ASH CLOUD
ASH CLOUD
Artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent? with Aidan Connolly
Our food systems are orders of magnitude more complex than other sectors of our economy so how can tools such as Artificial intelligence help farmers across the world make better decisions to improve the sustainability and productivity of our food systems.
Today we are joined by Aidan Connolly a animal agtech entrepreneur, investor, and author of The Future of Agriculture who has spend his career working on agricultural innovation.
Welcome to the AshCloud. I'm Ashley Sweetie. Our food systems are orders of magnitude more complex than other sectors of our economy. So, how can tools such as artificial intelligence help farmers across the world make better decisions to improve the sustainability and productivity of our food systems? Today we are joined by Aidan Connolly, an animal ag tech entrepreneur, investor, and author of The Future of Agriculture, who has spent his career working on agricultural innovation. Aidan, thank you very much for joining me today. Thank you. Yeah, my pleasure. Technology and agriculture and the innovation in this space. What are you seeing as the most exciting innovations with the work that you're currently doing?
SPEAKER_02:I think the world of innovation uh by its nature uh is changing every moment. I I would say that artificial intelligence is pretty obviously the most exciting area for us. Um, I've always seen as being the glue that pulls together the different disparate parts of the digital chain. You know, what do you do when you get sensors or from robotics or from even from a blockchain? How do you make decisions? How does that change the role of a nutritionist or agronomist or a veterinarian? I I feel that artificial intelligence was always the thing we talked about, but clearly it's bringing more and more to the table. And how that might disrupt agriculture, particularly livestock agriculture that I focus a lot on, is really, to my mind, is very, very, very interesting. And that is the feature of most of the conferences I've been to recently. I was at uh one in China uh this last weekend that was attended by three million people online, so kind of on the larger side, uh, 3,000 people in person. And they had a an internet influencer, um uh Yin Ming Bong, who is uh followed by 50 million people on uh as a social media person himself, and really, really interested in agriculture, really interesting the future of food production. But again, artificial intelligence seemed to come up in the presentations by himself, the FAO, and and indeed my own presentations at the at the event.
Ash Sweeting:So artificial intelligence is is something that gets talked about a lot, but not is I think there's there's lots to it too, um, that not everyone necessarily understands the details of what it actually is and how it works. So could we just take a little step back and you know dig into a bit of firstly what is artificial intelligence? How does it work, and then where are the opportunities for that to change or revolutionize the way that we we manage our farms and agricultural systems?
SPEAKER_02:Actually, very perceptive questions. As you know, um an awful lot of people who you see at these events standing up on stage and they use the phrase AI have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Um, some of us are hopefully humble enough to think we know something, but realize we actually don't know that much either. But I did like Seth Godin's um phrase, which was that artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent. And uh his purpose in pointing that out was to point and say behind almost every AI system on the planet today, there are people fixing things. So whether that's through is through annotation, whether that's through just watching to make sure you don't get algorithmic drift, or you get biases being introduced, or the databases which we're using to inform our insights are actually balanced. All of these things can happen. And even if you've worked with artificial intelligence in its original forms, I'd say 10, 20 years ago, but let's just say even for to be more shocking and more controversial, three years ago, five years ago, it's probably moved on tremendously since then. Um, I did head up a a company Caintus, uh, which was using using AI to identify the behavior of cows, particularly um looking at uh sitting, lying, drying, eating, drinking, and then obviously uh separately looked at the the consumption of feed indirectly by seeing the feed disappearance from the bunk. And I get a real sense of just how expensive some of this is, of how consuming it is from a resource perspective, and how complicated it is. And whenever somebody says to me, uh news, I'm working on an AI system and I spent a few hundred thousand dollars or spent a few million dollars, I've often been known to say, that's very nice. You bought a you bought a ticket to the AI club, but you haven't yet uh purchased a beer at the uh at the bar. Uh because those unfortunately are just table stakes in in what is not inexpensive technology. Um, but anyway, sorry if that's a little rambling. I'm just trying to say to start off by saying, I think you're absolutely right. We talk a lot about it. We're not always as clear as to what it is and how how it's going to help us. And um that's going to be for me a lot of the big leaps that we're going to make now in the next couple of years.
Ash Sweeting:So, my my understanding of AI in the most basic fashion, and please steer me in the right direction when I am not correct in this, is that it's essentially pattern recognition technology. So you have a bunch of data in some data set, which could be the entire internet or it could be something smaller, and you develop algorithms that identify patterns that link different things. So in your Cainthas case, those patterns would be potentially, you know, the visual and image of that a certain cow links to that cow's identity, or the from the pixels that you're pulling out of those images, you identify things like whether the cow is sitting down or standing up or eating or um those sorts of things. And then the algorithms um generate correlations which will have various different levels of accuracy between these um these patterns that they're identifying, and those, and there can be there can be causation with some of those things, and there can be just random correlations as well. So that goes back to the accuracy side of things. Is that is that a very basic understanding of what AI is, or am I way off the mark?
SPEAKER_02:I like that, and I think that's that's how I would reason it as well. And I think you've picked out one of the key challenges when it comes to agriculture, um, which is it, is is it caused, is it causation, or is it correlation? Um, we are currently seeing a number of startups that analyze the sounds that animals make, and from that uh come to some fairly strong conclusions about the prevalence of disease or stress or uh well-being of the animal. But we're not actually fully sure whether those things are really correlated or not. Quite often it fact that a pig is unhappy, is it unhappy because it's hungry? Is it unhappy because it's got uh it's seen a it's seen a rodent? Is it unhappy because it was tail was bitten by another pig? Or is it unhappy because it's got African swine fever? You know, some sometimes I see these things in presentations, I'm sure you do as well, from companies that have got great ideas but don't practically understand uh how unlikely it is to be able to predict specific diseases from very indirect factors. Uh and yet that's where we are today. And the power of AI may be to get us closer, but those patterns may or may not signify what we what what we what we're hoping that they signify, which is the ability to detect some of these bigger problems.
Ash Sweeting:So I think what you're kind of opening up in terms of the conversation is that connection between the AI and the algorithms and what those are telling us, because you know, at the end of the day, a can a computer or a multiple computers can analyze um amounts and volumes of data that are just orders and orders of magnitude um greater and larger and more complex than what uh an individual human can can um can look at. But then you need to link that into human decision making, because at the end of the day, a human is going to treat the pig or give it some extra food or put the band-aid on the tail, per se, or you know, do something about the African swine fever. And then you also need to link that into other research and information systems that will um, I guess, ground tooth or ascertain what is actually happened. Do you need to have a PCR test, say, or another viral test that will actually diagnose the African swine fever or some other sensor in the trough or whatever those other bits and pieces of information and technology. So you're kind of linking all the this power of AI, but back into um humans and how how that will help humans make better decisions.
SPEAKER_02:The the the two pieces I would pick out in what you've just said, firstly, for those that have not worked in AI, there is a presumption that more data is good, and that we simply cram more data into the funnel, we're going to get better sausages at the other end, which is definitely not true. The quality of data that goes in, the ability to curate the data, uh carefully uh removing extraneous uh uh data that can lead to the wrong conclusions, and equally make sure that the data is not simply creating a insights on a specific situation in a specific farm in a specific conditions that are so specific that you don't get any real value out of it. The second problem we have is particularly agriculture, you know, I I I've often used the phrase that we have a lot of unknown unknowns, you know, to obviously play off the uh the phrase of known knowns and known unknowns. Well, we definitely have unknown unknowns, and the more we're learning, the more we realize how little we know. Um, this tablespoonful of soil that contain eight billion microorganisms, which not only are eight million micro microorganisms, but can influence the the cereals, the crops that are grown in those fields, the bacteria on the skin of a of a pig or chicken or a a cow are in their environment that can influence how they react to nutrition. So I'm particularly thinking of this because I've started working with a veterinarian who's got a great idea for looking at um uh replicating the diseases that he sees in the field and where he will sometimes do uh postmortems on animals to see how those have changed. And as I've gone through it with him to try to think through how we'd replicate this using AI, he basically in his head reviews 400 possible scenarios, and it's multifactorial, it's extremely complex, and he's effectively using the hesitate to use the phrase gut feel, but he's using his gut and and his 30 years, 40 years of experience to make a diagnosis as to what's being seen. Trying to get a system, an AI system, to replicate that is nothing like as easy as I thought it would be. And I think that um it's critical we do this because a lot of what we've relied upon is something that I learned in college 30 years ago when I was sitting in lecture hall and I heard my professor say this, and maybe I was asleep, or maybe I was uh distracted, or maybe I didn't read the the right chapter that you know. So that learned book learning is there, or the learning that we gain from being from watching other people, or the gaining the knowledge we get being handed down from father to son or mother to child, um you know, that sort of learning is all exists in agriculture. That's not going to be effectively what we need to do in the future. So the promise of AI is obviously to make better decisions than humans make with less errors, with less uh mistakes um due to omission, uh commission, uh, and equally the ability to just uh not get fatigued, uh to to continue to make those decisions better and better over time. That's the real power of what we have it or can have in our hands in a very uncertain business. But equally, I just want to repeat the same things. It is just not going to be easy to do. It's just we we have this imagination, and we're dealing with a pharmaceutical factory or car factory. We are dealing with agriculture. It's got lots and lots of things that just are out of our control.
Ash Sweeting:Going back to what you said, um, I I I completely completely agree with you on the complexity of that. And going back to what you said on the on the microbiome, be that on the soil in the soil or in um on the skins of or the guts of animals, um, one, there are those billions of microbes there. Uh, the other side of it is our our current knowledge of microbiology is that we actually don't even know what a lot of them are. Um, but also they're dynamic, they're constantly changing. What's there one minute is different to what's there the next minute, and we're never going to be able to censor and monitor all of them because it's that's just we the the sensors and the ability to do that is is not possible. So it then comes down to what are what are the key bits of data that we need to put into those algorithms and what are the key outcomes that we need from that data um that are going to change decision making or improve decision making. So how do you how do you think through that that nexus and that those challenges?
SPEAKER_02:I think if you look at outcomes, uh unfortunately, uh trying to remember something I read earlier today saying that humans are increasingly making decisions faster and faster with less information, maybe the overload of our society. We want to be able to say ostridia is bad, E. coli is bad, lactobacillus is good, Pediococcus is good, benefitobacteria are good. And you start to understand after a period of time that's just not quite that simple. So we are being confronted by things that are not what we learned, not what we want to believe, and and and don't allow for the simplicity of saying, let's kill the bad things and let's favor the good things and suddenly we'll all be happy. Um so as that uh as that evolves, I think again, AI can play a role in our understandings of what we should feed, when we should feed it, you know, the kind of the the right time, right place, right nutrient approach that we've taken in crops. We're doing that increase, we need to do that increasingly in in livestock. The complexity of how nutrients, one nutrient like a fiber, can influence on the absorption of a of something else like a protein. Um, that's another part, particularly in ruminant animals, in cow, dairy cows and and and and beef cattle, goats and sheep. There's even more complexity because of the way the stomachs, you know, those these various stomachs work. Um, but at the end, I still like looking at outcomes such as, well, the basics, more milk, more meat, more eggs. Not everybody loves that idea, but that's makes food more affordable, and it's usually a sign that the animal is healthy. Obviously, greater understanding of health will be critical. The influence on the quality of the produce, so that could be something as simple as the shelf life of our eggs or milk and our meat. And eventually we're starting to get into also understanding precision nutrition from a human perspective, uh, a scary thought. Um, I'm joking, of course, but the realization that you know, maybe many of the choices we make as humans from a from a nutrition perspective are not well informed. And if we start to inform those, we may be consuming animal products which have been designed more appropriately for our health and for the outcomes we want as humans.
Ash Sweeting:There are lots of very interesting things that you said just then. So I'm not quite sure exactly where to go next, but um where I will go is that the nutritional side of you know our food systems, because at the end of the day, we produce food so that we can feed ourselves and and have and be healthy. And there's growing evidence that one the the more simplistic models or or dietary requirements based on you know energy, protein, fat, salt, etc., um, are somewhat simplistic, and there's many, many more molecules within our foods that impact our our metabolism. And secondly, that the way that food is grown uh um will impact the nutrient density of food. And the the information I'm I that I'm sourcing here is from the Bionutrient Food Association, um, where they looked essentially that the underlying the highest correlation was that the the more biodiverse and complex the um the ground in terms of cover crops, etc., that crops were grown in had a positive correlation with increased um nutrient density and a more biodiverse diet for livestock for cattle, um, increased the nutrient density of the meat and the milk. So, you know, in terms of linking those, I those I see AI as a very, very valuable tool in terms of you know linking those patterns to try and understand how that works and then feeding that into human nutrition. Um, I'd just be interested in your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_02:Well, sometimes I think uh more deeply about whether we get ourselves to a situation where the nutrition we are allowed to consume it becomes mandated um by choice outside of my head or your your your your your head or our wallets. Um and does that happen through through doctors? Does that happen through insurance? Does it happen through governments? What's absolutely clear to me is that again we we we have lived in this paradise of probably misinformation, misinformed information, saying eat less fat, consume more something else, which tends to be sugar, um, etc. etc., which probably have led to some of the the outcomes in the fact that the average uh American uh lifespan uh has declined over the last three years is pretty shocking. And uh I see some of the same trends are currently happening in other countries. Um, to what degree will that return us to uh some form of food that's uh better for us? I I don't know. I mean, there's arguments that people make for organic. Um, some days I believe some of that, and some days I find it more challenging to believe it. Um, certainly the further processed foods are under tremendous attack. Um people are arguing that is is our problem with the consumption of meat that we eat too much of it, or is it that we're eating too much processed meat? So there's lots of interesting parts like this, but again, when I deal with the chicken, chicken's life is not very long. It's uh its consumption of nutrients is so well controlled and so uniform that I know to some degree the outcomes. Uh, and I could argue the same thing about pigs and and and maybe dairy and fish and other livestock species. In humans, the mistakes we make nutritionally are the let for argument's sake, uh, the decision to take up smoking or drinking excessively can take 30 or 40 years for the damage to be seen. So it's going to always be extremely difficult for a human to make choices for themselves when the consequences of bad decisions take so long. And again, not to replay the same uh refrain, but I think that's where artificial intelligence and better data and better collection of uh information will allow us to make, I think, better decisions, certainly uh uh from a human perspective um uh than we are currently doing.
Ash Sweeting:So, how do we yeah, this is this is obviously how long to pete a string question, but um we've got we've got multiple factors going on. We've obviously got our own health, we've got the productivity and the livelihoods of the the farmers and ranchers who are growing and producing the food. We've got the social and cultural environments that they live in and the traditions that those people have. And then we've got the environment and the the health of the climate um as another another big factor. So and then we've got people running around you know making decisions as you said on on more and more quickly on on less and less information. So you know from there's a lot of complicity in there. So where do we you know how do we break that down and and where do we start and how do we start to build that into areas where we can have impact and then use technologies like AI to to you know get those gains to get the confidence for people to use it um more frequently and and grow the whole the whole pie.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah how do you hold on hold on to the tail of the uh of the of the tiger um I probably well I know I'm a very optimistic person and I believe that these trends that we see tend to lead to good outcomes. I I know that a lot of people are uncomfortable with the increasing size of our farms the fact that we have typically more animals on on on in on sites that we are seeing less and less of the small farms but I happen to believe those smaller farms have got a bigger environmental problem. The carbon footprint certainly of cows in farms where you've one or two cows in a relatively unproductive settings is infinitely higher per cow than a very productive cow on a large farm. Could make the same argument certainly that chickens in an environmentally controlled house being fed properly, being watered properly given drinking water properly with good quality litter is much more likely to happen on a on a large productive farm than it is on a small farm. It also I think is true that the welfare of those animals can be better. Now we have seen things happen which maybe the unintended consequences of of industrialization of food production which I don't think have been good and you've pointed out you know this soil thing let's say we uh choose to grow plants in soils and we in our wisdom decided that they required nitrogen phosphorus and uh potassium in PK fertilizer we never thought about selenium and boron and we never thought about uh uh copper and manganese and zinc and all the microelements and we certainly never thought about the soil health we certainly never thought about the aeration of that soil um and these are all really interesting ideas that I think are coming to the fore and can be married together with productive agriculture because when you show to somebody who wants to produce more of their land they go well actually I start to see as to how this fits together with uh what I need to do.
Ash Sweeting:So I I I feel that the desire for more affordable food to more people in the world to more nutritious food uh requires us to do a better job of treating our plants well treating our animals well treating our planet well um so I'm as you can gather optimistic that those that that push will be favorable um and in order to get there we need to be more precise and the only way to be more precise in well how much water does a plant need how much protein does an animal need to consume before it starts to belch or uh uh emit uh some of that in the form of ammonia or or methane all of those I think farmers are on the same side as environmentalists on the same side as those who want to get food into the into the mouths of hungry people um but uh we we so that precision I think again will come from better use of information and I I think it's being embraced it's just a it's just a question of how we can help it happen faster and and keep in mind to not allow the unintended consequences of sometimes uh free market decisions which were taken in the right for the right reasons but lead to the wrong outcomes you you as you said earlier you've you've recently or just the other day last this week you've been in China you've also you travel quite extensively and where who do you see both from both from you know countries or regions and also in terms of individuals be that companies or or researchers uh who are who are leading the field in this space I'm not going to give you names because I don't think that would be appropriate i i I'd give you countries I would say I'm really impressed with Israel um I'm not sure they have a plan but uh they achieve uh extraordinary things because of the way that you meet 12 and 13 year old Israelis and you ask them what they want to do when they grew up and they say run a startup um they're not they're not looking to work for a bank and they're not looking to work for a you know an I IT or AI uh superpower from the beginning of their lives they're quite open to the idea of of them starting their own business and and embracing technology that way I'm very impressed with the connectivity and um route to route to branch I'd call it uh top to bottom approach of the Netherlands and of New Zealand in particular um my own country Ireland has done okay but I I I've been on the record saying I think we they could do better.
SPEAKER_02:The United States is a little all over the place um which is nature of a very large country with so much innovation going on uh I don't see the hubs uh as clearly as they could be that's perhaps an opportunity for uh certainly I know St. Louis and I know in Raleigh North Carolina and I know that uh we've seen some in attempts in Silicon Valley but um but Minneapolis but I think there's more to come it doesn't necessarily have to be one location in the United States I'm sure it's going to be multiple and but but again um it's a nature of a very entrepreneurial uh capitalist society that we've got lots of polls um I have been disappointed a little bit in the AI so-called AI superpowers that they are not investing in agriculture as much as they could and Microsoft is probably the leader in terms of their commitment um but I'm sure ag tech, crop tech, livestock tech by the fact we have not seen as much happening as you would in fintech or as you would in I I don't know, you know many of the other industries probably seems less attractive to them. But that said and I know as you've covered this on your podcast in the past the scale of the opportunity is enormous. The gap between where we are and where we need to go to it cannot be bridged without embracing new technology. We just can't get there and the gains that could be achieved are are therefore much greater than you could get perhaps in uh other more controlled industries. So I'm hoping that that become attractive um from an accelerator perspective um I I've worked with Thrive in California they do a great job uh they've reviewed as we know over the years uh and and helped uh hundreds if not thousands of startups in the US and Canada and Australia to to to make some breakthroughs and and there are other examples but I I I would generally say uh though those are my comments without uh picking out individuals and saying this person's doing a phenomenal job you you don't find too many ag tech experts when it comes down to it and um I know when you get invited to conferences and I get invited to conferences and you're thinking um it's an honor and and also great for the ego to be on stage but aren't there more young people aren't there more people coming in um not as many as you would imagine and I think that we've got to look forward to uh hopefully fostering more of that as we move forward.
Ash Sweeting:I think it's a interesting the reflection between fintech or or just tech or um and agriculture is I think there's a very easy it's easy to jump to the to the perspective that there's just bigger returns um in other industries so the potential profits are greater so that's where they you know that's why they get the investment. But the other thing and this goes back to what we were discussing about the microbiome and all those other things is that our food production systems are much much more complicated and complex than and so it's a bigger challenge to actually do things in them um than the financial industry. It's not that the financial industry isn't complex it's just that when you add the fact that everything most things are going on outside you've got animals you've got plants which have got their own way of doing things and then the very diverse um array of people um across multiple countries multiple regions etc um there's orders of magnitude more complex complexity in the agricultural systems or the food systems than many of the other industries that we have so how much do you you know do you think that that's a contributing factor that that helps that is one of the reasons why investment goes more to those other industries or is it just basically the ease of returns all of those are true it's hard to argue with any of them so firstly you know let's start with the basics if we if we're talking about the United States which is where much investment uh go uh comes from when it comes to innovation um even globally uh startups quite often end up in the United States looking for money because that's where the money is and that's there is a culture and a history of people investing in this area.
SPEAKER_02:So from that perspective how many Americans are farmers what percentage of the population how many have encountered farming how many actually understand where their food comes from and how it's produced and would have an idea half an idea as to how to create a startup with an answer to a problem that a farmer has and I don't need to say it's a very small number um we talked about two million people being involved in agriculture but I'm not even sure when it comes down to it fundamentally that's a real number I'm sure it's a fraction of that maybe even you know 2000 really top level uh I call it professionals um involved in the production of food so how do you find a startup which typically is in a city to understand the problem which is typically in in in the in the countryside that that that that bridging that gap has been a challenge and farming has become increasingly specialized and harder to understand and so therefore you know being able to again understand that this is not your grandfather's or great grandfather's great grandmother's farm farming system we just will repeat the piece about the more we're learning scientifically about what we do the more we're realizing how little we actually understood in the first place. So that's another level of complexity to it. And yeah if if I grew up in a city I've probably read the financial pages at some stage and certainly invested some of my own money and have some sense of what the financial industry is and have bought a car and driven a car and believe I know what a car is and I have had to use probably at some stage in my life pharmaceuticals to make my health better have a sense of so these other industries feel more transparent. They feel as though I understand what I'm going to invest and when I'm going to get out of it. Whereas when you're trying to attract investors into agriculture who have not been involved in agriculture there's a leap that has to be made and and how comfortable they are with doing that of course is the question. We have the opportunity to to tell a better story and involved with for example HARP um company out of North Carolina that's got a natural alternative to Roundup the way it's being positioned the way we positioned it is to not replace but to be used in conjunction with to solve maybe some of the issues that we see with um with with with the herbicides when when we use them and how we use them. But nonetheless um but most of the technology is not as transparent not as understandable to the average person in the public and um that that obviously brings its own challenges when we're looking for money to invest.
Ash Sweeting:Increasingly um with guests on on the podcast the urban rural divide um is raised as um an issue that that you know is impeding both um you know progress on farms but also you know the flow of money back to the research in in so many ways it's becoming a a challenge. And I guess when when you think of using technology or innovation to solve our agricultural and food production problems, you know, and I I'm very guilty of this as well I I jump into precision feeding or understanding the science or building the markets it's not so much about how do you connect the different parts of a society to overcome some of those potential political or cultural hurdles. Do you think there's an opportunity to sort of use technology in some of those other ways to try and you know one encouraging younger people more younger people which we need um because you know the other thing about the farming community that you or farmers whether it's here in the United States or elsewhere is they're um a ever continually aging group of individuals so we need young people no matter what to be coming in but is is it do we need to broaden our focus in terms of where where technology could come in and and you know focus on things like attracting young people and and that urban rural divide as well as the precision and productivity side of things.
SPEAKER_02:I think you're leaving the witness here because you know I'm gonna agree with you but um of course if we could develop better visual tools for argument's sake some form of uh virtual reality to allow people to see what we do um if we could gamify it make it more attractive for people to to learn about the production of food through um through having fun through games um if we could do a better job of communicating through you know how I I I've been shocked to read some recent statistics on how children are being taught how the requirement to be able to read a book from beginning to end is no longer apparently a part of a necessary part of an education process. But that is the nature of society we're we're all if we're not in Twitter not in X we're in some form we're communicating in shorter shorter form forms I was one time brought up um short by somebody who said well you talk all about the problem of agriculture but there are lots of other industries out there that are also feeling vilified and feel as though uh they're misunderstood and we went through the car industry the coal industry tobacco pharmaceuticals and not sure I want to be in the category with all of them but there you go that's that's uh the nature but yeah there there's there's an opportunity if we change the way we communicate however we need to be clear most of the time we don't change most of the time you go to an agricultural conference and you hear the same conversations in the same ways i i was uh leading a panel in amsterdam there 10 days ago um on antimicrobial resistance in in animals and it was just going to be too easy to talk about how nobody understands us how we really use antibiotics for the right reasons and it's to keep animals healthy and alive and happy and but nobody outside of livestock understands this what is the purpose of that conversation that's just insiders speaking to insiders if you don't learn how to communicate to people who don't come across these questions on a daily basis and the complexities of those are every bit as great as everything we've spoken about then um then you know we're never going to bridge that gap so it it it is partially using the modern media the modern communication tools that we have at our disposition and doing so in a way that is uh is smart but we also have to be clear the purpose of this is not to convince other people in agriculture that we're doing the right thing and a lot of the times I attend meetings where that's what I feel we're doing. We're just patting ourselves on the back or woe is me you know commiserating with each other that nobody else understands. That is not going to move the needle at all we have to learn how to change the way we speak such that people outside can understand what we do, why we do it.
Ash Sweeting:And if we're doing the wrong things we have to change those as well I was recently listening to a and actually a BBC food program podcast and um it said that something like about 80% of the food that's produced is actually consumed within cities. So cities are in some ways or in in in many ways they're the actual drivers of our food system because that's where the demand comes from that's where the quality um signals come from and that's also where the price signals are coming from and more and more there's sustainability and health signals coming from the city there's a lot of people who still will buy on price but given given that the cities are driving the food systems through those signals and this is something else that's and and given the fact that you know the farmers are frequently feel increasingly squeezed between the the costs of production their profit margins and increased regulatory or environmental or other are they other requirements do you think we just need to come to terms with the fact that you know our current system food is not highly valued enough and it's not and it's too cheap and we should actually be you know paying realistic prices for our food and paying more for farmers and then they would be more likely to get the food that um that everyone wants and everyone needs.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely we've uh seen the cost of food in the United States is well below 10% I think it's eight percent of our income we spent on food accepting that there are certain segments of society which are paying an awful lot more than that but the number is very very small and that includes eating outside the home so the spend on food at home is probably something out of the order of three three percent three and a half percent and maybe four and a half percent outside of the home so it's eight percent total these are extraordinarily low numbers and are consumers willing to pay more for food we already know the answer is no and not to get political on this but one of the candidates has stood up and said she was going to uh put a cap on food prices because they're so expensive uh which I've just found astonishing and I I I don't mean that again suggest one candidate is better than the other everybody makes their choices for other reasons but it is um it's a very populist uh image that we are that food is very expensive and that something needs to be done about the price of food I would argue a little bit along the lines you did we should be paying more for food and then allowing farmers to do the things we've asked them to do the sustainability requirements the measurement of carbon in the soils the capturing of that carbon um some of the things we want to do with respect to to make farm making farmer better farming better all of those are going to require extra investments by somebody and what we've discovered historically is they don't come from food companies they don't come from food retailers they don't come from the government they can't come from inevitably it's a farmer that has to make that investment how do you do that when you're trading On razor thin margins, maybe even below razor thin, it's uh extremely difficult. Um, as at a conference in Spain, uh, somebody in Europe was speaking about this and saying if we want to make changes, we have to learn how to pay a higher price for our food, we have to learn how to pay farmers more, because that's the best way to change what we want to change. But it's also true, people in cities are quite ignorant and don't necessarily even want to know entirely where and what was done. And I don't know how you change that, or do you do you want to change that because you're confronting people with things with truths that they don't want they they don't want to know, and when they do know them, doesn't don't necessarily doesn't necessarily make them happier or more willing to pay more for it.
Ash Sweeting:I was speaking to a a Kansas cattleman earlier this year, and he was talking about the percentage of um beef across the US that's graded as the highest quality standard, and that had gone from something like 30 odd percent um 20 or 30 years ago up over two-thirds or up over 60 or 70 percent today. And the only signal that drove that change was that the market was prepared to pay a premium for better quality uh beef. And it it shows that if those signals, and they're not, you know, market signals are not particularly complex, come through that farmers will and ranchers will change their behavior. Um so you know, and there's other other examples out there similar that um that you know show the same thing that farmers will change their behavior due to those price signals.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. But a grocery store also knows if they uh frontline uh have great price on milk, eggs, or or beef, they will drive customers in the door. And as a result, we get to be the lost leader in some of those behaviors, and then there's other foods that I don't know, I'll pick out salmon or avocados or whatever, where they are not price sensitive and where they will walk through the door and pay a higher price. So the grocery store figures out how that all works and where to put those um low-priced items to dry to make you walk through loads of aisles to get to them. So so for better or worse, that's where we are, and how we become the eggland's best, to use an example uh of somebody who's revolutionized the egg business or horizon in the dairy business, or where you create um chicken meat or pork which uh can be sold for higher value. Um that is the key to to a lot of unlocking a lot of this extra value, and and that probably also requires us to bring in a level of transparency to explain why what what better things we're doing and how we're going to make sure we continue doing them. Um yeah, it's it's it's not it's it's not a simple task, but it's uh certainly a worthwhile one in my view.
Ash Sweeting:We've we've drifted off the um the technology focus um slightly. So um gonna happen.
SPEAKER_02:You were never going to stay on on task on this one, but you're I'm glad you're going, I'm gonna glad you're bringing us both back.
Ash Sweeting:So I think um one of the questions I'd want to ask you is is that you know, farming systems, and the it's a very arbitrary divide because everywhere's everywhere's got its nuances, but in terms of technology development for the global north and the global south, how do you see the balance of fitting into um you know the different environments and and and socioeconomic and cultural environments?
SPEAKER_02:Um, tend to be a glass up full type of person, as you've heard. Um, so I think in the case of Africa, uh, we have seen innovation taking place. I was in Kenya, I guess about four months ago. Uh, wasn't as enthused by the actual progress. In other words, a lot of things have started, some of them, maybe a more than should be, have been backed by outside agencies. Um, so you get the feeling that maybe the startups are chasing prizes and they're chasing grants rather than chasing market. That would concern me. But I I saw some really interesting apps for, for example, for backyard chicken production, where you can record on your phone, where you can get videos to teach you, where you can do some trading, get paid, where you can order, where when you have a disease or a problem, you could put in your data and it can tell you, well, you should consider you know, feeding more protein, or that you might have some disease that you probably need to visit a veterinarian. So that's really simple, relatively cheap to develop, extraordinarily valuable for smallholders in Africa. In Brazil, obviously, always the converse. Um, food production is on a large scale. There are a tremendous number of ag tech startups in Brazil making really good progress on some of the bigger issues Brazil has uh uh about sustainability, traceability systems, making sure that you know if beef is JBS, uh, for example, has been using a system to track every single cow that comes into their system and make sure it has not been in an area which is in a protected forested area um because of pressures they're getting externally, but nonetheless, the system itself is extremely impressive. And uh, we see the same thing being done in in soybeans and corn and and satellite data being combined with information from the ground. So uh the global south is is is not being left behind in this. Um I think the ability to leapfrog to take a technology and to avoid going through all of the the the uh ways in which Europe, the West, uh, the United States evolved to be able to make that leap is tremendously exciting. Uh, I saw an awful lot of technology in China. Most of this technology is not coming out of China at the moment, tends to be staying in China, but it's pretty advanced. Um, what I saw for dairy cows in particular, pigs and poultry a little bit further back, and they're extremely advanced, as you know, the use of satellites and drones for for crops such as cotton, uh, precision application of um disease control, fertilizer, irrigation, um, every aspect of it. So I I I I would hope that we'll go back to more of a global environment when it comes to this technology, but the moment China is forging ahead in technology for China.
Ash Sweeting:That is wonderful for to hear. Is there any is there any particular example out of all the different things you've seen that excites you um more than anything else?
SPEAKER_02:We've lived in this, would I say, um imaginary world where everybody wants to work on a farm and they love the idea of getting up in the morning at 4:30 and cleaning the milking parlor and milking the first cows by 5:15 and then milking them again at lunchtime and then milking them again in the evening. And we have discovered, surprisingly, that that's getting harder and harder to sell as a vision to young people. So, robotics, the use of robotics is inevitably going to be the area I think that's going to grow the most in the next five years. Robotically milking cows, robotically moving around animals, robotically picking you know things out of the field that is really backbreaking work, uh, either weeds or in the case of um uh strawberries, fruit, etc., etc. I think robotics, robotics and processing plants are a given. Uh, nobody really loves the idea of working in a processing plant, particularly if it involves um cleaning up animals, uh cutting up meat. Uh it's kind of a nasty, nasty thing to do. Um, and mostly we've relied upon immigrants in almost every country in the world to do that work uh as a first step on the ladder to get into the country to earn the money to then pay for their kids to go to college and do something else. So robotics is where I see uh the most growth in the in the short term. Censors, really interesting to know more about the environments, about you know how things are being done and more precision information and back to AI. But you know, how soon AI is for me is the five to ten year plan. We we obviously see it happening now, but I think we're gonna see an awful lot more of it in five years' time.
Ash Sweeting:Aidan, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. And before we go, is there anything else that you'd like to add that we haven't already discussed?
SPEAKER_02:There is actually. Um, I know I know uh I see you at lots of conferences as well. So having uh having heard uh some of my uh pontifications and uh and thoughts, what what what does the trigger in you?
Ash Sweeting:I'm meant to be the one who's asking the questions here, mate.
SPEAKER_02:That's uh this is the this is the end of it now. You're you're good. I I I get to throw one curveball back.
Ash Sweeting:Well, I think it's all about people at the end of the day, because as people are the customers, people are the ones who are um who actually have to make decisions. So how do you help people make decisions? How do you work with their cultural and social social um backgrounds and their their values? And you know, and you can't go head to head with people because as soon as you start telling them you know the the old kind of neocolonial, I'm right, you're wrong, um, has been proven not to work um at all. So I think in terms of you know, I go, I guess I go to throughout my my career, I've always found that the social and cultural political challenges have been more challenging or difficult than the technical and the financial ones. So how do you work with people to understand and empathize with them, understand what their fears are, what their risks are, um, to bring them along on those journeys, and then use the amazing technologies and tools we have to better understand the biology of the systems, um, so that you can tweak that in various different ways. Um, one area that I am particularly interested in or fascinated by is the whole epigenetic space, which is so gene expression, yeah, genetics is hard-coded. So you're born with whatever DNA and and but then how those genes are expressed is is not hard-coded. So, say a you can have singles, triplets, triplets, or twins. Um and there's a whole bunch of communications within the animal or within the cells that that instigate that people can be born with one colored eyes, and then after X number of years, their eyes change to a different color. Their DNA hasn't changed, but their gene expression has. So understanding how the different parts of ecosystems interact and communicate, I think, is really exciting because that gives us a way of tweaking things without actually having to change with the DNA. And where that's really exciting is especially with anything that's perennial, you plant an almond tree or an apple tree, or you have a cow, and that DNA is locked in the day you put that in the ground or the day the cow's grown. Um, whereas the weather and the climate and the environment, um, environmental conditions change. So if we understand those epigenetics, then we can manage that gene expression um to suit the climate at that particular time rather than being linked back to the decision that was made all those years ago when you start the process.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I really like that, Ash. And I think um I worked initially in nutrigenomics, which was just basic gene expression, the epigenetics idea, uh, or the idea that also we could be looking back multiple generations for some of these impacts is really, really important. Um, I I should, of course, have pointed out uh I should have plugged my book. I forgot to plug my book, so I do have a book called The Future of Agriculture, a free download on uh agritechcapital.com. But the the part that I didn't, and this is pointed out to me. I started working with Kin Cannon and Reed and Executive Search Group, and they pointed out to me I hadn't written enough about people, and it's absolutely true. All of what we've talked about today is going to change the people we need in agriculture, change the people we should be hiring, the change the people, how people should be trained, uh, what information, what knowledge they have when they come in. That that that's going to be another massive piece. Uh, it's not going to be always traditional skills. In fact, it shouldn't be traditional skills, and certainly should be people from much more varied, diverse background. Um, that that that's going to be a critical part of making sure that these innovations are sticky, that they're accepted, and and that we that we make the progress that we're talking about today.
SPEAKER_00:Aidan, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you very much for joining me.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks, Anch.
Ash Sweeting:Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02:Look forward to seeing you at the next meeting.
Ash Sweeting:You've been listening to the AshCloud with me, Ash Sweeting in conversation with Aidan Connolly. If you've enjoyed listening to this conversation, please subscribe to AshCloud, where we'll be continuing to discuss the environmental, food security, social, cultural, and political challenges facing our food systems.