Future of Agriculture

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. 

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor: Calgary, Alberta! www.CalgaryAgBusiness.com Greg Peck research: https://hardcider.cals.cornell.edu/Cider Chat Podcast: https://ciderchat.com/ Today is an episode I’ve been very excited about for a long time because it combines three of my biggest passions: cider, farming, and this podcast. It’s part history of apples and cider, part analysis of the growing cider industry, and part personal indulgence of asking an expert if I’m crazy to dream of one-day owning an orchard-based cider company. Dr. Greg Peck is a pomologist, cider expert, and an associate professor in the School of Integrative Plant Sciences at Cornell University. His research addresses the challenges of sustainably and profitably producing tree fruits, and has conducted research in fruit-crop production systems in California, Washington, New York, and Virginia. He really has become a leader and expert in cider in the U.S., and received the American Cider Association’s 2018 Grower Advocate of the Year Award. As you can already tell, this episode was selfish for me in a lot of ways as a hobbyist cidermaker myself who has planted a dozen or so apple trees. But there’s some really great stuff in here that touches on history of agriculture, local agritourism, wine, climate change, and farm economics. Enjoy this episode with Dr. Greg Peck.

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Prime Future Weekly Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/  Video of High Plains Ponderosa Dairy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s91pH9wNKOw  Today’s episode covers some really progressive concepts in modern agriculture, and specifically modern dairy. Greg Bethard is the CEO of High Plains Ponderosa Dairy in Kansas. You’re going to hear from the lens of a producer how they are finding ways to lower their carbon footprint, produce both dairy and beef using the same resources, drive costs lower, and partner with companies like Shell to take their operation to the next level. 

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Verntures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Poultry Sense: https://www.poultrysenseltd.com/  Ancera: https://www.ancera.com/  For the first half of today's episode you’ll hear an interview with Alan Beynon, founder of Poultry Sense. Then in the second half you’ll hear from Ancera founder & CEO Arjun Ganesan, who I’ll formally introduce a bit late in the episode.  Alan Beynon is a veterinarian in the UK who started Prognostix, which used to be called Poultry Sense, in 2016. As Alan will describe, he saw a lot of opportunity in the use of sensors and data to improve animal welfare and efficiency. Merck Animal Health Ventures invested in the company in 2019 and then ended up acquiring them in 2021. We talk a little bit about that part of Alan’s story as well. Connecticut-based Ancera is a pioneer in microbial-based risk assessment and monitoring solutions. So what does that mean? They have a proprietary technology that enables near real-time, rapid detection and quantification of microbial threats across all points in the food production process, from farm-to-consumer. If that’s still sounding vague, the way I sort of understood it in my mind was that biological interactions are more complex than chemical interactions. So for any type of biological intervention it’s important to know more than just did it work or did it not work. We need more data about the dynamics at play, and that’s what Ancera does for their customers. Founder and CEO Arjun Ganesan shares details as well as some specific use cases.

 Philip Giampietro is the CEO and president of Walden Local Meat Company. Founded in 2014, Walden is New England and New York's leading brand of locally raised, sustainable meat. They are part of the first cohort of companies to legally reincorporate as a public benefit corporation or B-Corp. Philip says their purpose is to “make local work," with a more specific mandate to: 1) Connect adjacent rural and urban communities, 2) Produce the healthiest products possible with leading standards of animal welfare and environmental sustainability, and 3) Create incentives for farmers to move to more regenerative practices — those that are not simply "do less harm" but those that provide a net positive benefit to the environment and surrounding communities. Before Walden, Philip was a Director at Bain Capital and held various positions in private equity and consulting.    Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Walden Local Meat Co: https://waldenlocalmeat.com/ *SUBSCRIBE TO JANETTE BARNARD'S PRIME FUTURE NEWSLETTER: https://primefuture.substack.com/  Join the FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture  We have a great show for you today about what it takes to build a regional food system that can scale in today’s market that has very high expectations when it comes to taste, flavor, convenience, health, social and environmental impact, and beyond. Walden Local Meat has been building their company serving the Northeast U.S. since 2014. They have a great story about what it takes to make this approach work, and where they see the future of local and regional food systems headed. Some of you may know that I grew up in a direct-to-consumer specialty livestock business, so this concept is definitely of interest to me and near and dear to my heart.

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ AGI: https://www.aggrowth.com/ Farmobile: https://www.farmobile.com/  Today’s episode is a fascinating look at the value of farm data. Jason Tatge has been thinking about farm data for decades now, and you’re going to hear about the early days of trading data over the phone, to how that concept is basically what we know today as carbon credits and NFTs. He’ll also talk about how Ag Growth International or AGI is using Farmobile’s platform to connect data from all sorts of equipment including things like grain bins and dryers to reach unprecedented levels of interoperable farm data. Some really interesting topics to cover on today’s show, make sure you stay to the end to hear his vision for where all this stuff is going. Jason is currently serving as a Senior Vice President for AGI Digital.  AGI Digital is the collection of technology assets that have been acquired by AGI. These include the companies of Intellifarms, Farmobile and CMC Hazard Monitoring. AGI, for those that don’t know, provides global equipment solutions for seed, fertilizer, grain, feed and food processing systems.They are a global equipment leader with several brands across five main areas: Grain, Fertilizer, Food, Feed and Seed. Jason came to AGI by way of acquisition of his company Farmobile last year. He started his career though, in the same way I did: as a commodities trader. After seven years of that work, he was a co-founding employee of Farms.com, and then started his own company called Farms Technology, which was an electronic marketplace with automated hedging capabilities. He sold that company to DuPont Pioneer in 2012.  JOIN THE FOA COMMUNITY: www.Patreon.com/agriculture 

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/  Blue Ocean Barns: https://blueoceanbarns.com/ Today’s episode features Joan Salwen, co-founder and CEO of Blue Ocean Barns. Joan grew up in the long shadow of her family’s Iowa farm where she harvested cherries and cared for the sheep. During 20 years as a Managing Director at Accenture, Joan managed $50M+ client relationships and led the firm's Atlanta practice for organization and change strategy. In 2015, Joan transitioned to Stanford, where she built a team that energized university, market and government interest in seaweed as a solution to climate change. She founded Elm Innovations, a non-profit platform for exploring the potential of the seaweed-livestock connection and ultimately co-founded the commercial engine for it, Blue Ocean Barns in 2019.  I’m very excited to share today’s episode with you. There is so much here. Not only does this project have incredible incredible potential to reduce methane emissions. But also this is an incredible entrepreneurial journey Joan went through to resurrect old research in this area, support further research, commercialize the venture, then figure out how to grow, process and distribute the product at a scale that could be meaningful for the future of agriculture.

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ EverAg: https://www.ever.ag/ Dairy.com: https://www.dairy.com/ Prime Future: https://primefuture.substack.com/  Today’s episode is really a unique opportunity to hear from someone who has been working on what it means to digitize agriculture supply chains for over two decades. I can’t think of anyone who better understands the potential here for our industry, but also the reality of the challenges that lie ahead than Scott Sexton of EverAg and Dairy.com. Dairy.com is a leading provider of software, risk management, and market intelligence solutions for the dairy industry. The company was formed in 2000 by investors that included eight of the largest dairy cooperatives, and since that time continued to grow based off just that initial investment and their own earnings until they brought in an outside investor just a few years ago in 2019 and started expanding into some new areas that Scott will talk about with this new umbrella company called EverAg.  I’m very pleased to bring back everyone’s favorite co-host, creator of the Prime Future Weekly newsletter, ruminants lead at Merck Animal Health Ventures, and my good friend Janette Barnard. Join the FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Jan Willem van Groenigan https://www.wur.nl/en/Persons/Jan-Willem-prof.dr.ir.-JW-Jan-Willem-van-Groenigen.htm Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JWvanGroenigen YouTube videos:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJz4ijSeqjg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt77IvHaZuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6em_8iFfKIk  Jan Willem van Groenigan is a professor of Soil Biochemistry at Wageningen University in The Netherlands. He is a trained soil fertility specialist, and him and I originally connected about some soil carbon sequestration work that he was a part of. You’ll hear from one of his co-authors about that on a future episode. But when he told me that he was spending a lot of his time these days focused on the role of earthworms in agricultural soils, I knew I had to get him on the show to talk about that topic. He has been a part of several studies on earthworms such as their effect on crop yields, soil fertility, and greenhouse gas emissions, all of which we will talk about in today’s episode. I found his comments on phosphorous to be particularly interesting and important. First though, I’m going to drop you into the conversation where he gives you some more background in his own words, and we’ll take it from there. Enjoy this conversation about earthworms with Jan Willem van Groenigan.    Join the FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture 

Thank you to our quarterly presenting sponsor, Merck Animal Health Ventures: https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Innovating Agtech: https://soundcloud.com/user-73017811 SomaDetect: https://somadetect.com/ Books: Adventure Finance, Farm and Other F Words, The Third Plate Today’s featured guest is Hannah Senior. Hannah grew up in a farming community but followed a career into corporate life working with multinational companies, including 5 years with the retailer Tesco.  She completed an MBA at Stanford University before returning to the UK and agriculture, when she acquired PBS International, a company which makes products for plant breeders and seed producers around the world.   She describes her professional expertise as a stool with three legs, spanning agricultural technology, entrepreneurship & plant breeding.  Hannah holds Board and advisory positions with several AgriTech companies including Crop Health and Protection, the UK’s government-backed Agritech centre for Crops, and is Vice President of the National Association of Plant Breeders (although if this goes out in late August I’ll be President by then!). She is the host of two podcasts: Plant Breeding Stories, which interviews a diverse range of people in and around plant breeding, and Innovating AgTech is an audio documentary about how to better align interests in AgTech entrepreneurship between the environment, farmers, entrepreneurs and investors.   I first connected with Hannah as she was putting together this Innovating Agtech documentary-style podcast, and was very eager to both listen to the six-part series, and share some of her takeaways and perspectives with you here today. Join the FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture