Future Of Agriculture

Today we are joined by Naeem Zafar. Naeem is a 7x serial entrepreneur and 5x CEO, with multiple successful exits. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of TeleSense, an IoT company creating real-time wireless sensing and predictive analytics for the stored grain industry. TeleSense is a portfolio company of Fulcrum Global Capital and adds to their story that we have had the privilege to share with you so far. A lot of the attention has been paid to sensors in agronomy with soil, water, etc. But think about this with stored grain: every year we produce billions of bushels of corn, soybeans, and wheat, just in the U.S. alone. A lot of that is stored and handled multiple times: maybe in farm bins, in a local grain elevator, on a barge or rail car, at a processing facility, or export house where it goes on to further handling. So there are several opportunities for the grain quality to be affected, and a lot of current solutions of checking quality are still mostly manual: meaning sending someone up to look at

Around the new year I like to reflect on previous episodes and pull out insights that I think are important for the future of agriculture.  As I reflected on the content from this past year, an insight became immediately clear: agtech has a long way to go. As much as we talk about the money that has poured into the industry and how much potential there is for the future of agriculture, progress has been, by most measures, slow. And change - in a lot of cases - has been minimal. This isn’t an indictment on anyone in the industry, instead it’s a statement that we all probably don’t say often enough: innovation is hard.  There are some real forces working against the advancement of agricultural innovation. Today’s episode explores these barriers that are holding back the entire sector and profiles companies that are directly addressing and trying to eliminate those barriers. Loyal listeners know that I love this idea of enabling technologies. Which is to say, breakthroughs that open the floodgates for numerous

Check out another great ag podcast: www.OffIncome.com. Today’s episode is really one of those that I think embodies my vision for this show. It’s the vision you just heard me reference: where we take innovative ideas, in this case artificial intelligence, and we look at the point in which the meet practical realities.  The reason this is so important to me, is: first, it’s so much easier to learn and understand new technologies by observing their use cases. And secondly, I am convinced this intersection is really the best hope we have for getting a glimpse into the future of agriculture.  We have on the show Craig Ganssle, the founder and CEO of Farmwave:  an agriculture technology company that is transforming the world’s agricultural information into AI data models that power decision-making and preserve the future of farming. In this episode you’ll hear how Google Glass originally led Craig to agriculture, how artificial intelligence works and how it’s applied to a variety of use cases, from predicting t

One of the biggest criticisms of ag tech and really many ag innovations in general is they often seem to be a solution that is looking for a problem rather than the alternative. This mismatch is often doomed to fail leaving many ag entrepreneurs frustrated. The Beef Alliance is trying to change that in the cattle feeding industry through their program called Feeding Innovation, a Beef Alliance Startup Challenge. The Beef Alliance wants smart entrepreneurial, problem solvers to see real potential opportunity and apply their talents to the cattle feeding industry. They're putting up $50,000 in the form of a cash prize and the chance at a pilot project to the winning startup of the competition. So even for startups that don't win that top prize and chance to pilot, it's still an opportunity to engage with leaders throughout the cattle feeding industry who could end up potentially becoming customers and investors. **Learn more about the startup challenge: https://beefalliance.com/startupchallenge/ The Beef Alli

Victory Farms is a Tilapia farming operation on Lake Victoria in Kenya. Since it was founded in 2015 it has become the largest fish farm in East Africa and is now the fastest growing Tilapia Farm in all of Africa. Joseph Rehmann is the CEO and founder of Victoria Farms and joins us today to share his journey towards becoming an innovative entrepreneur in Kenya with an environmentally sustainable aquaculture operation.    “It really felt like an opportunity to be where I wanted to be, in a field that I’m passionate about which is growing things and being able to have a meaningful impact from the work I do.” - Joseph Rehmann   Joseph observed that while Africa’s population is booming the development of local food sources was decreasing resulting in an increased dependence on imported food. He discusses the supply and demand mismatch that he was able to find a market in to not only build his business but help local populations.   “You've got 200 or 300 million people in the East African block and you've go

This is the series finale of exploring agtech adoption with In10t. Co-founder and COO Kevin Heikes joins as co-host to setup this episode which features Josh Miller and Elizabeth Blessum from BASF.  Make sure you listen to the other three episodes in the series:  FoA 226: The Problem with Farm Data FoA 215: Bridging the Gap Between Farmers and Agtech FoA 194: Accelerating Agtech Kevin reflects on the journey of founding In10t and what we’ve covered in these episodes as well as in his first two Future of Agriculture appearances on FoA 028 and 062. “When technology gets in the way of innovation, no one is happy.” - Kevin Heikes Josh Miller is a technical market manager for plant health at BASF. He describes the thousands of farmer trials that have been a part of bringing their Revysol brand fungicides to the market. He emphasizes the importance of trust and transparency when performing on-farm trials.  “I think (on-farm trials) is becoming part of our DNA. It’s not just about the data. It’s about the

Back by popular demand is guest co-host Janette Barnard. She co-hosted on episode 225 about direct-to-consumer meat, and is back today with Lamar Steiger, a consultant who is helping Walmart rethink their beef supply chain. They’re doing some really innovative stuff trying to improve quality and create shared value. Janette is the author of Prime Future, a weekly newsletter about trends in the animal protein value chain, and she’s the managing principal of Rock Road Consulting helping companies launch, source, and fund innovation. She’s also just a great friend and my go-to source on all things animal agriculture.  Also on this episode is a startup spotlight featuring Ceres Tag.  Join the FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture

Visit another great podcast: www.OffIncome.com.  Are agtech and regenerative agriculture at odds? Regenerative is committed to working WITH nature, and agtech is often trying to manipulate nature in some way. Agtech is often automating and trying to displace human capital, when regenerative is often trying to bring people back to the land. Agtech often includes buying new hardware or paying a monthly as a service fee, when regenerative is trying to rely as much as possible on what can be generated and then regenerated from the land itself. Those are the ideas that were floating around in my head when I decided to put together this episode. Probably the best part of doing this podcast is getting to hear from those of you listening. A few months ago I got an email from a listener politely asking that I feature more European stories on the show, particularly something from Switzerland or Germany. I wrote back and asked what topics he thought listeners would find most interesting in that area, and he responded

Visit our sponsor: www.OffIncome.com.  Today’s episode is a great example of true agricultural innovation. Most of you know our food system is heavily dependent on chemical fertilizers to efficiently get nutrients, especially nitrogen to most of our crops. However, some of those crops, think legumes like soybeans, pulses, and peanuts, have a symbiotic relationship with fungi that enable nitrogen fixation from the air and make it available for the plant.  Today’s guest asked the question, what if we could make this happen on all crops? Especially on corn, wheat, and rice, which together make up a significant chunk of the chemical nitrogen consumption. We have on the show Karsten Temme, CEO and co-founder of Pivot Bio. Pivot’s first product, Proven, is a microbe that when applied to corn can allow the plant to have a similar symbiotic relationship to, in a way, fix it’s own nitrogen from the air. If this is sounding familiar, it’s probably because we had Pivot Bio’s Director of Agronomy on episode 215, talkin

“We’re going to bring a lot of new, interesting, innovations leapfrogging across the world.” - Francisco Jardim   Today we explore an international agtech powerhouse, Brazil. And we have the perfect guest to talk about the developing agtech ecosystem in the country, Francisco Jardim. Francisco is the Founding Partner at SP Ventures which invests across multiple industries, but as you’ll hear, he has particular expertise in agtech. Francisco has been investing with SP Ventures for over 13 years, and focuses on Brazilian startups.   “We’re leveraging technology, new digital technology, to be able to make less friction, less costs for farmers to be able to empower themselves through the use of their data and access more sophisticated financial services products.” - Francisco Jardim   Historically, mainstream multinational ag companies have used fairs and large sales teams to expose farmers to new technologies. Francisco shares that by virtue of the spread of connectivity and digital technologies, farmers a

Typically when we think of food waste we imagine processed food ending up in the landfill. In this episode we explore a solution to reduce crop waste caused by microbes, mycotoxins or viral particles. Nanoguard Technologies has developed a device to reduce the microbial load without any residue or additional chemical input. Larry Clarke is the CEO of Nanoguard Technologies and joins us today to share the advances the company is making.   “Being able to reduce these mycotoxins saves the farmer from getting the discounts, allows him a non-complex supply chain by being able to get rid of his grain, peanuts and rice, but it also allows the animal industry to have better efficiencies.” - Larry Clarke   With limited treatment options, many producers have to resort to devaluing their crop in order to find a market. As well as helping row crop producers, this new technology also contributes to longer shelf lives of fresh produce and even meat products due to reduced microbial activities.    “We’re seeing shelf

Rural locations often have limited connectivity to cellular data. Dr. Sara Spangelo is the CEO and co-founder of Swarm Technologies. Their company launches constellations of small, sandwich-sized, low cost, two-way satellites into lower orbit space to provide affordable global connectivity.  Different space programs offer them access to launching their devices including Space-X and Vega among others.  “That will provide us with a network of 150 satellites for global continuous coverage - covering every point on earth at all times and essentially providing a lower cost version of existing networks.” - Dr. Sara Spangelo Swarm technologies is finding a home in agriculture technology as a solution to poor cellular connection. Sensor type devices will be able to send data continuously to producers at a reasonable cost. The business itself involves the acquisition of a modem that would then get embedded into a third party device. Users are then charged based on their data volume. The target customer is agricultur

Great show for you today, especially for the entrepreneurs in the audience. We have on the show Joe Dales, who in his current capacity is the CoFounder and President of Agri & Food Innovation at RH Accelerator in London, Ontario, Canada.  In this episode, we talk about the importance and the elusiveness of product-market fit - meaning creating not just a great product or service, but one that the market is eager to pay for. We also talk a lot about attracting and retaining talent to the ag industry, and the future of work.  Joe’s extensive experience in bringing innovations to the market really shines through in this episode. He has been involved in successfully launching over 40 agtech innovations ranging from crop protection products, to seed varieties, to biologicals, to software companies. In 1998, he co-founded Farms.com Ltd. and AgCareers.com which have grown to become a leading supplier of innovative solutions to farmers, agriculture and food companies around the global, he remains a major shareholde

We talk a lot about data in agriculture. Yield data, aerial data, weather data, soil data, data interoperability, data ownership, and on and on and on. What we’re not talking about enough, however, is data quality. More and more and more data is not helpful unless it is QUALITY data. We have the quantity, there’s no shortage of farm data out there, but how do we improve the QUALITY?  We often fall into the trap of assuming more data is better data, when in reality, better data is better data. We’ll explain why in this episode. You’ve probably heard of data being “cleaned” or being “scrubbed”. But what does that mean? Why is this so hard to do with farm data? Why is this a problem and what can be done about it?  “Right now the industry is really really excited about all of the data that we can produce...but I really feel like the second generation of the data wave here in agriculture is going to be quality, and comparability, and what metrics do we measure excellence by. Those are going to be the things that

Can a farmer transition from the commodity market into a full-scale direct-to-consumer brand?  The answer is “yes”, and David Newman is proof.  But this isn’t a story of an overnight success. The transition for Newman Farm has been in the works since the 1990s. Over the past 20 years he has learned many lessons, and he was kind enough to share some of them on this episode.  This is a special episode of the “Future of Agriculture” Podcast because for the first time, the interview did not include our usual host, Tim Hammerich. Guest co-host Janette Barnard sourced the story and interviewed David.  *Be sure to subscribe to Janette’s weekly newsletter about innovation in the animal agriculture value chain: primefuture.substack.com.    David and Janette discuss:  Transitioning from a commodity focus to building a brand Finding the right strategy for growth How COVID-19 has impacted their business The need for reinvention no matter how traditional your industry The challenges of a branded product with d

We've seen the rise of alternative energy and alternative protein, could alternative plastic be next?  Mark Remmert is the CEO of Green Dot Bioplastics. This fascinating company manufactures low-cost, biodegradable materials for a variety of uses.  There is an obvious sustainability story here, but it's also a peek into what can be a rapidly growing company and industry segment in the coming decades.  Green Dot is a portfolio company of Fulcrum Global Capital, who partnered with us on this episode. Duane Cantrell, Kevin Lockett, and John Peryam join Tim to introduce the episode and provide their perspective on why they invested in Green Dot.  What are your thoughts on the future of bioplastics?  

Daren Williams joins the show to help us better understand the role of producer-led commodity groups. Daren is the Senior Director of Global Communications at the Almond Board of California. He has worked in agricultural communications for over 30 years, much of that with producer-led commodity groups like almonds, beef, apple, dairy and pork.    The Almond Board of California supports all 7,600 almond growers, as well as many others in the almond growing community from suppliers and beekeepers to farmers and buyers. Almonds are one of the fastest growing crops in California, and the Almond Board has cast a vision for the industry that includes goals to improve by 2025 in water use efficiency, dust reduction, zero waste, and pest management.    “We fund research and production techniques. We validate techniques at work and if it's beneficial and cost effective and can help improve the return on investment for the grower, we roll it out to the industry and make sure everybody knows about it.” Daren William

Today’s episode is the deepest dive I’ve done to date into the world of regenerative agriculture. You’ll probably be able to hear it in my voice in the interview, but this one had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. In fact I think the conversation just gets more and more interesting the deeper we get into it.  If you’re new to the concept of regenerative agriculture, some previous episodes in which we discuss the concepts are episodes 44, 64, 109, 135, 182, and 199.  My viewpoint on regenerative agriculture since I first was introduced to the concept a few years ago is somewhere in between “cautious optimism” and maybe skepticism. I’m certainly not skeptical about the importance of soil health. I think you’ve heard that from me a lot on this show, and certainly you have if you listen to Soil Sense, one of the other podcasts that I host.  But some of the - what I’ll call hype associated with regenerative ag have left me asking a lot of questions. Many of those, we get into on today’s episode.

“Quinoa is very unique. One, it is gluten free but it also contains high amounts of protein and a greater balance of essential amino acids than cereals.” - Angela Ichwan   This week we are exploring the emerging market of American grown quinoa. The financial, environmental and supply chain consequences of a few farmers from the San Luis Valley in Colorado that started developing this product are shared today. Paul New is a 3rd generation farmer that was initially introduced to quinoa production by a graduate student that rented some ground from his operation. Sheldon Rockey farms in Center, Colorado and joined Paul in the quinoa venture. The two have expanded from an initial 500 acres of quinoa production to 3000. And finally, Angela Ichwan, who leads the technical team of the specialty crop business unit of Ardent Mills joins us to explain the quinoa market and how Ardent Mills has contributed to its success.   “We were watching him grow the quinoa and it was kind of an exciting plant because it didn’t s

Today’s episode has some really important perspective, especially for those of us who do not see the effects of persistent hunger and poverty on a daily basis. I have on the show Paul Winters, who is the Associate Vice-President of the Strategy and Knowledge Department of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).  IFAD is part of the United Nations and is the only UN agency or international financial institution that works exclusively in rural areas. They work in around 100 countries with the aim to eradicate rural poverty and hunger through agricultural development.  Paul is an Agricultural Economist by training and holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.  The first half of our conversation focuses on what agricultural development looks like in practice, and Paul shares examples from several different countries.  The second half of our conversation focuses on some of the major challenges to global food security, including the f