Schoolboy wins outstanding individual achievement award in ABP competition

No better example of this was the tremendous achievement of the team from Belfast Royal Academy, the members of which got all the way to the final stage of the competition from the 2017 call-for-entries and onto the skills development programme along with teams from three other schools.

The Youth Challenge was specifically established as an agri-food skills development initiative aimed at bridging the gap between school and employment for teenagers in Northern Ireland interested in working in agri-food.

As it turned out, the Academy team didn’t end up as the overall winning team announced just recently. That honour was bestowed on the group from St Louis Grammar in Ballymena.

However, the overarching theme the team from Belfast’s oldest school pitched for their finalist assignment – that of modelling a “city investment concept” to finance a calf to beef system – certainly caught the imagination of the judging panel.

It may come as a surprise to know that none of the Academy team had farming experience. Yet Lorcan Convery, the only boy in the Academy team, became the recipient of an outstanding individual achievement award when the trophy winners were announced last week.

“The competition was a tremendous experience, from start to finish,” he said.

Lorcan hails from Muckamore in Co Antrim and has no farming background, whatsoever.

He continued: “We started-off with the premise that it should be feasible to generate a satisfactory return for an investor in our beef finishing enterprise.

“As part of the initial development work we had contacted all of the local banks. The clear message back from them was that they couldn’t deliver any investor a return on their money of such magnitude at the present time.

“We also knew that, if selected as a finalist for the competition, we would have the opportunity of managing five Angus cross cattle of our own from the weanling stage right through to finishing. In other words, we could put our theory to the test.

“This would give us the opportunity of taking the real figures associated with the rearing of the cattle and working out an actual return on the investment that was actually committed to set the business up in the first place.”

The rest, as they say, is history. The members of the Academy team did make the final and, courtesy of lands and housing made available by their biology teacher Andrew Bell on his home farm near Stewartstown in Co Tyrone, they had the opportunity of managing the five calves awarded to them by ABP as part of the finalists’ challenge and benefitting financially from their sale to ABP at the end of the programme.

Throughout the 18-month finalist programme, Lorcan and his fellow teammates focussed on the prospects of farmers working with outside investors in ways that would allow both parties to generate a return on the investment they both made in the business venture.

He explained: “We used the opportunity of rearing the calves through to finishing to see if it is feasible to attract outside money, which would be targeted at production agriculture.

“This means taking all the costs and weighing them up against the final value of the cattle and the subsidies that are available.

“At the end of the day, there has to be margin in this for the farmer and a return on their money for investors who might wish to get involved.

“As it turned out, our final figures came in right on the money.

Looking to the future, Lorcan is hoping to start university later this year to study either Global business or business management. Both degree options will take him to Dublin. Beyond that, however, he is totally open minded.

“Taking part in the ABP Angus Youth Challenge gave me a unique insight into the workings of the farming and food industry,” he said.

“Working within either sector on a consultancy basis would hold many attractions for me.”

Explaining why the judges singled Lorcan out for an award, ABP Northern Ireland managing director George Mullan said: “This accomplished young man displayed a real head for business and an immense appetite for a challenge. From a city school, with no agricultural background whatsoever, he managed to make a big impression on the judges. His leadership and communications skills shone through at every stage of this competition.”