So next, Lox and Atec Field Days, we've got Diane Stewart-Dine, would you like to introduce yourself please, and what your product is today? Sure, thanks Matt. Our company is called Aka Primary Solutions. We're not a start-up, we're actually an agent for a New Zealand technology called Harvest Electronics. So they've been around for about 20 years. They have a bunch of cellular sensors that connect through a base station and upload data live. They can collect data from everything from a rain gauge right through to fire service data. We've got some work here with the fire service departments in Victoria. They run signal monitoring on tracks, railway tracks in Tasmania. But I'm here today to talk a lot about the orchard and vineyard monitoring that we do. And what benefits are there from what you're doing for our orchard and vineyards around the Riverland? Sure, there's a lot of benefits with efficient resource use. So things like irrigation water, we can monitor soil moisture, which we've seen a lot of today. We also have pump monitoring. So it can monitor pressure, water flows, and give you alerts on all of the parameters that are monitored. So if you've got one of those leaks, you'd get a phone alert that says, pressure's not where it should be, or flow rate's not where it should be. So you have that ability to improve your decision-making, improve that use of time we've heard a lot about today. But also be very efficient with your resources. Something that's worked very well in New Zealand. A lot of the regional councils have water metres on systems, as well as individual off-takes from water systems. And that data is uploaded automatically to the regional councils for your water bills. It's also shown on screen so you can see it live when you turn your pump on. What's happening, and it all tallies, it's all electronic. Saves one job you don't have to do now. So what would be the standout feature of your product compared to some others? Well we've got a pretty good range. So we can have up to two kilometres between loggers back to the base station. So when you're on big properties like we typically have in Australia, you're not looking at necessarily a lot of the expensive base stations to jump the signal back. So that's pretty handy. It gives you really good economies. And also from what I've seen, we can fit the most sensors on those systems. So a much greater range of data points. The base stations are fully customisable and there's also a free app that's fully customised to the user. Lovely. Diane, thank you. You're welcome. Next to the locks and agtech build days, Mike Krause. Mike, would you like to introduce your company and product that you've got here today? Yeah, my name's Mike Krause. I'm CEO and founding start-up. Planned to Profit Agri is the name of our company. So if you're a grower and you've got questions about wanting to be on top of your financials, or you've got major questions like, do I want to buy the next door neighbour out? And we happen to have a hike in water pricing. What's that going to look like? And also doing sensitivity and risk management activities. Those are the sort of challenges that we've had. So we've got a cloud-based program that helps you model the financial outcomes of those challenges you've got to make a decision on. About six years ago, I was approached by GRDC. I was, no, it's not the wine industry. To write a manual on farm business management, it's actually gone to its fourth print in five years. And the principles in it are identical for horticulture. So we've grabbed that and all the different budgets that are in that. And we've basically made those budgets simpler to do rather than using Excel. So how does your product differ from other finance applications that are out there? You mentioned Excel, but how does it work better than those other products? We've put a lot of effort into usability. So we appreciate, I guess the theory is, if we can get growers and farmers using our platform, which are 60% of our license holders, then anyone should be able to use them. So usability and also some of the outputs that come from it are quite simple with dials. You can see what your efficiency of your business is. You can see the equity levels. You can see some other bank ratios and those performances. And probably what makes us a standout from anyone else in the world is we do scenario analysis. So what's the next five years going to look for us? And if we change any of that plan, what impact it's going to have on our cash or our profitability or our balance sheet? So those three things are really important to look into. So you're looking at business continuing or you're looking at succession planning or what sort of areas is this focusing on specifically? All of that.  We cover all agricultural industries at the moment except for dairy and pigs. So we'll do horticulture, we do dryland farming, we do pastoral. We're all over Australia in the tropics down here. So we're covering all those. And I guess what to stand out, we do a lot of training and support with COVID and allows us to do it more with Zoom. And I have been approached by an Ag college in New South Wales to do some accredited training in the farm business management space using our platform. Mike, thank you very much. Thank you. Next at Loxan Ag Tech Field Days, Arne, would you like to introduce yourself and what you've got here today? Yeah, good day. I'm Arne Deniking. I'm the owner of Mobishare Australia. We're originally a farm-based business that's gotten a little bit out of hand. We started off looking for solutions that people wanted that you couldn't find. So we started off with a cordless shearing handpiece like this. Did that. It was something I wanted for my farm. I couldn't buy anywhere, so we went looking and that's how the business got started. Since then, we've done a lot of field days. We talk to a lot of people and people come to me looking for solutions for things and say, hey, can't you find me this? Can't you find me that? And I really kind of like the challenge. So we had over and over people asking us for a cordless secretary, initially to trim sheep's hooves. But also now we're obviously in the horticulture game and it turns out we were the first to bring one in that was fully cordless. So no cord to get tangled in. You can just wear it on your hip. Very light and easy. That was the challenge to meet and it's just gone crazy. But at the same time, we come from a fundamental farming point of view which is I don't like having to buy a product and then two years later it's obsolete and I have to throw it in the bin and buy another one. So we come from a standpoint of dependability, repairability. So we keep all the parts. We allow you to fix them yourselves. You don't have to go to an authorised repair and get charged squillions to replace something. That's something that we're really passionate about. So we really want people to have a product that they still own and they don't have to hand in every year to have the maintenance done just to keep the warranty. So on top of that, we give you a two-year warranty, an honest warranty so that when things do go wrong, you know we're there for you. If you need parts in the middle of pruning, we're at Mount Barker now, they can be overnight basically. And these are all things that I value as a farmer myself when my machines break down and that's what we try and I follow people. So come and have a look. You mentioned you got around to a lot of field-based and developed that way but were there specific things that you wanted in your product that you knew from the outset like the repairability and those sorts of things? Yeah, definitely. So everything we take to market, we test first. So these products here, we tested for nine months in the hardest conditions we could find before we were willing to even introduce them to anyone. So we found people with vineyards, I've got family in vineyards, horticulture doing trees and so forth and basically gave them to them and said, hey, kill this. And all of them didn't want to give them back afterwards so we knew we're onto a good product and from there we then went to the next step. And because it's our brand, we're a smallish company, we want to make sure that when you see our brand you get something that works and not something that goes in the bin. And thanks so much. No worries. Next to the locks and egg tech field days. Scott, would you like to introduce yourself and what you've got here today? Yes, I'm Scott. I provide customer support for Saras in Australia and so we do imaging and also other data to help people see where their crop's going like in season so we mostly for horticulture and also for other irrigated crops we will provide imagery and also integration with other sensors so people can sort of, I guess, probably useful to think of it as a mini-order so you can look at where your crop's at and find areas that you can fix and then make some changes and then a month later you do another image and see how it's fixed up and whether what you've done has worked so basically we provide some thermal data we call it water stress we provide some NDVI which are growth data which we call NDVI and chlorophyll and people look at those together and they get a really good picture for where their crop's at and compare it with last year and compare how it's going in the season. Lots of discussion on this today in the other tent but what's the entry level here? How does someone get started with this to help develop what they're doing on farm? So I guess first year we've imaged we very often find some issues so it matters just looking at the image and then someone like myself will come out and either over the phone or on your property and go through the image with you and help you to see things changes you could possibly make and we talk about different management options or whatever but then after a while you start to see the patterns in the imagery and you can make changes based on that probably in a nutshell it's like what were you expecting to see there and areas you're going to have poor and good areas and worse areas in the paddock but in your property but using imagery you can see if they're tracking where you expected and make changes and find problems before they actually become a loss of crop for that year. People you've worked for previously how has it helped them? Have you got some real world examples you can give us? So typical things we find because valves or irrigation infrastructure hasn't turned on properly so you'll very often see pressure problems before you can actually see it in their image before you can see it in person actually we pick up that there's the transpiration not quite working as well as it could so that's probably really typical and then things like wind stress and buried dripper will identify that and then if nutrition has not been quite right then you'll see slight differences in our growth picture which people use to help them refine those things so the good thing about a product is it's a relative measure that we have an app where we load things in so if there's lots of differences in the paddock you'll see those but then once you start to get those out then you'll pick up finer finer distinctions between differences so the better you get the more it'll show you so that's something that people find really useful. Excellent Scott thanks so much. No worries. Next in Lockston Agtech Field Days Brad introduce yourself and Ryan as well and let us know what you're doing here. Hi I'm Brad Knot Project Manager and this is my team member Ryan Tan. Ryan is part of the ground based vision system for the Vidiviser project. You may remember we spoke about Vidiviser as a dashboard and a ground based vision system this is the ground based vision system here and Ryan's going to very quickly talk about the functionality of that but on a higher level this is being developed open source and we're here today because we want third party technology organisations to start working with this prototypes. The project's ending in June 22 at the end we'll have a prototype of this ground based vision system working and we want to engage in an open source way for companies to come harvest all part and the data is included so you can either look at the data sets the algorithms and the hardware and develop this as a whole product or to value add to your own products and services. Excellent. Ryan do you want to take us through it? Okay I'll show you guys the two different products we have over here one is we call it the VTBOX 2.0 so they are pretty much a handheld device that you can either carry it throughout the farm or you can attach it onto the mule or quad bike and while you're doing pruning or doing something in the farm you can still take photos of the incidental capture of the farm and it has high accuracy RTK GPS data up to 3cm so this will give us a geospatial plus the information of the plant which is really useful when we combine all the information together. Okay so this again is a prototype but by this time next year it will be something really good. So the other one hanging at the back is sort of the prototype of the we call it a TriCam so it has three cameras top, middle and the bottom which is facing up we can attach infrared camera thermal imaging laser LiDAR in it as well so that will essentially give us more information as in we can even detect if there's any leakage just happening in the irrigation site plant area index how healthy is the plant so again this are all modularized units so it will be really good to get some feedback from growers as well as developers over here so at least we can move forward and make it a better product at the end. Excellent Ron I think you've summed it up beautifully thanks so much next is Loxan Agtech Field Days Andy would you like to introduce yourself and what we're doing here? Thanks Matt so Andy Chambers from Airborne Logic we obviously had a bit of a chat this morning but the detail around what we do is detailed image collection and very detailed mapping on farm so we're using a combination of drones a couple of little guys on the table here and the big one behind me on the banner and those are utilized to do detailed couple of centimeter type positioning across so that we know exactly where those end posts are the corner posts the tree or the vine itself here on the screen we've got a copy of the vineyard that we had to look around this morning with some of the variability around nitrogen in that particular vineyard block and that'll be live on the Agtech demo site so really a lot of this was driven by the request to have accurate positioning around plants so that we could do counting not only of live plants but dead ones as well so some of the financial information that this has been used for is to put together a financial budget for clearing vineyards that are really riddled with Utipa for instance so a big budget to spend across three different vineyards can't choose which one okay let's have a look and do a count and work out which one's got the least number of life trees or vines or whatever it might be so those types of financial decisions are being made behind with this type of detail what are some other applications and extrapolations you can do from getting this data yep so here are a little focused around nutrition but we also have similar layers that are showing that water stress as well so that we can then apply those types of data sets into something like a variable rate application for mulch spreading for instance if we're looking at how we're going to treat different parts of soils across vineyards with different mulch rates to retain soil moisture Excellent Andy thank you Thank you Next at Loxford Ag Tech Field Days Matthew, Deep Planet that's what we're here having a look at now Take us through what it is Deep Planet is an agri tech company out of the UK with their research background out of Oxford University where three founders met each other as doing their MBA and did a water challenge independently to each other and realised if they put all their smarts together they've actually got some really useful technology so what they're doing is monitoring and helping growers and winemakers to manage vineyards at scale so it's largely bringing in satellite imagery so other people have spoken about different ways of getting imagery we're looking at satellite imagery and providing it on a regular weekly or daily basis so that they can make decisions quite quickly and not have to rely on imagery on set timeframes Importantly they're therefore able to look at all the things we've already spoken about in terms of vigor variability stress, water but they've also got some really smart algorithms in terms of doing hands-off yield prediction as well as as you can see on screen here by my heat maps they've actually identified how they can actually measure sugar from space and organise where you might want to take your sampling from to actually get a truly accurate representation of the vineyard help growers have that database discussion with grower liaisons about is their block ready to be picked can they actually split-click the box because a third of it actually is within contract and two thirds might not be so you can say let's take that third off and we'll come back in a week and pick the rest of it so it's reducing the growers risk but the winery is still getting their wines still getting their grapes at the quality they want for the wines that they want to produce Something we've talked about is interoperability and working between other systems as well does this interface with other systems or can it is there a way it can do that? Yeah absolutely and when DeepPlanet originally set up their business their whole philosophy was that they were going to be just a business that delivered the algorithms that could do the analysis of the data as you can see you can get imagery from lots of different sources where their smarts is actually in interpreting that data and being able to put it out so their initial plan was that they would API in and out of different systems so if you've got soil moisture sensors they can actually take that information in they can predict that your soil moisture for up to a month most growers want a week to two weeks they can also do soil moisture interpretation so your whole sub terrain can be mapped across the whole block rather than just getting a measurement at one particular point but unfortunately when they started to push out their results there was no dominant platform as we've been talking about today so they can either deliver it through a front end platform they can API it into say a major larger winery or grower groups existing operational platform or as some growers who maybe want to use technology but they're not very technologically focused and they don't want to jump on a computer every day the way they build their software is they actually build it as if it's like a PDF report and then once growers and through the co-creation once growers are happy with that then they build it onto the platform so they can literally just email your PDF report once a week to make it really easy so I'm suggesting that would be the entry level if you were going to use a system like this yeah I mean from an entry level so they have as most software as a service you know monthly subscription companies do they have a free service where you can get your basic imagery again you know we're not out there trying to you know create a you know make money off of supplying imagery because that that's quite easy to get where you pay the the fee for the service is actually in the interpretation of the data and moving into prediction analytics so if you take for example the BOMA heat maps and so forth that actually was a spin out from us actually predicting the optimal harvest state based on a target BOMA level so panorakard winemakers said to us last season we want to know how much is out there quantum of the yield that's what we originally started discussing and then they said the second question was we need to know when it's ready to be picked because if we've got a 13 and a half BOMA that's our target BOMA for that Charles block then if it comes in a BOMA under it costs us a whole heap of money to put concentrate in or whatever else and we have to stop we might have already booked trucks so we have to pay for those trucks going back empty and they came back and we did a thousand hectares over multiple regions this region in in the riverland Clare Valley, Langhorn Creek and Barossa multiple regions we got to an 89% accuracy on their on the yield prediction at a block level and then within 0.22 of a BOMA to actually measure their sugar so 0.3 was their their maximum range we're in 0.22 this is one of their blocks where they've ground truth that forest as well they're very helpful in that and you know they they estimated that it was up to $55 a ton just largely in logistics costs that they were getting as an ROI in terms of not having future transport reducing their sampling by not having to have as many samples samples going up the hand the the yield predictions completely hands off the maturity prediction needs some initial samples at the early side of the season just to calibrate it and they're saving quite a lot of money and it also brought the winemakers into a database decision on where that variability is can we split pick the box because I've got X amount as I said before that's in contract and not have to risk losing my whole block interesting and the connectivity involved in that as well also just quietly say they have received a grant from the South Australian government through the department for trade and investment called the landing pad program and they will actually be opening up an office here in South Australia because they recognize the the smarts and skills of South Australia as a community from the eco system that people are all here are doing the Australian Institute of machine learning and the universities and so forth and with their Oxford University background they are coming so they will be based here as well Next to the locks and egg tech field days guy I'm going to get you to introduce but I see the tag along the essential tool for everything rural it's a big claim but I'll let you explain it to the company so onsite is a digital checking solution that helps improve operations communications compliance and biosecurity for farms and people visiting farms so we work across all rural sectors we have over 36,000 users across 3,500 rural businesses we're out in New Zealand so I just moved here four months ago to grow our presence in Australia already the uptake's been really good our biggest sectors are orchards and vineyards but we come from the dairy sector so really the need for onsite came from our CEO and co-founder Ryan Higgs who worked for Sinlay which is one of New Zealand's largest dairy farming operations and they struggled to know who was where in real time, what jobs they were doing, how to communicate health and safety information, particularly temporary stuff that would pop up overnight and that's a requirement under legislation so they couldn't find a visitor management on the market at the time that solved this problem so that's where it was created so really started with check-in and health and safety management but it's grown from co-development with the industries to be the essential tool for everything rural so including task management, biosecurity and that's our ultimate vision is to create a global rural network to provide next generation biosecurity. So how is the system implemented, how does it work in that respect? It's an app on your phone at the core of it so we're at first and super simple we know it needs to be ridiculously simple to actually get used in the field, you can have the best back end in the world if it's not used in the front end then you're not really collecting data and it's not useful so yeah anyone can download the app on their phone free to download, I've mapped out the Loxton site so you can check and play around, look at the risks and stuff and you can also use QR codes kiosks, web check-in you name it, we've thought of all the different ways how we can allow people to still use the system no matter what their level of tech capability or you know whether they have a phone that can run it etc. So there's a level of scalability there as well? 100% yeah I mean we started from individual dairy farms now our biggest customer manages over 200 orchards so it scales with your business so there's a free version that can help with things like sustainable accreditation so compliance is getting heavier and heavier these days so like the sustainable wine growing accreditation it then requires you to do things like map your property, traceability, biosecurity OH&S management and so all of these things you can do through on-site, a lot of them through the free version and then the subscription is 100 bucks a site a month and that will allow you to do your OH&S and job tracking and things like that Excellent, thank you so much Next at Lockston AgTech Field Days we've got John, where are you from and what's your business? My name's John Pargetta I was a grower of 500 acres down at Langong Creek so similar sort of pain points coming off the river I'm now with Swan Systems Swan Systems is a software company, we're hardware independent but I guess especially as we heard in the tent next door is dragging together all of that siloed information and data sets so we bring in weather data, irrigation controller data moisture probes, some leaf sensors all the different siloed things that the grower has issues bringing together and looking at different platforms so we bring it into the one platform And how do you use it from there? It then has as Peter mentioned on a slide there it can be very easily you can look at a dashboard and you can see whether the blocks you've got are in the green zone which is obviously the good zone if it was blue it's over watered, if it was yellow it's under watered but when you drill down further you're able to program seven days out our algorithms look at the forward weather conditions and we're able to then put a suggested irrigation out for seven days we have one irrigation controller that we currently have it fully integrated so we can push that seven day program into the irrigation controller and we're working on the other two major ones as in Taugil Dream that's here and also the MoTeC ICC Pro so the two major ag controllers but there will be Galcon and Mate and those come along as well So there's a level of automation going on here as well? Correct, yeah and it's it gives the grower that one stop shop I guess, all that solid information is able to look in the one place we also integrate imagery from a number of different sources whether it be drone, satellite we can bring that in as well Excellent, John thanks so much and next it locks in AgTech Field Days Matt Cooper you've got the product in your hand take us through it I do indeed, thanks Matt So I work for D3 Ag and we are the Australian distributor of Aribel and their flagship product which is the Mark II as Mark mentioned in the field earlier this afternoon it's a weather station but we also have some crop sensing capabilities in there as well primarily to look around the overall water balance of a crop what's coming in, what's going in a rainfall reference ET our crop ET and a couple of other bells and whistles as well such as looking at overall peak greenness NDVI and things like that So how does it actually do that? Well we use spectroscopy so we measure about seven different wavelengths which correspond to plant growth we also use infrared canopy temperature to get those measurements as well and we use very simple ratios to get those NDVI calculations which we deliver on a daily basis So how does the data go from there to something that we can use? So we transmit to two places a web app and a mobile app via cloud services and look the data that we see coming from this thing in the field provides us with all the information about obviously everything that the weather drives our crop production we can tie things to growth stages and phenological stages and there's a little bit of extra capability in scheduling as well So what have been some implementations that people have used this for to better their farm? Well we see a lot of success in short season crops such as vegetables because it's very portable, it's easy to move around and particularly in viticulture as well so it was very popular in the commercial research space in agriculture as well and it's really just a tool, a valuable tool that they can have on the toolkit which provides all the relevant field data that they need to run their operations basically We also have the capability to plug into other systems as well if growers might be have more of an on the boots on the ground boots approach it's useful to have a series of these things deployed across their operation where we can just check in see what the local conditions are what the forecasted conditions are or we can scale up from that we want to dive deeper, we can send our data to people like Swan Systems you know, DeepPlanet PairTree Intelligence and a whole range of others so we've got great interoperability with other platforms that are out there and that's where we see a lot of success as well Excellent Matt, thank you Thanks Matt Next at Lockston AgTech Field Days we have Hannah from Save Ag Systems Do you want to take us through what you're here for today? Hi, I'm Hannah we are Save Ag Systems an operational safety software for managing health and safety on farm and compliance founded on the York Peninsula after an incident on farm realised when they thought they were all across their safety started asking questions regulators came in couldn't answer them, they wanted records procedures, maintenance records and inductions so Save Ag Systems was born that was about five years ago since then we've developed to now cover all of your sort of OH&S as well as risk assessments hazard maps task management incident reporting, chemical register so yeah the platform's really grown a lot since then So how does it actually work? How does it integrate within the business? So it's all cloud based software with desktop and app all the workers have a login and they can then sort of mark themselves at work complete all their paperwork as they need to or not paperwork and yeah they can get everything on their phone. So does it work as a training system or is it after the training happens? So you can train within it we've got checklists which lots of people build out with a video at the top in a Q&A where it's more sort of a register so it happens as a storage for those training records and being able to show compliance on many different levels Exactly that yes and we're bringing in sort of more of the compliance as it's growing because everyone wants to integrate that as well so there will be an audit module as well in the new year so that your auditor can send you that and you can send them everything from the system you need to and then you're good to go Thank you Next at the Lockston AgTech Field Days we have Dominic would you like to take us through what you're displaying here at the Field Day? Sure, thank you very much so I'm Dominic from Greenbrain we do a range of soil moisture monitoring equipment and weather stations that sort of thing we try and give you the option to deploy, use whatever sensor type or sensor configurations are ideal for your particular property whether it's gypsum blocks and soil moisture tension as Mark was talking about earlier which is what we've got demonstrated out here or any of the commonly sold capacitance probes we're integrating them in sending them through to Greenbrain which is a really simple user interface to view the data if anyone's after more complicated more complex fancy predictions and services and things like that we've got an open API that is then able to feed the data to swan systems to manner irrigation to series imagery you name it as we're even looking after all of the race track soil moisture monitoring in Victoria so we've got that API to send the data out to any other use case Can you just explain to us how the setup is actually out in the field and how that actually works? Yeah so there's sensors either weather station sensors in the air or soil moisture sensors down in the ground they tend to be cabled up to something like this which would be a cellular logger so it's a little solar panel inside that little logger that powers the unit, measures the sensor takes the reading and then connects via the CADM1 network to the cloud where data is brought and uploaded in real time so the growers can see what's going on And the APIs that you're talking about was that a decision from the outset to make sure it could actually work in with other systems and push them forward? The outset was 1984 so I don't think anyone could spell API back then it was certainly a decision that I thought was quite important we weren't ever going to build every connection to every service in the in the industry what everyone wants and in the formats that they wanted so the easy way to make all of that flexibility available was to make the data available for everyone who's doing a very specific and a really good job at some of those things so it was an early decision but it wasn't at the outset Dominic, thank you Thanks And at Lockston Agtech Field Days and a lot of equipment here do you want to take us through some of it and how it all works? Sure, thanks for having me I'm representing Sentec South Australian based company established in Adelaide actually in Riveland in Lockston we have tens of thousands of these probes around this area in Riveland especially we're selling to more than 80 countries in the world at the moment it's not just the soil moisture it's moisture salinity as well as the temperature in different levels calculating anywhere between 10 centimeters to 40 meters so depending on what type of crops or what type of industry we're working with it goes from mining to environmental to ag and hort and so on we also do have weather station, automatic weather station that probes can connect to that ones as well back to the conversation earlier that we had in the in the sessions in terms of API and ownership of the data ownership of data is definitely by the owner of the probe so that's private and personal and they can decide so which integrator or irrigation controller they want to go to if they are working with one the API also open and we are working with a number of different irrigation controllers let's say Swan, let's say Mate Alcon as well as some other ones so there's the capacity and potential to work with in terms of our product they come in a number of different shapes and forms depending on the top of the crops that the producers are planning to utilize the probes in them we also have our own telemetry like a Sentech telemetry that the unit that sends all of the information to the clouds and then all of the information can be accessed by the e-reMax which is the software that is available to the owners of the probe or the consultants that are working with us I was just going to say it looks like the system is quite scalable to whatever application we want to put it into absolutely, yes so in terms of scalability so the reason that we come up with the Bluetooth probes which is a drill and drop five minutes installation easy and then within a minute you can take it out as soon as you put it in the soil without undisturbed the data is valid pretty much it can be used but normally we give it a week or two to be able to interpret that data that is coming out from the probe it doesn't need a telemetry unit by the way so it's a telemetry on its own it sends the information to the mobile phone that you use and then you can use the mobile phone as the telemetry unit it sends it up to the cloud whenever you want and normally holds about 2100 readings so it depends how often you want it so it can be varied so it can hold a lot of information in there but it depends when you go there to grab the information from the probes but anyway too much details for now so in terms of this session the API is open for the integrators and we are open to work with any irrigation controllers we also do NDVI as well as the weekly forecast one week in advance forecast in terms of prediction in terms of irrigation what needs to be done the icing I suppose on top of the whole thing is the quality of the data that's coming out of the probes and it is South Australian and Adelaide based company and we are proud of what we produce I think you've explained it very well thank you for having us Hello everyone very nice to be here today even though not physically my name is Yoav and I'm from Aerobotics company at Aerobotics we use drone technology and models to provide information about the performance of your crop the information to provide is to the tree level or to the vine level all those tools are available for any tree crop as well as vineyards and basically the idea is to fly or a orchard to get those maps those reports to take action voice down those reports and then to reflight to measure the changes over time the entire process is very easy we work with local drone pilots they come to the property they fly the orchards we get the data on the cloud we analyze the data we identified variation in risks in your orchards and I come to your farm we sit together we go through this very detailed report which includes what we identified quantified how many trees in each block are underperforming how many trees are suffering from water stress etc. and we provide recommendations on how to fix how to rectify those issues once this have been done we reflight those blocks to measure the changes over time to make sure that we are on the right track and the entire idea is obviously to optimize yield and to reduce variation on the block level we're not here to create a beautiful maps for you to put in your office but rather to really help you to drive and take actions based on the insights that we identified again don't have heaps of time today so I'll only show you a few examples of maps that we provide the first one is a high resolution the RGB visual of your orchard which we then use to provide three sensors for each in every block of your orchard so you know how many trees you have how many are missing and that could be exported into a really nice report per variety as well the next one is using a multi-spectral sensor we provide three health maps so that you know what areas in each block are underperforming also there is a tool that allows you to quantify how many trees are affected by this trend issue how many trees are suffering from phytophthora and so forth and the last one the last thing that I will touch on today which I want to focus a little bit more is the water stress analysis basically when the drone flies we measure the temperature of each and every canopy in your orchard we then apply a few models to calibrate that based on the embryo temperature and based on the actual size of each and every canopy to provide you this colorful map as you see here on the right hand side whereby a blue dot represent tree that transpires a well photosynthesis transpires well orange yellow tree are trees that are a bit stressed in terms of irrigation I will now jump into the platform and for the last minute or 90 seconds that I have I will show you a few examples from one example from the platform specifically on the irrigation side of things so this is a citrus orchard northern hemisphere this is a naval block we've mapped this orchard quite late in the season in late April this is the visual the RGB it looks fairly uniform it looks a bit like the here but nothing too drastic and the grower wasn't aware of any issue then we applied our models and the transpiration product provided as the following image and you can definitely see that the midsection is transpires well so three trees are in a good water status compared to the with western valve and the eastern valve which was the most severe water stress as can be seen here and you can see the distribution as well so what we did here long story short was to the grower to flush clean the drippers he did so three times and he also adjusted the pressure in this valve in the eastern section and then we mapped this block twice and I'm jumping to the last mapping from late April sorry from late August sorry it's loading but you can basically see that the variation shrinks it's quite hard to see when we look at one map but if you look at it side by side you can see that the variation shrinks you can see here on the distribution and also you see that more trees are blue and less orange this block has been picked already and there was 10 tons to the hectare difference between this valve and to this valve so I think that comes to show the value of this product and how important it is to measure this irrigation uniformity distribution early in the season as early as possible to remediate those kinds of risks and anomaly we are now very busy doing those mapping as an irrigation product in your area as well citrus almond and vineyards so if you find this of interest feel free to reach out to me and we can discuss further very much Hi everyone my name is Cedric Geffen Fielding is an agtech start-up company founded in 2013 in Israel and currently operates in the US Australia and Israel our technology different to many other agtech services and products which focus primarily on the agronomics i.e soil, water, plants pests, nutrients climate et cetera et cetera Fielding's technology and service focuses on the operational side of the business with ever increasing farm size the complexity of multiple sites and assets increasing costs of input and labour it is becoming increasingly difficult for today's grower to maintain visibility and control fielding steps in we lift the veil and provide continuous visibility of the full range of equipment and the tasks on hand our sensors and tags are installed on all pieces of equipment relevant to the task we deliver live and offline insights into the location of that piece of equipment how it is faring as far as efficiency of operation is concerned based on preset parameters of your choice of multiple operators across multiple sites we provide the status of the completion of the tasks alerts in the event of exceeding or falling between below preset operational requirements and deliver reports on a daily weekly seasonal and activity basis we believe that we increase profit we know that we increase profit per acre by boosting efficiency and accountability and we enable the grower to take remedial action and to drive efficiency and profitability our insights are focused on continuous improvement and enable the grower to motivate and incentivize workers based on actual results and tangible measurable outcomes by setting goals and enunciating what success actually means it is very easy to motivate staff and team members and then hold them accountable to the metrics because you've got the data we assist growers in producing better yields by enabling them to improve the accuracy of the delivery of the tasks we improve the efficacy of their activities and there in turn we have an impact on the quality of the delivery as well as the quality of the outcome our reporting and analysis produces results and provides our customers with a means of tracking whether or not we are adding value these are onsite live where possible and correctional activity can or action can be taken clearly we can also identify things on the truck for instance that people are operating at speeds that are outside of the instruction we get alerts we can correct that at the same time the results we track them and the outcomes we track and we see the delivery and we see the outcome so for example on the left hand side of your screen you see the number of skip grows double sprays and speed issues fixed per 1000 acres over a period of time and we can see that during this period of time the number of activities that we reported was high in the beginning and thereafter it dropped and the conclusion for that is that clearly by tracking this and taking correctional measures the actual effectiveness has improved now once again you translate that to costs and ultimately you bring down the costs of what these activities are the cost of the mistakes or the emissions or the recurring work etc etc and all of that is the tangible outcome that is the return on investment so what makes Fielding stand out from the crowd we do have a unique and sole focus on operations rather than agronomy operational efficiency is our key success factor rather than just simply GPS tracking there are many companies that provide as we use tracking as a means to deliver that insight into operational efficiency we are highly flexible and customizable in the solution that we provide because the insights that we provide each grower not only is different between growers they're different between the sites of each grower and they also alter and change as we grow with that client so the insights that we provide in year 1 will be more rudimentary the insights that we provide in year 2 etc etc we hand hold you we are a true SAS model so we are a software as a service model we're retention keeping you as a valued client as someone who is deriving benefit from us on an ongoing basis is our key success factor so our grower success manager that is the ultimate goal to maintain you as an interested party where we can show that we are delivering value on an ongoing basis the other differential there is that we're interested in the data so it is in our interest to maintain the hardware and the software so that you are agnostic to that and we need to make that as seamless as possible because if we can't get the data we can't provide that insight to you and therefore that's our responsibility at the end of the day we provide continuous benchmarking not only against yourself but also against industry gold standards ladies and gentlemen the best testimony to the results of our labor and our service are our loyal clients and at the end of the day we would love to be able to gain you as potential interested parties and what better than getting glowing testimonials from some clients that are using our product we'd love you to learn more and to engage with us please give us a call and we'd be delighted to talk to you further about our technology and I think that's about it now it's your time to mix and mingle around the room and enjoy the rest of the afternoon just a final bit of formality thank you for your help and being our emcee today it's been great


Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming out here to CSIS this morning. I'm Kathleen Hicks. I run the International Security Program, and I'm the Kissinger Chair here at CSIS. Let me first thank Lockheed Martin for its support that make possible this event here today and the coffee you're enjoying outside. And it's such my pleasure to be here to introduce Admiral Zeconft and, of course, my partner in crime from the U.S. Naval Institute, Pete Daley, CEO of the U.S. Naval Institute. As you probably know, CSIS and U.S. and I have partnered for this Maritime Dialogue Series to try to bring a forum together where we can discuss major issues in the Maritime. And it's wonderful to have as our second speaker, just after the CNO spoke, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, 25th Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Zeconft. What we have here today really is the bridging of the worlds of Homeland Security and law enforcement with national security. And the Coast Guard lives every day in that space from his own personal experiences, serving as the Federal Unseen Coordinator for Deepwater Horizon, oil spill recovery efforts to working on issues in the Asia Pacific. The Admiral here, the Commandant, certainly personifies what the Coast Guard is all about. So without further ado, and with thanks in advance to Admiral Daley for moderating today's event, I'd like to introduce Admiral Zeconft. Like, Kat, thank you very much. And Admiral Daley, thank you for stepping up to moderate this. You always have a chance during the introduction to scan the audience. And as I scan it, I probably counted at least 10 of you that have written fitness reports on me when I was your subordinate. So it's a bit daunting to stand in front of you today, but it's important because I spoke at SNA yesterday. And there were a lot of people that didn't realize, you know, all of the great things that the Coast Guard does as a first and foremost, as a member of the Armed Services, as a law enforcement agency, as a humanitarian service, as a regulatory agency, as a member of the national intel community, and all the great things that we do for our country. So I want to thank you first for taking time to be with us today. And I certainly want to entertain your questions as well and leave ample time for us to be able to do so. When I stepped into this job about eight months ago, the first thing I did is I put my commonance direction. It was very straightforward. It was about service to nation, duty to people, and commitment to excellence, but really building upon the eight commonance that served before me while I'd been on active duty and take the best of their ideas and provide continuity of command rather than transition of command as I stepped into this position. But I also looked at how we've been executing our budgets since 1790. I'm sure when 10 revenue cutters were chartered under Alexander Hamilton, we probably wanted 15, but only yet 10. But we usually work with what's left over. And my first approach is, you know, we need to have a budget that is driven first and foremost by a strategy, by a strategy that is relevant, that resonates across a whole of government. And so we've been able to do exactly that. The first piece that we rolled out under my predecessor Admiral Papp is an Arctic strategy. I recently released a strategy for the Western Hemisphere. And I'll talk a little bit about that at length here shortly. In the next several weeks, we will release a strategy for cyber, and I'll talk a little bit about that as well. And I'm also very focused on what I call the energy renaissance. Every day a new tank barge is entering our waterways with a US certificate of inspection on it right now, because right now we export more oil than we import. We are a net producer. We're an OPEC nation. We produce more oil and gas than any other nation in the world right now, which is why gas is hovering oil around $46 per barrel. So let me talk a little bit about the Western Hemisphere. There was in the Smithsonian back in the late 70s, there was this vignette that plays out. You have basketball players, three in white shorts, three in black shorts, and you watch very closely as they pass a basketball among them. And if you pay very close attention, they pass that ball about 12 times. And about 65% of the people get it, but those 65%, what they don't see, is in the middle of that vignette. Someone dressed up in a gorilla suit does a moonwalk right between them, and no one saw it happen. No one saw it take place. I use this gorilla metaphor in the context of the Western Hemisphere. Today, eight out of ten of the most violent nations in the world are right here in our backyard in the Western Hemisphere to include violent crime, undermining rule of law, good governance, and how did that happen? Well, what's happened is that gorilla was actually organized crime, moving drugs, moving people, moving weapons into Central America, much of that destined for the United States. But that's why we now have eight of the ten most violent nations are right here in our backyard. We saw this play out this past summer with unaccompanied minor children. And some of us, if you look at that, the first thing you want to do is we're going to need bigger detention facilities. We need more beds. How do we place these children? And that's treating the symptom. What's the ultimate cause? The ultimate cause are the parents of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, three of these most violent nations, Honduras being number one, are trying to get their children to a safe haven. To leave a country that currently has 40% unemployment, 50% poverty, but a young child being born in Honduras today, one in nine will be murdered before they reach the age 21. And so how did that happen? So I'm looking at the cause of that and how that is taking place here in our hemisphere. Besides the unaccompanied minors, we're looking at drug flow. And within the Western Hemisphere, I'm taking a very offensive approach and attacking organized crime where it's the most vulnerable. And that's when it's on the water. We realize that when drugs come ashore, they're not coming ashore in the United States. They come ashore well south of here. So when I look at where does our maritime border begin, it begins at the territorial sea of 41 countries with whom we have bilateral agreements to do counter drug operations. But once those drugs come ashore, very difficult to detect. So one of my imperatives under my commonance direction is we will have intelligence drive operations. We've been a member of the national intelligence community for over 12 years now, 13. And it's time that we vector ships to where we know the threats, where they are at. My last ship that I commanded, I left over 13 years ago, we would go out and I would pick a spot in the ocean and I say, they're gonna come right here. And more often than not, it was like forest gump before they caught all the shrimp. But more often than not, you went home and you were skunked. And that's not the case anymore. The Coast Guard Cutter Boutwell, it's a 45 year old high endurance cutter return just before Thanksgiving with over half a billion dollars worth of contraband on their flight deck. 13 interdictions in one deployment. And for those of you that have been in this line of business, one a year is staggering, but 13 in one deployment. But this is all intelligence driving operations. Our intelligence product is so good today that we have at least one layer of intelligence on about 80% of the flow in the Eastern Pacific and in the Western Caribbean and even some of the flow that's destined towards Europe as well, 80%. On the best of days, I have an airplane, I have a cutter or a frigate that I can vector to go after 20%. So I can, 60% get a free pass. And so why is this of concern to me? Obviously we've got this challenge with regional stability in Central America. But this is a $750 billion enterprise. I have a $10 billion slingshot in my budget. But if we use Intel appropriately, again where organized crime is the most vulnerable where I have the upper hand is at sea, complimented with the authorities that we have. And the authorities are one thing, but it's also the competencies of the people. And I am honored to lead what is by far the best Coast Guard in the world today. So much so that many countries are trying to replicate the United States Coast Guard. They've got the color scheme right, they've got the stripe right, they might wanna buy our ships instead of theirs. But what they can't replicate is our people. What they can't replicate our authorities, our governance, because we reach across every aspect, so any maritime stakeholder, they really have to look one place to the United States Coast Guard. But that's where we're really having a difference. And as I'm trying to wake others up to this challenge, this gorilla, if you will, there's another very troubling number, and that number is 450,000. And those are the number of American citizens since 9-11 who have died due to drug overdose, drug crime here in our United States of America. We now have more people dying to drug overdoses, drug violence each year than we do to highway fatalities. So I need to build up this, you know, click it or ticket, but at a much higher level as we look at how do we invest in the Coast Guard as we look at some of the challenges that we see in the 21st century. The next line of the Western Hemisphere besides going after combating networks is safeguarding commerce. 90% of our trade currently rides on the sea. Yesterday, this relates to our cyber strategy, we hosted a public meeting for the maritime industry. In 2002, the Maritime Transportation Security Act, probably one of the most wide-sweeping pieces of legislation to impact the Coast Guard, impacted a number of facilities that do international trade. And they balked it first when we said you're gonna have to build a higher fence, more cameras, credentials, security guards, and so forth. But now they're coming to us and say, well, we need to know what the international standards are for cyber. If you look to see what's playing out right now on the West Coast with the ILWU renewing its contract, we're starting to see gridlock in our ports and we live in a just-in-time inventory economy. And so there's no room for error if there's a disruption in any one of our ports, especially if you look at a port complex such as LA Long Beach, where over a billion dollars a day of commerce goes through that port complex. That just goes through there. What you don't see are warehouses in the heartland. That warehouse is on a container that then gets on a rail car, that then gets to the factory floor just in time that's keeping our economic engine running. I was down in Sabine River about six weeks ago and on the Sabine River, there's a facility called Cheneer that will be the largest LNG exporter in the world when all six of those liquefaction plants come online over the next four to five years. Just after that, I went down to the Panama Canal. I went into the expansion project. It's 180 feet wide. It can accommodate ships with graphs of over 50 feet. That should open on or about the April Fool's Day of 2016. So with that, there will be a flow of gas ships. There will be also a flow of container ships, some of them carrying upwards of 18,000 tainter equivalent units, 20 foot containers coming through the canal, which may have an impact on where we do trade here in the United States. But behind all of that, the Coast Guard is the enabler and we do not wanna be the inhibitor of allowing all this maritime commerce to take place. So that's a key element as we look Western Hemisphere and then how we enable commerce and keep that engine running as well. And then the third piece of our Western Hemisphere strategy is securing our borders. And this question comes up time and time again. In the maritime environment, our border is not our territorial sea. Our border begins at the port of debarkation for any nation that does trade with the United States. Our maritime security regime, we have teams that go out and we audit all of the ports, all the facilities that do trade with the United States. And if they're in compliance with the international port security codes, they get a clean bill of health. If they're not any ship that calls on that facility within five times before it arrives here in the United States is going to have a welcoming committee, a very stringent inspection to make sure that their security standards have not been compromised as they go through these ports. So what that does to a shipper is either they don't do commerce at that port or that facility says, well, we better come into compliance. So it's a very indirect way, if you will, to correct compliance on an international scale. At that point, as that ship leaves a foreign port, the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection at the National Targeting Center here in Reston, Virginia. We look at the cargo manifest, we look at every crew member, the consec needs of that product. And then we look for any anomalies. Is there a person of interest? Is there perhaps something with that manifest that may cause great concern?  And so we screen all of that well in advance of those ships coming into our territorial sea, way out in the high seas. We have 12 bilateral agreements with flag states of convenience that allow us to go on those ships if we think that there is a weapon of mass destruction on those ships. We don't have to ask for permission. But you don't wanna board that ship as it's coming under the Golden Gate Bridge. That's why we have Flight Deck-Equipped Cutters. That's why we have a Tier 2 team, a maritime security response team that does fast rope, uses the exact same tactics, techniques, procedures as our special operations forces to go on board. And if it is a worst case, to take positive control on that ship and buy us that trade space, that time we need of what do we do with the final disposition of this ship that was destined for the United States and perhaps torching off a very worst case scenario. And then the other aspect of our borders is the flow of illegal migration. And it's not just here in the United States. This is playing out on a global scale. It's playing out in Australia with migrant flow going to that country. We're certainly seeing that in the European Union just in the last several weeks with very large numbers. And the Coast Guard has been dealing with phenomena now since, really the Mariel boat lift of 1980. Last month, we had a 200% increase in migrant flow leaving Cuba. There was a perception that our feet dry policy was going to change and what we saw were as rudimentary as these vessels are, these were really makeshift chugs, rusticas trying to get to the United States. As I was dealing with that threat and moving ships around, we have a 50 year old fleet of 210 foot cutters. They do have a flight deck on them. And so if you're holding 100, 150 migrants, it takes several days to go through a screening process before you repatriate these individuals. Well, four of these 210 foot cutters we had to send off to emergency dry dock. We've been doing a great job and all the crews that came before that to maintain these ships, but they're 20 years beyond their service life. But we're still operating them for 50 years. So what's the consequence? We have these great brand new fast response cutters that are about 154 feet long, a crew of 22. But that crew of 22 is now holding over 100 migrants for a period of five days. And as these migrants get anxious, some of them will self mutilate to be medically evacuated and then they become feet dry to enter the United States. But those fast response cutters were not designed to hold migrants for days on end as we look at the final disposition of these individuals. In this phenomenon, I don't think it's gonna change in the 21st century. When I look at the abyss between have and have not nations, when I look at political instability in the region, when you don't have to look beyond the country of Haiti, whose economic engine just doesn't seem to get started, but there are a lot of other leading indicators throughout the region where the United States is gonna become a very attractive target to emigrate to. Much like what we saw back in the early 1900s with the European phenomenon. But they will do so illegally and we wanna screen out who is a person of interest that may cause harm to the United States and who is a bona fide economic migrant looking to better their way of life. But that will be a challenge for us as well. I'll shift gears real quick to another area that I'm looking at and that's the Arctic. Yeah, when I say Arctic, it's also Antarctica. When people ask me, what do I lose sleep over? It's the Coast Guard cutter polar star that is grooming the channel as I speak. And things are going a little slower than expected. A little bit more work than they anticipated. We have great imagery, but they said, no, the ice is thicker, it's more dense. There's some fast ice in here as well. But what happens if they have a major engineering casualty while they're breaking in? There used to be a point in time where I could send another heavy icebreaker to the rescue. But right now they are going it alone and every time I would swim and water over my head, it was always good to have a buddy. But the United States doesn't have a buddy system right now as we're operating at the very far extremes of the world. And we have equities well beyond scientific research in Antarctica. And then as I shift to the Arctic, for the next two years, the United States will chair the Arctic Council. The head of that delegation will be my predecessor, Admiral Papp. How do we view the Arctic in the 21st century? What I see as the most looming challenges are gonna be safety of life at sea and then protecting the environment itself. So we will stand up on Arctic Coast Guard Forum and we will host all eight members of the Arctic Council. This includes Russia. In March, as we look at a governance structure for the Arctic going forward. First and foremost, safety of life at sea and also bandwidth. How do you communicate up in this region? To deal with a very complex contingency. A major oil spill up in the Arctic may only be several thousand barrels, not on the magnitude of a deep water horizon event. We need to be sensitive to the indigenous nations that have been living up there for several millennia as well. And take time as we work. Those partnerships as well.  But yeah, we have an opportunity over the next couple of years to really make our presence felt in the Arctic. But it's hard to do so in a very persistent manner. When our nation, these are national assets, our heavy ice breakers is one. And our medium ice breaker, our fleet again is one. So I'm keenly interested in recapitalizing our capability as we go forward. So there's a number of directives that I've teed up as I look at this world around us. And one of the first areas I look at is our human resource competencies. We operate in a much more complex environment than we did even back when I was in Ensign. We have boats and mates that are pursuing boats 140 miles offshore using warning shots up to including deadly force and doing the arrest as an E-5. We have a cyber command. We have intel specialists. We have an acquisition program that has not only matured but received five federal government awards in the past year. Our ships are much more complex. The systems on there to leverage them to the full capability. You cannot send apprentices to sea. We get to the journeyman approach. They leave and then we bring in the next wave of apprentices. So we're gonna have to overhaul our human resource competencies to be proficient in the 21st century. And that also includes our prevention world of work. We regulate an industry that is now turning to alternative fuels. There are offshore supply vessels using LNG as a fuel source. And I don't wanna find ourselves learning from the industry that we're trying to regulate. We should be the ones imposing the standards and not learning from industry. But we've never had closed loop communities other than the aviation community within the Coast Guard. And we need to tighten those circles a little bit more than we have in the past. Whether it's sea going, doing response, doing prevention, doing intelligence, doing acquisition, all of our support missions. Every one of them are valuable. I need it all. But I need to make sure that I've got competent individuals and I have an assignment process that grows those subject matter experts because we can no longer be that Swiss army knife. That jack of all trades, masters of none as we're doing brain surgery out here in the 21st century. So we're gonna overhaul that as well. I'm also directing as we look at the flow of oil within our inland waterway system. In two years ago, about two million barrels of oil went down river. Last year it was 50 million. It went up by a factor of 25. As I mentioned, more barges are being built when they come down on high river conditions. They're shifting silt. And there's a lot of exposure and something can go bad, but I need to make sure that that maritime transportation system, the waterway, is reliable. While we're maintaining that with 60 year old inland buoy tender. So if you thought those 50 year old ships were old, well, I've got something even older yet. And so I need to take a long hard look at that and how do we recapitalize that? There's a lot of talk saying, well, hey, we have GPS and we have electronic navigation. You won't need that anymore. Well, what happens if that GPS signal goes dark? Then what do we do? And I'm very focused on that aspect as well, of what some of those, well, we never thought of that, but that keeps me awake a little bit at night as well. Not just in our navigation systems, but also this is our timing system. Our financial market relies on GPS. There is no backup right now. So that's another key focus area of mine as I look into the 21st century. And then I also look at climate change. Not what's causing it, but I know that the sea level is rising. We've measured the ocean temperatures. Those are rising. And there were two phenomena that I observed in the last year. In 2013, it was super typhoon Haifan. That came ashore in the Philippines with winds of 196 knots, highest ever recorded in history. Well, we topped that this last year. It just didn't come ashore, but that was super typhoon Vong Phong. And as they were digging out eight feet of snow up in the Northeast, what happened was it was so powerful and dragged the jet stream south and then across the United States. But if you can imagine one of these beasts coming ashore in the United States. Katrina was a category three. Sandy was a category one. This is a category five plus plus. And do we have the resiliency within the Coast Guard to respond to an incident of that magnitude at a point in time where my active reserve, my active in reserve combined are less than 50,000 people as we look at how do we respond to some of these contingencies. So we're staying very focused on that as well. I'll close by saying there's no point in time where we have not had a better relationship with the United States Navy. I meet with Admiral Greenert on a regular basis. Very soon we will sign out the cooperative strategy for the 21st century. And when I look at the challenges that he is facing, gone are the days where you have six months to lead up to a contingency. When you have unpredictable leadership on the Korean Peninsula, threatening our country with ICBM missiles, clearly the Navy does have to reposition. And as they reposition, what do you pull from? And so in many cases, the Navy has had to pull from the Western Hemisphere. And as they do that, first and foremost, I applaud the great support, the teamwork that we have had with our Navy, with law enforcement detachments on those ships. It's been a game changer. I painted a rather bleak story for the Western Hemisphere, but it would be even more bleak had it not been for the presence in this great relationship that we've had with our Navy. But as the Navy repositions to the Pacific, I'm repositioning to the Western Hemisphere. Our presence right now is up by nearly 40%. And obviously I did not grow a fleet of 40% overnight. Again, we're using intelligence. We're doing what I call risk-based decision-making, but what are my highest priority threats on a global scale? And right now, they're right here in our backyard to go after that guerrilla. It's a great time to lead this organization. When I spoke to the Corps of Cadets at the Coast Guard Academy, I said your biggest challenge is when you lead this institution, you're going to lead an enlisted workforce that is more experienced, more mature because they're 24, 25 years old, and in many cases, better educated than you are.  But the strength of our human resource capital, I've never seen where it is today. And so when I step back and look at our United States Coast Guard, I could not be more optimistic. I could not be more thankful to the 88,000 active duty, our reserve, our civilian, and our exhilarate because to a person, every one of them are collectively punching well above their weight class. So I look forward to hearing your questions. Thank you for hearing my view of the world from a Coast Guard perspective. And so, Peter, I'll turn it over to you for some moderated discussion. Thanks, sir. My intent here is just to ask a couple of questions and open it up quickly to the audience. And I will thank you for your remarks. We had a forum last month where a speaker who really looks at this closely looked at the Coast Guard's acquisition, construction and investment accounts and noted the fact that historically, that had been at 1.5 to 2 billion and then has now 14 out centered on more of a 1 billion, 1.1 billion. You mentioned earlier your remarks about the hindrance cut or about well over 40 years old. What does this do to your ability to recapitalize that force? Yeah, my primary responsibility is come out of the Coast Guard as I've told our workforces. I spent most of my career as an operator and now I'm in marketing and sales. And I need to market our United States Coast Guard. We've done our due diligence. For two years running now, we have a clean financial audit opinion. We were the first military service to do so and then the Marine Corps followed suit last year. Well, we did it again. When you look at the fact that we can maintain a ship for 50 years, it was designed at a point in time where that ship was designed to maybe go out for two weeks and do search and rescue before the Magnuson Act was even signed dealing with fisheries and how we've been able to modify that cutter, train our people to remain relevant in the 21st century. I think we've been a pretty darn good steward of the resources, the platforms that the taxpayers have provided the United States Coast Guard. But over the last several years, our acquisition budget has gone from 1.5 to just south of $1 billion. And I cannot run our Coast Guard on a budget like that. We need the fast response cutters. The national security cutter has been a game changer for us. Gone are the days where you go out for a two month patrol. They deploy. They provide persistent presence and they're providing tremendous return on that investment. Let me just, yeah, a quick sea story. Coast Guard cutter, Washi, our second national security cutter just completed Rim of the Pacific, the largest Rim of the Pacific this last year. As she was doing her workups down in San Diego, we diverted her twice and she did two drug interdictions. Then she streams with a battle group and she's the SAG commander for the first time the PLA ever participated in Rim of the Pacific. When that was all said and done, they then went out and enforced our EEZ against fisheries. All in one deployment. And so this is a very capable asset. What I'm lacking right now is that middleware. And that is our offshore patrol cutter. We are down to three competitors. I've gone back to my staff and scrub every specification that's on there with a view towards affordability. And we view this as though I am personally paying for out of my checking account. One, that it's affordable, but two, that this is going to meet the requirements that I foresee in the 21st century. But I can't do it on a budget south of $1 billion. Well, shifting gears, just a minute. You've been commandant now for about seven and a half months. And in some sense, you've spent most of your life preparing for the job and there's probably no surprises. But I always feel like it's worth asking now that you're the man, you're the number one guy, is there any aspect now that you're in the job that has surprised you or is least unexpected? Yeah, I'd say there are two surprises. The first surprise is in the last month, I was on five continents. I've met with every geographic component commander and to a person, they've all said, we want more United States Coast Guard as an instrument of national security in their area of responsibility because many of the threats that they see are Coast Guard-like. Criminal activity, law enforcement authorities are requisite. So that's been the first surprise of how far and wide can I spread this peanut butter across the globe? And so we've tried to do that in years past, but now I'm stacking peanut butter and I'm stacking some of that in the Western Hemisphere. So that's the first surprise. The other, it actually comes as no surprise, is I've called ourselves the silent service because we don't overstate. In fact, we often understate our value to the nation and how few people understand what the Coast Guard delivers to our nation day in and day out. We have daily contact with American citizens, with bad guys and we're great instruments of diplomacy overseas, but very few people understand that. And the epitome of that is when we do our Coast Guard Foundation Awards and we had a rescue swimmer in the last year save 13 lives on multiple rescue missions. And this wasn't just out in the open water. This is in that surf zone against the cliff as people are being scraped across barnacles and all 13 of them in all likelihood should have perished. He saved all 13 of their lives and as he steps up to the podium, receives his award, I said, would you like to say a few words? He goes, well, I'm a rescue swimmer. This is what I'm trained to do. And I had duty that day and he walks off. That's great. It is mind numbing, but that is, we have 88,000 people just like that. I mean, we train them, we empower them, they do great things, but the value they provide to the nation often is underappreciated. Got it. You talked about West Ham and the fact that the Navy is focusing more on the Asia Pacific, the other side of the Asia Pacific. This opening with Cuba, and today represents a bit of a threshold because some of the requirements eased up just today on travel restrictions and the amount of money that could be spent, use of credit cards, things like that. What does this opening to Cuba mean to the Coast Guard? Yeah, first I'll say what it means to the Coast Guard and also mention what it means to the Department of Homeland Security as well. We've had this unique policy with the government of Cuba now for a number of years, this feet-dry policy, and it's been very challenging for those of us on the front line and having been there as the lights of Key West appear on the horizon. A lot of times people looking to better their lives will go to desperate efforts to try to make landfall here in the United States because once they do, they're home free. It's the only policy like that. So it would make our world of work a little bit easier. What I don't know would the government of Cuba try to prevent people from leaving because there's been a policy change and then if they do, there might be a reverse effect. You might have Cuban nationals leaving the United States destined for Cuba and trying to embark them and then bring them back the other way. So it can play out one of two ways. So I look at it from a couple of different aspects there. From a Department of Homeland Security aspect, we're unique in that we're 22 components, but we're not weaved together like the Department of Defense is under the Golden Water Nichols Act. Under Secretary Jay Johnson, he released a memo shortly after I became common on to talk about unity of effort within the Department of Homeland Security. And then how do we make best use of the resources and then apply it to what are the most relevant threats as viewed at the departmental level? So we've created three task forces. A Joint Task Force East, which is led by Vice Admiral Dean Lee. He'll be double-hatted as the area commander focused on DHS equities maritime. His deputy will be a member from Customs and Border Protection. There'll be a Joint Task Force West. That will be led by from the Border Patrol, Commander Robert Harris. His deputy will be a Coast Guard individual and then we'll have another Joint Task Force for Investigations, which is really getting into the criminal networks led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His deputy will also be Coast Guard. So we're starting to turn DHS a little bit more purple by the creation of these task forces. As we look at emerging threats and then how do we apply resources will always be scarce, but how do we optimally apply resources across DHS to deal with those threats? Do you foresee that you'll be able to deploy or at least employ Coast Guard forces further south in the hemisphere and maybe operate from other countries or have more access to launch activities from? These are not stage questions, by the way. It's a great question. You may know that the White House, when we released our Western Hemisphere strategy, if you release a strategy, you wanna make sure you have connective tissue. And so our first connective tissue is to our department that has a Southern Border and Approaches campaign. But the next piece is to the White House that has a strategy for Central America. President Obama has met with the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador. He has heard their concerns. A lot of that violent crime is collateral damage for the flow of contraband destined for the United States. So there is a responsibility for the United States to step up to the plate. So as we look at, I have six patrol boats in Bahrain as I speak today and they've been there for 12 years, but that very same concept could apply in Central America. A dedicated squadron of patrol boats operating in this region to, first of all, help build up their Coast Guards. But at the same time, if there's actionable intelligence, I can divert them to either do unilateral or combined operations with these countries. And as they look at their Navy model in this region, the countries of this region, it's very much a Coast Guard model. So it's a very good fit for us. I think it's a very good fit for our nation as well. Well, thanks. I just, as a guy who operated out there in the Persian Gulf with those WPBs, I just want to say that they were fantastic in their contribution and to the mission, also super impressed with the junior structure, obviously, in those small WPBs and what those officers and crew accomplished out there was impressive. And as promised, I wanted to open it up more quickly to audience questions and gentlemen, right in the back there, sir. Admiral, good to see you again, sir. As always, your initiatives are incredibly aggressive. They're exciting to hear. We hear of the added, almost tasks that are being put on you by our country and our global partners, but it still seems like we're still using Admiral Lloyd's analogy, the dull knife. Is the administration and the Department of Homeland Security ready to go to Congress and work with them on their offer to get the Coast Guard the funding needed to get you not to be the dull knife, but the sharp tip of the spear? Yeah, my responsibility, and I'm very optimistic in that regard, especially when I go to my boss, Secretary Johnson, and his first concern is counter-terrorism, obviously. I mean, look what just played out in Belgium. Look what played out in Paris before that and we're operating under a continuing resolution right now. That has a direct impact on new starts, major acquisitions if that continuing resolution were to continue. He's been very vocal, one, in lifting that continuing resolution and have a fully funded department as he looks at counter-terrorism. His number two concern is recapitalizing the Coast Guard. I'm happy being number two. We haven't always even been in the top five, but to be number two at a point, an inflection point where we need to invest in our Coast Guard to be relevant in the 21st century, I'm very thankful for the leadership that I have in the Department of Homeland Security right now. Okay, we have a question right here, sir. Good morning, Admiral. Good to see you again. Will Watson, Maritime Security Council. Can you speak a little bit to the Coast Guard's role in safeguarding American or U.S. flagged owned and crewed shipping in high-risk areas like the Gulf of Guinea and Aden, the Malacca and Singapore Straits, et cetera? Yeah. Ironically, there's only one U.S. flagged, bonafide cruise ship, and it's out in Hawaii. But obviously, it's primarily a foreign flag fleet. We just released a notice of proposed rulemaking in the last day or two. As we look at violent crime, as we look at safety standards on cruise ships, and very early on in my assignment, I think it was in week two, I met with all of the CEOs of the cruise shipping industry. And I said, from this point on, we are going to have a relationship. But what we are not going to have is a partnership. It is in our mutual best interest as a regulator that we provide enough maneuvering space between the two of you. And we do periodic inspections on these ships to make sure they're in compliance with international code. But now we're doing spot checks. We show up unannounced just to keep them honest. And it's in their best interest to say, hey, we've got a Coast Guard seal of approval and we've been spot checked. And so it provides us better credibility, but it's certainly good for their business product line as well. But the next piece of rulemaking is still out on the street right now. It's an important one. This is, this ranks in my top five right now in regulatory packages that I would like to see to get through over the next year. That lady in the back row there. Left hand colonel Sylwia Szawowska from the Polish Embassy. I would like to ask you a question concerning your Arctic capabilities, especially in terms of budgetary cuts and what are your immediate plans to increase your polar icebreaker fleet? Thank you. First, you need to start with, what are the requirements for the 21st century? And if you're gonna be operating in the Arctic domain, you wanna make sure that you meet or exceed the environmental standards that are in the Arctic. That's everything from gray water, the type of fuel you burn, the emissions. And right now, none of our icebreakers meet today's modern day standards. And those are gonna be updated even more so with the release of the polar code. I say that because we're also looking at what would it take to bring the Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea back to life. It's been laid up now for over six years. Some of those parts were used to put the polar star together so it could run for notionally about 10 years. And so we're still doing an assessment of what would it take to bring a 40 year old ship back to life and then hopefully keep it on life support for another 10 years. But it's like that old car that you just don't wanna let go of. And at some point, you throw good money after bad, but this is taxpayer money. And I wanna make sure that we make a sound investment. But if I'm sinking so much money into that to the point where I could have recapitalized that ship outright, and I don't wanna find out four or five years later, that that's exactly what I should have done because it's gonna take several years for our shipyards to be able to produce a heavy icebreaker. Just the technology that goes into building a hull with a hull skin of several inches thick, which is what we have on our polar icebreakers. Clearly this needs to be a new line item in our budget. I can't do it with the acquisition budget that I have right now. But clearly an icebreaker is not, the Coast Guard operates and maintains it. But it really answers a lot of mission needs for a number of agencies within our federal government and also internationally as well. So we're looking across all of government to find the resources to put into a recapitalization of our art of capability. Other, this lady down here. Thank you, Marisa Lino with Northrop Grumman. Thank you for your comments. You covered such a broad scope. It's hard to decide what to ask. But I am curious, you mentioned being in Panama for the, to look at the canal. Do you have, what are your thoughts on the Chinese building a canal in, I think it's Honduras? Nicaragua. Nicaragua. Thank you. Not a new concept. Yes. Well, my term is four years. And it won't happen on my watch. But yeah, just from the outside looking in. You know, Lake Nicaragua, fresh water source as we look at invasive species. I mean, there's an environmental component. It will take much longer if this were ever completed to transit that canal than it would the Panama Canal. What does it take to operate and maintain that? And so does it provide competition? But I think there's gonna be many, many challenges in seeing that to fruition. And certainly what shippers want as we look at shipping going through the Northern Sea Route, the Northwest Passage, especially in the container fleet. They wanna meet schedule. No surprises, no time for disruptions, which is why you don't see container ships going up the Northern Sea Route. What they typically need is other infrastructure, another container terminal, railways, because they may as they transit, may need to shift some of that cargo because it's been diverted to another direction. So it's not just a canal, it's all the infrastructure that would need to go up around that in order that to be a viable waterway. Much like we have with the Suez Canal, a very mature Panama Canal as well. So it will take decades for that to really realize its full potential, even if that canal was completed. I'd like to just go back to the DHS, the competition for resources for a moment. You talked about the fact that, yes, we have this recapitalization challenge. We talked about that.  But at the risk of getting to a sensitive subject, DHS itself has a target on its back politically because of the association with the very highly charged immigration issue. How do you see that plan out? I mean, everybody else has a full year budget. You don't. What type of proselytizing needs to be done to protect the Coast Guard in this environment? Well, Peter, that goes, again, back to the marketing and sales aspect of this job. So with 114th Congress, my responsibility is to engage the many overseers, the appropriators, the authorizers that that impact the Coast Guard budget. And also at the same time, indicate that we are a part of the third largest federal agency in our government is the Department of Homeland Security. Number one is DOD. Number two is Veteran Affairs. Number three is the Department of Homeland Security. So just on that note, sometimes I'm asked, does the Coast Guard fit well in the Department of Homeland Security? And my answer to that is you bet. And when you look at the QHSR, much of that resonates, the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review resonates with the Coast Guard. What I am doing is I'm gonna take that a step further and the Coast Guard will have a QDR, if you will, a five year strategic intent for the Coast Guard. And I've had some of my predecessors when asked, well, how big does the Coast Guard need to be? I need to be able to provide at least a floor. But right now I am below that floor right now when I look at the mission requirements that I have at hand. But what I owe my boss and what I owe our nation is a strategic intent that takes into account the external environment, some of those challenges, opportunities that I laid out before you, but put that into a coherent strategic document and not a fist pounding saying I need more, but to be able to articulate that in a strategic manner that resonates with our national strategic objectives. Thank you. I thought I'd open up to more. Sir, the front here. Thank you. An independent consultant and former army, foreign air officer from the Western Hemisphere. I've had the privilege of working with your attachés throughout the region, and in particular the one in Haiti and then some observers for the UN. So we've done a fabulous job. In that vein, do you have something akin to what the army has in the record in the rapid equipping force office that allows some of us that have some ideas that we'd like to share with you, the possibility of optimizing on the spending that you have for special mission sets? Yeah. One of my collateral duties is the interdiction coordinator, a chairman within the office of the National Drug Control Policy. And within that interdiction committee is Ambassador Brownfield from INL. So as we look at opportunities, that may be beyond my resource base. And right now we're putting teams downrange using state department support to be able to do so, but we're doing it with a whole of government approach. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, I took the entire leadership team from the interdiction committee and first we went to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has seen a 300% increase in flow. And at the same time, they've seen a violent tremendous spike in violent crime there as well. But I haven't seen a 300% increase in flow leaving Puerto Rico, at least not by sea. So I met with the governor, I met with the regional commissioner. You know, there's an internal issue here as well. It's not, we're protecting that front door, but what's leaving the back door? From there we met with the president, presidents of Panama, Honduras and Columbia. So they could see firsthand what the challenges are downrange. Met with the country teams as well. And the demand signal for US capabilities, whether it's capacity building or whether it's basing resources in those countries is as loud as I've ever heard. But you really need to get down and see firsthand. And it's important that you bring other members of this leadership team whole of government down to see for yourself. So I don't see, and then I'm trying to tell the person next to me. And as that communication goes down the line, the message gets scrambled and it's not understood. So we're all seeing the problem set from different aspects, but with whole of government and what needs to be done down there. And I'm very optimistic for the opportunities that have presented themselves. Well, we seem to be at the end of our lot of time. And I just want to one more time thank Admiral Zucun for coming out and making himself available. Excellent remarks and the Q and A was wonderful. And also like to thank our sponsor, Lockheed Martin, one more time. And our partner CSIS, we think this is a wonderful partnership between us, Naval Institute and CSIS. But thank you very much, sir. And let's give him a comment on that. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.