Agri-EPI is involved in a wide range of projects in the agriculture sector. Our project management team are there for you and are committed to supporting you and your team from concept right through to successful delivery.
We asked our Project Manager, Naomi Smitten, a few questions about what it’s like to be a Project Manager with Agri-EPI Centre.
Read on to find out more!
What are your main responsibilities?
I am a qualified Project Manager and I coordinate several projects for Agri-EPI Centre, which are made up of experts from all industries focused on, but not limited to, Agriculture.
Who is involved?
Most of the companies that are involved in our projects are already operating organisations and/or universities, who don’t necessarily have the time or skill set to align a project. This is where I come in.
What’s your typical day like?
My typical day usually involves communicating with partners on a project and ensuring that as a consortium we are tracking. Other things that I could be doing are:
I am based at the Centre’s Hub in Newport, Shropshire. Here we hire out venue space, workshop bays, office space and provide incubation services, which takes up some of my time as projects often hire a workshop to carry out project tasks.
What do you love about your job?
Every day is different. No two projects are the same. You have to start all over again at the start of a new project; meet a new team; learn about another area of the industry; assess a different method of working and apply best practice throughout.
The objective is to provide an initial monitoring test facility to validate best-of-breed British technologies that have potential to significantly improve agricultural output in Paraguay.
The challenge lies in gathering individual production measures on batches of livestock (remotely) and assessing treatment interventions that may boost productive capacity, such as daily weight gain.
Big data to improve beef and dairy productivity in New Zealand
A current project funded by the NZ Ministry for Primary Industries, and involving industrial partners in both New Zealand and the UK, including Abacus Bio, Dairy NZ and Defra, is helping to increase understanding of the impact of beef and dairy production on greenhouse gas production, and therefore how to reduce the environmental impacts of these sectors and improve their sustainability.
This study is to research and evaluate current and future communications and safety systems that will be required for off-road vehicles to operate in compliance with safety
regulations in on-road situations. Commercially available sensing packages will be evaluated and subsequently the most applicable will be integrated and tested on pre-existing autonomous agricultural vehicles.
To enhance the performance and nurture young researchers to develop their career in data driven precision agriculture and exploration of opportunities for further career development.
Agri-EPI Centre provides access to data driven precision agriculture eco system by providing resources such as agriculture knowledge, data and best practice example of precision agriculture in place on commercial farms.
With the support of industry leading partners and academia, Agri-EPI Centre is working to develop an early warning system for tail biting in pigs; a significant health and welfare challenge in pig production.
There is currently no tool on the market specifically for credit providers to track crop performance and enable them to actively engage with their investment. Credit providers will have the ability to monitor their investment and in turn affect the outcome of the yield via the delivery of agronomic knowledge therefore improving their potential return and the prospects of the farmer.
This large-scale collaborative project aims to integrate satellite data with the UK’s most comprehensive soil datasets from Cranfield Uni and JHI to produce a ‘precision soil map’. The resultant map would present an economically viable alternative to the current labour-intensive methodology of soil surveying and represents a very exciting opportunity for arable and vegetable farming to embrace precision farming.
On 6 October, we bring together the brightest minds during our Annual Conference. Industry expert Phil Wilkinson will join us as panellist for Session 4 'Agri-food Supply Chain, Retailer, Processor ... and Consumer Perspectives on AgriTech' More info: https://agri-epicentre.com/agri-tech-connect-2020/ #virtual
