Beanstalk Global

Running a campaign that involves more than 200 organisations brings valuable lessons on building and maintaining relationships.

Veg Power is a not-for-profit organisation focused on encouraging the UK to eat more vegetables. Since their inception around three years ago their successes include the award-winning ‘Eat Them to Defeat Them‘ campaign in partnership with ITV, which included a TV ad supported by over £10m of advertising from ITV, Channel 4 and Sky Media. 

This year the campaign’s accompanying schools programme reached 500,000 primary school kids from 1,900 schools. They were able to demonstrate behaviour change with an additional 517 million children’s vegetable portions sold from the campaign’s launch in February 2019 to July 2020. 

The fundamental difference with other healthy eating or public health campaigns is that the Veg Power operating model includes a strong, diverse and vocal alliance that has nationwide reach and impact – all on a very low budget. The alliance consists of individuals, groups and organisations that are passionate about the cause. It includes large and small businesses, national and local government, NGOs, community groups and schools, celebrities and influencers. This enables them to reach a greater range of individuals and adds credibility and interest to their campaigns. 

We go live for a positive catch up with Dan Parker – Chief Executive Officer for Veg Power to gain an understanding as to how the campaign is tracking, why they need your ongoing assistance and taking a deep dive into the attitudes & awareness of seasonal vegetables.

Dan has worked in marketing and advertising for 25 years. As Chief Executive and Executive Creative Director of marketing innovation agency Sponge, he pioneered online, mobile and location marketing for the world’s largest food, restaurant, grocery, media, and technology brands, He is the project lead and Chief Executive Officer of Veg Power, a not-for-profit organisation which inspires kids to eat more vegetables. Veg Power is best known for the Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign for kids which reached into the homes of 40m people in 2019.

David Rogers – Commercial Manager of Tozer Seeds also joins us to explain why they are proudly joining Veg Power‘s industry-first membership programme to increase veg consumption in the UK.

In our ever-increasing and highly regarded interview series, 20on20 – “20 minutes with inspirational people from the international fresh food sectors” we are delighted to be joined by Anna Hill - Presenter of Radio 4's Farming Today.

Anna started her broadcasting career at BBC Radio Sussex, in Brighton, just in time for the great Hurricane of 1987. Working as a reporter and producer she covered local news and made a one-hour documentary about the making of the Sussex Landscape. She then worked at Radio Kent, and Radio Surrey before taking a sideways step into Radio 4 as a continuity announcer and Newsreader.

Anna joined Farming Today as a presenter in 1994/5. Since then she's covered the twists and turns in long-running farming issues such as Bovine TB; and the devastating impact of BSE and then Foot and Mouth. 

Over the last 26 years Anna has talked to hundreds of farmers and politicians across the UK. She's also reported from Kosovo for Farming Today and Countryfile, been the first broadcast journalist allowed to meet the reclusive Mennonite farming community in Bolivia, and spent time with farmers in the Falklands. 

Anna was been a Director of the Oxford Farming Conference (2017-2020), and has chaired many conferences around the country for farming organisaton's.

Since the pandemic, Anna has been working from home in Norwich, where she has built up a new relationship with her ironing board, which is now her desk!

Anna is happiest when out interviewing farmers in the field, kayaking on Norfolks rivers, or hanging out the washing in the early morning under the apple trees in her garden.

The Produce Marketing Association is a key international trade organisation representing companies from every segment of the global fresh produce and floral supply chain. The PMA helps members grow by providing connections that expand business opportunities and increase sales and consumption. Its mission is to connect, inform and deliver industry solutions to enhance its members’ prosperity.

Each month, we will be focusing on a major area of South African fresh produce and discussing that all with the country’s key industry experts so we can learn and appreciate fantastic South African Fresh Produce. This month it's Dragon fruit!

Dragon fruit is a very large, mostly red-skinned scaly fruit produced by a fast-growing trailing cactus. Dragon Fruit Farming is a relatively young industry in South Africa, local dragon fruit farms show huge potential to deliver substantial amounts of fruit to northern hemisphere markets.

The South African dragon fruit industry is mainly based on the red-skinned varieties with the pink-fleshed fruit being the most popular. Dragon fruit prefers a warm subtropical climate, and is successfully grown in areas where avocados and macadamia nuts are cultivated, and is harvested from around December-January to April-May.

We will discuss this rapidly growing industry and its development across the Western Cape and up to Zambia.

On the panel we will be speaking to several leading experts on the South African Dragon Fruit Industry including:

Fred Steyn, newly appointed Chair of the Southern Africa Dragon Fruit Association

CT van der Merwe, CEO of AL 3 Boerdery

Laura Strever

Jason Sampson

Michael Muller

Beanstalk Global are hosting an “Emergency” Broadcast about the issues in the sector around lack of labour, lack of haulage and falling margin returns. A number of industry leaders have recently written articles and open letters highlighting the significant issues. Those authors are joining us so you can hear their views directly and discussion about possible solutions.

Tim O’Malley, Group Managing Director - Nationwide Produce PLC.

Jack Ward, CEO - British Growers Association.

Joe Shepherdson, Enza Zaden Sales Representative and Secretary to the Cucumber Growers Association.

Padraic O'Leary, Managing Director - Walsh Mushrooms.

Equifruit is a group of diehard believers in ethical fruit sourcing. Especially when it comes to bananas. They are on a mission to right the wrongs of banana business history by making it fair from the start, especially for farmers.

Established in 2006, Equifruit is Canada’s leading Fairtrade-certified banana importer. They are a growing produce aisle sweetheart with current distribution in Quebec and Ontario. Stay tuned for their worldwide Fairtrade banana domination – starting with North America. Beanstalk loves these guys and are looking to assist them with their mission via our international networks.

On the Broadcast we will have Kim & Jennie from Equifruit.

Kim Chackal is the Director of Sales and Marketing at Equifruit.  Over the past 6 years, she has established Equifruit as the Canadian market leader for Fairtrade bananas and her sights are set on global Fairtrade domination. Her fearless and bold approach is making waves in the produce industry. With 20 years of sales experience, she loves challenging people to rethink their consumption habits and consider Fairtrade as a sustainable solution in produce.

Jennie Coleman has been Owner / President of Equifruit since 2013. She combines a lengthy career in business with longstanding social justice roots, set during two years’ volunteer work in Namibia in the mid-90s. She loves fair trade for its pragmatic approach to sustainable business. She loves Equifruit for… the fruit (YUM!), the farmers and the fact that something as simple as eating a fair trade banana can have such a positive impact on someone’s life and community.  Equifruit was recognized at the 2020 Canadian Fairtrade Awards with the prize for “Excellence in Producer Partnerships”, and “The Packer” named Jennie one of their 2021 “Women in Produce”.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a fourfold increase in cybersecurity complaints, whereas the global losses from cybercrime exceeded $1 trillion in 2020 alone.

The World Economic Forum’s “Global Risks Report 2020” states that the chances of catching and prosecuting a cybercriminal are almost nil (0.05%). Given the circumstances, business awareness and resilience is key to securing sensitive data and avoiding breaches. Cyber threats are getting more sophisticated and intense amid the increasing levels of remote work and dependence on digital devices.

The subject title of this Beanstalk post is NOT factitious. That comment to a CEO from their IT team relates to a £50m annual turnover fresh food business in the UK that had been attacked with ransomware over this summer. The hackers had gained entry into their system some four months earlier. They had watched and picked up all of the email and data information they needed before deploying their ransomware and making their financial demands. The business paid the full blackmail demand on the same day as they had no option.

There is a view that 50% of food/fresh produce business in the UK alone have such poor housekeeping IT wise that they are as vulnerable to a very similar attack as per the example presented. How do you NOT become the next victim?

We have secured one of the UK’s experts in this area, David Smart - Managing Director of Softwerx to guide us through this significant issue to all of us.

“Women in Food and Farming” is a group of professional women in food, agriculture and the land-based industries at all stages of their careers, who get together to discuss business issues, support each other via mentorship and advice, and help generate networks of contacts that might be useful to themselves and their businesses.

Founded in 2011 by Christine Tacon CBE, the group started back in 2011 with just five women and has now grown to over 500 members. Christine is known to many as the first Grocery Code Adjudicator and head of the Co-op’s farming business, she has just been appointed Chair of Assured Food Standards which operates the Red Tractor Assurance scheme amongst other roles.

Beanstalk is very proud to offer our extensive platforms to allow Women in Food and Farming to continue their conversation and debate and to encourage new members ongoing to join them, be that on a virtual Broadcast basis.

In these current strange times, Beanstalk is very proud to offer our extensive platforms to allow Women in Food and Farming to continue their conversation and debate and to encourage new members ongoing to join them, be that on a virtual Broadcast basis.

The emergence of Covid-19 dramatically changed life and business as we knew it. Yet, despite all of the challenges, worry and fear that have accompanied this global health crisis, many professionals gleaned valuable insights over the past 18 months.

This is especially true in the Farming and Food sectors, which had to quickly adapt to sharing information about the ever-changing pandemic and adjust their businesses to suit. What have we learned most?

Perhaps:

• Kindness and compassion matter most.
• Teams need a shared sense of purpose.
• There’s no such thing as ‘Normal’.
• Flexibility and transparency lead to productivity.
• Being flexible and adaptive is key.
• We are all deeply interconnected.
• There is always a way to move forward.
• Every business needs an online brand.
• In-Person Interactions Are Crucial.
• Strong communication is essential.

Welcome to ZOONO. The technology is used all over the world to help keep people safe. It is the next generation of antibacterial technology. It is potentially revolutionary in what it can do for our fresh produce and fresh food sectors. And we are going to find out how on our Beanstalk Global platforms!

 The sectors have been looking for such a long time to source a product that can extend the shelf life of fresh produce and also assist with combatting mould in containers holding fresh food/fresh produce. Zoono may have just the answer for us. Listen to the Zoono Global experts as well as Burger Conradie the Operations Director of Cape Dried Fruit Packers in South Africa, to hear of the success he and his business have had with Zoono.

The Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) is an annual conference for the UK Farming Sector that takes place in Oxford, United Kingdom, in the first week of January. The OFC will return to Oxford from 5 to 7 January 2022 in person bringing together speakers from across the world, who will inspire, challenge and inform your thinking.

To highlight the conference and the great work that the OFC undertakes, we have gained the Joint Chairs to tell us more. On with Beanstalk Global we will have Co-chairs: Barbara Bray MBE and Sarah Mukherjee MBE.

Barbara Bray is a food safety consultant and registered nutritionist driving and delivering food safety in food supply chains and developing nutrition strategy for businesses. With a passion for educating people about food and nutrition, Barbara is a trustee for International Affairs with the Nutrition Society and sits on the food and nutrition committee for the Institute of Food Science and Technology.

A professional speaker and 2017 Nuffield Farming Scholar, Barbara speaks at food and agriculture events and gave a TEDx talk at the University of Chester in February 2020. She was awarded an MBE in 2019 for services to food and nutrition.

Sarah Mukherjee is Chief Executive of IEMA, the membership organisation for environment and sustainability professionals. She read law at university and worked in PR and consultancy at the House of Commons before becoming a BBC Environment correspondent on TV and radio. More recently she was Director of Environment at Water UK and Chief Executive of the Crop Protection Association.

She brings with her valuable experience working with people in different parts of the industry; farmers, regulators, politicians and academics, as well as 20 years’ experience as an award-winning national and international journalist. She sits on the National Food Strategy Advisory Panel, and is a governor of Harper Adams University.

Have you got 30 minutes?! We know how important it is to be inspired by both big businesses and individuals, which is why we are excited to present Talking Leaders, a monthly initiative from the AHDB which will see a series of inspirational speakers share their life experiences and deliver impactful stories to the AgriLeader community.

This month we are delighted to be joined by Holly Beckett - Project Director at Focussed Farmers.

Holly undertook a Nuffield Farming Scholarship in 2015 looking at what physical practices and tools could be introduced into farm businesses to develop more consistent leadership and improve the work-life of people within a business and in turn, the productivity of individuals and organisation as a whole. Holly looked at business practices and leadership predominantly outside of agriculture and was interested in how to increase the four pillars of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness and social-management - the foundation of effective communication.

Her findings were that mindfulness training provided huge benefits to business performance, productivity and profitability as well as improving focus and general overall well-being for people. The Frank Parkinson Agricultural Trust funded a pilot study to introduce mindfulness to agriculture and Holly has been working with Farmers since that study in 2017 gaining consistent and remarkable results with Farmers who take up ‘mental training’.

It will be a fantastic opportunity to pick up some tips that you yourself can implement in your own life to help better manage situations and improve your focus.