Future of Agriculture Tim Hammerich

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com
Soiltech Wireless: https://www.soiltechwireless.com/
Today’s episode features Soiltech Wireless founder and CEO Ehsan Soltan. To try to summarize, Soiltech Wireless builds sensors and platforms that helps farmers and downstream partners produce more with less by optimizing inputs, organizing manpower, and collecting data from the farm and beyond more seamlessly. Ok, what does that mean? Their flagship product is a small round device that appears indestructible - that’s my claim not their’s - but it’s meant to either be buried in soil or to be placed anywhere else that the data it collects can be useful such as a developing crop or a warehoused harvest. Soiltech has its own app for cell phones and tablets and its own web browser application for farmers to interact with the data, but they and have also integrated with other parties as well to make sure customers can access the data wherever makes the most sense for them
I really enjoyed this interview in which Ehsan will share about the technology and the company, how they’ve relied on early farmer customers to really guide the development of the product and even become early investors, and some of his thoughts on agtech more generally. Coincidentally, I found out after reaching out to him for an interview that he and I live in the same town, so that was kind of a cool connection as well. 
Before Soiltech, Ehsan was living Taiwan and working in the telecommunications device manufacturing industry. But his wife was from Southern Idaho and her mother works for a potato packing house, so she was really the genesis for the whole venture to get started and off the ground.
Special thanks to Jim Cupples for the guest recommendation.

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com
Trusted Advisor Partnership: https://trustedadvisorpartnership.com/
General Mills' regenerative agriculture commitment: https://www.generalmills.com/how-we-make-it/healthier-planet/environmental-impact/regenerative-agriculture
"Trusted Advisor Partnership with Dr. Abbey Wick" on Soil Sense: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soilsense/episodes/Trusted-Advisor-Partnership-with-Abbey-Wick--Ph-D-e1virlc/a-a9dbsgs
"Soil to Cereal with Dr. Steve Rosenzweig of General Mills" on Soil Sense: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/soilsense/episodes/Soil-to-Cereal-with-Dr--Steve-Rosenzweig-of-General-Mills-e20191k/a-a9evon2
Today’s episode features soil scientists Dr. Steve Rosenzweig of General Mills and Dr. Abbey Wick of North Dakota State University.
There’s been plenty in the media and even on this show about the idea of paying farmers for carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services. But what often gets lost in the conversation is how do changes in practices like reducing tillage, planting cover crops, integrating livestock, etc. actually happen? I mean there’s a lot of risk involved. In some cases there is new equipment that needs to be purchased, new techniques to develop, new thought processes to exercise and new expertise needed. Sure, financial incentives can help with this, but what’s equally important are collaborators, supporters and trusted advisors. 
That’s what today’s show is all about. We’ll start out by talking to Dr. Steve Rosenzweig about General Mills interest in soil health. Where that’s coming from, what it means to their business and what led them to programs like the Trusted Advisor Partnership in North Dakota. Then we’ll talk to Dr. Abbey Wick who is an associate professor and soil health extension specialist at North Dakota State University about this Trusted Advisor Partnership program, how it works, and why its important. Then we’ll wrap things up with both Abbey and Steve to discuss why it’s important for food companies to collaborate in this way. 
Both of these interviews were originally conducted for the Soil Sense podcast, which I co-host with Abbey. If this stuff interests you, I highly recommend you check that show out. The full interviews for the audio you’re about to hear can be found as episodes one and two of the current Soil Sense season. 

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com
Fyto: https://www.fyto.us/
It’s not every day that we get to feature a promising new crop on this show. Especially one uniquely suited to convert dairy manure into a high quality protein-rich and palatable feed. Jason Prapas is the founder and CEO of Fyto, which is pioneering the commercial production of aquatic plants that are not only nutritious for animal feed, but also highly productive. But to truly make their mark on agriculture, Fyto will need to scale. Are aquatic plants the answer for converting waste into animal feed? Fyto’s Jason Prapas has the answer on today’s Future of Agriculture podcast. 
Jason and I are going to discuss the systems they are developing to commercially grow aquatic plants. Now, we are not talking about algae here. As Jason will explain, their focus right now is growing a very small plant that’s commonly referred to as duckweed. Fyto is in the process of setting up their systems on dairy farms to grow this crop in the effluent from the cows and have it immediately readily available as a high protein feed. 
He’ll explain what makes these types of plants so important and promising for the future of agriculture. I learned a ton in this episode, and I think you might learn a thing or two as well. It’s super interesting. 
Jason has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Prior to Fyto, he was the Director of Translational Research at the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design. There, he led the Center’s efforts to select, shape, and position projects for large scale deployment, and helped develop 8 spinout companies in 18-months across the energy, health, agriculture, and water sectors. He was also an instructor of entrepreneurship courses at MIT Sloan School of Management. 
Prior to that role at MIT, Jason was the Co-Founder and CTO of Factor[e] Ventures, a venture development and investment firm.Years ago he also worked as Process Engineer for the world's first algae-to-biofuel company, GreenFuel Technologies. 

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com
Feedlot Health by TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods: https://www.feedlothealth.com
TELUS Agriculture and Consumer Goods: https://www.telus.com/agcg
Over the past five years or so, a Canadian telecommunications company has established themselves as a major player in agtech. Telus Agriculture has acquired a number of agricultural technology companies including Feedlot Health Management Services. 
Tye Perrett is the general manager of services and pharmaceutical supply at what is now Feedlot Health by Telus Agriculture and Consumer Goods. They are one piece of an overall strategy to optimize the food value chain through connected data from farm to fork. This is an ambitious vision, but Telus likely has the resources and patience to see it come to fruition.  Tye and I will talk about Feedlot Health specifically, both before and after the acquisition by Telus. We’ll also learn a little bit more about Telus’ overall approach to ag data. And we’ll get some of Tye’s thoughts on data, artificial intelligence, and the future of agtech. 
This a bit of a shorter episode because it was originally intended to be a 5-7 minute spotlight. But when it came down to it, I thought it would be worthwhile to share the whole thing, so I hope you enjoy. 
Dr. Tye Perrett is a veterinarian by training who joined Feedlot Health in 2004, where he currently manages the administrative and consultant teams.

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com
Norm: https://www.fbn.com/norm
Farmers Business Network: https://www.fbn.com/
Today's episode features Kit Barron and Charles Baron of Farmers Business Network. However, today's episode is not about Kit or Charles as much as it is about Norm, FBN's AI-powered Ag advisor tool that they launched just weeks ago, but already has me fascinated about the potential impact on the future of agriculture.
Charles has been on the podcast before, but it was clear back on episode 75, which aired in October of 2017. In that episode he provided a lot of the basics of Farmers Business Network which was founded in 2014, and is best known as a farmer-to-farmer network and e-commerce platform. 
Kit Barron has worked with farm data for a very long time with familiar names such as The Climate Corporation and FarmTogether. He now serves as the Head of Data Science and Analytics for FBN. 
Charles, Kit and I talk a lot about Norm, the potential for artificial intelligence to provide useful advice for farmers, and what this means for agtech in the future. Like do we need API’s for example as data pipelines if we can train AI’s to go get the data we need. It really presents a lot of interesting questions about the future of agriculture. Questions Norm and others will someday be able to answer. 
Be sure to stick around for the end of today’s episode where you’ll hear Kit, Charles and I come up with the idea to have Norm write a script for a potential intro to this podcast episode, then I give that script to another AI tool called Descript which generates an audio of that script in my voice. I’ll be honest it’s a little spooky what’s possible, so stay tuned for that. 
To kick things off though, Charles is going to provide a little catch up since our last interview nearly six years ago. Then you’ll hear Kit’s voice describing more about Norm specifically. 

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com
Bibamba: https://bibamba.com/
The Business of Food Newsletter: https://jenniferbarney.substack.com/
 Mara and Patrick Tcheunou live in Denver, Colorado. In 2015, they decided to buy a farm in Cameroon where Patrick is originally from to grow cacao.
Their first harvest was ready to go in 2020 - the year the pandemic started and the world changed. Circumstances pushed Mara and Patrick into creating their own unique single-source product line of premium chocolates, which they branded Bibamba.
So how did they overcome all of the many challenges of creating this full value chain from scratch? And what are the pros and cons of living in the US while operating a farm in a country like Cameroon?
The fascinating story of a young chocolate company on today's future of agriculture podcast.