Nowadays, grocery store items are stocked full of labels: pasture raised, cage free, non-gmo, sustainable, the list goes on. But if the health and environmental problems these labels seek to address were legitimate, why wouldn't they be made mandatory? Are they just a marketing hoax or a path to a safer, healthier, more environmentally friendly food system?  We sit down with agri-business expert Mary Shelman to deconstruct these questions and more.

Mary is an internationally recognized thought leader, author, and speaker on global agribusiness, AgTech, and food system trends. She is the former Director of Harvard Business School’s Agribusiness Program and has worked closely with startups, Fortune 500 companies, governments, and the FAO. She is the author of 70+ case studies on the world’s top agri-food businesses.

After interviewing many guests, I was still left with the following questions: what are we doing to systematically mitigate our agriculture emissions, is it actually working, and how far do we have left to go? In this episode we dive in with the group that has been tackling these questions in California for the past 10 years.

Renata Brillinger is the executive director at CalCAN, a California based nonprofit driving forward critical policies and programs at the intersection of climate change and sustainable agriculture. We discuss decarbonizing livestock, what regenerative agriculture looks like at industrial scale, and the financial breakdown of how we get to net negative emissions (I’ll give you a hint, its surprisingly low). 

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Resources mentioned in the episode:

• CalCAN website
• California Agriculture Climate Solutions Summary
• What’s happening in other states? National Healthy Soils Policy Network
• Renata’s email: [email protected]

Building a startup from scratch is an art. In this episode, we sit down with Swaroop Kittu Kolluri, one of the best early stage venture capital investors, to dive into what it takes to go from an idea to a billion dollar business, with a focus on the ag-tech and climate-tech. 

Kittu is the founder & managing director at Neotribe Ventures. He is a serial entrepreneur turned venture capitalist and has both run and invested in several successful startups including well known names like Climate Corporation, box, robinhood, webMD, and Bloom Energy. 

Kittu gives an inside view into the journey of The Climate Corporation, one of the most successful ag-tech and climate-tech startups of the 21st century. He also shares some of the key the tips, tricks, and strategies that he uses to coach his founders.

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Background Reading

Walking Around in Your VC’s Shoes - Written by Kittu

Neotribe Ventures

Ed brings one of the most diverse agriculture perspectives to the podcast to date. He is the former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, 2 time governor of North Dakota, and he has led a multi-national consumer products business as well as many entrepreneurial start-ups. Ed played a pivotal role in many of the biggest agriculture events and movements of the 21st century.

This week in Agriculture Adapts:

• Tackling the 2008 world food crisis; learnings for a safe & resilient global food system
• What it was like to build the USDA organic label and why it may be more "wishy washy" than you'd expect
• G.M.O.s are a spectrum, we can't bunch them all together and rule them out-- there is too much potential for good
• How silicon valley jumped the gun with ag-tech

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References mentioned in the episode

• 2007-08 world food price crisis
• Golden Rice - G.M.O.s and Vitamin A deficiency in developing countries

Tatiana Schlossberg is the author of Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have and a former New York Times Science and climate reporter whose award-winning work has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Bloomberg and other publications. We chat with Tatiana about a variety of topics relating to climate change, pollution control, social inequality, agriculture, and aquaculture.

“Its not about feeling individually guilty, its about feeling collectively responsible” 

This week in Agriculture Adapts:

• How Climate change relates to everyday life and why feeling bad is not the answer
• Oceans, aquaculture, and sustainable fishing
• Why climate change and pollution are inextricably linked to social inequality
• Coal ash ponds: pollution disasters destroying the surrounding farmlands and natural environments

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References mentioned in the episode

- The Omnivore’s Dilemma

- The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail

- Tatiana’s book: Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have

- Tatiana’s website

- Global Fishing Watch

Michael J. Coren is a reporter at Quartz where he works on climate change, and the people, technology, and policies addressing it. Recently, Michael has been focusing his attention on uncovering the relationship between COVID-19 and climate change/pollution. This week we finally dive in to what the pandemic means for our planet. We also tap into Michael's experience with carbon markets and forrest carbon sequestration.

This week in Agriculture Adapts:

- Paying people to not cut down forests might be a great way to sequester carbon 

- The implications of green house gas and air pollution decline from quarantine

-What do low gas prices mean for the oil and gas industry?

- Quarantine may cause banks to become owners of a lot of oil and gas 

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Michael's page at Quartz: https://qz.com/author/mcorenqz/

Michael's email: [email protected]

Michael's twitter handle: mj_coren 

Dr. Ray Goldberg has served a critical role over the past half century in improving the global food system. He is considered by many to be the father of agribusiness and is actually credited with coining the term “agri-business” in 1957. 

Dr. Goldberg has been a professor of agriculture and business at Harvard since 1955. He recently published a book called Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust. This book sums up some of the most insightful interviews he held with folks that put their ideological differences aside to work together on solving some of the most pressing issues in food and agriculture.

This week in Agriculture Adapts

- Climate change’s impact on agriculture: a first person perspective from the dust bowl to now

- The pros and cons of GMOs without the stigmatization

- Food as medicine-- it’s about time we gave food the credit it deserves

- Consumer brands are innovating to improve the profitability and financial resilience of their farmers in developing countries

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Be sure to grab a copy of Ray's book! All proceeds go to Harvard

Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust

Craig is the owner/president of Sierra Orchards and the former president of California State Board of Food and Agriculture, advising multiple generations of state governors on farm related policies for the state that holds the title for 5th largest agriculture producer in the world. Craig is also the founder of the Center for Land Based Learning.

This week on Agriculture Adapts:

- Getting food to the people who need it: food waste, food scarcity, and "food apartheid" in the U.S.

- A creative approach to pest/weed management for organic hazelnuts

- Over-pumping groundwater has lead to irreversible subsidence in California

- Ways to deal with extremely difficult water access issues in California

- Taking steps to avoid a loss of multi-generational farming knowledge

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Resources mentioned in the episode:

- Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in CA

- California's Healthy Soils Initiative

- CalCAN: California Climate and Agriculture Network

Katharine Hayhoe is one of the world's most renowned climate scientists-- she has a ted talk with over 2.5 million views, and in 2017 was named one of Fortune’s world’s greatest leaders. Katharine is a professor at Texas Tech University and has been published in over 125 peer reviewed papers, abstracts, and key reports including the National Climate Assessment. We speak with Katharine about the science, the impacts, and the psychology of climate change.

This week in Agriculture Adapts:

- Why the U.S. Military calls climate change a "threat multiplier"

- The impact of climate change on agriculture: risk, resilience, and profitability

- Faith based communication on climate change: the secret to a fruitful discussion is common ground

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Links to topics mentioned in the episode:

Global Weirding

Katharine's Ted Talk

Iowa Interfaith power and light

Katharine's Facebook

Katharine's Twitter

Angela Santiago is the co-founder and CEO of the Little Potato Company, an innovative and fast growing company focused on colorful, tasty, mini-potatoes that taste delicious. We talk with Angela about the mechanics of the potato world, the obstacles climate change is creating for the industry, and what it takes to build an agriculture business from the ground up, 

This week in Agriculture Adapts

• Breeding for diversity and flavor
• Your french fries, chips, and table potatoes all come from different types of potatoes, specifically bred for their end use
• Increasing weather uncertainty, more frequent extreme events, and a potato production moving north to escape the heat
• How small changes in weather can bear significant impact on the way the crop turns out

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website: The Little Potato Company

facebook: The Little Potato Company