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Performance every Pig a simple yet powerful Pig health and production management tool just stall always one step ahead in swine feeding. Welcome to find a podcast. My name is Marcin room Salvage your host for today's episode. This episode sponsor highlight is about Newt request Newt request delivers targeted breakthrough solutions to animal producers via nutritional and non nutritional products services and Technologies and Newt request. We believe in Ingenuity inspired by servitude and that our success comes from helping producers realize improved profitability through optimized Technologies and efficient operation. Hello everyone today. We have a In Connolly in we're going to chat about innovation in livestock production. What is here? And what is coming to reach us here in the very near future very exciting times ahead of us. So, how are you today Aidan? I've great. Thank you very much. Yes. I've been very busy over the last three four weeks. And of course the world of Agriculture is very exciting place to be at the moment it is As in if you can just share what you told me a few minutes ago on the flight that you had cancel and the audience there was there was waiting for you there. Yeah, it's funny Marshall you say that's when I discovered obviously, we have a lot of things in common with your Brazilian background and the fact you're going to China as soon I was invited to a conference in China that I couldn't make any agreed this morning. I should come in by by video conference and what I didn't realize was the flight coming out of JFK was going to be delayed nearly nearly three hours, so I didn't make the conference and I got the word that which I You that I was about an almost a thousand people in the audience, but they're actually another 240,000 people online who want to learn about digital Technologies for pigs specifically and for agriculture in general. It is amazing. Well, I wouldn't think there would be honest that big but it's it just think about China and Technology. It's amazing. Wow. Maybe you maybe you need to consider translating your podcast into Chinese. It's a Actually, we had discussions about it this week. So you're you're onto something there very cool Hayden, if you could just walk us through your career for those that don't don't know you you know for the beginning all the way to currently that would be great. Yeah, so I was very lucky when I finished my MBA and in Ireland, I joined the company called alltech when I joined them. The turnover of the company was 24 million. And actually During the period of those 28 years it grew to 2.3 billion. Wow, so I was responsible within the company for setting up their office in France that I went to Brazil and lived in France for two years lived in Brazil for for four and a half years setting up noxious the Brazilian office, but also a factory and offices throughout Latin America went to North America with him and ran some of the North American Business Then came back to the European operation where it was Europe was described very broadly. So I went all the way to Russia Kazakhstan Armenia down into North Africa, but it was covering about 50 countries then went to Washington DC where I joined the boards of many of the made associations there, which was kind of cool Turkey Federation National pork producers. I worked with chicken Council animal feed And some Global bodies like the GIF is a f continue started visiting China quite regularly and then moved to headquarters in Kentucky, which was Hauser given the responsibility of Chief Innovation Officer says working directly with the research group. And then last Thanksgiving I left to sound start my own company called agritech Capital at a North Carolina and subsequently also became the chief the sea CEO of a startup called Quinta switch is involved with recognition of animals using cameras. So yeah, pretty quiet pretty quiet career. In fact, sometimes I say to people, you know, the alltech one in particular it really felt like when we went from 24 to two-and-a-half billion, it was a bit like starting with a start-up and then moving to a unicorn. Well, yes, that's a big big change there. That's amazing. Very cool. Um, what do you think Aiden? There are things that seem futuristic, you know, as you transition here from your career to this topic of innovation in livestock production, what are the things that seem futuristic but are already starting to happen in livestock production and also any comments in pigs is specifically as well. Yeah, so clearly we have I'd say three big buckets of Technology one is for me digital Technologies. I've written a lot about these crispr Gene editing Technologies clearly crispr is the next level of Gene editing beyond what we've done with GMOs. There will be more generations of that technology coming through and the third bucket for me would be nutritional genomics and nutrigenomics how nutrition changes Expression and the first book Is it does seem futuristic to think of I've called it the eight digital Technologies for those are hardware-based. So those were things like 3D printing robots sensors. If we think of an obviously machine vision camera vision come Allied to artificial intelligence and machine learning if we think therefore the force a software-based technologies that are changing things. We are thinking about virtual reality augmented reality mentioned already artificial intelligence and the fourth one would be blockchain. If you want to put a ninth technology in there, probably the internet of things which connects all of this all of this together the hardware devices the software the algorithms connected together. So in those eight or nine digital Technologies, what are we seeing in pigs? Clearly sensors are something that everybody's very excited by and we've seen companies like swine Tech using sensors to improve the productivity of of sows preventing pigs from getting crushed. We see sensors being used to detect changes in ammonia levels and Barnes carbon dioxide levels in Barnes temperature and Barnes. So in other words environment are meant to management systems are really exciting. If I look at something like 3D printing not too much so far specifically in this wine World, obviously, we're already seeing very affordable 3D printers which are capable. Of them a printing things like pizzas and cakes and candies. So where you've got a highly processed foods 3D printer certainly can do it, but they're already using 3D printing and Israel to print meat. So, you know some interesting things around that clearly if we think about blockchain. I often had conferences when engage people ask them to explain blockchain to me and nobody really wants to from the audience. You don't want to put your hand up and explain what blockchain is but it's the idea that we have a traceable Ledger online that can't be changed can't be altered and has the potential really to prevent us or to give us more traceability when you have food safety scares when you have recalls in mind if I look What in particular probably the types of Technologies being used today virtual reality is being used at consumer level to teach them about what happens on farms McDonald's in the UK would be a prime example of that augmented reality is being used in the case of teaching people what to see when they look at a field so probably more crop based. And the some of that is also being used to teach veterinarians how to recognize warning signs of health issues. So maybe I should just pause there because I could as you could tell me fun going but but within all of those digital Technologies, they're all having some impact already on pigs. You do see in particular in China people using artificial intelligence systems to analyze the sounds of pigs. You see them using artificial intelligence to try to estimate heart. Eight of sows, they're looking at indicators of other health parameters within cantus. We've started to work looking at estimating weights of pigs and growing-finishing Barnes. So probably if I looked at where we are today blockchain is what people are talking about. I don't think it's quite there even the Walmart is working on it sensors clearly being used today. Yes virtual and augmented reality for training and for information. Absolutely. What coming Within digital Technologies, I think artificial intelligence is the one I would believe is going to be the most transformational in the next couple of years. Very cool. Yeah. It's very exciting. I love that. So for all those if you could distill down a little bit. Okay, what would be the one true one or two that people are implementing right now? I think you already said on the sensors, but I also want to be the one or two. That should be coming very strongly and that might be there. Artful artificial intelligence. I don't know. What are your thoughts there. Artificial intelligence is the one I I think I'm the biggest believer in and I don't think I'm a line that's being Allied at the moment primarily two sensors. So I think the cameras aren't the most interesting because they're non-invasive. They can collect information easily. And if it delivers us answer, which does not look correct, at least the farmer has the ability the producer has the ability to look at images. So that's the combined with using that data. That information using artificial intelligence to interpret it is very exciting crispr is Gene editing is already here with what's going on with African swine fever. The development of a vaccine has been very slow and it's very complicated because of course the size of the molecule that we're going to require and I know there are at least eight companies in China who seemed to be in development of something but the same time we've seen 80% of the Chinese pigs wiped out which is quarter of the world's pigs and that's having huge knock-on effects to everything. We do I go to China loss and sometimes I hear but maybe 70% of the pigs 80% of the pigs are wiped out. I honestly think that's an exaggeration. I think we're exaggerating too much overcompensating, but I think it's certainly 50 55 percent of the moment nutrigenomics the impact of nutrition on genetic kegs depression. Gene expression, excuse me enough genetic expression gene expression that has the potential to do lots of things and diseased meat quality as lots to do with fertility when we look at things like those manners Rich fractions. How were those impacting on the animal were feeding and the case of Sally Eve sighs even the animals maybe the coming from the south. So those artificial intelligence Gene editing through crisper neutrino mix. Those are absolutely happening today. And already the largest producers in the world are gaining the benefit of that. That's pretty exciting. And from the European standpoint. Do you see any any repercussion on how they respond to the gene editing side of things? Yeah, it's very unfortunate to hear that the Europeans are going to some of Europeans. Let's say you're trying to regulate crisper in the same way as we have seen the regulation of GMOs and I don't think that's going to be very helpful because you remembering that yogurts have been consumed in Europe for now over 12 or 14 years using gene edited crispr edited bacteria to produce like a bird. So it's not very consistent and I think in particular Gene editing is is a critical part of how we get more food out of the planet more sustainably less waste everything gets better with crisper and crisper is it is a natural process that exists inside of our animals are plants already. We already have the enzyme that cuts and repairs DNA. So what we're doing is were activating that cutting that that scissors. Technique, we're not putting in any transgenic DNA. So this unlike GMOs were not introducing something that wasn't there in the first place, and I know that Europe has the potential we've seen this in the past to mess things up quite badly by I over-regulation things, but I would focus in this situation Common Sense will prevail and we will see an exception for Christopher to degree that. We've never seen GMOs interesting. See ya very very interesting area. And where do you see agriculture Aiden going say 30 years from now. Yeah, I to be honest in Farsi. Oh, I never answer that question. I've been at conferences where they say. Where do you see? Could you know 2050 2060? I have no idea. Hmm. I think a lot about these issues. I think a lot about where this where this world is going. And I'm really struggling because there's so much happening so quickly, you know, we're talking about will we see augmented human beings as in that we would be implanting the equivalent of iPhones inside of our head for extra chips in our brains that are people who realistically imagine that to happen by 2032 2033 you Singularity you and in California in San Francisco area has been talking about this for a long time. That's a very game. Changing fenomena, right? I'm a big believer that we will continue to eat milk drink milk eat meat he's eggs. But then you contrasted with the billions of dollars that are going into trying to create these fake Meats to create these alternative proteins and you've got to imagine somebody's going to do something. I don't see it capturing all of the market. I frankly don't think that we're going to exceed 15 20 percent. But the margins on that are better than they are for farming. So one of the existential threats we face in terms of farming is the potential that people are not going to consume Products that come from animals, or maybe they do it very low level but will increasingly see the product products coming from products coming from directly from texturized proteins or from even proteins grown in a Petri dish. I don't like that future, but we have to be realistic and say it's possible. Ever I get to a conference and I say where we going to be 30 years from now and I ask the audience rather than trying to answer it myself. Somebody always says well, why do we going to grow food on Mars? And even with the craziness of what that is? I think within the Thirty Year period it's too soon but we have to imagine there could be different ways different places locations where we might end up producing food as we as we go forward. Well, it's funny that it touched on three aspects that I'm very we fun off which is one is the whole sensors and cameras with AI which that's what Tesla is doing right now killer job, right? And then the other one is neural link from Elon Musk there with the some lots of MIT scientists doing very very cool things. And then finally on Mars is SpaceX. Just just launched the Starship You They had a launch few weeks ago in that was amazing. So I think it's so exciting because things are moving so so fast, it's unbelievable very fast and yet at the same time, your listeners are probably wondering because these businesses are not making money and if you're a farmer and you don't make money you go out of business, you might make it through one year or two years, but eventually go out of business you have businesses being created on the basis that we're getting. More customers for collecting more data, we've got more information. We've got more value and a lot of that just has not frankly make sense in the old fashion world where you have to make something sell something and make a profit on it. So I wonder and I know a lot of farmers look at this and say this just doesn't make any sense. How is it possible for this come from where we going with this technology? Frankly? I am very excited as you know, and I write a lot on LinkedIn. Started publishing for Forbes very recently trying to write articles that would hopefully be of interests not just to Farmers people involved in agriculture food, but also to the general public but I think in this area here, there was a quite a big disconnect between technology companies and the farmers of the trying to provide solutions to well very nice. Yeah that makes that makes total sense. Very good Aidan anything else before we move to the three questions. We ask every guest and now isn't it time your pers protocol evolved? Elanco suppressant pers is safe and effective offering at least 26 weeks of immunity duration against the respiratory form of pers as the first and only on Market USDA licensed vaccine containing a contemporary lineage one field stream prevalent is a contemporary Solution connect with your veterinarian or an elanco representative to understand how prescient can fit your operation visit present prrs dot U s-- to learn more prevalent. It's time for a new perspective. It is time to our fans. So that three questions we ask every guest every episode 8 and the first one is what's your it's wine-related book if any swine related book a resource. I have to say I always like to nutrition books particularly those that cover Nutrition management and in particular really likes the writings of jazz Cole. He's from the University of Nottingham. I actually met Des spoke translated from Des when I lived in Brazil. So I was his translator even translated one time from from English to French. So I had to eat if you know that if you're the translator you have to know the speech better faster than the professor you need to you need to you need to really know it pretty well. So wow. I enjoyed him as a person. I loved his way of thinking that farming and feeding pigs. Very practical John. God wrote for quite a number of magazines in the past. He's quite elderly now, but he Was a kind is a great writer for translating scientific Publications ideas that you would hear theoretical ideas into something that farmers producers workers could use very practical advice 8 things. You should know if you're managing sows three things to look for in your in your winning takes so that's type of person and he's written a couple of books as well. So those are two writers. I really Oil from a from a swine perspective very nice. And what would be your favorite book in general? Well, I generally read books that try to take my mind off of my business, but the one books book books that really made me think recently where the books of Yuval Noah why UVA LNO aah, he's written one called homo sapiens. Ultra wrote one called home the dais more recently 21 lessons for the 21st century. He writes about artificial intelligence in a way which is very eye-opening and very scary particular has a lot of projections and predictions about the future but I do think we need to understand where it's all going and he he's a very easy to read describes the history of where farming came from the world came from He's not particularly Pro farming, but I think we also need to understand what the other side is saying and for people who don't take the time to read books. I would recommend you to look up any of them. Particularly Yuval Noah. Look him up online on YouTube. You'll you'll find videos where he's being interviewed and even the questions and answer sessions can be really really interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. I've heard about that one. Never had never read that letter very cool. Um, and then finally Aiden in your opinion what separates successful swine professionals from those that are not? Yeah, that's a really good question Marcio. I would say so in general with people in agriculture today. The first thing I say to them is get a passport to travel and they will always say why do I need to I'm in the United States were the leaders in swine production. Well, if you get the chance to go to Chile and see the The old super polio super company and to see what they're doing with pigs and to see mortality levels of probably below half a percent. You're just going to learn an awful lot about biosecurity. You're going to learn a lot about the world if you get the chance to see what they're doing in China with the old farms and even with the new Farms if you get this chance to go to Siberia and see what's being done in terms of production in Russia, and why Why Russia has become in my view the most astonishing story of the last 15 years in terms of improving productivity and again showing how things can or should be done. Even the countries which traditionally were not that good. Brazil is always amazingly impressive. You don't get to just open your eyes to what's happening in pigs, but what's happening in crops? What's happening in chickens? What's happening? You know what Brazil is doing and even though a lot of bad news about Brazil, too. Enemy agriculture continues to March forward and has continued to become bigger and bigger joke journals in terms of its Global presence. So my first comment would be successful twin professional should definitely get themselves a passport take opportunities to travel whenever they can. When you're in the country go to the grocery stores go to the supermarket's go see how food is being sold go to open markets go to organic markets if necessary, you know just take the opportunity to see that clearly that's all part of a general process. And in fact, maybe I should take the last question you will know was asked if you have children and the children have to study. What should they study? Should they study animal signs? Should they become veterinarians should have become lawyers. Should they become should they become accountants or should they study mathematics or should they study art or should they study music? You know, what's and he took a long time to answer the question and after a long time? He said I don't really know the answer to your question. I don't think any particular choice in University or career is better than any other one, but what's absolutely clear to me. You should tell your children is that when they finish University they cannot assume that they finished learning because the future of the world is continuous learning and if I was to give one piece of advice to swine professional of any sort it is assume you're learning has not stopped when you left college does not stop when you finish your training program does not stop when you finish whatever it is. You've done even at 30 40 50 60 you have to you to improve your skills and prepare for future which is going to be extremely competitive. Wow. Yeah that it's that is amazing. And I love that. Yeah, we have to be always learning and traveling to see what's going on and funny enough. That's one of the goals of the podcast which is bring that perspective that you just brought in which is what is happening in other places, right and Can we copy and paste some of those things? It's it's much easier to evolve through a copy and paste then radical Innovation. Even though we need both absolutely very cool. So thanks a lot. I know you're a busy man. And I really really appreciate your time and your insights here today then yeah, thanks. And as you appreciate some I know you've done this already, but for anybody listening, I'm always very open to being connected on LinkedIn. Try to publish most of what I right there. So it's open access and it's free clearly if anybody wants to connect to it with me through counters. That's also possible. So I do also tweet so you can see pictures of where I'm going in the world and what I'm seeing and I try to only focus on issues relating to to food and to to agriculture but again to light the connect with anybody after the podcast or would like to know more very very very cool. Yeah. That with that thanks a lot Hayden. Thank you Mauricio. Hey guys, and girls, thank you so much for being part of our community as well as thanks for all the great gas that we have had. I hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as I do to be part of our email list and get some exclusive materials go to our website www.3playmedia.com. That's wine. I t.com And subscribe to our e-mail. List also we love feedback. So if you use the Apple podcasts app, please leave us a review. It is much appreciated. We'll talk soon.
“Your learning has not stopped when you left college, does not stop when you finish your training program, does not stop when you finish whatever it is you’ve done... even if you are in your 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s, you have to continue to improve your skills and prepare for the future… which is going to be extremely competitive.” – Aidan Connolly. Our guest is Aidan Connolly, another bright mind of the Global Swine Industry. Aidan is CEO of startup Cainthus and an adjunct professor at University College Dublin and China Agricultural University. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce from University College Dublin and a master’s degree in international marketing from the Smurfit School of Business, University College Dublin, Ireland. He is also an executive board member of the International Feed Industry Federation (IFIF), the National Chicken Council and the National Turkey Federation, and of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA). What you will learn:   Things that seemed futuristic but are already starting to happen in livestock production;  What is coming down the pipe and we should watch for, from an innovation standpoint;   The future of agriculture;   What separates successful swine professionals from those that are not. Aidan’s favorite swine-related book: Modern Pig Production (John Gadd) Aidan’s favorite book unrelated to swine: Sapiens (Yuval Noah) Edited by Lauro Faccin 