AHDB Food & Farming

In a rapidly changing world, what do you think makes your business stand out? And most importantly how do you measure success? Key performance indicators can be mistaken to be complex but in fact, once adapted to your business model – the results are prolific! 

In this podcast, John Bates interviews Ben William AHDB’s Senior Knowledge Transfer Manager will introduce the four pillars of efficient pork production, why they’re important and how you can begin adapting the four KPIs to achieve the maximum outcome of your pork production. 

Tools and resources: 

Visit the SmartPork page 

Take a look at the Pork KPIs 

Explore our Lean management webpage 

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Podcast produced and edited by Aisha Shabnam.

This special podcast will focus on Great British Beef Week, which will place on Friday 23 until Friday 30 April.

Now in its 11th year, the campaign aims to highlight and celebrate the sustainable practices of British beef farmers. GBBW is a Ladies in Beef initiative, working with industry partners.

 John Bates talks to co-founder of Ladies in Beef, Jilly Greed, as well as two beef farmers, Anna Blumfield and Paula Matthews who share their sustainable beef farming stories

For more information on the campaign visit the Ladies in Beef website

Hosted by John Bates and produced by Gemma Pamment.

The AHDB Pest Bulletin, hosted by Syngenta, provides forecasts and up-to-date reports for most key field crop pests.

 

This podcast looks at the Pest bulletin tool and new tools in development and how they fit within the wider IPM programme. Dawn Teverson and Rosemary Collier discuss the Pest Bulletin and latest trends in pests, while Bastiaan Brak looks at the latest tools that utilise data and how that might develop in the future, and Carolyn Coxe talks about grower concerns and what they’re saying about their pest monitoring needs. 

 

Our panel:

 

Dawn Teverson, AHDB Horticulture Knowledge Exchange Manager for Field Vegetables is joined by Rosemary Collier, Entomologist and Professor at Warwick University. Also joining is Carolyn Coxe, Agronomist at Green Grow Consultancy Ltd, and Bastiaan Brak, Crop Protection Systems Scientist at AHDB.

 

If you are interested in finding out more, our panel can be contacted at:

 

Bastiaan Brak – e-mail at [email protected] 

Rosemary Collier – e-mail at [email protected]

Carolyn Coxe – e-mail at [email protected] or follow on Twitter at @carolyncoxe

Dawn Teverson – e-mail at [email protected]

 

The forecasts are designed to provide growers with the opportunity for early intervention, to help inform pest control decisions to protect crops. 

 

Data is collected from various locations around the UK, giving local and reliable information, as well as historical data to provide year-on-year comparisons of pest numbers.

 

Feedback survey: We'd love to know what you think of our podcasts. If you’d like to give your feedback, please complete our short questionnaire, which will help us to improve the podcast on an ongoing basis.

 

Podcast produced and edited by Amna Yusaf and Maria Covlea. 

 

Cattle handling can be stressful for cows and farmers and the speakers on our recent series of webinars on this topic have given us a better understanding of how our cows see and think and what we can do to make handling them safer and less stressful for all concerned.

 

In this episode Knowledge Exchange Manager Becky Miles talks to Joep Driessen from Cow Signals in the Netherlands to find out how he became a ‘cowmunicator’ and some tips on handling cattle.

  

Watch our cattle handling webinar with Temple Grandin.

 

Feedback survey: We'd love to know what you think of our podcasts. If you’d like to give your feedback, please complete our short questionnaire, which will help us to improve the podcast on an ongoing basis.

 

Podcast produced and edited by Kate Smith.

In this episode, Philip Dolbear, AHDB's South West Knowledge Exchange Manager, talks about the Fungicide Challenge with Chloe Morgan and Jonathan Blake of ADAS, and AHDB Monitor Farm host Ashley Jones from Saltash, Cornwall. They explain the Fungicide Challenge in which groups of farmers across the country compete to achieve the best margin over fungicide programme costs in a local wheat crop. Last year was a question of 'less is more' but will that be the case for harvest 2021?

Image copyright: www.paulslaterimages.com Paul Slater Images

In this episode we hear from Beef & Lamb Strategic Farmer Ian Norbury as he reflects on the changes he has implemented and the lessons he has learnt during the past three years being a part of the project.

Running a beef farm in Mobberley Cheshire, Ian now works full-time on the farm alongside his father to look after the 250 acres of land, located close to Runway 2 at Manchester Airport. Since beginning his journey as a Strategic Farmer with AHDB in 2017, Ian explains that one of the biggest and most effective changes he has implemented is rotational grazing, as well as colostrum testing, taking egg fluke counts instead of routine worming, using EID tags, increasing numbers and reducing the calving period to 12 weeks. Take a listen to find out more about his journey.

https://ahdb.org.uk/dairy-farm-beef-lamb-strategic-farm

https://ahdb.org.uk/farm-excellence

AHDB has released the latest in a series of Horizon reports which scan the landscape ahead, and in this podcast we are going to look at the report, which takes a look at the key opportunities for the sheep sector over the next 10 years. 

There are around 33.5 million sheep in the UK, spread over 78,000 farm holdings. 

The average number of sheep and lambs on each holding is 430. 

About 10,400 holdings have fewer than 20 head of sheep, and 9,400 have more than 1000 head. 

In this podcast John Bates chats to Rebecca Miah, AHDB Beef & lamb sector strategy director and David Swales, Head of Strategic Insight about the report and what it means for sheep farmers.

MI Sheep Horizon Report

MI Sheep Horizon press release

KPI Beef & Lamb calculator

AHDB Market Information

This episode was hosted by John Bates and producer by Gemma Pamment.

A ballot to decide the future of the AHDB Potato levy has concluded and the voting report has been passed to Ministers in London and the devolved administrations for a decision on what happens next.

 

In this podcast, John Bates gets AHDB Chairman Nicholas Saphir's reaction to the voting outturn. 

 

The Independent company UK Engage was appointed to run the ballot and the outturn has been published on the AHDB website.

In this episode Knowledge Exchange Managers Hannah Lilburn and Kate Harris talk to New Zealand vet Neil Chesterton about understanding cow behaviours, and how we can change our behaviour to make the cattle handling process less stressful on all of us.

 

Read the summary article of the webinar with Neil Chesterton.

 

Watch our cattle handling webinar with Temple Grandin.

Feedback survey: We'd love to know what you think of our podcasts. If you’d like to give your feedback, please complete our short questionnaire, which will help us to improve the podcast on an ongoing basis.

 

Podcast produced and edited by Kate Smith.

On 9 March, our team of Cereals & Oilseeds Market Specialists presented on the key drivers for global and domestic markets, the path for fuel, fertiliser and interest rates and the future of farm policy. This podcast focuses on some of the key messages from that session.