Calgren Renewable Fuels https://www.calgren.com/ Maas Energy Works: https://www.maasenergy.com/ California Milk Advisory Board: https://www.realcaliforniamilk.com/ Dairy Sustainability Award: https://www.usdairy.com/media/press-releases/2021-dairy-sustainability-awards-winners-10-year-anniversary Today’s episode is a great story of collaboration, public-private partnership, innovation, and sustainability. Before I introduce the guests on today’s show, let me set the scene for you a little bit: a...
Nov 03, 2021•38 min
OWL GitHub https://github.com/geezacoleman/OpenWeedLocator Weed AI https://weed-ai.sydney.edu.au/about Guy Coleman Twitter: https://twitter.com/GeezaColeman William Salter Twitter: https://twitter.com/williamtsalter Video: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/guy-coleman_the-openweedlocator-owl-is-now-live-its-ugcPost-6835703385925283840-LdvF On the show today we have Guy Coleman, and William Salter. Guy is PhD Student at the University of Sydney and Fulbright Future Scholar currently based at Texas A...
Oct 27, 2021•37 min
AgOpenGPS: https://github.com/farmerbriantee/AgOpenGPS Autonomous Tractor Skiing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-T-rrny1Vk Brian's Twitter: https://twitter.com/efarmerdot Brian Tischler is a farmer in Alberta, Canada. He farms with his neighbor who he shares equipment with to cover a combined 2,500 acres of wheat, barley, oats, canola, flax, and peas. He started his career in the medical technology industry, which you’re about to hear more about, but then he bought his family’s farm when his ...
Oct 20, 2021•39 min
OGRAIN: https://ograin.cals.wisc.edu/ YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/uwipm/search?query=erin%20silva Today’s episode is all about organic farming. Now, organic may be a concept that you have strong opinions about one way or another, but no matter what your perspective, I really encourage you to listen to what our guest has to say. I originally invited today’s guest, Dr. Erin Silva onto the show to clear up one specific question I had: are organic standards so restrictive that it ma...
Oct 13, 2021•39 min
Precision AI: https://www.precision.ai/ Fulcrum Global Capital: https://www.fgcvc.com/ Protein Industries Canada: https://www.proteinindustriescanada.ca/ Today’s episode is another great example of how artificial intelligence and computer vision are impacting the ag industry. Today’s episode will focus on a row crop application. Specifically, we’re talking about new drone spraying technology from Canadian startup Precision AI. Long time listeners will recall that we’ve talked about drone sprayin...
Oct 06, 2021•37 min
SomaDetect: https://somadetect.com/ Prime Future Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/ Our guest on today’s show Jordan Lambert actually mentioned back on episode 261. She has a technology that is easily installed in a milking parlor that collects milk data at the individual cow level. Not just on milk quality - which is one big factor, but also on cow health. It turns out, the milk can tell us a lot about how that cow is doing. This way, a dairy producer can see trends in not just their...
Sep 29, 2021•36 min
Benson Hill: https://bensonhill.com/ Today’s episode features Matt Crisp, CEO and co-founder of Benson Hill. Benson Hill describes themselves as a food tech company unlocking the natural genetic diversity of plants with its cutting-edge food innovation engine. Basically, they are trying to improve plant-based ingredients by attacking every aspect of the value chain from seed to processing to sales. The “plant-based” movement so far, has been trying to mimic the flavors and nutrition of the produ...
Sep 22, 2021•39 min
AGCO Corp: https://www.agcocorp.com/ Louisa Parker-Smith: https://news.agcocorp.com/news/agco-names-louisa-parker-smith-director-of-global-sustainability Email Newsletters: Upstream Ag Insights: https://upstreamaginsights.substack.com/ Software is Feeding the World: https://rpethe.substack.com/ Today’s guest is Louisa Parker-Smith, who is the Global Head of Sustainability for AGCO Corporation. Most of you listening know all about AGCO - they are a major farm machinery designer, manufacturer, and...
Sep 15, 2021•39 min
Visit Bushel online: https://bushelpowered.com/ Today’s episode takes a peak inside one of the hottest agtech companies to come along in recent years: Bushel. I’ve known about Bushel for a couple of years now, and originally just understood them to be a company that was digitizing scale tickets, which is actually how they started. Scale tickets, for those of you who don’t know, are the paper receipt that accompanies a load of an agricultural commodity that usually includes how much was delivered...
Sep 08, 2021•37 min
Learn more about SWAT Maps: https://www.swatmaps.com/ Fieldwalker Agronomy: https://fieldwalker.ca/ Jonathan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZRAgri Today’s episode is all about precision agriculture, so if you’re into agronomy and variable rate technology, or what our guest would prefer to call optimal rate technology, you’re in for a real treat. If these terms are new to you, at a basic level we are talking about technology that is being used to understand the variability of a field so that the...
Sep 01, 2021•33 min
Inari: https://inari.com/ "From Farms to Incubators" book: https://bookshop.org/books/from-farms-to-incubators-women-innovators-revolutionizing-how-our-food-is-grown/9781610355759 We have on the show Ponsi Trivisvavet, who is the CEO of Inari, the SEEDesign company that uses predictive design and advanced multiplex gene editing to unlock the full potential of seed to build a more sustainable future for the food system. Ponsi joined Inari in 2018 when they were just over a year old. Since that ti...
Aug 25, 2021•35 min
www.futurityfood.com www.linkedin.com/in/jackbobo www.twitter.com/Jack_a_Bobo TED Talk: Why we fear the food we eat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thiOicCQRWY White paper: The role of innovation in transforming the food system: https://animalagalliance.org/resource/white-paper-the-role-of-innovation-in-transforming-the-global-food-system/ I have on the show a guest whose work I’ve followed for a long time, and someone who I’ve connected with a handful of times over the years, and am really gla...
Aug 18, 2021•40 min
SWARMFarm Robotics https://www.swarmfarm.com/ Burro https://burro.ai/ Farmwise https://farmwise.io/ ZTractor https://ztractor.com/ Carbon Robotics https://carbonrobotics.com/ TerraClear https://www.terraclear.com/ Today’s episode is going to be a highlight reel from a virtual event I hosted for the FoA community. That event was an ag robotics roundtable, which featured six robotics companies to have a discussion about the challenges and opportunities of bringing more automation to agriculture. T...
Aug 11, 2021•37 min
PMA Takes on Tech: https://www.pma.com/content/podcast/takes-on-tech Aromyx: https://www.aromyx.com/ Today's two part episode starts off with a higher-level picture of the innovations in produce with Vonnie Estes, vice president of technology for the Produce Marketing Association. Then we’ll drill deeper into one aspect of food quality, arguably the most important aspect of food quality: flavor. For that we’ll talk to Josh Silverman, CEO of Aromyx, a company that is digitizing taste and smell. I...
Aug 04, 2021•36 min
This episode is brought to you by AgVend ( www.AgVend.com ) Today’s installment of our Tech-Enabled Advisor series is really an insightful look at how a farmer-owned cooperative is leaning into the digital changes that are happening in our industry to remain relevant and provide value to their farmer shareholders. KC Graner is the senior vice president of agronomy at Central Farm Service , a co-op in southern Minnesota. As an advocate of the cooperative system, KC has spent his career embedded i...
Jul 28, 2021•38 min
Today’s episode is broken down into three parts: first, a brief primer on some of the issues contributing to the issues in California. Second, one potential hydrological solution going forward: groundwater recharge. And finally, we’ll talk about water markets by highlighting the new Nasdaq Veles California Water Index. To help me tell each of these three stories I have for you three different guests that you’ll hear from today: Dr. Safeeq Khan, Dr. Helen Dahlke, and Lance Coogan. You can also li...
Jul 21, 2021•38 min
Resilient Biotics: https://resilientbiotics.com/ Fulcrum Global Capital: https://www.fgcvc.com/ My guest on today’s show is Chris Belnap, the CEO of Resilient Biotics, which is an early-stage animal health company that develops microbiome-derived, live therapeutics for livestock. In other words, they analyze the microbes that naturally live inside of cattle, then they administer those that are most beneficial to make the cattle more resilient to certain diseases. Specifically they are focused on...
Jul 14, 2021•39 min
Ranveer Chandra: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/ranveer/ Overview of Azure FarmBeats: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/industry/agriculture/overview-azure-farmbeats FarmBeats: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/bill-gates-features-farmbeats-on-gatesnotes/ Microsoft has been making waves in the agtech industry with its FarmBeats project and Azure cloud computing service. That effort can be traced back to 2015 when today’s guest, Ranveer Chandra, wrote a me...
Jul 07, 2021•37 min
World Resources Institute: https://www.wri.org/ Follow Rich on Twitter: https://twitter.com/waiterich Recent blog post: https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/08/us-agriculture-emissions-food More from Rich: https://www.wri.org/profile/richard-waite Our guest today has spent years diving into this question of the environmental impacts of the food system, and what can be done to optimize the amount of food that gets produced and distributed, while minimizing the negative externalities of that system. Rich...
Jun 30, 2021•42 min
Thanks to FieldAgent by Sentera for sponsoring. Visit https://sentera.com/ . On today’s episode I’m joined by Todd Vagts who is a technical agronomist for the Channel Seed brand which is part of Bayer Crop Science. Based in southeast Minnesota, Todd works with Channel salespeople and seed dealers (who they called “Seedsmen”), to make sure they are up to date with technologies and to problem-solve in the field. Todd is a farmer as well - lives 30 minutes from the farm where he grew up. Todd has a...
Jun 23, 2021•38 min
Today’s episode highlights two interesting consumer trends in food and agriculture. And on the surface, these two trends seem to be going in totally opposite directions, but not necessarily as you’ll hear from our guest today. The first trend is the increasing desire for healthier, simpler, more nutritious food. The second is that demand for processed food is strong and getting stronger. You might be thinking, wait aren’t those two things complete opposites? Well, not necessarily. Our guest toda...
Jun 16, 2021•31 min
My guest today, Allan Fetters, is a third generation agriculturalist who has worked in agribusiness for over 30 years. I say agriculturalist, because he was not born into a farm family, but a family that has been working selling products to farmers. However, he recently also started doing some farming himself in addition to his consulting. In today’s episode, I try to glean as many insights as I can from Allan’s vast experience in agriculture technology. We touch many of the important aspects of...
Jun 09, 2021•32 min
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 e...
Jun 02, 2021•35 min
PLEASE COMPLETE OUR LISTENER SURVEY: https://airtable.com/shrCB33GWIUCIxVRU Today you’re going to get to hear the story of Dave Oien of Timeless Seeds and Timeless Food. He shares how he figured out how to convert to organic when very few thought it was possible, then how we built a seed business that ultimately became a food business. And make sure you stay to the end for some really interesting comments about resiliency. Dave returned to the farm in Montana and convinced his dad in the 1970s t...
May 26, 2021•31 min
Today’s episode is brought to you by FarmQA ( www.FarmQA.com ) Today’s guest is Shannon Winny with GroWest Ag Ventures in Central Saskatchewan. She is a Professional Agronomist and a Certified Crop Advisor. About 18 months ago she decided to start her own company to meet the need for independent agronomy services in Saskatchewan. Farming is a team sport. Certainly nobody shares the same risk profile as a farmer, but every successful farmer that I can think of has strong relationships with people...
May 19, 2021•35 min
Check out the SWAT Agronomy Podcast on any podcast platform! Please participate in our listener survey to help us focus the direction of the show: https://airtable.com/shrCB33GWIUCIxVRU If you’ve ever tried to grow any food crop - shoot, even a garden - you know that insect pests are unavoidable. Over the past 100 years, chemical pesticides have been developed as efficient and cost effective ways for farmers to manage these pests. But as I’m sure you know, they are not without their downsides: p...
May 12, 2021•36 min
Please participate in our listener survey to help us focus the direction of the show: https://airtable.com/shrCB33GWIUCIxVRU While we here in the U.S. have an agricultural system built upon exports, while our guest today lives in Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates which currently imports 80% of their food. What we view here as needed viable technology to create a more sustainable agriculture is likely to be different there. We have on the show His Excellency Dr. Tariq Bin Hendi. Dr. Tar...
May 05, 2021•33 min
Check out the SWAT Agronomy Podcast on any podcast platform! Please participate in our listener survey to help us focus the direction of the show: https://airtable.com/shrCB33GWIUCIxVRU Over the past decade, one of the areas agriculture has changed significantly is in the number of available digital tools that can be used on the farm. On the surface this is a great thing, but if - and only if - these tools are easy to use and produce actionable results. And even then, a farmer is only going to u...
Apr 28, 2021•35 min
Today’s episode is brought to you by FieldAgent by Sentera . One key piece of the agtech conversation that often gets overlooked is the most likely customer for a lot of digital tools may not actually be a farmer. For many of them, an advisor to that farmer may be the one actually performing that task, and may have the biggest vested interest in adopting cutting-edge technologies. We’re calling this little mini-series “The Tech-Enabled Advisor.” We will profile some of the farmers’ advisers: agr...
Apr 21, 2021•33 min
Please participate in our listener survey to help us focus the direction of the show: https://airtable.com/shrCB33GWIUCIxVRU Today we get a unique global view into agtech and agribusiness. We are joined by Greg Meyers, who is the Chief Information Officer and Chief Digital Officer of Syngenta based at their world headquarters in Switzerland. Most of you are familiar with Syngenta but you may or may not know they are the largest crop protection company in the world and the third largest seed comp...
Apr 14, 2021•34 min
