Future Of Agriculture

Visit our sponsor: https://www.sound.ag/ (https://www.sound.ag/) April Clayton Twitter: https://twitter.com/AppleApril111 (https://twitter.com/AppleApril111) April the Apple Gal YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2DOJG_0BOYGv00KAw-CuxQ/videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2DOJG_0BOYGv00KAw-CuxQ/videos) April on “Real Food, Real People”: https://realfoodrealpeople.org/april-clayton-002/ (https://realfoodrealpeople.org/april-clayton-002/) April on “The Farm Traveler”: https://thefarmtraveler.com/2020/04/22/podcast-episode-53/ (https://thefarmtraveler.com/2020/04/22/podcast-episode-53/) April on “What The Farm”: https://farmercitygirl.libsyn.com/144-april-clayton-organic-orchardist (https://farmercitygirl.libsyn.com/144-april-clayton-organic-orchardist)  I’ve been following April Clayton on Twitter for a while, she is @AppleApril111, and she puts out some great content about their life and work at Red Apple Orchard, where they grow organic apples and conventional cherries. She also has a PhD in

Visit our sponsor: https://www.sound.ag/ LandScan: https://landscan.ai/ Today’s episode with LandScan founder and CEO, Dan Rooney. We could spend the entire episode going through Dan’s background and expertise in this field, but I wanted to get right to the interesting work he’s doing at LandScan, a company they’ve been working on quietly since 2019. They’ve developed what they call “the most advanced and practical site characterization and analysis technology. These multiple layers are a series of digitally synchronized tools and techniques that create a unique understanding of the relationship between crop performance and the growing environment”. Dan will tell us all about this in today’s episode and makes a compelling case for why this is a critical missing piece in digital agriculture.  Just a little bit on Dan’s impressive background: He is a scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur who has a PhD in Environmental Monitoring with an emphasis on remote sensing and spatial information analysis from the U

Visit our sponsor: https://www.sound.ag/ Seal the Seasons: https://sealtheseasons.com/ The Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/ Today’s episode features Alex Piasecki, co-founder and COO of Seal the Seasons, a retail consumer brand of packaged frozen fruit and vegetables. Seal The Seasons is aptly named as its mission is to bring locally grown produce to your grocery store 12 months a year. They do this by sourcing high quality fruit and vegetable varieties from local growers and leveraging grower hubs for processing, packaging and distribution within the local region. It’s a different model than the bigger frozen companies where some of the competition is sourcing from outside the US. The business idea started at the Farmers Market in North Carolina where as a college student Alex’s partner and Seal the Seasons founder Patrick Mateer, was working for a non-profit that donated unsold produce to the local community. When there would be excess produce either because of a rainstorm o

Visit our sponsor: http://www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com Over the past couple of weeks, two former guests of this podcast, Vence and TeleSense, have announced that they have been acquired. This prompted a random idea in my head to do an episode called 10 former guests that have been acquired. But I first wondered: have there even been ten yet? A quick scan of previous episodes and a little bit of Googling revealed that there have been at least 10 that have been acquired in some form or fashion.  So I spent a day going back through and re-listening to each of their episodes, researching when they were acquired and by whom, and trying to pull out insights that might indicate what about these companies allowed them to get to the finish line so to speak. That’s what I have to share with you today.  Vence, acquired by Merck Animal Health FoA 246: Unlocking Grazing Potential with Virtual Fencing https://open.spotify.com/episode/0NT9F695WJRmUAcUCEleKT?si=dJ2uquAERvujkUWWa7qa0A (https://open.spotify.com/episode/

Visit our sponsor: http://www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com Pattern Ag: https://www.pattern.ag/ FoA 170: Genetic Testing for Soil with Dr. Poornima Parameswaran: https://aggrad.libsyn.com/foa-170-genetic-testing-for-soil-with-dr-poornima-parameswaran-of-trace-genomics Today’s episode features a conversation with Mike Tweedy, VP of sales for Pattern Ag. Pattern Ag is a predictive analytics company that uses DNA sequencing of the soil to see the actual biology in farmers’ fields that they claim has never been available until now.  They take the unknown such as very specific pathogens that rob top end yield - like soybean sudden death syndrome and corn rootworm which we’ll talk a lot about today - as well as beneficial microbes and make them known. They are based in California but focused exclusively on corn and soybeans at this time.  Mike is the vice president of sales and leads the midwest commercial team. He’s a sales guy, but he’s also an ag guy with a long pedigree in the industry. He spent his early ca

Visit our presenting sponsor: http://www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com HEMPALTA: https://www.hempalta.com/ Phyto Organix: https://phytoorganixfoods.com/ We often get excited about the future of agriculture being more diverse and distributed and differentiated, but this is not going to happen by just planting new crops. Entire value chains need to be created to facilitate rich and diverse crop rotations and food choices. A critical piece of this is processing. These are the entrepreneurs that tap directly into the demand, innovate on the operations side, and develop relationships with farmer suppliers. I’m excited to feature two of these entrepreneurs on today’s show.  First you’re going to hear from Darren Bondar, president and CEO of Hempalta, which is an agricultural technology company focused on innovative hemp processing and product creation. It is one of the only commercial-scale hemp processors in North America able to manufacture high-value hemp products. After Darren, you’ll hear from Chris Theal, found

Visit our quarterly presenting sponsor: https://www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com Bruins Seed Consultancy: https://www.bruinsseedconsultancy.com/ "20 Most Famous Plant Breeders": https://european-seed.com/2022/07/20-most-famous-plant-breeders-1-5/ Dr. Marcel Bruins studied Plant Breeding at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, followed by a PhD award on Fusarium resistance in wheat. He worked for 10 years with a vegetable seed company as Manager Plant Variety Protection. He then served for 7 years as Secretary-General of the International Seed Federation (ISF), lead the Secretariat of the International Grain Trade Coalition (IGTC) through a phase of transition and continued working as their Scientific Advisor. Besides being the Editorial Director of the ‘European Seed’ magazine, he also operates as an independent consultant, helping out companies and non-profit organizations with their questions on seed, grain, trade facilitation, intellectual property and international outreach. I came across his work from a s

Visit our presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com California Ag Solutions: https://www.calagsolutions.com/ Livestock Water Recycling: https://www.livestockwaterrecycling.com/ Joining us on today's episode is Silas Rossow, president of California Ag Solutions, which is a crop consulting company that helps growers leverage technologies and production practices that meet the needs of the crop and the goals of the farmer. Silas says they're known for their in depth understanding of the ecological environments where their growers operate, and their ability to use biomimicry and other nature based approaches that we will talk about.  Silas received his college education at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and grew up around agriculture his whole life. Driving tractors, irrigating fields, and figuring out how crops grow was a valuable education. He started at CA Ag Solutions in 2008 and in 2014, he began managing the day-to-day operations. He says his drive to seek out the very best practices for California fa

Visit our presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com Nitricity: https://www.nitricity.co/ Today’s episode features Nico Pinkowski, co-founder and CEO of Nitricity, which is a company electrifying and distributing the production of fertilizer. As it is done today, fertilizer emits as much as  5-7%/yr of total global GHG emissions. The company can trace its beginnings back to Stanford University where Nico received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Nitricity and Nico have been awarded numerous awards and grants from Stanford, MIT, Caltech, ASU,  Forbes 30 under 30, NSF, USDA, and ARPA-e SBIR, and a recent $20M venture finance round.  We’ll start off with a fascinating history of fertilizer production, then talk more about Nitricity’s solution, how they’ve developed it, and how they’re bringing it to market with farmers and retailers.

Visit our presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com Posterity Ciderworks: https://posterityciderworks.com/ Brendan Barnard Twitter: https://twitter.com/IntractableLion Posterity Ciderworks Twitter: https://twitter.com/posteritycider Kris Barnard Twitter: https://twitter.com/KrisMBarnard FoA 318: The Budding American (Hard) Cider Industry with Greg Peck, Ph.D. https://player.captivate.fm/episode/49237ec9-117d-4d16-9569-0672b5e9aeca Today’s episode features Brendan Barnard of Posterity Ciderworks.  To set some context here, a lot of the episodes on this show are focused on efforts to scale solutions: venture capital, commodity crops, hardware and software. And those are incredibly important to continue to find ways to improve our global food system. But I think too often there’s a tendency in agriculture to think something has to have the potential to reach some sort of global scale and FEED THE WORLD in order to matter. If you’ve listened to many of these episodes, you already know that I believe in

Visit our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.com Builders VC: https://www.builders.vc FoA 169: Investing in Farmland with Carter Malloy of AcreTrader https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2d02dd15-9faa-469b-8b5d-5b99233a3a53 FoA 188: Fintech Meets Agtech to Invest in Farmland https://player.captivate.fm/episode/44a98802-07c3-4295-87c0-e0965881e5b2 Joining us on today’s episode is Mark Blackwell of Builders VC. Mark is actually based in Calgary, but Builders is a Silicon Valley - based venture fund that focuses on modernizing antiquated industries. So they focus in not only agriculture, but also healthcare, industrials, real estate and construction. They have a portfolio of over 60 companies, investing from seed to series a. The team has a long history of investing in agtech before they founded Builders when they invested as part of Kosla Ventures in companies such as Granular and the Climate Corp.  Mark and I talk a lot about the current state of venture capital, and what areas of agtech h

Visit our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.calgaryagbusiness.com Teffola: https://www.eatteffola.com/ The Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/ FoA 221: Bringing Commercial Quinoa Production to Colorado: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/fd94a32f-7554-46b4-9ba5-bfc50a371680 Claire Smith is the founder of the ancient grain granola brand Teffola. She comes from a 7th generation farming family in Michigan where Tenera Farms has been farming wheat, corn, and soy since 1837.  In 2015 Tenera Farms started planting teff, a tiny grain rich in protein and fiber and a key ingredient in the Ethiopian bread injera. Why the farm began growing this obscure grain, how they became processors, and how that lead Claire to start making and marketing granola is the subject of this interview. Today’s episode is all about ancient grains and building a consumer packaged goods or CPG business on top of an established farm. These are two things I know very little about, so lucky for you and for me

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.com AgriPlay: https://www.agriplay.com/ A4 Systems: https://a4.systems/ Joining us for today's episode is Dan Houston, president of AgriPlay. Dan has over 17 years of experience in commercial real estate. He is a partner in a company called A4 Systems, which looks for industry issues that can use their expertise in data and technology. They have started two companies in agriculture: the first being HerdWhistle, a feedlot management system. And the second being AgriPlay which is building vertical farms in commercial real estate space.  AgriPlay’s first big project, after their distressed environment lab where they have been testing all of this, is the Calgary Tower. Phase one is 65,000 square feed of vertical farms starting operations this coming September. But as you’re about to hear, their vision stretches far beyond this starting point. Dan claims they already have agreements with wholesale buyers of the produce and plans to expand p

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.com Root Agricultural Advisory: RootAgAdvisory.com Skye Root on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skye-root-cfa-5064463/ Skye Root is the founder of Root Agricultural Advisory where he manages and grows farmland portfolios throughout the Western USA. Prior to starting his company he worked as a senior vice president for Westchester Group Investment Management, a global farmland asset manager. And before that he was a water rights consultant for WestWater Research, a leading advisory firm in the water rights industry.  In today’s episode we talk farmland and water, and the perception of more outside institutional money being deployed in rural areas. And when we say institutional money, we are talking about large organizations such as banks, pension funds, or insurance companies who are usually investing on behalf of their stakeholders.  Skye is unique in that he grew up in a very rural part of eastern Oregon on a farm and ranc

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.com TurtleTree: https://turtletree.com/ "From Farms to Incubators" https://bookshop.org/books/from-farms-to-incubators-women-innovators-revolutionizing-how-our-food-is-grown/9781610355759 Joining us on today’s episode is Fengru Lin, co-founder of TurtleTree, which is based in both Singapore and California. The company describes itself as “a biotech company dedicated to producing a new generation of nutrition—one that’s better for the planet, better for the animals, and better for people everywhere. Utilizing its proprietary, cell-based technology, the company is creating better-for-you milk ingredients sustainably and affordably, with benefits that extend beyond the dining table and into the heart of humanity.” When I first heard this description I was highly skeptical about their ability to compete with what I know is a very efficient dairy industry. But what I learned from Fengru shed a lot of light on where companies like TurtleTree stil

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: Calgary, Alberta! http://www.calgaryagbusiness.com/ (www.CalgaryAgBusiness.com)  Greg Peck research: https://hardcider.cals.cornell.edu/ (https://hardcider.cals.cornell.edu/) Cider Chat Podcast: https://ciderchat.com/ (https://ciderchat.com/)  Today is an episode I’ve been very excited about for a long time because it combines three of my biggest passions: cider, farming, and this podcast. It’s part history of apples and cider, part analysis of the growing cider industry, and part personal indulgence of asking an expert if I’m crazy to dream of one-day owning an orchard-based cider company.  Dr. Greg Peck is a pomologist, cider expert, and an associate professor in the School of Integrative Plant Sciences at Cornell University. His research addresses the challenges of sustainably and profitably producing tree fruits, and has conducted research in fruit-crop production systems in California, Washington, New York, and Virginia. He really has become a

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Prime Future Weekly Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/  Video of High Plains Ponderosa Dairy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s91pH9wNKOw  Today’s episode covers some really progressive concepts in modern agriculture, and specifically modern dairy. Greg Bethard is the CEO of High Plains Ponderosa Dairy in Kansas. You’re going to hear from the lens of a producer how they are finding ways to lower their carbon footprint, produce both dairy and beef using the same resources, drive costs lower, and partner with companies like Shell to take their operation to the next level. 

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Verntures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Poultry Sense: https://www.poultrysenseltd.com/  Ancera: https://www.ancera.com/  For the first half of today's episode you’ll hear an interview with Alan Beynon, founder of Poultry Sense. Then in the second half you’ll hear from Ancera founder & CEO Arjun Ganesan, who I’ll formally introduce a bit late in the episode.  Alan Beynon is a veterinarian in the UK who started Prognostix, which used to be called Poultry Sense, in 2016. As Alan will describe, he saw a lot of opportunity in the use of sensors and data to improve animal welfare and efficiency. Merck Animal Health Ventures invested in the company in 2019 and then ended up acquiring them in 2021. We talk a little bit about that part of Alan’s story as well. Connecticut-based Ancera is a pioneer in microbial-based risk assessment and monitoring solutions. So what does that mean? They have a proprietary technology

 Philip Giampietro is the CEO and president of Walden Local Meat Company. Founded in 2014, Walden is New England and New York's leading brand of locally raised, sustainable meat. They are part of the first cohort of companies to legally reincorporate as a public benefit corporation or B-Corp. Philip says their purpose is to “make local work," with a more specific mandate to: 1) Connect adjacent rural and urban communities, 2) Produce the healthiest products possible with leading standards of animal welfare and environmental sustainability, and 3) Create incentives for farmers to move to more regenerative practices — those that are not simply "do less harm" but those that provide a net positive benefit to the environment and surrounding communities. Before Walden, Philip was a Director at Bain Capital and held various positions in private equity and consulting.    Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Walden L

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ AGI: https://www.aggrowth.com/ Farmobile: https://www.farmobile.com/  Today’s episode is a fascinating look at the value of farm data. Jason Tatge has been thinking about farm data for decades now, and you’re going to hear about the early days of trading data over the phone, to how that concept is basically what we know today as carbon credits and NFTs. He’ll also talk about how Ag Growth International or AGI is using Farmobile’s platform to connect data from all sorts of equipment including things like grain bins and dryers to reach unprecedented levels of interoperable farm data. Some really interesting topics to cover on today’s show, make sure you stay to the end to hear his vision for where all this stuff is going. Jason is currently serving as a Senior Vice President for AGI Digital.  AGI Digital is the collection of technology assets that have been acquired by AGI