Bringing international insights home

Through a Hort Frontiers Leadership Fund investment, three horticulture levy payers had the opportunity to attend KPMG’s Enhanced 2022 Agrifood and Internet of Farms Traction Program.

Cameron Folder, John Maher and Andrew Bulmer participated in a tour of the Netherlands where they were able to see a wide range of agricultural businesses and meet leaders within the industry.

The program was designed to help drive the success of Australian’s agrifood sector by providing senior executives and emerging leaders with access to best-in-class insights.

Here, we talk to Andrew Bulmer from Bulmer Farms about what he gained from attending the tour.

What was a highlight of the tour?

The opportunity to network and form professional relationships with some of the great thinkers and leaders from the Australian food, fibre and agribusiness landscape was by far the greatest highlight of the tour for me. The tour afforded fantastic opportunities to see how new and novel ideas are being explored and commercialised.

This ignited spirited conversations and debates on the tour bus between our cohort after we witnessed what could, will and is already being applied back home in Australia.

The tour was jam-packed with early starts, numerous presentations, site visits and late nights. Dining and celebrating the produce and producers we met each day was a key feature of the program, as it was a great way to network, unpack and discuss the day’s learnings.

The opportunity to visit progressive countries like the Netherlands, who are the world’s most efficient producers of food per square metre, and Denmark who proactively embraced world’s best sustainability models 50 years ago, was fantastic to experience in person. It was inspiring to see how these countries have become so great at what they have proactively chosen to embrace.

It was a brilliant and thought-provoking experience to gain access to progressive businesses, universities, and exceptional people, to see how they operate on the other side of the world.

What was a key learning from the tour, and do you hope to implement this learning on your farm?

For every business that we went to visit, they would proudly present on where they are making a difference regarding the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and how it applies to their individual businesses.

Sustainability is already high on the agenda for Australians, we have moved on from talking about the environment, to sustainability, to a circular economy. The framework is already there, and I think for horticulture, and other businesses, it is something we could easily adopt. You can see how seriously the countries in Europe take it. Rather than us reinventing the wheel and coming up with our model, one of the key learnings would be to adopt something that is there and works. That way, people can easily identify and show how they are making a difference.

We also did a field trip visit to Wageningen University which is recognised as one of the world’s leading agriculture universities. It was good to see how this university is situated in agriculture heartland. The key learning from that visit was that the university had invited prevalent agriculture businesses to bring their R&D facilities onto campus. This would allow the university students to understand the unique issues the food companies were facing, where it was relevant to their curriculum. The students learned about real agriculture issues during their degree, which gave them a direct career pathway into agriculture.

In Australia, we are subjected to the tyranny of distance, but the way the university invited businesses to bring complex issues to campus and incorporate it into the student’s curriculum fostered relationships and developed clear future career pathways.

The way they do business over there is through the quadruple helix model. They take an issue, and they will try to work through that with government, the education system (universities and schools), the public and private enterprise to find a solution that meets the needs of all those stakeholders. I think that is a strong principle, to meet the needs of all those different group to solve issues.

What was something you learned about a circular economy that interested you and how has it changed your perception of farming?

I think that circular economy is the next iteration of sustainability, the next developed model. It has taken sustainability and expanded on it by putting value on everything within the lifecycle of a product or a process. It is about closing the loop on waste by finding ways to take what we would have referred to as “waste streams” in the past and make them valuable and return them back into the lifecycle loop of that product or process.

For example, one of our lines is broccoli and now we pack it into Styrofoam boxes. The Styrofoam is a petroleum-based product, once it reaches the consumer at the end destination it currently goes into landfill, and it is bad for the environment.

We know that is the end of the lifecycle for that product. When looking a circular economy, we need to look at ways where we can take that piece of packaging and we can make a Styrofoam replacement out of mushroom compost, or an organic material. When it gets to the end consumer it will break down quickly in landfill, or it could be planted in the consumer’s backyard as organic manner, hypothetically. It would be good for the consumer’s soil.

We are trying to control waste streams to find more value out of what we have with our current processes and what we use to put into processes to make things work.

Did the tour change your vision about the future of farming?

I think a lot of farmers are already obliged to have sustainable business models in place, or you fall behind and do not meet consumers’ expectations. In another context, in water, lots of agriculture produces in dairy or cotton and certain parts of horticulture, that has evolved to irrigation pipes and people are a lot more conscious of catching it on their roofs for later use. The next iteration is to capture our wastewater, remove the bad particles, UV treat it to meet standards and use it again.

You can apply the theory to a lot of things and how you use materials and engage in processes to eliminate waste. It just needs to be financially viable to stack up, which will take a bit more time. But consumer demand will drive businesses to do more of this in the future, such as single use plastic.  Consumers want to see businesses become better corporate citizens and protect the environment for everyone.

Regarding the Australian farming position, we are climate adaptive and adoptive of whatever world class technology is out there. With R&D, because it is so expensive, we often need to adopt the models of others. I think we have a greater ability to get on the front foot and write our own rules about sustainability and be proactive in that. Australian farmers are world class, and we should be proud about what we produce and how we go about it.