episode #9
Sean Kane was appointed by Whites to the role of Agri Supply Chain Coordinator in June 2018 having graduated from Queens with a degree in agriculture. His degree consisted of animal husbandry, crop husbandry and business management – a joint qualification with CAFRI.
It opened up his mind to data and how you can apply it in farming.
In his role at Whites Sean is responsible for delivering improved oat quality and grower yield, and research and development. This includes farm trials and surveys, professional guidance on new seed varieties and mixes.
He was first attracted Whites because of the diversity of the role, combining office and field work but he also had a keen interest in research and how it can be applied to support and improve farm performance.
agriculture
data
research
A unique aspect of the role is that he works with farmers in the field, follows the product in to the mill, all the way through to the breakfast bowl in the morning.
Capturing and analysing data across 100s of farms is key, and understanding what the top 10% are doing differently, key data points that can be shared with all of the other farmers.
More recently they have partnered with Foundation Earth and the lifecycle analysis of growing oats – it has opened their eyes to the supply chain.
Getting to net zero will require everyone in the supply chain to work together and collaborate.
transcript
SPEAKERS
Dome Burch, Sean Kane.
Dom Burch:
Welcome back to the ubloquity podcast with me, Dom Burch. This is podcast where we get to speak to thought leaders around the industry to get our heads around technology and what’s going on in the exciting space of food, provenance data, and of course, the blockchain. I’m delighted this week to welcome onto the podcast, Sean Kane. Now Sean is the agri supply chain coordinator for Whites. He’s an agronomist by trade, and he’s getting himself into data and technology. Sean, welcome to the podcast.
Sean Kane:
Thank you very much Dom, delighted to be involved.
Dom Burch:
So let’s go back a little bit. Tell me a bit about you. What did you do at university? How did you end up becoming an agronomist and also what the hell is an agronomist?
Sean Kane:
Suppose if we take it back to university, I completed a degree in agriculture, that really consisted of everything from animal husbandry, crop husbandry, business management, that was three years at Queen’s University, that’s a joint degree with Caffrey College of Agriculture and Rural Enterprise. And I suppose within that as well, I did five months placement at Chavis, which is a school of Research Institute, and in the south of Ireland, I suppose that opened my mind to the data side of things, I’d always had an interest in it since then. But I completed this very, four, maybe four and a half years ago, there was a job as agri supply chain coordinator came up at Whites Oats, what attracted me to the role was that oats were very much in demand. And there was a great outlook for oats in terms of their health benefits, they’re very much suited to this climate. I seen it as I suppose a very sustainable career going forward.
Dom Burch:
And that’s important, isn’t it to people coming out of university these days, I mean I remember when I graduated, what ’98. So going back a fair few years, you come out a uni don’t you, all guns blazing, you want to change the world, you want to do good, you want to you know make a difference in life and having a role that is helping sustain, you know, agriculture, it’s helping to grow things more efficiently, more effectively doing less harm to the planet. Ideally, doing good to people is is important to people now isn’t it?
Sean Kane:
Very much so, one of the most unique things about the role is that we, I suppose I work with farmers right through from the sowing of the crop right through to delivery to the mill, and then as well as that you’re consuming at every morning. So it’s quite unique that you can see the provenance in front of you, there’s traceability and transparency from farm to bowl, so I suppose that’s another benefit. But I suppose in the broader sense, it is really health food, and it’s becoming more and more trendy, as I suppose different trends and whether they’re fads are not moving in the direction of veganism, whole foods flexitarianism all these things are buzz words and oats firmly fit in with all them. So it is quite unique.
Dom Burch:
Now you work for a company that dates back to what 1841 So 180 years old, if I’m getting the maths right, things must have shifted a lot, even in the last four years in terms of how you’re applying the tech that’s now available and more accessible on farms, allowing people to do things differently. Just talk us through, you know, a typical day in the in the in the life of a agri supply chain coordinator. What sort of things are you seeing happening today that people might be surprised by
Sean Kane:
180 years this year. And it is interesting that, you know, some of the old methods of farming are very much common back in, you know, wider rotations, more diversity and inputs, different crop management that would have been common practice maybe 50/60 years ago, such as organic farming, cultivating crops differently,
Dom Burch:
What sort of changes have happened over the last few years, because I guess even though it’s 180 years old, there must have been a lot of innovation that you’ve seen in the role that you’ve been doing just in the last 18 months or so.
Sean Kane:
Yeah, like there definitely has been a lot of innovation. In terms of the management of crops. One of the key things would be OPE on this island we have some of the highest yields, oat yields in the world. So it puts us in a very unique position. And that’s been driven largely, I suppose by climate, but as well as that improve management of the crop on farm. And some of the work I suppose that I will be doing in the role would would be research and development. So that’s where we’re looking at different varieties, different management of those varieties in our climate. And then that’s giving farmers the information to make decisions, whether to plant a different variety, manage it differently, and hope to get the same outcomes that maybe we’re been able to demonstrate in research.
Dom Burch:
So one of the things that Ellen agritech manager says quite a lot actually and she’s a farmer herself just come out of Queens, you know, right at the forefront, I guess of this world of using data and technology to improve things on farm she says you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And I guess part of what you’re able to do now is just collect so much more data, collect so much more inputs to be able to then analyse, take the insights from those and make better decisions.
Unknown:
Well, precisely. And you know, that’s the unique thing as well about data. You know, we could have one research facility looking at, you know, one field of oats, or you could have 100 farms all growing oats in different climates, different soil types, different management practices, being able to capture the data, and information about how these crops are being managed, and bring that together, analyse it, and be able to feed that back to growers to show, why are the top 10% the best growers? What are they doing differently to maybe the guys in the bottom 10%? And, you know, what are these key differences in their management practices that are delivering these higher yields, and higher quality crops. That really underpins the data side of things, from our point of view is the informations there, we have hugely complex farming systems, we can start to pinpoint the key data points, the key management decisions on farms that are delivering those higher yields, then we can through knowledge transfer equip the rest of the growers with this knowledge, you know,
Dom Burch:
So tell us a bit about the link with Foundation Earth and how that pilot has developed for Whites.
Sean Kane:
We started off with Foundation Earth, and I suppose the lifecycle analysis of growing oats, so everything from seed, right through to mill, the processing of the oats, and then the distribution to the supermarkets, and on other outlets. It has opened our eyes to the supply chain, you know, some of the actors that we can influence, there’s a lot of things that we can’t influence and it’s very much a journey with our suppliers or stakeholders to get to a target of net zero by 2040 is what we accept, not one person in the supply chain can get us there, it has to be everybody working together. And I think that’s been the key learning on my part anyway, that we now have that knowledge of the key parts of the supply chain that are, you know, carbon intensive, the bits that are really good for biodiversity, short supply chains, local supply, and it’s bringing all this together. Yeah, really just it’s really growing our knowledge in that area, you know,
Dom Burch:
and it’s something that’s just going to gain an importance, isn’t it, we’re just on the back of Cop 26. People will have seen whether they wanted to or not a lot of coverage in the newspapers, you got Greta Thunberg, you know, saying blah, blah, blah to world leaders. But in the meantime, industry, consumers are moving ahead with a pace, aren’t they and you know, this sort of front pack, environmental scores are going to become more commonplace, you know, 5 or 10 years down the line, there’s going to be an expectation isn’t when you’re picking up the groceries in the Asda or the Tesco that you want to know that the things you’re putting in your trolley have been produced sustainably?
Sean Kane:
Absolutely. You know, it’s all about doing the right thing is what we see. And, you know, consumers want to make that choice that, you know, is this slightly better for the environment, the climate, and, you know, climate change carbon, it’s hugely complex and complicated. But, you know, it’s a big step in the right direction. You know, it’s all learning, it’s going to be learning over the next 10, 20, 30 years. And, you know, it’s important to us to take our consumers in that journey with us.
Dom Burch:
Now, as somebody who I know likes a bit of golf, you’ll know then the best players in the world are always just making those little fine tunings aren’t they, little thing, focus on the putting focus on the driving, make sure your head is straight, what are the little things that everyone could be doing today? You know, just to make those little steps forward, because I guess if everyone on farm listening to this podcast was to start making those small changes immediately, the compound effect of all those small changes will add up to a lot.
Sean Kane:
Yes, absolutely. And, you know, small changes, that’s where the data will help make these decisions in terms of for management of crops, you know, rotations, diversity, I suppose is the key word, diversity and fertilisation, getting the fertility into the soil diversity in crops. So you know, wider rotations, it’s always going to improve soil health, suppose a lot of these things will come back to the soil, the fundamental asset on farm, and it’s how we can help growers on that journey of becomming net zero in their own right, through different farm practices, all these things add up. So you know, improving soil health is going to improve everything from the farmers margin, through to the quality of the crop, and the efficiency to grow that crop. But even more, so the resilience in these different weather events that we’re getting, you know, I think three out of the last five years, we’ve had pretty severe droughts, something that’s not very common, but the more resilience we can build into soil and farming systems, the more sustainable the supply chain is going to be.
Dom Burch:
And what’s your hopes for the future, then as you look out, sort of over the next, I don’t know, maybe even just sort of next 12/18 months Sean, what do you see that’s coming that excites you that sort of gets you out of bed in the morning with that fire in your belly,
Sean Kane:
We have developed an app at Whites. The key here is data capture and knowledge transfer. And what this will consist of, and we’re already doing this and we have done last year is assessing all crops that are grown by each of the farmers in terms of ant populations, different assessments throughout the season that give us this data set in two to three years, which will be able to put us in a position that we can then advise growers, where are these other growers, or some of the growers doing very well, where some of the growers not doing so well. And that will give us the ability then to create a platform, a community within the grower growing group who make decisions on the back of that. And so that that is really exciting. And we want to increase yield on farm farmers margins, we want better milling quality for Whites, as well as that in the background, there’s going to be a range of other metrics, and one of the key ones at the minute will be carbon emissions, sustainability, all these factors will play their part. So that’s exciting for me, I think, the more data we can capture, we don’t necessarily need to know what we’re going to do with that yet. But as long as we’re on that journey of capturing it, in three years time, we can then make decisions of that. And the more data we have, the better the decisions are going to be on the back of it.
Dom Burch:
I’m just in relation to carbon, of course, a lot of people thinking, right, how on earth do we get to net zero, one of the things that you can do as a farmer is actually carbon sequestration. So as I understand it, you know, depending on the quality of the soil and your farming practices, you can actually capture carbon, and your ability to capture carbon can actually increase over time, but you need to establish a baseline right, you need to be able to verify and certify that, you know, your wherever your baseline is that you can then measure from. That potentially opens up a whole new marketplace, doesn’t it for farmers to actually enter into this idea that they are capturing carbon and they can sell that carbon credit, to a part of an industry that, you know, is a carbon polluter, you know, if you’re in the airline industry, or you’re a manufacturer of steel, you are going to be creating carbon through your processes. Farmers need to start waking up to this notion don’t know that in the future, they have an asset on farm, which is carbon and been able to store it.
Sean Kane:
Yes, absolutely. And it’s the unique thing about farms, you know, in Northern Ireland, here, we have a lot of hedgerows, very good for sequestering carbon. And just basically, any plants growing on farm or bringing carbon out of the atmosphere, putting them into the soil. And as you say, it’s an asset. And I think, you know, the key thing for farmers will be to be moving their farm in the direction of net zero. As well as policy changes, you know, some farms are sequestering more carbon than they’re admitting. And if you’re in that position, then there’s obviously that opportunity to trade or to sell your carbon credits. But as well as that, you know, from our point of view, we don’t want to be in a position where we’re purchasing credits from farms, but they’re maybe emitting a lot more carbon that they’re sequestering, which could put them at a disadvantage, if new policy come in, to say that, you know, farmers need to reduce their carbon emissions by 20%/30% in X amount of years, they’ve sold that carbon credit off farm then they’ve lost that ability for that hedge to sequester the carbon. So look, it’s a very new area. And it’s, it’s complex. And I think, you know, everyone’s learning, but yeah there’s absolutely no doubt, that a farm is a very unique ecosystem that is sequestering carbon.
Dom Burch:
I think that’s right, isn’t it? It’s a complex area. And I suppose the message to farmers is, you know, if you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t understand the context of carbon and carbon credits or how to become more sustainable then now’s the time isn’t it to raise your hand and to find out what’s going on. There’s plenty of good stuff happening in your neck of the woods in Northern Ireland isn’t there in terms of Queens University and companies like ubloquity and others who are really beginning to sort of like revolutionise data, using the blockchain, you know, and figuring some of this stuff out. There’s a lot of smart people setting their mind to this at the moment.
Sean Kane:
Absolutely. And as you say, you’ve hit the nail on the head when you say, you know, figuring it out, it’s it’s definitely a time of learning. And the more we can help farmers on that journey to better understand, you know, how to sequester carbon, what different practices and on farm are better for the climate. There’s a lot of stuff out there in terms of different management. Farming is complex. A couple of changes aren’t going to fix everything. It has to be that holistic management approach. You know, a farm can very quickly plant the whole farm up in trees, sequester a lot of carbon and sell those credits. But, you know, that’s the detriment of maybe biodiversity, to food production, and it’s just getting the balance. So I think balance is a key word in this whole debate. Learning is going to be at the forefront of getting everyone to where we need to be
Dom Burch:
Sean, thank you so much for coming on to the ubloquity podcast, it’s been great catching up. And and good luck for everything you’re doing on farm and in the months ahead, look forward to staying in touch as things develop. But in the meantime, thank you so much for coming on.
Sean Kane:
Yes, Dom. Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.
