Future of Agriculture

Today’s episode is broken down into three parts: first, a brief primer on some of the issues contributing to the issues in California. Second, one potential hydrological solution going forward: groundwater recharge. And finally, we’ll talk about water markets by highlighting the new Nasdaq Veles California Water Index. To help me tell each of these three stories I have for you three different guests that you’ll hear from today: Dr. Safeeq Khan, Dr. Helen Dahlke, and Lance Coogan.   You can also listen to previous episodes 159 with Dr. David Zetland, 161 with Adam Borchard, or 198 with Chris Peacock to get more information about these topics. 

Resilient Biotics: https://resilientbiotics.com/ Fulcrum Global Capital: https://www.fgcvc.com/  My guest on today’s show is Chris Belnap, the CEO of Resilient Biotics, which is an early-stage animal health company that develops microbiome-derived, live therapeutics for livestock. In other words, they analyze the microbes that naturally live inside of cattle, then they administer those that are most beneficial to make the cattle more resilient to certain diseases. Specifically they are focused on a biological solution to bovine respiratory disease, which is currently very reliant on antibiotics.  Resilient Biotics is a portfolio company of Fulcrum Global Capital, which long time listeners will remember have partnered with me on several episodes in the past. What stands out about Fulcrum, and you can probably pick up on this if you’ve listened to all of these episodes with portfolio companies from their first fund, is that their LPs, their investors, are from production agriculture. They care about solving real problems in the food system.  One of the perks of these Fulcrum episodes for you and I is that we get to hear briefly from the investors first about what attracted them to this company, then we dive into the entrepreneur’s story. So joining me today is Fulcrum venture partner John Peryam, who along with his venture partners Duane Cantrell and Kevin Lockett, had been looking at potential companies who could help reduce reliance on antibiotics. 

Ranveer Chandra: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/ranveer/ Overview of Azure FarmBeats: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/industry/agriculture/overview-azure-farmbeats  FarmBeats: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/bill-gates-features-farmbeats-on-gatesnotes/ Microsoft has been making waves in the agtech industry with its FarmBeats project and Azure cloud computing service. That effort can be traced back to 2015 when today’s guest, Ranveer Chandra, wrote a memo which led to him starting and running the FarmBeats project. FarmBeats for those who do not know, provides a way to collect on-farm data and track that data using cloud computing models. It’s not a product that farmers buy, but it’s a platform that agtech companies build upon. In fact, previous guests of this show are customers of Microsoft to power their technology.    Ranveer is the Chief Scientist of Microsoft Azure Global, and Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research. He started the FarmBeats project at Microsoft in 2015, and has been leading it since then. He is also leading the battery research project, and the white space networking project at Microsoft Research. That is a project where he provided rural connectivity using unused TV channels. He was invited to the USDA to present his work on FarmBeats, and this work was featured by Bill Gates in GatesNotes, and was selected by Satya Nadella as one of 10 projects that inspired him in 2017.  Ranveer has published more than 80 papers, and filed over 100 patents, more than 85 of which have been granted by the USPTO.  Both FarmBeats and the TV white spaces projects started with memos, and as you’ll hear, Ranveer wrote his 2020 memo on sustainability. So we also get into the discussion about sustainability metrics and Microsoft’s big open source carbon purchase from a few months ago. 

World Resources Institute: https://www.wri.org/ Follow Rich on Twitter: https://twitter.com/waiterich Recent blog post: https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/08/us-agriculture-emissions-food  More from Rich: https://www.wri.org/profile/richard-waite  Our guest today has spent years diving into this question of the environmental impacts of the food system, and what can be done to optimize the amount of food that gets produced and distributed, while minimizing the negative externalities of that system.  Rich Waite is a Senior Research Associate in World Resources Institute’s Food Program. He is an author of the World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future, which focuses on solutions to feed 10 billion people by 2050, including boosting agricultural productivity, reducing food loss and waste, shifting toward plant-rich diets, and protecting and restoring forests and other natural ecosystems. Rich is also the Data Lead for Cool Food, an initiative that helps major food providers reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions in line with climate science. Prior to joining WRI in 2007, Rich lived in Cameroon for four years, where he served as an agroforestry extension agent with the U.S. Peace Corps and helped coordinate the U.S. Embassy’s international development programs. Rich and I discuss that, for all the talk about climate change, there has been very little progress to reducing the carbon footprint of the food system. We discuss why actions must be taken, and what the data tells us about what levers can be pulled to realistically make that happen while producing and distributing adequate amounts of nutritious food to people around the world. 

Thanks to FieldAgent by Sentera for sponsoring. Visit https://sentera.com/.  On today’s episode I’m joined by Todd Vagts who is a technical agronomist for the Channel Seed brand which is part of Bayer Crop Science. Based in southeast Minnesota, Todd works with Channel salespeople and seed dealers (who they called “Seedsmen”), to make sure they are up to date with technologies and to problem-solve in the field. Todd is a farmer as well - lives 30 minutes from the farm where he grew up. Todd has a master’s in Agronomy from Texas A&M, and stayed down in Texas to focus on cotton for a while before coming back to the midwest where he is focused now.  Todd has been interested in drones for over a decade, but as you'll hear it took a while for them to really find a place in his day-to-day work.

Today’s episode highlights two interesting consumer trends in food and agriculture. And on the surface, these two trends seem to be going in totally opposite directions, but not necessarily as you’ll hear from our guest today.  The first trend is the increasing desire for healthier, simpler, more nutritious food. The second is that demand for processed food is strong and getting stronger. You might be thinking, wait aren’t those two things complete opposites?  Well, not necessarily. Our guest today, Joanne Zhang is the founder of Phytoption, a food ingredient company that uses proprietary technology that allows them to replace certain ingredients in processed food that are synthetic or modified - like certain emulsifiers and texturing agents, with essentially simple flour like rice flour or chickpea flour. This allows more processed foods to be made with more naturally occurring ingredients.  As you’ll hear Joanne describe, these ingredients are used because they make food functional. For example, they help give a plant-based beverage the same texture as cow milk. Joanne’s technology allows these basic flours to serve the same functions without having to be chemically treated or altered in any way.  Important to note before we dive into today’s interview is that Joanne’s company Phytoption, will be separating this food division into a new company Flouring, LLC and Phytoption will continue to focus on pharmaceuticals. So you’ll hear us mention both Phytoption and Flouring, LLC in the episode because they are currently the same company.  Joanne started the company using technology developed by Purdue University after a career as a food scientist. I was connected to Joanne by Amy Wu, who is the author of the new book “From Farms to Incubators: Women Innovators Revolutionizing How Our Food is Grown”. Joanne is one of several women innovators featured in the book and I highly recommend you pick it up.  I told Amy how much I enjoyed the book and that I would like to interview some of the women she featured, and she said she had considered doing a podcast as well, so we decided it would be fun to interview Joanne together, and a couple of other women trailblazers in agtech that you’ll meet in future episodes later this year.    Join the FOA Community! Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form. Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com.  Find us online! Future of Agriculture Website AgGrad Website

My guest today, Allan Fetters, is a third generation agriculturalist who has worked in agribusiness for over 30 years. I say agriculturalist, because he was not born into a farm family, but a family that has been working selling products to farmers. However, he recently also started doing some farming himself in addition to his consulting.  In today’s episode, I try to glean as many insights as I can from Allan’s vast experience in agriculture technology. We touch many of the important aspects of specialty crop agtech such as water, labor, pest management, and the need for yield data. Allan explains why he believes that we are still in the very early days of digital agriculture.  I could spend several minutes describing Allan’s successful career, but I’ll sum it up by telling you that he has spent most of his career in field research, sales, marketing, business management, and technology development and implementation. Until 2019 Allan worked as the director of technology at Simplot, the global agribusiness based right here in my area of Boise, Idaho.  Currently, as principal of AGceleration Advisory Service, Allan works with companies to introduce new innovations to agriculture, including testing, evaluating, and analysis.  Join the FOA Community! Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form. Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com.  Find us online! Future of Agriculture Website AgGrad Website

Today’s episode is all about data and technology for the modern dairy. But even if you’re not specifically interested in the dairy industry, you’re going to want to stick around. And here’s why: one of the big challenges to agtech is the long feedback loop. You try a technology out for an entire year and you get one shot - harvest to see how it performed. Dairy is way different. That scorecard happens three times per day when the cows are milked. This rapid feedback loop has allowed dairies to embrace data analytics arguably faster than other areas of agriculture. And I would argue all of ag could learn a thing or two from this episode.  We have on the show Jordan Lambert. Jordan is the VP of Business Development for VAS, a software and data analytics company that provides sustainability and profitability insights to dairy producers. Jordan grew up on a dairy farm in rural Colorado, and graduated from my alma mater, UC Davis with a bachelor’s in Biotechnology.  She spent her early career as a genetic engineer before pursuing an MBA at Harvard. From there her career took her into consulting and back into agriculture with a role at Indigo. But she returned to Colorado and to the dairy industry to take this position with VAS.  There’s some great stuff here on data including collection, standardization, and privacy. As well as some interesting discussion towards the end about what it’s like to have private and cooperative ownership in the company, and how sustainability metrics are increasing the need for farm-level data.   Join the FOA Community! Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form. Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com.  Find us online! Future of Agriculture Website AgGrad Website

PLEASE COMPLETE OUR LISTENER SURVEY: https://airtable.com/shrCB33GWIUCIxVRU Today you’re going to get to hear the story of Dave Oien of Timeless Seeds and Timeless Food. He shares how he figured out how to convert to organic when very few thought it was possible, then how we built a seed business that ultimately became a food business. And make sure you stay to the end for some really interesting comments about resiliency.  Dave returned to the farm in Montana and convinced his dad in the 1970s to let him convert the farm to organic. Then, over the next four decades he built a seed business and a food business selling organic lentils and chickpeas as well as ancient grains and some other farm products.  His story is so remarkable, it was made into a book called “Lentil Underground.” This episode was created and originally was published as a part of another podcast I host called Growing Pulse Crops. Audrey Kalil who produces that show has graciously allowed me to re-air the episode on my show because I think it’s so good. So if you’re at all interested in pulse crop production - that’s peas, chickpeas, and lentils, go check out that show: Growing Pulse Crops on any podcast platform.    Join the FOA Community! Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form. Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com.  Find us online! Future of Agriculture Website AgGrad Website

Today’s episode is brought to you by FarmQA (www.FarmQA.com)  Today’s guest is Shannon Winny with GroWest Ag Ventures in Central Saskatchewan. She is a Professional Agronomist and a Certified Crop Advisor. About 18 months ago she decided to start her own company to meet the need for independent agronomy services in Saskatchewan. Farming is a team sport. Certainly nobody shares the same risk profile as a farmer, but every successful farmer that I can think of has strong relationships with people like consultants, agronomists, farm marketers, other farmers, extension agents, researchers, and more. These trusted advisors often serve as the extension of that farm business and play critical roles in the decision-making.  These individuals are all too often overlooked by agtech companies and agribusinesses. So this summer I’m hosting a tech-enabled advisor series. One episode per month will be dedicated to featuring one of these trusted advisors to learn about their business, their tech stack, and how they view the future of agriculture as it pertains to the farmer customers in their area. “I saw the fit that farms need a hundred percent unbiased, independent agronomy recommendations. It's really hard as the retail agronomist to maintain a hundred percent and be a hundred percent impartial when you know what's in the chem shed, how much margin you're making off specific products, stuff like that. So I decided to go the completely independent route.” - Shannon Winny   Shannon’s services are charged by the acre, sample or hour but because of her business model she is not beholden to quotas or specific products. This allows her to maintain an unbiased approach for producers that will provide them the best advice and benefits. She has circumvented the obstacle of producer adoption of different software by using the all inclusive, customizable, intuitive software from FarmQA. Farmers are able to see real time data and reports to monitor, save and analyze the data their operation provides.   “Agriculture is just changing so rapidly and we need to start really targeting specific zones and how to effectively manage those zones because land is expensive. We should manage the land that we have as efficiently and effectively as possible to be profitable.” - Shannon Winny   This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast: Meet Shannon Winny, an independent agronomy consultant with GroWest Ag Ventures in Central Saskatchewan Discover the advantages and benefits of the FarmQA technology she uses as an independent consultant   Thanks to FarmQA for sponsoring this episode. Make sure you go learn more about them at www.FarmQA.com and tell them thank you on Twitter @farm_qa.   Join the FOA Community! Be sure to join the new Future of Agriculture Membership for even more valuable information on the future of the ag industry. I’m sending out my email newsletter on a more regular basis, focusing on what I call the front lines of agtech: where product meets producer. You can sign up for that at www.FutureOfAg.com. There’s an email icon in the center of the page, just click on that and it will take you to a signup form. Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to tim@aggrad.com.  Find us online! Future of Agriculture Website AgGrad Website