Future of Agriculture

Voyage Foods: https://voyagefoods.com/

Jennifer Barney's Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/

I continue to be interested in pursuing episodes that are more on the food side of the industry. I think at first glance some of these stories might make you question whether it really belongs on an agricultural podcast. But I really believe consumer interest and food trends will drive the future of agriculture just as much if not more than any ag technology will. So it’s really important for all of us in agriculture to keep a close watch on these trends and connect the dots about what impact this could have on our industry. 

Guest hosting today’s episode is Jennifer Barney. Jennifer has been very generous with her time to bring us several episodes over the years, all focused on food companies. In the past she has featured companies like: Teffola, WonderCow, Alexandre Family Farm, Bibamba, Ugly Fruit Company, Neutral Foods and Seal the Seasons. 

She is a successful food entrepreneur, having founded, grown and sold an almond butter company called Barney Butter. Today she works with consumer packaged goods company as a consultant and writes the weekly email newsletter “The Business of Food”.

Jennifer is going to be interviewing Voyage Foods founder Adam Maxwell. 

A native of Boston, Adam Maxwell, was drawn to a food career from an early age, pursuing his first professional experience as a 14 year-old pastry apprentice at James Beard award-winning restaurant, Clio. He continued working in fine dining while studying food science at McGill University. But before graduation, Adam left school to work at Chew Innovation Labs. It was there that he met one of his co-founders for Voyage Foods, Kelsey Tenney. After his time at Chew, eh went to work for Endless West, the worlds’ first and only molecular wine and spirits company. His belief that everyone deserves to enjoy their favorite foods without compromising on tastes, the risk of future access or sacrificing dietary needs led him to launch Voyage Foods in 2021.

00:00 Intro

00:31 Meet Adam Maxwell of Voyage Foods

01:20 Introducing Guest Host Jennifer Barney

02:23 Jennifer Barney Interviews Adam Maxwell

03:04 Adam Maxwell's Background and Voyage Foods' Mission

06:49 Innovative Food Processing Techniques

09:55 Sourcing Sustainable Ingredients

13:29 Challenges and Opportunities in Food Tech

17:34 Scaling Up Voyage Foods and Future Plans

33:01 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Dr. Trey Malone Profile: https://ag.purdue.edu/directory/tjmalone#:~:text=Trey%20Malone%20is%20an%20agri,on%20agri%2Dfood%20supply%20chains.

Trey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/treymalone

MS-MBA Joint Degree: https://agribusiness.purdue.edu/degrees/ms-mba/

Dr. Trey Malone is an agri-food economist and the Boehlje Chair in Managerial Economics for Agribusiness in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University. His work focuses generally on strategic marketing and strategic decision making especially as it relates to what universities can do for industry. He has published over 60 research articles in outlets including Food Policy, Journal of Business Venturing Insights, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. 

Before Purdue, he worked as an ag economist with the University of Arkansas, and before that at Michigan State University. His insights have been featured in popular press outlets, including the New York Times, TIME Magazine, CNBC, CNN, USA Today, Fast Company, and Popular Science. And now the Future of Agriculture podcast.

This episode has been a long time in the making. I’ve known Trey, at least from a distance for years. He almost came on the show earlier this year, but then was offered his dream job to move from Arkansas to Purdue so we put it on hold until now. In addition to being an ag nerd, I’ve always had an interest in economics, specifically what drives markets and what drives behavior. I read Freakonomics years ago and am a listener to podcasts like Planet Money. So why it took me so long to realize that what i”m trying to do here with the Future of Agriculture is bring together my science and tech nerdiness with my business nerdiness is beyond me. When I say that this show is really at the core about ag economics, a lot of you long time listeners are probably saying “DUH!”, but to be honest I never consciously thought of it that way. 

I share all this with you because I’m hoping this episode is just the start of featuring many other economists. No, i”m not going to stop covering agtech or sustainability or science or the other topics we we cover here on the show. But I do want to make a concerted effort to highlight the interesting work our countries 2,000+ ag economists are doing. And this episode with Trey is a great place to start. 

Farmland LP:

Back on the show today is Craig Wichner of Farmland LP. I had been reading in the news some of the big moves Craig and his team were making to acquire and add value to more farmland. And I thought, wow, this must be a tough environment just based on the prices of some of these specialty crops and the jump in interest rates. But what Craig shared surprised me, and I’m excited to share it with you today. 

If you need a little refresher from Craig’s first appearance on episode 298 back in February 2022, here is some background: 

Craig founded Farmland LP in 2009 with a simple yet powerful idea: to combine regenerative agriculture with proven real estate management practices from the commercial property sector.  Thanks to that approach, Farmland LP is the largest fund manager focused on organic farmland in the U.S., delivering strong financial returns alongside demonstrable environmental and social benefits. Craig is responsible for day-to-day management, business strategy, and all investment activity at the firm.  

Craig is an outspoken advocate for verifiable, data-driven standards for sustainable farmland investing so investors and consumers can look beyond misleading labels and support beneficial farming practices. 

Gallagher: https://am.gallagher.com/en-US

I’m pleased to welcome Gallagher Animal Management Chief Executive Lisbeth Jacobs onto the show today. There is nothing like the battle-tested point of view from a company that has been an innovator and market leader for a long time. In Gallagher’s case, it’s in technology for animal management. A quick description from their website: Founded in 1938, Gallagher is now known and respected in over 100 countries as a family-owned business built on customer-led innovation. From the electric fence to the cloud, Gallagher’s connected and customisable ecosystem of solutions empower our customers to work responsibly, productively, and profitably to protect what matters most.

So their customers are ranchers and livestock raisers, particularly those who raise livestock on pastures. And I love the juxtaposition of this pastoral customer grazing livestock like has been done for thousands of years, using the latest technology like virtual fencing which they sell under the brand e-shepherd. Lisbeth and I will talk about e-shepherd specifically, as well as Farmote, which is a joint venture between Gallagher and Barenburg to commercialize technology for automated pasture monitoring.  

Lisbeth Jacobs joined Gallagher as Chief Executive - Animal Management in April 2021 and thrives on providing strategic leadership across the global footprint of the Animal Management operations.   

Prior to this Lisbeth held senior leadership roles at the leading edge of applied innovation and sustainability with Fletcher Building, Uniservices, The Icehouse, and global steelcord & steelwire company Bekaert where she worked and lived across Europe, China, the Middle East, and North America.   Lisbeth holds a PhD of Engineering from the University of Auckland. And her background in both business leadership and engineering both shine through in today’s episode. 

Full Harvest: https://www.fullharvest.com/

Software is Feeding The World Newsletter: https://www.rhishipethe.com/sftw

Metal Dog Labs: https://www.metaldoglabs.ai/

I’m really excited to share today’s episode with Christine Moseley. This problem of food waste is one I’ve been interested in since starting this podcast. The first episode I dedicated to the issue was episode 040 clear back in early 2017 with Jonathan Bloom of Wasted Food. Then we’ve had other episodes with people like Olympia Yarger of GOTERRA, Abi Ramanan of Impact Vision, Larry Clarke of Nanoguard and Justin Kamine of Do Good Foods all talking about food waste. And if I’m being honest, I don’t think the needle has moved in how much food gets wasted every year. But I applaud the efforts of all of these people and Christine to take on such a massive and complex problem. 

But I won’t be asking the questions today. I’m very pleased to welcome Rhishi Pethe back onto the show to host what I believe is his fifth episode. For anyone who doesn’t know, Rhishi has has extensive experience in artificial intelligence, supply chain & logistics, product, data & technology strategy, robotics & computer vision, sustainability, and data interoperability. He has held leadership roles at Mineral (an Alphabet company), The Climate Corporation (Bayer), Amazon, and other technology companies. He has led two startups through exits, and one through a spin out. 

Rhishi is also the creator of the free weekly newsletter “Software is Feeding the World”, which I highly recommend and I will leave a link in the show notes where you can subscribe for free. It is always a please to pass the mic over to Rhishi and I appreciate him hosting Christine today. 

And speaking of Christine….Christine Moseley, Full Harvest Founder + CEO, is a passionate serial entrepreneur. At age 17, she started a music education non-profit, Musical Empowerment, which is still growing nationally 16 years later. Currently, at Full Harvest, she is solving the food waste problem at the farm level with technology. Full Harvest is the first B2B platform for surplus and imperfect produce, connecting large farms directly to food & beverage companies.

Christine has over 15 years of experience in the logistics and food industries at both Fortune 100 companies (Maersk, P&G) as well as high-growth food start-ups. In her last corporate role, she assisted Organic Avenue, an NYC healthy food + juice start-up, double in size as Head of Strategic Projects and Business Development. 

Christine holds an MBA from Wharton Business School. 

Two really smart people talking about one of the greatest challenges our food system currently faces. Enjoy this conversation between Rhishi Pethe and Christine Moseley. 

Ag Done Different Newsletter: https://agtechmarketinginsights.substack.com/

"Reclaim Your Market Power: The Agribusiness Blueprint for Strategic Influence" : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aO__6x2ze9QSe_e7jyWvCKJzh-4-I7yW/view?usp=drivesdk

Schultz Collaborative: https://www.schultzcollaborative.com/

As lead category designer at Schultz Collaborative, Dan Schultz helps agtech companies around the world design their category and think differently about how they commercialize their products.

Dan is vehemently opposed to telling boring stories, sales pitches thoughtlessly read off spec sheets, oversold technobabble, undersold innovation, and venture money wasted on vanity marketing metrics. Dan helps companies stop droning on about incremental improvement and start building movements.

He is the author of the weekly newsletter Ag Done Different. You can read his full weekly newsletter at agtechmarketinginsights.substack.com

Sabanto: https://sabantoag.com/

FoA 241: From Drives to Driverless with Craig Rupp of Sabanto

I’m really glad to get Craig Rupp back on the show today. Some of you might remember his interview on episode 241, where Craig shared the incredible journey of building 640 Labs which he sold to the Climate Corp and became the FieldView Drive. At that time, we also talked about his newest venture, Sabanto, which is bringing autonomy to agriculture. 

Since that episode over three years ago, Craig and the team at Sabanto have evolved their offering from autonomy as a service to a kit that allows dealers and farmers to convert the equipment they already have to include autonomous capabilities. Along with that, they offer a service for remote operating and monitoring, which kind of blows my mind. Craig is hiring a team of remote tractor drivers to monitor several autonomous tractors at once, and we’ll talk a lot about that in today’s episode. Sabanto has also found an interesting niche in sod farmers. They work with farmers across basically all crops, but the amount of passes these sod farmers have to make in a given year, makes an offering like Sabanto has really compelling. This is also an episode about the evolution of on-farm autonomy and what the future might look like as adoption continues to grow. 

For a refresher on Craig’s bio: 

Raised on a farm in Iowa, Craig Rupp started his career in 1988 as a hardware engineer at Motorola, designing and developing the first GSM and Iridium mobile stations and John Deere in 2002, developing the Starfire receiver and Greenstar display.

In 2012, Craig founded 640 Labs, envisioning a simple iPad as a data collection and monitoring device for agriculture. Acquired by Monsanto in 2014, he made his FieldView Drive one of the most ubiquitous and low-cost data collection devices in agriculture.

In 2018, Craig founded Sabanto, a company that provides autonomous solutions for agriculture. He was the first to autonomously plant a farmer’s field in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Texas, and Indiana.

I really enjoy whenever I get a chance to talk to Craig, his intelligence and real world experience comes through in the wisdom that he shares.

Terviva: https://terviva.com/

Today’s episode is long overdue. For the past 15 years, today’s guest: Naveen Sikka, has been working to commercialize the pongamia tree. There are several things that are special about this emerging crop. First, it’s a legume, so like soybeans, peas, lentils, chickpeas and other legumes, the plant forms symbiotic relationships with nitrogen fixing bacteria, so in short, it can fix its own nitrogen from the atmosphere. Although the crop does still require some fertilizer - just a fraction of what is required for a lot of other crops. Also like other legumes, the beans are very high in oil and protein. But unlike those crops it’s a tree, which can have benefits in terms of productivity, soil health, and adaptability to certain parts of the world. So you have this supertree, that is a nitrogen fixer that is a perennial and adapted to both periods of flooding and periods of drought, and most of all it produces a versatile and nutrient dense crop. Naveen’s going to share a whole lot more about pongamia, but I wanted to start with answering, why is all of this effort worthwhile? 

And it is indeed a lot of effort. Naveen and his team are having to attack this from every angle to turn this tree into a viable commercial crop: developing genetics, growing practices, markets, processing, attracting interest from farmers, and educating potential consumers just to name a few. But they’re making real progress, and I find their commitment to the cause to be inspiring and certainly helpful to all of us hoping to make real contributions to the ag industry. 

To give you his formal bio here before we jump in: Naveen Sikka is the founder and CEO of Terviva, an agricultural innovation company partnering with farmers to grow pongamia, a climate-resilient tree which helps to reforest land and revitalize communities. Under his leadership, Terviva has unlocked pongamia’s potential as a super tree capable of providing meaningful climate-change solutions. After more than a decade of innovation, Terviva has established an equitable and transparent supply chain where they harvest and transform pongamia beans into bioenergy and sustainable food ingredients called Ponova®.

BovEye: https://boveye.com/

Flyover Whiskey: https://flyoverwhiskey.com/

FarmAfield: https://www.farmafield.com/

Andrew Minarick tells Tim about his latest company, BovEye, which is using computer vision and AI for remote livestock verification. As you’ll hear this is extremely important to his customer base which is not producers, but instead agricultural lenders. We also talk about his experiences in starting Flyover Whiskey, working for FarmAfield,  getting his MBA at Stanford, and more. Cool stuff all the way around and a very fun conversation for me. 

Andrew grew up on a small ag operation in North Bend, NE and has worked as an engineer and operator across a number of early-stage AgTech ventures, with a current focus on livestock production and financing technologies. He holds a B.S. in Biological Systems Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he was a member of the Engler Entrepreneurship program and holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Andrew lives in Omaha, NE where he serves as the Founder/CEO of BovEye.

In this unique solo episode, Tim Hammerich shares his framework for thinking about the future of agriculture. Drawing inspiration from a recent keynote at the 4th annual Soybean Research Forum and Think Tank, Tim discusses the rationale behind the podcast and shares the four key questions (plus a bonus) that guide his exploration into agricultural innovation.

00:00 Introduction and Purpose of the Podcast

00:36 Inspiration from a Recent Keynote

01:49 Reflecting on the Podcast's Journey

04:26 Challenges in Discussing the Future of Agriculture

08:31 Framework for Thinking About the Future of Agriculture

09:38 Current Trends and Historical Insights

12:20 Innovations on the Fringes

13:43 Considering Unpredictable Changes

18:33 Conclusion and Final Thoughts