Ducks on the Pond
A podcast for rural women... by rural women. Hosted by Kirsten Diprose and Jackie Elliott, they seek expert advice and the stories of other rural women on issues such as succession planning, motherhood, starting a business...running for politics and much more!
Ducks on the Pond
Opportunities in Agtech and Sustainability - Sarah Nolet and Ebony Greaves
We are hearing more and more about the use of agtech for precision farming tech, for water level monitoring, soil carbon accounting, and so much more. So where do you even start? And is it even worth the time and effort?
In this episode we look at how you can better engage with these emerging technologies - whether that’s on farm, as an investor, or getting involved in the industry itself. In the future, we can also expect more regulations around sustainability, whether that’s in the form of carbon accounting or another form of environmental governance. So should we be getting ready now?
To discuss, we have two industry leaders:
- Ebony Greaves - CEO of Sea Oak Consulting, which helps agriculture businesses transition to more climate resilient practices. Ebony is based in Victoria’s High Country.
- Sarah Nolet - CEO and co-founder of Tenacious Ventures, an agrifood venture capital firm and advisory in climate resilient systems.
We also have some very frank discussions about the role of women in driving this change. Let's face it, when you get the technology industry mixed with the agriculture industry…. you generally get a lot of men. So, how can we, as women, get more involved to even up the scale?
This episode is hosted by Kirsten Diprose.
This is a Rural Podcasting Co. production. Love this podcast? You might also like: Two Smart Blondes and Town Criers.
Farmers are the true stewards of our actual land, and so I am excited about how agriculture isn't necessarily a trade-off.
Ebony Greaves:You're not trying to change the way that farmers farm by any stretch of the imagination. Sometimes it's actually just about helping them to tell their stories in a more impactful way, because most of them are already doing all this incredible stuff that they don't talk about.
Kirsten Diprose:Welcome to Ducks on the Pond, brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co. Kirsten Diprose here, and the sponsor for this episode and the whole season is Buy CC Fine Jewellery. Now, farming is one of the world's oldest professions. There are techniques and wisdom that has been passed down for generations, but it's also true that when you look at farming technology, the future is already here. We're hearing more and more about the use of drones for precision farming tech, for water level monitoring, soil carbon accounting and so much more. So where do you even start and is it even worth the time and effort? So that's the focus of today's episode how you can better engage with these emerging technologies to get a sense of if they're right for you and whether there are potential benefits beyond your own farm. That could be investment opportunities, perhaps working in the field or getting involved in steering and guiding some of this work. I know I would like to see more women involved in these discussions. Let's face it when you get tech plus ag, you generally get a lot of men. Now we have two guests that spend a lot of time thinking about climate resilient tech and ag tech. First up we have Ebony Greaves. She's the CEO of Sea Oak Consulting, which she runs out of the Victorian high country. Now, after working as a climate strategist at Deloitte and working on cutting edge environmental projects like offshore wind, tidal energy, innovation and even researching kelp growth, she decided to start her own thing Now.
Kirsten Diprose:You'll hear my co-host, Jen McCutcheon. She does the interview with Ebony. You'll also hear from Sarah Nolet. She's the CEO of Tenacious Ventures, which is a company that helps agricultural startups to transition towards carbon neutral and climate resilient systems. They're both an advisory and a VC, a venture capital firm. Originally from California, Sarah now proudly calls Australia home. She also is the host of her own podcast called Ag Tech. So what, which I recommend you check out after this episode? I actually used to produce it a little while back and it is a fantastic listen, so let's get stuck into it with Jen's chat. First with Ebony Greaves. Jen started by asking Ebony how she navigated the tricky early stages of starting her own business.
Ebony Greaves:Starting a new business is very overwhelming, but going into an industry that you don't particularly know a lot about is like double whammy, and so it was a little overwhelming. I was the originally the primary income earner in my family. I had run, started and run a couple of businesses previously. They were very small, grassroots businesses many years ago, but I was the primary income earner in the family and so it was a pretty scary decision to leave what was a very stable job and open my own consultancy. A mentor who I still to this day look up to, and he said to me at the time all entrepreneurs and business owners pretty much have a fear of failing, but it's the successful ones that are able to recognize that and use that fear to their advantage. And that quote really stuck with me. It's been like a little voice on my shoulder ever since then, and that little voice has helped me to make better and more strategic decisions with the business.
Ebony Greaves:So we have a slightly different model and I guess how I came to be in the agriculture industry is a little bit different potentially, and what I knew and having the experience that I did, I really felt like the agriculture industry was where I wanted to be where I wanted to play and where I knew I could have the biggest impact.
Ebony Greaves:So in the early days of starting Sea Oak at the start of last year, I did a pro bono project for a local dairy farmer in Northeast Victoria. That farmer was incredible and we're still working together today, but it really gave me a foot in the door and a really good understanding of the dairy industry. It taught me how the dairy industry works, who the key players are, who the kind of key peak bodies are, also gave me a really good insight into what's important to farmers and any specific climate related risks for farmers and their agribusinesses. So I did that project for free. It was a lot of time and energy, but it definitely was worth it because it gave me a foot in the door to the agriculture industry and both of us got a lot out of it. So that's how I ended up in the agriculture industry and so what projects does Sea Oak work on?
Jen McCutcheon:Like what? Just for some of us who don't understand the ag tech space and renewables and there's a lot of buzzwords flying around at the moment in ag.
Ebony Greaves:but just to boil it down for people yeah, so I actually wouldn't call SEO consulting a ag tech company. To be honest, it's a climate and sustainability consultancy. Interestingly, we do have some collaborations going on right now that are very focused from the tech space, but it's not the core of what we do. So the core of what we do, we use science-based strategies to help our clients manage exposure to climate risk and put forward solutions that create long-term value for businesses, people, planet and biodiversity, because I don't believe that they are mutually exclusive. We do a broad range of advisory services, from climate risk mitigation and adaptation strategies through to carbon auditing, emissions reduction strategies, revenue diversification strategies for farm environmental management strategies and lots of other things around corporate sustainability strategy in carbon and natural capital markets.
Ebony Greaves:We're not a tech-focused company, even though that's been my core background for the last 15 years. I've tried to steer away from that a little bit and focus more on the strategic side of things and, I guess, something that you said a little bit earlier the farmers that we work with. They're farmers at the end of the day, so I don't even have iPhones or phones, and so what we try to do is help them navigate some of the main complexities that they do actually have to deal with on a daily basis or on a regular basis. Whether they want to or not, they're being exposed to all types of climate-related risks or seasonal variations in their farms and the output of the productivity of those farms. And there's a lot of noise as well around carbon markets and mandatory climate reporting. So we operate at the grassroots level. We're there for the farmers, holding their hands and really helping them to navigate some of those complexities.
Jen McCutcheon:And, especially at the moment, some of those climate solutions and emissions and that things that have happened overseas haven't happened here yet. So how important is it for farmers to get their heads around things and be prepared and try to start looking at it now, so in case in years to come it becomes mandatory that they're ahead of the game in some?
Ebony Greaves:ways it already is mandatory if you think about a couple of different layers. So you've got policy changes that are happening at the government level nationally things like the introduction of new mandatory climate reporting, which actually kicked off from January this year. The chances of that impacting directly farmers ie farmers have to actually report on their annual climate-related financial disclosures is very low. I don't think that we probably have any farmers of that size. Maybe we have a couple actually. But where the impact is as a flow-on from that is if you think about your Coles and your Woolworths and some of the bigger retailers that stock the products of the producers. They need to start reporting on their climate-related disclosures. So as a result of that, they will start putting pressure on their downstream suppliers. So, for example, the farmers they're going to start getting asked questions around what their emissions are on the farm, what their land management practices are, because their upstream partners need to start reporting on these things. So it's not theoretical, it's already here. These farmers are already going to be facing some of these impacts. If they haven't already, they will in the next couple of months and years as well. So there's that. There's policy changes at the government level. You've also got import-export related shifts. So there are some countries that won't import products from other countries unless they're carbon neutral, for example, and we've seen things like that impact entire industries. So it's not entirely unexpected that may happen to our food and fibre industry as well. So there's that aspect.
Ebony Greaves:But then I think, more broadly, there's aspects around what the consumers are demanding as well. All of the research kind of points to the same trajectory, which is that consumers, first of all, they want to know more about where their food is actually coming from. So they do want a greater connection with the farmers. They want to understand how the animals have been treated, the kind of sustainable land management practices that have or have not been happening on the farm, and all of the research does point towards consumers willing to pay more for sustainable products as well. So I think probably that has shifted a little bit since COVID. I think potentially there's some economic challenges that many families are facing Potentially right now. That's maybe the trajectory for consumer preferences has gone back a little bit, but I would expect it to keep shifting upwards.
Ebony Greaves:And so you asked how important it is for farmers to be on the front foot of that. It's incredibly important, because if they're not on the front foot of that, they're falling behind. Incredibly important, because if they're not on the front foot of that, they're falling behind. They risk becoming uncompetitive, very rapidly growing market.
Ebony Greaves:And yeah, so that that's the way that we position it to our farmers is you have to do these things whether you want to or not. And you know, what's actually been really interesting and really eye-opening is that most of the farmers are already doing these things. But if you think about how most of the farmers take care of their land, they take care of their soils, they take care of their animals because, at the end of the day, these things are their livelihoods they're already doing a lot of this incredible work on their farms, whether they actually realise it or not, and so sometimes I think it's actually about you're not trying to change the way that farmers farm by any stretch of the imagination. Sometimes it's actually just about helping them to tell their stories in a more impactful way, because most of them are already doing all this incredible stuff that they don't talk about.
Kirsten Diprose:Stay with us. We'll be right back after this message from our sponsor.
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Kirsten Diprose:Now back to Jen's chat with Ebony Greaves.
Jen McCutcheon:Now back to Jen's chat with Ebony Greaves. We have a dairy here locally and they name all their cows and when you get your bottle of milk you can like scan a code and it'll show you the cow and what its name was that the bottle of milk came from, which is really cute and, I guess, a great way to connect to the consumer, the people in Sydney that don't know where Dubbo is. A way of doing that. How did you go, like I was saying it's a very big space and you came from that tech side of things. How did you go, narrowing it down to what you wanted to achieve and setting up your business?
Ebony Greaves:So I mentioned that we have a slightly unique business model. Right from the start, I was focused on growth. That was my mindset and I was really focused on how I was going to scale the business. But I didn't have the capital to do this common challenge. So there's obviously lots of paths you can go down to try to get funding for a new startup. You can go down the path of investment things like that or a debt. I didn't want to do anything like that, so what I did was bring on a business partner or a second co-founder, and I really tried to find somebody whose skills and experience complemented my own. I was very lucky. I found an incredible young woman who joined the team mid last year as a co-founder and she has equity in the business and she's just been instrumental in helping us to get where we are today. Late last year we also brought on a third business partner. That business partner doesn't actually have equity in the business, so instead we developed a different model with that business partner where they're incentivized in different ways. If they bring in work or clients, they receive higher bonuses and higher consulting day rates than the other two partners do bonuses and higher consulting day rates than the other two partners do.
Ebony Greaves:The most impactful thing that we've done to scale our business without having the capital upfront has actually been our partnerships and partnering with the right people. So I already mentioned the dairy farmer in northeast Victoria giving me a foot in the door to the ag industry in the early days. That relationship opened up a lot of doors. We are still working together today. We're actually doing a really cool carbon project right now, and then a short time after that we partnered with a very well-known Angus beef farmer who was already blazing trails in the carbon neutral farming space and he was and is continuing to do some really incredible work on his land in Gloucester, new South Wales.
Ebony Greaves:So that relationship has also opened up a lot of doors for us and, yeah, we're very thankful for those relationships. That's the kind of core We've got the three partners in the business slightly different models for all of us. We have some very strong relationships in place that we put in place in the early days that we knew were going to help to elevate our business in the market, and we are just about to hire a couple of sustainability analysts to support the team as well. Market competitiveness is very important and understanding where your day rates fit in the market is also really important. Yeah, bringing on some more junior team members is going to help us to be a bit more competitive in the market around pricing as well.
Jen McCutcheon:I don't want to be disrespectful, but I know myself like as a young woman, like trying to talk to some of these farmers and convince them when they're like, oh it's climate change doesn't exist, or it's mumbo-jumbo, or there's some farmers who are super on board or maybe they want to deal with the man, blah, blah. Like how do you navigate all those kind of stereotypes and that kind of thing in your industry?
Ebony Greaves:oh, we have those challenges constantly. So, first of all, I fairly recently, in the last 12 months, I asked a government official working in the climate change space how she deals with some of these things, and her advice was very simple. It was follow the smiles. That's great, which I love. It's so simple, um, because in the early days of the business, I was for want of a better way of explaining it. I was banging my head on a brick wall, just being like how do I communicate to these farmers? I'm not getting through, and that was the advice that this person gave me was follow the smiles, and, and so that's stuck with me.
Ebony Greaves:But there are absolutely there's a few stereotypes. The first is some farmers don't believe in climate change, and that's absolutely okay. We need to be respectful of everybody's views on things and understand that different people are driven by different things. They believe different things. They might have different cultural backgrounds, whatever it is. So we need to be respectful of everybody's views. One thing that I have found really useful is actually not talking about climate change. It's not a word I use very often, to be honest, because I do think it has a bit of a negative connotation attached to it, or a bit of a kind of threatening connotation. And so what we talk about with our farmers is around how can we help them manage seasonal variability in weather, extreme weather events, whether it's drought, floods and things like that. What kind of nature-based strategies can we put in place on those farms to make those farms more resilient? And every single farmer that you speak to will agree that there's seasonal variations in the farms and the productivity of those farms, and so that's how we've been able to navigate those conversations.
Ebony Greaves:You mentioned another stereotype as well around being a female business owner sometimes comes with its challenges in itself. There's a couple of things that I would say around that. The first is that one of the reasons why we did bring on our third partner, who also is a male, an incredible one who just is a wealth of knowledge he's been in the industry for more than 20 years. For us that was a real strategic decision because he does speak to farmers in a way that they understand. So he's a kind of he'll probably be mad at me for saying this, but he's a middle-aged farmer. He understands what farmers care about. He speaks their language. So we call him our secret weapon.
Ebony Greaves:And then the other thing is and this is also this was advice given to me just in the past week was around when you are in scenarios where you have challenges related to being a woman in any industry, whatever it is you do for work sometimes, the fact of the matter is that you do just have challenges when you're potentially working with certain types of men, and her advice was make sure you've got some strong men in your corner, and so that one has also really stuck with me, and I had a very real example just recently where something similar happened and I actually had a really strong man in my corner and he stood up and he fought for me, which I was not expecting also was a client. So I think it is those stereotypes absolutely are out there and that's okay, but finding the people that are in your corner definitely helps.
Jen McCutcheon:And so if people want to engage your services, how do they do that and what does it involve? Do you rock up on the farm or do you go through the books or do you? Yeah, just talk us through how someone who's listening could engage your services.
Ebony Greaves:We're always open for a chat. We're a very chatty bunch at Sea Oak, so I think probably the first thing would be jumping onto our website, wwwseoakconsultingcomau. I'm sure you can also post a link on your website or something along those lines. The first step would be jumping onto there. All of our contact details are on there and that's probably your first port of call.
Ebony Greaves:We provide advisory services across a really broad range of areas and I should say also we don't just work in the agriculture industry. It's certainly the core of what we do and, with the exclusion of myself, the other two partners are actually farmers. One's an organic farmer and one's been all kinds of different farmers for the last 20 years in different countries, so I'm the only one on the team that's not a farmer. But we do work outside of the ag industry as well. So we do work with corporate clients across all kinds of domains and sectors and we also do quite a bit of work around the product-based industry, so around waste management, waste materials optimization and things like that. It's not just the ag industry but if you're interested, if anybody's interested in what we're doing, whether it's interested in the services or just potentially having a chat, if something I've said resonates with you. I'm always open for a chat, as are the other two partners and anyone else on the team as well, so just reach out.
Jen McCutcheon:It's important to get in front of this, do you think? As quick as possible.
Ebony Greaves:For the farmers. You mean yeah, oh yeah, absolutely yeah. I don't like to use the term burying your head in the sand, but sometimes it is a little bit like that. These changes are already here. The new legislation has already been passed. Different countries are setting all kinds of benchmarks around only importing carbon neutral products. These changes are already here. They're not in the future, and so if you're not acknowledging that and building your business around that and a farm is a business, at the end of the day, that's exactly what a farm is If you're not ahead of that, then you're behind everybody else. So it's important to start now if you haven't already.
Ebony Greaves:There was just actually one quote that I always like to think of, quotes that resonate really well with me, and I think there's one favorite quote that I would like to leave with everybody, and I don't actually know where this quote came from. I'm sure it was a very smart person at some point in time, and it's the reasonable person adapts themselves to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to themselves. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable person. I love that quote and I think, when you're talking about really challenging and complex topics like climate solutions. I think we all need to be a little bit unreasonable and push the boundaries of what's possible and what's comfortable, because otherwise progress will never be made.
Kirsten Diprose:There it is your official permission to be unreasonable. Thanks, ebony, for that and for all of your wisdom, and once again to Jen for that fascinating conversation. Now we're going to jump straight into my chat with Tenacious Ventures CEO, sarah Nolette, and I started by asking how she went from being a kid in California to dedicating her working life to ag in rural Australia.
Sarah Nolet:Grew up near and on the land in various ways, but in my mid-20s had the opportunity to go to South America on what was going to be a short holiday and ended up being a sort of gap year, to use the Australian term, and lived mostly on farms in Argentina. And so that was the catalyst for me to shift careers into agriculture, which I haven't looked back from, and it's now been well over a decade working in kind of ag innovation, but first in the US, and so did a master's on impact investing, did corporate sustainability consulting in food and ag, looked at transition to organic farming in India and like the NGO context, and then all of that was sort of my pathway into food and agriculture and my now husband said hey, I got a job offer in Australia. Do you want to go there? And so it was totally unexpected, completely unrelated initially to agriculture, but we said absolutely Like that sounds like a good opportunity.
Sarah Nolet:Came here and I this was 20, started asking around what was happening in ag tech and people pretty much said nothing. But when I said digital agriculture, then there was a big answer, and so there was a lot of innovation, people talking about Australia's strengths in agricultural research, and I ended up starting a consulting and advisory business called AgFentic at the time and that took me to regional Australia in lots of really fascinating ways. So I was able to speak at workshops and attend grower group meetings and talk a lot about the sort of Silicon Valley in Israel model of innovation and how and where that may or may not apply to ag innovation in Australia, and just had this fascinating experience of living, you know, on the beaches in Sydney but spending a lot of time for work in regional Australia and that has largely convinced us to stay in our citizens. And it's been almost 10 years, ah now, you'll never leave Possibly.
Kirsten Diprose:I have so many questions. My first one is what do you call it in the States? If it's not a gap year, what is it?
Sarah Nolet:Well, they don't do it because it's like you just go, you have two weeks of holiday. And so I was literally like I was taking a three and a half week vacation. I had quit my job, I had subletted my apartment and I was going for three and a half weeks. And to me it was like I'm going to go live in South America and the trip was planned to be three and a half weeks, like that is the American context of like a large vacation. Aussies would be like yeah, I'm just like going on holiday, like that's a normal holiday. You might do that every couple of years. But for me, I was truly'm traveling indefinitely and I was truly like you can do that, like that's allowed. And then, just the more I thought about it, I was like well, actually I could do that Like, and so I did.
Kirsten Diprose:Oh, that's good. I'm glad we like influenced you well before you knew you were going to become an Australian. You met some Aussies, because it's quite a few of us overseas that convinced you to get into the Australian way of holidaying.
Sarah Nolet:Indeed, yeah, and I mean it truly changed my life, so I'm very grateful for that experience.
Kirsten Diprose:For someone listening here who's perhaps on a farm or running their own business what opportunities are there in ag tech that we can think about Because we're seeing it more? You know, water monitoring systems are becoming increasingly common on farms. A lot of people are using like AgriWeb or something similar now to keep track of what's going on in the farm in a digital way. But you know, beyond that, what is there?
Sarah Nolet:So I think the first opportunity is actually not the technology itself, but the idea to think about what problems you have like. Where are areas in your business that you're doing something inefficiently Like oh, we, you know we keep getting these directions wrong, and when we're tasking each other and talking about the workflow each day, which is like we do rework or we're driving to that same paddock so many times, and so ultimately you might end up with an app that does task management and keeps track of that better. But the first opportunity might just be huh, there's a problem here and we could change our practices or change our systems, maybe with a spreadsheet or pen and paper, to actually improve things. So I think technology can't be the forefront. It has to be the problems or the practice changes or the inefficiencies that come first, and then it's like what technology could help solve that. So that's kind of the like.
Sarah Nolet:I think the biggest opportunity and it's not just necessarily productivity gains or, you know, use this input for yield improvements or that kind of thing.
Sarah Nolet:It might be truly as simple as like let's just stop driving 700 times to that particular paddock to do that same thing like, and gain some time back to work on the business and in some other part. At the same time, though, we are like probably what most people think of when they think of technology seeing a lot more around, like autonomy and robotics and these kinds of things that probably for 10 or 20 years now has felt a bit more like science fiction, like oh you know, maybe that's coming one day and it's actually here now. So people doing you know, spot spraying with things like a swarm bot on the back of them we're seeing like automated pest monitoring instead of driving out to check traps manually, like there's examples where this stuff has moved properly from the lab into the field, and even farmers who are like I am not an early adopter, but I've had a crack at this thing and it's actually worked, and to me that's a real sign of success that it isn't just the folks who are wanting to tinker with whatever's on the cutting edge.
Kirsten Diprose:I feel like it's not accessible in some ways for farmers, and whether that's a knowledge and education piece or it's, you know how do I find out if that works? So if no one around you is using an autonomous vehicle to spot spray and you're interested, it's still a really big leap to start. How do you bridge that or think about that in a way that's not scary?
Sarah Nolet:I think really there's a bit of an almost advocacy opportunity there for local government, for things like the drought hubs, for RDCs, to really be encouraged to hear that pull because they sit there going. We've heard of these companies. There's a lot of them out there. What are our farmers really want? And they're stuck in like how do we actually bridge this gap? They've got a strong incentive around adoption and pressure to commercialize and so you know hearing that growers hey, I want more around monitoring technology for water, or I want to hear more about autonomy or those kinds of things.
Sarah Nolet:I think that pull is actually really important. But probably more practically, reach out to the companies and see where they might be at a trade show or a field day, even if they're not on a commercial farm near you, which is obviously the best outcome. Maybe they're coming to like a field day or something like that near you and you can actually like have a chat to the team and see the unit or those kinds of things, because that's where a lot of especially in the early days before these tech companies have like a national distribution presence that they would at scale. You know, when you become like a nutrient or whatever or working with them. You'd be going to some of those key like field days and shows, and so I think that's really an opportunity to connect and learn and have a chat and see if it's a fit.
Sarah Nolet:And then I would say the follow up there could be like ask for a reference, like hey, can I talk to a grower who's been using this for two years, and they'll have those reference customers that are happy to tell, like warts and all. Yeah, like the first year the paddock mapping didn't work and I had to spend all this time and then it was broken down but the team came out and fixed it really quick and they were really on it and so I've built a lot of confidence that they're really there to support me and blah, blah, blah. You'll hear those kinds of stories. So, yeah, those are probably like the three ways to sort of start advocate for the system. Find the tech companies and have a real chat to them, whether that's virtually or ideally in person, and then get those reference customers to hear what it's like in a kind of commercial environment.
Kirsten Diprose:Yeah, I think that's great advice and, particularly with newer companies, you can really ask a lot of them like as in, they want feedback and so don't feel shy about, you know, like they might cut you a deal or just, you know, bend over backwards for you to make sure you've got a good experience, which is what it's all about. You know, often it's really not about saving 10%, it's about making sure it works and works well, so you can call them back and ask that they visit or ask that they, you know, have some sort of follow up with you.
Sarah Nolet:Absolutely and you might get more support out of it. You might get top of the queue for feedback. You might just get here like they really hear that you're that those issues are happening and fix it sooner so that we absolutely see that in the early days Companies good companies are highly incentivized to make sure their initial customers are super happy and to really solve that problem before moving on to the next one. And yeah, there's a tension there. You know more customers and revenue and pressure and investors and things like that. But I think in you know, what we look for as investors is companies who are going to really make sure they've solved enough of the problem to be really adding value before they're going and pushing new features. And so that's absolutely an opportunity for growers to say like, hey, this needs to be fixed or hey, let's have a chat about feedback.
Kirsten Diprose:Yeah, and I know, if I'm looking at some sort of tech, that's what I want is customer service, and I know it's what my husband will really want. Otherwise, there's like nothing worse than having a piece of tech it not working and there is no one who can help you. Or it's someone on the other side of the world and you're like I'm not getting up at 3 am for you to show me how to do this over the phone, because for anyone who's had to explain to, like their parent, how to, like you know, do something technical over the phone, it's painful, oh, it's miserable.
Sarah Nolet:Totally, totally, and I think that's like part of also the assessment process for when you are looking at buying new technology. Yes, it's like what is the tech and does it? You know, will it work remotely, with no connectivity, or in my operation or whatever? Also, how are you going to support this Like? Is there a package of support that comes with it when we fix it? How fast are you guys usually out there? Is it such that, like other local technicians could come fix it? So if I've got like a local repair shop, could I take it there, like those kinds of almost like diligence for buying it? I think it's also where, like farmers can feel empowered to ask those questions and if they don't get good answers, then provide that feedback and you know, maybe it's not a good solution. What?
Kirsten Diprose:is actually out there. Sometimes I feel like the you know, tech is moving so quickly and we're so busy on the farm doing what we do and doing it well, that you're like, oh well, that that's happening over in agriculture. How do? How do we benefit from that too? And it's moving so fast, how do we tap into that in a way that potentially ways we didn't know about or didn't think about 10 years ago?
Sarah Nolet:One of the things we see with a lot of our companies is maybe they are solving a problem on farm or in the supply chain, but their head office might have to be in the city because that's where they're getting the talent or where the capital is. And so then they're looking for, often people maybe who grew up on a farm but did a mechatronics degree, or grew up on a farm but have a finance background and could help them. So there's a lot of job opportunities in these growing companies for folks who have that kind of connection to the land or just awareness of what it's like to service a regional community or you know those kinds of things. So that's absolutely an opportunity. And then sometimes those companies grow and then they're starting regional hubs or, you know, moving into those areas. So it's not necessarily only a metro opportunity in the kind of medium term and wouldn't want to sound like that. I think the other one is we're seeing more around the existing agricultural system getting more tech savvy. So if I give you the example of Swarm Farm Robotics, they build autonomous agricultural vehicles, but they don't actually build the implements that go on the back of the robots. They partner with existing spray boom manufacturers. So these would be like regional businesses that would have been building your spray boom to go on the back of a tractor. They might be selling self-propelled sprayers too, and so those are like established businesses. And now they're saying well, how do we integrate with advanced camera technology that's using artificial intelligence to detect weeds, and how do we go on the back of a robot? And so the kinds of labor that they're attracting is sort of increasing as well, and so I think that's another opportunity.
Sarah Nolet:And then we talked a little about the adoption side.
Sarah Nolet:So you could actually be a sort of partner with one of these companies to say we can help you trial on this farm, and maybe, if you're willing to go even further, you might become, you might be sort of a super user and want to get some advisory recognition or even equity recognition for helping them to really develop those features before they're properly commercial.
Sarah Nolet:So this might be taking a technology that's not quite ready to be sold but trialing it, testing it, giving it feedback, putting in those hours and sort of in-kind resources and getting recognition in, maybe shares in that company. Or it could go all the way through to investing, where you're saying you're seeing these opportunities but you want to either directly invest in them to support the ones that you think will be commercially successful, or work with a fund manager to say, we want to see an access to like a whole pipeline of opportunities and just sort of outsource it to someone else. There's like a whole menu of options now that's emerging, you know, including with an Australian focus. It's not like it used to be, where all of those options were really offshore, but now there's a real ecosystem here to engage with technology, kind of depending on what you want out of it. Is it financial, is it strategic?
Kirsten Diprose:That kind of thing. The other side of the equation that I really wanted to ask you about, you know you were speaking about approaching it, sort of ag tech, from the problem area. You know I've got this problem, whether it's financial or time or and how can I solve it. The other one is, I suppose, a problem, but it's a bit more harder to kind of put your hands on, and that's kind of around climate solutions and wanting to, you know, be more conscious of, you know whether it's greenhouse gas emissions or whether it's about, you know, capturing carbon in the soil. And you know, certainly the region ag movement talks about that.
Kirsten Diprose:And I was at a conference recently and talking to a farmer who was just sort of saying, you know he was a conventional farmer and he was saying the way that he was farming wasn't sitting right with him, it wasn't feeling authentic to him. And this is I'm on a conventional farm, so I'm not saying there's a right or wrong, but I just thought, gosh for him he wouldn't have stayed in the industry or would have been absolutely miserable, which is no way to live your life. If you're doing something that is so against kind of what you feel inside, like, how do you assess that Like? I know that's such a kind of bizarre question, but I feel like it's real, you know.
Sarah Nolet:Yeah, mean it's. That's one example around climate, which is something we're really passionate about. Like the reason I'm in agriculture is some unique blend of, like the climate impact and the humans, like I just love working with farmers, and so it's. That's real. And we see it in other ways too. It might be around like succession planning and a realization that, look, my kids aren't going to come back to this farm if we're farming in the same way that we have been, and they're not going to want to work the hours I've worked or, you know, make the sacrifices I've made. Or it might be that the you know we literally can't keep growing the crops that we've been growing or exposed to the risk we've been exposed to, or those kinds of things. So it's actually, I think, maybe not talked about enough.
Sarah Nolet:Some of these like emotional, like values, decisions that drive technology adoption, and like we're all humans. If we pretend we're making decisions without our emotions, then I think we're truly just pretending. And so, yeah, like absolutely technology or practice change can have that kind of benefit, and that's part of the deal. Like that's what's actually going to get people to change. You can run numbers and look at them all day long on a spreadsheet, but that's where the actual decisions happen. So maybe we need to be thinking and talking more about that, especially around climate.
Sarah Nolet:Like, farmers are the stewards like true stewards of our actual land, and so I am excited about how agriculture isn't necessarily a trade-off between doing you know, making money and taking care of the land, and there's increasingly technologies and practices that can help with that, whether that's virtual fencing to do rotational grazing or better farm management software to be doing that digitally or planning it out or something like an OptiWay, you know, hardware in a paddock to be doing like mob level condition scoring and making decisions about, you know, grazing movements or trading decisions. So there's just a lot more like practical tech now to be doing things, and I think that I mean I'd be curious what you're hearing, but it moves it from this sort of like aspirational, almost like I have to decide I'm a I'm a regen farmer to like I am just a farmer and I'm making decisions that are consistent with my values and consistent with how I want to make money, and like the labels are sort of less important, which I think is you know where we have to go.
Kirsten Diprose:Yeah, I think it is moving that way and it's more becoming more of a spectrum. You know like there are just, you know, within the past sort of three or four years, even on our farm, a conventional farm, yeah, we've got OptiWay, which you know is just an easier way to measure the weight of the cows and less sort of invasive, I suppose. And we, you know we're already no-till, there's like practices that are just becoming, you know, sort of assumed by the conventional farmers, because they make sense and they try it and they like it. It's great, you know. Water monitoring, you know, means that we have to. We don't have to check the water as much Did mean.
Sarah Nolet:Christmas was interrupted because Sometimes you'd rather not know. Yeah, exactly.
Kirsten Diprose:I was like, oh no, ruined our Christmas. No, it was all right. Yeah, I think it is. It is merging, but it's like I mean, you see it in tech all the time, like those early adopters, there's ones like out there driving industry, and then there's that sort of trickle down, that sort of happens, and perhaps it doesn't happen as quickly as maybe some of the drivers would like. But I find it quite interesting how adoption works and I know you spend a lot of time with your head in adoption and and how it works. How does it work, sarah?
Sarah Nolet:oh my gosh, as if I just had this answer. I can I ask you a question? Instead, I hijacked the microphone. I'm curious. Like you, you've used the word conventional a couple times and it almost feels like there's like a need to say that or like how do you think about using that word? Cause you described like no chill and having OptiWay and like you've got water monitoring that's interrupting Christmas, like in one. One could say that's not conventional. But I get the not wanting to identify as like oh, we're, we're region organic, cause that has sort of had this like alternate. How do you think about using that word? Because I would argue like you're doing lots of like really innovative practices, as like a family and as a farm. Great question.
Kirsten Diprose:Sarah. Sarah's got her own podcast called Ag Tech, so what? You should listen to it where she asks questions like this. But I suppose it's the well first like anyone can be regen. It's really self-identifying.
Kirsten Diprose:And being regen doesn't mean no fertilizer or there's no specifications. It's certainly an approach and that willingness to be more sustainable and, I suppose, intentional almost, in how you're farming, in having less impact on the land and being a steward first, and I think it fits really well with people. I guess I say that because we're farmers in the commodity sector and so are a lot of regen ag farmers. But there's been no major change and there's certainly been no major change in mindset. And I'm, of course, part of a family business and my involvement on the farm is a lot smaller compared to, you know, my husband and his parents or his dad, and so it's like, yeah, he would never describe it like that, so I wouldn't either.
Kirsten Diprose:We certainly aren't regen and look, I'm pushing to slowly become a little bit more focused on some of the new technology that can assist and focus on climate and those sorts of things, but it's a really slow process and I know for my husband nothing matters like the bottom line and so nothing's going to get over the line if it doesn't do well for the bottom line. So we haven't changed our system of farming. It's still high production and I guess you know high-ish inputs. I mean, we've lowered our inputs because the costs have been so high, right, but it's still a high production farm.
Sarah Nolet:I think that's really interesting where and I appreciate you sharing that we see this conversation where almost there's like a view that sustainability or climate resilience has to be the thing that you're selling, or like the top line motivator, whereas at least my personal belief is that you're going to get a lot more adoption of those kinds of practices, if that's what you really care about it, if they're sitting in with a commercial motivator Like so we talk about it tenacious, like unlocking impact at scale in agri-food systems, and to me, like the impact comes through the scale If it resonates with people's bottom line, if it makes them more like happier, better time with their family, more productive, better headspace, more profitable whether that's through yields or profitability or whatever it might be then and it has a sustainability or resilience benefits Like that's how we're going to see change at a landscape scale.
Kirsten Diprose:But there's sort of these terms that I almost feel like kind of hold us back of, like it has to be one or the other, so yeah, and with every technology there's, like the benefit like the water monitoring is is time and freedom, being able to be away and have that sort of certainty, not that we're away for a long time, like you wouldn't, just you know, but just like just being away for a weekend and having that confidence which is still building.
Kirsten Diprose:But yeah, optiway is, yeah, just I think it's, it's just better, it's they've found a way to do something better.
Kirsten Diprose:And then the kind of digital system when and you know, we're using AgriWeb and again, I have no stake in any of these companies that I'm mentioning that's just what we're using and we had done it in the past, but my, my husband's not really into recording things digitally and we did it with a previous manager and he left and we just didn't continue it. But we're starting it up again because we can and it's really for me, because I enjoy that oversight and it's the way that my brain works and I need it or want it, because I don't have that 50 years of farming that he has behind him or 70 plus years that his dad does. They just like know so much, whereas I love to see something and I love to input something and that's how my brain works and I just don't have like that osmosis of farming in me. People talk about farming being in your blood. Well, it's not in mine, right? I have to really work hard to understand what's going on.
Sarah Nolet:I love that, and that's where something like technology can help, because if we just said only people who have farming in their blood, or whatever that even means, can farm, we're missing out on a lot of talent in the sector and a lot of possible partnerships and different perspectives to bring in. So that's maybe another side benefit of technology.
Kirsten Diprose:What really excites you about the future of ag tech?
Sarah Nolet:Oh man, I think it really is the heart of this conversation, where technology is just sort of ready now, in a way that we can move from a theoretical conversation about tech on farms to a much more practical one, and that's bringing in a lot of these conversations about climate.
Sarah Nolet:Now I hope it's because there's opportunities, not just because people are facing really significant threats, whether that's, you know, fires or floods or droughts.
Sarah Nolet:That's there too, but I see so much potential in regional Australia, in regions around the world, for continued stewardship of the land and a real solution around some of the climate challenges that we face, and I see technology as a way to help that and move the needle on the bottom line. And so those kind of like one plus one equals three opportunities and move the needle on the bottom line, and so those kind of like one plus one equals three opportunities Plus. Just it's so rewarding to work with farmers and entrepreneurs Like I get the best I feel like of whatever country I'm in, but especially Australia, where I'm just like everyone I work with is just thinking about how to make the world a better place and ambitious and also like self-aware and like it's I just am so lucky in the people that I get to work with, whether they're building a farming business or a technology business or trying to figure out how those two things work together. So that definitely helps me get out of bed in the morning.
Kirsten Diprose:Have you observed and find, if you haven't women's role in ag tech adoption at all, do you have any insights?
Sarah Nolet:on that? Well, I'm sure not as much as you and the work that, like this podcast and the women on this podcast, do and are in in those seats, but we've seen a little bit of it just in. Often, like behind any great man, there's a woman calling the shots or like pulling the strings or whatever it is, and there's flavors of that right, whether that is often in the farming dynamic, we'll see that women who maybe have an off farm like background education, background education, and so aren't as hands on the tools but might be looking at the financials, and so sometimes that forces a conversation around like hey, here's this part of the business that's not doing as well, or here's this type of system that I've seen can work better and I'm looking at the numbers, and so actually this like advocate for change, whether that comes financially or like just through that like observation of of what the numbers or the processes look like. So I think there is a flavor of technology that actually gets more adopted or at least needs buy-in from that side of things and maybe it's less the like in paddock kind of hardware side of things would would be a little bit of anecdotal experience and there's actually been some research.
Sarah Nolet:We had at least one on our podcast, rachel Hay and her work, which I'm happy to link to, but they've actually done studies around technology, adoption and the role of women, and so I think that's a factor too. And then we're also seeing now as succession planning and new generations come through. You know that landscape of you know who is farming and what it means to farm is starting to change and so that next generation will be interesting to see like what the gender divide looks like. But if you know the tech savviness and the education and the entrepreneurialism, like a lot of those barriers are shifting more broadly across society and I expect it will play a role in farming also.
Kirsten Diprose:And that's it for this episode of Ducks on the Pond. Thank you to Ebony Greaves from Sea Oak Consulting and to Sarah Nolet from Tenacious Ventures for sharing their wisdom on this tricky topic. I hope you found it helpful. I know I certainly did. If you want to check out Sarah's podcast, it's called Ag Tech, so what, and you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. And, of course, if you haven't, don't forget to follow the rural podcasting co on instagram. We have a few other podcasts you might like. They're called two smart blondes, which is all about the media and pop culture, and town cries, which tells the big stories of the small towns. We also help you. If you'd like to start a podcast, let us know. Go to the Rural Podcasting Co website. And, of course, a big thank you to our episode sponsor by CC Fine Jewellery, in fact sponsoring this entire season. Make sure you check out their website for some beautiful jewellery that's functional for farming, women and mums and people with a busy life. Thank you so much for listening. I'll speak with you soon.
