Future Of Agriculture

Terviva: https://terviva.com/Today’s episode is long overdue. For the past 15 years, today’s guest: Naveen Sikka, has been working to commercialize the pongamia tree. There are several things that are special about this emerging crop. First, it’s a legume, so like soybeans, peas, lentils, chickpeas and other legumes, the plant forms symbiotic relationships with nitrogen fixing bacteria, so in short, it can fix its own nitrogen from the atmosphere. Although the crop does still require some fertilizer - just a fraction of what is required for a lot of other crops. Also like other legumes, the beans are very high in oil and protein. But unlike those crops it’s a tree, which can have benefits in terms of productivity, soil health, and adaptability to certain parts of the world. So you have this supertree, that is a nitrogen fixer that is a perennial and adapted to both periods of flooding and periods of drought, and most of all it produces a versatile and nutrient dense crop. Naveen’s going to share a whole lot m

BovEye: https://boveye.com/ Flyover Whiskey: https://flyoverwhiskey.com/FarmAfield: https://www.farmafield.com/Andrew Minarick tells Tim about his latest company, BovEye, which is using computer vision and AI for remote livestock verification. As you’ll hear this is extremely important to his customer base which is not producers, but instead agricultural lenders. We also talk about his experiences in starting Flyover Whiskey, working for FarmAfield,  getting his MBA at Stanford, and more. Cool stuff all the way around and a very fun conversation for me. Andrew grew up on a small ag operation in North Bend, NE and has worked as an engineer and operator across a number of early-stage AgTech ventures, with a current focus on livestock production and financing technologies. He holds a B.S. in Biological Systems Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was a member of the Engler Entrepreneurship program and holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Andrew lives in O

In this unique solo episode, Tim Hammerich shares his framework for thinking about the future of agriculture. Drawing inspiration from a recent keynote at the 4th annual Soybean Research Forum and Think Tank, Tim discusses the rationale behind the podcast and shares the four key questions (plus a bonus) that guide his exploration into agricultural innovation. 00:00 Introduction and Purpose of the Podcast00:36 Inspiration from a Recent Keynote01:49 Reflecting on the Podcast's Journey04:26 Challenges in Discussing the Future of Agriculture08:31 Framework for Thinking About the Future of Agriculture09:38 Current Trends and Historical Insights12:20 Innovations on the Fringes13:43 Considering Unpredictable Changes18:33 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

PURIS: https://www.puris.com/Growing Pulse Crops Podcast: https://growingpulsecrops.com/Nicole Atchison is the CEO of PURIS Holdings, a vertically-integrated plant-based food company that operates from field to fork in primarily yellow peas. Nicole leads the agriculture side of the business, including contracting with growers, seed development and breeding, and innovation in product development. Her brother Tyler leads the ingredient side of the business. PURIS operates throughout the entire supply chain from developing genetics to developing new markets. “So if you're making a high protein cereal, you need a different pea protein than if you're making a plant-based beverage, which is still using a pea protein. But those two pea proteins are slightly different. And that's really the innovation that we do on our processing side, is we create these different proteins with different functionalities so that they can work in these different applications.” - Nicole AtchisonAtchison describes the wet prote

Syngenta: https://www.syngenta.com/en[Soil Sense Podcast] Soil Health Assessment with Jordon Wade, Ph.D.FoA 364: Supporting Soil Health with Dr. Steve Rosenzweig and Dr. Abbey Wick [Soil Sense Crossover]Future of Agriculture 123: Nerding Out About Soil Health with Dr. Abbey Wick of North Dakota State UniversityFuture of Agriculture 162: Cannabis Inputs with Dr Colin Bell of Mammoth MicrobesReally excited this week to bring Dr. Matt Wallenstein onto the show. Matt is the Chief Soil Scientist for Syngenta Group, where he leads their efforts to enable farmers around the world to improve their productivity and profitability through science-based innovation through soil health. Part of that team is my good friend and co-host of the Soil Sense podcast Dr. Abbey Wick, who you’ve heard on this show in the past. As well as Dr. Jordan Wade, who was a guest on a very fascinating episode of Soil Sense a year or so ago that I’ll have to link to in the show notes because it’s a great one. Anyway, so Matt’s putting together

FarmTest: https://farmtest.ag/Iowa Nitrogen Initiative: https://www.agron.iastate.edu/portfolio/iowa-nitrogen-initiative/Today’s episode is a really unique concept and potential game-changer for how we think about on-farm technology, management practices and research. Historically, universities and agribusinesses would conduct randomized controlled trials for the best data on how products work. But these trials are limited on where they can take place and how many replications could take place, so when a farmer says “what about MY field and MY management?” it’s not surprising that the bottom line comes down to: your results might vary. But we don’t know for sure or by how much. But with advancements in technology, why can’t every field include some sort of trial to understand how that product is performing? This has been done in the past with check strips that a farmer would plant as sort of a control, but this is far from precise or scientific. It just so happens that Nick Cizek is a bit of an expe

Cultura Technologies: https://culturatech.com/Metal Dog Labs: https://www.metaldoglabs.ai/Software Is Feeding The World Newsletter: https://www.rhishipethe.com/sftwIf there’s been a theme on this show over the past few months, it’s what does tech collaboration look like? Is it lip service or will it lead to real outcomes? You’ve heard from Lawrence King, Claudia Roessler, Mark Pendergrast, Jim Ethington and others all talking about this. Today, we hear from another leader who has proven experience in agtech collaboration, Jeff Schreiner. Jeff is the senior vice president of global collaboration at Cultura Tech, a company that has acquired technology companies focused on agriculture across the value chain. Jeff is interviewed by Rhishi Pethe in today’s episode about collaboration, data, regulation, and the future of agriculture.

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Arable: https://www.arable.com/FoA 256: Agtech Collaboration and Data-Driven Decision Agriculture with Jim Ethington of ArableToday's episode features Arable CEO Jim Ethington. Jim first appeared on this show on episode 256 back in 2021 and I was pleased to get a chance to sit down for a second interview with him in person at World AgriTech in March. His background is impressive. Prior to joining Arable in 2018, he spent 10 years at The Climate Corporation where he was VP of Product and grew the company to 50 million paid acres and built a team from 10 to over 600 individuals. So he started at Climate in 2008 when they were still called Weatherbill and stayed with the company through the big acquisition in 2013 and for years after that. So Jim has been thinking about the challenges and opportunities in digital agriculture for a long long time and it shows in the insights he shares in this episode. If you’re not familiar wit

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Ag Ventures Alliance: https://agventuresalliance.com/AgLaunch: https://aglaunch.com/FoA 068: Farmers Investing in AgTech with Spencer Stensrude of Ag Ventures Alliance and Matthew Rooda of SwineTechFoA 117: Bridging the Gap Between AgTech Entrepreneurs and Farmers with Pete Nelson of AgLaunchToday's episode features Pete Nelson and Margaret Oldham from Aglaunch and Spencer Stensrude at Ag Ventures Alliance. If you’ve been a long time listener to this show - i mean a REALLY long time listener - you heard Spencer back on episode 68 in 2017 and Pete on episode 117 in 2018. I’ll link to both of those classics in the show notes. Since that time the two organizations have partnered together based on a shared mission of investing in farmer-led innovations. They each have unique aspects to their models, which i’ll let Pete, Margaret and Spencer describe to you. But they also are joining forces in a way to put the farmer at the center of investing

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Carbon Robotics: https://carbonrobotics.com/Paul is the founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics. What Carbon Robotics is doing is novel and interesting in and of itself, and we’re going to talk a lot about that in today’s episode. But it’s important to note that Paul has a really impressive history of building technology companies outside of agriculture.Before starting Carbon Robotics, he co-founded Isilon Systems, a distributed storage company, in 2001. Isilon went public in 2006 and was acquired by EMC for $2.5 billion in 2010. In 2006, Paul co-founded Clustrix, a distributed database startup that was acquired by MariaDB in 2018. Immediately before Carbon, Paul served as Director of Infrastructure Engineering at Uber, where he grew the team and opened the company’s engineering office in Seattle, later focusing on deep learning and computer vision. So in today’s episode we’re going to talk a lot about laser weeding, building a field robo

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Azure Data Manager for Agriculture (ADMA): https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/data-manager-for-agricultureAg Powered Services: https://agpoweredservices.com/"Scaling Sustainability Through Bayer & Microsoft Partnership": https://www.bayer.com/en/agriculture/bayer-and-microsoft-partnership Today's episode features conversations with Claudia Roessler and Mark Pendergrast. A quick heads up on a couple of things before we dive in: first, both of these interviews were recorded at World Agri-Tech in San Francisco and they were other conversations happening in the media room for part of the time, so I hope you’ll forgive a little bit of background noise. Second, similar to Amie Thesingh’s episode last month, I originally recorded these interviews to be spotlight episodes featuring the work Headstorm does. Just like in Amie’s case I thought this story warranted a full-length episode, so we will focus on the work Microsoft and Bayer ar

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Phospholutions: https://www.phospholutions.com/Sentinel Fertigation: https://www.sentinelfertigation.com/I’m a firm believer that in the U.S. our agricultural research and extension programs at our land grant universities truly are national treasures. But of all the outstanding research that’s done at these institutions every year, not enough of it seems to get commercialized. Today we highlight two young entrepreneurs that each began their entrepreneurial journeys at their respective campuses, and are today growing real businesses helping farmers with different aspects of nutrient management. Today, you'll hear from Hunter Swisher, founder and CEO of Phospholutions which initially commercialized research done at Penn State. He does a great job talking about some of the major issues with the status quo when it comes to phosphorous. If you haven’t looked into it before it’s seriously eye opening. Then we’ll move west to Nebraska,

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/4AG Robotics: https://4ag.ai/ As you heard a bit about in last weeks episode, mushrooms are an incredible indoor crop with a ton of advantages and potential. But they are also extremely labor intensive. “When you have a crop that doubles in size every 24 hours, you're often picking mushrooms at the end of the shift because you know that they'll start colliding with other mushrooms or their caps will open up by the next morning. So you pick them too quickly. Whereas if you know, I can come back in three hours and pick that, you'll gain the extra yield and weight that'll come with it. A robot is, is able to do that, that you know, shift labor can't accommodate.”Sean O’Connor and the team at 4AG Robotics are bringing automation to this industry. But they’re not the first to have this idea, which means they have to work a bit harder to gain farmers’ trust. “Decades of people saying that we're gonna solve harvesting through automatio

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Ecovative: https://www.ecovative.com/ MyForest Foods: https://myforestfoods.com/ I’ve been meaning to do an episode on mushroom farming and mushroom technology for a long long time. But the right story just never presented itself. Then I got connected with Ecovative and about the same time got in touch with the subject of next weeks’ interview and all of a sudden I have two fascinating stories of fungi! And these aren’t far-fetched companies: they are proving commercially that mushroom farming shouldn’t be kept in the dark when it comes to the future of agriculture. In fact, when you think about the vast diversity of fungi that exist in nature, it’s surprising to me that we haven't seen more done to commercialize them for food, fiber and other resources (relative to domesticated plants and animals). But there are reasons to believe that’s starting to change, and will likely be accelerated through advancements in biotechnology in my opinio

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Wilbur-Ellis: https://www.wilburellis.com/ Today's episode features Amie Thesingh, president of ag solutions and chief technology officer at Wilbur-Ellis. Today’s episode is a perfect compliment to last week’s episode with Brad Fruth of Beck’s Hybrids. Both Beck’s and Wilbur-Ellis are well-established family-owned companies that aren’t just resting on their laurels. They’re looking ahead and wanting to be on the cutting edge of technology and innovation. Like last week’s episode, the perspective Amie shares is both grounded in the realities of how agriculture really works, but also forward-looking and open to how the industry is evolving and changing. In Amie’s role, she has to wear three different hats: Strategy and business development for the company as a wholeRunning their ag solutions business, which includes digital solutions, sustainable grower solutions, and their proprietary products portfolio - really focuses on innova

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Software is Feeding The World: https://www.rhishipethe.com/sftwBeck's Hybrids: https://www.beckshybrids.com/ The word “innovation” is tossed around quite a bit - I’m guilty of overusing it myself. But what does it mean? There’s probably no better person to dig into this question at least in agriculture than Beck’s Hybrids director of innovation Brad Fruth. “Ideas are cheap.  Motivated people that are passionate about their ideas is what is lacking.”Beck’s Hybrids is the largest family-owned retail seed company and the third-largest seed brand in the country. But it’s Brad’s views on innovation and adding value to customers that really stand out today me in today’s episode.“Focus on what we're good at, which is seed, and the selection of seed, the placement and management of it, but then partner with best in breed on everything else.”Today, Brad shares some of the specific ways Beck’s Hybrids adds value to their farmer customers,

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/ELO Life: https://elolife.com/ Pairwise: https://www.pairwise.com/home New Leaf Symbiotics: https://www.newleafsym.com/ Harpe Bio: https://harpebio.com/"Biologicals are ‘economically unfeasible’ According to Report: The Shortcomings and Opportunities" by Upstream Ag Insights: https://www.upstream.ag/p/biologicals-are-economically-unfeasibleI considered a title for this episode that was something like “The Biological Revolution Coming to Agriculture”. I decided against it, and not just because it’s over-dramatic and the word ‘revolution’ is tossed around way too much, but because it would give many listeners the wrong idea of what this episode is about. This is not an episode about biologicals, which has become a catch-all term for things like biostimulants, biopesticides, biofungicides, and bioherbicides. I’m not a fan of trying to categorize things as “biologicals” for the following reasons: The term “biological” doesn’t t

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Today’s episode features Headstorm CEO Lawrence King. Lawrence has over 18 years of technology strategy consulting experience. He got his start in agtech with Farmlink over eight years ago where he built an engineering team. That company ran into some hard times, and Lawrence found himself with a talented team of engineers and no work to do. He tapped into his contacts in agtech looking for strategy and engineering talent and Headstorm was born. Today, Headstorm has worked with companies all throughout agriculture and in similar industries who want to implement large-scale technology initiatives in their businesses. He’ll give us a few examples of what that looks like. Also, Headstorm recently announced a product of their own called AGPILOT, which uses generative AI to give ag retailers and other agronomists a new interface to record and access their data which ultimately allows them to better serve farmer customers.Lawrence has a lo

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Hemprino: https://www.hemprino.co.nz/ Prime Future Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/ We’ve all heard the stats about how little of what consumers pay makes it back to the farmer or rancher. Some producers, like New Zealand sheep farmer Paul Ensor, are seizing the opportunity to capture more of that value. "A lot of farmers don't know where their produce goes once it leaves the farm gate, but we're very well connected and we know what standards they require for us to grow the wool under. And so it's all about adding value and the best way to do that is be better connected to our end customer, farm to fashion."Paul is capitalizing on this farm to fashion opportunity in a number of ways, including his own natural fiber brand called Hemprino, which is a blend of 80% fine merino wool and 20% hemp. "There's a lot of wool blended with synthetic fibers to give it various attributes, whether to make the yarn stronger or more durab

Headstorm: https://headstorm.com/AGPILOT: https://headstorm.com/agpilot/Bayer Announcement: https://www.bayer.com/media/en-us/bayer-pilots-unique-generative-ai-tool-for-agriculture/Bayer AgPowered Services: https://www.bayer.com/media/en-us/bayer-collaboration-with-microsoft-connects-farm-data-to-address-lack-of-data-interoperability-in-agriculture/Microsoft World Agri-Tech Reflections: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/industry/blog/sustainability/2024/04/02/world-agri-tech-2024-pioneering-agriculture-resilience-with-ai/Claudia Roessler World Agri-Tech Reflections on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/claudia-roessler-microsoft_world-agri-tech-2024-pioneering-agriculture-activity-7180973495110057984-Bay4?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktopFoA 111: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with Jeremy Williams https://futureofagriculture.com/episode/future-of-agriculture-111-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-with-jeremy-williams-of-monsanto FoA 361: Meet Norm, FBN's AI-Powere