Future Of Agriculture

Farmland LP: https://www.farmlandlp.com/ Join the FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture  Today’s episode is a unique approach to farmland investing. Farmland LP buys farmland and adds value by doing things like planting higher value crops, converting to certified organic, and implementing regenerative farming practices. The company then leases the land back out to farmers who agree to maintain these practices. Joining us on the show today is Farmland LP founder and managing partner Craig Wichner. Craig founded Farmland LP in 2009 and is responsible for day-to-day management, business strategy and all investment activity. He is a seasoned executive with nearly 30 years of experience building companies and investing.  Craig has also helped to manage his family’s real estate portfolio of apartment buildings for over 25 years. He also serves on the board of BN Ranch, Bill Niman’s successor company to Niman Ranch.  Craig and I have a fascinating and wide ranging conversation about investing in farmland, thei

Leaf Agriculture: https://withleaf.io/ GROWMARK: https://www.growmark.com/ FoA 238: 5 Barriers Limiting Agtech: https://aggrad.libsyn.com/foa-238-5-barriers-limiting-agtech-and-the-companies-breaking-through-them FoA 275: Digital Infrastructure for Ag Supply Chains: https://aggrad.libsyn.com/foa-275-digital-infrastructure-for-ag-supply-chains-with-jake-joraanstad-and-jesse-vollmar-of-bushel  Bailey Stockdale is the CEO of Leaf Agriculture which builds developer tools for agriculture. What that means exactly is what we’re going to spend most of today’s episode talking about, but in the meantime, you can think of them as the company that enables integrations between technology providers so that the user experience is seamless. In other words, technology users will never know they exist. Their customers are technology providers in the industry.  People like Brendan Bachman, who joins Bailey and I on today’s show. Brendan is the Senior Agronomy Technology Manager at GROWMARK/FS, which is one of the largest

FarmRaise: www.FarmRaise.com  Building a startup in ag? Email me: tim@aggrad.com  Support this show and join the FoA community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture    A point we try to drive home as often as possible here is that innovation on its own doesn’t really get anywhere until it can be implemented. For agriculture, that often means that the ideas we talk about here on this show need to actually work for farmers. So for the future of agriculture to be more data-driven or more technological or more regenerative, the tools and practices will have to be executable. And for farmers to find this out, they will need to experiment with them. Which is very risky. Luckily there are programs to help absorb some of that risk. A lot of them involve free money in the way of grants, or very cheap loans. But to access these programs requires an often tedious process of seeing if you are eligible then applying then waiting to hear back then keeping up with the ongoing reporting.  Lowering these barriers is exactly where

Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/ Support this show: www.Patreon.com/agriculture  Today, I’m excited to bring you an interview with a very interesting company in agtech, and a unique one in many ways. Adam Litle is the CEO of Sound Agriculture. Which is in the “sound science” sense of the word not the audio sense of the word. They have some really interesting scientific approaches to, on one hand, activating beneficial microbes to provide more nutrition to crops. And on the other hand to perform what they call on-demand breeding, which doesn’t actually change the genetics of the crop but blocks expression of certain genes by soaking the seed in a specific protein. Each of these individually is a pretty exciting innovation in agriculture, but I wanted to know where do they intersect? In other words, why is this one business instead of two? We get into that as well as some of the challenges of bringing innovations like this to the market, and much more on today’s episode.  As CEO, Adam leads the compa

Grounded Capital Partners: https://www.groundedcapitalpartners.com/ How would you rate the Future of Agriculture podcast using a scale of conventional (1) to aspirational (10)? Where along that spectrum do you think it should be? Email me at tim@aggrad.com to let me know or send me a DM on Twitter or LinkedIn.  Our guest today, Stephen Hohenrieder was first on the show back in episode 216 to talk about building a more distributed system. It remains one of my most popular episodes, and I still highly recommend it even after you listen to this one. In that interview in 2020, Stephen mentions that he is working on developing a more permanent investment vehicle to carry out some of his investment theses about the future of food. What he was describing is now Grounded Capital Partners, and I wanted to invite him back to talk about his work.  Stephen has over a decade of focus on regenerative food systems, having invested, studied and collaborated across diverse categories of food and agriculture — proteins, fru

Granular: www.granular.ag Platinum Ag Services: https://platinum.ag/  We have on the show Cassie Misch who is an independent crop consultant and the owner of Platinum Ag Services located in Northwest Indiana. As part of her offerings to farmer customers, Cassie is a Certified Services Agent for the Granular Agronomy suite of services. One of those farmer customers is Jake Smoker, who also joins us on today’s show. Jake farms with his father, Greg, in LaPorte County, Indiana where they grow corn, beans, wheat, non-GMO corn, non-GMO beans, cattle, and seed corn for Corteva/Pioneer. Jake and his wife Jill were also just recognized this week with the American Farm Bureau Achievement Award, so congratulations to them. Cassie and Jake will talk about how they have worked together to leverage technology to improve yield and efficiency on the Smoker Farm. There’s some real insights here on what’s possible when the right ag technology is fully supported by the right people. As you may recall with this tech-enabled

Dawn Equipment: http://www.dawnequipment.com/ Underground Agriculture: https://www.undergroundagriculture.com/ (https://www.undergroundagriculture.com/)  Joe Bassett on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoeatDawn Soil Sense Podcast: www.NDSoilSense.com  Joe Bassett is the president and CEO of Dawn Equipment Company. Dawn makes smart soil-engaging products enabling farmers to plant seeds more precisely and prepare the soil with greater efficiency while using less fertilizer. They specifically focus on row crops like corn and soybeans. You’ll also hear us mention their sub-brand Underground Agriculture which focuses on cost effective products for Regenerative Agriculture, making several novel mechanical devices that empower farmers to maximize profit through healthy soil and cover crops. Joe strikes a balance between the hope and optimism of regenerative agriculture and the realities that adoption of these practices are slow and not a fit for many farm businesses in their current form. We touch on how well-inte

Semios (108): https://aggrad.libsyn.com/future-of-agriculture-108-data-driven-sustainable-agriculture-through-iot-and-machine-learning-with-michael-gilbert-of-semios Manolin (120): https://aggrad.libsyn.com/future-of-agriculture-121-electricides-with-andrew-diprose-of-rootwave  Harvest Returns (093): https://aggrad.libsyn.com/future-of-agriculture-093-crowdfarming-with-chris-rawley-of-harvest-returns  We are revisiting three different former guests from 2018 to ask the question “Where are they now?”. This is something you all have requested over the years, but I’ve never done until now. It was a lot of fun and really insightful to catch up with the three former podcast guests that you’re about to hear from. They are: Michael Gilbert of Semios, Tony Chen from Manolin, and Chris Rawley of Harvest Returns.  So you’re getting sort of three episodes in one today. I think there are a ton of great nuggets in each of these segments, so I highly encourage you to stick around to listen to each of them.   

InnerPlant: https://innerplant.com/ "From Farms to Incubators" https://www.farmstoincubators.com/  This week we are exploring the concept of engineering a plant to provide signals of stress like pest pressure or disease pressure or nutrient deficiency. InnerPlant is developing traits that serve as biosensors for when each of these unique types of stressors occur. This can be monitored via satellite for early detection and hopefully swift and precise action by the farmer. InnerPlant founder and CEO Shely Aronov is joining us on today’s show.  And when I say us, I not only mean you I, dear listener, but also my co-host for today’s episode Amy Wu. Amy is the author of the book “From Farms to Incubators: Women Innovators Revolutionizing How Our Food is Grown”. Amy and I teamed up earlier this year to produce some episodes together featuring women in agtech. This is the third of those episodes following Joanne Zhang in episode 263, and Ponsi Trivisvavet in episode 273. I highly encourage you to purchase a copy

Omnivore: https://www.omnivore.vc/  Tenacious Ventures: https://tenacious.ventures/ SP Ventures: https://www.spventures.com.br/  Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/  Last month I gathered four agtech venture capitalists who all happen to be very popular previous guests of this show to talk about what they’re seeing in agtech investment, and to speculate about where things might go from here. What resulted was a great conversation talking about how areas of technology are making their way into agriculture, and how that’s made them feel suddenly like part of the “popular kids” of the venture community.  The four voices you’re going to hear from today are Mark Kahn from Omnivore in India, Sarah Nolet from Tenacious Ventures in Australia, Janette Barnard with Merck Animal Health Ventures here in the U.S., and Francisco Jardim of SP Ventures in Brazil. I’ll link to each of their websites and the previous episodes where you can hear them in the show notes.

Hello Tractor: https://hellotractor.com/ Jehiel Oliver on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jehiel/ Software is Feeding the World Email Newsletter: https://rpethe.substack.com/  Today’s episode is about how Hello Tractor is bringing tractors to farmers in developing countries. This is a tremendous story of figuring out the logistics of how to maximize the use of farm machinery where it’s needed most, and deploying the technology and processes to make this happen at scale. At a real basic level, Hello Tractor is an agricultural technology company that connects smallholder farmers across the emerging markets with farm equipment owners that have excess capacity through technology.  Jehiel started the company six years ago in Nigeria, and has since moved to Kenya. Hello Tractor is now operating in 13 countries in Africa as well as a few countries in Asia as well as Guatemala and Jamaica.  Today’s episode is worth listening to all the way through, whether or not you think the problems of the developing wo

The Nature Conservancy: https://www.nature.org/en-us/  "Building Soil Health Through Innovation" https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provide-food-and-water-sustainably/food-and-water-stories/building-soil-health-innovation/  Renée Vassilos LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rvassilos/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rvassilos/)  Today’s guest is Renée Vassilos. Renée manages The Nature Conservancy’s investments in innovative companies that will help scale regenerative agriculture production practices. Prior to joining TNC, she spent nearly a decade at John Deere, followed by leading her consulting firm, Banyan Innovation Group, advising growth-stage agriculture technology startups and investors. That’s where she was when we heard from her in episode 157 in 2019.  If you’ve never heard of The Nature Conservancy before, they are a global environmental nonprofit working to create a world where people and nature can thrive. They have a strong reputation for working with private and public

Bionutrient Food Association: https://bionutrient.org/ Bionutrient Institute: https://www.bionutrientinstitute.org/  Bionutrient meter: https://bionutrient.org/bionutrientmeter  Over the past few years, the term “nutrient density” has been popping up more and more. There are a lot of claims being made about farming practices like regenerative agriculture producing more nutritious food or more nutrient dense food. But is this true? I mean, if you increase the amount of one nutrient are you really making it more nutrient dense or are you maybe just doing so at the expense of other nutrients? And if there are more of any given nutrient in a product, does that make it necessarily healthier?  The truth is we don’t really know. There is no agreed upon standard for nutrient density. And many people and companies are not letting that stop them latching onto the term and running with it for their own marketing purposes. You’ve heard evidence of that right here on previous episodes of this show. Also, without colle

AgWorld: www.AgWorld.com  John Silvera on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-silvera-02b838175/  Today’s episode is another installment in that series, and it’s a really cool story of how John Silvera, an Independent Crop Consultant in the central valley of California, is using one tool in particular, AgWorld, to offer much more to growers than just agronomic recommendations.  In this episode we’ll talk about the return on investment of farmers hiring independent crop consultants, why John decided to start using AgWorld, and how he estimates he can save an average sized grower around $100,000 per year through his integrated budgeting, agronomic advising, and input purchasing service. We’ll also get into how he’s thinking about the future of agriculture and his crop consulting business.  Today’s show was produced in partnership with AgWorld.    Founded in 2009 with an Australian headquarters in Perth, AgWorld is a global leader in collaborative farm management, enabling farmers, advisors and thir

See GUSS in action: https://gussag.com/ Almond Journey Podcast: https://www.almonds.com/almond-industry/industry-news  We have on the show today another great example of this in GUSS Automation. GUSS stands for Global Unmanned Spray System, and joining me for today’s episode is COO Gary Thompson. As the name implies, GUSS sells a fully autonomous sprayer for use in orchards and vineyards. Which is really interesting, because there is no piece of equipment that goes through these operations more than a sprayer does, so the savings and efficiencies here are compelling.  Gary is going to share their interesting story of how this technology was developed out of their traditional custom spraying business, how they’ve grown without outside capital to start selling these machines, the value and benefits of these machines for farmers and other custom sprayers, and what these capabilities means for the future of agriculture.  GUSS came up on another podcast that I host called the Almond Journey podcast. For any o

Calgren Renewable Fuels https://www.calgren.com/  Maas Energy Works: https://www.maasenergy.com/ California Milk Advisory Board: https://www.realcaliforniamilk.com/  Dairy Sustainability Award: https://www.usdairy.com/media/press-releases/2021-dairy-sustainability-awards-winners-10-year-anniversary  Today’s episode is a great story of collaboration, public-private partnership, innovation, and sustainability. Before I introduce the guests on today’s show, let me set the scene for you a little bit: a group of 15 dairies in the central valley of California are getting paid to turn their cow manure into renewable fuel. Twelve of these dairies are connected via underground pipeline that transports biogas from on-farm digesters to a centralized conditioning facility which processes and markets the fuel. So the dairies not only receive a milk check, they also receive a manure check. All the while they are drastically reducing their own emissions and replacing 3 million gallons of fossil-fuel diesel with near-ze

OWL GitHub https://github.com/geezacoleman/OpenWeedLocator Weed AI https://weed-ai.sydney.edu.au/about  Guy Coleman Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeezaColeman William Salter Twitter: https://twitter.com/williamtsalter  Video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/guy-coleman_the-openweedlocator-owl-is-now-live-its-ugcPost-6835703385925283840-LdvF  On the show today we have Guy Coleman, and William Salter. Guy is PhD Student at the University of Sydney and Fulbright Future Scholar currently based at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on the interaction between artificial intelligence for weed recognition and plant morphology in large-scale production systems. Guy also has experience in alternative weed control technologies like lasers and targeted tillage. Willam Salter, who you will also hear called by his nickname in this episode, Tam, is a postdoctoral agricultural scientist at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on several important aspects of plant and weed science, ranging from improvin

AgOpenGPS: https://github.com/farmerbriantee/AgOpenGPS Autonomous Tractor Skiing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-T-rrny1Vk Brian's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efarmerdot  Brian Tischler is a farmer in Alberta, Canada. He farms with his neighbor who he shares equipment with to cover a combined 2,500 acres of wheat, barley, oats, canola, flax, and peas. He started his career in the medical technology industry, which you’re about to hear more about, but then he bought his family’s farm when his dad was ready to retire in the mid 90s.  Brian is going to share how he started learning how to build software to solve a basic problem, and how that lead to a community of thousands of people around the world who are a part of what is now an open source project called AgOpenGPS. We’ve done a few episodes on open source before, and its really inspiring to see farmers, who have always found ways to hack together solutions to their own problems, do the same with digital technologies as well. Today’s episode will fo

OGRAIN: https://ograin.cals.wisc.edu/ (https://ograin.cals.wisc.edu/) YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/uwipm/search?query=erin%20silva Today’s episode is all about organic farming. Now, organic may be a concept that you have strong opinions about one way or another, but no matter what your perspective, I really encourage you to listen to what our guest has to say.  I originally invited today’s guest, Dr. Erin Silva onto the show to clear up one specific question I had: are organic standards so restrictive that it makes it difficult to grow organically and build soil health through practices like no-till. But once we started the interview I started thinking of all sorts of perceptions of organic that Erin was able to clear up for me. If you’re open to really examining the myths and realities of organic agriculture, we’ve got a great show for you.  Dr. Erin Silva is an associate professor and state extension specialist in organic and sustainable cropping systems at University of Wisconsin - Madi

Precision AI: https://www.precision.ai/ Fulcrum Global Capital: https://www.fgcvc.com/ Protein Industries Canada: https://www.proteinindustriescanada.ca/  Today’s episode is another great example of how artificial intelligence and computer vision are impacting the ag industry. Today’s episode will focus on a row crop application. Specifically, we’re talking about new drone spraying technology from Canadian startup Precision AI.  Long time listeners will recall that we’ve talked about drone spraying on the show before, but today’s episode goes even deeper into both the technology and the opportunities that can come from the per plant precision that it offers. Also cool about this episode is our guest, Precision AI founder and CEO Daniel McCann. A three-time startup founder with over 25 years in technology in diverse industries such as artificial intelligence, fintech, security, fast food, and agriculture, Daniel provides a unique perspective on how technology impacts our world.  Daniel was a finalist in th