Future of Agriculture

Farmland LP: https://www.farmlandlp.com/ Join the FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture  Today’s episode is a unique approach to farmland investing. Farmland LP buys farmland and adds value by doing things like planting higher value crops, converting to certified organic, and implementing regenerative farming practices. The company then leases the land back out to farmers who agree to maintain these practices. Joining us on the show today is Farmland LP founder and managing partner Craig Wichner. Craig founded Farmland LP in 2009 and is responsible for day-to-day management, business strategy and all investment activity. He is a seasoned executive with nearly 30 years of experience building companies and investing.  Craig has also helped to manage his family’s real estate portfolio of apartment buildings for over 25 years. He also serves on the board of BN Ranch, Bill Niman’s successor company to Niman Ranch.  Craig and I have a fascinating and wide ranging conversation about investing in farmland, their strategies for acquiring property and adding value, and how he is thinking about the future of agriculture and this asset class of farmland. As you’re about to hear, Craig’s not afraid to call it like he sees it, especially when it comes to sustainability related topics. He sees a lot of greenwashing going on in agriculture and wants to see more data-backed metrics of improving the lands in which we farm.

Leaf Agriculture: https://withleaf.io/ GROWMARK: https://www.growmark.com/ FoA 238: 5 Barriers Limiting Agtech: https://aggrad.libsyn.com/foa-238-5-barriers-limiting-agtech-and-the-companies-breaking-through-them FoA 275: Digital Infrastructure for Ag Supply Chains: https://aggrad.libsyn.com/foa-275-digital-infrastructure-for-ag-supply-chains-with-jake-joraanstad-and-jesse-vollmar-of-bushel  Bailey Stockdale is the CEO of Leaf Agriculture which builds developer tools for agriculture. What that means exactly is what we’re going to spend most of today’s episode talking about, but in the meantime, you can think of them as the company that enables integrations between technology providers so that the user experience is seamless. In other words, technology users will never know they exist. Their customers are technology providers in the industry.  People like Brendan Bachman, who joins Bailey and I on today’s show. Brendan is the Senior Agronomy Technology Manager at GROWMARK/FS, which is one of the largest producer owned coops in the U.S. Brendan has worked there for about 16 years in various agronomy and technology capacities. For the past five years he’s been in thor sole working in strategy and implementation of different ag technologies with their various member companies and working with agtech companies to help them find market fit with growers. After Bailey’s first appearance on this podcast in episode 238 we also featured Bushel in episode 275 diving deeper into the concept of digital infrastructure. Both of those would be great to re-listen to with this one. Today you’re going to get something though that you didn’t get in those past two episodes: a tangible example of why digital infrastructure is needed, how companies like leaf work with technology providers, and we’ll end with a deeper exploration into how an infrastructure provider makes money, differentiates themselves, and deals with competition. This is a different episode, but one I found really fascinating. One technical note: Bailey’s air pods failed us towards the end of the interview, so you’ll notice his audio quality change pretty drastically. But stick with it: he has some really interesting comments towards the end about how all of this plays out for the future of agriculture.    **JOIN THE FOA COMMUNITY: www.Patreon.com/agriculture

FarmRaise: www.FarmRaise.com  Building a startup in ag? Email me: tim@aggrad.com  Support this show and join the FoA community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture    A point we try to drive home as often as possible here is that innovation on its own doesn’t really get anywhere until it can be implemented. For agriculture, that often means that the ideas we talk about here on this show need to actually work for farmers. So for the future of agriculture to be more data-driven or more technological or more regenerative, the tools and practices will have to be executable. And for farmers to find this out, they will need to experiment with them. Which is very risky. Luckily there are programs to help absorb some of that risk. A lot of them involve free money in the way of grants, or very cheap loans. But to access these programs requires an often tedious process of seeing if you are eligible then applying then waiting to hear back then keeping up with the ongoing reporting.  Lowering these barriers is exactly where FarmRaise comes in. Jayce Hafner is the co-founder and CEO of FarmRaise. What’s interesting about this episode is not only the impact they are having for farmers, nearly 10,000 so far and $9M in funding applications, but also where they hope to take the company. Today, they offer a freemium model where a farmer can check their eligibility on 15 programs for free or pay $25/month to check eligibility on hundreds of programs, apply to them in less than 15 minutes, and get ongoing support.  Jayce sees this as just the beginning. This valuable service can grow into many more financial services including lending, ecosystem services, and even tax support. In the interview I compare it to H&R Block for farmers, but she quickly corrects me that it’s more like TurboTax. Which is fair. FarmRaise just announced they closed a $7.2M seed round led by Susa Ventures as well as angel investments from some notable names including former podcast guest Zach Johnson (The Millennial Farmer). They also have some really interesting distribution partnerships with Corteva and Cargill with others scheduled to be announced this year. We talk about that as well. There’s so much here to dive into and I think you’ll find this full interview to be well worth your time.   Jayce grew up on a livestock farm in Virginia, where she saw first hand how these financial incentives can improve a farming operation. Before FarmRaise, she invested in agriculture with SLM Partners, completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Trinidad and Tobago, and worked on environmental sustainability at Apple. Jayce has led policy coalitions at several United Nations COP climate negotiations and founded a record-breaking conservation coalition that mobilized 100,000 citizens to advocate for the Arctic Refuge. She has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, an MS in Agriculture from the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. 

Sound Agriculture: https://www.sound.ag/ Support this show: www.Patreon.com/agriculture  Today, I’m excited to bring you an interview with a very interesting company in agtech, and a unique one in many ways. Adam Litle is the CEO of Sound Agriculture. Which is in the “sound science” sense of the word not the audio sense of the word. They have some really interesting scientific approaches to, on one hand, activating beneficial microbes to provide more nutrition to crops. And on the other hand to perform what they call on-demand breeding, which doesn’t actually change the genetics of the crop but blocks expression of certain genes by soaking the seed in a specific protein. Each of these individually is a pretty exciting innovation in agriculture, but I wanted to know where do they intersect? In other words, why is this one business instead of two? We get into that as well as some of the challenges of bringing innovations like this to the market, and much more on today’s episode.  As CEO, Adam leads the company’s strategy and overall company execution. He joined Sound to help serve both producers and consumers with more sustainable, differentiated crops. Prior to Sound, Adam was on the founding team and served as Chief Revenue Officer of Granular, the leading farm management software company acquired by Corteva in 2017.

Grounded Capital Partners: https://www.groundedcapitalpartners.com/ How would you rate the Future of Agriculture podcast using a scale of conventional (1) to aspirational (10)? Where along that spectrum do you think it should be? Email me at tim@aggrad.com to let me know or send me a DM on Twitter or LinkedIn.  Our guest today, Stephen Hohenrieder was first on the show back in episode 216 to talk about building a more distributed system. It remains one of my most popular episodes, and I still highly recommend it even after you listen to this one. In that interview in 2020, Stephen mentions that he is working on developing a more permanent investment vehicle to carry out some of his investment theses about the future of food. What he was describing is now Grounded Capital Partners, and I wanted to invite him back to talk about his work.  Stephen has over a decade of focus on regenerative food systems, having invested, studied and collaborated across diverse categories of food and agriculture — proteins, fruits and vegetables, nuts and consumer packaged goods. His perspectives were shaped by a systems approach, the teachings of others, observations in exploring a thesis for how our food system is evolving, and a belief that all stakeholders are interdependent. Since 2017, Stephen has served as the CEO & CIO of Meyer Family Enterprises, an entrepreneurial impact-focused single-family office in the Napa Valley, where he oversees entities that include direct investments, real estate and farming. Join the FoA community at patreon.com/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 advisor series, I wanted to hear from different types of guests who each are using different types of technologies. In order to do that, I have sought out companies to partner with on each individual episode of this series. Today’s show was produced in partnership with Granular. Many of you listening are familiar with Granular, and you may even remember the episodes I did with them back in 2019, which were episodes 135, 136, 137, 138, and 153. They’ve been some of our most popular episodes ever, so I highly recommend re-listening to those. Granular is more than just a Farm Management tool. They deliver science and service for successful nitrogen management, especially in a year where prices have gone up so dramatically. Granular’s Certified Services Agents, people like Cassie, are an incredible resource to help farmers explore and push the needle as they try new software. Learn more about them at Granular.ag and thank you Granular for partnering with me on today’s episode.

Dawn Equipment: http://www.dawnequipment.com/ Underground Agriculture: 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-intentioned programs can try to push practices on farms without empowering them to integrate into their businesses. I really think this is a conversation worth your time, especially as so many people out there want to choose sides on these issues without considering the realities.  Dawn Equipment was started by Joe’s father, Jim, and two partners in 1992. Joe studied Physics at the University of Iowa and joined the company in 2003, eventually taking over in 2015. He founded Underground Agriculture in 2019.   Support the Future of Agriculture podcast: www.patreon.com/agriculture

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 of Amy’s book, as it not only includes Joanne and Ponsi, but also several other former guests of this podcast: like Pam Marrone, Fatma Kaplan, Sarah Nolet, Mariana Vasconcelos, Christine Su, and others.  So, joining Amy and I is Shely Aronov. Shely grew up in Israel and came to the United States to get her MBA at Stanford, where she chose entrepreneurship as her focus. After some entrepreneurial ventures including a hummus company, she was inspired by some work her father in law was doing in biosensors which eventually led to founding InnerPlant in 2018.  I usually don’t feature companies on this show that are so early that they don’t yet have a commercial offering. But when Amy brought up the idea, the concept of communicating with plants was just too enticing for me to pass up. You’re going to hear a lot about how this works, why it could lead to significant improvements in management of these stressors, what it’s like to be a female agtech founder not from an ag background, and why farmers are paying to be part of this several months before there’s even a product available. 

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. Francisco Jardim LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/franciscojardim/  Sarah Nolet LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/svnolet/  Janette Barnard LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janettebarnard/  Mark Kahn LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-kahn-20490a/  Sarah Nolet Twitter: https://twitter.com/svnoles Janette Barnard Twitter: https://twitter.com/JanetteJoyB  Mark Kahn Twitter: https://twitter.com/agri_technology