EP 57: Host Episode; Poultry Network Live – confidence, caution and the people challenge

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Poultry Network podcast. My name is Tom Willings. Tom, we're in Harper Adams.

I'm Tom Woolman We are in...

Just finished the next iteration of the Poultry Network live conference.

Yeah, yeah, and what a day it's been.

We should offer our congratulations to our esteemed colleague, Jake Davies. Another year done. These things take some organizing, so Jake, chapeau.

They do. And actually, Jake, I was very impressed. You roped in your mum, didn't you, this year to help us out. So,

family affair.

yeah, yeah. Nobody is. It's a real effort. And a lot of people have come in and they've had a great day. So.

Good, this episode, we're obviously without video, I say obviously, say every time I point to the fact that not everybody does watch and I'm relieved that most people listen. But we are without video. The episode is gonna focus on the conference, but I have, Tom, this week been inundated by a text message making inquiries of your sheep. It's been some time since you've updated us. Would you mind just, for one particular listener, just bring yourself to

speak.

Yes,

well it's been a challenging week with the sheep, I'll have to admit. So there's a WhatsApp group that I've got with the people that I run the sheep with and unfortunately this week I've had an awful lot of photographs and messages because the sheep are kept behind an electric fence but one or two of the sheep have realised that actually they're covered in wool and if they just put their head down and push on through then they can escape and they've been doing this continuously.

Is

it contagious to sort of one go and then, you know, like...

That's exactly right,

you know what sheep are like.

Go about

it, sheep through a gate. Fred Duncan gave that analogy as, well, I won't tell the full story, but it involved basically a copycat kind of operation. And I thought sheep were stupid, but evidently not.

Well, once they've learned something, they will do that and they've learned to get out. unfortunately, when I've been out and about around the country, I haven't had...

sheep.

I haven't been able to do it. So my poor old long suffering wife has been dealing with it the children. But

Another family affair.

we've managed to get the offending sheep penned up and perhaps the future for this sheep will be off of the farm as...

That sounds very final.

Well, no.

This is a good time of year for selling breeding sheep and it's a young sheep and so we'll probably just take it to a sale and someone can take it on. Hopefully someone with better fencing or non-electric fencing. Well

Or just greater current.

we have tried that and we can guarantee that the shock coming off of the fence is quite substantial.

Abattoir

spec. Right, that's probably the end of the Shepard podcast before this goes downhill anymore. Should we go back to the conference? For one lucky listener, that was just for you. You know who you are, but I think we should return to the agenda of the day. So where should we start? Why don't you explain the format?

Well, yes, so the format is it's at Harper Adams. there are there's lecture theatres. So we start off the day with speakers that talking about the big picture stuff that's going on with businesses and subjects which affect everyone across the poultry sector. And then we have some lunch. And in the afternoon, then we split up, don't we, into different sections talking at

talking about poultry meat and then different sessions talking about eggs. And those afternoon sessions are a bit of a chance to have a bit more of open conversation. So we have some people doing short presentations, but actually, yeah, there's much more back and forth and exchange of views. Because you've got good people up there giving the presentations, but actually there's a huge amount of experience and knowledge sat in the audience as well. So there's definitely been some good back and forth this afternoon, yes.

We should probably start with the plenary sessions with those sort of cross industry issues with three very, very accomplished presenters kicking off the morning. First, Patrick Hook.

Peter Hook. Patrick

talked at length and very, very openly actually and candidly about the challenges that they have in their business, specifically around planning and he was talking about his experiences of trying to build a breeder farm effectively in their local village where they've been for generations and navigating that and he was talking about the positive impacts that actually being open with the community is and seeing people face to face and explaining what you do and he was

Yeah, suggesting that people should, everyone in the industry can have an impact on how the industry is perceived and talk to your MP, engage with your local community.

It was a real call to arms. thought, you know, he made almost non-stop, he was incredibly eloquent in covering all of the, you know, the main issues of the day from, you know, imports to planning to, yeah, government policy and so on, cost inflation in the supply chain. But the things that he raised were repeating...

themes in all of the other conversations that took place. was right on the money.

And

then we had new boy on the block Ken Clough

Ken Clowey,

I don't know that he would appreciate being called newborn, but it was his debut performance at an industry event or conference. So giving a presentation, that can't be an easy thing to do. He's got a very big job and joins clearly a very well established, highly regarded business at the top of the tree. So that's not going to be the most comfortable job, but yeah, fair play to him for taking to the microphone and giving us

I'd say a very balanced view. So my take out from Ken's presentation was firstly, growth in eggs is strong, outperforming many other sectors in food and in protein. A huge degree of optimism in terms of the position of eggs from a value perspective, but perhaps some opportunity lost, opportunity cost in the face of recent headlines around.

around Salmonella and that opportunity cost, it could be pretty expensive given that demand over the summer has been quite weak. So his kind of cautionary tale, and I don't think Ken overplayed the message, but there was a cautionary tale from him about making sure that balance remained between supply and demand and that the pipeline of farms coming down the track was just on his radar.

Which is

exactly, it's been on our radar, that's what we've been talking about haven't we for the past couple of weeks.

I think

we've been a bit more overt, perhaps we've been quite upfront to say this feels as though we are not just at a turning point but beyond a turning point. Hope that we're wrong, but in conversations, I go back to probably our conversation with Barry Jackson a few weeks ago, think there was slightly more than caution. But as I say, Ken's views, immaculately presented and very well balanced.

What struck me was then the, I'm use the word juxtaposition, I'm gonna feel like I'm an idiot for just using that word, but there was a real contrast with his cautious message and the out and out confidence from HSBC and Geraint May, the regional agriculture director, talking about HSBC's outlook for investment in poultry as part of their wider agricultural portfolio because it still sounds as though there is tremendous

to continue lending. The thing that really struck me, sorry I'll give you a chance in a moment, but the thing that struck me about HSBC or Geraint's message was that he pulled out two particular indicators of market sentiment, confident market sentiment, which were firstly, that there was still all egg contracts being offered to new investors. Therefore there must be demand.

Just

to clarify, as someone that doesn't know egg contracts, is that a contract where people say this is the price and we'll take everything then?

Yeah, so the traditional way of buying eggs from farm gate would be that you pay more for a large egg than you do a medium, you pay more for a medium than you do a small egg and you definitely pay a lot less for either farm selected or machine selected seconds. So there's a hierarchy of values which then plays into the value right the way along the chain and ultimately to the cartons of egg picked up by the consumer. When you go into the supermarket, large are more expensive than a medium or a mixed weight. The more novel

way of buying eggs, is, you know, everything is swings and roundabouts. Chances are if you're on an all-egg contract then you perhaps might be receiving slightly less for your large than you might do, but more for your mediums. But one thing's absolutely certain, you're receiving a much higher price for your

It's nailed

on isn't it? is.

It is, you know

what every single egg that leaves your farm is valued at. And yeah, they were a very rare entity and they are now much more commonplace, still perhaps only 15, 20 % of the kind of deals that are out there. But the fact that they're still being made available is, I think, a sure sign of market confidence that they were pointing to. And the second was the longevity of the deals available, know, three to

three to five year HSBC see those two things as a reason to remain.

Which is amazing considering going back to Patrick Hook a lot of the challenges that he was talking about Talking about the fact that it used to be 40 pounds a bird to build a breeder shed. It's now a hundred pounds a bird and You're looking at paybacks of 20 years potentially, but yeah,

25. Yeah.

yeah, so There is still some optimism there. That was that was the main takeaway definitely from from from HSBC

We then had a bit of a health session, didn't we, which was chaired by good old Daniel Parker.

I'm a of the podcast.

And yeah, who were the speakers there? We had Jack Hughes, didn't we?

Let me say something here. So Jack Hughes is a previous colleague at Eggbase. Jack was a complete stalwart at Eggbase who managed our one-to-one farmer tuition training, always on the end of the phone, could never do enough for our customers and did a superb job. He was to the manor born I didn't know he could do that.

Yeah,

he was very natural, wasn't he?

Yeah, brilliant. And just

and I would not have wanted that job for all the tea in China knowing that the next person on the stage was Dr. ash banyard

Yeah, yeah,

yeah. Who, for those that don't know him, is the creme de la creme of virologists employed by APHA. I had the pleasure of going to the pub with him the night before and he was very entertaining in the pub. But boy, when he opened up about avian influenza viruses, just, my mind was blown.

I have to say I didn't understand a huge amount. I took a lot of photographs and the slides will be shared. He said I'm sure the slides will be made available to all of the people that attended the conference today. But yeah, I asked him a question at the end from the audience asking in layman's terms, was the headline, please, please, please in layman's

You

shouted it, shouldn't you?

thought it did. Within 10 seconds I was completely buried in science. I've got no hope.

So speaking of being completely buried as well, we had an interesting keynote speech about AI and its application in the poultry sector and I think this was by Conquer AI which was a couple of consultants that talking about AI and its application and they used the analogy of a wave and this wave that is coming with this new technology and how it's going to influence what we're doing.

And I thought that was really good. They started talking about some very practical applications of how people could use AI in their poultry businesses. These people were not poultry specialists, but they knew enough about what we did to really give us some practical insights. And it was a good fun session. It was very different to talking about avian influenza. It was quite humorous. It was quite interactive. And I thought it was a really nice change of pace.

Yeah, I thought it was

a fantastic kind of upskilling of an audience because it was a total departure. mean, there was a bit with the guys using AI to ask the audience to check between a pair of photographs on the screen and which one was artificial intelligence generated and which one was real. yeah, it clear that only a handful could tell the difference. Only on three rounds, only a handful could tell the difference between real and fake.

was demystifying some of what is available to us all for efficiency, optimisation of our businesses. Whatever our businesses might be, I thought it was a really, really useful thing. And then speaking to a lot of people over the breaks that followed, they took a lot out of that. So fair play again to Jake for putting that on the agenda. I've not been to a conference and seen that sort of stuff.

And

it's good to have speakers that are left field and outside of the poultry sector, people you don't normally hear from. It's very refreshing.

It was a good call.

We then went our separate ways. You went chairing. I went back to the audience.

Yes, I chaired

a session on broiler health and welfare and so we heard from Stuart Thompson from AVGen who talked about what AVGen had been doing and showing some of the gains that have been made in terms of broiler health traits. AVGen...

are in a situation now where they gather about 70 % of the broiler data, of all the broilers that are processed every week. The processors share that data with them. so Avigen have got a really good handle on how their birds are performing. there was some really good news in there when you were looking at the data in terms of reductions in pododermatitis and leg defects and all sorts of other things. Really good news stories.

And actually, that's only possible by...

companies sharing their information back with Avigen, which means that Avigen can make the right selections at pedigree level that deliver us these outcomes. that was really good. And then had Pippa Abbey as well from SEVA, SEVA Animal Health, who talked about some of the viral challenges that are going around, like gumbre. She was talking about subclinical gumbre, which I know from going around farms is something that isn't a headline problem, but it is definitely something that underlies and causes issues on a lot

places. And who was in the egg health?

We

had a very, I would describe it as probably informal, is to complement the participation of everyone in the room. And that went for both breakout sessions, the health session to start with, and then the wider market session afterwards. But the first one was a Rose Hill and St David's affair chaired by Dave Hodson. The podcast.

for now.

That's right, a friend of the podcast.

And putting two questions to the team of contributors. what makes?

a good farm? are the hallmarks of success in our industry? So, you know, talk about getting the basics right, but also a program style approach to health from a vaccination point of view, a hygiene perspective, monitoring and so on, and a healthy dose of teamwork among

all of the people supporting a farm. And then quick discussion around the key threats to firstly health status, then the success of a farm and understandably salmonella.

given recent events got a little bit of an airing with, yeah, again, pointing to vaccines. A little kernel of wisdom I took from that shared by Dave towards the end was something he picked up from previous colleague Richard Turner saying that high percentage, I'm gonna say 90%, and forgive me, Dave, if I've got the number wrong, but 90 % of issues in a flock stem from just four.

four things and if it isn't one of those four things then it's a kind of a one in a hundred style you know outbreak or issue to be faced so if it's not IB or it's not worms or it's not poultry red mite it's most likely water and if it's none of those four you know then it's a bigger issue that needs needs more investigations. Yeah the health and welfare session was interesting.

And then it all got

very business focused, didn't it, at the end?

It did. We had almost a noble loving with one current and two ex-employees from Noble Foods joined by Jason Gittins from ADAS, was sort of awkwardly on the sidelines. But Amy Marney, now Chief Poultry Advisor of the NFU. Friend of the podcast. Gray MacKesson as the chair, friend of the podcast.

And John Paul McKelsey who's not quite yet a friend of the podcast, but I'm sure I'm sure it will come in time. Yeah

And

what was the takeaway? What was the key theme?

Well,

we only got through sort of three topics really, and labour being the first discussion point. With a really, and this goes right the way back to Patrick's opening gambit, which is, present as an industry, poultry, but agriculture in general, you'd say, a great opportunity for young people. There is no end of variety in the type of work that people can do in our.

industry. We were talking this afternoon very much at grassroots level, finding the right members of staff to join a farm team and then even more specific to that, the challenges for family farms who perhaps don't have the corporate structure to be able to offer a full-fledged career path but

but desperately want a need to attract reliable, enthusiastic, committed people and invest in those people on a farm to help support their sustainable production. So that generated a great deal of back and forth on who to target, where to target them, what messages to say, what do they actually want to hear, what is it that we have got to sell by way of

of an employer and yeah.

It's

quite amazing that that came out because labour and how you look after labour was one of the main themes that came out of the broiler business session and I have to give a shout out to Robert Lanning who gave a great presentation, last presentation of the day but did it with a twinkle in his eye, told the great story of how he got into chicken farming and grew the business from nothing really to what he's got now with Seven Farms but he talked a lot about labour and they're different,

tried different approaches to Labour and he was saying at one point they were so desperate it was just whoever applied get them through the door get them on and they might last a day or a week or three months and he was saying though how now they work quite hard to make sure they've got the right candidate they probably carry a couple of extra people as well maybe more than they need to because they also know that when someone leaves they've got six to eight weeks potentially to fill and what they don't want is the rest of the team to feel the pressure but he talked

about the fact that you almost need three different traits for people on farms. He said you need someone that's going to be in a shed, a stock person, someone that's able to go round and pick up dead chickens and do that sort of thing. But then you want someone that's going to hop onto the computer and be a bit of an IT geek.

running the controls for the ventilation, et cetera. But then he said the third trait that you need is actually someone that will work as part of a team. And Robert employs 20 people now, and you need someone that's gonna fit in with that team structure. And he said, actually, all three of these traits, it's very rare that you'd actually find someone that's got all three. It's maybe one person majors in one or in the other. And he also said that they're much...

much more gentle with their staff now. He said they haven't done a disciplinary for a long, long time and that they treat their staff carefully and with respect because they are a precious commodity.

Should it ever be any different?

would be my take. I sat sort of quietly in the room feeling as though the answers to the questions lie in the mirror. People join people, people leave people. And what have we got to offer? Well, we ought to have support and respect and investment. And we're asking people to do a very, very important job, often a very difficult job, often a very dirty job.

and what not, but it ought to be job that we're prepared to do ourselves.

and people

deserve respect for coming and working for you. So could you pick a standout speaker for the day? Who made the biggest impression on you?

I

think different people for different reasons. I'm going to go back to my friend Jack because I really did knock it out of the park as far as I'm concerned. You know, didn't actually say what he was talking about, but Jack's with LifeTech talking around farm biosecurity and their program of farm support, embracing technology for traceability of movements and a lot of the very basics around keeping disease out. So he made a lot of very

valuable points in beautiful, plain English. Did it excellently. So yeah, he stands out. Ash...

equally as a complete and utter expert in his subject, know, wow, what a guy. What pleasure. I felt like I learnt a lot. I didn't go to university, so every time I come here each year, I enjoy the environment, I enjoy being in the lecture theatre, and just like in previous years actually, go away from here feeling as though I've learnt an awful lot in a very short space of time. It's unfair to call out individual speakers.

everyone at the country did a fantastic job. We haven't talked about your last session quickly, what was the broiler business?

Well, so we had that was the one where Robert was talking but we also had Patrick Snodgrass who's a business consultant who helps a lot of farmers particularly in the Shropshire area with costings and benchmarking and that was really good. mean he's someone that I haven't actually met but I go around a lot of the same farms and people talk about his work and about the benefits that he's bringing to them and in the questions and answers I asked a question about

renewables and it was quite amazing how he had the numbers in his head to hand. He knew what the benefit was of different renewables, he knew what the range was, know, and how much it costs certain people to heat their chicken houses and what the best was and what the worst was and what the average was and so I was really impressed on his grasp of the numbers and yeah and he's growing his business. There are more and more people using him. So yeah.

I just reflect on the conversation that we've had of the last 15 minutes or whatnot. Patrick started the day in reference to labor. It sounds as though both breakout sessions have had quite a heavy personnel element to the conversation. And now we're talking about the things that have struck us as we've gone through the day and the diverse skill set in display there. It is a perfect little microcosm of all of the opportunity that the farming and food

industry offers to the outside world. One thing I'd love to see for next year, and I don't know, we'll talk to Jake about whether we can do this, but there are seats in the auditorium still, and I wonder whether or not we can find a way of filling those seats with young people. I don't know what the association to business or farm need be, but how do we get people that are not necessarily of the industry? It was great to see that there were a few

younger people with the familiar faces that we see in many, many events joining and learning their trade as they join as fresh employees in business. But what about those that are just another step or two away? can we, even if we're just...

informing, educating sounds quite a formal word, but sharing some of the enthusiasm and the passion and the information of our trade with people that may just take a positive message away from it even if they don't end up working in our industry. That's just something that struck me towards the back end.

No, I'm sure, I'm sure. Well, we know the man to speak to, don't we? We've got ideas for the conference next year. Anyway, it's been lovely to see you.

Absolutely, we

should wrap up and thank you for listening. If you didn't join the conference this year, there will be another opportunity, no doubt, next year. But so in the intervening time, you'll have to make do with Tom and I and this weekly show. But thank you for following along.

Yeah, and

thank you to all the people that have come up to me and you today and talked about the podcast and given us some good feedback. So yeah, it's been really nice. And I managed to, I collared someone in the corridor and they said, where can I listen to the podcast? And I got them to subscribe there and then. So we've got another one Tom. We've got another one.

I make that seven.

Okay. All right, until next week, goodbye.