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.

 

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Do you have suggestions for topics to be explored? Tweet them to me @timhammerich or email them to [email protected]. 

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