Episode 129
FROM PLANES TO POWER TOOLS with Mark Earles, AEA President
Chris Biddle welcomes Mark Earles of Makita UK, the President of the Agricultural Engineers Association (AEA), to Inside Agri-Turf, where they delve deep into the intricacies of the agricultural engineering sector. The conversation begins with a reflection on how the industry has evolved over the years, particularly in light of recent challenges and opportunities, such as the ongoing sustainability discourse.
Mark shares insights from his early career, emphasizing the importance of adaptability in engineering roles. He recounts his pathway from aircraft engineering to the outdoor power equipment market, illustrating how diverse experiences shape one's professional journey.
The discussion opens with the critical role of agricultural engineers in ensuring food security and the necessity for a renewed appreciation for farmers and engineers alike.
LINKS
Agricultural Engineers Association
We Are Landbased Engineering campaign
Transcript
Hello, I'm Chris Biddle and welcome to Inside Agrita, featuring those lovely folk who are engaged at the heart of the farm and grass machinery industry known collectively as land based engineering.
Chris Biddle:And thank you for joining me.
Chris Biddle:Now, before I introduce today's guest, I'd like to touch on topical issue which is gaining considerable media coverage.
Chris Biddle:Now, I don't mean the US election in the re emerg of Mr.
Chris Biddle:Donald J.
Chris Biddle:Trump, although I will make a brief reference to him at the end.
Chris Biddle:But first let me go back to the previous episode before this, talking to Dr.
Chris Biddle:Mark Moore, during which I asked him what role do agricultural engineers play in that whole process of feeding a growing population.
Chris Biddle:And here's what he said.
Mark Moore:I think farming in general, which obviously agricultural engineering is linked to, is underrated, undervalued.
Mark Moore:I've never had a time where I've not walked into a shop and there's been never been food on the shelf.
Mark Moore:So every time I've walked into a shop and not only the food, but a wide choice of food as well.
Mark Moore:And I think expectations are there.
Mark Moore:So consumers, right when they walk into a shop they expect food to be there.
Mark Moore:My parents grew up in the second World War and they experienced rationing.
Mark Moore:So they've I think a bit more appreciative of farming than perhaps we are today, my generation, because of that.
Mark Moore:So they experienced rationing, food shortages and things like that.
Mark Moore:I'm not saying they went hungry, but they haven't got the sort of the stability or the free choice that we enjoy today.
Mark Moore:So I think we need to try and get back to the point where we appreciate farmers more and more.
Mark Moore:And I think agricultural engineering can play an important part particularly around this sustainability challenge.
Chris Biddle:Now I expect you know where I'm coming from on this.
Chris Biddle:That interview was recorded before Rachel Reeves recent budget which included swinging changes to inheritance tax on farmland that would impact many family owned farms who are indeed the backbone of food production in this country.
Chris Biddle:The Ferrari amongst the farming community is palpable.
Chris Biddle:This move would likely spell the end of generational farming as we know it.
Chris Biddle:The NFU has already said that it is not in favor of mass protests a la France.
Chris Biddle:But here's the thing.
Chris Biddle:In WarGaming disaster scenarios, MI5 no less predict that we are only ever four meals away from anarchy.
Chris Biddle:And given how fragile the supply chain is and the reliance on just in time logistics, no wonder a group of about a dozen farming influencers with many millions of followers on YouTube and TikTok are talking about disrupting supplies and it doesn't take long for panic to set in.
Chris Biddle:So remember that MI5 forecast that we are only four meals a day away from anarchy.
Chris Biddle:Well, they do do it before Christmas.
Chris Biddle:Well, only time will tell.
Chris Biddle:But it could remind the government to never, ever take farming and food production in this country for granted.
Chris Biddle:Now, I know I promised not to mention the Donald, but it strikes me that we might adopt and adapt his MAGA slogan and instead of make America great again, make agriculture great again.
Chris Biddle:And so now continuing my theme of interviewing industry leaders and following episodes featuring Jeff Webb, the CEO of Grounds Management association, and Dr.
Chris Biddle:Mark Moore, the president of IAGRI, the institution of Agricultural Engineers.
Chris Biddle:This week I'm delighted to welcome Mark Earls, the current president of the aea, the Agricultural Engineers association, the trade association representing land based engine engineering manufacturers and suppliers, which will celebrate a very important anniversary next year.
Chris Biddle:Mark, a very warm welcome to Inside Agri Turf and congratulations somewhat belatedly on your appointment as president of the aea.
Chris Biddle:How are you enjoying the role?
Mark Earls:Oh, full on.
Mark Earls:It's been a really good year.
Mark Earls:A lot of work is our 150th anniversary next year so there's a lot of work going into that.
Mark Earls:It's going to be quite a special year next year, I think.
Chris Biddle:Absolutely.
Chris Biddle:And has it been a real eye opener for you?
Mark Earls:I've been on the board for quite a while.
Mark Earls:I know what to expect and it is, they're a great bunch of people.
Mark Earls:Everybody there, the board, the people on the committees.
Mark Earls:It's.
Mark Earls:Yeah, it's a, it's a good organization.
Chris Biddle:Look, if we could go right back and start at the beginning if you like.
Chris Biddle:Almost the beginning.
Chris Biddle:Your early days, Mark, schooling.
Chris Biddle:Did you enjoy school?
Chris Biddle:Was it, was it something that you look forward to?
Mark Earls:Oh God, I'll give you a potted history, shall I was born in Warwickshire.
Mark Earls:Most of my upbringing bringing was in a small village called Stratmond and there's more between Coventry and Rugby.
Mark Earls:Fantastic time to be growing up in there.
Mark Earls:So yeah, there's no, no worries about safety in a little village like that and you just go out in the summer holidays at 8:00 in the morning and you're only coming back at half past eight because somebody was shouting you back.
Mark Earls:Some is great time to be growing up.
Mark Earls:Great place to be growing up in with all the farmers.
Mark Earls:It's a very rural sort of little village, the farm right in the middle of the village.
Mark Earls:So we used to get up to all sorts of mischief and yeah, so it's great place to, to be growing up, schooling Went school in Rugby and I never really took to school at the time.
Mark Earls:Too many of the distractions and other bits and pieces.
Mark Earls:I think I only really got what schooling was about, about the last year I think so.
Mark Earls:But I pulled it out the bag.
Mark Earls:I got some reasonable grades and, and things like that.
Mark Earls:But coming from an engineering background.
Mark Earls:So my granddad was an engineer, he worked on Concorde.
Mark Earls:My dad was an engineer.
Mark Earls:He worked in several factories around in the Coventry area.
Mark Earls:And so the early days I was destined to be an engineer.
Mark Earls:And the granddad was desperate for me to be an aircraft engineer.
Mark Earls:The same as him.
Mark Earls:He helped me with getting an apprenticeship with an aircraft engineering company in Coventry.
Mark Earls:And that was really good times, give you good grounding.
Mark Earls:But it's that apprenticeship where I took off really because really did well there.
Mark Earls:I was top of the class, getting distinctions in engineering, drawing and all the different techniques, everything.
Mark Earls:And that's where education I think really kicked in with me a bit late, but that's where it happened.
Chris Biddle:Was this specifically aircraft engineering or general engineering course?
Mark Earls:Oh, this was aircraft engineering and quite a lot of it was military based.
Mark Earls:We did a lot of.
Mark Earls:We walked on tornadoes and jet Provost trainers at the time.
Mark Earls:We even made the toilets for the Queen's flight.
Mark Earls:But it was good.
Mark Earls:We even did some work on a Spitfire that had belly flopped somewhere.
Mark Earls:Yeah, it was, it was a good time.
Mark Earls:And of course it was the 80s as well.
Mark Earls:Computers were just coming to the forefront.
Mark Earls:I think I got a ZX Spectrum at the time computer.
Chris Biddle:Oh, bless them.
Mark Earls:And yeah, just going back a bit.
Mark Earls:So I learned how to program it.
Mark Earls:I learned DOS and things like that, which then set me up in the company where I was working because they started to get these terminals coming in.
Mark Earls:And in them days, if you remember, there were a black screen with green writing on and the keyboard was an integral part of the machine.
Mark Earls:I think they were made by Sharp at the time, the ones we were using.
Mark Earls:So I used to work out the guy's salary.
Mark Earls:I wrote a program to work out the guy's salary on the shop floor.
Mark Earls:So on a Wednesday evening just before we knocked up, all these people would be queuing up telling me how many hours overtime they'd done and their tax code.
Mark Earls:And I put it all into this little program I've written and I get it right within about two or three pence it was.
Mark Earls:Was quite good.
Mark Earls:Again, that was in the days when you used to get a little envelope with a corner missing.
Mark Earls:You have to count your notes before you opened it for your Wage packet.
Mark Earls:It brings back some good memories when.
Chris Biddle:You look back and did you see your future lying in the aircraft or the aviation sector or what happened in terms of when you joined Makita?
Chris Biddle:How did that come about?
Mark Earls:Computers happened.
Mark Earls:That's what, that's what happened.
Mark Earls:And I got noticed by another company, a design company and they wanted, they poached me basically from the aircraft side to go into car design on camera and looking back you'd think, is it a good decision?
Mark Earls:I worked on the XJ220 for Jaguar.
Mark Earls:They, the car that was with Tom Walkinshaw racing TWR because he had the contract to build them.
Mark Earls:The story with that is they came to us and said, we've shown this model at the motor show and we didn't really want anything from it, but a couple of really noticeable people, musicians, have placed orders for the flipping thing.
Mark Earls:So we've got to build it.
Mark Earls:Yeah, okay then.
Mark Earls:So they came to us.
Mark Earls:We then turned that into a full size, full size thing.
Mark Earls:But just before the tooling was going to be made, they came back and said, is too big, it's too long, we got to make it shorter.
Mark Earls:You can't just chop out a foot out the middle of a car and say.
Mark Earls:So the whole thing had to be redesigned again and they wanted to put a smaller engine in it.
Mark Earls:They wanted to put actually the Metro 6R4 engine in it that they were using for rallying.
Mark Earls:So they, we had to shorten the car.
Mark Earls:We did that.
Mark Earls:That led.
Mark Earls: ls Royce Corniche convertible: Mark Earls:So that gives you an idea of the year.
Mark Earls:Then there was jcb.
Mark Earls:There was.
Mark Earls:We did work for Ford on Transits and Fiestas and we did the.
Mark Earls:Was it the Rover 220?
Mark Earls:They did.
Mark Earls:The code name for that project was Sports.
Mark Earls:One was called the Dragon.
Mark Earls:I remember that.
Mark Earls:Anyway, that, that was that.
Mark Earls:So I then thought, yeah, maybe my career is in car design, but this is quite good.
Mark Earls:And then the market took a downturn.
Mark Earls:I was the last one in, first one out.
Mark Earls:And yeah, you think to yourself, okay, that's a pretty tough time.
Mark Earls:Went to sign on and the government went, or the office went, no, you can't, you're too well qualified.
Mark Earls:We're going to send you to university.
Mark Earls:So what, you know, just got married and we're going to send you to university.
Mark Earls:So choose a university course.
Mark Earls:So I went home with this book that they gave me and I thought, what have I got strengths in engineering?
Mark Earls:So I thought Computer Agent Engineering, Wolverhampton University I'll go and do a degree in that.
Mark Earls:So that's what I did.
Mark Earls:Shut off to.
Mark Earls:And I could do that from home.
Mark Earls:Buy a train from Leamington Spa, nice and easy.
Mark Earls:Did that for two and a half years or two years.
Mark Earls:And then the summer placement, I went to Potterton Meissen.
Mark Earls:The boiler people, the central heating systems, they had a big factory opposite where I lived.
Mark Earls:So I did a summer placement there.
Mark Earls:And at the end of the summer placement, a guy there called Ken Percival said to me, we don't want you to leave.
Mark Earls:We've been in touch with the university.
Mark Earls:You've done everything you need to get your degree.
Mark Earls:I'm offering you a job.
Mark Earls:So okay then.
Mark Earls:I knew though that my future wasn't going to be in boilers and things like that.
Chris Biddle:A bit of a change for Rolls Royce, Connie.
Mark Earls:Just a little bit of a change.
Mark Earls:You're quite right.
Mark Earls:I left there as I didn't leave there, I converted some of the production lines into from air to cordless.
Mark Earls:And that's where I got in contact with Makita and this rep came in.
Mark Earls:But while I was off with.
Mark Earls:When I was doing my university stuff, I had a friend who worked for a counselor at Claverton Parish council.
Mark Earls:They had 40 acres of woodlands, so a little bit of pin money and things like that to keep things tidying over.
Mark Earls:I was managing their 40 acres of woodland for them and I had my own chainsaws and things like that.
Mark Earls:So I asked Makita because I saw in the back of the catalog your chainsaws like.
Mark Earls:And this guy said, oh yeah, I'll bring one in, you can have a go with it.
Mark Earls:Said, oh, brilliant.
Mark Earls:Kept pestering him and eventually this guy turns up called Mike Baldwin.
Mark Earls:He used to be in charge of construction and the outdoor power side for Makita and I took him for a walk around the factory and bearing in mind that I've got no experience in sales at the time, I got no experience expecting anything from.
Mark Earls:From him.
Mark Earls:And we walked around and he was saying things to me like, did you get a meal allowance?
Mark Earls:No, I've never had a meal allowance, no, just bring me own sandwiches.
Mark Earls:A bit later on he'd say something like that, do you get like a company credit card so the department has one?
Mark Earls:He said, all right, okay then I don't suppose you get a company car, do you?
Mark Earls:Live over the road and water work and anyway got to the end of this walk around the factory says, well, if I offered you 2,000 pound more than what you run a company car Company credit card, health scheme, daily meal allowance.
Mark Earls:Would you come and work for me?
Mark Earls:I went, yeah, probably would.
Mark Earls:And he went, okay, then shook my hand and as I looked at him, he said, the letter will be in the post.
Mark Earls:And off he went.
Mark Earls:Anyway, Wednesday, the following week, this letter arrived and I showed it to my wife and my wife went with sales and went, I'm just fed up with engineering a little bit, because every year you've got this threat of redundancies over your head.
Mark Earls:It seems to be coming up all the time and as soon as somebody says, oh, we're going to go for the pay rise, then all of a sudden the management would go, things are going a bit tough and.
Mark Earls:And it's just usually like a tool to knock down the pay rises all the time, so.
Mark Earls:So I just said, why not just give some a different.
Mark Earls:Give it a go, give it a go.
Mark Earls:And while I was at Potterton's, they put me through a degree in management and then subsequently a postgraduate diploma in management and also another apprenticeship.
Mark Earls:I had to go and do a technician's apprenticeship in production engineering.
Mark Earls:So I got all these qualifications, building up behind my name sort of thing.
Mark Earls:So I thought, I'll carry on.
Mark Earls:Crack on.
Mark Earls:And up again.
Mark Earls:So anyway, I went to.
Mark Earls:I joined Makita in early 95.
Chris Biddle:What was your first role then, Mark?
Mark Earls:Area sales manager.
Mark Earls:I looked after a third of the country for outdoor power and that was Midlands, Mid and South Wales and the Southwest.
Chris Biddle:Yeah.
Mark Earls:And two months into the job, I rang Mike Baldwin up and I went, mike, I said, sorry, but this isn't working.
Mark Earls:I said, in two months I've sold eight chainsaws.
Mark Earls:I said, that cannot be justifiable.
Mark Earls:And he went, did I give you a target?
Mark Earls:So I said, no.
Mark Earls:He said.
Mark Earls:He said, you're here for the long term, not for the short term.
Mark Earls:Don't worry about it.
Mark Earls:Just go out there, do what you're doing, it'll come.
Mark Earls:And I thought, flipping that right, okay, then.
Mark Earls:That's taking a bit of faith in somebody in this.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:And I was the first dedicated person they took on because the people before me were a cross between construction and outdoor power.
Mark Earls:They were given a bit of the outdoor power.
Mark Earls:I was the first dedicated one that Makita took on.
Mark Earls:That then led onto me becoming assistant national sales Manager, then national sales manager for Outdoor power Equipment.
Mark Earls:I then started picking up some of these other roles then, so.
Mark Earls:Like the AEA and the egmf, another bits and pieces.
Mark Earls:So I.
Mark Earls:Then they said to me, you're good at this.
Mark Earls:And we want to give you the time to do that.
Mark Earls:So I said, yeah, okay then.
Mark Earls:And it was a.
Mark Earls:This aside, I really enjoyed, to be fair.
Mark Earls:So I stepped back from the national sales manager's role on outdoor Power and they give me the role of business development manager as a title.
Mark Earls:But that's not really anything what I do, I do business development, but a lot of what I do is the associations, working with the likes of Bali, the apl, egmf.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:Aa.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Chris Biddle:And so, Mark, this would have been a time when cordless was becoming much stronger.
Chris Biddle:And it always seems to me that cordless on paratools, paratool market was much stronger and the uptake on outdoor power equipment seemed to be slower.
Chris Biddle:Was that very much the case?
Mark Earls:I think so, yeah.
Mark Earls:If you look at, say, take a job in builder, then I think that most of the tools that he would use would be being used for short periods of time.
Chris Biddle:Yeah.
Mark Earls:Putting in screws, putting.
Mark Earls:Drilling a hole through a wall a few seconds and then that job's done.
Mark Earls:I think cordless tools initially would have been with the battery technology at the time.
Mark Earls:It blends itself to that sort of application.
Mark Earls:But as an outdoor power, are you running a brush cutter, you're running a motor for a long period of time, you're running a chainsaw again, you're running it for minutes, not seconds at a time.
Mark Earls:So the drain on the batteries would have been a lot higher.
Mark Earls:So I think in the early days, the battery technology probably wasn't quite there for the outdoor power side of things.
Chris Biddle:I think it was also a question of affordability.
Chris Biddle:Obviously they were a lot more expensive.
Chris Biddle:And also fears about runtime for potential purchases.
Mark Earls:Wasn't it, oh, runtime, how, when to charge, how to charge.
Mark Earls:If you're out in the field, then you need somewhere.
Mark Earls:It's sometimes impractical to carry 20 batteries with you to get a day's work done.
Mark Earls:So, yeah, there was all sorts of things coming in there and, yeah, cost was a bit prohibitive as well.
Mark Earls:And of course, in the early days you had the batteries which had battery memory, so you had to be very careful how you managed your batteries.
Chris Biddle:Where do you think?
Chris Biddle:So, coming right up to date, Mark, where do you think we are now?
Chris Biddle:Is cordless the very much accepted form of power for the outdoor power equipment market?
Chris Biddle:Are we there yet?
Mark Earls: the whole of Europe, then in: Mark Earls:If you look at now then, you're looking at 58% of the market being cordless.
Mark Earls:So over half the market being cordless and I think it's about 26% being petrol.
Mark Earls:Yeah, I think it's.
Mark Earls:The figures certainly indicate that cordless has come an awful long way and that's because battery technology has come an awful long way.
Mark Earls:And also motor technology is coming up along.
Mark Earls:People will always say, oh, it's battery.
Mark Earls:It's not just battery, battery is one part of it.
Mark Earls:You look at the number of brushless motors now that are out there, brushless made a big difference, 40% increase in efficiency with the brushless motor.
Mark Earls:So, yeah, it's big changes.
Chris Biddle:You referenced the egmf, which, for listeners who don't know what that stands for.
Chris Biddle:It's the European Garden Machinery Federation, am I right?
Mark Earls:Yeah, that's correct, yeah.
Chris Biddle:And I'm old enough to remember the British Lawnmower Manufacturers Federation, which has got very few members now, if any.
Chris Biddle:But the EGMF is based in Europe.
Chris Biddle:What.
Chris Biddle:What's the role of it?
Chris Biddle:Is it really standards, it's liaison with government departments and so on.
Mark Earls:It's.
Mark Earls:It's two roles, basically.
Mark Earls:A technical.
Mark Earls:So you have the technical side of things and then you have the statistics side.
Mark Earls:All manufacturers, all the major manufacturers are members of the EGMF and they're in it for two things.
Mark Earls:One is obviously you get your data, you put data in, you get data out.
Mark Earls:They.
Mark Earls:They won't get involved at all with forecasting.
Mark Earls:It's nothing to do with forecasting, but they will give you history.
Mark Earls:And then if you want to take that history and do your own forecasting, that's up to you.
Mark Earls:We tend to do what say we, because I pay quite a large part in the egmf, we tend to give five years figures, so you can work back.
Mark Earls:And that's quite interesting because obviously we have the COVID years as well.
Mark Earls:We could probably come to that a little bit later.
Mark Earls:But when we look at the.
Mark Earls:When we look at the figures, it gives you a fairly good idea of trends, of what's happened and a lot of manufacturers are interested in that.
Mark Earls:But also there's the technical side.
Mark Earls:And the technical side is just as important because people come out with.
Mark Earls:The European Union comes out with wonderful ideas of what it wants to see in the future, and then it's the job of the technical people on the egmf, which are all made up from the manufacturers people.
Mark Earls:So they will then go and they will Lobby the European Parliament, tell them what is possible, what isn't possible and hopefully get a good outcome for the industry that moving forward.
Mark Earls:So it does play a vital part.
Chris Biddle:Is it all driven, Mark, now by environmental and sustainable issues?
Mark Earls:Yeah, yeah.
Mark Earls:Well that's the European Union's driving that way and they are pushing the manufacturers that way.
Mark Earls:Manufacturers will go along with it.
Mark Earls:If you've got to be environmentally, you've got to be sustainable, there are benefits for doing it.
Mark Earls:Yeah, it's very much so driven that way.
Chris Biddle:You mentioned the COVID years.
Chris Biddle:I think I saw a graph on the EGMF site which looked extraordinary.
Chris Biddle:Surge in one year followed by a dip the other.
Chris Biddle:What happened to the market during those years because it almost defied belief.
Mark Earls:What happened was everybody was stuck at home.
Mark Earls:And while everybody was stuck at home, we had a brilliant spring and summer, didn't we?
Mark Earls:We did and everybody was.
Mark Earls:The only time you're allowed out the house was to go and clap the nurses on a Thursday afternoon, whatever it was.
Mark Earls:So the rest of the time you were stuck in, stuck at home.
Mark Earls:And one of the best places to be was in your garden.
Mark Earls:So there you were and you needed your guard machinery to maintain it.
Mark Earls:A lot of guard machinery companies that had websites and a lot of companies that did online sales did very well and you can see that by that huge lump in the sales.
Mark Earls:Then we were hit with the following year we were hit with component shortages and then, oh, that ship tried to do a three point turn in the Suez Canal.
Mark Earls:I think that things have leveled off now we're back to where we should be.
Mark Earls:If you look on the graphs on, it's where you'd expect.
Mark Earls:So that that's ironed out.
Chris Biddle:What challenges are there for the power equipment, outdoor power equipment market particularly?
Chris Biddle:There's a lot of legislation coming through in the states that states are trying to impose.
Chris Biddle:Do you look across the Atlantic and see what's happening over there and see whether or not it might well happen over here or what we get when.
Mark Earls:We do the EGMF meetings in Brussels, we always have opei which is the American equivalent to EGMF and they report on what's happening over there.
Mark Earls:Things over there will eventually come over here.
Mark Earls:And there's been a seismic change in the industry with Cordless over the time.
Mark Earls:So I think yeah, there's going to be tightening of legislation on emissions.
Mark Earls:There's going to be lots of other things coming through.
Mark Earls:I can see in the future and I think looking from a guard machinery dealers perspective and from where I Sit.
Mark Earls:This is not an industry thing.
Mark Earls:From where I sit, the dealers, when we go and visit them are saying, oh, we're going to lose out this thing about losing on service.
Mark Earls:And because they're not doing the work on petrol engines anymore, cordless still needs work doing to it.
Mark Earls:I think people have got to look at taking the opportunity with our batteries.
Mark Earls:The company I work for, then you can do health checks on them.
Mark Earls:Dealers can do these health checks.
Mark Earls:We sell a device to the dealer.
Mark Earls:If he's a service agent, he can clip the battery onto this.
Mark Earls:It will give him all sorts of information.
Mark Earls:He can then pass that on to the customer.
Mark Earls:The customer then can make the decision whether he wants to renew his batteries or whatever and also take the opportunity.
Mark Earls:When these machines come in, they do need a clean, guides need repairing.
Mark Earls:They all have something like a chain or a nylon head or a blaze.
Mark Earls:If it's a hedge trimmer, then the blades need sharpening.
Mark Earls:Just take the opportunity to do this.
Mark Earls:Might not take the same amount of time as a, as a petrol engine machine, but there is the opportunity there for people to do a cordless health check.
Mark Earls:And that gives them an opportunity to make their machines go out into tip top condition for the end user for the start of the season.
Chris Biddle:Mark if it could come now back to home in the aea, the Agricultural Engineers Association.
Chris Biddle:Why trade associations?
Chris Biddle:Why do companies join a trade association?
Mark Earls:It's strength in numbers.
Mark Earls:If you're going to be lobbying the government and you've got a trade association behind you, then you will have specific people in that organization who specialize in certain things.
Mark Earls:There's about four or five people now in the AEA that have different specialities and they have the contact with the government, they have the contact with the lobbyists in government as well.
Mark Earls:And that's vital because you got to get to the right people.
Mark Earls:That's one thing that I've learned is getting to the right person.
Mark Earls:One big thing at the moment that we're working on is this Rural Crime Prevention Bill.
Mark Earls:We all want to stop crime in whatever it is.
Mark Earls:And you hear of the number of ATVs and tractors and chainsaws and everything that's being stolen at the moment.
Mark Earls:The government's come out with the Rural Crime Prevention Bill and they've come up with some ideas.
Mark Earls:And basically it only affects England and Wales, it doesn't affect Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Mark Earls:It's nothing to do with the rest of Europe.
Mark Earls:And you've got to tread a very fine line because if we do what they want us to do, it's going to increase the price of all the products that we sell.
Mark Earls:But what we need to do.
Mark Earls:Well, obviously if you increase the price of the products, then people outside of England and Wales will have a field day in our market.
Mark Earls:It's trading that fine line.
Mark Earls:It's trying to work with the government to find a way to make this happen which isn't going to impact too much on cost.
Chris Biddle:Mark.
Chris Biddle:I suppose the strength of trade association was best illustrated during COVID and when AEA and Bagma almost combined forces unofficially then to lobby government to allow agricultural dealers and many outdoor power equipment dealers to remain open and remain trading.
Chris Biddle:And I think no individual companies would been able to achieve that, would they?
Mark Earls:No.
Mark Earls:That's another good example of what they can achieve.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:So now it's.
Mark Earls:And that brings us onto Bagma as well.
Mark Earls:Bagma now a part of the aea and I think that's a good fit.
Mark Earls:I think a few little teething problems to start with, but I think now it's all settled down, I think Nick's doing a good job there.
Chris Biddle:And again, I think if we're looking at successes, that recently there was increased funding, wasn't there, for land based engineering apprentices, courtesy of some excellent work done by David Kirchner, which I think raised levels by something like 48%, which is extraordinary.
Chris Biddle:And perhaps the straits, the value perhaps that land based engineers are starting to be regarded in.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:I chair the Education and Training committee for the NEA as well.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:And David's done an absolutely fantastic job there.
Mark Earls:And we started off with the level two apprenticeship and then that quickly became working on the level three as well.
Mark Earls:And you're right, and the big thing is we're allowed to ladder up now as well.
Mark Earls:So you're allowed to go from one to the other.
Mark Earls:Which means that the training bodies that provide the apprenticeships get an awful lot of money for training these people.
Mark Earls:But what we had to do is we had to prove that our apprenticeships were different to that of an automotive.
Mark Earls:If you think of construction, you've got hydraulic, you've got electric, now you've got gasoline.
Mark Earls:But what we could do was we could prove because of sprayers and milking equipment and other things like that, that there was a lot more in our apprenticeship than what there is in others.
Mark Earls:And we had an excellent guy by the name of Dean Jones from Ifate who walked us through the process and we sat down with him, with people from TH White do the manufacturers, other dealers.
Mark Earls:We had some big meetings and Dean From Ifait said he'd never had meetings like this where so many people were engaged and wanted to be part of it.
Mark Earls:And.
Mark Earls:Yeah, so it was taken up.
Mark Earls:That apprenticeship is brilliant.
Mark Earls:And if you looked at an automotive apprenticeship, then we're over double the amount of money for the same sort of period of time.
Chris Biddle:Just going back to the.
Chris Biddle:I call it the merger of AEA and Bagma.
Chris Biddle:It wasn't quite a merger.
Chris Biddle:AEA actually bought Bagma and of course the AEA represents its members, its manufacturers and suppliers and Bagma represents the dealers.
Chris Biddle:You referent teething problems.
Chris Biddle:But if.
Chris Biddle:What happens if Bagma, on behalf of its members, as a policy issue with a supplier who happens to be a member of the aea, are there conflicts of interest or do you tackle it internally and try and sort it out or what happens?
Mark Earls:It's treated as two separate organizations.
Mark Earls:Bagma isn't in on the AEA meetings.
Mark Earls:They're treated very much as a separate part of the aea.
Mark Earls:Bit like the milk marketing side of it as well.
Mark Earls:There's no dealing through the aea.
Mark Earls:The dealing of the manufacturers is done direct with the dealer, not through the aa.
Mark Earls:So I can't see what come up.
Chris Biddle:Yeah, yeah.
Chris Biddle:And I only reference that because a number of dealers were very unhappy with a policy decision by a manufacturer recently and who would have been a member of aea.
Chris Biddle:And I just wonder whether or not there are any conflicts of interests or whether the thing just takes its natural course in a way.
Mark Earls:No, I don't think that's an individual level.
Mark Earls:It's not at a level where I think it's.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Chris Biddle:And it's also very noticeable, Mark, from recent missives I've seen from Bagma, that they are ramping up the number of benefits being offered to Bagma members, which is always something people ask, why should I join a trade association?
Chris Biddle:And of course, the more benefits you can provide to them.
Chris Biddle:And there certainly has been a very obvious ramping up of an availability of benefits in recent months.
Chris Biddle:Are those benefits automatically available to AEA members or is there a certain amount of cherry picking going on?
Mark Earls:No, the benefits that are coming to Bankma are from the likes of Troy, because obviously Bankma were owned by Bira before and they used to get Bira bank and things like that.
Mark Earls:So there were.
Mark Earls:There was all sorts of offerings they used to get and when they came over to the aea, they wouldn't have been getting that.
Mark Earls:So they had to look at other things to do.
Mark Earls:Yeah, the AEA went out and helped with Some of the experiences that they had with the likes of Bagma generally.
Chris Biddle:Within the association with AEA and Bagma and of course I agree through Litech, which I can't remember what it all stands for but we know that it is the sort of promotion body for the industry that with the we are engineering.
Chris Biddle:How's that going internally?
Chris Biddle:Are you pleased with the progress?
Mark Earls:We are Land based is brilliant.
Mark Earls:Gareth Ford at the AA is doing another fantastic job and that's getting we are Land Based into schools.
Mark Earls:This is trying to.
Mark Earls:The whole idea of this is to try and get everything to link up.
Mark Earls:You go to a lot of schools and they don't realize where the food on their plate comes from half the time.
Mark Earls:So we are Land based is a good vehicle for getting this in front of schools.
Mark Earls:And we've gone out to most schools in the country with this now and we've offered them, all of them presentations and the people to go and be there.
Mark Earls:And we've been very successful with it.
Mark Earls:And this is basically, it's a good tool to get somebody interested and even the staff of the schools to say, look, there's this career path that maybe you're not thinking about and it's great.
Mark Earls:And yeah, I, I think the whole thing is in the education thing is fantastic because it's like everywhere you go there's a shortage of engineers and our industry, whether it's a guard machinery dealer or an agricultural dealer, they're all screaming out for engineers.
Mark Earls:And the more people we can get into this then the better.
Mark Earls:And I think land based is land based engineering or we are land based is the way to start sowing the seed in people.
Chris Biddle:And are you seeing practical results from that already?
Chris Biddle:It's examples of where pupils heads have been turned towards land based engineering.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:On the AEA website you can go on there and you can click on and there's a link to take you through to explain everything.
Mark Earls:We've been into some of the colleges and we've had students already coming up and saying where can I go to be trained in this?
Mark Earls:What can I do?
Mark Earls:And I do know a couple of dealers that have taken people on and going to be putting them through their apprenticeships.
Chris Biddle:And this is important, isn't it, Mark?
Chris Biddle:Because traditionally, particularly in agriculture, the source of new staff, new blood often came through the farming community and that has gradually disappeared or dissipated over the years.
Chris Biddle:And so we need.
Chris Biddle:Or the industry needs to get to new audiences.
Mark Earls:Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Mark Earls:This is making a big difference on that.
Mark Earls:I think I'm really Optimistic on it.
Mark Earls:I think it's a cracking way forward.
Chris Biddle:Good, excellent.
Chris Biddle:And what would you.
Chris Biddle:You've got a year term, haven't you, as president and what would you like to achieve during your term of office?
Chris Biddle:It's.
Chris Biddle:I understand that it's a team effort.
Mark Earls:It's a team effort and nothing happens really quickly.
Mark Earls:The apprenticeship thing has been going on for four or five years.
Mark Earls:The 150th anniversary is probably into its third year now.
Mark Earls:So we are land based is probably four or five years since the initial concept.
Mark Earls:So these things are always rolling along and doing that.
Mark Earls:So yeah, I'd love to stand up at the conference and say this year I've achieved.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:But like I say, it's a team effort and being president is really good because it's a great team of people on the board.
Chris Biddle:Yeah.
Mark Earls:From, from the likes of David Withers that I see key David Hart at Kubota and then you've got John at Kuhn and yeah, there's Chris Mecocke at John Deere.
Mark Earls:It's a great bunch of people all giving their time up to.
Mark Earls:For the industry to try and make the industry better.
Mark Earls:And yeah, it's, it's a good, good place to be.
Chris Biddle:Look, Mark, I find this absolutely fascinating and, and it proves once again there is often no defined route into outdoor power equipment or the land based engineering.
Chris Biddle:And most people I speak to have come in through very unusual routes and long may that be the case.
Chris Biddle:And finally, away from the presidency of the AEA and Makita and so on.
Chris Biddle:Marco, goals.
Chris Biddle:What when you're not working and.
Chris Biddle:And so on.
Chris Biddle:What sort of pastimes or hobbies have you got?
Mark Earls:I am a trustee of Warwickshire Scout association and we just.
Mark Earls:I've just built a 4.2 million pound Scout facility in Kenilworth and I say I haven't.
Mark Earls:I've no good with the trowel but I've been the chairman of the committee that has been responsible for that.
Mark Earls:Hobbies, I do a bit of shooting and I've fly a few drones.
Mark Earls:I've got a few bits of that.
Mark Earls:So a bit of photography as well.
Chris Biddle:So never a dull moment then for you?
Mark Earls:Never a dull moment.
Chris Biddle:And if you're going out to eat or eating at home, what sort of food do you tend to go for?
Mark Earls:I'm trying to be healthy, so I should say salad.
Mark Earls:But I do Chinese and Japanese food.
Chris Biddle:Yeah.
Mark Earls:And that's good.
Chris Biddle:Oh, that's a nod to your employer, presumably.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:Probably 30 years ago.
Mark Earls:Backwards and forwards to China.
Mark Earls:And Japan.
Mark Earls:But.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Chris Biddle:And do you get a chance to go to films or listen to music?
Chris Biddle:Any interests there?
Mark Earls:I like a good action film music.
Mark Earls:I'm quite eclectic on.
Mark Earls:I've got.
Mark Earls:If you were to look at.
Mark Earls:I do have a.
Mark Earls:An iPad and I've got a.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:A list on there and it can be anything from Bruce Springsteen to the Killers to Rag and Bone man to it's if I like it and that's it.
Mark Earls:It's.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Chris Biddle:Nothing wrong with all those.
Chris Biddle:When you get away.
Chris Biddle:Able to get away holidays and that sort of thing.
Chris Biddle:Is there a favorite destination?
Mark Earls:I love Italy.
Mark Earls:I do like Italy and I do spend a lot of time in the uk.
Mark Earls:So I do Northumberland and we go up there.
Mark Earls:I love the wildlife up there and I do Cornwall and I spend an awful lot of time in the North Cornish coast.
Mark Earls:So that's an easy getaway.
Mark Earls:Yeah, yeah.
Chris Biddle:And.
Chris Biddle:And lastly, is there any sort of motto that you jump out of bed each morning and.
Chris Biddle:And say this will help get me through the day?
Mark Earls:I had one person say to me once, try and make a difference.
Mark Earls:And if you can make a difference to somebody's life in a positive way then you're doing a good thing.
Chris Biddle:Indeed.
Chris Biddle:And I suppose that that comes partly through your scouting involvement.
Mark Earls:Yeah.
Mark Earls:But partly through.
Mark Earls:That was an engineering.
Mark Earls:Is an engineer that actually told me and actually speaking to him and he said as an engineer he said if you can make somebody's life better from your actions then you can go to bed happy at night.
Chris Biddle:That's a lovely place to stop.
Chris Biddle:I think.
Chris Biddle:Mark, I found this absolutely intriguing and fascinating and thank you so much.
Chris Biddle:It really is a pleasure for me to hear all these stories from different people because it's such a diverse industry and such interesting and inspirational people.
Chris Biddle:Thank you very much for your time today.
Chris Biddle:Best of luck in your rest of your term as president of the aa.
Mark Earls:Thank you.
Chris Biddle:You know, I really don't know how you can pigeonhole the characters and the community that makes the land based engineering industry tick.
Chris Biddle:If these series of interviews prove anything is that so many go on to make a real impact in an industry that may not have been on their radar initially.
Chris Biddle:And in the next issue, I'll be delighted to be talking to David Kirchner who Mark referenced about his long career in the industry and his valuable contribution to the enhancement and reputation and indeed future for apprenticeships.
Chris Biddle:I'm Chris Biddle.
Chris Biddle:Thank.
Chris Biddle:Thank you for joining me.
Chris Biddle:And this is Inside Agriturf.
