Future of Agriculture

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/More About Jim Rogers: https://www.jimrogers.com/Today’s episode features Jim Rogers. I will first admit that this episode is pretty selfish. I found Jim’s books, particularly “Investment Biker” “Adventure Capitalist” and “Hot Commodities” in college when I was trying to figure out where my interests were and where I might like to start my career. I already had an interest in agriculture, international travel, and investing, so they had a huge impact on me. In fact, I decided to start my career in commodities in no small part because of his writing. So, when I had the chance to interview him on his thoughts about the world generally, I jumped at it. This one might be a bit different from our normal content because Jim is looking at broader economic and geopolitical drivers from an investor perspective and not so much as a “ag person” but I think his perspective is extremely valuable. The other reason this one might be a little bit different is I couldn’t help but become starstruck by him. He really had that big of an impact on me at a formative age. If you weren’t a wannabe investment geek in college like I was, let me give you some biographical background. Jim Rogers, a native of Demopolis, Alabama, is an author, financial commentator and successful international investor. After attending Yale and Oxford University, Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund, a global-investment partnership. During the next 10 years, the portfolio gained 4200%, while the S&P rose less than 50%. Rogers then decided to retire – at age 37. Continuing to manage his own portfolio, Rogers kept busy serving as a full professor of finance at Columbia University Graduate School of Business, and, in 1989 and 1990, as the moderator of WCBS’s ‘The Dreyfus Roundtable’ and FNN’s ‘The Profit Motive with Jim Rogers’.From 1990-92, Jim Rogers fulfilled his lifelong dream: motorcycling 100,000 miles across six continents, a feat that landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records. As a private investor, he constantly analysed the countries through which he travelled for investment ideas. He chronicled his one-of-a-kind journey in “Investment Biker: On the Road with Jim Rogers”. Rogers also embarked on a Millennium Adventure in 1999. He travelled for 3 years on his round-the-world, Guinness World Record journey. It was his 3rd Guinness Record. Passing through 116 countries, he covered more than 245,000 kilometres, which he recounted in his book “Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip”. His book, “Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably In The World’s Best Market”, was published in 2004. Another of his books “A Bull in China” describes his experiences in China as well as the changes and opportunities there.

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/Prime Future Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/Leachman Cattle of Colorado: https://leachman.com/URUS: https://www.urus.org/In agriculture, we have exponentially more examples of people collecting data than we do of people using data to unlock real value supported by real dollars. Cattle genetics company Leachman Cattle is one of those few who demonstrated the ability to do just that. "You know, we kinda had set our own course to analyze our own data, to gather our own data to store it. And that's just been part of our model. It certainly wouldn't have been the cheapest route to go. But if you go the cheapest route, which is you put your data in a breed association, then we wouldn't have had any proprietary data or indexes. And I think it is that information and the way we use that information that. That led to the opportunity that we had to do business with URUS."That’s Lee Leachman, and Uris, who he mentioned there at the end, just agreed to acquire a majority stake in Leachman Cattle to take these proven proprietary genetics and build programs around them that optimize the entire value chain. "We want to build systems that capture value for dairy farmers and beef cattle ranchers that bring more money back to the farm. And to do that, we've gotta optimize these animals from conception to consumption, and we've gotta have enough structure to pass the value back."Lee Leachman chats with Janette Barnard on today’s Future of Agriculture podcast. Lee’s going to share more about his background and his company during the conversation, but I actually wasn’t a part of this one. This interview was conducted by my good friend and occasional co-host on this show, Janette Barnard. Long time listeners know Janette from previous episodes that she has co-hosted with me, and I hope you all are subscribers to her email newsletter, which is called Prime Future, which you can signup for at primefuture.substack.com.

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/Canopy Farm Management: https://canopyfm.com/Savanna Institute: https://www.savannainstitute.org/Kevin Wolz and I talk about the fundamentals of agroforestry, their potential in the midwest, what these systems look like, and the barriers and opportunities to agroforestry becoming a bigger part of the future of agriculture, especially in the midwest where Kevin is focused. In 2013, Kevin co-founded the Savanna Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and promoting perennial and tree-based regenerative agriculture systems. Under Kevin’s leadership, the Institute quickly gained recognition for its transformative research, education, outreach, and breeding efforts.Kevin is also the CEO of Canopy Farm Management. He is leading that company to drive innovation in tree establishment and management via a mobile fleet of state-of-the-art farm equipment, appropriate automation, and holistic strategies for tree-crop integration. Make sure you stay tuned to the end of today’s episode for a spotlight segment featuring Michigan farmer Laurie Isley. She shares some of the cool conservation practices they are adopting and some of the initiatives she’s a part of as a director for the United Soybean Board. Thanks so much to the soy checkoff for supporting the Future of Agriculture podcast.

Dr. Paige Stanley, an interdisciplinary scientist, discusses the potential of regenerative grazing for increasing soil carbon sequestration. Topics include challenges in measuring soil organic carbon, carbon fractions and soil microbes, the role of culture and motivations in ranching, and a research project on soil carbon sequestration and grazing management.

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/Sustain-A-Grain: https://www.sustainagrain.com/The Land Institute: https://landinstitute.org/Today’s episode features Peter Miller and Brandon Schlautman, Ph.D. of Sustain-A-Grain. Sustain-A-Grain has a two-part mission: to introduce consumers to Kernza® perennial grain and to support family farms in growing Kernza®. The team has been growing Kernza® themselves for nearly 5 years in close collaboration with The Land Institute—where Kernza® was first developed. They are certified seed dealers, handlers, and growers, and they work with dozens of farmers across the Great Plains to grow and market their grain. They also work with food companies, restaurants, breweries, and distilleries to source high-quality Kernza®. This is an interesting episode about the potential for perennial grains, and what it takes to commercialize a brand new crop. The problems are different that what you would expect. For example, Kernza® has received a ton of press and excitement from some pretty big end users, which sounds like a great thing, and ultimately it is. But Peter and Brandon have to find ways to build the supply chain in a way that buyers remain happy, farmers remain profitable, and supply and demand can grow together at a sustainable pace. No easy task. We’ll talk about the research and breeding efforts that continue to go into the crop and what this means for farmers, food companies, and the future of agriculture. Peter Miller, CEO & Co-founder, has global agribusiness experience and previously worked in three early-stage startups, including helping to launch FarmLead’s online grain marketplace. Peter has over 10 years of operations and private equity experience in the ag industry. He holds an MBA from University of Illinois.Dr. Brandon Schlautman, Chief Science Officer & Co-founder, is a crop scientist who previously led cranberry breeding and domestication efforts at University of Wisconsin and perennialization of edible legumes at The Land Institute. Brandon serves as the Research Director for a $10M National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant for perennial cover crops and holds a Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin.We begin the conversation with Brandon talking about where this all started, the place where Kernza® has been developed over the past 20 years: at The Land Institute. 

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/Perry Agricultural Laboratory: http://www.perryaglab.com/FoA 370: [History of Agriculture] William J Morse, the Father of the US Soybean IndustryJoining me today is the Chair of the United Soybean Board, Meagan Kaiser. Meagan has an impressive background growing up in agriculture and pursuing a degree in Soil Science from the University of Missouri. This set her up to join her family’s soil laboratory business, Perry Agricultural Laboratory which has been around for forty years based in Northeast Missouri. She is now a soil scientist and the chief operating officer for that business, and at the same time she farms with her husband, Mark, on the other side of the state in northwest Missouri. We will certainly talk about soil and about farming in today’s episode, but she’s here in another capacity, as the chair of the United Soybean Board, where she leads a group of 77 farmers who share one goal: to increase return on investment for US soybean farmers. It was a treat to talk to Meagan about the role of the soy checkoff and some of their many approaches to creating value for farmers: from infrastructure to biofuels to health and nutrition to innovation and technology. 

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/FieldClock: https://www.fieldclock.com/Sometimes in agtech we get a little too focused on solutions that are still years away from reaching widespread adoption, and overlook providing practical solutions for today’s problems on the farm. Joshua Farray is the CEO of FieldClock which helps track and manage farm labor. They’re a great example that ag technology doesn’t have to mean big venture capital bets on a world that’s drastically different than it is today. Through their customer-focused approach, FieldClock has remained laser-focused on helping farmers and farmworkers with very practical tasks like clocking in and out, getting paid properly for piecework, and keeping compliant with labor regulations. Joshua has a family history in the produce trade, and that’s also where he started his career. But int 2011 he decided to get into tech, and helped a lot of people in his network modernize their business through technology. His network was mostly made up of farmers and people in agriculture, and he eventually started building the product that would become FieldClock along with his co-founders which included farmers in Washington State. Joshua started off as CTO of the company and took over as CEO about a year ago. I appreciate FieldClock’s customer-centric approach and relentless focus on challenges related to managing labor. I hope you’ll find the product and the conversation as interesting as I did.

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/Alexandre Family Farm: https://alexandrefamilyfarm.com/The Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/Today's episode features Blake Alexandre of Alexandre Family Farm. Blake is based in Crescent City, California on the far north coast of California. He and his wife Stephanie have been dairying there for over 31 years, and has raised five children who have started coming back to the family operation full time. They have been an organic dairy for about 25 of those 31 years, and in 2017 they started selling dairy products under their own brand, which is Alexandre Family Farm. There’s a whole lot more to the story, but he tells it much better than I do. This story was put together by my guest co-host for today’s episode, Jennifer Barney. As you might recall from previous episodes, Jennifer is a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) expert who lives in the Central Valley of California and got her start in the food industry 16 years ago when she founded the almond butter brand Barney Butter. She also writes a great weekly newsletter called The Business of Food that you should subscribe to. I’ll leave a link for that in the show notes. We covered so much in our conversation, that I thought the best way to share it with you and still come somewhat close to our normal format was to share highlights, so I’ll be popping in throughout today’s episode to narrate around some of the thought-provoking points Blake made about what they’re doing and his views on the future of agriculture. Starting with some backstory on the farm and the business.

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/Soy Info Center: https://www.soyinfocenter.com/Studying the past is one of the most important activities for not only gaining perspective on the current state of the industry, but also to zoom out and get a better vantage point on where things may go from here, and what factors may drive it in that direction. That’s why, perhaps ironically, studying the history of agriculture is essential for a podcast that claims to be about the future of agriculture. Plus, I think most of you are just a little bit nerdy about agriculture like I am and enjoy knowing more about its history.One of the things that has held me back from ever trying one of these episodes is that I worried it could very easily become a boring lecture of random facts and names and dates that didn’t really provide the real context I was hoping to provide. So I wondered, “what is the FoA approach to learning more about the history of agriculture?” And I came up with this: I’ll focus on a specific person who I wish I could go back to that time and interview. Then hopefully that individual’s story can provide insights and context into the time in a relatable way, and allow us to connect those experiences to our current situations. Keep in mind that this is an experiment, so if you like it or if you don’t like it, I’d sure like to know either way. I think you know where to find me by now, but tim@aggrad.com is probably the easiest to remember. All right, let’s get into it. Today’s guest that I wish I could interview if he were still alive today is William J Morse, considered by many to be the father of the U.S. soybean industry. When William graduated from Cornell with a bachelor’s of science in agriculture in 1907 he started his job two days later at the age of 24 with the US Department of Agriculture He was hired as an Agrostologist. That’s a term I don’t think is used too much any more, but agrostology is the study of grasses. Which is a little odd because he would end up studying soybeans, not a grass at all. Whether he knew it or not, but soybeans would be his focus for his entire 42 year career, all at USDA. What’s incredible is during that time, the U.S. soybean industry would grow from an obscure forage crop sparsely grown in parts of the southeast to one of the top three most important cash crops in the country, grown on over 11M acres. Now today that number is over 80 million acres, but the meteoric rise of the soybean during William Morse’s life was just incredible. I try to think of something like that happening today. Think about hemp that had all of that hype, and I think it’s grow today on something like 7k acres in the US, I mean almost nothing. But in one man’s career he saw the birth and growth of a major industry that is one of the most important crops in American agriculture today. How did this happen? What were the catalysts for this growth? What lessons can we pull from this for today’s agriculture and the agriculture we want to see in the future? 

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.comINTENT: https://intent.ag/Randy Barker is the CEO of INTENT, an Agricultural Company focused on the use of technology to accelerate new innovations in agriculture. Randy is the co-founder of the business which draws on his vast global experience in launching agricultural technologies in over 30 countries over the past 25 years. INTENT serves a wide range of customers from startups to multinationals in their quest to improve adoption using data science & digital technologies.Long time listeners might recall hearing previous episodes with Randy and others from INTENT here on this show. They started the company around the same time this podcast started I believe, and we’ve always been really aligned in the mission to try to accelerate innovation, so it has been really cool to watch their development. Today, Randy gives an update on the company as they’ve evolved from managing farmer trials to offering a suite of digital solutions to customers and adding sustainability measurement and monitoring to their list of services. We also get a little bit into their approach to artificial intelligence, some of the continued challenges with on-farm data collection, and the importance of providing not only accurate data, but relevant context. Randy began his career in Canada for the largest network of ag input retailers in progressively senior roles, ultimately as Director of Crop Protection. He then joined Monsanto Canada as Vice President of Crop Protection serving agriculture, forestry and industrial businesses. Randy relocated to Monsanto’s global headquarters in St. Louis taking on various senior leadership roles with global responsibility.