Episode 21: Podcast Transcript - The Farming Blog

00:05 

Host: Chris Lyons, Innovation Lead, Innovate UK 

Hello and welcome to the Defra Farming podcast. I'm Chris Lyons from Innovate UK and I'm guest host for this episode. Innovate UK deliver the Farming Innovation Programme for Defra. 

Now my role is threefold. I design funding competitions for the agricultural sector. I run respected competitions, ensuring accountability for public funds, and I support successful applicants through the duration of their funded project. 

Now today's episode features two guests who applied originally through two different competitions, and both of which are continuing their innovation journey through the Adopt programme. 

With the recent announcement of an increased £123 million available for the programme this year, we thought this was the perfect time to hear directly from farmers and projects who are already innovating. 

So I'm really pleased to be joined by Dominic Swan from Salle Farms.  
 
Hi, Dominic. 

Guest: Dominic Swan, Data Analyst, Catalyst Farming 

Hiya, Chris. 

Chris: 

And David Prior Hope from Fibe Limited. 

Guest: David Prior Hope, CTO and Co-founder, Fibe 

Hi, Chris. Great to be on. Thank you. 

Chris: 

Dominic, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the farm you're involved with? 

01:05 

Dominic: 

Yeah. So I'm a data analyst with Catalyst Farming, which is a collaboration of four large farming businesses in Norfolk, and my role is to analyse the farm data, coordinate research and development of projects, and then helping those members to use the evidence and technology to improve profitability and sustainability across those businesses. 

Chris: 

And just very briefly on those farms, what do those farms do? 

Dominic: 

They're mainly arable farms, farming combinable cereals, legumes and forage crops across the four businesses, covering around 8,000 hectares. But more specifically, Salle Farms, the one where this project took place, is a 2,000-hectare farm. 

Chris: 

Excellent. Thank you, Dominic. And David, could you introduce yourself and a little bit about your company, please? 

01:55 

David: 

So I'm David Prior Hope. I'm the CTO and one of the co-founders of Fibe. 

We are a startup founded in 2022, and essentially what we're doing is we're making textile fibres a sustainable alternative to cotton, from agricultural residues, and now actually applying that same technology to agricultural products like hemp to try and make more sustainable and lower-cost materials. 

A big part of my role is to figure out how we can use technology to best cater to the needs and the goals of the agricultural industry, and also to the textile industry. So it's a really fundamental thing for us that whatever we do has to be a genuine improvement for both sides of the supply chain. It can't be a thing of making it difficult for one, so it can be good for the other. 

Chris: 

Excellent. Thank you David. And just again, to try and get an idea of scale, you're quite a new company. How long have you been running and what sort of size are you in terms of staff numbers, etc.? 

David: 

Absolutely. We've been running for about four years, so we had a pre-seed round led by Patagonia closed in January 2024. Last week we closed a £3 million seed round led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, and now our staff count is about 13 people. Looking to grow it up fairly soon, so upwards and onwards. 

03:09 

Chris: 

Excellent. That's fascinating, that we've got two different perspectives on some of the funding that we're going to be talking about here. 

So before we get into your projects, the Farming Innovation Programme is all about collaboration and innovation and making our farming sector more profitable, productive, sustainable and resilient. That's the key focus areas of what we really want to see out of this funding. 

Recent geopolitical events have thrown resilience into the spotlight, with increased pressures on input costs such as diesel and fertilisers. So that's really focused the mind and what we're trying to do with the programme and its most recent fund, Adopt. 

Adopt is all about ideas coming from the farm, being tested on the farm and then shared with other farmers, and we'll come back to that later. Adopt featured on a previous episode, so if you are interested, go and look it up. 

Through the whole of the Farming Innovation Programme, projects can be about productivity, sustainability or resilience. Funds are applicable to any area of farming and growing, so just as applicable to livestock, horticulture and other key sectors. 

04:13 

So Dominic, let's start with you. What made you think, this is something we really want to try? 

Dominic: 

So our project specifically focused on fertiliser and improving nitrogen-use efficiency. Fertiliser is one of our largest costs, and then also has the environmental impact linked to it as well. And really we want to try and find a way of improving our fertiliser-use efficiency across the farms, both the advantage of an improvement in financial output but also environmental output. 

Chris: 

Absolutely. So this was what we call a research starter project. So just tell us, because I know farmers are very interested about what's actually involved with one of these applications, and I think this was a two-stage application. Do you want to just talk us through that and how perhaps simple or perhaps difficult it was? 

Dominic: 

Yeah. So it's a two stage application. So the first part was a small, short overview on what the project would look like, and that's an expression of interest. So then if you're successful on that, you get invited to the full stage application, which is obviously a bit more detail and the finances about how it would work. And then, yeah, once that's accepted, you can start your project. 

05:26 

Chris: 

Excellent. So then you get your award letter to say that you can crack on and go forward. So it wasn't just you in this project, was it? You were working with another organisation, is that right? 

Dominic: 

Yes. So we were, our partner was NIAB, who were very helpful on the application. It was one of the first applications that we've done as a farming business for this type of work, and it is quite complicated if you've not done one before, create risk registers and Gantt charts, and the whole procedure on how to best fill out applications. So yeah, really helpful to be working with a partner with experience in that. 

Chris: 

Excellent. So just following the process, you're awarded, you've got your partner to work with, and then you actually get involved with running the trial and the research project. So how did it go? What were the outcomes from it? 

Dominic: 

I think it was a successful project, perhaps didn't have the exact outcome we were after. So effectively, we were using computer crop-modelling to simulate nitrogen response trials across different soil types across the farm, so we could more accurately apply our fertiliser where it's needed to try and hit the optimum rate on different areas of each field. 

So we were hoping to see an improvement in margin, across the field. The margin actually ended up being the same. But we did see an improvement in nitrogen-use efficiency. So there was a small positive to come from it. And yeah, hopefully we'll be able to show that again in the next couple of years as well, going forwards. 

07:01 

Chris: 

Excellent. And Dominic, just for those that haven't done these sort of things before, if you hadn't received the funding or you hadn't worked with NIAB, would you have done it? What was the alternative? 

Dominic: 

I think we would have struggled to do it because we needed assistance from NIAB, and they do require funding for their business to work, and it would have been, yeah, quite a risk for us to have taken that on without being confident that it would work. So it was a way of de-risking the project for us to be able to start it. 

Chris: 

Excellent. That's really interesting to know that. You know, we have got a world class research base in the UK in agri and I don't think enough people really understand that, that they do need funding. It's not something that they all just get up in the morning and they're quite happy to do pieces of research without getting supported for it. And this is clearly one way that they can do that through the delivery of these Farming Innovation Programme competitions. So that's really positive. 

08:06 

David, if we perhaps jump to you. So yours was a slightly different project and slightly bigger in scale. I think it was a feasibility project, can you remember roughly what your grant amount was? 

David: 

Oh good question. It was just shy of half a million, I believe. So substantially more than I think what Dominic had. 

Chris: 

But perhaps just tell us a little bit about what went on in that project. 

David: 

Absolutely. The project was a collaboration between Grimme as a subcontractor, Century, also subcontractor, NIAB and East Suffolk Produce. Essentially, we were doing the feasibility work in trying to work out how the potato-stem supply chain could work. 

So before that project, we were just grabbing any potato stems that we could, which was the starting feedstock that we started working with. We were begging growers to let us come and get it at the time that they would usually flail it, and just sort of shooting in the dark a lot. 

What this project enabled us to do is to build the world's first potato-stem harvester with Grimme. So we were able to automate that harvesting process. 

09:03 

Just the first harvester was, I believe, 400 times faster than doing it by hand, which for me, from an engineering background, is extremely satisfying. 

And NIAB was really helpful. We did two years of trials. We were basically trying to work out how agronomic variables influenced fibre quality for potato stems. So that was really helpful, as well. So we are now in a really good position to say, okay, this is the crop we're going to focus on, and this is how we're going to get more of that crop. Before this, it would be impossible to do this work. But now with this machine, with this knowledge, we've actually unlocked comfortably the majority of the world's potato stem, which is super exciting. 

Chris: 

I quite often see applications come in from startup companies and technology companies such as yourself, David, and all too often I read that they're going to be using agricultural waste. I understand agriculture, and there's not a huge amount of waste out there. I think farmers are the most circular businesses out there, in terms of what they do with crop residues and things like that. 

10:04 

So when I read your application, that was crossing my mind as well. But actually, in the world of potato production, this was something that was previously just being discarded. But actually, in the world of potato production, those stems really are a waste material that farmers do not want on the farm, because they've got to spray them off. Is that right? 

David: 

Yeah, spot on. There's lots of ways of harvesting a potato, but the most common way of doing it in the UK is, you have a process where you flail the stem, so you basically destroy it and you leave, I think, about a 10-12 inches stump in the ground, and then after you apply a desiccant spray.  

So before, what we used to do is, we used to just spray it all off with Diquat, but that's now been banned. So we have to do this flail and spray approach. But what this harvester is doing is, it's essentially acting as an alternative for flailing. 

So from the grower's perspective, rather than having to do the flailing process, instead they can do this. So it's designed to be as minimum hassle for the grower as possible, whilst giving the grower a new income stream for the stem. 

11:00 

Chris: 

Great. And this really is potentially game changing for the industry, isn't it? 

David: 

Well, I'd like to think so. [laughs] 

Chris: 

But in all seriousness, David, you know, you have created with Grimme, the world's first potato-stem harvesting machine, and you have potentially created an income stream for potato growers that they wouldn't have otherwise had, which reduces their risk as well, which is, I think, quite game changing. 

Potato is no different to a lot of crops out there in terms of extremely tight margins, lots of competition. You've got an engineering project, a soil classification project, crop breeding and agronomics all rolled into one. 

Did I pick up right, that you were looking at five different soil classifications when you tested in this project? 

David: 

Yeah, we were looking a little bit about how different soil types influence fibre quality. And we were also testing our machine on different types of soil as well. 

We were quite fortunate. The machines worked on everything that we put it on: the rain, the sun, sandy soil, clay soil. No problem. Grimme did a very good job with that. We're pretty happy with that. 

12:03 

Chris: 

It all sounds very good and all positive, but I'm sure there were some challenges involved, what you might have done differently? 

David: 

Yeah, definitely. If I were to say that it was all smooth sailing, I would be lying. But, I think along the way, there was lots of opportunities to learn, which I think was really, really helpful. 

One issue that we came across is the quality of our data. I'm sure that potato growers are very familiar with it, but potatoes are very noisy, in the sense of, one crop will behave in one way and a different crop will behave slightly differently. And that was something we also encountered in what we were doing. 

Sometimes you get one field that would be all upright and wonderful to harvest, and another field would just be short and fallen over and be a bit confusing. But we've been able to work out what tends to what and managed to work our way around it. That's not really been such a challenge in the end. 

We also had a few challenges around trying to understand exactly what variables influence fibre quality. In the end, we were able to work it out. 

We could also look at it positively, because it means potentially there isn't as much influence on these variables on the final fibre, so maybe that's a good thing because actually it's just going to more or less be good regardless. 

13:08 

Chris: 

Understood. Now let's bring Dominic back in, if we can, for a moment and perhaps move forward together about what you guys are both going to do next. And as I understand it, and I mentioned it at the start of the podcast, I think you've both been successful in applying for Adopt, which I briefly talked about at the beginning. 

Dominic, what Adopt project have you got moving forward? 

Dominic: 

Yeah, so very similar to the project we just finished last year. We did this across one farm on about 200 hectares, and that was just in one year. We wanted to continue it to get more years and scale it up a bit further and try it across different soil types and on different farms with different machinery. 

So yeah, we applied for an Adopt grant, which we've been successful with, and it officially started yesterday. And that will be across four farming businesses, across a slightly bigger area, and with a larger range of soil types in there. But again, along the same principles of trying to use computer-crop modelling to improve the efficiency of our fertiliser. 

14:09 

Chris: 

And Dominic, in Adopt, you need to have a facilitator to work with you. You've got a facilitator. Does that make life a little bit easier, starting that project? 

Dominic: 

I think probably because I've done one application now, it also makes it easier. You understand the general process of how they work. So that helped. But then, yeah, NIAB were the facilitator as well, or somebody from NIAB, was our facilitator. And again, this Adopt project, we are still working with NIAB, so we had the expertise from there still to help. 

Chris: 

Yes. There are over 320 registered facilitators, so you don't have to work for NIAB to be a facilitator, within the Adopt programme, which is good to know. There are facilitators all over the country, and there'll be some links in the show notes of this podcast so that you can go and find a facilitator. 

David, tell me how you've got involved with Adopt. 

15:01 

David: 

Absolutely. So we're part of a consortium, with Century being the lead. Century is an agricultural contractor. So they'll grow crops on farmers' behalf and they'll also do lots of innovative projects. So we're, I think one of their more unique customers. They're a small-medium business based out in Norfolk.  

They've been a huge help for us in helping us scale what we're doing. We've been working very closely with them, and they have been patient enough to advise us and help us work with the industry in the most logistically feasible way possible. And now it's actually got to a point where Century are able to operate the harvester on our behalf, which is fantastic. It's a huge help for us. And they're leading this Adopt consortium. 

They're actually very interested in understanding, how does our harvester compare to the conventional flailing process? One of the objectives of this grant is to do a side-by-side comparison so that we can say with confidence, yes, this behaves very similarly to a flailer. Maybe it's actually got these benefits. There are suspected benefits, that because we're removing some biomass, we might actually reduce the chances of disease being produced. 

16:00 

We are removing biomass. So there is a question of, okay, well, is this going to impact the carbon or removing carbon or removing nutrients, is that an issue? So we're going to be quantifying that as well, which would be really helpful, measuring things like soil compaction, because obviously we are going to be carrying something that might be a little bit heavier down the field. 

So that's going to be really helpful for us to be able to quantify how the benefits, the remuneration that we can bring to growers, is going to potentially be offset with some of the risks that have been identified.  

In our very early work, very preliminary stuff, we have seen absolutely no issues at all. So all the growers who've worked with us have been very, very positive, and, in fact, they've all invited us back. But this is just to get that data to really prove it. 

So yeah, the consortium is ourselves. We've also got Dyson Farms involved. They've been a huge help. And we're also going to be working as well with some of the growers that we worked with in previous years. So that includes Elveden, who have been a massive help. Waldersey as well, we'll also be working a little bit with, and potentially some other ones in the Cambridgeshire area as well. Really excited for that. 

We also have NIAB, Dr. Sarah Roberts, as our facilitator. She is one of the smartest people I know. She's been a huge help from the very beginning with our project. So excited to continue working with some great people. 

17:15 

Chris: 

What barriers might people experience trying to trial new things and get involved with experimenting? Dominic, what's your biggest challenges and how have funds that you've been involved with supported you on that? 

Dominic: 

Probably giving us access to experts in that area. So we're looking at using computer-crop modelling. It's not something I've used much myself, and certainly none of the farms have any experience in this. But there's David Clark from NIAB. It's what he specialises in. It gave us the ability to work with him on this project, which without the funding, I think we probably would have struggled to do. 

Chris: 

Great stuff. I guess the same for you, David. Barriers to innovating, what are those key barriers that you see that you've been able to start to overcome through some of this funding support? 

18:02  

David: 

Yeah, I think a lot of it is just having evidence that what you're doing is going to work. At those early days of Fibe, I used to go to a lot to agricultural shows. Now we have a Head of Agriculture, who tends to go instead. They’re a lot more knowledgeable in this space than I am, but I'd sort of go to these events and I would start talking to growers, and I'd always find it very interesting because at first there'd be a lot of like, okay, who is this? Like, clearly not a farming person, trying to tell me about this idea. But then after speaking, I'd actually find that a lot of times that they would warm up.  

It's very important to really try and understand what the issues are. We're not trying to say to people, do it this way. We're trying to work out how we can do things in a way that benefits everyone. 

Coming from a design and engineering background, I see a lot of people trying to work with agriculture who aren't from an agricultural background, and I think one of the issues that they make is they come in, they say, this is how you need to do stuff now. And I think when you're saying that to someone who's spent their whole life doing something in a certain way, the way that's being proposed is probably terrible. So I really think it's important to try and understand how things work first, and then try to develop something together. 

The model we've developed was not our original idea. It's something we developed through lots of conversations with Grimme and NIAB, and real experts in the field. So I think a lot of it is just how it's approached. If you approach it with a mindset of, how can we build this together and how can we genuinely overcome issues? Then I think that there'll be a much higher chance of success. 

19:20 

Chris: 

We're moving forward. Advice for others. We've got a hundred case studies now on the Adopt support hub. We're approaching two hundred funded projects. So there's more projects that will go up on that support hub as well.  

But there’s lots of farmers that still haven't got involved. What would you say to those that have an idea, who think that it's not worth spending the time on? David. 

David: 

I would say go for it. We were involved in two Adopt applications. We were involved with supporting the growers throughout the process. The way that it's made is, it's a lot more accessible, a lot simpler. And I think also, with having a facilitator on board, that really helps. We won two Adopt grants. One of them is still in project setup, but both of those have been using facilitators from NIAB, who've been absolutely incredible.  

So I'd strongly recommend, if you have an idea, get in touch with the guys at NIAB or any other facilitator that you may know. Innovate's got a fantastic database that you can use to find the right person. 

Give it a go. I don't think there's too much to lose. The ROI is very high in my opinion. 

20:18 

Chris: 

Right. Great stuff, and Dominic, we're talking with farmers across the country. That includes county-council tenant farmers involved with Adopt. We've got some very big farmers. Dyson have been mentioned, but there's a whole plethora in between. 

Everyone's got time constraints and resources. How did you find time trying to move forward? And what would you say to farmers that might consider applying into some of our funding? 

Dominic: 

Yeah. Most innovations come from a practical problem to start with, rather than necessarily a scientific breakthrough, and then trying to find what the breakthrough could be used for. I'd say most farmers have practical problems they would like to solve that they are dealing with on a daily basis. That's a good place to start. 

And then sources of funding like this, then gives you the ability to put some time and resource to trying to solve that problem. 
 
21:08 

Chris: 

Excellent. I would say just again, that there is an Adopt support hub that's free to access, that people can go there and they can pick up and discuss their ideas and get some independent and impartial responses on that. So that's a good place to go. And again, that'll be in the show notes of this podcast. 

Collaboration. How important is that collaboration? Dominic, you work with four farms together, but potentially you could work with more. But, you know, that's 8,000 hectares, I think you mentioned. How important is it for those farmers to come together and work with researchers? 

Dominic: 

Collaboration is at the heart of what we do. It's key to Catalyst Farming. No single farm can test everything. By sharing results and working together, you can both share the positive and negative, help the whole industry learn faster. I think you learn faster together.  

21:56 

Chris: 

And that sharing is really important, isn't it? So, have you got plans within your Adopt projects to do some, what they call dissemination events, and go to some of the big ag shows to talk about what you've done and get it in the trade press as well. Is that part of your plans? 

Dominic: 

Yeah, absolutely. There's usually people that have good networks within the agricultural sector, but then also a lot of it is just through talking to people when we go to these events. 

Chris: 

David, anything else that you wanted to add there? 

David: 

I'd fully agree. It is so important to just find your champions early on, the people that are going to help you build something new. We were very lucky because we started working with NIAB. I feel like I've praised NIAB a lot, but we started working with them since we were literally students, and they helped us grow the business from a student idea into something that has been accepted by the industry. 

Just speaking to people that maybe aren't from that farming background, I found the agricultural industry to be extremely welcoming and supportive of the idea. So yeah, I'd say get out there. Go speak to people with different opinions and try and learn something new. 

22:53 

Chris: 

I guess keep the funding coming is the important message because there's lots of appetite for it from the two examples here today. 

Dominic: 

Yeah, absolutely. We have a long list of projects we would like to do between our farming businesses. 
 
Chris: 
 
And to your earlier point, if the funding wasn't there, you more than likely wouldn't do it. 

Dominic: 

It makes it quite an uncomfortable position for the farm to be in, to take all the risk on themselves and fund it themselves, whereas at least if it's being partly funded, that mitigates some of that risk. 

Chris: 

Absolutely. Very good. Very good. Thank you very much for your time. It's been a really useful conversation and I hope it's given people listening a clearer picture of your projects. 

If you are a farmer listening and you've got an idea that you think you'd like to try out, do reach out to the Adopt fund especially, and have a look at the Farming Innovation Programme. 

If you're a researcher, there's an awful lot of researchers in the UK, we are world class in terms of our agricultural research base. The Farming Innovation Programme can allow you to collaborate on a lot of these projects. Adopt fund, you need to be a farming business to lead. Some of David's projects, you had to be a business to lead, but you could have those collaborating researchers. So do look at that. 

24:08 

Importantly, you don't have to figure out everything all on your own. There's lots of experts out there. There's lots of help that's available. The Farming Innovation Programme has a very useful website. I've mentioned Adopt, that's got a funded support hub. So that's free at the point of access, to discuss ideas, discuss where relevant funding opportunities might come from. So do reach out there. 

The latest round of Adopt will remain open between 4th June and the 29th of July. And the important thing there is don't worry if you miss it, because after that round there will be another round that comes up straight away. 

24:44 

Chris: 

Now, just a personal note, I am very proud of what we've done here to bring funding opportunities to the agricultural sector, to support the development of solutions to overcome the many challenges that we all face. 

If you'd like to subscribe to the Defra Farming podcast, you can find it wherever you usually get your podcasts. Links to the Defra blog, Adopt Support Hub and Farming Innovation Programme websites can be located in the show notes. 

So once again, a big thank you to Dominic. 

Dominic: 

Thank you very much for having me on. 

Chris: 

And David, thank you for coming. 

David: 

Thanks so much for having me on. And I just wanted to quickly say, if you're interested in working with us, please do reach out. We are currently looking for a site to move into for our pilot facility. So if you have 10,000 square feet, let us know. Thank you. 

Chris: 

There's never anything wrong with an ask of an opportunity, David, thank you very much. So thank you for listening, everyone, and goodbye. 

25:31