This month, the Modern Acre Co-op got together to discuss all things AI in agriculture. It was a roundtable discussion that was wide-ranging and including a number of different use-cases for how people are thinking about and leveraging AI in their businesses.

Participants: Chris Bunio of Theory Mesh, Chase Dwelle, Kenny Lee of Aigen, Erik Wolfe of Sound Agriculture, Jim Cupples of All the Farms, Dustin Brunn of Dunn Dairy, and Ria Xi of CropSafe

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Dr. Michael Gilbert is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Semios, the leading precision farming loT platform for tree fruits, nuts, and grapes. Michael is a natural product synthetic chemist with a PhD from University of British Columbia and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Vienna. He has 25 years of experience in agtech and biotech R&D and production. In 2009, Michael founded Semios to meet the growing demand for data-driven sustainable and traceable food production.

Michael joins us to share his story of founding the company and how the have strategically scaled through acquisitions, distribution, technology, and business model. Tune in!

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Kit Barron is the Head of Data Science & Analytics at Farmer's Business Network, an independent agricultural tech and commerce platform and farmer-to-farmer network that helps its members make confident decisions to ensure the economic viability of their farms and work toward a sustainable future. FBN is an advocate for family farmers and ranchers, and does whatever it takes to help farmers become more prosperous - whether it's through data science-driven agronomic insights about their fields, providing farm inputs through its e-commerce store, helping farmers sell their crop more intelligently and independently, or providing them with health or crop insurance. FBN arms farmers with the tools they need to make the best decisions for their business, their families and the planet.

Kit joins the pod to provide some updates on FBN and share more about their recent launch of Norm, their AI agronomy advisor. Tune in!

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Jacob Muise is the Founder and CEO of Maui Nui Venison. Their venison comes from Axis deer, a non-native species to Hawaiʻi. Numerous and free-roaming, these deer are truly wild until the moment they humanely harvest them using 100% stress-free methods. Because their deer are wild instead of being raised for food, they enjoy a natural varied diet, which means their meat is higher in nutrients and noticeably more delicious.

Connect with Maui Nui Venison Website | Nutrient Density Study

This month, Tim and Tyler talk with Ariel about her latest Topsoil edition - "We didn't produce this much only to produce this much: A framework for understanding yield in agriculture."

Ariel Patton is the creator of Topsoil, a newsletter bringing you monthly frameworks to help make sense of agriculture, at just the right depth. Ariel has focused her career on driving digital transformation of agriculture to help farmers manage their businesses more profitably and sustainably at Monsanto, Granular, Corteva and currently, Mineral.

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Carson Britz is the Sr. Manager of Sustainable Ag at Nutrien Ag Solutions. Nutrien Ag Solutions is a subsidiary of Nutrien Ltd., a leading global agricultural solutions provider. The company was formed in 2018 as a result of a merger between Agrium Inc. and Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc. Nutrien Ag Solutions is primarily focused on providing agricultural inputs and services to farmers, helping them achieve higher crop yields and better farm productivity.

Nutrien Ag Solutions operates a vast retail network, offering a wide range of products and services. With a strong presence in North America, Australia, and South America, Nutrien Ag Solutions is committed to providing innovative and sustainable solutions that help farmers meet the increasing global demand for food while minimizing the environmental impact of agricultural practices.

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Paul Pittman is the founder and executive chairman of Farmland Partners, a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT) that purchases, leases, and manages high-quality farmland throughout North America.

Paul grew up in a farm family and has been buying and operating farms since the mid-1990s. Many of his farmland assets in Illinois, Nebraska, and Colorado were contributed to Farmland Partners Inc. at the time of its initial public offering in 2014. Paul has served as the company’s Chairman since that time, and he remains one of its largest shareholders. He was the company’s CEO until February 2023.

Before devoting full attention to his farming and farmland ownership businesses, Paul was the CFO of Jazz Technologies, a publicly traded semiconductor foundry. Prior, he started TheJobsite.com, which merged into HomeSphere, an enterprise software company where Paul served as President. Paul has worked as an investment banker in London, New York, and San Francisco, specializing in mergers and acquisitions with Merrill Lynch, Wasserstein Perella & Co, and ThinkEquity. He began his career as an attorney with Sullivan & Cromwell. 

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Jessie Deelo founded Deelo Consulting Services to design strategies for agricultural systems change. Building off her career as a farmer, Extension specialist and industry consultant, she integrates expertise in regenerative agriculture, corporate impact programs, food systems and strategy. Through analysis of landscape, markets, cultures and stakeholders, Jessie develops markets for place-based regenerative agriculture. In commodity markets, she executes strategic solutions for climate-smart sourcing and low-carbon ingredient supply chains.

Jessie has sector expertise in North American dairy, grains and oilseeds, and organic and regenerative agriculture. She also has experiential knowledge of small- to mid-scale organic horticultural production. Her graduate school training in International Agricultural Development from the University of California-Davis shapes her approach to supply chain sustainability for global markets.

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Niall Haughey is the Founder of Graze and writer of the Agri Fintech Newsletter covering the category globally.

Niall specialized in Financial Services at Deloitte before founding an SME Payments business and performing advisory work for clients including Royal Bank of Scotland, Investec, UBS, Centrica and others. Since 2015, Niall has focused on fintech product design and development for the Food and Agriculture sector in sub-Saharan Africa, including developing Input Finance, Warehouse Receipt Finance for grains and Pay-As-You-Go Asset Finance structures.

With Graze, Niall wants to utilize his combined expertise of conventional Financial Services and cutting edge Agri Fintech to design modern financial services for global food systems.

Connect with Niall Website | Newsletter

Bailey Stockdale is the founder & CEO of Leaf, food and agriculture’s data infrastructure company. Bailey has worked with food and agriculture technology since 2014 as a software developer, entrepreneur, and EIR at SP Ventures’ AgTech fund. Bailey is passionate about empowering developers that are solving farming, health, and sustainability challenges through food and agriculture technology. With Leaf, he contributes to broadening industry access and building the tools that food and agriculture technology needs to scale. Leaf provides farm data infrastructure similar to Plaid in finance, Twilio in communications, or Stipe in payments.

Connect with Leaf Website | Twitter