What sparked the creation of TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods and what are the key services that you offer?
TELUS is a global communications technology company that is digitizing supply chains, and helping communities in remote areas to connect in ways that were not previously available. Five years ago, TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods was created with the goal to make the industry value chain more sustainable and productive by leveraging our data analytics and data insights expertise.
Presently, our footprint is spread across more than 50 countries, our team is made up of some 1,600 experts and we generate around $400 million in revenue. By providing software solutions to agricultural retailers in North America, we are touching more than 200,000 farm operations. In the space of animal health, we use our data analytics systems to help produce more proteins sustainably, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to drive the production of beef with less inputs.
Last but not least, TELUS Consumer Goods is an important player in the trade promotions industry, where we serve 15 of the top 20 food companies in the world. We provide software that helps manage that transaction between the food company and the grocer in promotions like a "two for one deal". In the U.S., 80% of the processed poultry, 70% of the branded coffee and 90% of the breakfast cereals, for example, are running through our software. Driving better insights, prospectively, from consumer demand back to production is the key to get the right product in the right place at the right time, and do so more sustainably, productively and efficiently than ever before.
Reducing food waste and optimizing supply chains is a cardinal goal for modern agriculture. What solutions can TELUS offer in that regard?
Around 40% of global daily food production is lost or wasted, much of it ending up in a landfill where it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Thanks to the power of data, we have the ability to utilize aggregated anonymized information to see what is trending in terms of consumer demand for nutritional items like proteins, carbohydrates or sodium. As we look ahead, we see the opportunity to feed these insights back into the supply chain so food producers are able to improve their operations and get their products to the right consumer shelves. Typically, the food and consumer goods value chain would have about 60 days of inventory. During the pandemic the industry experienced the impacts of a highly analog food and consumer goods value chain and realized that there is a great opportunity for improved efficiency through the digitization of this system and the ability to greatly reduce inventory and improve utilization. With the help of data insights and analytics, we could become a lot better at building real time against demand.
Your customers operate in an industry with low margins, whereas fighting climate change requires the right incentives. How can technology help with this and what is the place for blockchain in agriculture?
As someone directly invested in farming, I know firsthand the risk and significant challenges farmers face in the financial health of their operations. In production agriculture, you need to be able to assess performance and crop needs in real time. Now, with the help of satellite imagery, AI and machine learning, field management has become much more straightforward. The trick is to make all these technological tools user-friendly so that farmers can utilize them at scale and obtain the best value possible.
With blockchain, we now have a digital file cabinet in the cloud that allows us to pull and cross-reference information in a far more accelerated and efficient manner. In the context of the Internet of Things (IoT) and connectivity, information is the great liberator. Today, farmers can take a picture of a plant with their phone, upload it to the cloud and receive instant information about the actions that need to be taken.
What are the key objectives that you would like to achieve over the next couple of years?
Ultimately, we are on a mission to drive digital connectivity and enable a much more efficient, sustainable and affordable food and consumer goods value chain through the use of data-driven insights. Forty years ago, an acre of land would produce enough food for about 40 people. Today, that same acre of land can sustain about 170 people and software-based solutions are at the center of this evolution. We are proud to work in this noble industry, and being able to connect consumer demand to farming production is essential to humanity's future success.
