“It turns out that in agriculture, we have some big problems we’re trying to solve, and we have some people with technologies that could really help us,” explained Aidan Connolly, chief innovation officer at Alltech. “But we really have to help them to help us.”

With the population steadily rising, it is important to find sustainable ways to nourish the masses. At ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17), 10 ready-for-market companies took the stage by telling a crowd of 4,000 potential investors and business partners what their plans are to disrupt the industry.

How can these companies change the way we farm and the way we eat?

Agrilyst: Determined to help indoor farmers save money and increase yields through data collection, Agrilyst aims to be an at-home digital agronomist pushing farmers to achieve year-round revenue.

AgriWebb: Optimizing farm efficiency and looking to solve a $25 billion issue in agriculture, AgriWebb supports farmers by tracking their data and accreditation needs.

 “I wanted to solve real problems for real people,” Kevin Baum, co-founder and CEO of AgriWebb, told the crowd.

Alesca Life: As a company that allows commercial-scale farming anywhere, Alesca Life saves water, promotes urban farming and meets the demand of fresh produce and organic food. Because farms are available in a shipping container, Alesca Life CEO Stuart Oda said that his company provides “local food production by anyone, anywhere.”

eFishery: Overfeeding at shrimp and fish farms is a big issue in aquaculture, especially when 80% of the total cost at farms is feed. eFishery senses a fish’s appetite, adjusts the amount of feed needed and automatically distributes it to reduce a farmer’s cost by up to 21%.

Greengage: When light can affect a chicken’s physiology, behavior and productivity, farmers should look to Greengage for a solution. Their LED lights that can last 60,000 hours can reduce mortality rates, increase yields and lead to more productive chickens.

Hargol FoodTech: As the world’s first commercial grasshopper farm, Hargol FoodTech is disrupting the industry by proposing a new, sustainable grasshopper protein. With 72% protein, essential amino acids and a neutral taste, it has the potential to become a power protein player in providing solutions to our world’s future food crisis.

MagGrow: An astounding 70% of what is sprayed does not reach the target crop, and as the CEO of MagGrow, Gary Wickham, said, “It’s waste,” particularly when 80% of the world’s available water is being used for agriculture.  By using a magnetic spraying system, MagGrow disrupts the status quo by reducing water drift by over 80%. It is “truly using less to grow more, and that’s what the world needs,” explained Wickham.

Moocall: Using calving sensors to measure contractions, Moocall can predict when a cow is going into labor. This innovative device will text and email a farmer an hour before the cow gives birth, marginalizing the $2 billion loss farmers experience per year due to cow and calf death during birth.

SkySquirrel: Utilizing the disruptive technology of drones, SkySquirrel has created a technology used for monitoring crop health. This invention can save the wine industry $15 billion per year by detecting diseases in the vineyard.

Tevatronic: “What do you think will happen with a system that will decide for you?” Oleg Koral, Tevatronics CEO, asked the crowd. The company, which is revolutionizing the future of irrigation, has developed an autonomous system that knows when to start and stop irrigation on crops so they receive just the right amount of water at the right time.

The culmination of a 15-week program called The Pearse Lyons Accelerator, the 10 companies (which were chosen out of almost 200 applicants) have been provided with mentorship and new industry connections. They also received over €300,000 in software perks from Google, Amazon and Softlayer.

“Since starting The Pearse Lyons Accelerator 100 days ago, we have doubled our revenue,” Agrilyst CEO Allison Kopf enthusiastically told the crowd.

Connolly, one of the mentors of The Pearse Lyons Accelerator program, gave future and current entrepreneurs a piece of advice before ending the session.

“You have to be passionate about what you do, but the focus is absolutely critical,” he said. “The business is not going to come to you; you have to go and find the business.”

One thing is clear: with disruptive ideas from around the world and a growing interest by investors in agriculture, a sustainable future seems more possible than ever before.

“In many ways, there’s nothing we do that has a bigger, more negative impact on the planet than agriculture, and yet, there’s nothing more critical for our daily survival,” said Jack Bobo. “The challenge we have is how to maintain and grow the benefits while reducing all those negatives.”

Bobo, chief communications officer at Intrexon, is very optimistic about the ability of scientific and technological advances in agriculture to reduce those negative impacts even as the population surpasses 9 billion.

Agriculture’s impact on land and water

Currently, agriculture takes up about 40% of the Earth’s land area. The total amount of cropland is roughly equivalent to the landmass of South America. Pasture takes up about the same area as Africa.

As agriculture demands more land, the inevitable result is deforestation, with agriculture and deforestation combined responsible for 25% of our greenhouse gas production.

Agriculture’s water consumption is an even more serious problem. Nearly 70% of the Earth’s freshwater is used for agriculture. Lakes across the world are being depleted, and the Colorado River no longer flows to the ocean. Some of our most important aquifers are being drawn down past the point of recovery.

Ag-tech: Savior of a hungry, malnourished and growing world?

With so many resources going to agriculture, how is it possible that people still go to bed hungry?

According to Bobo, 9 million people die from hunger and malnutrition each year, far more than any other cause. That means that 25,000 people die each day from hunger and malnutrition. And we will need to produce 60% to 100% more food by 2050.

So, why is Jack Bobo optimistic? Because agricultural technology has made incredible improvements in the last few decades.

We are producing more food with fewer resources than ever before. Bobo compared corn production inputs per bushel for 1980 and 2011.  The improvement was striking:

• 40% less land
• 60% less erosion
• 50% less water
• 40% less energy
• 35% fewer greenhouse gases

It seems the ability to produce more food with fewer resources should make everyone optimistic about the future of agriculture. Clearly, that isn’t the case. According to Bobo, “consumers have never cared more, nor known less, how their food was produced.”

Farmers make up roughly 2% of the U.S. population. Consequently, very few people even know a farmer today, and they have very little knowledge of how their food is actually grown.

“If people don’t understand your industry, then it’s up to you to change that,” said Bobo.

Some food companies actually compound the problem by using outdated imagery of very small farms to market their products. Or, some will market to misperceptions because it is more in their interest to cater to that belief than to eradicate it.

Distrust of agricultural science and technology can result in regulations that will make it difficult to meet the challenge of feeding 9 billion by 2050.

It’s important, according to Bobo,  that scientists work to gain people’s trust by telling their stories and explaining why they do what they do instead of just presenting the science.

“If people don’t trust you, the science doesn’t matter,” said Bobo.

To listen to our entire conversation with Dror, click on the player.

Tom:                Selected from more than 180 applicants, Hargol FoodTech is among the 10innovative food and agriculture ventures around the world brought to Lexington to make its case for investment. Co-founder and CEO Dror Tamir is among presenters in The Pearse Lyons Accelerator program — his latest stop in what has been an enormously successful whirlwind world quest.  Hargol … is in the grasshopper business. Dror, thank you for joining us.

Dror:                You're welcome. Happy to be here.

Tom:                We're pleased you're here, especially given all the traveling that you've been doing. We'll get into that in just a moment because it's very interesting. But first, I have to ask, edible grasshoppers. Do tell.

Dror:                Yes. Well, I can start with the story about the expected increase in global demand of protein. It is expected to double by 2050. And we all know that existing protein sources have their limitations. So the demand for alternative, high-quality protein will skyrocket. That's one story.

                        The other story is grasshoppers are the most widely eaten insect in the world, by about 2 billion people worldwide, mainly in regions where there is a lack of protein in people's diet. Today, they just collect them in the wild, and it means that they have a very limited season of four to six weeks. We will enable them to farm them year-round and reduce their cost significantly.

Tom:                I understand that you have developed a way to lengthen the normally short breeding season of edible grasshoppers. Is that correct?

Dror:                A little bit different. What we did was shorten the eggs' incubation period. In the wild, it takes about 40 weeks for the eggs to hatch, which means they can have one cycle a year. And what we did, we incubate in an incubator the eggs and we reduce the period to two weeks, meaning that we can have 10 cycles per year.

Tom:                And how did you come up on this idea? What instigated it?

Dror:                The funny story is, I'm an accountant. So accountants have very strange ideas. But the real story is, my previous startup, Plate My Meal, is dealing with obesity prevention and, while working about that startup, I learned about malnutrition and the lack of protein in people's diet. So as an entrepreneur, when you see a big problem, you start looking for a solution, and I came up with grasshoppers.

Tom:                When we think of grasshoppers, of course, especially in this country, we think of a bug. However, there are other parts of the world where it's nothing at all to have a handful of grasshoppers. What is the end product like? Is it a powder? Or is it a grasshopper?

Dror:                Both.

Tom:                Both?

Dror:                Yes. Just south of the U.S., you have Mexico, and the local grasshoppers called chapulines are a national dish. You have tens of millions of Mexicans in the U.S., and the demand for grasshoppers is high, and there is no supply of them. So when we look at the market potential and the opportunities, we look at two different products. One is, we mill the grasshoppers into a protein powder. We sell it to food manufacturers that produce healthy foods based on it. And we also sell to restaurants in Southern U.S. And that's about 35 percent of the demand that we see from the market.

What does a grasshopper taste like?

Tom:                I have to ask, what does a grasshopper taste like? Not chicken, I'm sure.

Dror:                I'm using that answer, usually. The thing is this: The grasshopper is almost neutral in taste and flavor, so the actual taste depends on the way you cook it. So you can get a taste that feels like shrimps or small fish, a nutty taste, or even a wheaty taste.

Tom:                Tell me about the company's former name and why you changed it to its current name.

Dror:                Oh, that's a good question. Former name was Steak TzarTzar, and, actually, everything started as a joke because steak tartare, we all know what it is. And tzartzar in Hebrew means crickets. So it started like that. And the name really caught, and people really liked it until we had our first investor from the U.S., and said we cannot pronounce tzartzar, you have to change the name. So we came up with Hargol, and that's the name of the kosher grasshopper from the Bible.

Winning global competitions with grasshopper genius

Tom:                Now, as we mentioned earlier, you've been experiencing quite a whirlwind of excitement in recent weeks. How is this interest in your product influencing your plans for the future?

Dror:                That's a complicated question to answer. What happened in recent weeks, we got a lot of attention and attraction from all over the world, and it means that it's hard for us to maintain the focus we had. Our focus is on the U.S. market. We want to produce an ingredient to food manufacturers. Keep it simple with a single product to a specific market. And the attraction from all over the world, from Europe, from Africa, from Asia, means that there's very high demand for whole grasshoppers frozen, freeze-dried, roasted, for powders of all kinds of species of grasshoppers, and we have to maintain focus on what our plans are and keep all these new opportunities to a later stage of the company.

Tom:                You have a great deal of momentum going for you right now, and you are in the midst of some pretty serious globetrotting. Can you describe for me what the past week or so has been like for you in your travels?

Dror:                The past actually three weeks, since we finished the Alltech Accelerator in Dublin. We've been working hard with their team, with (the) Dogpatch team and Alltech, to perfect our pitch. And the moment we finished that demo day, three weeks ago, we applied to several competitions, startup pitching competitions, five of them, actually, and we won all five. Some of them are international. The largest one, just two days ago in Singapore, with over 10,000 startups from over 100 countries, and it's unbelievable for us to imagine that grasshoppers could beat all these amazing technologies. I can only tell that this is the hard work of Alltech and Dogpatch with us to get the pitch to that level.

Could grasshoppers be the next sushi?

Tom:                How do you envision your concept — and I should interject here that I understand that you're targeting two different markets, the grasshoppers themselves and also the protein supplement, I suppose. How do you envision these concepts affecting the average consumer's diet or the dinner table?

Dror:                Well, as we see it, the new protein sources, it will take them a long time to replace existing protein sources. It's hard to change our behavior, our habits. So it's the same as it was with sushi. In the '80s, no one would ever try raw fish in the U.S., and now it's common food you can find everywhere and it's really cheap. And we believe that it will be like that. It will be only insects or only grasshoppers. You will have a variety of new protein sources: plant-based, algae-based, cultured meat maybe, and many, many other sources. And eventually, they will become part of our diet. And we will have, because of that, many new food applications that we will be able to find in the market, and we also see it getting into the pet food industry and feed industry as well.

Grasshoppers…on Mars?

Tom:            There's a lot of lore around this insect, many stories, and I know that you have plenty of them. Can you give us a few?

Dror:                Sure. Let's do some amazing facts about grasshoppers and insects.

                        First, grasshoppers have been around on Earth before the dinosaurs. They're an ancient, very efficient creature.

                        Second thing, grasshoppers are the only kosher and halal insect in the world. They are mentioned on Leviticus as kosher. Actually, that's the name of the company, Hargol.

                        And the last thing is that's our vision in Hargol FoodTech and it will be that missions to Mars will have insects as part of the closed system to support humans on this long and challenging trip.

Tom:                And why is that?

Dror:                Because insects first are really efficient, and they provide zero-waste farming, meaning they can use any waste generated by humans and plants and generate with that protein and fat for the uses of both humans and plants.

Tom:                What do you enjoy most about what you do?

Dror:                It's fun. We're having so much fun. We're having so much laugh about it, so many jokes. The joke I like the most is that our CTO Chanan Aviv, for over 30 years, has been growing, breeding and eating a wide variety of insects, and this is why he is the only guy with hair on his head on our team.

Tom:                Dror Tamir with Hargol, which is among the 10 companies chosen for The Pearse Lyons Accelerator program. Thank you for being with us.

Dror:                Thank you very much.

Dror Tamir presented at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17) as part of a special pitch fest by the top 10 agri-tech startups selected for the Pearse Lyons Accelerator program. To hear more talks from the conference, sign up for the Alltech Idea Lab. For access, click on the button below.

Dr. Pearse Lyons, president and founder of Alltech, took the stage with an enthusiastic smile — a smile that was clearly concealing an exciting secret. Luckily for the 4,000 attendees in the audience, ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17) was just beginning, and the secrets of how to be a disruptor were about to be revealed.

The theme of the conference, “Disrupt the Disruptors,” is about changing the status quo and shaking up the industry by developing and embracing products and ideas that save time and money, improve efficiency and are user friendly.

Aidan Connolly, chief innovation officer and vice president of corporate accounts at Alltech, emphasized the importance of agriculture embracing new, disruptive technologies on-farm.

“If you don’t embrace disruption, you’ll go out of business,” he explained.

Welcoming disruption becomes synonymous with welcoming the future, and the future of agriculture features more efficient farming, faster results and money saved.

Connolly detailed the eight technologies that have the power to transform agriculture through disruptive innovation:

1. 3D printing
2. Robots
3. Drones
4. Sensors
5. Artificial intelligence
6. Augmented reality
7. Virtual reality
8. Blockchain

“Innovation is key to disrupt an industry,” said Connolly.

While it is important for businesses to accept disruption, what does it take for them to achieve disruption in a competitive, ever-expanding market?

Dr. Lyons made his message very clear: “Mainstream companies sell products; great companies sell dreams.” 

To be a disruptor in its industry, a company must sell not only what they are interested in producing, but what the consumer wants; it is a two-way street.

“Being a disruptor is about having the dreams of your people aligned with yours, and your dreams aligned with theirs because, ultimately,” said Dr. Lyons, “they’re the ones who count.”

In addition to realizing dreams through disruption, he explained that these dreams and ideas are not enough — companies must also have ideals. Laying out the roadmap for successful disruption, Dr. Lyons explained the non-negotiable ideals of Alltech:

1. Remaining a privately owned company
2. Reinvesting time and money into our companies, products and employees
3. Speed: Don’t get it right, get it going
4. Having fun

By starting with a dream, innovators and entrepreneurs can begin their journey of disruption. Disruption, after all, begins with just ONE great idea.

“Sometimes you think that to change the world, you need to do the impossible,” said George Blankenship. “I look at it differently. It’s not impossible  —  it just hasn’t been done yet.”

In April 2017, Tesla bypassed General Motors to become the most valuable carmaker in the U.S. Although it only held the top spot briefly, this tech-savvy, boundary-pushing company is not only turning the automotive industry on its head; its innovation is also causing far-reaching disruptions in fields like energy storage, which is critical to the future of renewable energy.

How did a seemingly fringe enterprise blow by some of the most iconic carmakers?
 

According to Blankenship, former executive at Apple Computer, Tesla Motors and GAP Inc., who spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17), it is absolutely critical to assume that someone is going to redefine your industry.
 

“Whoever does is going to hold the world in the palm of their hand,” he said.
 

The disruptive tactic that Blankenship employed at Apple and Tesla focused heavily on giving customers something they couldn’t live without, before they even knew they wanted it. The clearest example is our modern dependence on smartphones, not for the phone itself, but for the wealth of apps that allow us to lead more efficient lives.
 

The key, Blankenship said, is to create a long-term customer relationship.
 

“What can you do that will keep customers wanting to come back again and again?” he asked.
 

Apple now has one of the most loyal communities of customers in the world. Blankenship said the three most important things a company can do to ensure long-term customer relationships include:

1. Letting people know they are important.
2. Letting people know they will be taken care of.
3. Letting people know that you will be available to help them.

Blankenship first executed this strategy at Apple by transforming the company’s brick and mortar stores from simple retail sites to engaging venues where customers could connect directly with a product. They also became the home of the Genius Bar, where customers could stop by to ask for advice about the Apple products they already owned (and purchase even more once they were on-site).
 

Now that greater connectivity and the internet are making it more convenient to learn about products and order them online, the physical stores themselves should be the place where experts make a difference by giving customers time, attention and an experience.
 

Today, this is exactly the stratagem that Tesla is employing. It is redefining the car buying experience by becoming the first car manufacture to put the brand into shopping malls, where families are visiting, taking selfies with their children inside the cars and, of course, asking how soon they can buy the latest model.
 

“You will know if your store is successful and you’re doing a great job if everybody leaves smiling,” explained Blankenship.
 

To excel, Blankenship said it is vital to cultivate a disruptive mindset by doing the following five things:

1. Simplify: Focus only on what’s important.
2. Courage: Don’t listen to outsiders.
3. Alignment: Demonstrate conviction.
4. Celebrate: Successes and failures.
5. First step: Take it!

“So, who in this room is ready to close their eyes, envision the possible opportunities of the next 10 years, and then make a difference that will change your industry forever?” asked Blankenship. “Somebody is going to do it. The only question is: Will it be you?”

Tom:                Technological innovations have the ability to transform every link in the food chain, from seed to fork. We're joined by the author of those words, Alltech's chief innovation officer, Aidan Connolly, to talk about disruption and the accelerating pace of change. Thank you for being with us.

Aidan:             Thank you.

Tom:                “Disrupting the Disruptors” is the theme of this conference. Sounds a little bit like chaos, or are we interpreting that too literally?

Aidan:             Well, you have to remember that although Alltech has become a very large organization employing over 5,000 people, we're still led by an entrepreneur. We're still led by the man, Dr. Pearse Lyons, who created and started the company, and he very much enjoys disrupting things. If you work for Alltech, you would know that. So the conference reflects the fact that he sees the world changing tremendously and that conventional thinking is not going to solve the problems that we are facing. We need to think differently about how we confront those issues, and if we do so, in the right way, we'd profit from our solutions.

What is disruption?

Tom:                That word, “disruption,” is becoming something of a buzzword, and the originator of the theory has complained that the term is frequently used loosely to invoke the concept of innovation in support of whatever it is that person wishes to do. What, in your view, defines meaningful disruption?

Aidan:             Well, it is something that you hear a lot of discussion about, and, obviously, you hear people from universities, people, academics, talking about it. But practically, I feel that innovation is all about doing the same thing better, whereas disruption is about doing things that make the way we do it today obsolete, and that obsolescence of the old ways of doing things is overused as a phrase, there's no question about it. We do hear people talking about things that are fairly conventional and how they're going to disrupt them, but we've seen huge disruption in all markets in the last three to five years. We think of the Uber model disrupting the way that we get moved from place to place, we think of the Netflix way of disrupting the model of how we get our movies, and you look at businesses that are really struggling to cope with the level of disruption of the scene, in particular, in our area, areas such as the food business, grocery stores, shopping malls that are empty, et cetera. So the level of disruption that we're seeing just requires us all in business to think differently about what we do and to really prepare for that business is not going to be the same as — it's not going to be as usual.

Tom:                The pace of disruption today seems to have really accelerated. Won't something soon come along and disrupt your disruptor?

Aidan:             Of course. And sometimes you feel disruption is like being on a conveyor belt. You're walking along, and just about the point that you get to one spot, you have to keep on walking because, if not, you start being pulled back. So there is no question that the level of change in society no longer allows you to come up with a new business model or idea and expect to get away with maintaining that for 10 or 15 years. You have to be on a continuous disruptive innovation pathway.

                        What I would say is that this perhaps is not as different as we think. We did for 200,000 years maintain pretty much a hunter-gatherer existence. We started farming about 10,000 years ago. That led to the development of cities and civilization and the time to think and innovation and art and all of the creative stuff that we're doing today. We have to assume that although we're seeing acceleration, which seemed mind-boggling in the last 10 years, that's going to continue. It might even accelerate.

Investing in disruptive ideas

Tom:                Do investors in disruptive technologies or innovations need an iron stomach? Do they need to be pretty tolerant of risks?

Aidan:             I think a lot of people use the phrase “I'm looking to invest in a unicorn, I'm looking for the unicorn, and I'm trying to figure out what a unicorn is.” But, of course, the unicorn, in their language, is this one business opportunity that you invest $10,000, $100,000 and magically, over a number of years, with the insight that they have to create businesses worth $100 million or $1 billion. The reality is, there are very few of those out there, and, of course, they are well-reported in the newspapers and in the media because that is what people are excited by.

                        I think if I'm an investor, I have to assume, as we always do, that we're going to have some successes, we're going to have some failures and we're going to have a loss in the middle.

                        And make sure that you maintain a portfolio approach to how you invest. So would I invest $10,000 in one project, or would it be better investing $1,000 in 10? I would feel the 10 is always the better way to go.

                        Yes, there are people out there with unique insights into where the future of the world is going to go, but the vast majority of us are not that lucky. And as such, we have to embrace what we see as the opportunities but also be prepared to spread our risk.

                 Digital technologies that will transform how we farm

Tom:                 In a recent article, you identified eight disruptive digital technologies with the power to transform agriculture. Which technologies made that list?

Aidan:             I hope I can remember all eight now off the top of my mind, but I remember we have hardware solutions, such as drones and robots, sensors. We have the software applications of virtual reality, enhanced reality, artificial intelligence. Of course, we think a lot about the internet of things, bringing all of these together. From my perspective, all of these have tremendous opportunities to change the way in which business is done — all types of business — but the gap between where we are today and where we could be in food and agriculture is even larger.

                        So, from that perspective, I think that the gains can be much greater. You take a technology such as blockchain, which most of your listeners probably will not know what blockchain is. It's a little bit like bitcoin to allow you to have transparency in a system where you don't actually know who manufactures, who transforms or changes it, who packages it and who delivers it. The food system is a classic example of that. But you need that transparency to make sure that if there's a food scare, if there's a requirement for going back and finding where something bad happened, you can do so.

                        So blockchain is another transformation of technology. But, from my perspective, all of these eight areas all can transform food and agriculture. Some of them are closer to being implemented. For example, robots we already see being used on farms to help milk cows, sensors to detect the water content of soils so we can irrigate better. But then others, maybe like virtual reality, are further away, will require larger investments, and as of yet, we're looking to the future, not looking at today.

Tom:                Among them, is there one or are there some that you find really compelling?

Aidan:             I think people talk a lot about the internet of things, and that clearly is the central point of all of this. As in feedback from devices from the information you're collecting, bringing that back  to your systems, to your computers and being able to analyze and understand what you're seeing.

                        But fundamentally, I think artificial intelligence is the one I would go for. That is the one that I think is the most transformative, the most disruptive and the one I'm most excited by.

How should businesses deal with digital disruption?

Tom:                Borrowing from a question that you've raised, given that artificial intelligence, or AI, has the potential to revolutionize many areas of a company's operations, including their decision-making processes and their budgeting abilities, how best for an organization to invest in and leverage AI?

Aidan:             That's a really good question, and obviously I posed it myself in the article we published on alltech.com and on my LinkedIn page. I think you have to be extremely hard-nosed about really understanding what the technology is and who's behind it. And, of course, for most of us, we don't feel comfortable asking some of these writing algorithms or mathematical formulae, "Now, how do I use this? What does it do?" But it has the ability to transform life and transform, in particular, work life. So we really have to dig into it, and the classic questions exist of “What is it going to do for me and for my business, my customers? How is this going to help me make more efficient or better or do so at a lower cost?” Examples of where it's being used today, that's clearly something that is very, very important. So while I wouldn't necessarily focus on existing sales, I'd like to look at existing uses and applications.

                        I think, while a lot of us feel very uncomfortable with trying to understand technology, I don't see any aspect of business today which will not be affected by it. So I think it's kind of important for us all to read as much as we can, research these areas. There are tremendous articles online on the internet that you can read. And obviously, don't rely on one. Read many of them. But I've also recently formed a kitchen cabinet of friends who I know I can call on who have the time and the interest to understand this better than me, who can give me very good advice as to whether, from an Alltech perspective and/or my customers' perspective, whether something being promoted actually has the ability to deliver what it says it can deliver.

How innovators and tech entrepreneurs deal with failure

Tom:                How important is it to the technological entrepreneur, the innovator, to accept risk and even accept the possibility of failure going into it?

Aidan:             It's absolutely essential. So if you think of the types of companies I've seen in my short space looking at this since the creation of The Pearse Lyons Accelerator, it's surprising to me how many things can happen that you just can't predict. You can have somebody sadly fall ill. In one case, I saw somebody who's in his 40s die of a cancer that we did not know when he was setting up his business, so obviously, he could never have. We've seen situations where anchor customers go out of business, the customer that you're most reliant upon.

                        So you have to accept that when you're talking about 10 or 100 or 1,000 companies, a certain percentage of them will have things happen to them which are just not predictable. And back to my suggestion of taking a portfolio approach to how you invest or how you select, obviously you can do your best to find the companies you think are likely to succeed. But if you try picking a single company, I think you're always taking a risk, a very large risk that your investment strategy will not be successful.

Tom:                And if it's not successful, if failure turns out to be the outcome, what should happen then? What should you do with that?

Aidan:             Well, ideally, it should be money that you can afford to lose. I mean, that's the essence. For yourself, personally, or for your company, you shouldn't be overextended into something.

                        I met a company last week who have twice invested in technology that they were told would transform the way their factory worked. They, in one case, invested $600,000, the next case $300,000, and both times the software failed to deliver on its promise. So they're down $1 million. If they couldn't afford the $1 million, they shouldn't have invested it. It is clear they believed that if they succeed, this will put them at a tremendous competitive advantage over everybody else in their business, but at the same time, you have to understand many of these technologies don't succeed.

Bringing it back to the kitchen table: How will ag disruption impact the consumer?

Tom:                How does this ongoing disruption in the agriculture sector affect the average consumer's kitchen table?

Aidan:             It could affect it in many, many ways. The most obvious, which was surprising to me, was to see a 3D printer printing food. If you think that's hard to believe, just imagine a cake being produced where the machine is just moving in circles and it's basically using food ingredients to print out the cake and create it perfectly. So will that be capable of producing burgers and fries in the future? I'm not sure about that, but why not? That 3D food printer today is about $3,000. So, maybe expensive, but starting to sound like it's within the realm for people who wish to do that. I could imagine the same thing clearly for drinks, maybe being even easier when drinks are so deconstructed.

                        If I think about what it could do from the point of view of traceability, I see McDonald's having a virtual reality farm visit. So if you are the type of person who wants to go to McDonald's — and this is being held in England — and you want to see where their food is being produced, their potatoes, their beef, their tomatoes, you can actually put on the goggles and you can visit their farm virtually without ever having to leave the store.

                        And if you think in terms of what's happening in traceability of food, I mentioned blockchain earlier. This is very important as well for places like China. But Walmart having used blockchain in China is bringing it back to the United States and implementing it here to make for better traceability. When there is any sort of issue with packaging, maybe even food safety, they know exactly where in the chain the problem occurred and how to solve that problem quickly.

                        So I see these will basically, I believe, hopefully help to continue to make food more affordable, make food safer. I'd like to think it will add flavor to food and allow consumers to do what they said they want, which is to understand more where their food comes from.

Tom:                Alltech Chief Innovation Officer Aidan Connolly, thank you so much.

Aidan Connolly spoke at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17).To hear more talks from the conference, sign up for the Alltech Idea Lab. For access, click on the button below.

Former Tesla executive George Blankenship receives Alltech Medal of Excellence at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference

Innovative and influential disruptor recognised for his contributions to the customer experience

Alltech’s conference, now in its 33rd year, opened today in Lexington, Ky, USA

[LEXINGTON, Ky] – Former Tesla Motors, Apple Computer and GAP Inc. executive George Blankenship received the Alltech Medal of Excellence at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE 17), an event dedicated to inspiring innovation in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, May 21-24. Now in its 33rd year, the annual international conference is expected to draw approximately 4,000 attendees from nearly 80 countries to network and discuss disruptive ideas in business, technology, food and agriculture.

Blankenship received the Alltech Medal of Excellence from Dr. Pearse Lyons on the main plenary stage in Rupp Arena at ONE17. Alltech’s highest accolade, the medal is awarded annually to someone of great accomplishment and leadership. Previous honorees include former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Norman Borlaug, the father of “the Green Revolution.” Blankenship received the medal in recognition of his ability to create unrivaled customer experiences with two of the most disruptive brands of our time: Apple and Tesla.

“George Blankenship is the epitome of disruption, and I pay homage to his strategies in leadership and breaking the norm,” said Dr. Pearse Lyons, president and founder of Alltech. Businesses that think they can thrive by doing the same things again and again will not thrive and survive in this era of disruption. Our ONE conference this year is all about celebrating those who take risks and disrupt the norm.”

Blankenship pioneered Apple, Tesla and GAP’s retail philosophies, transforming the customer experience. At Apple, he crafted one of the most dominant retail growth strategies in recent history, growing brand loyalty and exponential profit. Then, at Tesla, Blankenship redefined the car buying experience, moving the Tesla brand into shopping malls, something never done before by a car manufacturer.

“I am thrilled to be here today,” said Blankenship. “Never ever let anyone get in the way of what you know is the right thing to do deep down inside. This conference is about the ONE thing that makes a difference.”

Blankenship shared his disruptive advice with the record crowd at ONE17:

• Pick ONE thing to focus on. That ONE thing could turn into something magical.
• Sometimes you have to think about doing the impossible.
• Have a simple message.
• Celebrate your successes and your failures.
• To change the world sometimes you have to do the impossible. It is not impossible; it just has not been done yet.

Follow highlights from ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference by visiting one.alltech.com, and join the conversation online with #ONE17.

Speaker presentation clips will be made available in June on the Alltech Idea Lab. Learn more and sign up for access at ideas.alltech.com.

[LEXINGTON, Ky.] — In just a few short weeks, some of the brightest scientific thinkers from colleges and universities around the world will gather under one roof for an opportunity to compete at the highest level and be rewarded for their innovative research. The Alltech Young Scientist (AYS) program, now in its 12th year, features the world’s largest agriscience competition, with 154 nominations from 134 professors representing 121 universities from 36 countries in 2017 alone.

The regional finalists will attend AYS Discovery Week, held in conjunction with ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17), May 21–24 in Lexington, Kentucky, to present their papers to a panel of international judges. The prizes include a fully funded Ph.D. position for the global undergraduate winner as well as $5,000 USD and a fully funded postdoctorate position and $10,000 USD for the global graduate winner.

The regional finalists selected for the graduate AYS award and their paper topics are:

• Tanimowo Damilola, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
  • “Broiler nutritional programming using betaine”
• Syed Saad Gilani, University of Adelaide, Australia
  • “Gut health biomarkers in poultry”
• Delano Dias Schleder, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil
  • “Shrimp resistance to stress and disease”
• Jonas de Souza, Michigan State University, United States
  • “Fatty acid metabolism”

The regional finalists selected for the undergraduate AYS award and their paper topics are:

• Sophie Hazelden, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom
  • “Pre-weaning dietary supplementation in piglets”
• Sujiyanto, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia
  • “Trehalose supplementation for heat-stressed broilers”
• Nicolàs Curubeto, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Argentina
  • “Edible coatings for food applications”
• Joshua Gukowsky, University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States
  • “Detecting antibiotic residues in foods”

“The Alltech Young Scientist program provides a great opportunity for students to showcase their research talent in front of a global audience, including some of the most respected leaders within agriculture and agriscience,” said Dr. Aoife Lyons, director of educational initiatives and engagement at Alltech. “We are rewarding the undergraduate and graduate competition winners with the opportunity to join our global team.”

For more information about the Alltech Young Scientist program and to view the regional placements from this year’s program, please visit: AlltechYoungScientist.com and stay connected through the Alltech Education Facebook page.

Tanimowo Damilola, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, has been selected as a graduate regional finalist for the 2017 Alltech Young Scientist program.

Syed Saad Gilani,University of Adelaide, Australia, has been selected as a graduate regional finalist for the 2017 Alltech Young Scientist program.

Delano Dias Schleder,Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, has been selected as a graduate regional finalist for the 2017 Alltech Young Scientist program.

Sophie Hazelden,Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom, has been selected as an undergraduate regional finalist for the 2017 Alltech Young Scientist program.

Sujiyanto,Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia, has been selected as an undergraduate regional finalist for the 2017 Alltech Young Scientist program.

Nicolàs Curubeto,Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, Argentina, has been selected as an undergraduate regional finalist for the 2017 Alltech Young Scientist program.

Joshua Gukowsky,University of Massachusetts Amherst, United States, has been selected as an undergraduate regional finalist for the 2017 Alltech Young Scientist program.

[LEXINGTON, Ky.] — ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference (ONE17), held May 21–24 in Lexington, Kentucky, will host a focus session specifically dedicated to the equine industry. Experts and enthusiasts alike will gather for intriguing discussions on innovations in the industry, from disrupting traditional nutritional and breeding practices to brand development.

“We believe it’s important for those in the equine industry to gather here, in the horse capital of the world, to be inspired to harness the disruption on the horizon for horse health,” said Dr. Pearse Lyons, founder and president of Alltech. “Our equine focus session will facilitate open discussion and drive disruptive thinking for the future.”

ONE17 equine focus session

• Disrupting Traditional Nutritional Practices: How do we rethink diet formulations for horses? When it comes to equine nutrition, how can we bring new discoveries and techniques out of the lab and into the mainstream?
• Using Enhanced Nutrition and Partnerships to Drive Market Share Growth: While others were cutting costs and cutting corners, find out how Gain Feeds harnessed innovation, research and traceability to set themselves apart with premium offerings and, in the process, became Ireland’s biggest selling feed brand.
• Thinking Differently: The Secrets Behind Growing the Iconic Coolmore Brand: Beginning from humble roots, Coolmore has grown into a premier global brand and a household name. Discover the secrets that contributed to building one of the leading equine operations in the world today.
• Breaking the Mold on Traditional Breeding Techniques: Hear from one of the pioneers of equine embryo transfer and surrogacy as she shares the lessons that were learned from these innovations as well as what other practices and methods may be on the horizon. What role does diet play? Have we overlooked blind spots that may present opportunities for disruption?
• Changing the Face of Breeding and Performance Through Genomics: Genetic testing is becoming more accessible and affordable with each passing year. What are some of the unexpected ways that DNA profiling is already changing our industry? Is it cause for concern, or is it cause for excitement?
• Driving Tourism in the Horse Capital of the World: When you close your eyes and think of Kentucky, what do you see? For many, they see rolling pastures, miles of fences and picturesque horse barns, thanks in large part to the work of Horse Country and its partners. Learn how these collaborations are built, what it takes to brand a region and build a revenue stream, and if it could work in your area.

For more information on the ONE17 equine focus session, visit http://one.alltech.com/equine.

ONE17 is approved for 7 ARPAS and 35 AAVSB RACE continuing education units.

Join the conversation on Twitter with #ONE17.