Unique Contributions

Feeding the world

• RELX • Season 2 • Episode 8

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Farmers and growers are at the forefront of what is perhaps the world’s biggest challenge. How do you feed a growing world population expected to reach 9.6bn by 2050 while available arable land is reducing and environmental constraints are increasing?  How can we help the farmers and growers who put food on our plates? In this episode, YS Chi speaks with Graeme McCracken, managing director of Proagrica, a provider of connectivity and data-driven support solutions for the agriculture and animal health industries.

Graeme believes the challenge is surmountable. He shares his insights into the vast amount of data that can be found in every element, from the individual seed type in the ground to soil types and yield. Combining these different data sets provides meaningful insights that can significantly help growers, farmers and the entire supply chain improve productivity, profitability and transparency, while also increasing sustainability. Here is a deep dive into the future of agriculture, from seed to field to fork.

This podcast is brought to you by RELX.

YS Chi:

The Unique Contributions podcast is brought to you by RELX. Find out more about us by visiting RELX.com.

Graeme McCracken:

Growers have been the custodians of our environment for 1000s of years. And they have to care about their soil quality because it's their livelihood. If they get it wrong, then it's problematic.

YS Chi:

Hello, and welcome to our second series of unique contributions, a RELX podcast where we bring you closer to some of the most interesting people from around our business. I'm YS Chi, and I'll be exploring with my guests some of the biggest issues that matter to society, how they're making a difference, and what brought them to where they are today. I'll be exploring today what is perhaps one of the world's biggest challenge. How do you feed the world's growing population while managing today's environmental constraints? Based on current global trends in diets and population, 70% more food will be needed in 2050 to feed a world population expected to grow to 9.6 billion. For farmers and growers this creates significant productivity challenges, further compounded by environmental constraints, and rising consumer expectations on standards of animal welfare, sustainability, and traceability of food. This issue concerns every one of us because it is the farmers and growers who put food on our plate. So how is the agriculture industry tackling these issues? And what does the agriculture of the future look like? To explore these big questions with me today is Graeme McCracken, managing director of Proagrica, a provider of independent connectivity and data driven support solutions for the agriculture and animal health industries, and part of RELX. Graeme, it's great to have you today. Thank you so much for joining the podcast. I understand you're currently based in London. Can you just tell us how things have been for you over the last few months?

Graeme McCracken:

Thanks YS. Well, it's been challenging for us all hasn't it? But it's been good. It's been great to see how my teams have performed in what have been very challenging times. Just personally, it's been quite nice not to be on planes all the time. So I'd say that has been a nice thing, to get to spend more time with my family, which has been an unexpected outcome of all the current unpleasantness.

YS Chi:

I like your positive attitude toward all this.

Graeme McCracken:

It's been interesting.

YS Chi:

Looking at the positive stuff.

Graeme McCracken:

Yeah, you have to look at the positives because otherwise you're just going be focused on the negatives. With all these challenges, there's always an opportunity, and certainly for our industry and for our business. The fact that we link things together more intrinsically, I think this does create opportunities for our industry and for our business.

YS Chi:

Speaking of positivity and linkage, tell me how did you study politics and economics at the University of Glasgow, and your first job was in the House of Commons? And here you are making an industry jump in your career. How did you end up from politics to information technology and data analytics?

Graeme McCracken:

I'm not sure it was planned. But then again, quite a lot of my career I don't think has been planned. I've always been a firm believer, if you focus on doing what's right, then your career will somewhat look after itself. I was always fascinated by politics and economics, and loved doing that at university. I wanted to see if that was something I wanted to really get into. As a sort of 21/22 year old, having spent about a year in the House of Commons as a researcher, I realised that it probably really wasn't for me, and due to challenges with my family and looking after my mother, I had to change career. Just inadvertently through contacts, I found myself as a graduate trainee within Reed Information Services, as it was back in those days, in its directory division. As part of that, I discovered a deep and adhering love to data and analytics and all things related to it. Don't ever invite me to a drinks party because I can talk to you about ontologies and taxonomies, happily for hours on end.

YS Chi:

So when you first discover your love of data, why do you think that this intersection of technology and data is so important for business and industries today?

Graeme McCracken:

Well, we've all got so much data spread around of our businesses, and it really is the most, well apart from our people, is the most valuable asset. In particular, when you think about agriculture, everything in agriculture is creating data. Agricultural land and health is creating data. But because of the nature of our industry, it's not using it as well as it could do. I have heard the industry itself describe itself as being, 10 to 20 years behind every our industry in its use of data. The reason for that is fairly simple. Unlike most industries where the data is largely consolidated in businesses and distinct number of businesses. In agriculture it's spread all over the world. In data silos and in silos literally in the agricultural community, with everything creating data. There's 570 million farms in the world, about 5 billion farmed acres. There's 25 million tractors, a billion and a half head of cattle, satellites, drones, combines, sprayers, and everything's generating data. But it's all in different data silos, and all in different formats in different languages using different methods to communicate with each other. That makes it really challenging for our industry to bring that together. But if we can unlock that value, then we can make a huge difference. You mentioned earlier about the challenge of feeding the world by 2050. Just by unlocking that, the value in that data, I think that we can increase the amount of bushels per acre we can create, in order to address that challenge. So it is huge amounts of data. The insight you can get from analysing a single field or 200 million acres, the difference is exponential in the value you'll get from it. It's not an insurmountable challenge because unlike most other industries, agriculture is in two main data formats or data forms. One is the one that exists in most industries, all industries, the way that businesses transact with each other. So that's B2B, ran by invoices and inventory, all those. But the thing that really makes agriculture and animal health unique, is the geospatial element of it. So it's geospatial and temporal. The fact that we have geospatial and temporal data scientists within our business, I think speaks a lot to the complexities of getting data, unlocking the value of data within agricultural and animal health. That's really why, from a use of data viewpoint. Two factors, one is obviously it's spread on all these data silos. It's very difficult to get that intersect between the geospatial data and the B2B data, and make meaningful insights from it.

YS Chi:

So when I first got to know you and your business, I was quite surprised that there weren't that much data. Because I didn't think of agriculture as an industry sector where data was naturally captured. And a lot of the data that is being captured is actually man forced, isn't it, through IoT. It's not just that it captures the transaction, but that you actually have to plant these devices to capture live data, isn't it?

Graeme McCracken:

Yeah. So you've got IoT sensors, you've got combines running a field. Quite often you'll have four or five combines running in a field in parallel. Three of them may be John Deere, two of them may be Claas or Fendt. They'll all be using recording data in different ways. The three John Deere combines may have been calibrated slightly differently. In order to get the data from those machines, one you have to pull the data from the machines in the format that they produce. But then you have to do the intersects because the combines will overlap with each other. You have to pull all that data together. A single machine in a single field will easily create 30 to 50 megabytes of data per day. It's getting more and more. That's just one layer of data. When you think about soil types and weather and moisture levels and planting data and yield, which is what you get, and actually not just yield from the combine, you get the quality of the grain and the moisture levels in the grain. You're getting that every few centimetres, every few inches, and you're recording all of that. It's just a vast amount of data. It's fascinating.

YS Chi:

So now we've put to bed the fact that agriculture does have sufficient data or certainly accumulating them now. Let's get to the problem. Over the years, farmers and growers have decreased, and they make up just 2% of the population. And yet, it's all up to them to provide the food eaten by the rest of us. So tell us what the challenge itself is, and why this challenge is not their problem, but it's our problem.

Graeme McCracken:

It is a bit of a challenge. We've made huge strides. If you look back to the 1940s and 1950s, the number of bushels per acre were around about 20 to 30 bushels per acre. Today, it's usually between about 150 and 180 bushels per acre. That change was driven by a significant increase in mechanisation with tractors coming in and combines, and a whole bunch of new machinery that helped farmers do their jobs more efficiently. Which then obviously caused some of the reduction in the number of farmers because more mechanisation meant you could do more with less people. But it was also driven by the fact that we had more advanced crop protection, no pesticides, herbicides, things like that, and better seeds. The whole debate around GM that's been going on for for a while, in certain countries, in certain regions, less so than others. So, the farmers are playing their part, and really driving that. If that was the mechanisation revolution back in the 50s and 60s, and that's continued. The vast majority of the machinery today that farmers use can literally drive itself, they can all do precision planting, precision applications of crop protection.

YS Chi:

Yeah. So let's talk about that. Because traditionally Graeme, when you think of a farmer in our head, we think of them not as people who use complex technology or data insights. We tend to think of them, having been given wisdom and knowledge passed down through generation. Clearly that doesn't describe the farmers of today. Certainly in the developed countries, there's obviously so much more to it. Can you expand a little bit more on who is a modern farmer today? And how is their role reshaping the agriculture industry?

Graeme McCracken:

You still have an awful lot of inherent knowledge that passes down through the families. I don't think that will go. One of the things I love about this industry is that people don't get into farming because it's a career. This really is a vocation, it's like being a doctor or a veterinary surgeon. It really is something that people are passionate about. It's interesting to see in my business, that people are so passionate about what they do. So in lots of ways that bit is different. The amount of technology that they all have available to them, all farmers have now available to them is phenomenal. It's getting more and more to the extent that it's almost becoming a distraction. Because everyone has recognised that agriculture is the next horizon in the digital transformation that most industries are going on. And because we're 10 to 20 years behind most, everyone's coming and going, excellent, we can grab a piece of that pie. But too many of the new entrants are coming in and they don't have the background. RELX, Proagrica has been in agriculture for over 100 years. Obviously 100 years ago, it wasn't in data and analytics. It was in media publications that really were focused on the grower. But there's so much new technology coming in, that it's challenging for the farmer. There was a great article, I wish I could remember who it was by. But he said that farmers can't feel fast and cheaply, they can feel slowly and inexpensively because a farmers only got 40 growing seasons is his entire career. That really makes you think about it. He makes a mistake in what crop he plants or she plants, and that's his decision for the year. He doesn't get to go back and do a do over. He might do, but it wouldn't work. It's a very expensive business. That makes it a challenging place for new entrants to come and help. There are lots of really good new entrants. At Proagrica, what we're trying to do is really help there, by creating the best platforms on which those new entrants can build. We're not all building the same thing again and again. We allow different applications, whether it's IoT devices, or satellites, or drones, or indeed, sensors in the ground or fire management solutions, to all share data seamlessly. So that it doesn't matter if the growers is using a John Deere combine and the same growers are using a Claas sprayer. They can talk to each other. Or they can share data in a way that makes sense to the grower. That can then share data with applications that they find useful, the grower finds useful, to unlock the data. So there is a challenge, an inherent challenge for growers right now, in that there's so much out there and it's difficult to make the right choices. Quite often that's done with the help of their most trusted advisors who are typically the agronomist who are, if you like, soil doctors. People who come and help them talk about their soil types and what seeds they should plant and what crop protection they should apply. And really walk through with the grower about, what is the best plan for that farm in that field, every year.

YS Chi:

It's interesting. You use the expression that this advanced technology is almost a distraction. I recall, I think that Graeme you probably have seen or read the book, Moneyball in which American baseball employed data analysts to improve the performance of its athletes. It almost sounds like the farmers need to deploy or employ data analysts to do their job well now. And is that what you do?

Graeme McCracken:

Sort of. Like a typical field, a single field can easily have 8 to 12 layers of data. Yield so tight, weather on an hourly basis or if you've got a sensor on a minute by minute basis. That's not just, is it sunny, what temperature is it, what's the rain, what's the soil moisture level like. All of the things you can think about there. How deep did I plant? What was the crop? What's the variety? What is it susceptible to? There's so much, so many combinations of data that you can pull together to give you intel. Which is why, even though I think Bayer spends about 2 billion euros a year on developing new seeds and new crop protection, and doing a vast amount of really, really impressive crop trials, they're the best of information. If we can unlock the entire world from a data viewpoint, and do those intercepts across the entire real world, then it becomes a massively more interesting data set. Because we've got about north of 210 million acres that we manage inside our geospatial solution. You take that 210 million acres, and you look it at every single level of granularity at which we hold the data. You take two layers of that, and that creates about four petabytes of data, looking at a relatively granular level. That's just your yield and soil type. If you then start to overlay that with weather, you can see how the amount of data grows exponentially. But the insight you can get from that also grows exponentially. And that comes back to your original question about how do you feed the 9.6 billion people. You just do things better and you feed back to the farmers. You say to them, look, this crop protection of this seed variety works really well in this soil type at your latitude and your conditions.

YS Chi:

Well, it's very clear listening to you that using data smartly and comprehensively is going to help us reach the efficiencies that we need in this sector, right. Then there's the other side of it as well, as we can concern about the issues of the environment. The climate change and sustainability, which are now only compounding the challenge of feeding the growing population. So Graeme, how is the industry addressing the need to increase yields while simultaneously using, less water, less pesticides, or improve biodiversity for the long term? How is the industry tackling this?

Graeme McCracken:

It's quite an interesting thing here because growers have been the custodians of our environment for the last 1000s of years. They have to care about their soil quality because it's their livelihood. If they get it wrong, then it's problematic. Now, there are challenges around things like runoff, and certainly the overuse of pesticides and herbicides, and indeed over fertilising. But growers are increasingly focusing on that and indeed all of the partners. Whether it's the big input manufacturers, who you would think, would say, I want you to apply more of our application. But all of them are working hard to help the growers be more precise in their applications, to only apply it to the actual part of the field that needs the application. Our tools allow you to look at your yield with a view that includes the elevation and one of the great things when you look at it with the elevation. So a 3D model of your elevation with your yield mapped into it, means that you can look at which bits of your field are high yield and which have low yield. You can see quite often where those water runoff, you drain the fertiliser or are impacted the yield in those areas. That means that whilst the grower probably did know that was a lower yield area, it really brings it into stark relief for them. Then you can decide whether or not that is an area where you want to apply more fertiliser or arguably change your approach and say actually, I'm not going to try to over fertlise or get that bit of the field to produce the same yield as the rest of it. Because there is an environmental impact on it. If you look at what people like WinField are doing and Land O'Lakes are doing with Truterra, where they're building out sustainability models that allow us to all create a score for farmers. That allow us to start to get to more about carbon capture, about cover crops and all of the other things, sequestration, there's some fantastic solutions now coming into the market. There are new ways to apply fertiliser where you fix the nitrogen from the air. It's like free nitrogen from the air. You can use biological approaches to actually make that happen. The entire industry is very focused on sustainability. And literally every conference I'm on these days, it's a major part of what everyone's doing. And again, one of the ways, the way you unlock that, the way you unlock and encourage farmers to be even more sustainable is about getting access to the data, and then using that data, modelling it out. Then giving them insights about, small things. It's usually small things, it's always small things. It's kind of that old thing that the government's and marketing people have learned about nudges. You can nudge people in order to say, if you just change this bit, then your score will go up, and you'll get more carbon credits, and you can then get rewarded for the sustainability that you're doing.

YS Chi:

Right. One of the things in sustainability that I'm learning is about expectation of higher standards for things like animal welfare, or traceability of the food and so on. Can you just touch on that a little bit, please?

Graeme McCracken:

We're big believers that you have to follow the data from start to finish, all the way from seed to fork, if you like. Hence why we're very focused on input manufacturers and flowing that through. How that flows through ag retail, all the way through growers. And then beyond to the the millers, the brewers, the food manufacturers, and eventually the grocers or the restaurants. It's because unless you follow the data all the way from start to finish, then the data gets broken in places. A classic example is that across the industry, about two and a half percent to 10% and in some places 30% of crop protection products and similar for fertilisers and for seeds, that farmers are buying and applying are counterfeit today. Even if we do, and we do have the solutions that mean that we ensure that what the agronomist is advising is compliant, and that they're within the regulations. So they are not overdosing a field or not giving bad advice to farmers. And that the farmer, when he's doing the application or she's doing the application is not near a water course, is the wind speed below the required amount, all of the things that you'd expect to do. All of these people are doing the right things. If they 10% of the time, they don't know, they can't be sure that the product they're applying is the real Syngenta, Bayer, Corteva, BASF, Yara product, then that compliance is null and void. That's a multi billion dollar revenue problem for our industry. But much more worryingly, if a farmer doesn't know what he applied and he's doing it in good faith, and he's recording it in good faith, then how do we know when it flows down to the restaurant or to the grocer? They think that everything's fine. We don't know what was applied to that piece of fruit or to that corn and that bit scares me.

YS Chi:

Yeah, it is. As a consumer, that is a part that we don't want to worry about. Just one last piece, question on this sustainability. Is inequalities in agriculture a real threat to sustainable development? I mean, like environmental inequality or knowledge inequality, economic inequality among farmers, is it a significant issue? And is there anything that Proagrica is doing to address these inequalities?

Graeme McCracken:

It is. The different regions across the world, the different continents operate in very different ways. Just the supply chain operates very differently across them all. You've got subsistence farmers in various regions across the world. I think it's like 30% of their, according to the Gates Foundation, about 30% of their monthly wage just goes on the data. The connections to make sure they get mobile connectivity. That's scary and, quite frankly, farmers in North America or Western Europe or Sub Saharan Africa, none of them have a lot of money because they're pretty much the only people that buy at retail, and sell at wholesale. They buy crops and they have a great yield that year and the entire world has a great yield. It just reduces the price of their crops. So there's very little ways for them to have a huge win in any year or multiple years. So our view in Proagrica is to, where we can to help. The entire industry needs to help the farmer with the productivity, the profitability and the sustainability. That's the three key things for us as a business. That doesn't matter if you're a farmer in Lincolnshire, or you're a farmer in Vietnam. The crops are probably significantly different, I suspect. But they typically have the same needs. One of the things that we've been looking to do, we've developed now is, we have a fantastic sort of agronomy solution for ag retailers, and we're just building out the grower versions of that. Part of the things we want to do, is to see if there's ways that we can help the farmer by giving them devices, working with ag retailers. To say, look, we'll provide the applications, and then working with ag retailers and manufacturers to sort of say, you give them the advice and give them the advice preferably for free, because then that will help them become better farmers. You'll develop brand loyalty from the advice you're giving them, and they will eventually become your customers. So I think there is a whole journey that needs to be going on there. But it's difficult.

YS Chi:

So, clearly, you have taught me today about the amount of data in this industry. The dispersion of that data. The effectiveness of the data usage, and you call it seed to fork, and certainly from my background, I would say seed to chopsticks. For both efficiency and sustainability. So there is so much to look forward to, to help the farmers, growers and agronomists. Tell me in a comprehensive way, how does Proagrica then lead the way in uniting all these solutions and data sets that's out there? And is there one large vision driving it all?

Graeme McCracken:

Yeah, I think it comes back to two fundamental solutions, which are really around the geospatial. Being able to enable people to share geospatial data seamlessly, and permissioned and respecting all of the privacy concerns. That is really the fundamental that makes our market unique. Being able to share data seamlessly with each other to be able to then gain insight from that, I think is key to that.

YS Chi:

Yeah, and the industry is made up of variety as well, of problems and needs. It's not that all farmers have same issues. So are farmers in your view, collaborators? Or are they competitors in their behaviour, particularly when it comes to use of data? And second question, is there sufficient education being available for the farmers to really absorb this new era of farming?

Graeme McCracken:

I think historically, they've probably been competitors. I think increasingly they're becoming collaborators. I think the industry has historically been competitors. Part of that is driven by all these data silos, and some of those data silos really is the USP in that they do derive an awful lot of value from them. But again, the industry is seeing that we should work together. Those things that are effectively non competitive, that would unlock value for everyone. It floats all boats. The farmers have far more insight into their business and their opportunity than anyone else. They're the ones that are the sharp end. I mean, some of the challenges of farmers is that quite often, some of the biggest innovations you see in growing is because farmers are so innovative. I mean, they create the turn machinery into brand new machines at the drop of a hat. So I don't think there's an education thing here. I think there's a confusion about. There's so much out there and they just want a little bit of help to say, focus on these things. And we will make sure that all these solutions talk to each other. We owned Farmers Weekly until about just over a year ago, and we did a survey of Farmers Weekly. We asked them, this was two, three years ago. We asked them, have you bought a drone and 50% of farmers said that they'd bought a drone. We then asked them have you used them for anything that's agricultural? And 5% said yes, they used it for something agricultural. So they love new things, and they love to learn. But you need to make it so it's easy for them. That you can connect the data together. That's the thing with this industry.

YS Chi:

And speaking of which, you just did an acquisition of CDMS, right? How does that play in?

Graeme McCracken:

So CDMS has really two bits to its business. One is all about helping create the data labels and the rules around the data labels the input manufacturers feed into a lot, and apply to their products and then feed into the industry. And then the second that's really critical is they supply that as an application with all the rules to a whole bunch of solutions, software applications in the industry to make sure that when the agronomist or the grower, primarily the agronomist in this case. The agronomist goes in and is making a recommendation that they can make sure that the application meets with the label, is compliant with any local laws. Particularly important in places like California and Oregon, and in speciality or food crops where the legislation is more straight. But compliance is becoming, for all the reasons we've discussed over this call and for really good reasons, is becoming more and more prevalent. So the interesting thing for us is, can we take what CDMS have done brilliantly in those compliance rules and really help growers and our agronomists make sure that what they're doing is compliant and is best practice. Not only do we run those 4,000 models of whichever models within it across what the agronomist is choosing to recommend, and then he can adjust for that specific farm. But we can make sure that agronomist has gone alright, I'll best check. This isn't the seed variety because 110-120,000 different seed varieties, no agronomist can know them all. Can he make sure that it is the right one or if he's doing a crop protection, would it destroy that crop? There are some well documented examples where an agronomist has made a mistake. And because they've done an application to that crop, it's destroyed the crop. Those are, multiple tens of 1000s of dollars types of mistakes, depending on the size of the field, and destroys your relationship with that grower. Which is even more important because agronomists are the most trusted advisor to any grower.

YS Chi:

You know Greame listening to you, I get very excited about this space. In my next life, I would like to come back in the farming business, with data equipped by my side. Thank you so much for joining us today Graeme. I think that this is an area that is critical to all of us, not just because we have to eat but because it has such an impact on sustainability of the earth in which we live. So once again, thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you to our listeners for tuning in. Don't forget to hit subscribe on your podcast app to get new episodes as soon as they're released. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.