PMA Takes On Tech

Hear from two professionals at Wells Fargo discuss this season’s topic: CEA.

  

According to Top 100 Farm Lenders, Wells Fargo has been the nation's leading agricultural lender among commercial banks for 25 consecutive years. They bring farm-to-fork expertise to clients in the agribusiness, food, and beverage industries. I talk to Matt Servatius – Market executive for the Central Region and Karol Flynn Sector Analyst within Food and Agribusiness. They give their perspectives as a bank on financing, technology and where the industry is headed. As we’ve heard in other episodes, indoor Ag is a new industry with an underdeveloped ecosystem. Institutions like Wells Fargo will play a role in the build out and scale up of a successful industry.

AeroFarms is one of the early, venture funded Indoor Ag companies. In this episode, you will hear the interesting, long version of the origin story of the company. We also discuss the many partnerships and collaborations of AeroFarms and how the culture is built to support that.  Roger Buelow, CTO + Stacey Kimmel, VP of R&D expand on AeroFarms innovations and vast R&D programs along with the building of the largest R&D indoor farm in UAE.

Sonia Lo is an indoor farmer, a chef, an angel investor and a mother of two who speaks seven languages and holds a third-degree black-belt in Tae-Kwon Do. Sonia has over 32 years of combined agriculture, technology and business experience. In the industry, Sonia was CEO of Crop One Holdings, Inc., a vertical farming company that owns FreshBox Farms and a joint venture with Emirates Flight Catering in Dubai. Most recently, Sonia was the CEO of Sensei Ag, an AgTech company focusing on CEA founded by Larry Ellison in Hawaii. This conversation goes where most do not in indoor Ag with Sonia’s unique experience and view of the industry.  We spend time on business models and financing which are daunting issues in CEA right now. But we also talk about the political economy of CEA, the problems with lack of diversity, creating an ecosystem and how the industry needs to openly monitor, share and compare data on cost structure and carbon footprint.

This is the first episode in the last season of 2021 and is focused on Controlled Environment Ag. Nate starts off explaining CEA; it’s benefits and challenges. We talk about how Plenty improves food security, safety and availability. Unlike most vertical farms, Plenty grows on vertical towers instead of flatbeds. Nate has a great description on how this came about and the advantages. We also have an enlightening conversation on breeding for vertical farms. Whether you are a practitioner or are new to vertical farming, you will learn something from this engaging discussion.

As the federal government invests into carbon sequestration and as entrepreneurs explore "green financing," "negative foods," and carbon credit trading, what are the potential opportunities for producers of specialty crops? Are producers sitting on a gold mine, or is this fool's gold? We will explore these and other questions during this week’s Virtual Town Hall.

We speak with Jack Bobo, food futurist and the author of the book "Why Smart People Make Bad Food Choices." Jack talks about how we ended up with giant-sized food portions in the US and what can be done to redesign our food environment to make better food choices for healthier living. We talk about the role of innovation and technology in solving many of our problems and the imperative to get consumers on board.

In this episode, we speak to two executives from Bolthouse Farms about innovation.  The Bolthouse Farms story is a great business case on what innovation and collaboration can bring to a company.  Innovation is woven through everything they do and think about.  There is also an open invitation to reach out to the company with innovative ideas/products/technology at [email protected]

Hear from Randy Pequignot about his journey as a field supervisor for Del Monte AND data management administrator. He uses software to accumulate Ag data from contract of growers through to the processing of snap beans. Randy gives a great view of what is important to him and how data management has helped his operation and his time management. It is always great to hear the voice of the customer of new technology!

The race to develop systems for carbon capture and reduction is on!

We dig deeper into the carbon challenge and talk with two innovators who are working with food companies to ensure transparency across the supply chain. The speakers tie together the importance of ESG, effects of climate change, carbon programs and how technology is the “unlock” to solve these issues.

How safe is your information? How do threat actors get into your company and what do you do if it happens? Hear from the experts about the current state of affairs and how you should protect yourself and mitigate risk.