New knowledge transfer paradigm: A whole brain at a time

Sometimes, we all need the help of a critical friend, to point out home truths and be our devil’s advocate. That is the intention of what follows here.

For any business or sector of business to remain vibrant, innovative and competitive, dead wood needs to be cleared and replaced with vigorous new growth. In the worlds of hairdressing or fast food take-aways, motor repairs or corner shops, this is a fairly simple matter: Those not good enough to be able to pay their bills go out of business; and the barriers to entry are low enough to allow ambitious start-ups to have a go in their place. One consequence of this is that knowledge transfer, and the improvement it creates, happens automatically and in the most effective way there is…a whole brain at a time.

The contrast in farming is illustrated on two facing pages of the 19^th November Farmers Guardian (FG) and couldn’t be more stark. On page six is the Princes Rural Action Programme to reduce the number of dairy farmers leaving the industry. Put this another way, it seeks to keep current farmers farming, regardless of whether this is deserved, by benchmarking costs through Dairyco’s Milkbench+ service and working with experts to reduce costs and improve performance. All very laudable too, until you see on the facing page a story from the NFU Tenants’ Conference where, according to FG, president Kendall said that for the industry to change with the times, ‘the best people’ were needed to meet the challenge of producing more and impacting less. By now, you will see the dead wood and new growth metaphor I hope?

Let’s face the fact that farming has become more or less a closed shop, with a sitting elite (tenants and owner-occupiers alike) being helped to preserve their occupancy at the expense of potential new entrants…except that some of those in situ are not very elite at all. Why else would the same issue of FG need to carry an article titled “Simple steps to reduce forage, straw and concentrate wastage” containing advice from the first year of a dairy OND course. Moreover, farmers who do want to improve performance can surely avail themselves of Milkbench+ and experts without the help of a ‘programme’.

In a similar vein, the industry has numerous knowledge transfer teams working diligently to push knowledge upon farmers, regardless of whether they want it or can see its merits. How much easier would it be for the industry to open up genuinely to survival of the fittest (actually, I think Darwin said it was adaptability that really mattered rather than fitness)? Then, as opportunities open up for new entrants to take the places of those no longer adaptable or fit enough to earn their own survival, knowledge transfer can take place automatically, a whole brain at a time. For those who might feel threatened by such competition for places in the industry, it could be a whole lot worse; just spare a thought for corner shop proprietors with a new Bestco Local opening for business in the next street. Now that would test anyone’s survival skills.

Who is the psychopath or mother superior in your workplace?

In the popular press recently, it’s been suggested that some psychopathic tendencies are helpful in becoming a successful entrepreneur and boss. This prompts some thoughts about other must-have leaders in the ideal management team, for example: Handyman (production), cheer leader (advertising and promotion), bean-counter (numbers and solvency), preacher (sales), mother superior (training and employee well-being) and visionary (business strategy).

With 20:20 hindsight, a business in which I was involved during the nineties and early noughties had most of these, but crucially not all. It did have some vision and direction, a brilliant numbers/solvency-protection wizard, reasonable sales and promotion, and a modicum of employee nurturing. What let it down was variable production efficiency.

For the most part, those involved in production were perfectly capable, well intentioned and committed. But what we lacked was an enforcer; an occasionally slightly psychopathic nutter of whom everyone, management team members included, was a bit scared; someone who didn’t need to be loved by their colleagues.

All successful enterprises need someone with authority who is willing to say, “That just isn’t good enough; please do something about it by tomorrow/next week/next month”…then check whether remedial work has been done and dispense praise or sanctions accordingly. Also for success, other managers need to emulate this example. For those to whom this doesn’t come naturally (most of us?), demonstrating good discipline and insisting on it from subordinates needs to be an explicit element of their job description and training. In contemporary society, it seems that the value of good discipline has slipped down the pecking order in favour of compassion, human rights, and freedom of choice. We mustn’t make this mistake in business.

As it turned out, the business in which I was involved remained solvent throughout, gave good client service fairly consistently, and provided employment for several dozen people over its 13 year existence before its orderly, all-taxes-and-debts-paid, closure. But it never ripped up the tarmac financially, and the component missing from this drag-racer was an enforcer of good discipline and good disciplines. While I don’t pretend the management team line-up above is complete or perfect, I hope you agree that all those roles are essential. To end on two of my favourite clichés*, ‘there are no bad soldiers, just bad generals’; and ‘the fish rots from the head’. [*cliché: a very short distance between two minds].

Let the fight back begin with launch of farming’s own pressure group

This is great news for UK agribusiness and an initiative behind which, I hope you agree, people and companies in the industry ought to throw their weight. This is, of course, the launch of the UK Farmer and Grower Alliance (UKFGA) – an unprecedented coalition of about 50 (yes, fifty!) farming bodies.

As you may know, its overall objective is to enhance consumer trust of farming’s role in food production. The alliance wants consumers to know that farmers share their values. But rather than just preaching what it wants the public to know about farming’s woes, UKFGA claims to be committed to answering people’s questions about how food is produced.

In doing so, it will take the opportunity, of course, to emphasize farmers’ dedication to continuous improvement in how food is produced, at the same time as being good stewards of the environment, responsible carers of animals, and an integral part of maintaining strong rural communities.

For the farming industry’s self-interest, a goal is clearly to improve public perceptions and address or counter criticisms and anti-farming sentiment. As a result, a major gain could be to maintain or even enhance the farmers’ freedom to operate. For business efficiency’s sake, the alliance is also looking to exert strong leadership in strengthening collaboration along the food production, processing and distribution chain.

There are four main strands in UKFGA’s strategy: 1) To increase the number of policymakers and government officials at all levels who value modern agriculture production; 2) to engage key customer decision makers in dialogue about the value of modern food production; 3) to work with leading national influencer organizations – in a diverse range of areas including medical, cultural, dietary and environmental, for example – to create partnerships in support of today’s agriculture; and 4) to increase the role of farmers as the voice of animal and crop production on local, regional and national food issues.

The new coalition’s annual budget is in the range £20-30 million, contributed largely by the combination of farmers’ representative bodies, industry sector organisations, and commercial sponsors. UKFGA says it will give farmers a voice in traditional and social media conversations about agriculture – where it doesn’t exist now – as well as with key influencers who are shaping the good food/bad food debates in popular culture. On farmers’ behalves, it will ask consumers about their greatest concerns with today’s food production practices and promote the agriculture community’s dedication to continuously improving how food is produced in order to provide healthy choices for people everywhere.

“A knowledge and credibility gap has formed between the people and their food,” said a spokesman. “So farmer-led organisations have joined forces because it is vital for those closest to the farm to work together and lead the conversation about producing food. Our industry is continuously changing – improving how we care for the land, our animals and our communities. Farmers want and need to do a better job of answering people’s questions about their food.”

Clearly, this will be the first time such a major combination of industry groups has collaborated on a significant effort to listen to consumers and hold two-way conversations. As we’ve seen recently with Nocton, the Women’s Institute mega-farms debate and most recently Midlands Pig Producers, there are many bodies that speak out about farming, not always accurately. How refreshing it is to have the prospect of farmers making their voices heard more prominently, and hopefully more persuasively too.

Deception scandal admitted on agri-blog

With apologies for the deception, the story above is only partly true and contains a few intentional typos. As you probably realised, UKFGA is a figment of your correspondent’s deluded imagination, though the passage above is intended as a respectful and accurate depiction of the just-launched United States Farmer and Rancher Alliance’s initiative to build greater trust of farming and food among the public (ww.usfraonline.org). Surely you didn’t really believe that such an enlightened and far-sighted alliance could be initiated here in the UK?

The spokesman quoted above is actually Bob Stallman, USFRA chairman and also president of the American Farm Bureau Federation.[1] He says he knew farmers had an image problem when his daughter, who had grown up on the family ranch, called him to ask if drinking milk would be bad for her kids. It turned out that her church had just finished watching the movie, ‘Food, Inc’.[2] This is a 2009 US documentary about corporate farming in the United States. It claimed that agribusiness produced unhealthy food using methods that were environmentally harmful and abusive of both animals and employees…hence, the daughter’s phone call.

You don’t have to spend very long on the USFRA’s website to see that US and UK farming have a very similar knowledge gap and image problem. So if our farming-orgs wanted a short cut to action, they should simply make friends with the USFRA, establish mutually beneficial exchanges of expertise and information, and unashamedly copy in full the USA’s lead. By the way, I’d like to be first in the queue for the job of UKFGA chairman.

This autumn, USFRA begins reaching out to key influencer audiences through targeted advertising, a new internet presence, top-tier media briefings and a major event addressing the public’s biggest concerns about food production. “We had a great concern that consumer trust has been eroded by the critics,” says Bob Stallman. ”It’s the first time I can recall we have ever agreed among agriculture to enhance the ability for farmers and ranchers to operate freely and increase collaboration, and put aside the issues we can’t agree on.”

Consumer attitudes are the main focus of USFRA attention. The body itself was formed in November 2010, with 49 farmer- and rancher-led affiliates including state and national groups, commodity groups, and farm organisations. Counting them up now on the website, this has risen to 51.[3] Funding is 75% from producer groups and 25% by the agribusiness sector, including input suppliers all across the food chain, according to the USFRA.

“We initially wanted to fund this at $25 to $30 million a year but even that’s not enough to run a national consumer campaign,” explains Bob Stallman, “so we’re also going to try to reach out to people who influence the attitudes of consumers.

“We’re not going to hide anything,” he adds. “We need to answer the questions consumers want answered. Farmers and ranchers have been good about telling consumers what we think they need to hear, but we have to change our attitude and stop preaching a bit.

“We’re willing to engage with those who criticize us, other than groups who deny our right to exist…those people, we can’t have a conversation with,” says Stallman. “We want to talk to local, organic, free range, anyone, but we’re going to dispute those who don’t use facts. If you want a dialogue about gestation crates, that’s fine, but if you make up something that’s not factual we’re going to dispute that.”

As an example, a typically negative headline in the US Financial Times – ‘Agribusiness battles claims of abuse and unhealthy food’ – was countered immediately by a polite and assertive open letter to all the publication’s editorial staff about USFRA’s aims[4]: “The initiative is a shift in how farmers and ranchers communicate with consumers. Farmers and ranchers are committed to continuous improvement and a better future, which is why we are listening to the biggest questions. This effort is not intended to defend the status quo but foster continuous improvement. All the voices have to work together to find solutions to our most pressing food challenges.”

USFRA also plans to show up on social as well as traditional printed media. It reports that in May 2011, there were 277,000 conversations about food and agriculture. However, the website adds that the agriculture industry’s presence was minimal. “As producers we want to be part of that online conversation,” says chairman Stallman, “which means producers need to step forward and tell their stories. For those willing to face a television camera or speak to reporters, USFRA offers media training. You don’t have to be smooth talkers, just be honest and speak from the heart.”

The key, according to USFRA, is to tell consumers how production practices benefit them. Farmers are ultimately accountable to their customers – that is, consumers in both USA and abroad – and need to show they are listening and improving, suggests Forrest Roberts, chief executive of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and chairman of the USFRA Communications Advisory Committee, which led development of the movement’s strategy.

“We want a variety of people – including a diversity of small-, medium- and large-scale farmers and ranchers – to join our conversation,” he says. “This includes some people we may not always agree with. But we want everyone who is striving to create a better future for, and accessibility to, food at the table.”

UK agribusiness call to action

If you share a concern about the knowledge gap between UK farming and the public (including pressure groups, politicians, civil servants, etc), perhaps you might spend a few minutes checking out the USFRA website then writing letters/e-mails to anyone and everyone you know in the industry – in particular, of course, farming unions, levy bodies and other influential industry orgs – and to your MP and MEP, encouraging them to embark on a similar initiative. Imitation being a sincere form of flattery, I hope our US cousins will be suitably emboldened by our support and hopefully emulation.

In addition to their website, USFRA’s web-presence includes facebook.com/pages/US-Farmers-Ranchers-Alliance/103189669746931 and twitter.com/USFRA.

This text is a lightly edited version of an original article commissioned by Feed Compounder magazine, to be published in the September issue.

References

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[1] Mike Wilson*, 29 July, 2011. Finally: Farmers Reaching Out to Worried Consumers. http://farmfutures.com/blogs.aspx/finallyfarmersreachingouttoworriedconsumers-2500. *Executive editor, Farm Futures.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food,_Inc.

[3] http://usfraonline.org/about/affiliates/

[4] http://usfraonline.org/2011/08/usfra-responds-to-financial-times-coverage/

Autumn prosecution risk from improper rat control

PRESS RELEASE DISTRIBUTED ON BEHALF OF THE CAMPAIGN FOR RESPONSIBLE RODENTICIDE USE

20 July 2011                                                                                                    [c.450 words body text]

Farmers and gamekeepers are being alerted that misuse of rodenticides this autumn could put them at risk of prosecution. In particular, a new factsheet from the Campaign for Responsible Rodenticide Use (CRRU) cautions that rodenticides should be used as a time-limited rather than long-term treatment. They should also be integrated with non-chemical control measures, and the treatment site must be inspected frequently for dead rodents and disturbed bait, with rodent carcases collected and disposed of by an approved method.

A rodenticide programme should have a start, middle and end, according to CRRU chairman Dr Alan Buckle. “It may last as few as 14 days and usually no more than five weeks, depending on the severity of infestation,” he says. “Products must be used strictly according to the label, alongside non-rodenticide measures including prevention of access to food sources and elimination of refuge sites. Unused bait at the end of the treatment period should be cleared away rather than left out ‘just in case’, otherwise it will inevitably be taken by non-target rodents such as field mice and voles. These in turn are eaten by predatory birds including barn owls and kestrels, and this is a prime route by which wildlife is contaminated with rodenticides.”

For disposal of dead rodents, the information sheet defines the approved methods in order of preference:

1.      On-farm small carcase incinerator, regulated under the Animal By-product Regulation.

2.      Securely bagged in domestic waste collection, subject to local authority agreement.

3.      Off-site authorised incinerator or landfill.

4.      Only when 1-3 not possible, on-farm burial away from sensitive areas and compliant with the Code of Practice for the Protection of Water.

“Improper use of rodenticides puts children, pets and wild animals and birds at risk,” Dr Buckle adds. “Farmers and gamekeepers should use protected bait stations and visit them frequently to make sure rodenticide remains inaccessible to non-target species. It is also advisable to keep a written record of the control plan from the outset, together with a detailed list of dates and actions during the treatment period.”

In the event of suspected improper use of rodenticides and depending on location and circumstances, the Health & Safety Executive and local authorities have responsibility to investigate such incidents and, where appropriate, take enforcement action against those responsible. For professional guidance, more than 80 accredited Wildlife Aware pest control technicians are listed on the CRRU website together with the CRRU code of practice and the new Environmental Information Sheet download file*.

Further information: Dr Alan Buckle, CRRU chairman, alan@alanbuckleconsulting.com, tel: +44 (0)1730 826715 or +44 (0)7881 656564.

Author & PR contact: Phil Christopher, Red Rock Publicity, phil@redrock.uk.com, tel: 07802 672304.

*www.thinkwildlife.org.uk/downloads/Environmental_Information_Sheet_for_Anticoagulants.pdf.

New milk R&D deal claims to push back boundaries

This is an extract from an item commissioned and first published by Feed Compounder magazine (July 2011 issue) on its Screenings page. While aimed primarily at readers in the animal feed industry, I hope the content is also relevant to farming and other areas of UK agri-business. However, if you think it's bo!!o**$ please let me know.

The largest milk co-operative in France, Sodiaal-Candia, is probably best known here for its Yoplait brand, though it has many others and operates in most dairy product sectors. It has 13,000 milk producer and processor shareholders, handles 5 billion litres of milk annually, and generates €4 billion a year turnover (interestingly, if a bit crude, €0.8/litre). In April this year, the company signed an R&D contract with a biotechnology company to explore milk’s beneficial effects, both nutritional and therapeutic, on human health at the biochemical and physiological levels. The R&D partner, Rhenovia Pharma SAS, specialises in the central and peripheral nervous system. Applying their knowledge and processes to nutrition will help Sodiaal “better understand the effects of food on human health, and especially on people’s predisposition to neurodegenerative diseases.”

In particular, Rhenovia has developed a computer model of cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in a number of neurological diseases including epilepsy, neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and depression. It pursues alliances with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies interested in, for example, identifying new targets for therapeutic molecules.

The press release announcing the R&D contract says confidently, “Results of these studies will improve our understanding of the relationships between food, health and predisposition to degenerative diseases.” Rhenovia Pharma chairman Dr Serge Bischoff says, “It makes complete sense for Rhenovia to invest in the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, and to continue to find solutions for the nutritional deficiencies that are often associated with them.”

Having been first to market with innovations that include vitamin-supplemented, micro-nutrient-enhanced, flavoured, and neonatal milks, Sodiaal-Candia claims to be a leading player in countering “the trivial status of milk over the last 40 years,” says the press release. Their Candia Just Milk brand of long-life skimmed, semi and whole milk is on sale here in Sainsbury’s, Makro and Costco outlets currently.

The intriguing point for UKdairy farmers and the milk processors they serve is whether this French rival will gain competitive advantage from its R&D investment or find itself pouring milk down the drain. Clearly, they’ll be investing shareholders’ money in search of patent-protected proprietary gains that they can brand and earn value from—Milk for Healthy Brains, perhaps—rather than milk’s generic good image. Are the UK’s milk producers and processors active in this arena, I wonder?

Answers on a postcard please.

The secret of success: First, define it

This is an extract from an item commissioned and first published by Feed Compounder magazine (July 2011 issue) on its Screenings page, though the views expressed are exclusively the author's. While aimed primarily at readers in the animal feed industry, I hope the content is also relevant to farming and other areas of UK agri-business. However, if you think it's bo!!o**$ please let me know.

Someone we should have heard more about in this country is US teacher and sports coach John Wooden (1910—2010). Although his University College of Los Angeles (UCLA) basketball team were national champions 10 times in 12 years, a record that stands today, this is not the reason he should be a household name. It was his philosophy—in particular how he defined and pursued success for himself and his students—that marks him out from the crowd.

Most importantly, on the sports field he did not equate success with winning. In the classroom, he did not equate success with A-grades and it was his teaching experience during the 1930s that set him on a pathway to outstanding performance by his students and sportsmen. He describes becoming disillusioned when all parents expected their children to get A or B grades.[1]

“They thought a C was all right for the neighbours’ children, because they are all average,” he said. “But they weren't satisfied when their own [got a C]—it would make the teacher feel that they had failed, or the youngster had failed. And that's not right. The good lord in his infinite wisdom didn't create us all equal as far as intelligence is concerned, any more than we're equal for size, appearance. Not everybody could earn an A or a B, and I didn't like that way of judging it.”

So he developed his own and it became the cornerstone of sporting and academic success that he helped his students achieve. In his own words, “success is the peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you're capable.” He cites a verse on which his own definition was based:

At God's footstool to confess,

A poor soul knelt, and bowed his head.

'I failed,' he cried. The Master said,

'Thou didst thy best, that is success.'

And here’s something to bear in mind next time you’re doing appraisals and setting targets. In the talk on which this item is based, John Wooden said that his most successful basketball players, for the team and individually, weren’t necessarily those with prodigious natural talent. Rather, they were the journeymen whose own endeavour squeezed every last drop of value from their perhaps limited talents – Robbie Savage rather than Christiano Ronaldo, perhaps. If you ignore recent alleged matters off the field, the modern day player who exemplifies both endeavour and talent, of course, is Ryan Giggs, in spite of which 2011 is still clearly his annus horribilis. So be careful what you wish for among your colleagues and be sure to appreciate the C grades where those concerned really have made the effort to do the best of which they’re capable.

References

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[1] John Wooden, 2001. http://www.ted.com/talks/john_wooden_on_the_difference_between_winning_and_success.html

The beginning of the end for consumerism, and new beginning for resource conservation?

This item was commissioned originally and will be first published by Feed Compounder magazine (May 2011 issue) on its Screenings page, though the views expressed are exclusively the author's. While aimed primarily at readers in the animal feed industry, I hope the content is also relevant to farming and other areas of UK agri-business. However, if you think it's bo!!o**$ please let me know.

Front runner in the 2011 ‘Most Telling Sound-Bite Of The Year’ was heard at a recent Guild of Agricultural Journalists’ press briefing, when the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board’s chief scientist Prof Ian Crute pointed out that “we have to learn how to run civilisation on real-time photosynthesis”.

Prof Crute is a member of the expert group that oversaw the UK Government Office for Science’s Foresight project. The report—The Future of Food and Farming—was published in January from which the main point will be familiar to this journal’s well-read readers: A perfect storm of climate change, rising demand for food, and restricted availability of land, water, fuel and other key resource.[1]

The political significance of the report was highlighted at the GAJ briefing by Norfolk MP and chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Science & Technology in Agriculture, George Freeman.[2] He said that because the Foresight report was commissioned by the government, it had to be followed up with action. It returned farming to where it should be, he added, at the fulcrum of numerous key areas in politics and society. “From sideline to mainline” was my personal interpretation, noted at the time.

Motivated by the upbeat mood at the GAJ meeting, I’ve been reading the report’s executive summary and am grateful that bigger brains than mine are engaged in turning its worthy words into deeds. It’s a classic example of eating an elephant, which I hope can be done a spoonful and a time, though co-ordinating all the essential spoon-holders presents a gargantuan challenge.

Among these, one that sticks out like a dog’s what’sits is the observation: “Most of the economic value of food, particularly in high-income countries, is added beyond the farm gate in food processing and in retail, which together constitute a significant fraction of world economic activity.”

As I see it, in the real world, most brainpower and energy follow the money, where the objective is the employer’s financial success rather than society’s gain. For example, it’s much easier for an entrepreneur to get rich making people fat rather than making them thin. Similarly, the Foresight report’s mantra of ‘more from less’ is anathema to most agri-supply companies economic interests, who offer variations on the theme of ‘more from more’.

One place where new brainpower and energy is needed desperately, but where money is tight, is down on the farm. In all sectors of livestock and crops, there is a wealth of as-yet unapplied knowledge that is already proven scientifically to produce more from less. On page 34 of the executive summary, you will find a list of 12 “cross-cutting” (WTF does that mean?) actions for policy makers, number one of which is “spread best practice”. It explains how “this will require significant investment… to ensure that food producers… are equipped with the necessary skills to meet current and future challenges”.

But as every feed specialist in the country knows, for every willing recipient of wisdom and helpful, profitable advice, there are several who can find insurmountable obstacles to adopting change-for-the-better, no matter how compelling the case appears to be to its proponent. Can we force feed them with Foresight’s “necessary skills”? Of course not. But can we afford to wait for them to come round eventually or retire either?

I’m not seeking to be critical here to the Foresight report. On the contrary, when our grandchildren look back in 2050 from their perspective as one of 9 billion people, I really hope and expect that it will prove to have been a game-changing catalyst. But here and now I am concerned that the lucrative areas of processing and retailing already attract more than their fair share of intellectual food production horsepower and I’m struggling to see how this will change.

One possibility, of course, is that the Foresight report heralds the beginning of the end for unbridled consumerism, and a new beginning  for a societal paradigm that concentrates on conserving rather than consuming resources. In this brave new world, retail sales growth will cease to be a measure of a country’s success, with a consequent impact on retailers. Being denied the growth they pursue so aggressively and have come to expect, Tesco for example may develop their business activities instead into the food supply chain and even into farming itself, perhaps helping to solve the necessary skills problem along the way.

This might appear a fanciful notion, but until recently who’d have thought they’d become a second-hand car dealer (I kid you not, see www.tescocars.com). So surely it’s not inconceivable that Tesco agronomists could advise on crop protection strategies, which www.tescoagchem.com would fulfil and qualified Tesco farm technicians apply. Likewise, Tesco nutritionists could develop feed programmes, with off-farm materials delivered by www.tescofinefeeds.com to be fed by qualified Tesco farm technicians.

Clearly, it is naïve to expect this to achieve ‘more from less’; but it could help attain the important stepping stone in that direction of ‘more from the same’. Consider for a moment how this differs from what Genus RMS technicians do right now? What if farm vets decided to place qualified livestock technicians on clients’ farms, paid for via a share of improved financial performance? Indeed, the management at Bill’s Fine Feeds plc have been asking, “if vets could do this, could we too?”

In the veterinary world, compliance with prescribed medication is a significant issue (actually, the big issue is non-compliance, when medication is not administered 100% as prescribed). Similarly, how often are your company’s carefully defined programmes followed only partially or inaccurately? So at BFF plc, they’re recruiting agriculture graduates with strong practical skills, and training them up as livestock technicians to work alongside customers’ farm staff. Of course, they have to overcome various combinations of resistance, suspicion, envy, enmity or apathy when they first arrive. But if they’re any good and have been trained well, then helping the farm team to improve results and sharing the credit fairly soon overcomes these understandable and natural initial obstacles.

Imagine what might be possible in a typical 250-cow herd, for example. By improving dry period nutrition and transition management, then fresh cow care and re-breeding practices, it’s not out of the question that herd calving interval could be improved by 30 days in the course of a year, worth £90/cow or £22,500/year. On top of this, routine locomotion scoring and early intervention could reduce lameness incidence at a gain of £323 per case saved³. Among 250 cows, it’s not unrealistic to aim for a 50 case/year reduction, worth another £16,000/year. In the parlour, better routines and defences against mastitis could reduce the incidence of clinical cases from a typical 60 per 100 cows/year to 30. So 75 fewer mastitis cases at an average saving of £110/case yields another £8,250. So if each technician looks after just four such farms, they could realistically generate £190,000/year of improved productivity from the three elements described. At a 40:60 split with the farmer, that could produce £76,000 of revenue for the provider of the technician…plenty to pay them well and make a margin…and keep a good customer’s loyalty. Simples.

References

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[1] Foresight. The Future of Food and Farming (2011) Executive Summary. The Government Office for Science, London.

[2] George Freeman MP, 17 March 2011. Remarks to Guild of Agricultural Journalists briefing. National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham. Author’s notes on file.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming, viewed 21 March 2011. “Between 1979 and 1982, Ford had incurred $3 billion in losses…By 1986, Ford had become the most profitable American auto company. For the first time since the 1920s, its earnings had exceeded those of arch rival General Motors (GM). Ford had come to lead the American automobile industry in improvements. Ford's following years' earnings confirmed that its success was not a fluke, for its earnings continued to exceed GM and Chrysler's.”

[4] WE Deming (date unknown). Cited by Dr Johan Dreesen*, 8 November 2010. Opening address at Pfizer AH international veterinary symposium. Rhodes, Greece. *Group director ruminants, Pfizer Animal Health EUAfME.

[5] WE Deming, October 1992. Opening address to four-day seminar. General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan, USA. Cited by  Scott M Paton, October 1992. Four Days with W Edwards Deming. The W. Edwards Deming Institute®. Viewed 15 March 2011 at http://deming.org/index.cfm?content=653.

[6] Margaret Nuttall*, January 2011. It's a load of old tripe! Burnley Historical Society newsletter no 112. Viewed 15 March at tp://www.burnleyhistoricalsociety.com/page10.htm. *Community history manager.

[7] Dr Johan Dreesen*, 8 November 2010. Opening address at Pfizer AH international veterinary symposium. Rhodes, Greece. *Group director ruminants, Pfizer Animal Health EUAfME.

If only clients would simply do as they’re told

This article was commissioned from me by the editor of Pig & Poultry Vet magazine.

April 2011

By Phil Christopher, BSc Agric, freelance writer

Recognition appears to be growing in the veterinary profession that social science and soft skills have a place alongside ‘proper’ science and hard evidence in the work of today’s fully rounded farm practitioner. At the 2007 British Mastitis Conference (BMC), the agenda headline for the first session of the day was ‘Motivating Change’.[1] At the 2009 Cattle Lameness Conference, the best poster presentation as voted by attending vets was about using ‘social marketing techniques’ in veterinary work with farmer clients.[2]

Of course, there is no shortage of research-proven clinical techniques and protocols with which most clients, if only they would do as they were told, could improve animal health and performance. However, in one of the BMC papers, Theo Lam from the Dutch Udder Health Centre said the vet’s problem was effective knowledge transfer to clients rather than knowing clinically how to solve the animal health problems on their farm.

He said farmers were no longer obedient to, nor impressed by, veterinary surgeons, and that explaining the clinical rationale to a piece of advice was often not enough to get it adopted. “Veterinarians need the skills to motivate farmers, to transfer knowledge, and to sell this advice as a product,” he states.

In search of answers, Lam says farmers are no different to people in other walks of life in that their ability to learn, and presumably apply that learning for their own good, can be enhanced by having information presented compatibly with their preferred learning style. Of course, any person’s preference is an unconscious, undefined concept unless they happen to have undergone learning style analysis as part of a training course or personal development programme.

His BMC paper refers to a model proposed by American social psychologist David A Kolb, whose theory is that an individual’s ability to learn will be enhanced by strategies that conform to their preferred learning styles.[3] For UK application, this was refined and published as The Manual of Learning Styles by Honey and Mumford,[4]which according to co-author Peter Honey offers four learning styles as “a convenient way of describing differences in learning preferences."

Like any categorisation, he cautions that they are a convenient over-simplification but nevertheless provide a useful starting point for discussion about how people learn, and therefore how to help other people learn more effectively.

A formal way to identify someone’s preferred learning style is using Honey & Mumford’s DIY questionnaire and score chart.[5] As far as I am aware, this model has never been used and published for a sample of UK farmers. However, according to Theo Lam’s BMC paper, a learning styles study among New Zealand beef and sheep farmers found 50% with the ‘reflector’ preference. “However, if one really wants to reach as many people as possible, all learning styles need to be given attention,” he says in the paper.

In practice, this theory may explain, for example, why farmer meetings attract what is often felt by organisers to be a disappointing response. In Honey & Mumford’s work, they describe ‘activist’ and ‘pragmatist’ preferences as gregarious and therefore more likely to attend gatherings. It also validates the use of the written word, on paper and screen, editorial and advertising, parochial and national, for reaching people with ‘reflector’ in particular, but also ‘theorist’, preferences.

With persuading clients to take a specific course of action in mind, an interesting question that arises is: What’s the difference between advising a course of action and selling it? One slightly provocative answer might be, lower and higher uptake respectively. As a receiver of advice, there’s an option to take it or leave it. When you buy an item, or buy into a concept, a higher level commitment to action is involved.

Someone with plenty experience of selling to livestock farmers is founder-principal of Precision Prospecting, Jim Williams, who uses a ‘Five Meaningful Encounters’ model in his company’s work for agri-supply companies.[6] “No matter how well they know a salesman, people rarely buy at the first time of asking,” says Jim Williams. “There has to be a warming up and courtship process and this usually takes several steps, five minimum.”

He explains that a typical sales campaign may start with an introductory personal letter accompanied by an advisory newsletter, mailed to a carefully selected group of potential users of the product or service on sale. Step two is a call a couple of days later from Precision Prospecting’s experienced, predominantly female, farming-savvy tele-sales team with the proposition. To those who agree to considering the proposition, step three is a letter or e-mail confirming it in writing and offering more persuasive detail. Step four is another phone call seeking an appointment for the client company’s representative to call and, at step five, the salesperson does their stuff and asks for the order.

The relevance of this model to veterinary practices is that an adaptation has been used successfully by the progressive pro-active livestock practice, Lambert Leonard and May (LLM), to promote the adoption of better animal health strategies to clients.[7] The focal point is a ‘commitment meeting’, usually a pub lunch, attended by a group of clients most of whom are non-users of the strategy, technique or treatment being promoted, together with one or two committed users.

Non-user clients are selected for invitation using practice records to identify that they would indeed gain from adopting the proposition. To persuade target clients to attend, bearing in mind that reflectors and theorists among them may not be habitual meeting-goers, repetition is essential. They would be invited by letter and in person by their regular vet, supported by phone contact from the office, possibly more than once in each case.

“As far as possible, we don’t leave things to chance,” says LLM partner James Allcock. “The aim is for farmer targets for each initiative to receive the same message from several different sources, which of course means getting our story aligned among practice colleagues.”

At the meeting itself, the programme includes evidence and experience of the gains to be made from adopting the proposition together with some essential theory and instruction. In addition to this, our source says there is one more compelling secret weapon: “Once you’ve persuaded clients to attend, then social pressure comes into play,” he explains. “It is human nature to want to conform and most people will fall into line with their peers.”

In practice, the process is even more effective with seven encounters than five. Many who attend these meetings need to go home and convince other participants in the farm business, so it’s important they get help with this and with countering any buyer’s remorse in the aftermath of making an important decision.

Amid the day-to-day individual consultations between veterinary surgeons and clients, often the least difficult bit of the job is identifying the problems and action needed to overcome them. The tough nut is getting action, particularly to achieve full- rather than partial-compliance. Often, clients require some education—remember Theo Lam’s knowledge transfer bottle-neck—with the vet ideally placed as personal tutor. With gregarious clients, involving them in problem-solving groups with like-minded farmers may be effective. For those who rarely attend meetings, then good old-fashioned individual consultation supported by good documentation to help theorist and reflector clients come to their own conclusions is likely to be more successful.

So how do you and practice colleagues identify different client types? (i) You could buy the Honey & Mumford materials and do a learning styles analysis with each one, but in reality…? (ii) Otherwise, it’s down to each vet’s skill in observing and reading people: Do they experiment with new ways of doing things? Are they gregarious or not? Do you see or hear evidence that they read the printed material you give them? Do they read a lot? Do they take a long time to make decisions, possibly based on seeing lots of evidence first?

There are clues on every farm, and in some respects the successful advisors of the future—vets included—will be those who can develop the soft skills involved in reading people and handling them accordingly as much as their ability to perform clinical diagnoses and prescribe effective solutions. Maybe the time is right for including more soft skills and social science in veterinary surgeons’ original training and ongoing CPD.

References

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[1] British Mastitis Conference 2007. Proceedings. Institute for Animal Health, The Dairy Group, ADAS.

[2] Helen R Whay et al, 2009. Managing cattle lameness: A novel approach using social marketing techniques. Proceedings of the 2009 Cattle Lameness Conference, 25^th March 2009. University of Nottingham.

[3] David A Kolb (1984). Experimental Learning. Prentice-Hall, New Jersey. Cited by Theo Lam et al (2007). Making changes in improving udder health: A veterinary perspective. Proceedings of the British Mastitis Conference 2007. Institute for Animal Health, The Dairy Group, ADAS.

[4] Peter Honey & Alan Mumford (1982). The Manual of Learning Styles. Peter Honey Publications, Maidenhead. www.peterhoney.com.

[5] Peter Honey & Alan Mumford (2000). The Learning Styles Questionnaire: 80-item version. Peter Honey Publications, Maidenhead. www.peterhoney.com.

[6] Jim Williams (2009). Personal communication. Telephone conversation/interview took place Friday 12^th June 2009. Precision Prospecting, Framlingham.

[7] James Allcock (2009). Personal communication. Interview took place Friday 13^th February 2009. Lambert, Leonard & May, Whitchurch.

CONFIDENTIAL: Bill's Superior Animal Feeds 2011 strategy

This item was commissioned originally and first published by Feed Compounder magazine (January 2011) on its Screenings page, though the views expressed are exclusively the author's. While aimed primarily at readers in the animal feed industry, I hope the content is also relevant to farming and other areas of UK agri-business. However, if you think it's bo!!o**$ please let me know.

18 December 2010                                                                                          [c.1,600 word body text]

New year resolutions

Hot off the Wikileaks website, here are some extracts from the 2011 business plan from Bill’s Superior Animal Feeds Inc, for your eyes only, of course.

[1] Measure the company’s carbon footprint. Amid December’s second white-out in as many weeks, climate change remains plausible though global warming less so. However, ignoring this local blip, one of Bill’s rules that actually can apply to many aspects of life is “if you’re not sure about something that could be important, assume and plan for the worst. Then if it does happen, we’ve done our best; and if it doesn’t, bonus.”

So with global warming in mind, Bill gives it the benefit of the doubt and assumes it is taking place, though whether you take this view or not, I’m told that reducing your personal and business carbon-footprints alike makes good financial sense. None other than Peter Willes, one of the Nocton partners, said just that at Reaseheath College’s sustainable dairying conference last month. Incidentally, he and one other speaker were beacons of excellence in an otherwise sea of mediocrity and self-interest on the platform.

According to Willes, reducing one’s carbon footprint requires and indeed drives the elimination of waste. In whatever form we buy it, carbon is expensive. So by reducing carbon leakage, you need to buy less and therefore save money…simples. It may even be the case that this feature’s sponsor offers a service in this arena, though of course neither they nor your correspondent would be so crass as to promote it overtly here.

[2] Get out more. Luck = preparation x opportunity. See Screenings, November 2010.

[3] Measure the company’s true business potential. In less than five minutes, the UK populations of dairy and beef cows by county can be found on t’interweb. Indications of other farm livestock numbers by county are also available. So there’s no excuse here at BSAF Inc for not knowing how much potential business is out there. We think we know our market share and we think we know who’s who among our rivals. But are we right, assumption being the mother of many **ck ups? This is the year to commit £10-15k to an independent analysis of our market potential, our current standing relative to competitors, and our current standing as seen by customers and prospects. Be prepared, dear colleagues, to face some home truths.

[4] Buy a farm. If Bill’s Superior Animal Feeds Inc’s balance sheet isn’t strong enough to finance this, what have we been doing the past 10 years? By putting our money where our mouth is, or walking the walk as well as talking the talk, we demonstrate unique commitment to customers, indeed we become one of them. Land is a finite resource and they’re not making any more; on the contrary, it’s being consumed by urban sprawl. And driven by population growth, economic development, limited water availability and climate change, there’s a seismic global shake up coming in the economics, politics and distribution of food, out of which farmers can become masters of the universe where food is valued, rightly so, more highly than possessions.

At the Reaseheath conference, Peter Willes also voiced his faith in the strategy of buying land. No matter how you managed them, he suggested that dairy cows would always need about an acre of land each. And even in most difficult trading years, he said land-owning farmers still did ok through growth in the capital value of agricultural land.

Of course, managing a farm presents many challenge, but so does running a Superior Animal Feed company. Clearly, we will need to invest in the right people and management systems (including Lean Management…see point 5) as well as land and livestock. How different is that to what we’re already doing? Exactly.

[5] Make friends with Mr Tim Wood and, in parallel, approach independent agricultural economist Dr Kay Carson about (i) how the principles of Lean Management could be used to improve BSAF Inc profitability; and (ii) how its farm application on which she is working could be made available to our customers as a benefit of placing their feed business with us.

Dr Kay was beacon number two at the Reaseheath event. Shortly after an audience member had claimed, in posing a question to a previous speaker, that the average cost of producing milk was 28p/litre, she said a net margin of 10p/litre was the realistic target on the Lean Management’s monitor farm in Cheshire. By the way, her co-beacon Mr Willes also stated that his current three-herd, 1,000 cow set up in Devon was making money at the current milk price.

Of course, the concept of lean manufacturing or lean production as pioneered by the Toyota motor company will already be familiar to many readers. Its goal is ensuring that all a company’s expenditure is on things that customers are willing to pay for; it seeks to eliminate expenditure that does not contribute value, as defined by customers’ willingness to pay for it, to the company’s output. It’s about creating more value that customers will buy, requiring less work and using fewer resources.

In Toyota’s hands, lean manufacturing is reported to be based upon eliminating the seven deadly sins of unnecessary Transportation (off site), Inventory, Movement (on site), Waiting, Over-processing, Over-production and Defects. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our new ally and guru for 2011, Mr Tim Wood.

Although here at Bill’s Superior Animal Feeds Inc we don’t manufacture monogastric feeds, we know that pig and poultry producers have been friends with Tim Wood for many years. Unsupported by UK or EU subsidies, harsh free-market realities have meant that staying in business depended on driving unnecessary costs and avoidable losses out of the business. Those realities are now just as applicable to our dairy and beef producing customers. So if we can help them adapt their businesses to be more sustainable long term, without spending any money on things they don’t value of course, then we can gain a competitive advantage over our rivals. Incidentally, Dr Kay also offered a good definition of sustainability in a farming context, which was “sufficient profitability with minimal environmental impact and high animal welfare”, sufficient presumably for re-investment and a satisfactory return on investment for shareholders.

With thanks to the Lean Enterprise Institute (http://www.lean.org/whatslean/principles.cfm) for the bullets points and graphic that follow, here is a process for the adoption of lean principles, which the website says is “easy to remember, but not always easy to achieve:

·      Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family.

·      Identify all the steps in the value stream for each product family, eliminating whenever possible those steps that do not create value.

·      Make the value-creating steps occur in tight sequence so the product will flow smoothly toward the customer.

·      As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the next upstream activity.

·      As value is specified, value streams identified, wasted steps removed, and flow and pull introduced, begin the process again and continue until a state of perfection is reached in which perfect value is created with no waste.”

Simples (again). Thank you Tim Wood and Kay Carson.

[6] Not unconnected philosophically from number 5, teach everyone who works here at BSAF Inc, and anyone else who’ll listen, the principle of leaving everything slightly better than you found it. For example, pick up one piece of litter as you walk down the street; if everyone did this, we’d live in a tidy world, we’d not need as many street cleaners , and out council tax and business rates might be lower. Or even wash up your own cup and one or two others at the sink in the mill kitchen. Incidentally, it is Bill’s belief that all parents who aspire to make the world a better place for their children should begin by teaching them this rule and embedding it for life into their fertile subconscious psyches.

[7] Invest more in the company’s telesales team. The obvious purpose is to make sure all Bill’s Superior Animal Feeds Inc’s customers get a reminder call or text message when their next order is due, then further telephone calls from us to take the next order then confirm delivery and the customer’s satisfaction thereof. But the bigger picture is to make the telesales team an integral part of winning new customers. BSAF Inc’s move in this direction is based on the Five Meaningful Encounters model, as mentioned in this feature (attributed to Jim Williams of Precision Prospecting) in the June-July 2009 edition of this esteemed journal.

To recap, the essential components of this system include a database of customers and prospects, a capability to produce effective personal letters and advisory newsletters, an opening gambit, a defined step-by-step process, and close integration between the telesales and on-farm sales teams. The main principles are (i) a minimum of five worthwhile encounters need to take place between a potential customer and feed supplier before it’s worth asking for an order; (ii) that a well trained and suitably equipped telesales function is capable of contributing meaningful encounters, particularly in taking the relationship from cold call to warm, at much lower cost that the on-farm team; then (iii) the on-farm team is thereby accelerated towards the point at which they can ask for orders with a realistic prospect of getting yes as the response. The Lean Goal is minimising the cost of (a) getting the opening order with a new customer, and (b) generating repeat orders where little or no sales support is needed by customers.

Happy new year and best wishes for a successful 2011.