Episode description

Variable Rate done RIGHT with SWAT MAPS: https://swatmaps.com/

Cquesta website: https://cquesta.com/

FOA 200: Drones for Spraying, Seeding, and Pollinating with Rantizo

Michael Ott is the CEO of Cquesta, a deep root trait company that helps crops tolerate stress and earns carbon credits to farmers with no change in agronomic practices.  Michael is also the Founding CEO and Board Member at Rantizo, the nation's largest drone-spraying company. 

Before Rantizo, Michael worked in corporate venture capital backed by Monsanto, Novozymes and Bunge, where he invented a patented technology that delivers a tiny amount of nitrogen to a rice seed as it grows.  Michael has a Master's degree in Chemistry from the University of Iowa and two decades worth of experience in finance and agriculture.  He is an author on five patent applications and has raised over $180 million in investments over the course of his career. Michael was named PrecisionAg 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year.

Michael and I talk about Cquesta and what makes this technology unique, what’s not working in the current soil carbon market paradigm, how they plan to bring together seed companies, farmers, carbon credit buyers and others to make this model work, why he jumped right back into another agtech startup right after Rantizo, and more.