us hopefully simplify the system.
[00:06:43] Sarah Cheesbrough: There's also, the systems sort of really overlap as well. So what we're giving cattle as cattle feed wasn't necessarily first intended to go to cattle feed, quite often it's if the quality of a product drops and it was meant for human consumption, instead of it going to waste, it then goes to being cattle feed instead. So it's quite a circular and intertwined process. It's not just, this is the food supply chain that goes into cattle and comes out, it's waste from elsewhere and that kind of thing.
[00:07:08] Dallas Campbell: So what I'm getting from all of this is that we have these very complex supply chains of lots of different factors, all interacting with each other and squiggling around. Yeah, I mentioned something like the pandemic, how fragile are they? I suppose that's what I want to understand and then we can talk about how technology and satellite technology can help this, but give us an idea of how the fragility of it all.
[00:07:29] Phil Bicknell: Yeah, it's interesting. So you say name check the pandemic and you know, we will have, as we queued up to get in supermarkets one by one and keep two meters apart, we will have seen some empty shelves within that. Now that was all around, you know, whether people weren't able to get into some of the food processing plants to be able to process the volumes because of social distancing, that kind of just underlines some of the fragility, but we've also seen it when, you know, when, the Suez canal was blocked, right and we were able to, some of the, we missed some products. We see it with weather events. Don't know whether you recall that kind of rush on courgettes, because there was a hail event in Spain early in the year last year and for me, it probably the last four or five years, that point about food getting from field to fork and it always being there that Tony talked about. Actually, we can't necessarily take that for granted and I think there's more global shocks that we see. We can't take it for granted.
[00:08:18] Dallas Campbell: No.
[00:08:18] Tony Higson: Yeah, and I think it has a knock on effect in other ways as well, like our reliance on supermarkets. When you see these shortages, because we've got food reliance on things being imported in, that starts to have a knock on effect to the supply chains from a security point of view. If we had to fall back onto local supply chains, because there's only really large abattoirs now for example, in the meat industry, and they're supplying foods into supermarkets at scale. So if we lose some of that supply chain due to some form of conflict or whatever the case may be, then you haven't got those smaller abattoirs to create that circular economy in a localised region that enables them to all get the profit they need to keep trading. So it has a knock on effect to the option of a smaller supply chain as well.
[00:09:01] Dallas Campbell: We obviously have got used to buying food in this particular way. Are we going to have to rethink things as the world gets more complicated? Not just from consumers point of view, but also farmers. Presumably all this has effects on farmers who are sort of looking to you in terms of providing technology that will be able to help them out.
[00:09:18] Tony Higson: Absolutely. I mean, I would say from a consumer standpoint, there's a question mark. They need some form of education around the pricing side of things as to why things that they currently buy are so cheap and that's of course because of the supply chains they set up in a way that gives them fairly regulated, all the same size, the same low quality produce, versus why something that would be better for their health on a local supply chain would be more expensive. So there's an educational piece to consumers, but then the flip side of that is from a farmer's standpoint, is that a lot of the regen farming practices that need to take place to enable short supply chains involves an education, an education around biology, a lot of farmers are really good with chemistry but they need to understand what's happening in their soil, the way they've damaged their soil and how new forms of farming can be adopted and the trust to adopt them and to be able to take it up.
[00:10:08] Dallas Campbell: That's really interesting. Okay, so agriculture, it's complicated. Supply chains are fragile and you've given us some good examples of that. How can technology help us? How can technology help consumers, how can it help farmers, Sarah?
[00:10:22] Sarah Cheesbrough: So there's quite a few different ways depending on the scales that we're looking at it. Satellite Earth observation data and also SATCOMS data is very much ingrained within UK agricultural system as it stands, a lot of your big agri companies who are providing the chemicals to farmers, they're providing those with precision farming in mind, which comes from satellite data. So that's saying, okay, looking at this field, it's lacking a bit of nitrogen here. Let's go and spray that field for that there and so what that's doing is supporting the yield of the fields to ensure that product's going to the right standard to be used for UK consumers and making sure that they're getting the most out of the soil.
[00:11:02] Dallas Campbell: See, we can actually look at soil from space and go, Oh, crikey, that soil's not looking very good, or how does it do that? Like, what are we actually looking at that we can say, crikey, we need more nitrogen?
[00:11:12] Sarah Cheesbrough: So if you're looking at a bare field with soil in, then you can see characteristics of the soil, but it's more used in a way of once the plant is growing, you can look at those, crops and say, okay, the north half of that field, it's at the level we would expect for this time in the season. The bottom half, you know, it's a different soil type, it might need a bit of a boost with something else and where the advantage is of this is that instead of blanket spraying the whole field just in case it needs a bit more of this or a bit more of that. You're just doing the spots where it needs it and the scale to which this is happening is getting better and better, and the precision at which it's happening and it means that there's less waste in terms of chemical going on fields, which is profit for the farmers, more profit for the farmers, better for the environment and so it's, that's one scale at which this type of data is being used and it's a real success of earth observation data because the farmers don't know they're using satellite data, or if they do, they know they're using satellite data, but don't have to access it themselves, there is that player in the middle who is providing them with this data and they plug that straight into their tractors and their tractors go out and spray in that certain way. So it's a real success of observation data at that sort of level. A completely different level is looking at that global side. So if you're a big soy importer, for example, and you want to be able to put a mark on your products which say that my soy isn't associated with deforestation, then we can look at the areas where that soy is coming from and look at what environmental impacts which are happening within those areas. Is there being deforestation in that area? And so you can use satellite data to look at where those products are coming from to sort of support in that traceability of that supply chain.
[00:12:45] Dallas Campbell: That's amazing. So you can actually look at the kind of how green is my valley. That's amazing. Isn't it?
[00:12:49] Phil Bicknell: It's really interesting Dallas. I mean, one thing I've started using on the farm that I live on, I'll walk along with something called a plate meter and measure grass growth and that tells me how quick the grass is growing, how much, it means I can work out how big an area the cows get to eat. So try and optimise
[00:13:04] Dallas Campbell: that.
How do you measure how fast the grass grows? What do you use? That's really interesting.
[00:13:08] Phil Bicknell: So, you know, something called a plate meter, walk along, plonk it down, works out from how far the meter goes down to the ground, how much grass is there and therefore that equates to something called the dry matter content in terms of kilos per hectare. We know how much one animal would eat a day, so therefore you can match the amount of grass to how many livestock you've got. So really helpful for just optimising...
...the inputs that we've got are making the most of the resources and you know what, in terms of some of those challenges in drought years that we've had, and we've had more severe weather patterns. Gosh, it's been really invaluable to me in terms of being able to make sure the feed amounts are optimised. But yeah, I do that by walking across the field, holding something like a walking stick with a plate on the bottom. I would love satellites to be able to measure that, do that and then that saves me going for a stroll.
[00:13:56] Dallas Campbell: Hey, well, they can, you just have to talk to Sarah. she'll, hook you up with some... Actually, that's really interesting. A bit like supply chains where you've got lots of different factors, all feeding into things, I suppose that in terms of data that we can get from satellites, lots of different things are going to be helping farmers. So we've got, we mentioned soil, presumably things like water as well. You can look, and we've covered this on the podcast before, but actually measuring water and seeing what water's doing.
[00:14:23] Tony Higson: Absolutely, I mean, there's, you know, alongside of earth observation and the satellite side of technology, you can use water and soil sensor monitors to look at the biomass the compression of the soil, So that would enable people, farmers to know how the water is going to retain or not retain water, So where there's areas of risk of flooding. You can start to look at if the soil is regaining its biomass, if there's more mycelium and more roots and stuff within the soil, which makes the soil healthier and the crops healthier and then you can tie that in with the earth observation data. You can use internet of things and 5g to start to have more tracking of the tractors in your field so that it's more accurate. So for example, if you were spraying fertilizer in your field and you wanted to make sure that you weren't putting too much on and it wasn't running off into waterways and causing pollution, you could use RTK and automation devices.
[00:15:15] Dallas Campbell: What's RTK?
[00:15:16] Tony Higson: It's basically a signal standard that you can put around your farm now, which enables you to get a more accurate reading down to about, 30 centimeters I believe, of where you are in the field so you don't end up using too much fertilizer so it doesn't run off into walkways and cause pollution. Those sensors can pick up that pollution and you start to use weather data and the sensor data to tell where those spillages have happened, the concentration of them and start to predict with the weather data when you should or shouldn't be putting fertilizer on your fields to prevent these sorts of pollution. So that has a benefit to reducing the environmental impact, you can enhance traceability of goods in transit with technology. Like I said just now in regards to the Internet of Things and 5G. So if you wanted to measure your fruit and vegetables in transit and make sure they're staying at a reasonable standard of health, There's a lot of connectivity issues in tracking at the moment that they're starting to use things like Internet of Things and 5G and Earth Observation and Satellite. technology to help bridge those gaps so that you've got full traceability of the goods. So that's important to the consumer and to the person that's actually shipping them and producing them.
[00:16:21] Phil Bicknell: Tony, I guess the bit that shouldn't get lost in this either, right? It's the benefit to the farmer. If you're using fertilizer in a smarter way and you're able to use less of it, then that's less cost to your business, that's only got to be a good thing for an industry that really struggles with low margins.
[00:16:36] Tony Higson: Absolutely and I think the key things there is that especially with Regen Farming, if they're using less product to create their end product, so if they're using less fertilizer, they're using less feed, they're using natural grass growth to grow that cow and to create their beef, then that also helps them from a financial standpoint because they're lower risk because they tend to be more profitable as businesses. So farmers out there that are looking whether Regen Farming is going to work for them, it's worth knowing that it actually makes them a lot of financial risk to lenders as well.
[00:17:04] Dallas Campbell: So generally everything is geared to making more things more efficient from lots of different angles and presumably things like biodiversity as well, all this is going to help from an environmental point of view.
[00:17:14] Phil Bicknell: Oh gosh, undoubtedly, right? And I think us as shoppers, we don't just care about food availability and the cost. I think increasingly we care about where it comes from and how it's produced. So being able to capture just some of that data around the biodiversity, whether it's around the kind of carbon stored on farm, whether it's around hedgerows, whether it's around how we make more effective use of forestry, I think we've got greater ability to just be smarter about the resources that we deploy, how we use our land in the UK, but also in terms of just how we track some of the progress. I know some farmers who did some great things. The challenge as always, is how do you prove it? How do you measure it? And that's where I think satellites have got some potential to help the industry out, to demonstrate that, to give that kind of reassurance to shoppers and ultimately make sure that we're doing the right thing and get credit and recognition for it.
[00:18:01] Tony Higson: Yeah, I was going to say, absolutely. I think it helps with the adoption from a farmer standpoint, because what farmers will be looking for is that baseline data, that proof, that stick in the sand that says that one of my fellow farmers has done this. It's worked. I can see the data that's been showing from sensors and earth observation that this has worked and then on the flip side of it, it gives some transparency through the supply chain to consumers to be able to trust that sustainability element as well.
[00:18:26] Dallas Campbell: More generally, we've talked about specifics to do with the agricultural industry, but presumably things like better weather forecasting, which satellites give us and presumably being able to spot things like weird geopolitical events, we mentioned the Suez Canal getting blocked. I mean, presumably we can see that happening in real time from satellites and all that is going to feed into these supply chain issues as well.
[00:18:50] Sarah Cheesbrough: Yeah, absolutely. So that's looking at that kind of global market type level and as well as in sort of instances like that, which affect our food supply chains or food supply chains in Europe, for example. There's also, we've done quite a bit of work looking at, in zones of conflict when agriculture is quite, you know, often used as kind of a weapon in an area of conflict, people might go in and burn crops of the opposition side, so reducing their food security. So it's interesting to be able to look at areas where aid workers, for example, can't get on the ground, but using satellites, you can see What is the disruption to the food system in that area? Those crops that they planted two months ago, have they failed? Are they still operating? Is that area going to be able to feed themselves or do the aid agencies need to send food in? So that's a completely different perspective, which satellites can look in when no one else can get in on the ground to see what support is needed in those supply chains.
[00:19:43] Dallas Campbell: Thank you. Can we talk a little bit about usage and who is using that? I mean, we mentioned chemical companies, perhaps you make fertilizer, all this is very important to them, but maybe some sort of case studies. I mean, who is it, the farmers who are using the satellite data, or is it the, like, who are the main users and who are you trying to attract and trying to win over with some of this technology?
[00:20:05] Tony Higson: I think I can talk on behalf of the environmental space living labs, from an EO standpoint specifically, we're working with a client that's designed a low cost in water sensor, which basically enables real time information to be able to make decisions. So what that means in English is that they've designed a box that you can drop in a river that can stay there and can give you information on events in that spillage from a water company for pollution or phosphate runoff from farmland and it gives that actionable data that they can start to look at how weather could impact that. For example, if they know that there's going to be a rainfall one day, they know that they shouldn't put any phosphates on at that time because it's going to not get into the produce, into the ground, it's going to go into the waterways, so they can start to use the mixture of earth observation, the sensors and so forth to be able to more closely monitor and control and predict how their practices are going to affect waterways.
[00:20:58] Phil Bicknell: Yeah, for me, I think there's a whole host of people that benefit from different technologies. The bit not to lose sight of is the farmers, because unless they see a benefit from it, you're not going to get the adoption and uptake. I always think that better information means better decisions that are taken on farm and they then have knock on positives as we look through that supply chain from farm to fork. I think there's still a big issue over data trust amongst farmers, degree of skepticism. So if you don't get the buy in, if they don't see the benefits, actually that means we're not going to take full advantage of some of the technologies and some of the really smart potential we've got out there.
[00:21:32] Dallas Campbell: Is that a cultural thing? Is that just the way the farmers, you know, have generally done their business and suddenly, crikey, look, we've got all these satellites, we can do all this And it just, there's a little bit of a slow adoption of technology.
[00:21:45] Phil Bicknell: There's a cultural bit, I think, particularly in terms of trust, who else has access to that information? Particularly if it's related to some of the environmental impact, there's that perception of scrutiny and being checked on. There's also a bit about potential cost because sometimes that data is expensive. There's also some kind of practical barriers as well and Tony's mentioned about 5G connectivity, great if you've got it, but think about some of the rural areas we're talking about. So some of it in terms of the cost of infrastructure, being able to put it into practice is a barrier. For me, there's almost a mindset challenge and I think where you've got farmers that are focusing on their business, that are looking for marginal improvements, they'll be looking to science and innovation to help provide the answers. They've got a more traditional mindset, adoption tends to be much slower.
[00:22:29] Tony Higson: I would agree with that. I'd also say, I think there's a knowledge gap. There's an educational piece there to educate farmers around the uses of the technology and there's definitely a communication issue, I would say, is that farmers, academia, technology developers, public and private sector all speak different languages. So when new things are available, nobody knows what anybody's talking about. So that, that also breeds a lack of trust. So I think sometimes there's the need for that intermediary, somebody that can talk tech language and can talk layman's terms and be the middleman that goes in and actually shows them the solution and the benefit to them as opposed to the technical jargon behind it.
[00:23:05] Dallas Campbell: I think that's a really important point and obviously as well, Phil, there is the, you know, the, politics of all of this as well. Somebody tell me what the catapult is doing to try and solve some of those problems. Like how is the Catapult helping farmers, helping producers, helping the, sort of big picture of all of this.
[00:23:24] Tony Higson: Absolutely. So as I said at the beginning, I managed the environmental space living labs as part of the Catapult and we effectively, we focus on soil, water, and biodiversity, and we introduce people in the supply chain, farmers, sustainability companies, tech developers to expertise around earth observation and access to the data, expertise around 5G and connectivity, people within our consortium, universities and colleges have real world test sites so they can test products on land and in water. Rapid prototyping, 3D printing, lots of different services. So what will happen is we will get either a business come to us as a technology that they wanted to develop further and prove its scalable commercial viability, in which case we'll support them to get to that stage. But also we're there to flip that equation on its head and make sure we're not just designing or supporting products that have been designed that have no market fit. So we go out to the farmers, to the supply chain, we run workshops where we look at problems and solutions so that we can help facilitate. and enable that adoption of, the agri tech and that conversation.
[00:24:25] Dallas Campbell: So you're actually kind of go around to farms and sort of knock on the door and go, now look, we can help you here. We can give you some tech that'll make you more efficient and make you more environmentally friendly and all that kind of thing.
[00:24:36] Tony Higson: Sort of, a little bit the other way around. So, I speak to farmers. I put my wellies on, I visited, I've just finished running a workshop with a farmer with their entire supply chain there, including their abattoirs and their butchers and, retailers and other people in the mix. So I've been out to visit the farmers. I think trust and actually meeting them, their family run businesses, getting to know them is really key. But I think it's not a case of going to them and going, Hey, Mr. Farmer, we've got this technology that we're supporting the development of here. It's more a case of what are the pain points that you experience, what are the pain points that your neighboring farm experiences, so that we can start to support the development and the commercialization of solutions that have scalable appeal. For example, people management within the beef industry. So one of the biggest issues with their yield and their margins is inefficiency in the production line that somebody may be more efficient one day than are two weeks later, but that doesn't show in their bottom line until a month later. So it's how can technology help look at where those inefficiencies are, manage them and you know, it's just one example.
[00:25:32] Dallas Campbell: What about the big supermarkets? So we, right at the beginning, we were talking about, well, we just, we go into Tesco's and we buy our food and we don't really think about it. You know, supermarkets are so important in agriculture now, it's where most of us buy our food. How are supermarkets using this technology or are you approaching supermarkets and saying actually, you know, we can make this better, we can make it better for you and for consumers and the farmers.
[00:25:54] Phil Bicknell: So look, from my perspective and there's quite a degree of interest from supermarket chains, retailers, in terms of that whole kind of agri tech space and consciously even agri tech on its own is a bit of jargon, I think anything that is going to help in terms of the supply chain just perform a little bit better, in terms of whether it's better quality, whether it's about trying to remove a bit of cost, or have that consumer benefit, other big one that I'm really conscious of is anything that tries to improve animal welfare. Retailers are hugely supportive of the challenge probably comes in terms of the potential investment and commitment, particularly some supply chains really closely integrated long term supply relationships. That benefits partnership working, some positives that we see going forward. Other products probably much more commodity based, probably a bit more transactional, so therefore you probably don't get that kind of shared working and people coming together to fix solutions. But on the whole, I think there's certainly a greater understanding of, a greater willingness to do work around anything that helps give a better idea about what is coming and when and the quality. The other aspect that I think is top of mind for retailers is all around emissions and some of the sustainability challenge particularly around trying to remove and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that's definitely a focus in some of the conversations I ultimately that I have on a regular basis.
[00:27:12] Dallas Campbell: Yes, it's a really important one. Obviously, I mean, agriculture, crikey it's massive. I mean, maybe it's the biggest sector, actually, in terms of CO2 emissions, I can't remember.
[00:27:21] Phil Bicknell: Yeah, it depends what you're looking at. Methane. Methane is the biggest emitter. I think it's I think agriculture as a whole is about 11%. So there are other sectors that are bigger. The challenge in agriculture is that it probably hasn't dropped as much as some of the other sectors. Just trying to decarbonize it is a big problem because of some of the embedded emissions that you have in fuels and fertilizers and you know, around livestock production. But that's not to say there isn't scope to reduce it and look, the one big thing I'll say in terms of emissions, the frequent issue that I come across again and again, is that emissions tend to be calculated at a national or an international level. That's a mathematical sum based on some big assumptions. What I want to know is what are the emissions that relate to me, my farm and my farming practices? Because if I know that, and I've got better data, I can start to make inroads and that's where satellites can
[00:28:13] Dallas Campbell: That's fascinating and Sarah, presumably we can do that?
[00:28:15] Sarah Cheesbrough: Yeah, so I'm working on one of my big projects at the minute is methane emissions. But the satellites which we currently have available are, as Phil sort of said, the ones that can look at that country level or look at quite a wide level, but when it comes to the type of emissions that are coming off, say livestock houses, etc, you can see the emissions coming off in the very, very large ones in Brazil, etc. But from a UK perspective, there's the concentration of emissions coming off aren't large enough. The emissions that we're picking up with these satellites are your big landfills, your oil and gas type facilities, venting and flaring. So in agriculture, we know the more as diffuse emissions that currently we're not picking up and can't quantify with satellite data. But there's a lot of improvements coming over the next few years. I see it only improving in that respect.
[00:29:02] Dallas Campbell: Yeah, that's kind of my question, really, to kind of wrap up is what's the future of this? We've designed a very, very complicated world, which is very, very fragile and subject to all kinds of things going wrong with it. So then we develop this technology to help it make it smoother and also change the way that we interact with the planet and interact with agriculture. What does the future hold? Where are we going to be in the next 10 years? Is it going to be so localized that we'll be able to sort of monitor every cow from space or every head of corn or, paint us a picture?
[00:29:32] Tony Higson: I would say my opinion from the environmental space living lab standpoint is we almost need to go backwards in some respects to go forwards. I think there needs to be adoption of technologies, some policy changes to help support them within agriculture. And generally speaking, I think in a more simplistic way is we need to listen to farmers and supply chains, understand the problems, discuss scalable ideas, empathise to build trust with them and then collaborate across the board, including people like the ESL and Phil at the Agritech Centres and to do this, I think we'll solve some of the biggest environmental sort of sustainability and food supply chain issues we have today.
[00:30:08] Dallas Campbell: Phil,
[00:30:09] Phil Bicknell: Yeah, I guess from my perspective, let's kind of recognize actually where sometimes agriculture and farming can be painted as something that is kind of behind the times, but you know, increasingly tractors that you, and we've heard it, there's technology farmers who are using the satellite technology, but you know, you've got a huge amount of computing and processing capability in combine harvesters and tractors, you've got robotic milkers on farms, people are deploying the tech and I think that will continue. I suppose I'm trying to think, what gets in the way? What are the barriers and how do we remove them? So I think there's still, particularly around research, I'm conscious that actually that funding pipeline is a bit of a challenge. It can be the catalyst for change. There's also incentives on farm sector which yeah, low profitability is going through some big political, big policy changes right now, how we get the incentives right and I think there's a shared approach about how we do collaborate both within supply chains, but in terms of organizations like, UK Agritech Center and the Catapult, there's some really great things happening. I think there's some huge potential in terms of research, development, and innovation. I think the critical view is, how do we start to take a longer term approach to food, how it's produced, start to think about the broader systems and Tony talking almost about going back to the future. Yeah, that's something I hear about quite a bit and look, within that data issue, we still need to kind of crack that because I've been talking, you know, I've been in the industry for 20 plus years, data and trust was an issue 20 years ago. Still an issue that needs addressing now.
[00:31:38] Dallas Campbell: Interesting. Sarah, data and trust, you're a data person.
[00:31:42] Sarah Cheesbrough: Yeah, I am a data person and also a farmer's daughter, so I know about this.
[00:31:46] Dallas Campbell: Oh, right. Oh, no, you bring this right to the end now!
[00:31:48] Sarah Cheesbrough: Yeah, and...
[00:31:49] Dallas Campbell: You kept that quiet.
[00:31:50] Sarah Cheesbrough: The amount of times when I'm at farming type events and you say what you do and people say, Oh, you're not spying on me, are you? so there is this, certainly that impression there on it and I think a lot of that is that it's what governments have used to sort of check up on subsidies for quite a long time is looking at, okay, so these people have planted that crop in that field, and that's one way in which your DEFRA, your RPA are checking up on sort of farmers. So I think that's one kind of perspective of it. But then, yeah, I think we have seen this change in terms of farmers using it on farms as well, which has been really exciting. I think there's this huge change coming in agriculture, it's here already, as Phil sort of mentioned, change in subsidies, change in incentives, and it's more towards that environmental aspect. So what that's done has opened a lot of doors for, okay, we need new ways of monitoring this and verifying this. If someone's claiming X amount of money for putting in these hedgerows, then they want to say, I've put these hedgerows in and look, you can see that for yourself, sort of to evidence that. So it's opened up a lot of spaces and certainly from our kind of consultancy type work we do, there's a lot of really exciting businesses moving into the space and so there's a lot of innovation happening and yeah, as Phil said, that research side is really keep coming through.
[00:33:00] Phil Bicknell: Sarah, the one bit for me is that farmers have been rewarded or that for what they do from an environment, from a biodiversity perspective, one thing for me is, you know, we haven't got the baseline. So if we're not measuring where we are now, how do we benefit from any improvements that we make? And I'm conscious that stuff still tends to be relatively expensive and I know, ask anyone who's put in planning permission, had to do a bat survey or a new survey, the thousands tot up the idea of trying to gather that sort of data at a farm or field level, well that's the big challenge and I think that's why I'm excited where tech, where satellites can have the answer.
[00:33:32] Dallas Campbell: That's absolutely fascinating, what an absolutely terrific discussion, thank you so much, as well as all the tech that we've talked about, things like communication and trust really is at the heart of what the Catapult is all about, isn't it? As well as the technology.
[00:33:46] Tony Higson: Absolutely, yeah, we're an enabler and a convener and we're there to help facilitate those conversations, those introductions, to help develop those technologies and to help for a better world, I suppose.
[00:33:57] Phil Bicknell: Adoption and uptake is critical to this. If you don't get that, you haven't got innovation, you've just got an invention, if it's not being applied and taken up and so scale and pace is really important, particularly when I think about the, agri food supply chain and do you know what? There's some fantastic things that are happening. I think our industry sometimes get criticisms for what it's not doing. really keen that we get plaudits and recognition for some of the great things we are doing, and then try to think about actually how do we make it happen a bit quicker, at a bit larger scale. That's the conversation that I really want to hope we have in future.
[00:34:28] Dallas Campbell: Listen, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone, to Tony, to Sarah and Phil for this discussion. It's been really, interesting, thank you so much for, well, enlightening us about the things that we take for granted, it's that anesthetic of the familiar. We take food and agriculture so much for granted and you've just given us a lovely picture about actually how complicated it is, where the pressures are and how technology can help us, particularly satellite technology, and the catapult. So very, much indeed for being on the podcast!
[00:34:54] Tony Higson: Thanks very much, Dallas. It's a pleasure.
[00:34:55] Phil Bicknell: Thanks a lot Dallas. Thanks everyone.