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UK-LATAM Agri-tech collaboration strengthened on visit from Agri-EPI and CIEL

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Agri-EPI and CIEL embarked on a trip to Argentina and Brazil over the last few weeks to help strengthen LATAM-UK agri-tech collaboration. Agri-EPI’s International Business Development Manager, Jane Lycett and Head of Agri-Tech (Dairy), Robert Morrison, along with Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock’s Head of Innovation, Dr. Mark Young, met with representatives at Hub4 Agroinnovacion, where they were given a comprehensive overview of Argentine agriculture and agri-tech innovation – including a fascinating insight into circular farming systems being applied to beef production and a visit to Seed Matriz.

Jane Lycett sat on a panel session at the BCR Agtech Forum, hosted by Ingrid Drago from Bolsa de Comercio de Rosario. At the Congreso Aapresid (Argentine No Till Farmers Association), they saw some of the latest developments in Argentine agri-tech.

With Movimiento CREA they agreed some practical steps towards supporting UK agri-tech companies to make an impact in Argentina and identified world class tech solutions from Argentina which can help to address UK farming challenges. This culminated in signing a MoU to formalise Agri-EPI’s commitment to collaborate.

The week in Argentina was wrapped up at The British Embassy in Buenos Aires to agree next steps, working closely with the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Department for Business and Trade.

The Brazil leg included visits to AgTech Garage, Embrapa’s research farms and Cubo.network with AgriTIERRA’s founder, Mark Jarman.

Jane said:

“There is so much potential for sharing best practices and knowledge in both directions between the UK and Brazil, which will be the focus of a series of company exchange visits that Agri-EPI will facilitate and host later this year.

“We are thrilled to embark on this journey of collaboration and innovation. By connecting the vibrant agri-tech communities of Argentina, Brazil, and the UK, we aim to accelerate the development and adoption of cutting-edge solutions that will drive sustainable agricultural practices and enhance food security on a global scale.”

The Agri-EPI team looks forward to strengthening existing partnerships and forging new connections that will propel the agri-tech sector towards a more sustainable and resilient future. The journey signifies an important step towards creating a global network of agri-tech innovators, researchers, and businesses that will work together to address common challenges and leverage emerging opportunities.

Agri-EPI welcomes new Academic Partnerships Manager, Wendy Hewitson

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Agri-EPI Centre has welcomed on board a new Academic Partnerships Manager to their team, Wendy Hewitson.

Wendy has a diverse background, with twenty years experience within the retail sector, followed by a further twelve years at Barclays, where she spent the last five as the AgriTech programme manager for Barclays Eagle Labs.

Wendy was one of the founders of the AgriTech Industry vertical for Barclays Eagle Labs, where she created and oversaw the delivery of many successful accelerators, events and industry focussed support material and programmes. She helped support much of the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem throughout all areas of the food supply chain.

Wendy is passionate and highly effective at enabling knowledge transfer, sharing collaboration and growth opportunities with both agritech/agrifood innovators and key industry players within the UK.

Wendy said:

‘’I’m so excited to join Agri-EPI Centre. I’m hoping to help strengthen a collegiate approach between the expertise within academia, the innovative ecosystem, and the breadth of expertise that Agri-EPI centre provides to support the transition and transformation of the agricultural supply chain towards net zero.

The agricultural sector and food supply chain is an ever-changing environment, impacted daily by climatic, political, and societal pressures. It has such a breadth of un-tapped opportunities and capabilities. Having seen how technology, innovation, and collaboration has grown over the last five years I really see this as an opportunity to continue to broaden engagement and collaboration both nationally and globally.”

Putting farmers at the centre of innovation

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Agri-EPI Centre has enlisted a network of farms spread throughout the UK to participate in the Agri-EPI Farm Network.

Why a network of commercial farmers?

The innovation farm network was developed by Agri-EPI from the desire to “close the gap” between research and the end-user, by creating a platform to host research projects and evaluate developing technology in a commercial farm environment, rather than in a simulated or research environment. Each farm has technology deployed to measure variance at every stage of production, understand inefficiencies within the system, and inform the agri-tech industry to direct their research to those areas. The goal is to ensure technology is developed to be robust and relevant to meet the challenges and requirements of the end users.

The network is diverse, comprising different farming systems, sectors, sizes and business structures producing a range of agricultural commodities, all equipped with the latest precision sensor technologies that are purpose-built to measure your agricultural innovation. We provide a set of services to assist in the creation of agri-tech products through either commercial or grant funded projects. We assist in the development process through a combination of a strong technical team and a world class set of equipment and facilities. Our innovation services include validation, full use requirement and analysis, data collection and interrogation, market insight and analysis, sustainability analysis, economic modelling with the focus of ensuring agri-tech solutions will have a positive impact on-farm.

Lorenzo Conti, Founder & Managing Director at Crover, said:

“The Agri-EPI Centre has been our first and main partner for on farm demonstration projects. Being able to access a variety of commercial farm sites for testing and demonstration from early on and getting feedback from some of the country’s most innovative farmers about what works and what doesn’t has been invaluable for us.

Like every new technology, it is ultimately only as good as the value perceived by the end users, and the Agri-EPI Centre’s leadership in Knowledge Exchange and dissemination activities has also meant that we have been able to refine and deliver the message to farmers and grain storage operators and created a regular stream of inbound requests.

We are glad to see Agri-EPI’s team and footprint grow at a similar pace to our own business so as to be able to support agricultural innovation projects at more stages and geographies.

For any public-funding-backed innovation project in the UK, partnering up with the Agri-EPI Centre is a no-brainer!”

Read more below:

Farm offer brochure

Footbathing to treat lameness in dairy farming

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Lameness is recognised as the primary animal welfare issue in dairy farming. Nationally, 25% of dairy cows are lame at any one time. Although it has multiple causes, the key factor in most herds is endemic diseases, such as digital dermatitis, sole ulcers, and white line disease. Early detection and prompt intervention is critical to effective control and treatment of lameness, which costs farmers in excess of £300 per case. Many hoof lesions, especially relating to digital dermatitis, are visible prior to lameness developing but can be difficult to see in practice and require specialist training to diagnose.

The Hoofcount footbath was developed and introduced to the UK market in 2012. Designed with simplicity in mind, it now has a sustained reputation in the UK as the Market leader in Effective and Reliable Footbathing.

The UWE academic team collaborating on the Hoofcount project is led by Dr Wenhao Zhang of the Centre for Machine Vision. Wenhao’s team are working on developing and integrating machine vision technology and AI software for hoof disease detection. Their aim is to realise algorithms, able to capture, filter, and analyse hoof images several times daily in a non-invasive way, to detect hoof issues in the earliest stages and to monitor for changes. Experiments and tests are being conducted in several UK dairy farms.

 

Read more below:

Hoofcount case study

Agri-tech solutions for sustainable farming

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At Agri-EPI Centre, we help to develop robust and commercially viable solutions to empower more sustainable farms. From bespoke validation trials to system and product development, we are a collaborator of choice for agri-tech developers, start-ups through to established companies.

We are open to new projects and partnerships that use agri-tech in both funded and private research which are focused on the health and welfare of soil, crops and animals in order to:

• increase efficiency

• enhance environmental sustainability

• ensure productivity and farm business sustainability

We provide a set of services to assist in the creation of agri-tech products through either commercial or grant funded projects. We assist in the development process through a strong technical team combining with a world class set of equipment and facilities.

Balancing productivity with environmental and business sustainability is a challenge at farm level, which will only become more scrutinised. We believe healthy soils provide a foundation for a resilient agri-food sector.

Relevant and affordable agri-tech has a part to play in supporting a sustainable farming system, whether its software to automate data capture, manage inputs and outputs for better decision making or hardware to optimise current processes, increase efficiencies, reduce emissions and provide precision application.

Agri-EPI is here to help with your tech development and offers the following resources.

Read more below:

Sustainable farming brochure

Spectral imaging for the agriculture industry

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Spectral imaging as a general concept combines characteristics of imaging and spectroscopy technologies. Optical spectral imaging particularly makes use of visible, near infrared and short-wave infrared spectral range, has been demonstrated to be a very powerful tool in identifying, classifying, and mapping specific targets across whole scenery image in various application scenarios.

Spectral Imaging is especially useful in the agricultural domain, where crop/vegetation in different conditions has unique spectral characteristics. With more robust and rugged imaging product integrated with various platforms, agri-tech has been undertaking revolutionary improvements for remote sensed inspection. Multispectral imaging, hyperspectral imaging, and SIF (solar-induced fluorescence) imaging can be broadly derived depending on spectral bands and resolution needed.

Eliot Dixon, Head of Engineering at Agri-EPI Centre said:
“We have established a strong sensing team within the company, able to deploy a range of spectral imagers into agriculture including some exciting unique capabilities. With our contextual farm data, storage facilities and analysis tools this is a key data service for developers which is available to all.”

Multispectral Imaging
The advantage of multi-spectral imaging is that it extends human sight sensitivity beyond visible spectrum. Some wavelengths that are widely recognized for particular applications, such as normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI), can be deployed into multi-spectral imaging. Nonetheless, it has been proven to be very useful in many other fields, greatly empowering advancement of agriculture. And the adoption of UAV has made it possible to make large-scale mapping and thus better agricultural management.

Agri-EPI Centre has invested MicaSense Altum sensor covering RGB, NIR, Red Edge and LWIR, which can be operated easily on VTOL UAV platform.

With this multi-spectral imaging system, several important vegetation indexes such as red edge, NDVI, can be quickly collected and mapped across survey fields.

Hyperspectral Imaging
Hyperspectral imaging captures images at hundreds of wavelengths, creating a detailed spectral signature of objects and materials. Compared to multispectral imagery, hyperspectral imagery measures energy in narrower and more numerous bands, thus giving much more information on target. Hyperspectral image data is a datacube, where each pixel holds full spectrum across the range. Since spectra are as unique as ‘fingerprint’ to target, hyperspectral imagery can unveil features that multispectral may miss out.

Agri-EPI Centre has invested in a range of hyperspectral imaging systems. Read below for more:

Spectral imaging brochure

Tag Archive for: farming

Agri-EPI Farm Walk: Stratton Farms

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Agri-EPI invites you to attend an on-farm day at Stratton Farms in Stratton-on-the-Fosse , Somerset on the 1st of November 10am-2.30pm.,,

There are a limited number of tickets available, and we will be accepting registration on a first-come, first-serve basis

This event will be hosted by Rob Addicott, Farmer at Manor Farm and Jeremy Padfield, Farmer at Rookery Farm and will include an introduction to both farms, a farm walk at both farms, and a networking lunch for all attendees.

 

About Stratton Farms:

Stratton Farms is a joint venture business between Rob Addicott and Jeremy Padfield formed when the two family farms gave up dairying in 2000. The subsequent increase in the arable area across the two farms required a significant investment in upgrading machinery which they decided to do jointly across the combined area to capitalise on the economies of scale, the benefits of which are significant in an arable enterprise.

Although the farms have retained their independence in specific areas such as rearing beef cattle and sheep as well as renovating traditional farm buildings for commercial use, Stratton Farms has extended its arable business considerably through contract farming arrangements around the village of Stratton-on-the-Fosse. The farms also have heavy involvement with environmental stewardship and around 10% of the land is under conservation management through HLS and ELS agreements.

Jeremy’s independent beef enterprise consists of.300 cattle, all heifers mostly Belgian Blue X and some Angus X. They are bought in as 3-4 week old calves from local dairies. and will often top cattle numbers up with bought in stock from the local market.

Rob’s sheep enterprise consists of a100 Charollais Sired Breeding females, all male lambs are finished on farm and sold through the local market.

 

Agenda:

10am- Arrival, tea/coffee and breakfast roll at Manor farm

10:30am- Introduction from Ross Robertson Head of Mixed at Agri-EPI, followed by an overview from Robert Addicott about Manor Farm

10.45am- Farm Walk including overviews from Dan Lamb from DroneAg and Taylored Agri, presenting the Cropscan system

11.45am- Transport from Manor Farm to Rookery Farm

12pm- Introduction from Ross Robertson Head of Mixed at Agri-EPI, followed by an overview from Jeremy Padfield about Rookery Farm

12.15pm- Farm walk including overviews from Ewen Wardman CEO of iLivestock and Julie Russell from Ritchies

1:15pm- Transport from Rookery Farm to Manor Farm

1:30pm- Lunch and networking at Manor Farm

2.30pm- Close

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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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