Future Of Agriculture

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

SomaDetect: https://somadetect.com/ Prime Future Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/ Our guest on today’s show Jordan Lambert actually mentioned back on episode 261. She has a technology that is easily installed in a milking parlor that collects milk data at the individual cow level. Not just on milk quality - which is one big factor, but also on cow health. It turns out, the milk can tell us a lot about how that cow is doing. This way, a dairy producer can see trends in not just their herd as a whole, but also in individual cows.  Bethany Deshpande is on the show. She is the CEO of SomaDetect, which is the company doing all that stuff I just mentioned. Bethany completed her PhD in Biology, and isn’t from a dairy background originally, but started SomaDetect when she saw an opportunity in the industry to apply some technology originally developed by her father. We’ll get more into that background later in the episode.  But she’s certainly dove headfirst into the dairy industry these past five ye

Benson Hill: https://bensonhill.com/  Today’s episode features Matt Crisp, CEO and co-founder of Benson Hill. Benson Hill describes themselves as a food tech company unlocking the natural genetic diversity of plants with its cutting-edge food innovation engine. Basically, they are trying to improve plant-based ingredients by attacking every aspect of the value chain from seed to processing to sales.  The “plant-based” movement so far, has been trying to mimic the flavors and nutrition of the products they are trying to replace. Matt Crisp’s vision at Benson Hill that you’ll hear today on this show, is that they have the chance to surpass those products, but they will have to do so with better ingredients - which can only come as a result of better genetics and processing.  Matt’s road into health, nutrition, and agriculture actually came from his early career in venture capital. Hearing about how those things tie together is how we’ll start today’s episode with Benson Hill CEO and co-founder, Matt Crisp. 

AGCO Corp: https://www.agcocorp.com/  Louisa Parker-Smith: https://news.agcocorp.com/news/agco-names-louisa-parker-smith-director-of-global-sustainability Email Newsletters: Upstream Ag Insights: https://upstreamaginsights.substack.com/ Software is Feeding the World: https://rpethe.substack.com/    Today’s guest is Louisa Parker-Smith, who is the Global Head of Sustainability for AGCO Corporation. Most of you listening know all about AGCO - they are a major farm machinery designer, manufacturer, and distributor, including tractors, combine harvesters, hay & forage machinery. This includes brands like Fendt, Massey Furgeson, Challenger, Valtra, Gleaner, and many others. They also have a growing grain and protein division which offers grain storage, seed processing, and protein production equipment. In Louisa’s role as head of sustainability, she sets strategy for AGCO’s sustainability programs and ESG which stands for environmental, social, and governance. It’s a very hot topic especially among publicl

Visit Bushel online: https://bushelpowered.com/ Today’s episode takes a peak inside one of the hottest agtech companies to come along in recent years: Bushel. I’ve known about Bushel for a couple of years now, and originally just understood them to be a company that was digitizing scale tickets, which is actually how they started. Scale tickets, for those of you who don’t know, are the paper receipt that accompanies a load of an agricultural commodity that usually includes how much was delivered to where, what the grade factors were, etc. It’s really important because historically this is what is used to get paid properly, to keep effective records, and to have a paper trail for bankers, etc. Then this year they raised a $47M series B round and acquired long time farm management software company FarmLogs, and it became clear that I needed to get them on the show to explain all of these pieces and how they fit together.  Joining me is Bushel co-founder and CEO Jake Joraanstad as well as Jesse Vollmar, who w

Learn more about SWAT Maps: https://www.swatmaps.com/ Fieldwalker Agronomy: https://fieldwalker.ca/  Jonathan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZRAgri  Today’s episode is all about precision agriculture, so if you’re into agronomy and variable rate technology, or what our guest would prefer to call optimal rate technology, you’re in for a real treat. If these terms are new to you, at a basic level we are talking about technology that is being used to understand the variability of a field so that the precise (hence the name precision) amounts of a given seed, fertilizer, or other input can be applied in a way that maximizes the crop response, and of course, overall profitability. Plants don’t grow by the acre, they grow on an individual basis and may respond differently based on site-specific factors. For more on precision ag, find these previous FoA episodes: 256, 244, 243, 218, 211, 200, 196, 179, 175, 108, 25.  Today’s episode is part of a series I’m doing called the Tech-Enabled Advisor. These are episod