ADOPT Funding

Hello everyone, it's Thursday the 24th of September and welcome to episode 310 of the kite podcast with me Ben Eagle, no will today. Today we are talking about Adopt funding and asking whether it could be an opportunity for you are thisness. Adopt is UK government funding delivered with Innovate UK for projects which aim to "support collaborative farmer-led on-farm trials or experiments to generate test and demonstrate innovative solutions and practices to farming challenges." For full adopt grants round 9 is currently in process with a deadline for applications of the 7th of October at 11am, that's for projects to start by 1st of February 2027. So today we are going to learn more about adopt funding, what is possible, how it could help your business and how to make an application. To discuss it I am joined by Wallace Curry who is the adopt coordinator and knowledge exchange manager at the UK Library Tech Centre and farmer and consultant Will Toer who is a current adopt funding holder for his Clean Dairy project. I am also joined by podcast producer Becky Ray and everybody's favourite dairy market analyst Chris Walkland, Chris over to you for the milk market report, where are you this week? Well I am bringing you my report from a red track to see today because there are some red track to news, yes I know, it's everyone's favourite subject so gather the family around, shush the children and listen up for the latest developments and they are these, a consultation on proposed changes to the beef, lamb and dairy, red track to standards has been launched. Sorry I was waiting for a wow reaction there, such a big reaction Chris. Apparently the sector specific TAC technical advisory committee have reviewed and I quote every audit point line by line against set criteria, whatever that means, key changes include fewer audit points and a more farm specific approach and the proposals reduce the requirements for dairy by a quarter so that sounds pretty encouraging, a bit less hassle may be coming your way from red tractor. You've got until the 3rd of November to chew them all over, that's the deadline for responses. Now to the market and first off from Tara has this week revised its forecast milk price point for the coming season, from $9.25 per kilogram solid to $9.50 which is about 33 pay by my reckoning so that doesn't look as if milk volumes are going to dry up there on the back of the price but will they dry up on the back of the strengthening alineo, that's the big question for down under. With some volume figures from the US, two August was 1.7% more than last year so it's now hit 20 consecutive months where volumes were higher than the year before but the percentage increase on the previous year is declining. There was a GDT pulse auction this week, the key one are as SMP dropped a bit in dollar terms but increased slightly in euros, New Zealand butter fell quite a lot, again I'm afraid but it's still higher than EU price. Over to Europe land and let's have a wee look at German milk volumes this time last year, they flatline for several weeks. This year though they are declining as they normally do but they are still ahead of last year however as with the US the gap is closing the differential between this year and the previous one is the narrowest it's been for a year at 1.4% and France has recently matched last years so we really need European volumes to start to fall as the reality is that traders do not remotely worry or aren't remotely worried about milk volumes and until they are there is little hope of the market moving to support promised milk prices or needed milk prices. So Dutch butter that's sentiment weakening on that again that's down another 50 euros this week a second consecutive week of declines that's at 4,000 euros now the spot prices below that according to some traders and global prices and EU stocks are keeping a firm lid on butter and if that struggles and it is doing so will cream and so will liquid and commodity processes struggle to pay the sort of milk prices that farmers expect and need. So on cream I hear that's anything between £1.16 and £1.75 here so a wide range seems to be in play now to put that in context last September it was £2.50 a kilo two years ago £3.20 and a word of warning October's cream price is rarely more than September because it's only been higher twice in the last 10 years so the outlook doesn't look great for October in contrast to butter Dutch skin powder edged up again we're now on a 13 week positive run and food grade is at 3,320 euros butter and skin powder given an ampute price of around 30p on the futures well butter is still on a downward run I'm afraid this week it dropped by an average of 120 euros again so down to 4,390 euros still well above real physical market prices SMP was broadly similar and like the real market it converts to about 30p in farmgate terms and these futures are reflecting the negative sentiment onto cheese well cheddar has picked up in Europe a bit the ex index is at 3,300 sterling equivalent now so that's up 300 pounds or 10% in a month that's encouraging I held my pdf mile price last week at 3,400 sterling but that needs to start climbing again a lot to justify 40p promise to milk prices and I can't see it doing so at the moment so let me be clear the market is not going to deliver a milk price that the likes of wike has declared until or unless it moves wike has gone out on a limb with a price the market does not currently support so credit to wike on the one hand for trying to push the market higher but it does look exposed and I'm also picking up some talk about some cheaper imports of cheddar but I'm not sure what volumes and that brings me to red tractor again and a shout out a big shout out to red tractor I have to say now you might not want to hear it but if it wasn't for red tractor standards I think the cheese price in your milk price would be a lot lower than it is and under more pressure the retailers are committed to buying red tractor cheese and this commitment does result in a premium and helps to keep out cheaper European cheddar and other cheddar so you do benefit mature and extra mature prices are higher so they're sending milk into those markets might be better placed than some other cheddar makers however mozzarella in contrast to cheddar that dived 150 pounds in two weeks now to slide below 3,000 sterling again in Europe I think UK manufacturers are selling for more but again the EU price will not support the sort of milk prices that have been promised the EU price has to move to ensure some greater sustainability a spot milk I'm told is also dropped and I'm hearing prices from the low 40p zone to the high 40p so I think that's also a reflection of milk volumes lifting a bit from the trough and some planned maintenance shutdowns I think probably we're in the trough now coming out of the trough now Becky last year we hit the trough in the first week of September in the 2024, the 10th of September and in 2023 it was this week so we are on the climb. So there you are another one done and not a particularly cheery one this week I'm afraid but as ever it is what it is and you will get the facts here. So now it's onto our esteemed guest to talk about adoption whatever that means. So take it away everyone. Bye. Thank you Chris. Not particularly positive throughout but at least and positive words about retracting from you. So there's the same thing. Well yes, yes it is. And it all the hassle that farmers get from time to time with the retractor. It does deliver a premium I think. Right on to adopt as you're saying Chris. Wallace it's great to have you on the show. I wonder if you first of all could you introduce yourselves to the listeners because you're here with your adoptata on but I mean some listeners might know you with your adoptata on. You know what you've just hadn't pointed a flaw but I have left my actual adoptata home that is incredibly frustrating because I do actually have one. Yeah so it worked in agriculture in different places so I was a lecturer for a while podcaster and currently work has been said earlier sort of in knowledge exchange which is we'll get into as we go I'm sure for that agritic centre but focusing on 100% of my time on the adopt support hub which is a consortium created by Edas a soil association and UKATC. So I guess that's probably the background to me Ben. Fantastic thanks Wallace and will ever TA can you introduce yourself and you're adult project please. Yes so I'm William Chewer. I'm a farmer, struck out cultural engineer and consultant based in Cumbria and I run a company called WST Rural. It probably is close in my life to today is our house cloud called Ingrid who used to walk herself into the parlour every morning during my childhood and I think we had several ingrids so it was Ingrid one, Ingrid two and Ingrid three over the period my upbringing so my background in my later life as a farmer's son is agricultural engineering I work for one of the larger machinery manufacturers across Europe the UK and Ireland and I moved into renewable energy and a little bit digestion and interest in all the last few years really in energy monitoring and my clients might describe me as working in the shadows because I don't fit necessarily into a general consultant role so a farmer buys a land agency as sitting what has been a great area and if he were to ask ten years ago if I was going to be looking at energy I think it would have been a bit of a joke around the kitchen table but things have moved very quickly we look what's happened to energy pricing we look what happened with Covid the Ukraine situation and now the situation in the Middle East which has had significant impacts on costumes of energy into farm so my adopt project is with two dairy farmers John Mann with a conventional milking system and John Ferguson with a robotic milking system and the simplest way to look at it is we want to understand what that electricity is doing on them farms so for example John Mann has a very he has a small anaerobic digestive which is powered by his slurry and John Ferguson has some solar panels so we we look at what actually happens with electricity where does it go is that electricity being used in the right way so does it for example anything you generate the most a cost effective point is to use that generation on your farm yourself instead of importing so the the adopt studies to look at where does that electricity flow and then secondly that we partnership with the University of Strachlide is to build some AI tools around helping us do that so can we for example Lord shed so could we reduce consumption at peak times which will maybe reduce the cost of the impartial electricity can we use AI to both predict but analyse what's happening with electricity over a period of time and because my company's been analysing electricity on farms an anaerobic digestion site for several years we're able to build quite a strong picture of actually how electricity moves what consumes electricity and I work agnostically so we're able to monitor what certain texts are doing and do they meet the you know the criteria of what to require as a simple example is if you look at a slowy system or a separator quite a high consumption electricity loading can we automatically shift that to a period where either electricity price is much cheaper for example off peak or could we shift it to when there is renewables available if for example you've got a solar unit so really the the adopters to look at that whole picture on farm and first of all we analyse and then we interpret it and then we look to optimise really right we'll we'll dig more into the projects as we go on but first let's take a bigger picture look at adopt itself while it's going over to you I mean what what is adopt funding and why did it come about in the first place how long has this been going on for yeah good question Ben so first successful projects come out should say December 25 so they would have applied mid back end 2025 came about as a way to just make sure there was sort of funding available for farmers in a in a challenging funding climate I think it'd be fair to say and a way that trials that either have been conceptualised and we can look at doing could be funded but also also quite a lot of these payments whether it's looking at net gain whether it's looking at changes in carbon it doesn't matter are quite often paying that gain paying that change from today whereas a lot of these projects are already happening on farm so it was a way to sort of being able to fund those trials that there may be being trials but they're not coined trials because we're just doing it on farm so it was a way to fund a lot of different things and I'll go into the specifics of that in just a second so it funds agriculture horticulture and forestry and it focuses on a lead farmer you have to have a lead farmer which is based in England and that's where I think there's probably quite a lot of information around that based in England part that's where based in England starts so if we've got I'm guessing you guys have listeners in Wales Scotland Northern Ireland those collaborating farmers tech companies academics can absolutely be from those remaining four nations the only one has to be in England as that lead farmer and what it's basically funding is an increase in sustainability profitability productivity and or resilience if you can take one two three or four of those boxes you're in with a chance and the funding comes in two streams so you've got your facilitator support grant which is two and a half grand that's basically there to put you in touch with a facilitator to again in a second I'll go over what it is and sort of maybe just tweak your your application make the project maybe we need to make sure it's going to be more sort of up to scrutiny and then you have that fill grant which is a part of everyone's excited about which is between 50 and 200,000 pounds you would apply for there's there's sort of rolling round so you mentioned October 7th then October 7th the current fill grant round will close but on October 8th round 10 will open again and that'll run until November 18th November 19th round 11 will open I don't actually have the date because we don't have it yet that'll run until but I would guess in the ballpark of two months and then just finally to explain what a facilitator is and how the collaborative side works because some people will know and some people will not you need to have your lead farmer a collaborating farmer and a facilitator well it's just given example of much more people involved in that you can there's not really any level that limits that apart from people being paid enough within that that grant amount that facilitator is there to sort of project manage is probably the easiest way to explain it for someone who's not came across facilitators before there to make sure the meetings are happening make sure everyone's still talking make sure results are being shared and then just a quick little add-on they'll stop talking and to sort of what the important part of adopters is this open innovation so there's no there's not a capital grant there's no IP being protected this is here to benefit to benefit the sector across the country so obviously the people doing it are going to benefit at first for sure if it's if it's something that proves beneficial and then my role and a few other people's role now it's big big of an expanding beast is to make sure that those results are being are being shared potentially raw we're not sure if we're going to do that but certainly disseminated around the right the right sort of demographics through conventional media through academic through wherever that might be to make sure that we can get these data this data into the sector and turn them into insights that can benefit benefit the whole whole of agriculture in the UK right on the facilitator firm is is the facilitator on like an approved list who are the facilitators so there's there's three 30 at last check and I can tell you I don't have a two hundred life projects yet so yeah not not everyone is not every facility on that list has a project anyone really is the answer and you do a form you carry a form and I think I watch someone do it it'll take you less than 10 minutes if you sort of know what you're doing and I should you go through that form and be accepted you're there on a project list and after this call for you guys' description, I can send you all the links. There is a on the dot page, there's a list of facilitators and you can look at that from a, "Oh, I want to look at Brody Cararibor, I want to look at Derry and I want to look in the Southwest and you can find a facilitator." You can also go in with a project with a facilitator that you want to work with and you can sort of make sure that they're the one that you get. So it's all quite open as to who you can have. You can just give us an idea and this could be general but in terms of the kinds of projects that have been funded because what you're looking at is pretty broad so I'm guessing quite a lot of different things can fit into this. So this is the thing and it's an incredibly difficult question without just reading a bunch of titles because it is incredibly broad. Agriculture, Horticulture Forestry is literally it. That's sort of where we've opened. So maybe to focus on Derry a wee bit, we've got Will's project which I won't take away from. We'll have Will sort of look at that but we've got some titles that jump out or looking at improving Derry efficiency through novel automated monitoring of cattle. We've got quite a lot looking at energy, we've got cow comfort, AI is a big one. We're seeing AI across all facets of the sector. We've categorised projects into what we've called communities of practice sort of in its infancy and some examples of them are after-no-till reducing nitrogen use, maximising fuel use. There's 22 different sort of communities of practice that we've sort of grouped these into and we're seeing everything from the viticulture to mob grazing beef. It's extremely varied and it's honestly an incredibly hard question to answer. What I could do probably in a minute or two is just read a few titles but that would be incredibly boring. So yeah, the answer is, and I do sometimes when people ask me this because it is a question, what can be funded? I almost try not to say a bunch of things, you can go on to the adopt support hub and look up, yeah, fund a project and see them all but it is incredibly varied. But Becky, are there are there many kind clients who've gone through this process? There's a couple who have got either projects in fly. I suppose you've got that there's some pretty strict criteria which may be mollisol. So yes, it's broad in terms of what you can look at but then the scope of the funding is reasonably tight is my understanding. So in terms of does it fit the box for everybody? Some it will and would be a great opportunity. Others less so. This part is kind of tricky because you've kind of got a dot and you've got innovate. So you've got the stages of which is very confusing, I understand, but the sort of what would you call it? The panel, I guess, the projects go to. I absolutely have heard people that have come forward and say, oh, I put in this project and it seemed like it should have worked and it was knocked back for XYZ. Some people really thought it was a lot of rubbish and fair enough, absolutely fair enough. But I've also had quite a lot of discussions where people have had that and they were knocked back and say two of the three panelists seemed to be all on board with it and one didn't and that could either be they just thought it was wrong or they've maybe done fully understand it but what I have heard most of the time is that feedback that's given has led to them being able to apply again and be successful and I would say the majority of the people I don't have figures so I probably shouldn't say the majority. The majority of the people I've spoken to would be correct. They have applied, been unsuccessful and really taken that feedback on board have been successful again. So I think it's being quite strict with looking at that and we always get defeated, don't we, whatever that might be. But if you can, as I say, if you can take one of those four pillars and one of those three sectors and you can take that feedback on board and it's not just a straight note because that's really going to happen, then I think there should be some chance of that to be fair, Becky, which is, you know, if you're hearing that from people, please put them in touch with me and I can try and have a chat as well. Well, can you take us through your application process in terms of how you found it? Because I mean, did you look at like applications for other grants? There can be, I mean, a lot of work behind this but just how long does it take you? What was the process like, how easy was it? Yeah, so I think the first thing I say is it does require some work but that's the kissing agriculture isn't it? You put in some input and you get an output so there is a level of work needed. I think the primary thing is you need to be fairly clear about the problem you want to address and what has you raised that? So in our cases, actually, two of my partner and farmers have that issue. They wanted to understand where electricity was going because they had some fault issues, consumption issues and usage issues on them farms. So actually, you're going to be clear on what the problem is in the potential solution and that sort of forces you to walk through the adopt process. So mapping out what you're doing, what you want to achieve and what resources you need to do that. So pulling together whether you need a specialist, in our case, we needed a electrician to install some tech software. We needed a IT programmer to program sort of that software and then we need understandings of our farming group on the sort of the simple things about well when the milking parlors working, the cooler was working. So it was listing these in a sort of concise, almost bullet point list on the application. And the application, the first time you do it is quite daunting, but it's like anything, I think, when you first start something, you can look at it and be quite daunting. But actually, the system has got a lot easier to use. So you can go in, you can add your information, you can save it, you can pass to other members of your collaboration. So for example, farmer A can pass a question to farmer B, assign that to him and he can complete that. So actually, the system is user friendly. I found once we got used to it, we're able to complete that really remotely. So, you know, my partners could do it of an evening when they came back in or they could do it a copy time. So it's actually quite a nice system for that. It's just all the coming that initial sort of when you first go in the system, you've got sort of 10 to 12 questions and you've got to get your head around that. Actually, just break them questions down, work through them and input the information. And the other important things is just have the basics together, you know, each company details, you know, company's house information, turn all the staff numbers, sort of the basic things to put in the system to get it completed. Basically, you've also got more than a few hours to get your application and not to not mentioning everything in the news from this week. Sorry, sorry. We overstep the market and actually missed one with a small mistake. So we put our application in, we hadn't quite read the costumes correctly and it was rejected. So I will admit that. But the next time around, we went straight through and the assessors were quite frank with that, but that was what we needed. We addressed that problem. We were really submitted in the next round. So actually all that work we'd put in originally wasn't wasted. So we just moved around altered and put what was required. Do you know what you said? They were being, these rounds are mentioned notable weeks in advance and have been for months to be fair. And the next two albeitly don't have dates. We have a pretty rough idea of where they're going to be. We certainly know where the first one's going to start. And just two things as well spoke to you that sprung to mind was from what I understand, I'm not a funding expert by any means and I'll hold my hands up on that. From what I understand that this albeit is it's laborious to carry these things out by the very design. It is worth 0.2 million though. So, you know, there's there's reason for that. But I think it is less than some as well. I think that is certainly the feedback I'm receiving quite, quite commonly. And also one thing that that well alluded to there. And it's I think it's quite an important thing. There's no sort of, how would you say this, expectation of people to do stuff in kind. So there's been examples of, let's say, someone's went for 100k when it was 100k because it got up to June from 100 to 200. Someone's been for 100k and they've say stated a farmer or a tech partner is working for six pound an hour, for example, that will instantly up it to whatever it deems necessary for their expertise. And then if that jumps over 100, then that would that would feel because of that. So it's quite quite particular that people are treated correctly as well, which I was thought was quite cool. I would add a real sort of useful point is to just copy and paste the questions into a word document. You've got a lot of you said, both of you said you've got lots of time. So just copy and paste them words into a word document, the questions and work through them as a group over a period of a few weeks. So first set off draft and then revisit a week or two later because actually what you do your mind started to think through actually is that the right answer for the question, what will the assessors and there's some really useful guidance on what the assessors look for within the portal. So I would always recommend people do read the additional guidance, it's really useful. And we'll take that away from when we missed the first hurdle and we got in the second time and actually that the key to that was rereading correctly that information. Well, would you have done your project regardless? Even if a doc wasn't around or was a doc quite key to you doing the project. We had a small project ongoing but a doc was critical for certainly one of the other partners because it allowed a level of risk, quite helps with the level of risk which otherwise they would be taking risk with doing something like this, there's a lot of time involved in this. You know, farmers are short of time and it's a tight business and we all know margins are tight so actually the doc has been really helpful on, you know, essentially helping them dedicate a little bit of time to do these type of things and they're renumerated accordingly for that and I think it's important we understand that as well because farmers' times are stretched. You know, it needs rewarding for what they're doing and the doc has been really helpful for allowing them to dedicate time and put together a good project and I think that drives good projects and innovative projects and actually drives people to think about what they want to resolve so actually think about them key points you want to solve upon your farm. Yeah, Becky, there's a more general point here I suppose isn't there about innovation and like we were saying the time, the time and risk I suppose that goes into innovation on the business looking forwards, trying things out. And I don't think farmers necessarily always label it as innovation. You know, I think we quite just solve a problem that we've got and in an innovative way and I suppose especially the type of customers that we deal with, you know, I suppose the other bit will and will I see, it doesn't have to be something big and grand necessarily does it, it doesn't have to be a, you know, innovations sort of develop as an idea in your head, doesn't it, that you're going to come up with something groundbreaking that's going to change the way the industry or the sector works, actually there's many innovations and stuff that would qualify for the funding every day on farm and it was really interesting we're listening to the sort of energy mapping and energy use project that you were talking about because that's a real live topic for a lot of farmers and some of whom if we think about dairy will have considered mitigations but probably by a bit more trial and error than a formalised assessment and I think this gives people maybe some, yes, notwithstanding the demands on time but it does also give people a bit of structure and scope to tackle maybe some of those more complex challenges or problems to solve but with the support of a facilitator or other parties involved, not necessarily the facilitator, support for the process but to solve that with other industry partners. Yeah, I was actually just going to say Becky's really right there, actually what it's allowed through our adopters that quite challenging time and cost of understanding something that is actually people will say it's quite boring, where does electricity go on farm but that's now a significant cost point on the farms and we've discovered some really interesting and to a degree some worrying aspects around the energy movement on the farm and if we hadn't done this project, I was a two year adopt project so when I say the first thing is to analyse we wanted to get so our two years of seasonal data which is really important like anything in the farming calendar everything works to a degree of seasonality and that's the same when it comes to energy both from consumption and if he renewables to a degree the generation and actually working through that mix of information to find out it isn't something you can do almost at the moment of the shelf and that's what we want to achieve is something which can be done more cost effectively and what we found was when we looked at the problem, we went to the market and it was extremely expensive to bring in what we would say as an industrial type system to monitor on farms and there really didn't meet the requirement of a farming system so robustness, simplicity and reliability, a bit like your milking parlour, it's to work all day, every day 365 days a year and that was one of the challenges which actually adopters allowed us to do is to work through those key points. I think the one thing that Becky said that's really important is innovation as a word that some of us maybe think of as everyday you know but a lot of people would, a lot of these projects are everyday things and one thing that Becky mentioned to think you said collaboration Becky or maybe it was well, that collaboration title is maybe one of those buzzwords these days, you know, everything's collaborative, everything's whatever and this is based on collaboration but I think one thing I wanted to mention was it's collaboration not just at the big fancy high-floating level, it's collaboration which is working with your neighbour, it's a really good project looking at taking the mock from a dairy calf reading a farm composting that, turning it and using it as an input in the farm next door so that's a way of minimising costs for your inputs, working with those around you and both getting benefits from each as well so when you ask the question Ben, could you name us some projects it's really hard to do but it is important to mention just how open this can be and just how much, probably something the majority of people are doing on their farm would take a box with a little bit of work. Yeah, it's such an interesting one on collaboration as well and actually that point of innovation can be every day because it's been on that collaborative front, yes, you've got your first adopt project but as always find when people start working together, you've then built those relationships and you never know then what that might lead on to afterwards I suppose. Can you, as you've one question, yeah, if you've secured one adopt project, does that stop you from applying in future? No, not at all, quite a few farmers with a few and I could probably name 15 facilitators with borderline a lot. We've actually just done that so we, our collaboration, we're going to monitor water, we chat ship from the electricity adopt, came the discussion when we were all together on the farm, both farms were suffering with water quality, water pressure issues which has been ongoing for probably decades on local supply and out of this, the discussion can well actually do we really know what water we're getting on these farms? So we know we've just been approved to do what we call an adopt water project which is very similar to the electricity so what is the quality of the water coming into the farm, what is the quality of the water which is going from say a borehole or the rainwater collection systems and how does that look when it's delivered to livestock? So from our seed collaboration we've started to think well actually there is some sort of key underlying basic things we can monitor which we don't today and that's what we've found, we suddenly realise there's sort of the basic things we take for granted, we don't actually monitor and water is critical on the dairy farm, it's the quality and the availability and the temperature are so critical for cow health fertility and everything accomplishing with that and hygiene. Really interesting when we're discussing that yesterday, looking at some CRP data about the cost of water and we've just we've sent out a forage survey or we did a couple of weeks ago to farmers, what about the impact of the drought but two in terms of water use on farm this summer and what you know and security of water supply, you know several clients with boreholes where they had to switch over to mains and you know the cost of doing that and all the complications so yeah that's very very relevant. It's a good point because what we found in our our current adopt was through the investigation what we're doing with the energy aside with one of the subcontractors that opened up that actually he did a lot of work on distilleries and what is critical to distilleries is water quality, so we're able to reuse some of that knowledge and apply it in the farming environment at a cost of effective point and I will remember that because actually the industry is outside of I can generally don't really appreciate the low margin aspect of agriculture but also the requirement it needs to be robust technology, it's working in a dirty wet cold warm rough environment and actually that the adopt program has allowed us as part of it to look at solutions which will work on farms. Just nothing to wrap this up, well it's a two year project, what does success at the end look like for you? Success will be reduced bills while the farmers for electricity, it will be understanding that energy, when I say reduced bills it's actually farms are growing so will we ever reduce bills on them farms, so what we're able to do is actually say that renewable will work on that farm now, we understand the flow of electricity so we're just coming up nearly a year into this project, we're already able to understand what battery will work on that farm and what size of battery is most important and actually what does that look like from a return on investment point and really start with raising your money. important things is they are cost factors but also the other thing is security. One of the big things around our dot clean dairy is understanding can we create energy security on farm and a simple thing is is a lot of technology in the energy and renewables can be switched off remotely. So your inverters or your battery can be switched off remotely and and is that something which is acceptable when you're milking at half 4 in the morning and your system goes down and it's isolated by third party. So part of our agreement was to to look at that and understand and that's given the group our collaboration really insight to certain technologies and what we're working and what might have risk attached to it. And one final question, well we'll start with you was finished with you. What's your one piece of advice to a dairy farmer listening today? Who's maybe on the fence a bit of lying might might have an idea but yeah slightly on the fence. Well I think it's collaborate with somebody you know, somebody you trust and somebody you can work with. So if you've got a neighbouring farmer or you've got a friend who's doing something similar or something which matches your idea, getting sit down and muck it out just on a piece of air for very basic and then move from that into the adopt program. So don't fail over odd by the amount of information which is needed just collaborate with somebody you know, sit down and muck it out over a coffee. And Wallace finally to you? Well said there is very true, if you're thinking or I have something here but I don't know how to work alongside as well, it sounds very much like Barack Obama promoting Obama here in between two ferns here but the dots were I was a few things that I haven't mentioned as well as a connections hub there. That's actually really important. So if you're probably the one demographic we don't have too much involvement with as farmers but if you're tech company academic facilitator farmer and you have AID and you're looking for any of the listages mentioned you can put a sort of host on there is it where sort of a blog is like a marketplace that they can look at and also secondly there is sort of an event can't say hub again kind of event calendar on there that sort of is separated by region. What's going on in your sort of area? There's an event on that next week that is an adopt farmer promoting all their adopt projects with quite a few people coming both successful adopt applicants, potential adopt applicants so you can sort of see what's happening as well but I think Wells Point about work with the right people is very important if you do have an idea. Can I add a sorry to jump in but it's actually the adopt solicitator's important and when you choose one maybe choose one who's relevant to your idea it's sort of who has historic experience around that. They've been really useful in guiding us through the processes right from the conception to actually view the more the administration parts of putting your costs in the system claiming your time. So the adopt solicitator a really useful point of contact and find somebody you can work with but also has the relevant experience in that idea of area. Agreed. Well we will leave it there hopefully listen as that has given you a good insight into adopt and if you do think about applying or if you apply get in touch let us know uh what what what you're doing be great to hear anything any feedback and a massive thank you to our guests today Wallace Curry and Will Tua as well as Chris Walkland and Phelpscast producer Becky Ray. Thank you for listening it's always please see the show notes for more information including our podcast disclaimer we will be back with you next week but for now it's good bye from all of us here.