Kostas Ntolkeras

The most seriously I used to consider food was as ‘fuel’ for my football. I grew up in Thessaloniki, a port city in northeast Greece and used to play semi‐professionally for Iraklis F.C. – so a career in agri‐food was never on my horizon as a consideration. However, at 17, when it came to the choice between studying and playing, I chose university.

It was my internship with the Royal Bank of Canada in Luxembourg the summer before my penultimate year of university that really helped to steer my career. I have always had a head for numbers, statistics and trends, and I helped develop an econometric model at the bank that could explain existing trends and predict daily foreign exchange volume. This sparked my interest in modelling and machine learning and gave me a real insight into software development.

It was later, when choosing a project for my Masters’ thesis, that I came across Breedr and saw an opportunity to use modelling within a different industry.

Breedr is digitising livestock production; it is developing an online network that links farmers with others in the supply chain, increasing transparency in the value chain. It will help to improve animal welfare, reduce waste and makes the whole supply chain more efficient end‐to‐end.

My supervisor at Imperial College, London, linked me up with the consortium – led by Breedr and backed by Innovate UK, the UK's innovation agency. Breedr is developing a smart contracts system for the meat and livestock sector. The project uses blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) to capture the complicated flows of data between the different parties in the livestock industry, improving traceability within the supply chain and supporting online trading.

All of my previous roles had related to financial economics, so I jumped at the chance to work on some ‘real world’ economics.

Breedr's network captures a complete data history of the cow or sheep, creating a ‘digital twin’, which enables the animals to be bought and sold online. It has relationships with major processors, ensuring a ready market for quality animals.

Now, five months on, I am Breedr's leading fullstack engineer and blockchain developer. The work is really varied. Some days I'm doing a lot of coding, since fullstack involves engineering both the front‐ and back end of the platform, while my work on blockchain focuses on researching different blockchain models, assessing their viability – the commercial aspect of blockchain – and developing a Breedr‐specific solution.

Other days I am out in the countryside, talking to farmers to ensure I am developing tools that work in practice. I am a sociable person, so I enjoy these days – as well as the team meet‐ups with the company's 20 or so other designers and engineers across the UK and Europe. It seems there are more and more young people entering the agri‐food industry.

The skills you develop in working for an agri‐tech start‐up are definitely assets and transferable to other roles and sectors too. To be a developer you obviously need some coding skill – but you also need an appetite to learn and plenty of patience, because change and development come with time.

As with most start‐ups, the Breedr team all work remotely so it is vital to have good communication skills to ensure you are delivering a product that is aligned with expectations, especially if, like me, you are part of a team that has interdependent tasks.

I would recommend the agri‐food sector to anyone! While there are some exciting innovations in food science and processing, agriculture – at the other end of the supply chain – has not been disrupted by technology in the same way so you feel like you can make a real difference.

Breedr's ambition to help farmers produce healthy cattle more quickly, reducing waste and cutting greenhouse gas emissions, is right at the forefront of consumer demands right now. Agriculture should be good for people and the planet and I feel like I am doing my bit to help out.

中文翻译：

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使用区块链彻底改变肉类生产

Kostas Ntolkeras

我以前最认真考虑的食物是足球的“燃料”。我在希腊东北部港口城市塞萨洛尼基长大，过去曾为Iraklis FC打半职业赛-因此，我从来没有考虑过从事农业食品的职业。但是，在17岁时，当谈到学习和娱乐之间的选择时，我选择了大学。

在我倒数第二年大学毕业的那个夏天，正是我在卢森堡的加拿大皇家银行实习的经历，确实帮助了我的职业生涯。我一直负责数字，统计数据和趋势，并且我帮助银行开发了计量经济学模型，该模型可以解释现有趋势并预测每日外汇交易量。这激发了我对建模和机器学习的兴趣，使我对软件开发有了真正的了解。

后来，当我为硕士论文选择一个项目时，我遇到了Breedr，看到了在不同行业中使用建模的机会。

育种者正在数字化畜牧生产；它正在开发一个在线网络，将农民与供应链中的其他人联系起来，从而增加价值链的透明度。这将有助于改善动物福利，减少浪费，并使整个供应链的端到端效率更高。

我在伦敦帝国理工学院的主管将我与该财团联系在一起，该财团是由Breedr领导，并得到了英国创新机构Innovate UK的支持。Breedr正在为肉类和畜牧业开发智能合约系统。该项目使用区块链和分布式账本技术（DLT）来捕获畜牧业不同各方之间的复杂数据流，从而改善供应链内的可追溯性并支持在线交易。

我以前的所有职位都与金融经济学有关，所以我抓住了从事某些“现实世界”经济学工作的机会。

布雷德的网络捕获了牛或羊的完整数据历史记录，从而创建了“数字孪生”，使人们可以在线买卖动物。它与主要加工商有关系，从而确保了优质动物的现成市场。

现在，五个月后，我是Breedr的首席全栈工程师和区块链开发人员。工作真的很多种。有时候我会做很多编码，因为全栈涉及对平台的前端和后端进行工程设计，而我在区块链上的工作重点是研究不同的区块链模型，评估其可行性（区块链的商业方面）并开发特定于Breedr的解决方案。

其他日子，我在乡下郊游，与农民交谈，以确保我开发出可以在实践中使用的工具。我是一个善于交际的人，所以我喜欢这些日子，以及与公司在英国和欧洲的20多名其他设计师和工程师举行的团队聚会。似乎有越来越多的年轻人进入农业食品行业。

您在为农业科技初创公司工作时开发的技能绝对是资产，也可以转移到其他角色和部门。要成为一名开发人员，您显然需要一定的编码技能-但您还需要有学习的兴趣和足够的耐心，因为变化和发展是随着时间而来的。

与大多数初创企业一样，Breedr团队都在远程工作，因此拥有良好的沟通能力至关重要，以确保您交付的产品符合期望，尤其是像我一样，如果您是相互依赖的团队中的一员任务。

我会向任何人推荐农业食品领域！尽管食品科学和加工领域有一些激动人心的创新，但在供应链另一端的农业却没有以同样的方式受到技术的干扰，因此您觉得自己可以带来真正的改变。

布雷德（Breder）希望能够帮助农民更快地生产健康的牲畜，减少浪费并减少温室气体排放，这一雄心勃勃目前正处于消费者需求的最前沿。农业应该对人类和地球都有好处，我觉得我正在尽自己的力量来提供帮助。