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Supporting modern farming methods and innovation in the UK and around the world. Agri-EPI explores and delivers precision farming engineering and technology across soil, crops and livestock.

Beta Bugs Secure £1.72M to scale up Sustainable Insect Farming

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Scottish insect genetics business, and Agri-EPI tenant, Beta Bugs Limited, has secured £1.72M investment to scale-up the production, scale and supply of its Black Soldier Fly eggs and larvae to the insect farming sector, as a suitable alternative to current sources of protein for animal feed.

 

The funding round was led by The TRICAPITAL Syndicate LLP, with participation from SIS Ventures, Scottish Enterprise, Beeches Group, Climate.vc, together with existing shareholders in the business and Innovate UK.

 

Based in Edinburgh, at Agri-EPI’s Northern Agri-Tech Innovation Hub, Beta Bugs has developed the UK’s first comprehensive selective breeding programme and egg production site for the Black Soldier Fly, which is farmed as an alternative protein source for use in aquaculture, pork, and poultry feed and can be reared on various waste streams, including agricultural and food waste.

 

Black Soldier Fly farming provides a green, circular, and regionally produced alternative to the environmentally damaging production of soy meal and fishmeal, one of the prime causes of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and overfishing. With the global population forecast to reach 9.7bn by 2050¹, livestock farming will require an additional 539m hectares of habitat using current conventional methods – equating to an area 44x the size of Scotland² – to produce the necessary protein to feed this growing population.

 

Although these insects have been farmed commercially for the past decade, Black Soldier Fly have not, until now, been genetically improved for large-scale production. By improving  Black Soldier Fly genetic performance and supplying it at commercially meaningful scales, Beta Bugs provides superior larvae with which insect producers can increase both protein yield and quality for animal feed, enabling it to eventually compete with soy and fishmeal on price.

 

Established in 2017 by CEO and Founder Thomas Farrugia, Beta Bugs is based in the Easter Bush Campus, Scotland – a centre of excellence for animal science and home to the Roslin Institute, renowned centre for animal genetics. The business currently employs a team of 12 and will be looking to recruit another 4 full-time commercial and technical staff over the coming months. As part of its growth plans, Beta Bugs has also appointed Chris Richards as Non-Executive Chair. Chris is a recognised veteran of the international agribusiness industry with broad experience of building science-based businesses into successful enterprises.

 

Thomas Farrugia, CEO and Founder of Beta Bugs said:

“Beta Bugs has supplied its industry leading products to an increasing number of established and new entrant insect farmers in the UK and international markets. The company continues to develop its outstanding HiPer-Fly® breeding programme, which has demonstrated consistent increases in Black Soldier Fly genetic performance across multiple, economically valuable production traits. Completing this investment will allow us to expand production capacity, drive to profitability over the coming 18-24 months and further strengthen our market leadership position in the strategically important insect farming industry.”

 

Moray Martin, Managing Partner of The TRICAPITAL Syndicate said:

“Insect farming is increasingly seen as a sustainable alternative protein source that could help mitigate the predicted increase in protein demand over the coming decades. The significantly lower environmental impact of insect farming places the sector at the forefront of sustainable food source development.  In that context we are delighted to be able to support the acceleration of Beta Bugs to commercial scale.

 

Kerry Sharp, Director of Entrepreneurship and Investment at Scottish Enterprise, said:

“We have supported Beta Bugs through our high growth ventures team as well as financially and this recent investment will help the company fly high as it expands the team and continues to develop its sustainable and innovative insect protein solutions.

It’s a great example of a Scottish bio tech scale up providing value in the supply chain for the agriculture industry and with benefits for the economy and environment.”

 

Arran Dewar, Executive Director, SIS Ventures said:

“As the UK’s only insect genetics company, Beta Bugs is laying the foundation for a more sustainable global feed system. By creating jobs and diverting waste for its ground-breaking breeding programme, the business will deliver significant impact here in Scotland, with the potential to deliver even greater impact globally as the business grows and scales. We’re very happy to welcome Thomas and the team into the SIS Ventures portfolio and look forward to helping them achieve their impact goals.”

 

AIA Agri-Tech Investment Advisory service expands staff

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AIA has expanded its staff with the appointment of Jos Lovegrove-Fielden to the role of Investment Advisory Manager.

Jos joins AIA from PwC’s London practice where he oversaw audit, assurance and advisory services to a range of venture capital, private equity and investment management clients. He is also a partner in his family’s dairy farm in Shropshire.

AIA, an agri-tech investment advisory service, was launched in September 2022 to bridge the gap between investors and innovative agri-food start-ups. It combines expertise in capital raising transactions with the sector expertise, asset base and network of its parent, Agri-EPI Centre.

Joining Agri-EPI Centre, Jos Lovegrove-Fielden said:

“Innovative tech is key to enabling agriculture to respond to the macro challenges and disruptions that it faces. The commercial and investment opportunities that will flow from this are enormous, as will be the impact for people and planet more widely. I’m thrilled to play a part in supporting this transition with AIA.”

John Grealish, head of advisory at AIA, said:

“Jos brings the ideal combination of financial and investor experience, alongside a real world knowledge of farming.

“Since we launched AIA late last year we’ve found the scale of the opportunity has been overwhelmingly validated. Jos’s arrival will enable us to support more companies and more investors in achieving their ambitious goals, even in a challenging market.”

Agri-tech Investment Advisory Ltd is an Appointed Representative of Sapia Partners LLP, an entity which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

For more information about AIA, please follow this link.

Automation and robotics for agriculture at Agri-EPI Centre

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Agri-EPI, the centre for precision innovation in farming, is a first choice for agri-tech developers, from start-ups right through to established companies, to help with creating robust and commercially viable agricultural solutions.

Our team believes that it is vital that new agricultural technologies are both relevant and robust, build on well described initial design goals created from a strong understanding of the needs of farmers and their operations. If that is not done, then there will be delays in the development of the product and eventually quality, which will have ongoing negative effects on the trust of farmers in the product. Short testing cycles compound that problem, so the data used to design and build the systems needs to be of very high quality.

Our offer
Agri-EPI offers a wide-ranging set of facilities, equipment, and services. Our farm network is a key part of this, enabling the testing spaces and long-term interaction with farmers which we rely upon. Within the engineering team, we support the farm network and projects through our data engineering, data analysis and robotics specialisms.

Key resources include:

  • Multi-modal agricultural data
  • Spectral imaging and sensing
  • Agricultural data analysis
  • System simulation
  • Development / Robotic platforms
  • Data and robotics in agriculture consulting

Find out more here:

Engineering R&D brochure

Groundbreaking project to breed low-methane sheep

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A pioneering project to breed an ultra-low emission sheep is about to start in Hertfordshire.Precision-farming and innovation experts, Agri-EPI Centre are working with sheep-breeders, Rob and Jo Hodgkins of Kaiapoi Farm in Hertfordshire to measure emissions from a group of Romney rams and identify those that produce the least methane. The Hodgkins will select the rams with the lowest output and breed from them, creating youngstock which should also produce less methane.The project, funded by Innovate UK, builds on work already done on Romney sheep in New Zealand, which demonstrated that methane emission levels could be a heritable trait in sheep. The Kaiapoi flock has strong genetic links to the animals involved in that research project, and it is predicted that the flock’s methane production could be reduced by up to 25 per cent.SRUC will oversee in-field methane measurements by holding each animal in a portable accumulation chamber (PAC), collecting the gas it emits over the course of one hour, breaking it down by type and analysing it. The project will also examine increasing meat and wool yield with a view to reducing the amount of carbon produced per kilogramme of meat and wool (1.4kg of wool stores 1kg of carbon).

Ross Robertson, head of mixed farming at Agri-EPI Centre said:

“Methane emissions from livestock production are an important contributor to climate change, and farmers are under pressure to act. Innovative farmers like Rob and Jo could provide huge benefits to the UK and international sheep sector, and to the pursuit of sustainable food production.“Agri-EPI Centre conducts trials with farmers across the UK to test innovations and to learn about their current and anticipated needs. In the case of sheep, valuable rams with high estimated breeding values (EBVs) may still be producing high levels of methane, but if we can breed a demonstrable reduction into the system, the potential for climate change mitigation and for the economic health of the sector is very strong indeed.”

Rob Hodgkins from Kaiapoi Farm, said:

“This project is great because it demonstrates how livestock producers can be part of the solution to produce food sustainably rather than being the problem. It’s not the whole answer, obviously, but if we can cut methane emissions by 15% without reducing productivity and do so relatively quickly and cheaply, it would go some way.“A few people are looking at methane reduction in cows, but our sheep-breeding project is unique. Because sheep give birth to only one lamb or set of lambs each year, we need to take a relatively long-term view of the project, but I predict that within ten years, domestic and global commercial interest in low-methane livestock will be very high. By doing the work just now, we will be in a strong position to maintain our commercial advantage.“We are looking for that needle in the haystack: a low-methane, parasite-resistant sheep with a high growth rate and high lambing rates. As technology demonstrators, the more we breed successfully and test, the more we can determine the efficiencies gained by rearing cross-bred animals on a New Zealand system. There are hundreds of thousands of sheep this could be extended to across the UK.“In a few years sheep producers will be able to look at what we have done, what we have achieved in terms of methane reduction and, as a breed society, individual or collection of farmers consider this as an avenue that they can go down too.”

Case study

Collaboration essential for successful agri-robotics

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By: Eliot Dixon, Head of Engineering at Agri-EPI Centre

Robotics has several strong applications in agriculture, especially in scenarios where systems can enhance the productivity of a shrinking workforce or can offer production efficiencies to the farm. However, to be successful in these applications the systems created need be reliable, in terms of long-term physical robustness but also in the ability of their control software to handle the very wide variety of scenarios they will encounter in a farming environment. This means the robots must be both well designed and well tested to meet the needs of farmers. This includes a design which emphasises safety and reliability.

“Understanding user requirements and testing in-field is key”

Good design requires a deep understanding of the needs and requirements of farmers and their farming systems. This extends from the core values held by a farmer, such as safety, which dictate their decisions; through to very specific requirements created by the unique combination of their way of working and the land they work. If this understanding is not achieved for a farming system, then there is a very high chance that the eventual product will be unsuitable, either creating a failed product or a long development timeline to solve the deficiencies. Gaining this understanding should come through working with a wide variety of farms within the target market for the technology, not just a small handful. In many agricultural sectors this design stage is especially important due to the limited testing season and ability to iterate on the design.

Testing is also well understood to be important to creating a reliable product, and in agriculture this does require a close collaboration with farmers to ensure that the robot meets their needs. As these are complex machines, which are also often dangerous if not created with a strong safety process, the testing regime should also be rigorous enough to ensure that the system will function to the desired reliability for all the design requirements. A rigorous testing regime would usually require multiple tests for each requirement across multiple operational scenarios such as different weather conditions, soil types, dangers, failure modes, crops etc. Failure to complete this testing will certainly result in the robotic system encountering situations which it is unable to function within, which may create unfortunate repercussions for the user or manufacturer. Unfortunately, completing this massive number of tests requires a range of test facilities, some of which might be beyond the capability of a company focussing on a small range of agricultural applications.

In our 2021 hackathon we explore safety and security. Outcomes are discussed in our white paper here:

Hackathon white paper

As mentioned, good design and testing is essential to creating successful products, but this unfortunately comes with a high cost. Doing this for the wide range of complex operating scenarios in UK agriculture, as well as the short testing cycles, is driving up the cost of developing agricultural robots. There are a multitude of Agri-robotics companies in the UK creating their systems from almost the ground up, each of which are individually bearing the cost in time and money of this development. This creates barriers to adoption in terms of high costs, a limited set of operations which can be conducted by robots, or low reliability due to poor engineering, and is increasing the amount of time it takes for products to get to market. As in all development the saying “Good, Cheap, Fast. Pick two”, is very much in action here but some very pressing needs mean we must find ways to break that deadlock.

Collaboration enables future opportunities for robotic systems

The obvious solution for this deadlock is to massively increase collaboration between ag-robotics developers. This has been proposed for many years, but we are yet to see a viable solution to this. Direct collaboration is currently difficult for commercial reasons with developers competing for the same money, but also for technical reasons where it is challenging to share components between robots. Perhaps a solution for this is to build an ecosystem of adaptable, compatible, components and platforms which can be used to create a multitude of agricultural robotic systems. This ecosystem of components would also be able to be robustly tested to ensure reliability when integrated as part of a larger system. Thus, the costs of development would be increasingly shared, without any single robotics manufacturer losing income as they are all developing for specific agricultural niches. Using a set of well proven components would allow developers to focus on ensuring good understanding and design for specific problems in agriculture, while also allowing for easier integration and testing of the robots.

Robotics in agriculture is a promising field, and with the right design and testing, as well as collaboration between developers, it could be a great success. By understanding the needs and requirements of farmers and using that to create an ecosystem of components and platforms, robots can be developed which are high value, robust, reliable and safe. With the right approach, agricultural robotics could benefit farmers across the UK and worldwide. Read our robotics and automation article to understand more about how we can support you to develop a robust well tested solution through collaborative R&D today.

On-farm conference provides unique discussions around sustainability in farming

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Sustainability, technology, and innovation in farming were the focus of Agri-EPI Centre’s Annual Conference last month at Shimpling Park Farm in Suffolk. The event brought together over 100 guests from across the agriculture sector, from farmers and growers to tech developers, academics, and other sector representatives, for a day of discussions and networking.

The day, entitled ‘The path to sustainable farming continued: the role of precision technology’, began with introductions from host and farmer, John Pawsey, Agri-EPI’s CEO Dave Ross, and journalist and conference chair, Anna Jones.

Dave Ross said:

“It’s a relief to get back in person. There’s nothing better than actually meeting people face to face to have networking discussions, discuss the problems that are topical, and think about solutions to those problems.”

Fabia Bromovsky, Director of the Global Farm Metric at the Sustainable Food Trust took the floor as the conference’s keynote speaker to discuss the question: what exactly is sustainable farming? She explained that we lacked a common understanding and that where definitions exist, they often overlooked the interconnectedness and diversity of our farm systems.   She set out the need for a common language, a framework that recognises this holistic system and identifies where impact occurs.

She acknowledged the important role of technology to support farmers with this.  Farmers already collect lots of data, but with a consistent set of measures, in-common to all farm assessments, technology can provide solutions that make it easier to collect. Technology can enable farmers to protect their data, share data between consenting users, improve performance, and reduce time and costs.

She maintained the power of a common framework is it would provide a consistent baseline of data, the DNA of the farm, that can underpin supply chain transparency, green investment, and food labelling.  Governments, markets, and the financial sector can then reward producers who are delivering genuine benefit to the environment and public health and shift the balance of financial advantage towards more sustainable systems.

The farmer speakers were up next, with a panel made up of four of Agri-EPI’s innovation farmers, including Sophie Alexander from Hemsworth Farm, Jo Franklin from Kaiapoi Farm, John Pawsey from Shimpling Park Farm, and Ian Beecher-Jones from JoJo’s Vineyard.

They discussed the challenges within the agriculture sector including resilience to weather events, net zero goals, and price volatility, and how uncertainty in policy can affect the ability for some farmers to innovate as much as they would like to. Other topics discussed included how sustainability is inextricably linked to profitability, the need for a business mindset as a farmer, and the methods the farmers use to progress towards their sustainability goals.

The tech panel included developers Howard Wu from Antobot, Jack Wrangham from DroneAg, Jim Wilson from SoilEssentials, and James Brown from Earth Rover. Their discussions centred around how to make technology accessible to farmers, how to better understand farmers’ priorities for innovation, and how to attract more youth to agriculture with the use of technology.

Lastly, bridging the gap between the farmers and the tech developers, the final speaker panel included Calum Murray, Head of Agriculture & Food at Innovate UK and Agri-EPI speakers including CEO, Dave Ross, CTO, Trisha Toop, and Head of Engineering, Eliot Dixon.

Calum Murray explained:

“What we do at Innovate UK is try to make things happen that wouldn’t normally go ahead. First and foremost, we have to understand what the challenges are. We need to identify those areas that will deliver the greatest impact and give us value for money and give value to the UK economy”.

Dave Ross said:

“We are in an industry that has huge challenges and huge opportunities.”

The speaker sessions were followed by a networking lunch and farm tour around Shimpling Park Farm headed by John Pawsey.

John explained:

“We’ve been using the Skippy Scout Drone. There’s a huge amount to be looking at and I have to say, huge thanks to Agri-EPI and to Skippy Scout, because even though we can actually physically go out and look at all those things ourselves, because it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort to go out and get that data, if you have a drone that can go out and get it for you, then why wouldn’t you do that?”

Guests were thrilled to be back in person discussing sustainability within the food supply chain, agri-tech solutions, and innovation in farming.

Ian Beecher-Jones said:

“I think today was very much about the grower, very much about the farmer.”

Calum Murray said:

“It’s been terrific to get back on farm and hear first-hand exactly what farm businesses are having to face.”

Agri-EPI Centre is the UK’s leading centre for precision innovation in farming. They help to deliver profitable and productive solutions to empower more sustainable farms and specialise in connecting knowledgeable experts and new solutions across the agricultural sectors.

Get in touch about opportunities at team@agri-epicentre.com

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Registered office: Agri-EPI Centre Midlands Agri-Tech Innovation Hub, Poultry Lane, Edgmond Newport, England, TF10 8JZ
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