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Agri-EPI Centre announces agreement to develop agri-tech with Morocco

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Agri-EPI Centre has announced a significant agreement with Morocco’s agri-innovation agency to develop agri-tech innovation.

Agri-EPI, the precision farming specialists, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the agency, Pôle Digital de l’Agriculture, at SIAM, Morocco’s international agriculture exhibition, at which the United Kingdom is guest of honour.

The MOU commits both parties to work together to identify the main challenges facing farming in Morocco and align potential UK agri-innovations and collaborations to resolve them. The parties will facilitate mutual market access for agri-tech testing and provision, and identify opportunities for research and development, including on-farm trials.

SIAM is taking place in Meknes from 2-7 May, with Agri-EPI Centre and members and collaborators, Continental Engineering, Alvatech and the University of Bedfordshire demonstrating their technology and taking part in panel sessions on water scarcity, agri-tech and machinery, and research and development. Agri-EPI Centre is on a pavilion hosted by the Department of Business and Trade Team from the British Embassy in Morocco.

Jane Lycett, Agri-EPI Centre international business development manager, said:

“The scope for the UK and Morocco to address critical challenges for sustainable food production is enormous, and we are looking forward greatly to working with our colleagues at the Pôle Digital.

“The SIAM event is an excellent platform to showcase the UK’s world-leading agri-tech developments to Morocco and to the many other countries represented there. Morocco’s appetite for agricultural innovation and technology development is huge. The Agri-EPI Centre staff, members and collaborators attending SIAM have greatly beneficial expertise in crop technology, water management and irrigation.”

 

NOTES TO EDITORS

 

According to the MOU, Agri-EPI Centre and the Pôle Digital de l’Agriculture will:

· Work together to identify the main challenges facing the agriculture sector in Morocco. Align potential UK agri-tech solutions and facilitate UK/Morocco collaborations to address these.

· Facilitate Moroccan agri-tech providers UK market-entry through accessing Agri EPI Centre’s facilities, expertise, networks and wider UK business support mechanisms.

· Seek to address any barriers to the adoption of agri-tech in Morocco. Support UK companies to collaborate in-country to trial, test and adapt relevant agri-technologies to suit the specific challenges and farming systems. Demonstrate their impact to showcase the benefits of agri-tech adoption to the wider farming community.

· Jointly assist those operating in the Moroccan agri-tech ecosystem to identify R&D collaboration and commercial opportunities in the UK.

· Through working with Pôle Digital, identify key collaborators in the Moroccan agri-tech ‘ecosystem’ – including industry bodies, academia, centres of excellence, research institutes and farmers – with an interest in, and infrastructure in place, to conduct on-farm trials and participate in collaborations with agri-technology companies.

 

For more information on SIAM, please visit: SIAM 15th Edition 2023 | International Exhibition of Agriculture in Morocco (salon-agriculture.ma)

International collaboration in agri-tech

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Agri-EPI’s Business Development Manager, Duncan Ross, spoke at The Argentinian Embassy in London along with Agri-EPI Centre members: Ian Beecher-Jones from JoJo’s Vineyard, Marc Jones, Business Director at Antobot, and Emil Endres, Operations Engineer from Outfield Technologies, as part of the dissemination activity from the two Viticulture projects funded by Innovate UK and EIT Food.  They demonstrated the use of drone and robotic technology and the potential benefits to the viticulture sector to a delegation of visitors from the wine growing Mendoza region of Argentina, and the wider British Argentinian Chamber of Commerce. Agri-EPI’s Communications Officer, Tatiana Boyle, supported with the Spanish translation for the tech in viticulture video shown to the delegation.

This visit follows a trip to Argentina by Duncan and Agri-EPI’s Head of Crops, Claire Hodge, where they attended workshops related to the current state of UK Agri-Tech, and a conference on biofilms near Cordoba. They then travelled to Rosario to meet with numerous Agri-Tech businesses in the area to gain an understanding of Argentinian Agri-Tech, before finally visiting “Glimax” a company that researches and validates Agri-Tech from all parts of the globe to make tech adoption recommendations to their farmer clients in the agronomy side of their business.

Duncan said:

“This was a fantastic opportunity facilitated by the Department of International Trade, to build on the links we are developing with Argentinian contacts both in the UK and in country. I envisage future opportunities for Argentinian Agri-Tech companies to use Agri-EPI Centre hubs as landing pads, and for UK Agri-Tech companies to explore opportunities abroad.”

 

         

Agri-EPI hosts agri-tech focused tour for New Zealand delegation

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This month Agri-EPI hosted a visit from Callaghan Innovation and Agritech New Zealand.

Beginning with a visit to one of their satellite farms, Kaiapoi Farm, farmer Robert Hodgkins showcased his new sheep dairy and discussed the realities of farming in the UK and opportunities for deployment of agri-tech.

Agri-EPI works with an extensive network of real commercial farms and research facilities in the UK and internationally, offering a platform through which innovators can verify the effectiveness of their new idea or technology in practice.Their farm network is key to connecting farmers with technology developers, advancing the adoption of agri-tech and enhancing the sustainability of farm businesses.

The next leg of the visit involved a tour of Agri-EPI’s new Agri-informatics building at Cranfield University and the shared Agri-EPI Centre and Crop Health & Protection – CHAP phenotyping glasshouse facility, a superb asset for companies to use for R&D and trials. They were joined there by representatives from the university, CHAP, and Innovate UK.

With a stopover to UK Dairy Day, they watched Agri-EPI members at MilktechNZ showcase their award winning CR-1 electronic cup removers, followed by a visit to Harper Adams University where Hands Free Farm demonstrated their autonomous combine harvester in action.

The final stop was Agri-EPI’s Midlands Agri-tech Innovation Hub where networking and discussions around UK funding and the potential for future collaboration took place.

Jane Lycett, International Business Development Manager at Agri-EPI, who coordinated the visit, said:

“It was great to host an inward mission of innovative agri-tech companies, led by Callaghan Innovation and Agritech New Zealand. The visit provided an opportunity to showcase a number of Agri EPI Centre’s facilities and expertise and discuss areas for future collaboration between UK and New Zealand.”

Specialising in connecting knowledgeable experts and new solutions across the agricultural sectors, Agri-EPI aims to help deliver profitable and sustainable cutting-edge technologies to market.

 

   

Paraguay SMART Farm Project: Adapting Origin Digital’s Contour Platform to the South American Climate

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Agri-EPI Centre has been leading the Innovate UK-supported SMART Farm project in Paraguay since January 2018. It has involved partnering with a farming business to demonstrate UK agri-tech in the agricultural economy of Paraguay.

The farming business, GVASA in San Pedro, spans 85,000 hectares and incorporates cattle, maize, soybean and rice production enterprises. This phase of the SMART Farm project has focused on implementing Origin Digital’s Contour platform across GVASA’s arable fields, providing the farmer with in-depth soil health information, effective crop growth models, and enabling variable rate application.

Origin has worked collaboratively with Agri-Epi and Innovate UK to gather information on 6927 hectares of field boundaries and cropping information in Paraguay. Management zones were created over 1,661 of these hectares using soil brightness technology, and 589.6 had precision zonal sampling done on them for nutrient analysis.

Using crop growth model rulesets developed for Africa, the team were able to deploy these models in Paraguay with high levels of accuracy. Minor localisation of the models further increased the accuracy confirming the localisable value. These models include crop growth stage and yield predictors.

“The African models showed a strong correlation with actual South American yields , says Dan Wood at Origin Digital.

“And accuracy improved further when adjustments were made to the models to begin localising them further to South America, showing that our crop growth models can be successfully deployed in this geography.”

A particularly useful outcome is variable rate fertiliser recommendations, which can lead to significant cost savings, increased soil health, and improved efficiencies, yield and profitability.

“It has been a pleasure to manage the Paraguay SMART Farm project, particularly facilitating Origin Digital’s successful adaption of the Contour platform to the South American climate,” says Emily Laskin, farms technical coordinator at Agri-EPI.

“Seeing British technology provide efficiency and sustainability benefits to farming practices internationally shows us how we can make a difference and is a source of pride for the entire team at Agri-EPI.”

The economic outcome of introducing UK technology means more profitable farming systems, reduced environmental footprint and improved economic sustainability.

 

Read more:

Paraguay case study

Jane Lycett joins Agri-EPI Centre

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Jane Lycett has joined the Agri-EPI Centre team as our new International Business Development Manager.

Born on a Shropshire dairy farm, Jane graduated from the Agriculture Department at Reading University. She worked in dairy sales before pursuing a career in business support, funding and inward investment. For the past decade she has worked with the Department for International Trade, initially based in the British Embassy in Paris and then in the UK, to work for DIT’s Investment Services Team. More recently she worked as their Agri-food Specialist.

Through her role with DIT, Jane worked closely with the Agri-EPI Centre, and since joining the AEC team as International Business Development Manager last month, has continued to develop international relationships and identify collaboration opportunities with overseas partners. This includes leading on the International SmartFarm initiative to support efficient and sustainable approaches to farming and food production across a range of countries, working with UK agri-tech innovators.

“I’m looking forward to identifying opportunities to deploy world class UK agri-tech expertise overseas and also collaborate with companies from other part of the globe – working with the hugely talented and dedicated team at Agri EPI Centre” – Jane Lycett, International Business Development Manager at Agri-EPI Centre

Swiss crop electrophysiology specialist Vivent is a registered B Corporation™

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The ‘Fitbit of plants’, Vivent’s PhytlSigns device, the first commercial crop health diagnostic system based on plant electrophysiology, has been certified as a B Corp – a Certified Benefit Corporation – after meeting rigorous social and environmental standards which represent its commitment to do business in a meaningful way, by pursuing purpose as well as profit. Vivent’s technology leads to increased yields, improved crop protection effectiveness, and encourages the adoption of environmentally preferable protection solutions – so more food, less chemicals. With recertification every three years, Vivent has embarked on a process that aims at ever higher standards and continuous improvement.     

The B Corp Certification covers the whole business – five key impact areas of Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers. The certification process is rigorous, the company has to score over 80 points and provide evidence of socially and environmentally responsible practices – including energy supplies, waste and water use, worker compensation, diversity and corporate transparency. To complete the certification, Vivent had to legally embed their commitment to purpose beyond profit in their company articles. Vivent scored 101.7 in its overall B impact score. 50.9 is the median for ordinary uncertified businesses.

Vivent is now part of a community of over 4500+ businesses globally who have certified as B Corps. The B Corp Community is reflective of the global economy with businesses from a cross section of industries and sizes. These include well-known brands like innocent, Patagonia, Alpro, Triodos Bank, Alessi, and Ecoalf. Recent attention on the agriculture and agritech sectors makes Vivent’s B Corp Certification a notable step, and signals a shift towards greater accountability and transparency. Vivent joins Swiss agritech companies Ecorobotix and CleanGreens as well as 60 other Swiss B Corps.

Carrol Plummer, CEO of Vivent says: “The B Corp certification has been a goal of Vivent’s since its inception. The process was tough, but fair and really helped us to work on many aspects of organization management including our sustainability objectives and streamlining our mission.”

Jonathan Normand, Founder and CEO of B Lab™ Switzerland : “We are very pleased to welcome Vivent to the B Corp community.  As an innovative technology serving agriculture and research, we welcome their commitment to accelerate the transition in a collaborative approach to a resilient and stakeholder economy.”

There are currently 745 certified B Corps in Europe and 4500+ worldwide. Other agriculture and food industry B Corps include Ynsect, AppHarvest, Danone Canada, and Aerofarms.

About Vivent: 

Vivent was founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneurs Carrol Plummer and Dr. Nigel Wallbridge, who have now applied their information processing and telecommunication system skills to biological networking, with an initial focus on crop monitoring. The pair have worked with leading agricultural institutes, universities, crop protection companies and growers to validate this innovative approach. Vivent’s focus is on high-capital indoor growing operations with plans to move into high-value outdoor crops and then into large volume field crops. More information is available at www.vivent.ch 

About B Lab Switzerland

B Lab Switzerland is the Swiss branch of the global non-profit B Lab. B Lab is transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities and the planet. As a leader in economic systems change, its global network creates standards, policies and tools for business. In addition, it certifies companies – known as B Corps – that are leading the way. To date, the community includes over 4,500 B Corps in 77 countries and 153 industries, over 8,000 benefit corporations, and 150,000 companies managing their impact with B Impact Assessment and SDG Action Manager.

For further information contact: team@agri-epicentre.com

 

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