Episode: 16

Mark Campbell

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Toban Dyck, Jay Whetter, Mark Campbell

Toban Dyck  00:03

This is the extensionist conversations with great thinkers in agriculture. I’m Toban Dyck and I’m Jay wetter.

00:16

Hey, Toban, Jay.

Jay Whetter  00:18

So our guest today is a guy named Mark Campbell. He’s from the UK, and I’m going to tell you how we connected with Mark.

Toban Dyck  00:27

Yeah, yeah. What would Yeah. I’m curious, too.

Jay Whetter  00:33

So I went. I’ve said this before, so people are probably tired of hearing it, but so I went to Cornwall, England, home of the wetters, in April of 2024 and I tried to find a farm journalist from Cornwall who I could connect with while I was there. And so I found this woman, Ruth wills, W, I, L, L, S. And Ruth does some writing for farmers weekly, which is one of the big farm papers in the UK, and she does other stuff as well. So I found her, maybe through LinkedIn, maybe through social media, I can’t remember, but we connected. And I said, Hey, Ruth, I’m coming to Cornwall. This, this these dates, it’d be great to meet you. And also, could you find me a farmer to go visit? And she wasn’t available at the dates that I was there, but she did find me a farmer named Jeremy Odie, who I did an article with in country guide. I feel like you’ve Yeah, yeah, the name sounds familiar, Jeremy. It’s a great farm, and so I could, I recommend trying to find the my article and country guide about Jeremy Odie? Oh, it’s oat with an E y on the end. So, O, A, E, no, yeah, O, A, T, E, y, so then, so I’ve started following Ruth on LinkedIn, and so Ruth made this post about how much fun she had at this agri leaders event. And agri leaders, that’s interesting. So I sent her a note, and I said, Can you tell me more about this? And so she did, and then she said, You should talk to Mark Campbell, who basically organizes it. So I sent Mark Campbell a note, and we actually had a conversation, a phone, good old phone conversation a couple months ago. And then I made a mental note that he might be a good guest for our podcast. So that’s how we connected with Mark across the pond.

Toban Dyck  02:27

Yeah, connections happen in just the most bizarre ways. Yeah,

Jay Whetter  02:30

super interesting. That sounded so sincere. Tell

Toban Dyck  02:34

us more about that. And then you emailed him, and then he responded saying yes, and then I’m joking at a big sincere, you know, these things happen. And, yeah, in strange, in strange ways, I’m looking forward to the but like, from the notes, it’s just, I am really looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, in terms of, like training, it seems like he’s got a lot of experience with that and and an extension and all these things, I think your thoughts we’re gonna glean from it, I hope. Anyway, yeah, yeah, we’ll see. Excited. Are you curious about what Jay and I get up to behind the scenes at the extensionist the extension

Jay Whetter  03:16

is has a newsletter. We’d love you to subscribe. We give you exclusive content, some behind the scenes and

Toban Dyck  03:23

important updates. You’re never going to miss an episode again. Please sign up at the extensionist.com

Jay Whetter  03:35

All right. Our guest today is Mark Campbell, who’s the knowledge exchange manager with the agriculture and horticulture development board in the United Kingdom. Welcome Mark,

Mark Campbell  03:45

great, great to great to be on the podcast. This is

Jay Whetter  03:48

going to meander all over the place. Mark, this is the way always. This is the way Toban. And I like to roll but, but so a H DB always makes us think, or me anyway, have ADHD, yeah, when I’m reading my notes here,

Mark Campbell  04:06

definitely not the first people to say that, yeah. So,

Jay Whetter  04:10

yeah. So Marcus with ADHD and a H dB, HD

04:16

in

Jay Whetter  04:18

the in the in the UK, which agriculture agency that represents farmers who grow cereals, oil seeds, beef cattle and sheep, yeah?

04:29

For good measure, sure

Jay Whetter  04:30

lets us round it all out. Yeah, dairy, dairy, pigs, sheep, cattle, which is most of the light, I guess. Not chickens, but and then, and then, like you said, the cereals and the oil seeds. So you’re covering a broad swath of the English countryside, I should say the UK countryside, yeah,

Mark Campbell  04:49

a fair chunk of the UK countryside. And we won’t get into the devolved pieces, because it’s different in in all the in all the four countries.

Jay Whetter  04:58

So what we wanted, what we wanted to. Talk about, mostly is the agri leaders, but we, I really am quite curious about the So You said you like watching football and soccer, and also rugby union. And I don’t know much about rugby. I’ve never played a game of rugby or a game of football for that matter. But who is your team? Yeah,

Toban Dyck  05:22

so you haven’t sorry you even played

Jay Whetter  05:24

football. No, I’ve played, like Canadian football, but you haven’t played a game of soccer. Well, I’ve kicked a soccer ball around, okay, but I’ve never actually played a game, so except maybe from grade eight gym class or something. Yeah, okay, sorry, Mark,

Mark Campbell  05:38

it’s so good. And yeah, soccer. I’m a, I’m a big sports fan. Um, I enjoy my sport, and my family and my children play a lot of sport, so, so my team would be Brighton and Hove Albion if we’re talking soccer. Oh, yeah, and they’re doing okay. They’re really, really, they’re the underdog in the Premier League, and, um, taken on by a chap called Tony bloom, who bought the club about 1520, years ago as they were about to go bust, and has taken it from from nothing to probably the business in the worst is they looked on business in the Premier League of making money and success. That’s amazing. Yeah, they look at bringing new young talent in growing them and then pushing them on into bigger, bigger, better clubs around the world. So yeah, soccer. I like, I like to watch Brighton, and so do both of my sons. We we pop down there occasionally, but I’m probably more of a rugby fan. I enjoy my rugby union, so I follow a team called harlequins based in South, South East London, very close to the home of rugby, which is Twickenham, the Alliant Stadium and the RFU, which I also matched a volunteer for England at the RFU, and helped prepare the pitch and learn how to grow grass for a very, very different purpose. That’s

Jay Whetter  06:56

amazing, right? So you’re extending your agricultural talents to growing grass for the rugby union stadium.

Mark Campbell  07:03

Yeah, kind of like it’s very indirectly. I felt. In fact, it’s what my son wants to do. He’s in his final year of what we’d call secondary school in the UK, so he’s taken his exams in a few weeks before he fledges off to college, and he wants to be a groundsman. He wants to grow grass for elite sport level, and he volunteers there and does one day a week currently with the grounds team looking after the Hello turf and Yeah. And they got stuck for a person on a mower back whilst England were playing New Zealand in the autumn. And James phone and said, Dad, what you doing tomorrow? And I ended up doing the helping, and the rest is history. So it’s a really, really good word, watching my favorite sport, supporting my son, and learning about grass growing in a very, very different context. Yeah,

Jay Whetter  07:49

exactly. Did you say hallowed ground? The

07:52

hallowed ground is the hallowed earth of rugby it’s the birthplace of rugby union.

Toban Dyck  08:01

That’s it super interesting. So back, like years ago, Mark, we don’t know each other, but so I currently, I currently farm in southern Manitoba, in Canada, a great farmer here. You’re you’re talking to us. I’m at my farm studio here. And but for years, I wrote a agriculture column for a national paper in in in Canada, and I would get a lot of engagement from from people who grew turf in for golf when I wrote that column. So it’s interesting, right? There’s that cross section and that it’s come up a lot, actually, even still, sometimes on social media, people who are ground grounds, grounds crew for golf courses or for various pitches, engage in the ag sector, in ways that I actually initially found quite surprising, but there is a strong connection there that’s interesting. You brought

Mark Campbell  08:51

it up, there’s a massive synergy. And it just looking at the different sports turfs in terms of what they’re aiming to achieve. So rugby, for example, where you’re scrummaging, it’s all about traction and safety, whereas, if you’re looking at soccer, it’s all about how quick the ball can travel across the surface and stuff like that. And it’s openness, yeah, something I never, ever thought I’d get into, other than watching the game and where my son’s interested. It’s just there’s loads of synergies and loads of interest in terms of

Jay Whetter  09:18

so is there any way, like, do those synergies actually happen? Like, I’m just thinking of like, that quick recovery that you would need with a sports stadium. You need that grass to be perfect every week, and it’s probably after a rugby game in particular where you’ve got those heavy scrums and the shredding of the grass surface. I was wondering if there would be synergies or lessons for livestock pasture land for quick recovery? Yeah,

Mark Campbell  09:46

definitely, and some other stuff in the probiotics and the non agrochemical kind of treatments that they’re putting onto the grass to try and do that they’re spraying molasses and silica and all kinds of products, which is like. What’s that for? Basically, it’s Red Bull for grass to get it that booster to push it forward. But there could be a huge amount of learnings, like, why vice versa? I stick my ag head on in terms of, well, globally, we’re trying to reduce inputs. Are very expensive. We’re trying to be more environmentally friendly in terms of our practices. You look at sports turf and sports grounds, they just chuck in around like it’s nobody’s business. There could be a lot of learnings from how they can capture nutrients when they’re when they’re changing pitches and regenerating their surfaces. So yeah, it’s really interesting, and I quite surprised how interested I’ve got in it.

Jay Whetter  10:41

So, yeah, well, I could see, I mean, just, I’ve never even talked about that before, but I’m I can think we could do a whole podcast on that. I wonder.

Toban Dyck  10:48

I wonder, is it a bit of an accelerated snapshot of, like, research and development, where, if it’s for soccer, or if it’s for football, you can kind of do whatever you want, like the regulatory environments. Totally different. If you want to try out this, these genetics, this breeding program to get this done, there’s like this, you can do it there. It’s this little incubator for for, like, fast research, yeah,

Mark Campbell  11:12

yeah. Massively, massively. And there’s so different dynamics. If you look in the soccer world that we’ve we’ve been grateful enough that we were in good contact with the head, head of grounds there soccer, particularly if you look across the UK, where they’re not only playing in the Premier League, there’s what the Champions League, some of these pitches are facing, 345, matches a week, that they need to look immaculate and perfect, and how they can actually manipulate the plant growth to be able to sustain that is phenomenal.

Jay Whetter  11:44

I love that we could continue to talk, should we, should? Should we move on to Mark’s origin story? So so we always get some notes ahead of time. Mark and and I know you said you didn’t, didn’t grow up on a farm, but here you are now as a leader within agriculture in the UK, which is great. So what we’ll get there eventually, but what got you into agriculture was some love of cows. I think

Toban Dyck  12:11

in our notes it says, Actually obsession

Jay Whetter  12:15

with cows. So how did that come about at an early age? What

Mark Campbell  12:19

was obsession with cows? Obsession with cows was definitely what my mother would mother would say my only connection with agriculture in my family would be my grandmother. My mother’s mother, served in the land army in the wars, in World War One and World War Two. That’s my only, only direct connection with the industry. My my father, my grandfather. They were all precision engineers. They and my two younger brothers both followed my father into those realms. But I always had this yearning. We had an auction market, a sales center in the town that I lived in, and used to love it in the school holidays, because walking around to grandma and granddad’s. We had to go past the past the cattle market. And little mark would always like to go and have a look and nose around. And it’s quite I think it was those kind of things. I was just really intrigued about animals and what they did. Fast forward to as I entered my secondary stage of education, I met a lad there that lived on a farm. His parents didn’t farm. They rented a cottage, and I ended up becoming a bit of a pest, because I was around there every weekend and every every minute that would go with this, I was exposed to the world of agriculture to the point that his parents said to me, Mark, you’re not coming up anymore. And at that point, the the farm owner, we used to do little chores and errands for him. So there’s the keys to the workshop. Mark come up whenever you like, and you can let yourself in. And that’s kind of where my my love and my entrance into the industry came

Jay Whetter  13:54

on. So you’re welcomed in and that you felt at home. Yeah, definitely,

Mark Campbell  13:57

definitely, definitely, definitely, and now looking as my career has progressed into the words of education and now extension, we need more individuals to progress into the industry in that manner. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  14:12

certainly, when I’m reading these notes, I really like that. How you’ve, you’ve, it seems like you’ve, you’ve been able to kind of inject that into the program that you’re, that you’re involved in that bringing, bringing people from outside of ag into AG. That’s jumping ahead a little bit. We’ll come back to the kind of the early stages. But I just want to get this out there while I’m thinking about it. Is I really like that. I think ag here, and I’m sure there too is. It can get very insular, and echo chamber ish, and so I love the idea of bringing people from outside of ag into Ag, and letting people in ag know that a lot of their issues are shared in other industries and other sectors. And I think that just just immense valuable perspective.

Mark Campbell  14:57

I think it’s massively important aren’t. And I’m not hugely well traveled, but thinking of global agriculture, particularly in the Western world, there’s more technology there. There’s less people actually operating on farm because of the automation and things like that. So I think opening it out and looking further than just the field gate or the farm drive is really, really important, because what we’ve experienced, particularly with the program, is that whatever industry you tend to win, you tend to particularly which agri leader focuses around the human element of managing a business leadership management and people management. It doesn’t really matter what industry you’re in, most people are facing very, very similar challenges, but in a slightly different context.

Toban Dyck  15:42

Yeah, no, that’s, that’s very interesting. So when you, when you started your job with a HDb, Was it, was it, was it an available opening, or were you looking for something in that, in that field? So

Mark Campbell  15:56

prior to joining ahdb, I had had an interesting career from practical agriculture, working in the in the veterinary sector, and then I moved into a position in education in a college, so a 16 to 19 level College, where I was there for nearly 10 years, and I finished. When I left, I was in charge of the ag and food division at that college, and I loved my years teaching, and I loved my years bringing new entrants into the industry, but I got very frustrated with the politics that went along with education in in the UK, and had the yearning to get back in front of Farmers. So one of my prior colleagues Isaac van Heerden, that you might see on some of the podcasts and some of the stuff that we do over here, and we work together in the college, he looked after the degree level programs. I looked after the, what they call the a level programs. And he went to ahdb. He started the agri Leader Program, which was then called dairy leader because it was only focused on dairy. And he was like, Mark, I think there’s a bit of an opportunity here, and could do with some of your skills and and the rest is history. And I was quite keen to get back towards farmers. I’d used a lot of the resources that HDP provide across all the sectors, so I was aware of them, and just wanted to get back out on the road and up farm drives and in front of farmers again, rather than dealing with the bureaucracy and the politics of of managing an Agriculture Farm and in an agriculture University. So let’s

Jay Whetter  17:29

I think we should get into agri leaders. But I just wanted to go back to a couple of quick little things. This is way back to early on. You said your grandmother was part of the land army. And I know I’m 20 minutes late on touching back, so I wrote it down. This is a follow up. What is, what was the land army? So

Mark Campbell  17:50

back in World War Two, World War One and World War Two, when generally, all the men went off to fight at the front. On the front line, the land army were the women and wives that were left behind, and they were assigned to manage the land and produce food for the country. We’re in periods of rationing and all sorts of challenge. So my grandmother was deployed on a farm that was about four or five miles out of the town that she lived in. The farm still there today, and she worked with dairy cow. She was a milkmaid and milked cows through the wall the war period. That was what she was assigned, assigned to do. So, yeah, essentially, there were the people that were feeding the country, whilst everyone, all the men, were out on the front line fighting the

18:40

war land army. Yeah, that’s

Jay Whetter  18:41

perfect. And then the other thing was just so the college where you taught and you also went to as a student, was plumpton. Plumpton college, college. What’s it like? It’s

Mark Campbell  18:51

a fantastic institution. I still live in the area. Now, it’s only three miles from I haven’t ventured very, very far from home. I live just outside of the town I was born, and plumpton’s Four or five miles away from where I lived. And it’s, it’s a fantastic place. It’s a very, very unique institution in the UK that it’s independent. A lot of the bigger institutions now have partnered and collaborated with other institutions and and that an agriculture and land base is the is the core to the to their delivery. And over the periods I was there, we saw several million pounds worth of investment, not only into the farm, the infrastructure and the teaching facility, but also into conferencing facilities and community facilities as well, to help service the the south east, the southern agricultural communities, which is fantastic. So, yeah, still a great place. It’s very, very close to my heart and some, some good, fond memories there,

Jay Whetter  19:49

right on Toban. Do you have any other questions on that before we go to agri leaders? No,

Toban Dyck  19:56

take the college. Is there anything? I mean, we have tons, tons more. Questions. Yeah, so you kick

Jay Whetter  20:01

us off on what you got.

Toban Dyck  20:05

Jay just going on. How excited I was to talk about this before, before we because, I mean, I mean, I think it’s, I think it’s, I think it’s really interesting and really kind of apropos. Jay and I are actually kind of, we’re, full disclosure, we’re kind of looking at developing a little bit of a what sounds like a similar program here in in Manitoba, with something, you know, plans for Western Canada domination, but, but, but we really like some of the elements from, from these notes, from, from your program. There is, there’s a similar need here for, for that kind of leadership training, in in for farmers, in egg one of the kind of questions that’s on my mind right now is, do you, do you at all focus on, on so you develop current leaders or current farm car managers? Is there? Is there an angle where you’re trying to find new ones as well, like tease out. One of the issues that say just for just to round that out a bit, is we know that there’s lots of farmers in Manitoba or in Canada who are potential leaders, but who don’t, who aren’t out there in the public, so we don’t know who they are. Is there? Is there an effort to kind of tease those people out?

Mark Campbell  21:22

Yes, yes and no. I suppose the sole aim of the of the program is, is to be that enabler. If you’re a better leader and manager, then hopefully you’re going to overcome the multitude of challenges that’s facing the industry as we move forward. And we’ll always say that everybody leaves and manages on a day to day basis. And so whether you’re the new grad out of college or whether you’re 62 years old and the second gen, third generation in the business, everyone leaves and manages at a different and different level. What we’re trying to do is these skill sets within UK because probably in global agriculture, are not deemed as important or sexy, because the industry is generally deemed as more of a, say, more of a way of life, than actually a professional career, which is completely, this is a very professional career that we’re trying to instill those skills at all levels to help push the Push the industry to be on and if I’m, if I’m really honest, and this is no disrespect to my UK farmers or any farmers, it’s not really a sexy subject. It’s not something farmers in the UK like, like cows and plows and soil. When it’s like, I’ve got to manage a person and I’ve got to understand their personality profile or something like that, I’m just going to hook the power on and get back out into the paddock and carry on doing, on doing. So, yeah, we’re trying to enable them and bring these skills in very unique ways and different ways, to enable farmers to be better farmers.

Jay Whetter  22:56

And I was going to ask you what, what are the skills required? And I know so human you just mentioned human resource management. What? What are the targeted skills to build those leaders? So

Mark Campbell  23:10

if we go back a couple of steps where this program was actually born, 15, I’ve been with HDB now for for seven years, Isaac for 12. So probably 1214, years ago, we were challenged by a group of what we deem in the UK is very large, very progressive dairy farmers. And they challenged us basically in terms of the levy that they were paying us, the tax that they were paying. So we’re not seeing any return on that investment, said, in terms of animal husbandry, animal management, in terms of grass and soil management, in terms of business management, we’re good at that. We’re very, very good, profitable farmers. What can you provide us for that return? So rather than bearing our heads in the sands, we actually brought them all together in a room, and then started to ask some questions about where the challenges are and what the problems are, and pretty unanimously, with those eight dairy farmers that would easily have paid in levy mine and Isaac and probably another person’s salary, so fairly big players that it was all people related. It’s all about managing themselves, managing their teams of people that then effectively managed their business. So we started the program, very ad hoc wise. Originally, it was called the large leaders Club, which, I’m brutally honest, probably not the greatest name for a group which very, very quickly morphed into dairy leader, which was the it was obviously focused on dairy farmers, and and it was the leadership and management next element that we were trying to deliver, and we slowly grew that program from those eight farmers to about 2000 farmers using various segmentation methods to identify at that time, there was when Isaac started. There was probably around five. 14, 15,000 dairy farmers in the UK, when I joined, sort of halfway through the program, there was we were down to about 10,000 it’s now in the sort of 8000 region. We used some of the data we had on our customer records, and we did a bit of research to actually try and segment and identify said to dairy farmers that would would engage on the early adopters that would engage with this. Fast forward that on to 20, 2018 where we had our leadership team at HDB saying, you’re doing some really good stuff and getting some really good feedback. Why are you just delivering it to dairy farmers? And I said, well, because I my original role was I sat in the dairy extension team. I focused on the south of the UK, and I looked after the bigger guys to push it. And he said, Well, you’re not talking soil. Count your soil and plows and and cows. You’re talking people said, why are we not offering this to all farmers? So that’s where agrilida was born. And we flipped from dairy to agrilida, and we came together, being like, you guys probably are as an extension service. We’re an evidence based, independent organization. We’re completely impartial. We’re like, we actually haven’t got any evidence or research that backs up what we’re doing other than the results as an organization. That is evidence is at the core. We probably need to do some so we commissioned some research, a research report, which is called Bridging the Gap 2030 and what we wanted to understand is, what would the leadership and management traits and needs of UK agriculture over the next 10 years that that? Yeah, we started that in 2019 It was published in 2020 and from that that report, we identified that only nought point three, 7% of the industry in 2019 2020 were actually engaging in any form of leadership and management development, which is quite a small, very, very less than half a percent of UK Farmers were, and this was at the time, there’s about quarter of a million farmers in the UK, so there’s not many of them that were engaging with leadership and management. So that was the first big flag this. And the second thing we try to understand is, is what what traits would these individuals need to be better leaders and managers to overcome what we would call the mega trends. So the mega trends being disruptive digitalization and technology the world now you you can’t breathe without someone capturing some data about you. So there’s so much data out there, and particularly in agriculture, with sensors on animals or or whether it be crop sensors, or whether that be reports and account, whatever it is, there’s so much information out there that it becomes more disruptive than it becomes useful. We’ve then got global populations continuing to grow. Land mass isn’t so obviously we’re going to need to produce more food to feed more people. So that’s one of the big challenges, particularly in the UK as we’ve we’ve we’ve brexited, and we’ve left Europe our support packages and our subsidy schemes, and even more so, currently in the political climate that we’re in, we won’t go into politics as that. That is a complete interesting scenario. But we’ve had farmers have had their subsidies reduced. We used to have something called the basic payment scheme, which came out of the when we were in the EU of the EU pot that’s been slowly declined over the last five years, the new government has joined, have completely scrapped it and stopped it, which about 70% of UK farms were reliant on that payment to make any kind of make a break, even, if not make a profit. So they’re stopping and which is causing huge amounts of problems. But then got the social change, Gen Z, opposed to the baby boomers, have very, very different opinions on food and stuff like that. So we need to how we we work and interpret that as farmers. Then you get to the internet, Fact or Fake. There’s so much information out there, what do you believe and what you don’t believe? And then the final mega trend would be the environment, the environmental and ecological footprint of how agriculture is not only the solution, it’s a bit of a problem. But how do we reduce carbon footprints? Sequest more carbon and reduce overall seeker. So there’s massive challenges out there that we want

Jay Whetter  29:18

to mark a lot of you. Yeah, I before we go too far, because I want to, I want to go back and check in on a couple of things. But so one of the goals, though, is to inform your leaders on these, these mega trends, and what they mean for them and how they might manage around them. My I was in Cornwall, England last April. You just want, did you

Toban Dyck  29:45

just want to talk about that? Yeah, yeah.

Jay Whetter  29:47

Just gonna say my, I mean, it’s just about Brexit. So a lot of the Cornish farmers voted for Brexit with the promise that the supports would stay the same as what they enjoyed under the European Union. And. Quickly dropped to about a third. So there, I mean, Cornwall is not a rich place to begin with, and now it’s really hurting but, but I want to go back to the just the structure of of your agency. So farmers pay a levy and and in in Canada, we have a lot of these commodity associations, and they’re not lumped together necessarily the way yours is, but, but they pay a voluntary Levy, which means that they can, well, they pay it, and then they can opt out. But your farmers can’t opt out. So you are, you are wanting to service your your leaders, your bigger farmers, who are pushing back and saying exactly what you said, we don’t feel like we’re getting value for our money and we’re paying quite, quite large levies. So what was, why did you feel like you needed to when they couldn’t pull they had they were stuck in there. That’s about the right word. They couldn’t ask for their levy back. And yet there’s such a small percentage of all of the farmers. Why did you feel like you needed to serve them?

Mark Campbell  31:10

So, yeah, we, they are. It’s a compulsory Levy, and they can’t get out of it unless, unless we strike a ballot, which we won’t go into that. But we, there’s still levy payers that and they’re individuals that were paying a fair proportion of the levy. They didn’t object to the work that we were doing. They were where they were objecting is that it wasn’t meeting any of their needs. So that’s where we started to segment the demographic of farmers and starting to target and tailor the resource to them. And we need, we need to have an understanding of what their challenges, challenges were, which ended up being this, more people, leadership, management centric, which

Jay Whetter  31:52

I which exactly what I’m glad you we said that because I feel like our associations don’t necessarily segment their membership in that way, they’re they’re serving the masses, but you identified groups and specific needs for each group.

Toban Dyck  32:11

I also think that there’s a good, really interesting narrative here about how there is a there is a there are some associations in Canada that have been able to make their levy compulsory or mandatory, and there’s a there’s an argument against it, saying that, well, if it’s, if it’s not, if it’s not voluntary, then there’s no accountability for those associations to actually service their members, like that. All that’s built into kind of that, that voluntary nature. But what you’re saying is, is really interesting, is you do have it as compulsory, and yet you still feel that, that that strong commitment to service your members. And I think that’s a, I think that’s a really good thing to have out there. That’s a great I’m glad, I’m glad that’s been said.

Jay Whetter  33:02

And did you, did you segment them by size, or did, did you ask them what services they wanted to segment that way? Yeah,

Mark Campbell  33:12

so admittedly, I wasn’t around when the original segmentation was done. But yes, originally it was, it was very crude in terms of size and and it was dairy, it was number of animals. And then we did a beat bit of work in terms of their, how they would describe themselves, whether they’re an early adopter, or whether a la garden, and tried to then focus on the early adopters that were more proactive and more more engaged, to then start the ball the ball rolling. Yeah, that that we would love without spending 1000s and 1000s of pounds of Levy. Would love to do that for all levy players. Would love to be able to deliver sort of personal life, but like your social media, in this day and age with the algorithm, suddenly your personal you start clicking on cows eating grass, and before you know it, your feeds full of full of that stuff that we would love to get to that point where we can actually provide a very individualized service to each business in the country, which we will we’ll continue working, working towards.

Jay Whetter  34:15

Is there a belief, or is there evidence to support the idea that if you target your large operators, who are early adopters, that that knowledge will trickle down through the whole industry. Is that the thinking, Yeah, is that true?

Mark Campbell  34:35

They create that vacuum definitely, and bring people along with them. Definitely, definitely, yeah, because

Toban Dyck  34:42

we would certainly have examples of that here, or at least we’d have some. We could probably Jay and I could probably name some of the big operators that would be great to target for, for that kind of, that kind of programming that’s, that’s very interesting. So you do. You do a little bit of like media training and all this you mentioned, like social media and like navigating all that stuff, is that is that kind of a part of the program?

Mark Campbell  35:09

We do offer to some of our farmers media training. We’ve had a little bit as well, but we’ve been as the program has evolved, we’ve been provided quite a bit of a free license, if to try and make mistakes and try stuff new, which is, is the only way you learn, which is great. We’ve done a lot of work as I joined the business around behavior insights and social sciences. You might have come across Dr Yolanda Jansen from the Netherlands. She did a massive piece of work around back changing changing behavior. So rather than providing knowledge, which we all do is very, very important, it’s how do you actually change the behavior? And her thesis was on reductions of cell counts within the Netherlands without going through the whole paper, it was rather than tell people that they need to bed up more regularly and use better disinfectants on teats. They found that they identified that the biggest single factor to reduce cell counts in the country was to get milkers to wear disposable gloves. Problem is, the milkers didn’t like wearing their disposal gloves, so what they did over leading up to the Christmas period, any advisor, any sales person, any veterinarian that went on farm, just every time, left a couple of pairs of gloves continuously. And then the week before Christmas, they had a big ad words of St Nicholas or Santa, holding up, wearing going, holding up with white gloves on. It’s like, if this guy can wear gloves, I’m sure you can. And the result of the of the study and the program was basically cell counts dropped and sustainably dropped over the next nine months, just by amazing rather than just keeping telling someone something, it was just that subtle, leaving a packet, a set of gloves each time, whoever went on there and and we’ve tried to to utilize some of her, her methodologies and her theories, the reset model, which is where you you try and not only provide knowledge, but you hit a different button. So whether it’s an economic function, function, whether it’s with your peers, whether it’s knowledge, whether it’s rules and regulations, you try and hit two or three buttons, whatever you’re trying to change, and hopefully you sustain that change. Yolanda

Jay Whetter  37:30

Jensen, yeah. Dr, have you had, have you had Yolanda on your podcast? I was thinking we should talk to her. I love the idea of behavior.

Mark Campbell  37:39

Definitely could connect you. She’s amazing. Haven’t had her on the podcast? No, we’ve had, she’s spoken at my conference. She was one of the first people we ever had speak, and we’ve done, she’s been in the UK several times and done massive amounts of work with not only us, but other organizations. But she’s a, she’s a

Jay Whetter  37:56

really, I just think, yeah, using Santa as your Yeah, Santa Claus is here. Even Santa Claus counts as flea beetles before assesses the leaf area loss, before spraying for flea beetles. Even

Toban Dyck  38:10

just using Santa for everything. What would what would Santa do? Bracelets or something?

Mark Campbell  38:19

He’s trying very different things and new things we’ve had previously, like a conference that I organize conferences wherever you go, generally, there’s a nice lunch and there’s lots of information. You meet lots of people, and after the conference, you forget it all and don’t ever use the stuff in the goodie bag. So all we did several years ago is we had one of these. I don’t know if you haven’t been kind of a photo you go to a wedding or a function of a photo booth where you put a silly hat on and have your photo taken. So we had that for the evening part, the silly bit, but during the day, all we gave them was a little whiteboard, and so just detail down your the few key take homes and the few commitments you’re going to make from from attending the conference and what you’ve learned? So the conference was pre Christmas that year. It was in early December in the UK, on the 17th of January, that is the day that every UK Brit, or the majority of them, break their New Year’s resolutions. So they all eat too much over the festive period. They sign up to the gym, they buy a bike, they say, I’m gonna go running, I’m gonna quit drinking alcohol or whatever it is, but the 17th is the day all falls to pieces and and they give in, and they don’t use a gym subscription, or they don’t go for a run. So what we did is we sent those photos back to every delegate on the 17th and said, don’t follow the trend. What? How you getting on with your commitment? And it created a whole raft of stuff, there’s like, yeah, it’s on the it’s on the office wall. We’ve done this and we’ve done that, and it’s like, it just brings people back to that element, and it extends the value of the levy spent, because the learning is over a longer period, and it also instigates change within a business. And that’s what, what we’re trying to do as HDb, is unlock the potential of. Of UK agriculture and unlock the potential of those individual farms.

Toban Dyck  40:05

We need to dig into this a little bit, because I love this. So, so the white

Jay Whetter  40:09

the little whiteboard, like, I don’t know, one foot square or something. So they oh right on, funnily enough,

Mark Campbell  40:16

I’ve just got props. So it’s a little white from the pen with their Oh,

Toban Dyck  40:20

right on, oh, so that so they speech bubble, yes, brilliant. So

Jay Whetter  40:25

they, they wrote down just a few takeaways, and then did they hold that up in the photo booth? So this, yeah, and then you sent them back. You sent them their photo on January 17 as a reminder. Yeah. Yeah. So man, like the

Mark Campbell  40:42

social media guys, once you’ve posted the photo, it doesn’t just become yours, it becomes the person is so you we actually got, we harvested all of the, all of the, all the information, and then we just spun it back

Toban Dyck  40:56

to them. This is, this is amazing. Yeah, really amazing. So just full disclosure, like Jake and I are planning an event kind of similar to what you the kind of conferences you’re putting on, but we, we have a bit of a time crunch. We have about a month to put this together. We we’ve been talking about it for years, but now we have about a month to kind of put this all together, which is, you know, which is crazy. But these kinds of ideas like what you just said, are, I’m not gonna lie. We’re gonna, we are gonna steal this, and I hope you’re okay. We’ll give you credit and everything. But, yes, yeah, but the other way, we’re not good, good, good, yeah. We can share insights as we go along, too. I love the idea that you try a bunch of things, and I think that’s like, that’s really important. And I know you have shared some of those breakthrough moments, I’m guessing because these are, these are the things you’re citing now. But I’d like to if Are there any kind of other moments you’ve tried something brand new, you bring it to an audience, and it’s just like, it’s, it’s hit home in ways you didn’t expect or got really excited about.

Mark Campbell  42:00

There’s, there’s several things that we’ve tried and just cycling back. So off the back of the mega trends thing, we identified traits that we wanted to to actual physical traits within a person to develop under leading self. So things like growth mindset and resilience leading people. We can’t talk about teams in the UK, because if you’re, if you’re a sheep farmer in the UK, they don’t have, they say, I don’t have a team, or this only the dairy. So we changed it to leading people. So that’s like inspirational leadership and decision making. And then the third pillar that we’d cover would be leading business, so having that entrepreneurial mindset and and and then being detailed, conscientious, so really getting into the weeds. But So from those, those those ditch we try and develop content offerings, activity that with the sits under three of those pillars, some of the other successful things that we’ve done leading back to the conference again, again, it’s just bringing people from outside of the industry that that farmers wouldn’t necessarily come directly into contact with, but like I said, are facing the same challenges, but also are a bit of a bit of a carrot to get them there, if that makes sense. So we’ve had so one of the good speakers that I’ve used number of times is shemi Alcott. You guys might have heard of her or not. She is probably, to date, our most successful Olympic skier. We have a show in the UK through the winter months called ski Sunday. She’s one of the presenters on that she’s massive in the BBC, we brought her in just to talk about how she prepared. Her goal was always to win Olympic gold. She never got that far. She had multiple injuries. But she talked about how she prepares for races, how she prepares the Olympics, and we started to look at it. It’s like, that’s just like being an arable farmer. Weather, wind conditions, physical condition, and it’s just bringing those, those those individuals to into the into the sector, to share some other pieces, other things that we’ve done that have been quite innovative. So the world, unfortunately, is driven now by social media for good or for bad, in the UK, and like in anything, you have these influencers that have massive, massive reach. And because we have the challenge that the subject that we’re talking about, once farmers have engaged with it, they want more and more and more, and they really wanted but getting them to engage with it is always the biggest barrier. So we’re like, we need to get a bigger reach than what we’re doing on our podcast, on our individual meetings, where we’re growing the community. But it’s, it’s not growing as quickly as we’d like it to do. So we had a bit of an idea to bring. There’s several UK farming in. Influencers that, between them, had probably the best part of two and a half million followers, which from our following was small. So basically, we sport more into into a room together. We didn’t pay them. We just put them up for the night fed and said, Can we just have a chat about what we’re doing? But will Could you all stream it live on on your channels, and like, yeah, we can do that. It’s fine. You’re gonna pay. It’s fine. We brought these, I think there was eight of them in the first one, and we brought them into into our head office in the Midlands, in the middle of the UK, and just had it a chat. And our leadership team got very nervous, because there was nothing scripted. We didn’t know what they were going to say, and we were going live to the world to talk about what we were doing. So we managed to get by in it, and they agreed it, and we had 65,000 views within the first eight hours. And of those views, 60% of them were from in the UK, and 60% of that were were linked to agriculture. And suddenly we started, we were starting to tag our resources and our website and trying to track and everything just started getting used. So we want that the Circle of Influence originally a circle of influencers. I don’t like being called influencers, then became the circle and became a platform of trying to get our message out to a wider audience and engage with farmers that not necessarily were engaged. And we one of them. Well, the measurement of success in the south of the UK, where I’m based, I looked after one very, very large dairy farmer who he wasn’t objecting of playing the levy. He didn’t disagree what we delivered, but he didn’t engage with anything. And I tried and tried and tried and tried. I tried to do personalized stuff for him, everything, nothing, no engagement. I got a WhatsApp message that night go, and one of the influences was on tick tock, much to my daughter’s disgust, seeing her father on tick tock, I love it. Other social media platforms are available, but he sent me a What’s that saying? Good tick tock, last night. Mark, and I was like, hang on a minute. Let’s just take a step back. You’re in your mid 50s, you’re managing a herd of three and a half 1000 dairy cows, which, in the UK, is massive. You don’t engage with anything we do, but you’ve made the effort to send me a WhatsApp message saying, Good tick tock last night with Joe seals and Ollie Harrison and all the gang. And that’s so we’ve just tried to build, and then we we’ve built and leveraged on those kind of methods and ways of doing things. Okay,

Jay Whetter  47:45

I just want to, I just want to paint the scene again for this circle. Who were these eight people again? Were they all farm or agriculture related? I’m going to say influencers. I know you said they don’t like being called that. They’re

Mark Campbell  47:59

all farmers, and they’ve all the younger, and they’ve all from various different reasons, started doing YouTube and tick or tick tocks, where you create you’re following YouTube’s where you monetize it. So these guys are putting content out on a daily basis about about the industry. So being the levy body, I’ve got, we’ve got a fair chunk of contact details for farmers. I reached out to all of them, picked the phone up, gave me my call, and said, Would you like to be involved in that? I said, I haven’t got any budget to pay for pay. Pay you, but I can put you up for the night and I can take you out for dinner. Is about as far as I can go. And they’re like, I would love to help. We’d love to be involved. Wow, we’d love to get so were

Jay Whetter  48:42

you eight for eight? Yeah, where did they all want to figure did you get? And so you gathered, literally gathered around a certain in a circle, in a table and and you said they live streamed. So did they have their own phones in front of them? Each of them individually, yeah, and yeah, and they’re just live streaming the event, yeah.

Mark Campbell  49:03

And then what we did, so we just had a chat. It was kind of like we’re all in a bar and just talking about leadership, management and the challenges that the industry is facing so, very informal, very unscripted, our social media team, social media team that time was only two people. There’s three of them now. But we then monitored all of the feeds that we were going live on, and we asked for comments and questions, and then we fed those questions in. Again, it was if nothing technical, we had a WhatsApp group on on my work phone, and Isaac, my colleagues work phone, and we just chucked in questions So Jay and Toban from Canada have asked oranges or apples, and then we answered the question, and then we found more people started to join, because we were actually it was that two way kind of thing, but it had a massive, massive reach. And yeah, it was just something a little bit. Different to try and get the messages out there and just engage with farmers that we struggle to engage with, which it’s not to say that they don’t begrudge playing the levy, they just don’t engage with the mediums that we would been been engaging with. And that’s one of it’s probably a challenge that you guys face over in Canada, oh yeah, is the farmers that probably need really need our services and to use our information are the ones that we can’t physically get hold of.

Jay Whetter  50:29

And the people who we’re taking advice from are often the most engaged people around the board, and they’re thinking, No, I don’t need that. But you don’t realize that the other 90% plus actually need something quite different than what you need. I have a J and Toban question for you. We were talking about it before. This is it’s not apples or oranges, but how do you say the word S, C, O, N, E, the thing you have with tea, with butter and jam?

Mark Campbell  51:00

I’m a scone. Man, not scone. Yeah, there

Jay Whetter  51:03

we go. I’m a scone man, too. I said scone

Toban Dyck  51:05

earlier, yeah. Well, anyway, two against one, I like

Jay Whetter  51:10

it. But there’s a lot of scone. There’s a lot of scone people. I was telling Toban that you’re not that strange. There’s a kind of, I don’t know whether it’s a 5050, split, but anyway, we need to talk about the event because we don’t have a ton of time left. And so I like, I think you structure the event around your three, three goals, which is helping the self, helping the people and helping the business. Yeah, tell me. Tell me about how you you structure that event every year. So

Mark Campbell  51:41

we try and hit each of those pillars with a speaker from outside of the sector. So generally, the only agricultural content with the 24 hour period is the delegates in the room. We always run it now over 24 hours. So it’s lunch time to lunchtime, including an overnight stay and dinner. The current deal, which we might look at other other models and methods, is the levy will cover the cost of the conference and their evening meal. They need to get themselves there and put themselves up overnight. And probably one of the principal aims is not only to obviously highlight areas and develop skills and knowledge under leading self, leading people who lead the business, but it’s to really push them out their comfort zone. So we’ll always have the conference in a city center location. Not to say farmers don’t go to city centers, but it just makes it very, very different to what they’re, what they’re, what they used to and then we try and aim to focus on a theme that will run right the way through the conference to help develop so it might be change, it might be developing business and things like that. And then once we’ve established based on the feedback from the previous years, we’ll then try and source people that farmers would like, I said earlier, would have never, ever seen before, that are very, very engaging, that are very, very inspirational, but we’ll be able to provide some practical tips for individuals to actually take home and use within their business, maybe not immediately. It might take them a month. It might take them six months to establish that kind of stuff. And it’ll be a mixture of keynote workshop kind of activities, with that dinner and that networking piece, which is probably the cream Isaac, will always say you can never undervalue. You can never underestimate the value of a good piss up. We don’t buy the beer. We’re not allowed to buy beer. They have to buy their own beer. We’re not allowed to spend levy on beer. But some of the magic happens where we bring these like minded farmers together to share a network offer the farm away from the farm, to actually immerse themselves in the content.

Jay Whetter  54:03

How many people come?

Mark Campbell  54:05

So we around the 200 mark is where, and I’m not if you talk to our chair, we’ve currently the chair of ahdb, who’s in his final term. He’s just had it extended because his replacement is currently being appointed. He would say that we need to grow and grow and grow the conference. We would, we’d love to grow it. We always want to keep moving forward. But it’s, it’s about having the right people in the same room together. So I’m not as precious about numbers. I’m more what interested in farmers that are really engaged with this kind of content and really want to push themselves to better lead themselves, better lead their people and better lead their business.

Jay Whetter  54:48

And can anyone sign up? Or do you hand pick the invite list? No.

Mark Campbell  54:54

If they’re a levy payer, they are more than welcome to join. And I can’t be explicit. I’m not. If they’re a living player, they’re they’re in we, we don’t allow, we want to make it. We don’t allow industry so sales people and feed reps to attend. We want to be quite a safe space where there’s not a pressure. That’s because, essentially, some of these farmers are the best farmers in the country. It could be a very easy winter to meet several very large farmers and sell quite a lot of feed or chemicals or something like that. So we don’t, we don’t necessarily allow any industry representatives in unless they’re levy payers, because we do collect a levy in other sectors, the processing and abattoirs, millers, mosters, pay a levy as well. So they’re, they’re more than welcome to join. The only way they can attend is if they they they sponsor a table, which the caveat of sponsoring a table is, you need to fill that table with farmers. So it’s not just a monetary thing, monetary thing, basically place for their place at the conference. But the key thing is they bring some more farmers with us. Again, it’s a way we can try and grow the

Toban Dyck  56:02

network. That’s really interesting. I mean, we’re challenged with this. With this is all incredibly practical, unusually practical for, for a podcast episode, I love it. I love it. But we’re kind of, we’re faced with this because Jay and I both work in in, you know, for for these associations that collect levies. So there is, there is that kind of, it’s different than, like the bears and the cortevas, where there is, you know, you know, it’s a bit of an unbiased, Farmer friendly environment. But when we think of training, or we think of putting on programs like this, we have various kind of segmentations in mind. One of them is the kind of the staff at some of these associations, because they are there. Their purpose is to serve their levy payers, their farmers. So kind of communications and media training for them. But then we also have opportunities to train like their their boards. So these are farmers, farmer, Farmer boards, in management and similar, similar things to what you’re talking about. But then we have, you know, various others. So research like agriculture and agri food Canada researchers. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve actually been asked in some occasions, and there’s interest there in learning how to better for them, to better extend their research to to farmers, and then you’re talking about that, that farmer audience. And I, yeah, I mean, my head goes just in a million different places, then as a discussion Jay and I need to have, actually, literally, after this talk about programming for this thing we’re doing. But, yeah, I don’t know, like when I when I do, you have any comment on that and kind of a direction advice,

Mark Campbell  57:44

just give something a go and try and choose your choose your choose your audience, and just try some new stuff. That’s all we’ve done. Is, like I said, we were very as a levy body. We were very lucky that, as we were formed anchor leader, we were given the mandate to just make some mistakes and try some stuff that nobody else would do, and that’s and that’s what we did. And we’ve just, I’ve always tried to think outside of the box. So one of the things I want to do this year, I don’t know the same, particularly in dairy farmers, their milk gets collected, generally on a every other day, and they get a little receipt from the tanker driver that comes and picks the milk up. Well, I want to stick some information on the back of that receipt. Was a QR code or an image or a cartoon, steering them to something like that, because it comes every other day and they’re going to look at, look at something like that, which might get my I always aim to get five seconds a week of engagement with the farmer, because if I can continually have a positive engagement, then actually they might click on the website or pick the phone up to one of their local Extension officers to ask some advice. And it’s building that that kind of trust, if you’re organizing a conference, aim, yeah, think outside, outside of the industry, and just aim for some really, really good speakers. And I’ve set we, I shouldn’t say I myself, and I have set a pretty high bar in some of the individuals that we’ve had speak to name, but a few we’ve had Brad Waldron, who is a business development consultant in the UK. He generally works with Apple and L’Oreal and charges more than what I have in an annual budget for a day rape. And we just, I just reached out to him and said, This is what we’re trying to do. Would you be interested in helping? Is like, I love the concept quite happily. Do it. Watch your budgets like as much as you were thinking. And it’s like, no impact on 200 businesses. Of course, I can do it. We’ve had a chap called Jamil Qureshi. Jamil Qureshi is a sports psychologist. He’s taken seven people to world number one. I think the majority of his work is in in the world of golf. He spent, I think he spends his life in a plane traveling the world. And he came and did a, did a full morning session for us two years ago, and blew blue the pants off of the farmer. Which still today they’re using some of their content. So it’s having some really, really good, good speakers, bringing people together in an environment where they’re comfortable and safe. And like I said, they don’t underestimate the value of a good piss up scenario. It’s being a bit tongue in cheek, but it’s about providing space for networking, providing space for actually allowing that to happen.

Jay Whetter  1:00:24

For the piss up Mark, I just had to say that word, yeah. So are you? Is this just all 200 people? Did they all go to the same large room, or do they gather into little groups and head off to pubs?

Mark Campbell  1:00:40

No. So we tend to put on a some kind of formal dinner. And what we’ve done over the last couple of years, and again, we’ve got sponsorship, because there’s a levy body we’re not allowed to spend levy on alcohol. So we we get some sponsorship to help with the cost of that, and they sponsor the evening drinks and the meal. But two years ago, we again, it’s an overnight conference, and if you’re in a hotel or wherever you meet, it can get a little bit claustrophobic, and particularly as a farmer that I’m very much the same. We’re outdoors people. We want to get out a bit, so we try and take them somewhere. So two years ago, we were in Manchester, in a fantastic part of Manchester, between the two famous football stadiums, Manchester United and Manchester City, and we took them out for dinner at the National Football Museum, which is an absolute funky triangle shaped building. And we had use of the full the full resource, and it was literally we put a three course meal on. But that was it. There was no entertainment. It was all about enjoying the evening, having a few drinks, if you want to, and doing the same. This year, we were in London, which is very close to my home, thankfully. And we hired a penthouse area and hotel which was actually the cheapest out of all of them, which overlooked the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, so really iconic part of the city. And again, we put a nice meal on. There was no after dinner speaker, it was all about connecting with people and chatting and enjoying the evening. And it’s not compulsory. If they don’t want to come and they want to do their own thing, that’s absolutely fine, but we find putting a bit of food on is always a good magnet to getting a good conversation going and some good engagement when

Jay Whetter  1:02:21

you talked about farmers coming to London and being out of their comfort zone. Of course, I went to Caleb from Clarkson’s farm coming into London to sell his wasabi. A very uncomfortable scenario for old Caleb there. Yeah,

Mark Campbell  1:02:34

I think he’s getting a lot better of it now. Oh yeah, series four, she’s more of a celebrity. Season’s four just about to come out in the UK, so it’s a lot of baited breath the end of next

Jay Whetter  1:02:44

month. Do farmers like Clark Jeremy Clarkson? I think

Mark Campbell  1:02:50

Jeremy Clarkson is one of those iconic individuals in the UK that you either love him or hate him. We have a prototype vehicle Marmite, which like Vegemite and which people either love it or hate it. And he’s very much one of those individuals that people, I love him or hate him. However, the the mood and the opinion of the UK agriculture is that he has done huge amounts of good just purely his reach, and particularly into the into the general public and the consumer in terms of the actual understanding and the truth and the realities behind actual farming. I think the first series for me, his very final episode, where he sat down with cheerful Charlie. We know cheerful Charlie very, very well. He’s a great guy. Where they were just basically going through their figures for the year and for 1000 acre arable unit in Cotswolds, which is a great growing area, which would be a fairly sizable farm in the UK, if we’re honest, for him, to make 100 pounds for a year’s worth of effort, and that included his subsidy payment. He it really hit home in terms of the blood, sweat and tears that goes into producing quality food.

Jay Whetter  1:03:57

I’d like to get Charlie Ireland to come speak at AG days in Brandon. In fact, I was on a brainstorming session this week asking for speakers, and I said, Let’s try to get Charlie Ireland, or cheerful Charlie, to come to Brandon. And Doctor, I’m sure

Mark Campbell  1:04:12

it’d be up for that series rural, who he works for, always sponsor a table at the forum. They always bring fire. Oh, right on.

Jay Whetter  1:04:19

So Mark, you talked, you said the word mistakes, and so you’re given some latitude to try things and make mistakes. I was wondering, I mean, I don’t necessarily want to end on a low note, but, but I think we can learn farmers and anyone in business and anyone in life. We can learn a lot from our mistakes, like, if we were going to try some of these things here in Canada that you’re doing there with ahdb, what are some of the mistakes you made that you would you might want to flag for us? Um,

Mark Campbell  1:04:51

little things by trying to do too much and trying to target too too wide an audience and too wider people and. Uh, Isaac, my colleague will always say to me, Harvey, and then have it again, you’ve been too ambitious and you’re trying to think too wide. So one of those things, an example of that, is with the growth of social media, we tried to create a closed community, and we suddenly, I suddenly realized the actual, the actual hours and sweat and trying to fill a social media channel with content and engage with people and keep it live and real, it just was in terms of return on the investment in time for the actual engagement they were getting back. It wasn’t, it wasn’t the platform, and that was on a various platform that’s based in Silicon Valley, which, yeah, that that was, that was something that, that closed group, which is still up on Facebook now, took a lot of time and actually didn’t create enough enough traction, whereas Doing some of the things like we’ve done with the forum, with the video, with the the photograph or sending, we sent one year. Rather than sending an invite via email, we sent everyone a greetings card. So let you get for your birthday, because farmers are very, very time poor, and you have the iconic kind of vision of a British farmer sat around the kitchen table drinking tea and eating a full English breakfast. Well, hopefully that car to sit on the table for a longer period of time, and then actually they’ll engage with it after they’ve looked at it six or seven times. And actually, I will scan that QR code that’s in there, and I will book on to said event. So yeah, it’s try and don’t go too broad in some of those kind of kind of scenarios, and just yeah, be if it’s if it’s not going right, then just say it’s not gone. Gone. Gone too well.

Toban Dyck  1:06:54

I love that, because in the notes, it says you did that with the with the birthday card, and then you had, a golden ticket in there that said they’d been they’d been chosen to attend this conference.

Mark Campbell  1:07:06

We tried to replicate the good old road dolls, Willy Wonka’s Charlie, and the golden ticket, it just makes you, makes them feel a little bit special, until they conference and realize that they all got a golden ticket.

1:07:20

They’ve been duped. I love it.

Mark Campbell  1:07:24

Yeah. It’s just Yes. Some of the things, it’s just yeah. We’ve stumped. We’ve tried and suddenly realized that it wasn’t, wasn’t going to do or trying to extend some of these really good speakers and run them across the country in smaller groups. It’s not, it doesn’t often, often work, and you don’t get the numbers and the farmers wanting to, because suddenly, upward today we work with a glorious, sunny day in the UK, we’re leading up to Easter, there’s a lot of busy people out, and admittedly, we could do with a bit of rain, because people have just turned animals out or sowing spring crops, and we had a very dry March. And it’s, it could do the bit of rape people are busy. And we find in the UK that farmers will commit to our events, but are very quick to not turn up and and not necessarily always send, send their apologies for various, various reasons. So it’s, it’s thinking about how you can, how you can engage with people in in different ways. And like I said, I always think, How can I get five seconds of time in that farmer’s life every week, regularly? That’s positive that hopefully will, the fruits of my investment will then turn into a strong engagement, or they’ll turn up to event, or they’ll use one of our tools,

Toban Dyck  1:08:41

yeah, I’m impressed with the level of detail and inspired too, with how you think about these things. And really better, like, you know, you’re picturing the farmer, you know, sitting having morning tea, eating his or her, you know, full breakfast. I think that’s I think I think that’s great. I think that’s absolutely wonderful day.

Jay Whetter  1:09:01

Well, I just my last thought, because we could go on, but we need to wrap up the five seconds of time. I like that as a goal. So there’s social media, there’s the the birthday card, there’s the podcast, there’s the events. What are the most effective? And I guess this is a podcast unto itself. I love it, but, but what are? What are you? What are? What are the tools you use to get those five

Mark Campbell  1:09:28

seconds? All I would say is, well, we have a big marketing campaign in the UK called we balanced and the whole point of that marketing campaign is to promote eating a balanced diet. Admittedly, to have a balanced diet, you need to eat meat and dairy and various cereals and oil seeds. The way that we think in the agrilida team is we need to provide content in a balanced manner, in lots of different forms. So when you eat a roast dinner, it has meat and veg, and that’s how our content needs to be. So everybody’s different. You. I’m very much. You probably suspect I’m quite a detail orientated person. I like getting into the weeds and the nitty gritty and understand, whereas Isaac, my, my, my colleague, he’s not like that at all. We play to our advantages, and he brings a bit more creativity and a bit more out of the box thinking as well as he’s the one that will quite aptly, stand up in the middle of a room of 200 people and shout his idea that in that’s I’m never going to do things like that. So so we try and cover everyone’s different, and every farm is different. And if we wanted to get more engagement, particularly from the agri Leader program, but even more broadly, from all of our content HTTP, we need to think in very complex layers of different, different levels of communication, from social media, digital, face to face communication, sending something physical, someone being at the auction Mark, just chatting to someone like, we’ve sponsored napkins and cup like cups at the auction mark, they all have a cup of all go for a cup of tea and a bacon roll. Well, let’s stick some of the information on the cup and then or inside the cup, so as they drink it, then actually they’re engaging with it, and it might go, What the bloody hell is that? So it’s lots of different different manners. I wouldn’t say one’s better than the other, but lots of layers to try and get that message across, and try and engage with as many different people as possible. That’s

Toban Dyck  1:11:18

a Marcus has been incredible, absolutely incredible. We’re gonna, we’re gonna have to call our program the mark Campbell

Mark Campbell  1:11:28

trading program. But, yeah, we’re not precious, and I’ve just nicked ideas from from from other people. So yeah, use and abuse, and we’re always willing to fly over. We’ll come and give you a hand. Oh, good exchange program. I

Jay Whetter  1:11:41

love. Oh, perfect. Yeah, we should Well, thanks a lot. Marcos, great chat is a

Toban Dyck  1:11:45

pleasure, yeah, yeah, brilliant. That’s wonderful.

Jay Whetter  1:11:58

That was a lot of fun. Oh yeah,

Toban Dyck  1:12:00

there was no end. But it was, it was, it was strange, right? Because it’s like, sometimes it’s what, what get, I mean more. I could always talk more. I think all of our guests, I could always talk more. But this one was, like, I really wanted to get into the weeds on, like, the planning, yeah, of a, of an event, like, what he puts on, like, the nitty gritty, but I also got the sense that I could email him today and he would send me that itinerary in a detailed form, and then even, even, I’m guessing, he’d give me any feedback on anything that we would create, right? So I think amazing timing. I gotta say that. What’s

Jay Whetter  1:12:36

the thing that he of all the things he said that you want to try? I

Toban Dyck  1:12:40

the speech bubble thing. So what couple, couple things you guys for one, yeah, go for if you can. So I love the idea of, like, the overnight, a 24 hour period they’ve heard. And I feel like this is true that, like, that networking time in that first evening is so important for kind of you don’t have to have any programming, but it’s so important for, like, the galvanizing of that information, and then coming back to topics that that next morning, after you’ve spent X amount of time with people, I feel like sets things in the brain, especially after an overnight, your brain is learning while It’s sleeping, right? So it’s, it’s like, that’s so important. Well,

Jay Whetter  1:13:23

remember Diljit bra, our guest from a few weeks ago was saying that the importance of those of connections. So what, what that night, evening get together, does is enhances those connections. Yeah, so that, so your wrap up discussions the next morning are just that much more engaged and probably productive, because people are wanting to work together towards something there. And

Toban Dyck  1:13:51

there is some there’s a relationship, birdie, kind of structure there. And you think, like, my most productive hours in the day are the are the morning hours, right? So instead of like that first day where you’re setting things up, you’re spending those those those formative hours, kind of, you know, preparing everybody for what’s coming that next morning, you don’t have to do any of that. You can get right into the meat of what you’re talking about, whether it’s whether it’s rehashing or it’s new information, it’s just so I think the brain is just so much more prepared to take that on that next morning. So I love, I love that. And it’s just like an idea of, like the photo booth and that speech bubble and and the whole idea of just trying things out, like putting a cartoon in the back of a ticket, like, like a, like a dairy, you know, truck or ticket. I think that’s

Jay Whetter  1:14:38

like, if every grain elevator had a had a little like, as you’re getting your weight receipt, maybe you don’t get those anymore. You totally do, yeah, yeah. So yeah, having some sort of message from whatever Association it was that’s taking the levy off of that crop. Yeah, that’s maybe your five seconds a week that you want to engage. But

Toban Dyck  1:14:57

the challenge here now is, is, this is. Challenge, like, for me personally, is there are so many ideas in the world, right? Like, so you have a session like this, you know? And I, my notes are just full of ideas, right? How after this, do you start kind of just choosing to just implement one, yeah? Like, you just like, Okay, I’m gonna try this. Of

Jay Whetter  1:15:21

Yeah, you got to half it and then half it again, right? So, but I guess, or what, yeah, if you have one or two yeah that you want to run with every year, and I think that’s a good thing for the farm too, I suppose, is you get bombarded with the dozens, or if not, hundreds, of ideas all the time, which ones to implement.

Toban Dyck  1:15:39

I also really like the idea that it sounds like they took a real hard line on who can attend those events. So I know that’s something industry struggled with. Is like they want to keep they want to keep industry out and keep farmers in, but they’ve had trouble saying no to people. So I got the sense that they those lines are pretty, pretty hard there. Well, that event is for farmers, period. And if you’re going to come in, you got to sponsor a table, and then you have to fill that table with farmers. I love it. I love it. Just to be unapologetic about some of those things is fantastic.

Jay Whetter  1:16:13

And then the social media influencers volunteering to gather around in a table and just talk for whatever length of time it was, I

Toban Dyck  1:16:22

think there’s so much there to talk about. Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. Anyway, fantastic conversation.

Jay Whetter  1:16:28

Very inspired. Yep, this has been the extensionists. I’m Jay wetter and I’m Toban Dyck, until next time, this has been a burr forest group production. We also want to thank the people you don’t see. We’re here.

Toban Dyck  1:16:46

We’re chatting away with our guests, but there’s tons of people who work behind the scenes to make this podcast happen. Ryan Santschi, our director, Ashley Robinson, is the coordinator, And Abby wall is Our producer and editor.