The Modern Acre

Episode 300 is here. Check out the new look website and Co-op. Plus, we talk about why we recently made the decision to quit organic at Nuss Farms. Links: Join the Co-op! Check out the Shop Sponsor: This episode is presented by MyLand. Learn more at MyLand.ag. Check out our interview with Dane.

Tom Ryan is a 23-year veteran of the Land O’Lakes, Inc. federated system. Tom has held multiple leadership roles in sales, agronomy, marketing and operations across Land O’Lakes. Prior to joining Truterra, Tom headed WinField United’s business operations team including customer experience, business analytics and data science. Tom also led WinField United’s Strategic Retail Alliance efforts executing partnerships, alliances and joint ventures across WinField United’s aligned retail network. Tom currently serves as the President of Truterra, Land O’Lakes’ sustainability division focused on creating new value streams by driving farmer adoption of climate-smart practices and forging customer connections between farmers, ag retailers, Food and CPG companies. Tom has a strong track record as an executive with industry-spanning experience in agronomy and ag retailer services. He is also an active partner and multi-generation farmer who practices sustainability and soil health practices on his own farm in southwest Minnesota.  Links: Truterra Website Tom on LinkedIn Rate & Review the NEW Spotify Feed   Sponsor: This episode is presented by MyLand. Learn more at MyLand.ag. Check out our interview with Dane.

Sarah Day Levesque is the Founder and Managing Director of RFSI – Regenerative Food Systems Investment – and has spent more than 15 years working to connect agriculture and food systems stakeholders to the information and networks they need to be successful. For the past six years, Sarah has worked closely with a community of ecological farmers in her role leading the development and execution of educational and event experiences at Acres USA. In late 2018, Sarah started Regenerative Food Systems Investment to address to address a lack of attention, awareness, and capital being given to investment opportunities in regenerative agriculture and food.  Before joining Acres USA in late 2016, Sarah spent a decade in agricultural media, where she played a key role in the development of successful event and media brands, including Women in Agribusiness and Organic & Non-GMO Forum, and also served as Editor-in-Chief of Global AgInvesting Media. Sarah holds an M.S. in Agriculture and Resource Economics and an M.S. in International Agricultural Development from University of California, Davis. When she’s not working, you can find her running, hiking, coaching youth basketball, or playing ball with her family. Links: RFSI Forum 2023 (Use code THEMODERNACRE at checkout for 10% off!) Sarah on LinkedIn Rate & Review the NEW Spotify Feed Join the fitness challenge on Twitter Sponsor: This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com. Check out Mick's e

Dan Schultz is an agribusiness psychotherapist that helps agtech companies design their category and commercialize products differently. Links: Dan on LinkedIn Schultz Collaborative Rate & Review the NEW Spotify Feed Join the fitness challenge on Twitter Sponsor: This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com

Cassidy Johnston grew up in a suburb of Denver but has now been ranching for over a decade. She serves in the gap between the ranch and the table to build relationships and form bold partnerships to answer the question, “Where does my food come from?” Cassidy received her Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder. She was a student researcher at the Leeds School of Business Research Division, graduating early with honors. While there, she completed a thesis titled “Building a Rancher-Environmentalist Alliance to Protect Ranch Land Environments from Development,” and that paper was the proverbial spur in the flank that started her journey in the ranching industry. She and her husband, Robert, have lived and worked on ranches in Montana, Colorado, and New Mexico and have three little boys. Besides being an agriculture consultant and speaker, she is a bull and semen rep, podcaster, book enthusiast, and collector of weird socks. Links: Cassidy on LinkedIn Cassidy on Instagram Cassidy's Website Rate & Review the NEW Spotify Feed Join the fitness challenge on Twitter Sponsor: This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com

Alain Goubau is the CEO of Combyne Ag, which builds farmer-centric grain marketing management software.  Alain grew up on a mixed dairy and grain farm in Ontario, Canada. Prior to Combyne Ag, Alain led operations at 2 agtech and wind energy startups. He has also led various operational and strategy engagements within McKinsey & Company’s agri-business team. Earlier in his career, Alain was a field engineer and project manager with Air Liquide, building chemical plants across the globe.  Leveraging his background in agriculture, technology, engineering, and law, Alain is a passionate builder of teams and innovations at the intersection of agriculture, energy, and tech. Combyne Ag unifies inventory, contract, delivery, and settlement record-keeping to inform pricing and contracting risks, inventory-to-cash conversion cycles, and operational planning. By providing up-to-date crop marketing positions and informing decision making, Combyne helps farmers and their crop marketing advisors optimize the value of every bushel of grain they market. Through its Combyne Connect software integration capabilities, Combyne is designed to neutrally connect into both on-farm apps and grain buyer software systems. Using this same technology stack, Combyne also acts as a digital link between on-farm and off-farm data records, enabling biofuel, animal feed, and food supply chains to track grain quality and sustainability related attributes from farm to processing. Combyne Ag was recently acquired by Bayer Crop Science’s Digital Farming Solutions and continues to operate as an independent business unit. Links: Rate & Review the NEW Spotify Feed Join the fitness challenge on Twitter Sponsor: This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com

This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com This month, Tim and Tyler talk with Ariel about her latest Topsoil edition - "Data: the new oil or a new byproduct? A framework for data from the field." Ariel Patton is the creator of Topsoil, a newsletter bringing you monthly frameworks to help make sense of agriculture, at just the right depth. Ariel has focused her career on driving digital transformation of agriculture to help farmers manage their businesses more profitably and sustainably at Monsanto, Granular, Corteva and currently, Mineral. Connect with Ariel Topsoil Newsletter | LinkedIn

This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com Dane Hague is the CEO and co-founder of MyLand, a soil health company. MyLand’s innovative and patented technology and unique Soil as a Service approach allows farmers to easily and rapidly implement regenerative agriculture practices and improve their soil health by harnessing the land’s own native ecosystem, because No Two Farms are Alike. MyLand uses live, native microalgae to improve soil health more rapidly. Through their technology and service, MyLand helps tackle two of the world’s biggest challenges: food security and climate disruption.  Connect with MyLand Website | LinkedIn Follow our Fitness Challenge on Twitter!

This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com Anthony Howcroft is the CEO of SWARM Engineering. SWARM is a Software-as-a-Service platform that uses next generation cognitive computing to tackle challenges in the agri-food supply chain to save costs, reduce waste, and deliver environmental benefits. The SWARM platform is structured around a multi-agent approach which utilizes a curated market of algorithms to optimize key processes such as load planning, inbound and outbound logistics, demand/supply planning, maximizing yield, and pricing optimization. SWARM provides an easy way for business users to define problems, and rapidly match them to advanced solutions without any software coding, knowledge of advanced AI, or machine learning. Anthony has more than 25 years’ experience in technology, in a mix of corporate and startup roles that cover software engineering, sales and marketing. He was co-founder and VP Sales of DATAllegro, the data warehouse appliance vendor acquired by Microsoft for $260M in 2008. He subsequently ran Microsoft’s Big Data team in EMEA for 5 years, showing triple digit growth each year. After a 3-year stint mentoring CEOs in California, he launched SWARM. He has a Creative Writing Diploma from the University of Oxford and has lectured on the use of narrative in business. His non-fiction book Questions: A User’s Guide was published in October 2020, achieving Amazon bestseller status, and the research behind the book is being used to enhance the approach of the SWARM Challenge Modeler product. Connect with SWARM Website | LinkedIn Giveaway! Rate & Review the podcast and send proof to tyler@themodernacre.co. The first 5 entries will win Anthony's book Questions

This episode is presented by DPH Biologicals. Learn more at DPHBio.com Brenda Tjaden, founder of Prairie Routes, led this Co-op members call talking about how to monetize and model regenerative agriculture. This is jam packed with info and member Q&A. Subscribe to Brenda's Substack