Future of Agriculture

Visit our presenting sponsor: http://www.CalgaryAgbusiness.comHEMPALTA: 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, founder, president and CEO of Phyto Organix Foods, which is an independent Alberta-based innovator, processor, developer and distributor of conventional and organic plant-based protein for the food and beverage industry. Our project will source yellow peas to produce high purity, protein isolate from our wet fractionation facility in Strathmore Alberta.I really enjoyed both of these conversations, and here are the three reasons these stories have my attention: For all of the people talking about regenerative agriculture and sustainable practices, very few are actually creating real markets that can make those changes work for the average farmer. In my humble opinion, it’s more likely to be processors like these that facilitate change than it is the headline-grabbing carbon markets. These companies want to buy directly from growers. They are bringing real opportunities to farmers rather than just the vague promises of future benefits that a lot of new ideas to agriculture seem to have. This is not your typical silicon valley type capital I innovation. These are the real nuts and bolts advancements that I think agriculture needs. What do you think about the future of value added processing? How do you like this narrative format compared to more of an interview format?

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 series of article he recently published in European Seed called “20 Most Famous Plant Breeders”. I really enjoyed that series and we talk a little bit about it towards the end of today’s episode. I’ll of course link to those in the show notes. Beyond that, Marcel and I also talk about what has changed about plant breeders, how they balance grower demands (like pest management) with consumer demands (like flavor and nutrition), how the field of plant breeding will need to adjust to big challenges like climate change, and how new technologies will change the game.

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 farmers comes from his love of agriculture and technology. In today’s episode we discuss regenerative practices in specialty crops, especially tree crops, although Silas works in plenty of other crops as well, we discuss how water becomes a factor in decisions to implement these practices, and the toughest transition of all, which is the mindset shift that this approach requires.Also, stay tuned for a bonus segment at the end of today's episode featuring Livestock Water Recycling CEO Karen Schuett.

Visit our presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.comNitricity: 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.comPosterity Ciderworks: https://posterityciderworks.com/Brendan Barnard Twitter: https://twitter.com/IntractableLionPosterity 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-4d16-9569-0672b5e9aecaToday’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 innovation and progress can many different forms. Some will look like solutions that can improve the way millions or billions of people eat. Others, which I equally enjoy, are stories of craft, of skill, of care, of community. Stories that are delightfully unscalable, but no less important. Many times, these are the stories that can teach us the most about agriculture and the most about ourselves. I think we have a story like that for you today. It also helps that it ties together a few passions of mine: cider, nature, and value-added agriculture. Today’s episode speaks to several of the seven consumer values we talked about in episode 300, especially the need for a connection to an authentic source. Brendan and his wife Kris were living in the bay area working in tech. They had some fruit trees in their backyard and seven years ago Brendan dove headfirst into cider making. Eventually they bought property in Calaveras County, about 140 miles away with a long term plan of eventually starting an orchard-based cidery. Today, that is alive and well as Posterity Ciderworks. Some changes in the timeline led them to start sourcing apples from what he calls feral orchards, which have somehow survived and even thrived for decades with no care. These feral orchards have also spawned wild trees which Brendan and Kris also forage from for their low intervention, fine ciders that really reflect the place they are grown. They make these ciders with no sulfites, no added sugars, no preservatives and no artificial flavorings or colors. All of this while raising a family and starting and expanding their own dry-farmed, non-conventional  silvopastured orchard. We’ll talk all about that, but first just a couple of cider terms to be aware of. We will mention abv, which is alcohol by volume. Yes, this is hard cider, not apple juice. The ABV goes up with higher sugar content which is fermented into alcohol. Those sugars are measured in fruit via a system called brix, which is another term you will hear mentioned. Finally, Brenan will talk about racking, which is just moving the fermenting cider from one container to another, which is usually done to get it off the lees, which is the dead yeast and other particles that settle at the bottom of the container. Or to move it to a barrel, bottle, or other secondary fermentation container. 

Visit our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.comBuilders VC: https://www.builders.vcFoA 169: Investing in Farmland with Carter Malloy of AcreTrader https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2d02dd15-9faa-469b-8b5d-5b99233a3a53FoA 188: Fintech Meets Agtech to Invest in Farmland https://player.captivate.fm/episode/44a98802-07c3-4295-87c0-e0965881e5b2Joining 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 he’s most excited to invest in companies with bold visions and strategic plans. I’ll warn you, this episode gets a little into the weeds of venture capital. I’m by no means any sort of an expert on this, but if you’re unfamiliar, here’s a quick and very basic primer: Venture capitalists start and manage funds to invest in startup companies. They are backed by investors, called limited partners or LPs that give them money to place these bets. When VCs have money from their investors that they have not yet deployed to startups, they call that money dry powder. VCs do take a management fee from those investments, but the real money is made when a company exits. In other words it is sold or goes public. That is why we’ll talk about M&A activity which is mergers and acquisitions. When companies in their portfolio exits, that is when the VC can return the fund, or provide returns to their investors and themselves. We also reference SPACs at one point in this conversation, which could be a whole other podcast, but just know that stands for special purpose acquisition company and it is a vehicle that allows companies to go public that was super popular a year ago, but has fallen out of favor based on a number of factors I won’t get into here. Ok hopefully that provides good context for this insightful conversation with Mark Blackwell. Mark is a general partner and lead of the Canadian Office at Builders. Previously, he was a product manager at SolarWinds which he joined when they acquired GNS3 Technologies where Mark had been the COO. He also had a background in venture capital and investment banking before that.

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-bfc50a371680Claire 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, we have a guest co-host joining us on the show today, Jennifer Barney. Several months ago, someone shared a post on LinkedIn called “Ag Companies Launching Food Brands”. Long time listeners of this show will know that is something I’m really fascinated by, so I immediately subscribed to the newsletter that produced the post. It turns out that newsletter called “The Business of Food” was created by Jennifer Barney. After reading several of her newsletters I reached out about collaborating, and here she is co-hosting her first episode.Jennifer is a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) expert. She 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. Jennifer successfully grew the brand to nationwide retail distribution and then sold the company. After exiting Barney Butter, Jennifer has since become an advisor and consultant to startups and ag leaders who want to get closer to the consumer with their own brands and innovations. She writes an email newsletter called The Business of Food where she shares food industry knowledge including business modeling, growth tips, and what to focus on at the early stages of business.

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.comAgriPlay: 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 production over the next year. Most of you have already heard the case for indoor farming. If not you can check out previous episodes like 71, 146, 185, 193, and 307.

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.comRoot 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 ranch so he really understands the perspectives of both the producers and the investors looking to get into this industry.

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: www.CalgaryAgBusiness.comTurtleTree: 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 still have a place in the future of agriculture. In my opinion, that includes cultivating high value proteins for things like ingredients and supplements and pharmaceuticals. Another aspect I find very valuable about what TurtleTree is doing is trying to close the gap between infant formula and real human breast milk. We’ve seen issues with formula supply chains recently, and TurtleTree’s approach can apply to all forms of milk, including human milk. This is the fifth and final episode in the series I’ve been doing over the past year with Amy Wu who is the author of the book “From Farms to Incubators: Women Innovators Revolutionizing How Our Food is Grown”. Amy is passionate about featuring women leaders in agtech and I have been glad to share that passion with her and all of you by featuring Joanne Zhang in episode 263, Ponsi Trivisvavet in episode 273, Shely Aronov in episode 290, Ros Harvey in episode 304, and of course Fengru today. I highly encourage you to purchase a copy of Amy’s book, as it not only includes these guests but also several other former guests of this podcast: like Pam Marrone, Fatma Kaplan, Sarah Nolet, Mariana Vasconcelos, Christine Su, and others. Alright, let’s get to our featured conversation with Fengru Lin, co-founder and CEO of TurtleTree - and yes, we are going to ask her where the company name came from. Since founding the company in 2019, TurtleTree has become a top player in the alternative protein industry with $40 million in startup funding. Fengru is an alumna of Singapore Management University where she studied Information Systems Management and Marketing. Before starting TurtleTree, she held positions with Google and Salesforce.