Derek Carless

Leads the Digital Grain Passport project for AHDB on behalf of industry. Having first filled in a paper grain passport in the mid-1990s and having been involved in the earlier pilot project from 2014 to 2017, Derek has lots of experience of how a digital passport could work for all parts of the supply chain as well as a good understanding of the benefits and the challenges.

Responsible for the Farmbench team supporting levy payers through every stage of the process. From registration and data entry to helping farmers understand their production costs, what the benchmark reports are showing and facilitating group benchmarking meetings where farmers learn best practices from each other. Beyond this, the team are responsible for assembling sector representative datasets for the Cereals & Oilseeds and Beef & Lamb sectors providing AHDB and the wider industry with insights into the production economics on-farm across the two sectors. The team also includes the Cereals & Oilseeds market specialist analysts who produce the Grain Market Daily and the Grain & Oilseed Weekly Market Reports.

Derek is a graduate of the Royal Agricultural University and spent ten years working on farms with combinable crop, potato, sugar beet, dairy, beef, lamb, fruit and hop enterprises across Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, prior to joining AHDB in 2009.