Future Of Agriculture

Try Acres for free: https://www.acres.co/IFPA's Fresh Field Catalyst Accelerator: https://www.freshproduce.com/resources/technology/fresh-field-catalyst/"Taste is King" on the Fresh Takes on Tech podcast: https://www.freshproduce.com/resources/technology/takes-on-tech-podcast/episode-56-taste-is-king/"Locally Grown Through Vertical Farming on the Fresh Takes on Tech podcast: https://www.freshproduce.com/resources/technology/takes-on-tech-podcast/episode-59-locally-grown-through-vertical-farming/ "Traceability is Crucial to the World Produce Industry" on the Fresh Takes on Tech podcast: https://www.freshproduce.com/resources/technology/takes-on-tech-podcast/episode-55-traceability-is-crucial-to-the-world-produce-industry/"New Innovations are Improving All Aspects of Our Produce Supply Chain" on the Fresh Takes on Tech podcast: https://www.freshproduce.com/resources/technology/takes-on-tech-podcast/episode-68-live-from-the-global-show-2022-part-four/"The Future of Automation is in the Fields" on the Fresh Takes

Try Acres for free: https://www.acres.co/PYKA: https://www.flypyka.com/Michael Norcia is CEO of Pyka, which as I mentioned earlier is an autonomous electric aircraft company. Michael has a deep technical background in autonomous flight, having contributed to a wide variety of manned/unmanned electric aviation projects at Joby, Cora, and Kittyhawk. In 2017, Michael co-founded Pyka with the goal of combining two of his lifelong passions: electric aviation and business. This is a really fascinating interview that not only features some pretty mind blowing technology, but also a great example of finding product-market fit, overcoming regulatory hurdles, and taking a futuristic idea and converting that into a real business that solves real problems in the present day. For those of you who are entrepreneurial, I think you’ll be especially inspired, and you’ll probably also enjoy the questions I ask him about his Y-Combinator experience towards the end of the episode. 

Try Acres for FREE: https://www.acres.co/Robinette's Apple Haus & Winery: https://robinettes.com/The Land Podcast - The Pursuit of Land Ownership and Investing https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-land-podcast-the-pursuit-of/id1572511098 Exodus Outdoor Gear: https://exodusoutdoorgear.com/ Hello fellow ag nerds! Thanks for joining me for another episode of the Future of Agriculture podcast. My name is Tim Hammerich and every week you and I get to hear from the farmers, founders, innovators and investors shaping the future of the ag industry.Today’s episode features Allan Robinette. Allan is a fifth generation fruit grower and orchard manager at Robinette’s Apple Haus & Winery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They grow primarily peaches, apples, and sweet cherries and sell everything retail. We get into all sorts of interesting value-added concepts here including u-pick, farm retail, operating a bakery, winery and cider mill, corn mazes, gift boxes and a lot more. This one was a blast for me who grew up

Try Acres for FREE: https://www.acres.co/Magnetic Ag Newsletter: https://magnetic-ag.com/"Farm and Other F Words" https://bookshop.org/p/books/farm-and-other-f-words-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-small-family-farm-sarah-k-mock/16922376Imagine Content and Consulting: https://newsletter.imagine-content.com/"AEI.Ag Presents" podcast: https://aei.ag/podcast/"Agtech - So What?" podcast: https://www.agtechsowhat.com/One important change to agriculture that we probably don’t talk about enough is the changing ag media landscape. Farmers and those of us who work in agriculture traditionally would read industry publications and listen to farm broadcasters on the radio to get ag information. Those programs were funded by agribusinesses who new they had a fairly captive audience. Well as you know all of that has been turned on its head in the past 20 years. Now companies can have much more direct contact with their target audience, whether that’s a potential customer, a trade association member, a potential investor, collabor

Try Acres for free: https://www.acres.co/advance.farm website: https://advanced.farm/ Today’s episode features Kyle Cobb, president and co-founder of advanced.farm. They describe themselves as a 21st-century ag equipment company centered around robotics, with a current focus on automating harvest and postharvest in fresh fruit. advanced.farm is based in Davis, California and has raised over $35M of venture investment led by Kubota, Yamaha, Catapult Ventures and Impact Ventures. Before advanced.farm, Kyle was a Co-Founder of Greenbotics, a cutting-edge platform for robotic solar panel cleaning that was acquired by SunPower in 2013.Kyle and I talk about the journey that led him and his team to robotic harvesting, the challenges of bringing this type of technology to the market, why Kyle is convinced that now is the perfect time for robotics in agriculture, how they’ve approached raising money and much more.

Try Acres for free: https://www.acres.co/Agtech - So What? Podcast: https://www.agtechsowhat.com/Tenacious Ventures: https://tenacious.ventures/Today’s episode features a conversation on the future of fertilizer with Sarah Nolet. Both of us have been exploring the future of fertilizer on our respective podcasts, and we thought it would be fun to do a joint episode to talk about what we’ve learned. So you’re going to get not only Sarah and I’s thoughts, but also some highlights from episodes that provide insights into the future of fertilizer.Sarah Nolet is an internationally recognized food systems innovation expert and co-founder of Tenacious Ventures, a high-support, high conviction, sector-specific agrifood tech venture firm. Sarah has been instrumental in building the early stage agtech ecosystem - from advising dozens of startups, designing accelerator programs and consulting to established agribusinesses, to helping industry, universities and government develop and implement forward-looking initiatives

Try Acres: https://www.acres.co/The Ugly Company: https://www.theugly.company/The Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/Today's episode features Ben Moore, founder of The Ugly Company, an upcycled dried fruit snack company. Ben is a 4th generation California farmer tackling the complex problem of food waste. Through Ugly Fruit, Ben is on a mission to achieve zero waste at farms by upcycling unmarketable fruit directly from farms to consumers.  Ben had an epiphany while in his tractor plowing culled fruit. Ben reasoned that much of this fruit is perfectly good to eat and a shame being dumped. So, he did some research on ways to bring stone fruit to use as a value-added product. It’s another way for consumers to minimize food waste – some of the listeners may have heard of grocery ecommerce companies like Misfit Market and Imperfect Foods where you can purchase slightly off-spec food. The two main problems with food waste is food insecurity – getting nutritious foods transpo

Visit Acres: https://www.acres.co/"How to Grow and Sell Carbon Credits in US Agriculture" https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/crops/html/a1-76.html Dr. Alejandro Plastina is an Associate Professor/Extension Economist in the Department of Economics at Iowa State University (ISU). His area of specialization is agricultural production and technology, with an emphasis on farm business and financial management. His research focuses on the socioeconomic drivers of conservation practices, voluntary pest resistance management, carbon programs, and agricultural productivity.Prior to joining ISU in 2014, Dr. Plastina was Senior Economist at the International Cotton Advisory Committee in Washington, DC. He graduated with a BA in Economics from the University of La Plata (Argentina) in 2000, and an MS in Statistics and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2005 and 2007, respectively.I reached out to Alejandro when I was trying to make heads or tails of the various carbon programs

Visit our quarterly presenting sponsor, Acres: https://www.acres.co/Mineral website: https://mineral.ai/Dr. Elliott Grant is the CEO of Mineral, which is Alphabet's bet in sustainable agriculture.  Mineral is applying the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) to the existential challenge of sustainably doubling the planet’s crop productivity. Elliott and I really get past the buzzwords here and into the details of what exactly this technology is enabling on a practical level, and how it has the potential to impact agriculture and the way we do business. From my personal perspective, AI and ML have been talked about since way early on in this podcast, but it often felt like marketing to make their tool seem special. But it does feel like we’re hitting this tipping point now, where there are some really impactful technologies emerging, that can only exist because of the explosion in data collection and advancements in AI and ML, and I find that to be one of the most exciting aspects of

Try Acres for free: https://www.acres.co/Today we hear from AcreTrader with data science director Dr. Aaron Shew. Aaron is unique in that he has an extensive background in agriculture, economics, remote sensing and GIS and of course, data. In his current capacity, Aaron works with a team of software engineers, data scientists, and land experts to build advanced land analytics tools. He has master’s degrees in geography and agricultural economics and a doctorate in environmental dynamics from the University of Arkansas. He has more than 15 years of experience in the agriculture industry with 10 years of research experience focused on agricultural production and geospatial technologies.Aaron and I talk about the origins of the Acres tool, how it has already been helpful to AcreTrader which has 123 farms under management and ambitious goals to grow that number, why they would want to share this with the world - there’s even a free version that I’ve used - it’s pretty cool, and how this access to better data and

Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/CropIn: https://www.cropin.com/Software is Feeding the World Newsletter: https://www.rhishipethe.com/newsletterToday’s episode features Krishna Kumar of CropIn. Krishna shared with me CropIn’s 12 year journey in the agtech world, which I think is in some ways representative of agtech’s journey more generally. They started by building applications for farmers and companies with a vested interest in agricultural supply chains. From scaling their digital solutions to now 500 crops and 10k varieties in 92 countries, they realized they were capturing a lot of data and built what they call the Data Hub. They also started to build artificial intelligence models which now exist for 22 commodities in 13 countries. Krishna gives some examples of the wide range of use cases for those AI models.Now, CropIn is entering the next phase of the 12-year old company. A few months ago, the company announced the launch of a cloud platform with integrated apps. Founded in 2010, Cropin’s othe

Visit Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/XtremeAg: https://www.xtremeag.farm/ Farmer innovators featured on this show: Kristjan Hebert Greg Bethard Mike & April Clayton Paul Greive Zack Smith Peter van Wingerden Trey Hill Claire Smith Jesse Pella Patrick Smith Kelly Garrett Mike Evans

Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/California Cotton & Climate Coalition: https://californiacottonandclimatecoalition.com/Bowles Farming Company: https://bfarm.com/FiberShed: https://fibershed.org/Today’s episode is about the work being done by the California Cotton and Climate Coalition or C4. This is an example of a group of people that aren’t interested in the hype and greenwashing that goes on in so many “sustainability” circles. They are doing the hard work of bringing the right people together, collaborating, and collecting the data to find ways to evolve the cotton industry in California. I think this is a model many other ag industries can learn from. Today you’ll hear from Cannon Michael, President and CEO of Bowles Farming Company in Los Banos, California. He is the 6th generation of his family to work in the family farming business, which has farmed in California for over 160 years. After working in commercial real estate, Cannon joined the family farm in 1998, and they have since div

Sound Ag: https://www.sound.ag/ Ripe Robotics: https://www.riperobotics.com/ Today’s episode features Hunter Jay, CEO and cofounder of Ripe Robotics, a startup working on autonomous harvesting of fruit. The prototype is in small scale commercial trials, and will be ready to scale up in 2023 & 2024. The company has 2 commercial trial partners and another 30 companies on its waitlist, who spend a combined $85m USD on picking annually.Most of you have probably heard about robotic apple picking startups in the past, some that are still going and others that have failed. But one thing I really appreciate about today’s episode is Ripe’s commitment to keeping costs low and iterating fast. I think this is what it’s going to take to find automation that works for specialty crops like stone fruit. Hunter is a software engineer, and has a particular focus on artificial intelligence. He previously founded a mobile game startup, and whenI asked him about that company is where i’ll drop you into today’s conversati

Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/Neutral Foods: https://www.eatneutral.com/Jennifer Barney's "The Business of Food" newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/When I first read about Neutral Foods, I thought “that’s really smart branding”, but can they really back it up? And if so, how? And what’s in it for the farmer to incentivize them to make changes that benefit society, but may or may not benefit them? That’s really what today’s episode is all about. We’re about to bring on Jim Jarman, =vice president of product and commercialization at Neutral, and Ann Radil, head of carbon removal to answer these questions.Neutral Foods was founded by Matt Plitch, whose mission is to build the world’s first carbon neutral food company. He gained early investment from Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Ventures and other celebrity investors like Mark Cuban and LeBron James. Matt wanted to start with milk, which has 93% household penetration. The product, Neutral Milk is organic milk that

Visit Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/Do Good Foods: https://dogoodfoods.com/Harborview Farms: https://www.harborviewfarms.net/Trey Hill Interview: https://youtu.be/FRC1Ca9klGA Future of Agriculture YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClJpE4tdH2NN6Plj1UIWNwA Justin Kamine co-founded Do Good Foods with his brother Matthew to combat climate change by fighting food waste. They’ve created a closed-loop system with state-of-the-art infrastructure designed to upcycle surplus grocery food (after community donations occur) into nutritious animal feed. Do Good Foods first product, Do Good Chicken, is raised using this healthy feed can be purchased locally, giving consumers an opportunity to make an immediate environmental impact and Do Good...for Plate & Planet.™ The Kamine brothers’ company builds on the family’s 40-year heritage of over $3.5B of infrastructure of solving macro environmental problems. And stay tuned to the last half of today’s episode where you’ll hear directly from farmer a

Visit Sound Agriculture's website: https://www.sound.ag/ Our featured guests today are Sound Agriculture's CEO Adam Litle, as well as co-founder and CTO Travis Bayer. If you’re thinking you’ve heard all about Sound from previous episodes of this podcast, that’s great! But I will assure you there is a lot more you haven’t heard yet and this episode is well worth your time. Adam and Travis really do a great job of capturing a huge trend for the future of agriculture:  the convergence of biology and data science and other modern technologies to create innovative products that work with nature. But, their products are commercialized with the farmer customer in mind. There are some real nuggets in here that you definitely don’t want to miss.Some quick background: As CEO, Adam Litle leads the Sound Agriculture’s strategy and overall company execution. He joined Sound to help serve both producers and consumers with more sustainable, differentiated crops. Prior to Sound, Adam was on the founding team and served

Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/Farmers Risk: https://farmersrisk.ag/ Today’s episode features Dakota Hoben, co-founder and CEO of Farmers Risk. This is an interesting look at a new startup that is taking on a complicated topic: grain marketing. As many of you know, buying and selling grain is where I started my career, so I’m always curious about companies in this space, but frankly, always a little skeptical as well. Just knowing how many variables are at play in these decisions, not least of which being the farmer’s emotions. But that said, I am impressed by Dakota, and the approach they are taking, and I think he makes some really strong points in this interview. Dakota knew from a young age that the only industry he was truly passionate about was agriculture. Growing up on a grain and livestock farm in Southeast Iowa before heading to Iowa State to study Agricultural Business and International Agriculture, he watched family, neighbors, and other farmers ride the marketing roller coaster, but

Visit Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/ The Breakthrough Institute: https://thebreakthrough.org/ Alex Smith Bio & Articles: https://thebreakthrough.org/people/alex-smith "To Decarbonize Food Production, Washington Must Invest" https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/to-decarbonize-food-production-washington-must-invest "The Problem With Alice Waters and the 'Slow Food' Movement" https://jacobin.com/2021/12/organic-local-industrial-agriculture-farm-to-table/ "Fraudulent Foods" https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/no-17-summer-2022/fraudulent-foods I’m very pleased to be joined today by Alex Smith, senior food and agriculture analyst at The Breakthrough Institute, which is a global research center that identifies and promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges. Today’s episode might challenge you a little bit. Before I interview guests I ask them to fill out a brief pre-interview form to help me dig into the right areas during the conv

Visit our sponsor: https://www.sound.ag/ (https://www.sound.ag/) EFC Systems by Ever.Ag: https://www.efcsystems.com/ CropLife, "Top 6 Questions (and Answers) Every Agribusiness Should Be Asking About Cyberattacks and Data Security": https://www.croplife.com/iron/software/top-6-questions-and-answers-every-agribusiness-should-be-asking-about-cyberattacks-and-data-security/ Farm Progress, "Protect your farm from cyberattack": https://www.farmprogress.com/management/protect-your-farm-cyberattack I’ve been wanting to do something on cybersecurity for a while, but just hadn’t really happened upon the right guest. Then last month I read an article on CropLife called “The Top 6 Questions Every Agribusiness Should Be Asking About Cyberattacks and Data Security”. As a read the six questions I thought “those are just about exactly the six questions I would want to ask a cybersecurity expert on my podcast. And the author was Mike Moore who you’re about to hear from.  Mike is the Senior Vice President of the agrib