Future of Agriculture

Tim Hammerich

This show explores the people, companies, and ideas shaping the future of the agriculture industry. Every week, Tim Hammerich talks to the farmers, founders, innovators and investors to share stories of agtech, sustainability, resiliency and the future of food. We believe innovation is an important part of the future of agriculture, and real change comes from collaboration between scientists, entrepreneurs and farmers. Lead with optimism, but also bring data! For more details on the guests featured on this show, visit the blog at www.FutureOfAgriculture.com.

  1. Technology at the Farm-Gate with Nebraska Farmer Quentin Connealy

    3D AGO

    Technology at the Farm-Gate with Nebraska Farmer Quentin Connealy

    Follow Quentin Connealy on X Connect with Q on LinkedIn "Between 2 Farms" Podcast I’ve known Quentin Connealy just from following him online for several years now. Not only is he an entrepreneurial, forward-thinking farmer, but he’s also one of the nicest people in ag that you’ll find online. I’ve been meaning to get him on the podcast for a while, and I’m making more of an effort this year to talk to farmers like him about farm-level innovation this year, so it was the perfect time. We’ll get right into it here, but first just some helpful background on Q: Quentin Connealy is a fifth-generation farmer from eastern Nebraska, where he raises irrigated corn and soybeans along the Missouri River with his family at QJ Connealy Family Farms. Deeply rooted in production agriculture, Quentin focuses on bridging the gap between traditional farming and emerging technology—bringing real-world perspective to how innovation is adopted on working farms. With a background in interactive media and business, Quentin has become a vocal advocate for precision agriculture, data ownership, automation, and practical ag-tech solutions that deliver value at the farm gate. He regularly works with technology companies, researchers, and policymakers to test, validate, and communicate what actually works in the field. He gained international fame in May 2017 after a video of him wakeboarding in a flooded ditch on the edge of his cornfield went viral, amassing millions of views within days. Since that time, Quentin has become an active speaker and content creator, sharing honest conversations about grower adoption, sustainability, and the future of food and farming. Just this year he launched a new podcast of his own called “Between 2 Farms” with co-host Nathan Faleide.

    39 min
  2. Agricultural Exceptionalism and Farm Policy with Jonathan Coppess

    MAR 6

    Agricultural Exceptionalism and Farm Policy with Jonathan Coppess

    Jonathan Coppess Research Page: https://ace.illinois.edu/directory/jwcoppes "The Fault Lines of Farm Policy" book "Between Soil and Society" book Today’s episode explores an important area of agriculture that I probably don’t talk enough about on this show: ag policy. I wanted to bring Dr. Jonathan Coppess on the program to ask fundamental questions like: Is ag policy working? Is the Farm Bill still relevant? What has changed in ag policy and what needs to change? As you’ll hear we dive into this and a whole lot more. For some quick background: Jonathan Coppess is the Gardner Associate Professor of Agricultural Policy in the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The author of two books on the legislative history and political development of farm policy (THE FAULT LINES OF FARM POLICY, and BETWEEN SOIL AND SOCIETY), he is a member of the farmdoc project and a frequent contributor to farmdoc daily. Jonathan previously served as Chief Counsel for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, as well as on a temporary, part-time basis as a special counsel. Prior to his service on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, Jonathan served as the Administrator of the Farm Service Agency at USDA and Legislative Assistant to Senator Ben Nelson. Jonathan grew up on his family’s farm in Western Ohio.

    47 min
  3. Gene Editing and the Future of Plant Breeding with Tom Adams of Pairwise

    FEB 23

    Gene Editing and the Future of Plant Breeding with Tom Adams of Pairwise

    Pairwise: https://www.pairwise.com/ FoA 412: 'Biological' Is Not A Category (it's the future of agriculture) I’m excited to share today’s episode with you. I’ve wanted to get Tom Adams back on the show ever since I had the chance to interview him at World Agritech a couple of years ago. That interview was included on episode 412 of this podcast titled “Biological is not a Category”. The work Pairwise is doing is mind boggling to me. Using CRISPR and the latest in gene editing tools, they have built a platform to enable plant breeders to make very precise changes to the genome of a plant to give farmers and consumers more of what they want. Now this is different from genetic modification or GMOs because they are not inserting foreign genes into the plant. In fact, they are doing the exact same thing that plant breeders have done for over a century, they are just able to do it in an extremely precise way. On another podcast that I host, Agriscience Explained, Corteva’s Reza Rasoulpour explained natural breeding as wanting to change one word in a book by just combining all of the pages of two different books and hoping that word changes. Versus gene editing just going in and changing that one word in the book. I thought that was a good comparison. So Tom and his team are bringing this technology to agriculture by working with seed companies and other partners in a variety of use cases, many of which we’ll discuss today. A little background on Tom: Dr. Tom Adams co-founded Pairwise and serves as Chief Executive Officer. Tom has over 25 years of leadership experience heading up biotechnology for global companies, serving most recently as Vice President of Global Biotechnology at Monsanto where he led the team developing a broad range of innovative products. Tom wanted to realize the possibilities of CRISPR and gene editing in plants, and co-founded Pairwise to realize this potential in a mission-based environment. Formerly a faculty member at Texas A&M University, Tom holds a PhD in microbiology and plant science from Michigan State University and a BS in botany and plant pathology from Oregon State University. Tom and I talk about Pairwise’s continued work in this area, some of the cool developments that are under way, some of their strategic decisions like going the partnership route rather than being the seed company themselves, a little bit more about how the technology works, how this changes the game and who captures the value.

    34 min
  4. Does Organic Farming Have a Tillage Problem? | Andrew Smith, Ph.D. of the Rodale Instititute

    FEB 12

    Does Organic Farming Have a Tillage Problem? | Andrew Smith, Ph.D. of the Rodale Instititute

    Rodale Institute: https://rodaleinstitute.org/ "History of the Rodale Institute" on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nxSYYUMJ6F8 Today we’re talking to Dr. Andrew Smith of the Rodale Institute. I originally wanted to bring Andrew onto the show to talk about the history of the Rodale Institute and it’s contribution to agricultural research. Rodale Institute is a nonprofit growing the organic movement through rigorous, solutions-based research, farmer training, and consumer education. But I ended up focusing more on questions related to tillage, organic claims and realities, and what they’re learning from their long term farming systems trials.

    44 min
  5. An Agtech Entrepreneur's Nightmare: The Story of Wootzano

    FEB 4

    An Agtech Entrepreneur's Nightmare: The Story of Wootzano

    Wootzano: https://www.wootzano.com/ Atif Syed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/syedatif/ Via Atif's LinkedIn post "I never thought I’d have to write this. Wootzano, the British robotics company I built from nothing, is at risk of being shut down not because of commercial failure, but because of a procedural trap. Yesterday, after a petition by Innovate UK Loans Limited (UKRI), the Court issued an order that instantly froze Wootzano’s bank accounts. That created an impossible situation: In Scotland, a company cannot speak in court without a solicitor. A solicitor must lodge our appeal. But with accounts frozen, we cannot pay a solicitor." And if we don’t file the appeal by 28 November, liquidation becomes final. A functioning deep-tech company can be silenced without ever being heard. This is not how innovation should die. Wootzano took an £838k Innovate UK Innovation Loan, a government lender, in 2022, a product marketed as patient, flexible capital for high-growth innovators. Flexibility is even built into the contract. But when our funded subsystem didn’t reach commercialisation, no flexibility was offered, and the matter went straight down the standard debt route. If this can happen to us, it can happen to any of the 240+ UK companies on this loan programme. Wootzano is: 🇬🇧 The only British ag-robotics company for post-harvest to ship commercial robots to Japan and various other countries 🤖 Active in 6 countries 🔧 Supporting UK engineers, suppliers, and farmers 📈 Delivering £537m+ worth of contracts 🌍 Representing Britain on global trade missions 💡 Backed by diverse shareholders, from farmers to technologists, who believed the UK could lead in robotics Losing this to a procedural freeze, not a business failure, will destroy trust in British deep-tech nationally and internationally. We need to get a solicitor initially to file the appeal before the deadline. Appeal deadline: 28 November Every hour matters Even a share of this post helps. I have spent years building this with an extraordinary team. I am not giving up, but right now, the company is legally unable to act without help. If you believe in fairness, due process, and protecting UK innovation, please support or share this widely.

    33 min
  6. Forecasting the 'Underground Weather' with Bruce Moeller of AquaSpy

    JAN 21

    Forecasting the 'Underground Weather' with Bruce Moeller of AquaSpy

    AquaSpy: https://aquaspy.com/ On the show today is Bruce Moeller, before buying AquaSpy in 2009 Bruce was already a serial entrepreneur, a former president of a publicly traded company, and an author of two books. He successfully grew and exited Culture Works and Drive Cam, which was an early dash cam company. He decided to apply the idea they used at Drive Cam to use technology to capture what hadn’t been easily recorded previously, to agriculture. Specifically in-situ monitoring of soil conditions around a plant’s roots. So Bruce and his team bought AquaSpy, a company out of Adelaide, Australia in 2009, so really early in this part of agtech, and they’ve been operating it ever since. Bruce is not from an ag background, but as you’ll hear he looked at this as more of a feature than a bug. To describe AquaSpy, Bruce uses the analogy of the ecosystem of the rhizosphere, this area of soil around the roots of having it’s own weather. And AquaSpy being a tool to check the weather down there, which has all sorts of applications, especially with their latest feature, which allows them to also measure in-situ nitrogen in real time. We talk about how AquaSpy is approaching their technology and the problems it solves for farmers, and we talk about how AI is enabling them to move in a more predictive direction with the data they’re collecting.

    33 min

  7. JAN 8

    Checking the Pulse of the Ag Robotics Industry with Tim Bucher of AgTonomy and Dominique Mégret of Ecorobotix

    Five Questions About The Ag Robotics Revolution (FIRA 2024 Reflections) The Next Great Ag Equipment Brand will be Autonomy-First with Charlie Andersen of Burro Autonomous Sprayers with Gary Thompson of GUSS Making Spot Spray Technology Accessible With Jaisimha Rao of Niqo Robotics The Path To Superhuman Farming with Curtis Garner and Brent Shedd of Verdant Robotics Category Design with Dan Schultz THE BIG REGRESSION (by Jason Fried on X) I attended FIRA USA a few months ago, which is a great event focused on agricultural robots and autonomous solutions. Like I did last year, I wanted to share some reflections on the current state of the ag robotics sector. Today you'll hear from AgTonomy CEO Tim Bucher and Ecorobotix CEO Dominique Mégret on today’s episode about how autonomy in agriculture is much more than a way to reduce labor needs. It’s about re-thinking what it means to farm better. And while these solutions are finding their footing, we’re still a long way from widespread adoption. We talk about both the opportunities and the challenges of ag robotics and automation on this episode!

    45 min

  8. JAN 2

    Where is Agriculture Headed in 2026 and Beyond? Insights From Seven Ag Podcasts

    Podcast episodes featured: Where Will Demand Come From? | Damian Mason PodcastWill China’s cheaper tractors disrupt ag equipment? With Lachlan Monsbourgh | Agtech - So What?Reducing Weeds and Pests with Regenerative Mulching Systems with Erwin Westers | The Regenerative Agriculture PodcastField Intelligence: Elliott Grant on AI in Agriculture | Fresh Takes on TechAg's Efficiency Preoccupation Problem with Andrew Hoelscher of Farm Strategy | The PaceSetter PodcastRethinking Food and Ag Investments - The Quiet Trends Reshaping The Industry | The Modern AcreGenetic Progress Made Simple: Feed Intake, IVF, and AI Tools for Cattle | Farm4Profit For the third year in a row, I contacted the hosts of seven different ag podcasts to see if they would identify one of their episodes from this past year that they think is most indicative of where the agriculture industry is headed in the future. Once again, they all came through and I’m excited to share clips with you from these seven podcasters. Some of the themes are similar to last year like genetics and AI. Which I think is a good sign. If the themes changed every year it would probably be an indication that were wrong. Haha. But there are new themes that I think you will definitely find interesting. Themes we will be discussing today include the struggling farm economy, the growth of foreign agriculture equipment, the rise of systems-based thinking and regenerative approaches on farm, where artificial intelligence is making an impact in agtech, Food as health and what that means for agriculture and how genetics is changing the game in cattle and really every area of agriculture. Other Episodes Referenced: Where is Agriculture Headed in 2025 and Beyond? Insights from 7 Different Ag PodcastsFoA 395: Where is Agriculture Headed? Insights From Six Different Ag PodcastsTrade Wars and the Farm Economy With Bill RidleyHow China is Changing Global Ag Trade With Ian LahiffeTractor Wars with Rhishi PetheAI For Regenerative Agriculture With John KempfGoing All-In on Customers and AI WIth Devon Wright of LumoBetter Food For More People With Clayton Mooney of Clayton FarmsBusiness Model Innovation in Cattle Feeding With Kee Jim

    43 min
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4.8
out of 5
253 Ratings

About

This show explores the people, companies, and ideas shaping the future of the agriculture industry. Every week, Tim Hammerich talks to the farmers, founders, innovators and investors to share stories of agtech, sustainability, resiliency and the future of food. We believe innovation is an important part of the future of agriculture, and real change comes from collaboration between scientists, entrepreneurs and farmers. Lead with optimism, but also bring data! For more details on the guests featured on this show, visit the blog at www.FutureOfAgriculture.com.

Information

  • Creator
    Tim Hammerich
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    466
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2019 All Rights Reserved Future of Agriculture
  • Show Website
    Future of Agriculture

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