Oli Le Lievre 0:01
G'day. And welcome back to another episode of the humans of agriculture podcast. I hope you're all keeping well, it's nearly springtime. And I tell you down here in Geelong, we've gone through some real blips of absolutely beautiful mornings back down to 01 degrees. But hopefully we're edging closer to some of that great weather. Now, today I'm joined by Jody Kietzke. He is joining us from a backpack out in St. George. So we might have a little bit of sound tweaks in here but bear with us because God is a hard man to get ahold of. We had to lock him down. He is currently working on what is the second company that he's founded. We'll get a little bit more to that. Jordi grew up in North or South Australia's always been around farming absolutely loved it. His early memories are sleeping on the tractor floor while his dad was sowing crops. When I first came across God 2018 We're up at beef Australia. And God walked on the stage. And he must have only just been early 20s I reckon he stood up there and talked about this business that he had co founded. It was using lasers to measure meat eating quality, that company today is called me Q probe. It is going gangbusters and doing incredible things. Jordi is now tackling another problem. He's he's looking at ways to minimize pesticides, using agricultural production, and how this can be enabled through robotics and artificial intelligence to reduce the reliance on pesticides. He studied and ag science degree at university but hasn't spent a whole lot of time with it. Today. He's spending his time pretty well, anywhere across Australia is often I think, got the tools in their hair. His computer was actually sitting in the toolbox to protect it from the wind as part of this chat. If you remember back a little while ago, we sat down with Kellen Daly, who was part of the future young leaders program several years ago at evoke ag now Kalin met this bloke called Jordi. And off the back of that they had a little conversation, Jody said, why don't you come and join us down in Adelaide is the business we're working on. Callum goes home, packed up his bag and a week later is living down in Adelaide. So there's a few synergies. And what I wanted to find out from Jody was what actually got him to apply to the future Young Leaders Program. And as a young founder of a business or co founder of a business, what did it give him? And how's it allowed him to continue to build that network and opportunities for him? So hope you guys enjoy this chat. He's coming to us from Alabama, St. George. So let's get on join him out there. Whereabouts are you at the moment? near St. George today? What's keeping you busy out there?
Speaker 2 2:26
We've got a grower out here, looking at our technology. So doing a few demos and trials and tests and things.
Oli Le Lievre 2:33
And I'm sure you answered this so well in an elevator pitch. And we'll probably flesh it out a little bit more later on. But what is the work that you actually do?
Speaker 2 2:41
We're building technologies to try and help reduce the reliance on pesticides across the board in ag,
Oli Le Lievre 2:46
do you find it hard to answer those questions when people say like, what is it that you do?
Speaker 2 2:50
Yeah, it seems to condense into one sentence. Yeah, I guess what that what that ends up looking like is we are taking a robotics approach to it. So we've developed a few different ways of being able to sense things in the paddock that are important, such as weeds, and then being able to actuate upon them in different ways. So the first product we've got out on the market at the moment is like a spot sprayer. So detects the weight in in the crop. We're mainly focused in horticulture at the moment, but it'll end up in in broadacre. And then it just goes through and just squirts the weed
Oli Le Lievre 3:22
into the thing which I'll say on a little bit about you, but not enough. And so I'm very keen for this conversation. But there's two very clear themes. One is agriculture and the other is technology. Is this just a general curiosity, fascination? tinkering, you've got?
Speaker 2 3:37
Yeah, I'd say it's probably just like a blend of curiosity and a cool problem to solve. It's pretty hard problem to solve. And it's just what I'm passionate about and fires me up.
Oli Le Lievre 3:49
You grew up in South Australia on a farm. Yep. What's your earliest like memory? If you think back of agriculture, what is it today that you can kind of go back to that keeps you involved in the industry and inspired to be part of it?
Speaker 2 4:01
Probably my earliest memories are sitting. I used to sleep on the floor of like a sad tractor and had a I think that was like, whenever dad had to look after us was like babysitting in the tractor and my head or I would where I would sleep was where my head would end up where the clutch is. And so I remember a Rossi boot shoveling me to the to the left a little bit away from the clutch quite often because I didn't cover a clutch if need be. So they were probably the earliest memories on the farm. And I guess it was probably just through osmosis that I ended up being pretty interested in farming and pretty much not leaving since. Is the
Oli Le Lievre 4:40
family still farming? Yeah, yeah. Do your backhand much.
Speaker 2 4:44
Do a bit we like as in flux. ended up doing a fair bit of our fabrication and testing work there because Bosch headspace in Adelaide is pretty expensive. So it's pretty handy to have a welder we could borrow and concrete floor and all that and tractor so yeah, it's been tend to spend a fair bit of time there. It's always good to go for a spin around on the motorbike or jump on a tractor for a bit.
Oli Le Lievre 5:06
And I think with the majority, like what's, what's really interesting is you're on to founding and running kind of your second company. The first one is really humming along and I actually first saw your beef Australian 2018. You walked out with you, Ghostbusters. kind of outfit alongside? I agree with you, the chief technical officer or something like yeah, we long haired fellow pretty tall. Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 2 5:30
would have, we would have looked apart. You'd be glad to know that pretty much every meet process that we went into, you'd walk along the line. And like at least 10 people would yell out Ghostbuster
Oli Le Lievre 5:42
teach. Jumping back before that, in high school was and going through high school. Was it obvious to you? And were you interested in pursuing a career in agriculture? Yeah,
Speaker 2 5:55
like, probably so much. So that I found it very hard to convince myself that I needed to be at school, because, you know, I had plenty, plenty of days off. And I was found myself thinking, Gee, I learn a lot more mucking around on the farm than I do at school. So yeah, like farming was always where I wanted to be. And that
Oli Le Lievre 6:12
that dream was to just go farming? Or did you always kind of have these aspirations to do something more?
Speaker 2 6:17
Well, I guess, like, I had a passion for, like farming and growing things, I thought, obviously, the thing to do is to be a farmer, but then I don't know, I've got a pretty poor attention span, and find myself wanting to work on 5000 different things at once. And, yeah, that sort of led to like, working on a few other different bits and pieces. And yeah, I ended up sort of building technology for agriculture, rather than working on a farm directly.
Oli Le Lievre 6:46
Was that just a natural progression? Or like, what are some of those? When you say, building technologies? What actually were they? And what was your role in that?
Speaker 2 6:53
So I sort of decided at one point in time, I was gonna, I was gonna leave the farm, I was gonna go build some some technology, because I'd heard about startups and software and all this stuff. That was like, still pretty new to me, because I've just been listening to podcasts on a tractor, thinking that sounds right. And then yeah, I guess probably the first step was I just went around, like looking for different problems to solve, because like, I had a list a mile long from our own farm, but I wanted to go and understand just like agriculture more broadly. So I went and like met with dairy farmers, Mango farmers, I went over to South America went to Africa, visited farms there. And I don't know, I think it was just like a massive each scratching exercise to try and understand more than I was pretty familiar with grain production, because that's what our farm was. But then I'd wanted to understand the other sectors to see what problems were there to be to be solved, and then ended up working, sort of in the commercialization of, and product development of different technologies. And one of the things we were doing was the company you mentioned earlier, which is MOQ. And yeah, that was building lasers to measure the quality of meet
Oli Le Lievre 8:06
that business. How old were you, when you became CEO of that company?
Unknown Speaker 8:10
Think that's 22.
Oli Le Lievre 8:11
Holy shit, how many people you're responsible for?
Speaker 2 8:14
Well, at one point, including, so like all our full time staff, contractors, and then we used to have a heap of casuals come in to help with our trials. It was like, somewhere between 20 and 30, like including all the all the casuals, but in terms of full time team might have been like, eight or 10, there was definitely some weird moments where I was in a room with people, at least double my age, getting close to three times my age. And I'm meant to be in charge of them. So how did you find that
Oli Le Lievre 8:43
because like, you were so passionate about solving this problem and could see a way forward. But then actually, when it starts to evolve beyond just being like you and being able to be hands on an adaptive, how do you actually build that out to get other people on board, but also let go of that control?
Speaker 2 9:00
Well, the good thing about startups is it's a very flat structure. So although you're technically up on the hierarchy, you're you're in, you're in charge, you're from an operating spec perspective, you're very much on the ground with them. So like many of my hours were spent doing like some of the boringest least exciting jobs in the whole company.
Oli Le Lievre 9:23
And what are some examples of them? Ah,
Speaker 2 9:26
I would have spent like, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours just standing in, like meat processing plants, using our tool, which is like it is not an exciting task,
Oli Le Lievre 9:37
putting it into carcasses measuring it. Yeah. So you got 10 People upwards of 2030 kind of people when you actually include contractors involved in the business. But if you're so involved in the day to day and grounds piece, like how are you actually making it possible to have the time to get up above that and actually run the business but also drive the direction of where it needed to go. Oh,
Speaker 2 10:00
I guess we tried to hire really good people, whether it was on the meat and trialing side, or software development or algorithm development, tried to hire the best people we could find. So they would, they would take along and he didn't have to hold their hand too much and can use use their own initiative.
Oli Le Lievre 10:17
What are some of the learnings that you got from this? Like, I'd love to know, some of the moments where you thought you're on top of the world, like, how good is this? I've just found the best job in the world the real problem that we're solving, and then also, what are some of the like, oh, shit moments that sit within that?
Speaker 2 10:32
Yeah, probably the some of the best moments were when we'd like brought the whole team together for like a big big trial, a big experiment. And it is like it was properly hands on very long days for many, many days in a row. And then to be able to, like, get to an a good outcome at the end of that, they will like some of the best moments where everyone could sort of say, you know, like, we all had to chip in to get here and we couldn't have done it without if not everyone had chipped in, there were some pretty good moments. We're working pretty hard. So they're like just those those moments whether we were driving you know, 10 plus hour drives across the country where you know, you get to sit with your your co workers and and just have a chat about the world admits like very few hours sleep and all that were like some some good moments,
Oli Le Lievre 11:21
some things that you think look back on pretty fun late, like yeah, just that actually getting to know other people. Yeah, definitely. When I saw you guys presented a a beef Australia 2018. That was very early on. Like, I think you guys were still maybe only in one or two processes by that stage. Is that right? Yeah, I'd
Speaker 2 11:37
say at that point. We were still like in the process of developing the technology.
Oli Le Lievre 11:41
Fast forwarding from that, like, you started to build the business, you got started to get traction, the technology was actually working. You're also part of the evoke act future young leaders. I've spoken to Kalin a couple of times a pretty pivotal moment. And in the sense of, yes, you're young, but you're also see you making decisions and driving business forward. So much so that you meet someone at evoke ag and you're like, why don't you come and work with us? Can you? Can you share a little bit of that, that backstory maybe like, what was it about Callum, but also to getting to meet him and going like, this is that guy? Yeah,
Speaker 2 12:15
I think we were, I think at that time I'd been looking around the type of person we were looking for is not not everyone. It's like, are you happy to like, get up tomorrow? And it's like, oh, yeah, we need you to drive to another state with this box of lasers and like, find your way into a meat processing plant and achieve this outcome. It's like there's not heaps people that can go and do that. Yeah, I think I just met cow. And he was, he'd been on the farm or it was coming off the farm or something. And he was looking for his, what was sorted to come next. Just seemed like he had his head screwed on and was up for a challenge. And I think it was on the I might have met him on like a Wednesday. And we both got the same taxi to the airport on the Thursday. And I was quizzing him to see where he's at. I said, Why don't you come to come down to Adelaide, and work for us? And he's right. He said, I'll ever think it would have only been one or two days later. I think the following week, he was in his huge drive into that light. So yeah, it was it was pretty cool.
Oli Le Lievre 13:11
You're convincing salesman?
Unknown Speaker 13:14
I think he was he was just keen. But little did he know what he was getting himself in for?
Oli Le Lievre 13:19
Well, and were there many people in the business at that time?
Unknown Speaker 13:23
I think it was their first full time employee.
Oli Le Lievre 13:26
Plenty how you took a fair punt on him? Yeah.
Speaker 2 13:28
But he you know, he also took a punt on us. So yeah, that was good. How do you go
Oli Le Lievre 13:33
with the like external pressures of I'm presuming you guys need a capital raise to actually fund the technology. But then also, knowing that yet people are making, I guess, life decisions to relocate states, whatever it might be. And ultimately, as the business driver, you're the one responsible for, hopefully making that a success for them and everyone else, as well.
Speaker 2 13:54
I really try and be as honest as I can, without scaring the absolute living daylights out of people where it's like, you have to remind them, it's like we are, we're a pre revenue company, the technology is in development, it's looking good. But there's an awful lot of work to be done before. You know, we're, we're a big stable company. So if that's the sort of thing you're looking for, now's the time to probably move in that direction. Because if that's not your risk profile, it's going to be such an uncomfortable experience. And it's not a it's not a win for anyone
Oli Le Lievre 14:24
pretty way about going about it.
Speaker 2 14:26
Does it? Does it weigh on you? Yeah, definitely. Because you've got a responsibility as as the leader, I think I probably used to worry about it more. And the way I manage it now. It's just being more transparent and more honest about like, pretty much like paint the clearest pictures you can and then is like the the decisions with you. If it's for you, it's for you. If it's not, it's not and we can, we'll find a way to get there.
Oli Le Lievre 14:48
And in a sense, I guess that honesty is actually then giving them the license that they're empowered to make that decision if they decide to stick around. Well, they know kind of where you guys are at and how you can move forward.
Speaker 2 14:58
Yeah, yeah, and and brings them on the journey where it's like, once they've made that decision, they like Righto. I'm sure like offline, they're they're doing some mental calculations where it's like, you know what, I'll give it six months. If it goes south, then it is what it is, I would have learned a bunch of stuff. But if it's a good outcome, that's that's an awesome outcome.
Oli Le Lievre 15:15
Nothing ventured, nothing gained get after it. So your involvement through agrifutures? started before? Of okay, you're involved in the horizon scholarship? Was that actually how you became aware of what evoke ag was in the event, etc?
Unknown Speaker 15:29
Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Oli Le Lievre 15:30
So what was it the horizon scholarship? Why'd you get involved in that?
Speaker 2 15:34
I think I saw an ad in the stock journal when I was in. In year 12. I was planning on doing Ag Science at that time, so I thought, why not apply for it? Yeah, like looking back, it was such a valuable experience that almost like stuff money can't buy the sort of places I got to go. Like, and I ended up on a, on a grand trading desk in Melbourne, watching grain traders, like move millions of bucks of real and virtual grain around the world. Which was just like, you know, not everyone gets to, to see that sort of stuff. And so yeah, I was really glad that I was able to delay in something like that,
Oli Le Lievre 16:13
how'd that thing come to life? Like, looking back on your future young leader journey? What, what was actually involved in it? And what, from your perspective? What were the takeaways that you got from it?
Speaker 2 16:23
I guess it was like, a really efficient way to just make heaps of heaps of people who were keen to help. Yeah. So throughout the three days, or whatever it was at the event, got to meet all sorts of people who, you know, in various ways have stayed in touch with, which is, you know, a massive help when you're trying to get young and trying to get into the industry. Do you remember what you talked about up on the stage, it was something about how we need to speed up, commercialization Australia has all these pretty amazing resources. So some of the least subsidized farmers in the world, so naturally, they become some of the most innovative. But then you've got like, traditionally, like a lot of Australian universities have pretty good agricultural arms. And so there's all these these researchers there with, you know, years and years of experience in in various different fields. And then you've got sort of a bunch of young people from ag and not from AG, you know, wanting to start startups. I guess my argument is, there's a, such a long list of really cool problems to solve and challenges to address in ag, why not come and solve some of these? So yeah, I guess like the, the talk was about how, what are some of the ways we can speed up both the you know, the IP that's developed within universities, how we can like, develop more of it, and get it out into the hands of farmers faster? And then also just out out in industry as well,
Oli Le Lievre 17:50
on that, specifically for young people who are involved in wanting to get involved and throw their hat in the ring? What would be your message to them, specifically here on the future Young Leaders Program? Why should someone actually go go through and apply?
Speaker 2 18:03
Well, I guess it's just a, it's an opportunity to push, whatever you're trying to do, take it to that next step through whether it's like meeting the right person at the right time, or being able to find the resources to do what you're wanting to do. If you've got a bit of a plan for what you want to do. And you want to take it there. It's a pretty handy resource to be able to do so.
Oli Le Lievre 18:24
I'd love to know, the transition out of me to your previous business into this one coming into starting another, another business, what were the learnings and things that you took into this one?
Speaker 2 18:36
Well, MOQ, we'd spent quite a few years building some pretty hard technology, like playing in the middle of photonic and AI. And biology is like a reasonably messy space to play where you have to, like, get really good at building products because otherwise you just burn time and cash and it doesn't get there. So a few years of feeling the pain of that probably helped in setting up flux where again, like it's it's robotic. So it's capital intense, you've got lots of different disciplines are happening at once model systems systems that will need to talk you're working with biology, right and paddocks with you've got a normal distribution of everything and lots of funny things happening on the the end of the bell curve. And so the approach to overcome the difficulty was, okay, how can we iterate as fast as humanly possible? So when I first started flocks, I was trying to get something in a paddock, at least every week, a new sensor or circuit board or algorithm or whatever it was just like, no matter what, like be putting it in a paddock and be building something, and we're just whatever helps move the ball forward. It doesn't need to be done in worry about the problems we might have in three years. It's like what's the problem we have today? Let's fix that and move forward and have to tried to like, keep that in, sort of embedded in the company culture of like, always be thinking, how can we how can we iterate faster? When you're building something that's never existed before? Pretty much all you have is like a big chunk of assumptions. And you're like trying to work out which of them are the most important assumptions you have? And how can you move through them as fast as you can? Otherwise, you just sit around like twiddling your thumbs scratching your head in front of a whiteboard?
Oli Le Lievre 20:27
How do you approach then I guess the the big term vision of what you guys are trying to achieve? And then actually bring that back into like, do you think of this is how we're going to change the world down the track? What are you really thinking about? This is how we change one farmers life, one industry, whatever it might be?
Speaker 2 20:42
No, so we started with the started with the, like, the longest term vision or goal, which was like, how do we reduce the reliance on pesticides? And there was like, Okay, well, to bring that forward, the way we work, the way we get there, is we start building products that help farmers use less pesticide as soon as possible. And then the bit in between is all the like different product variants and things we can do with the data and all the other bits and pieces.
Oli Le Lievre 21:11
And I'm gonna ask you a super silly question. But I'm wondering it. So maybe when you say pesticides, you're talking about the control of both plants? And insects, other animals in cropping or farming systems? Correct? Yeah. And so is the one that you're focusing more so on initially,
Speaker 2 21:29
yeah, so I'd say like, most directly, we're focused on herbicides, because like our first product, really what it's doing is detecting weeds and spraying weeds. But over time, really, what we're looking to do is like build the build the health of that agro ecological system. And, you know, being doing things like, as we're bringing that, that pressure off the system, being able to have more, you know, a healthier soil, you've got more beneficial insects and all that. So you're starting to reduce your your fungicides and insecticides and all that, which is a, it's a long game, you don't change these systems in a season or two. But that's the that's ultimately where we're heading.
Oli Le Lievre 22:07
It's incredibly exciting. And I'm sure it's something which just like, well, we'll just, there'll be a new problem, and something else comes up. And it'll just keep evolving as I guess, the different sciences, technologies, etc, that is solving one problem today actually evolve within that creates something else for you to work towards.
Speaker 2 22:22
Yeah, yeah. And no doubt, there'll be like multiple, multiple different technologies that all sort of dovetail into a bigger solution.
Oli Le Lievre 22:32
What would you say? Is the dream right now for you with flux and the business that you guys are doing? Yeah, what does that actually look like?
Speaker 2 22:38
Well, we'd like to the company to be at a scale where, you know, pretty much any farmer in the world can be in a position where they can walk out in the paddock and be like, Okay, here's the, here's the challenges where we're facing which flux product can help us sort of achieve the outcome we're, we're looking for here. But to get there, I guess we've got a bunch of things we need to solve for b, that on product development side, you know, we're just starting to gear up our manufacturing at the moment, and learning a lot there through the distribution and how we get these things in front of farmers and on farms.
Oli Le Lievre 23:13
So if we park any company or whatnot, and look at you individually, God like what is motivating you, what's the impact that you want to have in, you know, agricultural, just impact more broadly,
Speaker 2 23:24
probably trying to produce the best food we can, on farms around the world, I think, like, almost take for granted how available food is like you can It's not very often that there's you know, you're not driving past some place that has food in it, I'd say trying to maximize the quality of the food around the world that we're we're producing, because I think just the flow on effects from from food quality, mindblowingly large.
Oli Le Lievre 23:52
And so one thing I'd love to know, and you can tell me to bugger off if you don't want to answer it, but like, what, why do you have the self confidence in yourself to actually be someone who can really make an impact and a really positive impact in this space?
Speaker 2 24:06
Ah, well, maybe I don't maybe it goes back to the pick, pick where we want to be later down the track 1020 years and just worry about like, what are we doing today? To get there
Oli Le Lievre 24:17
until you see that there is actual little things with your skill set, attitude, motivations and things that could actually change something for the better today.
Speaker 2 24:25
Yeah, I mean, I forget who said it. I think it was Steve Jobs, or someone said like the world was built by people no smarter than you and me. I've been lucky enough to meet what you'd call like high up people, you know, CEOs and senators and all that stuff along along the way. And when you do you sort of get reminded that everyone's just like, everyone's pretty much the same.
Oli Le Lievre 24:49
Everyone is like in their own circles, kind of ordinary, but I think we're like I kinda this is what I love about the stories and the different people that we get to chat to through agriculture is actually well, in a certain context or Different ways, everyone's actually like extraordinary when you find the right place where they kind of fit. Totally agree. Yeah. So a question I'll ask everyone that comes on the podcast and I'd be, I'd be keen to understand from you is, like, if you had the chance to go and chat to your 10 students in Metro school, what would you say to them about why they should consider pursuing or even thinking about a career in agriculture?
Speaker 2 25:19
Well, I don't know that I would, I'd, I probably more encouraged them to just work out like, what is what is something that just like, makes, you know, their heart burn, like fire them up in their belly, find a way to like, go and do more of that. And if you can make a career out of it. That's, that's a bonus. And then I would probably go on to explain that, for pretty much any job you can think of you can do an ag. And the sort of bonus points you get is like, you can work in all sorts of cool places like St. George, the people are awesome. You wake up knowing that no matter what your job is, pretty much yeah, you know, you're trying to help get better food on more plates. And that's tends to be pretty important for for most humans.
Oli Le Lievre 26:08
And I actually really love that you've also challenged me on that in the sense of actually going back to what is it about that person? And then looking at that next piece that sits below is, Can agriculture be something they can do? In most cases? It is. So a question mulga asked it when I sat down with her. And so I'm going to ask you as well. But what are you actually passionate about? And is that what you're doing today?
Speaker 2 26:35
Yeah, well, I try to wait, what am I actually passionate about? Because I'm passionate about all sorts of things. I think what I'm passionate about is, is solving important problems that I think I'm half, well place to, to solve. It's like if I don't do it, and like 10 Other people don't do it. Is this going to? Is it going to be solved?
Oli Le Lievre 26:55
I love that. And so one final question, you can answer it with a question. What question Would you like me to ask a future guest?
Speaker 2 27:05
Let's think the question like, what's something you'd love to explain to people that you haven't had the chance to?
Oli Le Lievre 27:12
Or electrostatic that's a great one, it'd be really interesting to see what different people think yeah, a different life stages, or whatever it might be, or different contexts that might be literally, that other people or someone else might be one person that that person wants to sign it? That's a really cool question.
Speaker 2 27:27
Yeah, I think just helped Squeeze, squeeze lemon out of it, where, you know, someone's got something on the tip of their tongue. But none of the questions have hidden but all your all your questions have been spot on. So maybe you're just a good interviewer.
Oli Le Lievre 27:39
Just do more research on your God. Just curious right. Now, really, really interesting. And thank you for taking the time to pull over on the side of the road in St. George, and appreciate you having a chat. But also, I think what you're doing is so cool. And so interesting. And I'm excited to follow the journey of your business, but actually more some were more interested to follow your journey and see what happens.
Unknown Speaker 28:02
Thanks for Thanks for inviting us on. Cheers.
Oli Le Lievre 28:08
Well, that's it for another episode from us here at humans of agriculture. We hope you're enjoying these podcasts. And well if you're not, let us know hit us up at Hello at humans of agriculture.com. Get in touch with any guests recommendations topics, or things you'd like us to talk and get curious about. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Right subscribe, review it, any feedback is absolutely awesome. And we really do welcome it. So look after yourselves. Stay safe. stay sane. We'll see you next time. See ya.
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