Dr. Ranveer Chandra, chief scientist at Microsoft Azure Global, joins us to explain the company's FarmBeats project and how it is taking the guesswork out of agriculture. According to Chandra, data-driven agriculture makes operations more profitable and sustainable — but some farmers rely simply on their instincts and personal experience to make decisions about their crops or animals. Chandra and the FarmBeats project seek to provide these farmers with data and insights about their operations that will help them make informed decisions for their production.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Ranveer Chandra hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                          Dr. Ranveer Chandra is the chief scientist at Microsoft Azure Global, and among the projects he is currently leading is FarmBeats, where he is principal researcher.

                                    The goal is to enable data-driven farming with the aim of improving yield and reducing cost while ensuring sustainability.

                                    Dr. Chandra joins us from Seattle. Thanks for being here, Dr. Chandra.

Dr. Chandra:             Thank you for having me.

Tom:                          And let’s begin, if we could, by laying out some fundamentals. There is this imperative to increase the world’s food production by 70% by 2050. What is driving this effort?

Dr. Chandra:             As you know, the world’s population is increasing, there is more urbanization, more and more people are moving to cities, and there is a need to feed this growing population of the world. That is, the amount of land is not increasing — the amount of good land — the water level is, like, going down, the soil is not getting any richer.

                                    So then, the question is: How can we feed this growing population of the world to — and not just feed them food, just give them food, but give them good food and grow this food in a sustainable way?

Tom:                          I mentioned data-driven farming. How does that differ from traditional agriculture?

Dr. Chandra:             Yeah. A lot of decisions a grower makes are based on guesswork. So, when I started this project, I went and talked to several growers. What I realized is that growers, these producers, they know a lot about their farm; they’ve been farming there for decades and, in some cases, even centuries. Like, there was one farmer who could feel the soil and say what’s going on. There was another farmer who could taste the soil and say what’s going on. But even though they knew a lot about their farm, a lot of decisions they made were based on guesswork — like, for example, how much water to apply, where to apply, what seeds to put, when to put out, when to harvest, when to plant. A lot of these decisions are based on guesswork.

                                    If this guesswork was replaced with data and data-driven insights like a vision is, if you could take a farmer’s knowledge and augment it with data and data-driven insights, you could enable a future of agriculture that is more productive. You could grow more that is more profitable because you would reduce cost; you would use less inputs, less water, less pesticides. It’s also better for the environment for the same reasons: that you’re not wasting water, you’re not wasting pesticide.

                                    So, that is what I mean by data-driven agriculture: the ability to use data to augment the farmer’s knowledge, so that farmers are more profitable and they’re using sustainable practices for their farming.

Tom:                          I’m imagining a field of crops, and perhaps one corner of it, or one section of it, is usually drier than other sections of it, and that can be difficult to detect. Is what we’re talking about here being able to detect areas that need more moisture or less moisture, for example, that kind of thing?

Dr. Chandra:             Yes. So, you’re then able to, like — for example, meaning which, I believe, if you would farm properly, you will have sensors everywhere. You would be able to see what’s going on throughout the farm. Wherever there is stress, you’d be able to respond to it in a timely way. And that’s very difficult to do. Like right now, mostly, you don’t know what your entire farm looks like. With data-driven agriculture, we can give you that view of what your farm looks like at any instant in time. Not just in terms of imagery; maybe even in terms of sensors. For example, what might be happening below the surface.

                                    So, one, you’ll be able to detect what’s going on, and second, you might be able to diagnose why are you seeing what you’re seeing, so that you can then take corrective action and fix that — and exactly to your point that there could parts of the farm that are very different than the others in different ways. For example, it could be in terms of crop stress, it could be in terms of nutrients, it could be in terms of moisture, water stress. And to be able to flag that in a timely way so that you can take corrective action is where data can help.

Tom:                          Okay. Tell us about the FarmBeats project. How does this work?

Dr. Chandra:             The FarmBeats project started in research, and the goal was exactly what we discussed: How do you take guesswork out of agriculture? How do you enable growers to take more decisions based on data and data-driven insights?

                                    And toward that, we have been developing various methods, both in terms of the Internet of Things, being able to get data from the farm, from different sources about the farm. For example, you can have sensors and drones and tractors in the farm, you could have satellite data, weather data. All of these data being able to bring all of that together in one place in the cloud, and bring the benefits of the cloud in artificial intelligence on top of that data, so that you can then start driving insights to the growers.

                                    And that is what we have been doing in the FarmBeats project: coming up with new ways to bring data from remote parts. For example, using new connectivity technologies, being able to leverage a news TV channel to send and receive data, so that even if you have no internet right now, you could then use this new method to start sending data using technology such as edge compute.

                                    That is, if you have a camera somewhere in the farm, sending all that data to the cloud will take a long time and will need a lot of bandwidth. You could, instead, be doing a lot of processing on the farm itself using edge compute. And then, when you bring all of these data to the cloud, you’re bringing new artificial intelligence tools to be able to merge different data streams.

                                    For example, you could be having very few sensors on the farm. We then use artificial intelligence to start predicting what the sensor values would be in other places where you don’t have sensors so that, at low cost, you can then start building these detailed maps of the farm.

                                    So, with the FarmBeats project, that’s what we’re building. We are building this platform for data-driven agriculture, the ability to bring data from different data variety of streams in a way so that you can then start running AI, artificial intelligence techniques on top of that data to drive new insights, to be able to predict things that you otherwise wouldn’t know.

Tom:                          I wonder, how can you gather data from farms that have no access to power in the field — or connection to the internet, for that matter?

Dr. Chandra:             Yeah, and that’s what makes agriculture so fascinating. As you know, my background is in computer science. I’m a computer scientist, and I work in different areas, not just agriculture.

                                    When I started working in agriculture, I realized that the agriculture poses very interesting problems to technology. For example, these farms, many of them do not have any internet; many of them don’t have power. That is, you don’t have power outlets so you could plug in your devices. Well, people say you could use solar panels, but then you have to spend the winter in Seattle to realize that it doesn’t work. We get very cloudy winters.

                                    So then, to address that problem, we’ve been developing new methods. For example, one way to get internet from the middle of the farm is using the technology I mentioned called TV white spaces. What the TV white spaces enable is — imagine a Wi-Fi that can go several miles, and one of the ways you could get that is if you take a white signal and put them in noisy TV channels. These are TV channels you watch using antennas, over-the-air antennas.

                                    You know, when you browse through TV, on certain channels, you get a transmission, and on other channels, all you see is white noise. The interesting thing about that is that most of these TV towers are in the cities. So, if you turn on a TV in the middle of a farm, most of the channels are just white noise. While that’s not great news for a grower who wants to watch TV, it’s great for someone who wants to use that unused TV channel for sending and receiving data. So, even if you have 20 TV channels that are available, we are talking of over a few hundred megabits per second of available capacity in the farm.

So, this is one way in which we are bringing connectivity to the farm. The other thing we are doing is bringing edge compute. That is, this is a scenario where, if you have barns where there are multiple cows and you have cameras, rather than sending all the camera data to the cloud, you could have edge compute. Imagine a small computer sitting in the barn or in the farmer’s house that takes all of this data, the camera data, and runs the processing over there itself, so that you could be sitting in your house and monitoring how your cows are doing. You could be getting alerts if a cow is sick, if the cow is not moving very well.

                                    And these are, again, things that could be enabled because of these new technologies: TV white spaces, edge compute, the Internet of Things. And we’re bringing all of that to agriculture.

Tom:                          This is fascinating. Have these technologies been deployed?

Dr. Chandra:             So, these technologies, some of them are Microsoft products. Like, for example, we have Azure IoT, Azure Edge, the Azure Stack Edge. And in the context of agriculture, we are working on some of these technologies. We have farms where we’ve deployed TV white spaces, we’ve deployed edge compute, we are doing all of this intelligence on top. And there are various farms in the U.S. and abroad where we’ve deployed this and shown the feasibility of this technology.

Tom:                          How are you using drones and sensors to map such key data as soil moisture and pH levels?

Dr. Chandra:             One of the things we want to know that the growers want to know is: How do certain soil properties (that) are in the farm produce certain weather properties (that) are in the farm? And you could get that information using sensors. So, these are sensors, for example, you could get from our partners, such as Davis Instruments special instruments.

                                    But the question, then, is where do you put these sensors? And so, one of the algorithms we have, an artificial intelligence algorithm we have, is it will tell you — once you give it the farm boundary, we then get the satellite image for that farm. And then, for that farm historically, we look at the satellite imagery for that plot of land and then estimate the best places that you need to put sensors.

                                    You could — say you have, say, three sensors. You can then use artificial intelligence to decide the best places you put those sensors. Once you put those sensors in the farm, the data then starts going all the way to the cloud. What that means is you could be anywhere in the world and you could turn on your phone and you’ll be able to see what your farm looks like, what those sensor values look like.

                                    But the question, then, is if you have, say, a thousand acres of land and you put just three sensors, it will just tell you three points in the farm. You want to know more; you just don’t want to know those three points where you intelligently place the sensors.

                                    This is where we use, again, artificial intelligence, where we combine the sensors with aerial imagery, say, from drones or satellite. The way we use it is, our key insight — and you would be able to relate to it — is that if two parts of the farm look similar, they are likely to have similar values. When I say look similar, it’s not just in red, green and blue, but in multispectral or high-spectral imagery, they are likely to have similar values.

                                    And we incorporate this intuition, this insight, in an artificial intelligence model again, where we combine the small, the sensor values with aerial imagery, say, from satellites or drones to build a heat map of what your farm looks like. So, with very few sensors, by bringing the latest in technology, you’re able to visualize what the problems are in different parts of the farm.

                                    And then, partners, the companies that we work with, could then start building solutions on top. Once you have this map, you can see how you could build several agricultural advisory solutions — for example, for irrigation or fertilizer management or others — on top of this framework to start providing insights to the growers.

Tom:                          We’ve been talking about farming that revolves around crops, around plants. How is the technology being used in animal husbandry — poultry, for example?

Dr. Chandra:             Yeah, that’s a very interesting question. And I recently gave that talk at the Alltech poultry conference. You could — the same ideas that I talked about could be used for poultry as well.

                                    For example, I talked about how, in a barn where you have cows, you could be using cameras to determine how the cows are moving around. Imagine, like, a baby monitor, but for cows. You could then get notification when a cow is sick so that you can then provide timely intervention to manage the cows.

                                    The same things could be used for poultry as well. That is, a lot of times, when you’re in chicken coops, you might not, like — especially when the chickens are young — you want to know how they’re doing, you want to know that the conditions are right. You might want to put sensors in the farm; you might want to put temperature sensors (or), in some cases, humidity sensors. So, (something) similar to kind of an IoT system could be beneficial for poultry, too. 

In fact, we are taking a step further. One of the projects we did, this was with the University of Washington, is where we’re looking at acoustic information that — instead of cameras, where cameras can’t see through obstructions, we were looking at putting microphones in chicken coops. And the system that the students spearheaded was called [clucky?] eye, where they had these microphones, and then, by looking, by observing the sound patterns of chicken, you could tell when a chicken is in stress. And that would be information that you could flag to a farmer (and) say, “Hey, go, there’s something wrong. Maybe there is predation going on; the chickens are not happy, for whatever reason.” And this is, this could help poultry farmers be more profitable (and) avoid damage which, otherwise, which will be just hard to monitor.

And there are many more new cases, too, and this is where I really enjoy talking to farmers. So, if there’s any farmer who’s listening to this podcast and would like to discuss ideas of how technology could be used for poultry farming or other farming practices, I would love to get them a comment (or) chat.      

Tom:                          How they can reach you?

Dr. Chandra:             Yes. The best would be to either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email on ranveer@microsoft.com, and I try to get back on email. So, I would love to talk to more growers, more people in the agriculture community, to discuss ways in which we can bring the technologies I talked about and many new things to help farmers be more profitable and practice the most sustainable practices.

Tom:                          Talking about profitability, what about the cost of purchasing and deploying these technologies. How do you make it affordable to small farms, in particular, that might be interested but may be discouraged by the cost?

Dr. Chandra:             This is where we want — well, that’s one of the other problems with agriculture, is you want to be providing a lot of these insights, and you want to get data from a lot of places that do not have great connectivity, but you also want to bring the cost of these devices down to a point where they’re affordable. And that’s been one thread of what we have been trying to pursue as part of the research, is (what) we (can) use to bring down the cost of these data-driven agriculture technologies.

                                    For example, I talked about leveraging TV white spaces for connectivity, leveraging artificial intelligence, so that you need much fewer sensors than what you would otherwise need to build out these maps for farms. And that’s been a concentration of the research teams that they are pursuing at Microsoft, in my team. And we are continuing to push the bar even lower (and) come up with new technologies to make it more and more affordable for the growers.

                                    If growers want to use any of these technologies, I think there are solutions, and we are working with partners on building solutions that can be affordable for the growers, that can be at the price point the growers can afford. Because, even for us, the eventual question that technology providers and our partners are trying to address is: What is the price of technology such that the return on investment for the grower is much more than the amount that they are investing in these technologies? For example, through sensors or whatever, we want to provide insights that can help the farmer be much more profitable than the amount that they’re investing in deploying these technologies in the farm.

Tom:                          If any of our listeners would like to actually see this technology in action, is a demonstration available?

Dr. Chandra:             Yes, Tom. There are few places where the people can see this in action. Of course, we are working — we have announced partnerships with other companies, which are starting to use this technology.

For example, we announced this partnership with the USDA, where — there’s a farm in Beltsville, Maryland, where we have deployed this. We also have a demo farm on the Microsoft campus; we do several demos here. And there’s actually another farm in eastern Washington. This is 9,000-acre farm spread over 45 miles. And there is a farmer I work with very closely, Andrew Nelson, he’s a fifth-generation wheat farmer, and he’s been using technology in his farm. He’s been using FarmBeats, he uses TV white spaces, (and) that is because his farm spreads over 45 miles, he doesn’t have to go everywhere every day. Using the connectivity, he can monitor where what’s going on.

He uses drones. He uses the drone’s information and combines that with leveraging FarmBeats. And then, he’s able to do the right application, the right intervention at the correct time in his farm. And there’s a video on the FarmBeats website where he talks about his experiences and how technology has benefitted what he’s doing in the farm.

And, in fact, his story just tells a very good story even otherwise that, as you probably know, one of the big problems in agriculture is the aging population of the farmers. The next generation of growers don’t want to get into farming. And, Andrew’s story — Andrew is, as I said, is a fifth-generation farmer. Like many others (in the) next generation of farmers, he came to Seattle, he did his undergrad in the University of Washington in computer science, and then he worked in the city for a while. And then, because of technology, he decided to go back to agriculture. And he’s going, he’s gone back, he’s farming again, (and) he’s using technology, he’s using all of the latest cutting-edge tech in his farm.

And this is a story which, as you can see, it appeals to many farmers of the next generation, the younger farmers, where you can then start using the latest in technology for your farm to see the benefits of how technology can help you farm better, help you produce more. And in the process, you actually use the latest and best in technology that’s out there.

Tom:                          You know, that brings me to a question I wanted to run by you anyway, and that’s how you’re using these technologies to have a societal impact.

Dr. Chandra:             So, these technologies can help with sustainability. That’s one direction where we are actively working on leveraging these technologies, to estimate the amount of carbon that’s sequestered in soil. That is, using these technologies, a farmer can reduce their emissions because, you know — like, for example, they’re not using more chemicals than needed; they could be using good sustainable agriculture practices, like regenerative agriculture, like the distill. But not just that. Growers can use this technology to help increase the amount of carbon that’s sequestered in soil.

                                    At the (same) time, when people have realized the importance of doing something for climate change, for reducing the amount of carbon emissions, agriculture can actually help provide the solution. Farmers can help put some of this carbon back into the soil. So, if you’re thinking of companies who want to, companies or organizations who are looking to reduce their carbon footprint, agriculture could provide the solution.

                                    And using technology, farmers can use these regenerative agriculture methods while still staying profitable — not reducing their profitability — and yet, enabling a new income stream by putting carbon into soil. So, that’s one of the things that technology could enable.

                                    In addition to that, we are also, at Microsoft, through Microsoft philanthropy, we are looking to bring technology to the rural population, enable the skilling of the rural population. For example, there is a skill gap, where there are quite a few jobs, but there’s not enough skilled population to fill those jobs.

                                    And with FarmBeats, one of the things we’ve done is we’ve created FarmBeats student kits, we’ve created partnerships with the FFA with 4-H, where we are working with these organizations. And (we’re) working with, for example, the FFA chapters to bring technology into the curriculum of high school students even when they are in school, helping introduce them to the latest in technology, so that when they graduate, they are fully skilled in all of these technology methods, and they also know how would you apply these technologies in agriculture.

                                    So, on the social good side, we are working on sustainability, on rural skilling, on air band, which is about providing connectivity to rural areas. We’re working on multiple directions to bring technology to the rural population in the U.S. and all over the world.

Tom:                          I wonder if the work with the FFA, the Future Farmers of America, is helping to overcome that reluctance of this emerging generation to go into the field of agriculture?

Dr. Chandra:             I think so. And I think, as you show what’s possible with technology, more and more of the younger farmers will get excited to stay back in agriculture. In fact, when I talk to them, I tell them how, with agriculture, you’re seeing the latest in technology being applied to agriculture — with artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, with cloud computing, edge computing, all of that, the latest is coming to agriculture. And some of the FFA students that I have met, they’ve been so excited to be flying drones, to be using the latest in robotics in the farm. I think this exposure would help the next generation of farmers see the opportunities of what is possible by staying back in the farm.

                                    Like, for example, the agriculture industry is not going away. We all still need food. And in fact, the importance of growing good food — the importance of growing food in a sustainable way — has never been more visible. Now, there is a bigger need for that, and technology can help address that.

                                    And this is an opportunity: the more of the next-generation farmers, the more they see technology as a way to bridge that gap, the more entrepreneurial opportunities that exist. We see that more and more of the next-generation farmers would stay back, would want to, in fact, contribute — either leverage this technology or invent new technologies — to help agriculture be more sustainable, to help feed the world.

Tom:                          I don’t want to diminish or downplay the hard, hard work that is farming and the seriousness of farming and the things we’ve been talking about, but I have to say, what you’re talking about here sounds kind of fun.

Dr. Chandra:             Yeah. And, of course, all of this is possible, as it builds on top of all the hard work that farmers do to ensure that all of us are getting good food.

Tom:                          What are the focuses of your current research?

Dr. Chandra:             Right now, we are continuing to push the boundaries of technology for digital agriculture to make it even more affordable for the growers.

And one of the things — like, for example, we talked about how we’re looking to bring down the cost using artificial intelligence, using new connectivity technologies, but even then, the cost of a probe, a sensor probing the farm, is still a few hundred dollars. Like, for example, if you go look at sensors out there on the internet, it will be a few hundred (or) even, in some cases, a thousand dollars, which, while for some farmers here, it’s affordable, but a lot of farmers in the developing world, that still puts it out of their budget. They won’t spend like someone who’s farming an acre or a couple of acres; they won’t spend a few hundred dollars to put sensors in the farm.

                                    And this is what we are doing with — one of the things we are continuing to investigate is: how do you bring down the cost of these sensors even more? How do you make sure that farmers can get data from the farm at an even lower cost?

                                    One of the ideas we’ve come up with is to leverage Wi-Fi to send soil. Many farmers, they won’t spend a few hundred dollars to purchase a new sensor, but then they have a smart phone, even though it is an inexpensive smart phone. If they have a smart phone, it has Wi-Fi. And one of the new technologies we have built is where you can use the time of light of a Wi-Fi signal to estimate the soil moisture and soil electrical conductivity.

So, we’re envisioning a future where anyone can go to a farm, any farmer who has a phone can just bring their phone close to soil and can get the information about what’s happening in the soil, (or) can actually drive around, maybe, in a bicycle, and then you have a map of what the farm looks like.

So, these are things, this is just one example, but we are continuing to invent new technologies to significantly bring down the cost of data-driven agriculture. We want farmers everywhere in the world to be able to get information about what’s happening in their farm, things that they can see and things that they cannot see, at the price point which they can afford, so that once they get the data, you can then start bringing the benefits of artificial intelligence to every farmer in the world.

The vision here is to democratize technology, democratize data-driven agriculture, so that every farmer everywhere in the world can benefit from data and data-driven insight.

Tom:                          This has been so fascinating. Dr. Ranveer Chandra, the chief scientist at Microsoft Azure Global. Thank you so much for taking time for us.

Dr. Chandra:             Thank you, Tom. Nice talking to you.

The importance of colostrum for newborn calves is well-recognized. Colostrum, the first milk produced by the cow at calving, offers a rich source of energy, nutrients, immune cells and antibodies. These antibodies are especially important since newborn calves lack disease protection, as antibodies do not pass through the cow’s placenta to the calf’s circulatory system. The antibodies in the cow’s colostrum will provide her calf with initial disease protection.

The immunity acquired during the first few days of life is particularly important for calf health and survival. Studies on calf death loss have shown that 4–12% of calves are either stillborn or die within the first 24 hours after birth. While there are many risk factors during this time that may lead to calf mortality, early nutrition and colostrum management are key influences.

What are immunoglobulins?

For the first three to five weeks of a calf’s life, the passive immunity received from the absorption of immunoglobulins in colostrum provides substantial protection to help the calf fight off infections, illness and diseases. Immunoglobulins are large protein molecules that function as antibodies and that are produced by plasma or white blood cells. They serve an important purpose in immune response by fighting off bacteria, viruses and other harmful invaders. There are different classes of immunoglobulins that each have specific functions, biological features, targets and structures. The primary (80–85%) colostral antibodies are immunoglobulin G (IgG), followed by immunoglobulin A (IgA, at 8–10%) and immunoglobulin M (IgM, at 5–12%).

The major factors that will influence newborn calf colostral immunoglobulin absorption are:

1. The age of the calf when it receives its first feeding of colostrum.

2. The number of immunoglobulins made available to the calf.

Colostrum absorption is maximized and at its most efficient shortly after birth, beginning to decline steadily as time passes, with very minimal absorption occurring 20 hours post-calving. However, in some calves, this closure of the gut can occur as early as 12 hours postpartum. Despite the length of time to gut closure, immunoglobulin transfer across the gut epithelium is most efficient in the first four hours postpartum and begins to decline rapidly after 12 hours postpartum. By 24 hours, it is estimated that only 10% of immunoglobulins are absorbed. Therefore, it is important to get that essential colostrum into the calf as soon as possible.

While these large proteins can be transferred through the gut prior to closure, so too can bacteria and large particles that may be harmful if ingested. This is yet another reason why it is so important to calve on clean, dry ground.

The number of immunoglobulins presented to the newborn calf is dependent on the volume of colostrum available and the immunoglobulin concentration of that colostrum. The quality of the colostrum can be affected by the dam’s age, health and nutrition status. Cows that are older — i.e., in at least their third lactation — typically have a higher volume of colostrum that is better-quality compared to the colostrum of a younger cow or first-calf heifer. While there are tools that can be used to measure colostrum quality, typically, good indicators of high-quality colostrum include a tan or yellow color and very thick, creamy consistency.

Nutritional status of the dam

The dam’s nutritional status can greatly impact the colostrum available to the calf. Colostrum and immunoglobulins start to form 5–6 weeks prior to calving. A Virginia Tech study has shown that colostrum volume and calf absorption of IgG were lower in nutrient-restricted cows compared to cows fed to their requirements, even though the IgG concentrations did not change. A study in sheep found that nutrient restriction from mid- to late pregnancy in ewe lambs altered colostrum quality and quantity. The dam’s nutrition prior to calving can greatly impact the amount of colostrum produced and the absorption of immunoglobulins, which may lead to scours and higher mortality rates if inadequate. Bio-Mos® 2 has been shown to support gut integrity and colostrum quality, thereby promoting overall performance. This product should be fed two months prior to calving for optimal results.

Failure of passive transfer

A frequent problem during calving season is failure of passive transfer (FPT), which occurs when a newborn calf does not receive the necessary colostrum. This can occur if cows were in a nutrient deficit and did not produce quality colostrum, or, in cases of dystocia, weak calves, temperature stress or the dam not taking care of her new calf, all of which can prevent the newborn calf from nursing. These factors may prevent the calf from not only getting essential nutrients from colostrum but also from getting the required antibodies. FPT can result in significant economic losses through increased calf illness and death. If a calf has not nursed or is at a high risk for not nursing within the first couple of hours, it may be best to intervene and provide it with colostrum.

The ideal method for a calf to receive colostrum is from its own dam. If possible, use a chute to restrain the cow in order to allow the calf to nurse. If the calf does not want to suckle, the cow could be milked out and a tube feeder can be used to get colostrum into the calf. A newborn calf should be fed about two quarts of colostrum within four to six hours post-birth and again within four to six hours from the original feeding. Colostrum should be collected within 24 hours of calving. If collecting from the cow is not possible, colostrum replacers or supplements can be used. In these situations, consult a veterinarian for assistance in selecting the best option.

Remember, the first meal is the most important meal of a calf’s life and plays an instrumental role in calf immune system development. It is vital to ensure that each calf receives rich, nutritious colostrum in order to set them on a path to successful performance.

I would like more information on beef nutrition.

Nori is a Seattle-based startup that aims to reverse climate change through their marketplace for carbon removal. Aldyen Donnelly, director of carbon economics with Nori, discusses how the company is helping farmers get paid to fight climate change, how these carbon removal practices can benefit farmers' productivity and what she believes are the keys for encouraging the corporate world to commit to reducing their production emissions.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Aldyen Donnelly hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                          Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us as we explore the challenges and opportunities facing the global food supply chain and speak with experts working to support a Planet of Plenty™.

Tom:                          I'm Tom Martin, and I'm joined by Aldyen Donnelly, a small-business developer and consultant who, in the 1990s, began working on market-driven strategies to reduce the atmospheric carbon concentrations now known to contribute to climate change. She coauthored Nova Scotia’s 2009 greenhouse gas emissions regulations, a first in North America. Nori, the Seattle-based startup Aldyen cofounded, aims to reverse climate change by incentivizing the removal of excess carbon from our atmosphere. It's a significant undertaking in an economic system that makes it easier and more profitable to emit carbon than to avoid doing so. Appropriately, Alden is the company's director of carbon economics, and she's joining us from Vancouver. Greetings, Aldyen.

Aldyen:                      Nice to meet you.

Tom:                          So, tell us first, briefly, about Nori. How did a company form around the goal of reversing climate change?

Aldyen:                      Nori’s original three founders are a couple of individuals who were doing well and in the high-tech space, Silicon Valley kind of world, and one who was part of the Climate Change Advisory Institute at Berkeley. And they met and realized that, personally, they wanted to focus their time and energy on something that would deliver a great social good. So, they came up with this idea, as well as the name, started saving their money and coming up with ideas about what they'd like to do in this regard. And I met them later, when a friend of one of the three original founders’ dad suggested they meet me, and it’s been fine ever since. We are actually a total of seven founding partners, and there are 10 of us in the company in total at the moment.

Tom:                          And what motivates this focus on the connection between carbon emissions and climate change?

Aldyen:                      For me, to be perfectly honest, it's not carbon emissions and climate change, per se. I have spent a lot of my life on sailboats, likely using sailboats, and I'm an old lady now, but about 30 years ago, I started seeing very dramatic changes in the ocean life and the way sea life movement patterns were changing while I was on the water so much of the time, and I started asking what was this all about, if it's good or bad. And that's when I first — and this is in the mid-’80s — started reading about the science that related the increasing concentrations of heat-trapping gases, mostly CO₂, in the atmosphere and the impact it could have on ocean and sea life.

                                    So, what drove me was what was happening in the ocean. It’s more than climate change. I must admit, that’s still my primary driver. I think the disruption to ocean life has such large potential that that's enough reason to take this very, very seriously. So, yes, there's a broader story about climate change and extreme weather events, which even makes the situation more dramatic, but I think the original events that drew me in were dramatic enough. Thank you very much.

Tom:                          And just briefly, Aldyen, just curious, what's the story behind the name of the company, Nori?

Aldyen:                      The original founders picked Nori before I became involved, which is quite a coincidence. Nori is Japanese for seaweed. And in the Japanese history, people have been growing and eating seaweeds since the 700s. Many algae-based seaweed species are potentially an ideal example of a sustainable food source. But also, in the history of seaweed, which is obviously now a long history, there was a point in time where seaweed production almost died out and was rebuilt. And also, it's now an industry that has to be paying attention to the difference between the sustainable and extractive industrial practices. So, that whole history of nori, the seaweed and the future potential role of seaweed as a long-term, sustainable nutrient source is really important. So, it was a great four-letter word through the history, which was exactly what we are thinking about and working on every day.

Tom:                          Our focus is going to be on regenerative agriculture. Can you give us just a brief definition of that term?

Aldyen:                      Regenerative agriculture is the new term that was probably mostly thought of as conservation cropping practices when the idea first started to get legs, 30 and 40 years ago. It's also been called “sustainable” agriculture in the past, but that fell out of fashion, and so, that new word is “regenerative” agriculture. And I hope, as many hope, that we will come up with a better, easier-to-say term option sooner rather than later.

                                    But historically, when all nations, not just North America, shifted to highly productive food and fiber production practices, we introduced a bunch of ways of doing things that have the positive effect of producing way more food per acre but (also have) a number of negative effects. To keep the soil in production, we started adding synthetic chemicals, because we were depleting the capacity of the soil to naturally support the food production. In that process, we've done many things. One of the most important things that we have done (is) it’s estimated that, over the last 300 years, we've permanently removed 50% of the carbon that our soils used to support and retain and sustain (themselves) year to year. And we use synthetic chemicals and other processes to make up for that loss.

                                    Over the last 30 or 40 years, a lot of great research has proved that there are ways of changing how we manage the soil and how we manage cropping practices, too, (while working) at the same time, to maintain very high levels of crop production per acre. We turn the soil to its healthiest state and rebuild that present stock, and that's a very, very large opportunity to do two things at the same time. First, (get) extra CO₂ out of the atmosphere and store the recovered carbon in soils, which has that huge capacity to retain more carbon than they are right now — and also, in so doing, building a much healthier topsoil. The top 30 centimeters of the soil is what most people are talking about, which is exactly what we need to ensure that our growing territories are resilient in the event of global warming. So, it's one of the only investments you can make that, coincidentally, reduces the risk of climate change while preparing the soil to be more resilient and stay productive in the event of climate change. Best investment anybody could ever make.

Tom:                          What does it mean that 1.5 to 2 degrees of global warming by 2100 is almost inevitable? It that's a given, what are the likely consequences?

Aldyen:                      First of all, they say “inevitable” because when we release a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, its life in the atmosphere is at least 100 years. So, the warming impact of adding that heat-trapping gas to the atmosphere lasts for 100 years after we release it. So, even though it's only 2020, we already know how much CO₂ is up there and how much we're likely to release over the next 10 years or so. And that adds up, if you look at the modeling, to that very high risk. By the end of this century, we will have that amount of warming.

                                    Two degrees doesn't sound like much, but it has a lot of potential to make land we think of as productive now (become) unproductive. You know, verification goes with that scenario — massively shifting where food can be produced and how much it can be produced. The model suggests it’s likely due to change weather patterns and result in many more extreme weather events: hurricanes, tornados, rainstorms, thunderstorms, floods and droughts. It's not just drought; it’s floods and droughts. One of the pictures of global warming that is always in my head is just gray, total gray, in that future. Where (there) is snow during the winter now, that’s more likely to be rain and freezing rain (in the future). Freezing after rain is much more destructive than a normal snow event. And it's not a nice picture.

Tom:                          You know, 2100 may seem distant, it may seem like a long way off, but a person born today likely is going to live to experience this.

Aldyen:                      They’re going to live to experience it, and everything they do in their lifetime will determine whether or not it happens.

Tom:                          Your projects have included using emission reduction credits to finance carbon sequestration in agricultural soils. What are emission reduction credits, and how can they be used to finance carbon sequestration in farmland?

Aldyen:                      Now, I'm going to go all Nori promotional on you because I use the term “emission reduction credits” in my general language, and you're right about that. In Nori, we’re calling them Nori carbon removal times (NRTs). And so, I’m gonna pitch NRTs for the rest of the —

Tom:                          That’s quite all right.

Aldyen:                      What we are saying is, (in the) U.S. or anywhere in the world, a farmer can elect to reduce their pillage activity, the amount of plowing of their fields and (subsequently) releasing soil carbon to the atmosphere and exposing it to the atmosphere. That is common practice: to change their crop rotations, to change how they do irrigation, to add cover crops and do other things that essentially accelerate microbial activity in that biogeochemical process that includes photosynthesis, the work that plants do.

                                    So, plants draw CO₂ out of the atmosphere and microbes down by the roots of the plant, and soil breaks down that CO₂, and some of the carbon goes into plant growth. Some of it goes back up to the atmosphere, and some of it stays in the soil. And the more we retain in the soil, the more productive our plants are and the greater the service they provide in pulling CO₂ out of the atmosphere. So, we are saying to farmers, “Find the best combination of changing how you grow food so that you’re maximizing the amount of CO₂ you’re drawing out of the atmosphere and, of that CO₂, you're maximizing the amount of incremental carbon you store in the soil. And when you do that and we can demonstrate that you have drawn an incremental ton of heat-trapping gas out of the atmosphere, we issue an NRT, and then corporations and individuals who want to offset their own carbon footprint can buy those NRTs (with the) confidence that they know they have bought real interest in 1 ton of heat-trapping gas pulled out of the atmosphere.” And even more attractive (is) that they’ve invested in a healthier, more productive food system at the same time.

Tom:                          Am I correct that you have created a marketplace for carbon removal? And this sets up ways for farmers to actually be paid to store carbon in their soil? That's the sequestration. How does that work?

Aldyen:                      Yes. We invite farmers to provide us a bunch of operating data — that’s information we need to know, both historical and going forward, to be confident that they are building up their soil carbon stocks. And when they provide us the data and then an independent third-party verifier provides us assurance that the data is reasonable and replicable — that’s the term we use, “reasonably accurate” — then we issue NRTs to the farmer in our marketplace. And the NRTs are offered for sale. And we only started offering NRTs for sale for our suppliers last September. And to date, when NRTs are listed for sale, they've been selling out within 24 hours.

                                    We often have a backlog of demand for NRTs, and farmers have been earning $15 a ton for those NRTs on average so far. To put that in context, the typical farmer who decides they want to pursue this objective is generating, on average, revenues in the order of $27–40 per acre per year before government subsidies. Now, that represents a wide range of earnings in U.S. farmland, ranging from, say, a loss of $9 per acre to earnings of $80 per acre. The typical farmer can adopt practices that will draw down roughly 1 ton per acre per year. So, adding $15 per acre per year to the earning potential of farmers for whom $27–40 is the normal range is very significant financially. So, again, you're able to deliver new revenues to farmers who really need it. At the same time, you're delivering this very significant environmental service to society.

Tom:                          In your (Alltech ONE Virtual Experience) presentation, you begin by sharing quite a lot of data to allow your audience to form their own opinions about what it says and how they should react to the information. And in your first slide, you note that even if all nations complied with the aims of the Paris Accord, the world would still need to cut or offset about 15 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas discharges annually by 2030. Of course, we know that all nations are not complying —  most conspicuously, the United States, which has pulled out of the agreement. As long as the U.S. refrains from meeting this goal, is it futile for the others to even try?

Aldyen:                      No. It means a couple of things. It means we've got to do our best, and then we have to figure out how to mitigate the impacts of warming given that, as you said earlier in the interview, it's probably inevitable, for the reasons you just outlined. So, the first part is (that) U.S. crop producers, on their own, have the capacity to draw down — while they're becoming more profitable — up to 1.5 billion tons a year. And all crop producers worldwide do have the capacity to draw down by docking regenerative ag practices anywhere. We're not sure, but (that would equal something) between 10 billion and 25 billion tons per year. Now, we’re not going to mobilize 100% of that capacity tomorrow afternoon, but that is the way to take a significant bite in that 15-billion-ton-per-year deficit that we’ve got to address by 2030. I just don’t see any argument why not (to do this) because, again, when we invest in regenerative ag, we are doing two things: We are taking a bite (out of) that 15-billion-ton-per-year deficit, and we're doing it in such a way that we're making the soils more resilient if the warming that we're worried about actually occurs. So, we should be optimistic that we can do a lot and start doing it.

Tom:                          How about the corporate world? How’s the corporate world responding to calls to reduce their contributions to climate change?

Aldyen:                      I perceive — I’m an eternal optimist — that things are changing for the better here. There is a history that’s evidenced in some of the slide that you just referred to, that I present often. There is a history of corporate talking the talk (but) not walking the walk.

                                    Fifty corporations worldwide account for 57% of all of the manmade greenhouse gas emissions, when we account for their production emissions and also the emissions that you and I discharge when we use their product, like the emissions that go out of the tailpipe of our gasoline-powered car. That's only 50 companies. And to be frank, while everybody is saying the right things, none of those companies have yet made a commitment or produced a plan to reorient their core business description to move away from fossil fuels as their revenue source. Again, many are talking the talk. But if you actually look at their financial statements, if you're looking at all of the big oil companies, they are saying the right things, but it's still the case that, year after year, more than 50% of their capital spending plan is dedicated to finding and extracting more fossil fuels.

                                    It really feels like we're on the brink. It really feels like at least some of the big leaders are considering change seriously for the first time. It's really going to be important for the companies we think of as big oil to change their image of themselves and think of themselves as “big energy.” And in that future, they're going to be way, way more focused on supplying electricity and storage capacity, battery storage capacity, than oil and gas. We're not there yet, but it’s starting to feel like we’re on the brink.

Tom:                          So, you just began to sketch out what, I take, an aggressive climate change action plan would look like, correct? And could you expand on that?

Aldyen:                      Well, an aggressive climate change action would, again, involve —  and it’s big, big companies, but we only need to get to 50 of them — it’s not thousands and thousands — to really change their idea of what their core business is and to think of themselves as in the core business of supplying energy broadly, not just oil and gas. And the really exciting thing about that is, you know what? That's not doing something they've never done before. That's very much like returning their business model back toward something much like what it was in the ’40s and ’50s.

                                    You know, when I was growing up in the ’60s, the first credit card my father had was from a company called Home Oil. And the same company that delivers oil to the tank in our house that we used to heat our home also ran the gas station we took our car to. So, going forward, that energy company is going to want to be both delivering electricity and heat to our home as well as electricity that we need for mobile transport. So, it’s just about them returning to a business model that they executed very, very successfully 50 years ago with different energy sources behind that business model. It's hard to make change, but they can. And that’s one of the key parts of what we need to see happen. I think we need to do a better job of inventing shifts in that direction both in terms of how we design policy and regulations as a society and how we communicate their options to consumers.

Tom:                          If “the big 50” got on board and everybody involved engaged in a very aggressive action plan, is it impossible to say how long it would take to draw down emissions to acceptable levels?

Aldyen:                      History tells us — it's not possible to say how long, but history tells us two things. So, we have some amazing pollution reduction success stories in our history — the whole industrialized world, not just North America. We got the lead out of gasoline and paint. We lowered sulfur levels in diesel and in the electricity supply chain. We got the ozone-depleting substances out of refrigerant chemicals and saw that hole in the ozone layer shrink. And in all three of those precedents, once we got rolling, we achieved the environmental goal way faster than we had thought we were going to before we got started.

                                    Whenever we look back, we see two things. If, in policy and regulation, governments decide that it's the role of government to set price or pick the solution and, then, put incentives in place to make the market adopt that solution, we fail. Every time we take that approach, we give up, and it takes a long, long time to achieve our environmental goal — if we even stick to our commitment to achieve it. Alternatively, if you look at all of our historical success stories, whenever a government said, “Okay, you guys, this thing that you’ve embedded in the products and services you sell is creating pollution that's damaging; reduce that input in your supply chain (to) this mandatory rate,” you figure out how to do it. So, you leave it to industry and the private sector to figure out how to price and what solutions to choose. Every time we’ve said to industry, “Take it out over time; you've got this much time; clear it out yourself,” we have actually achieved our pollution-reduction goals ahead of schedule and at way lower cost than anybody imagined when we started.

                                    So, the greenhouse gas version of that would be a simple regulation that says, “If you supply energy in the United States, you report your global supply chain fossil carbon content in that energy supply chain, and you cut it by …” And then we have a big fight over whether that “by,” what comes after “by,” is 3% or 5% per annum — but you don't tell them what to put in, and you don't tell them how to price things and, you know, allocate rights to do things. You just say, you know, “Get the fossil carbon out of your products and services you’re suppling us. Here’s how much time you have, and figure it out.” And I’m sure that if we just moved to that way of thinking, markets like the one we're building in Nori will become commonplace, where participants in the market will, on their own, trade credits to comply with the rule — and we will be surprised. We will be very pleasantly surprised.

Tom:                          You've noted that 100% of corporate investments in new energy solutions rely on continuing revenues from sales of fossil fuels. Isn't that a pretty serious contradiction, and is it possible to break out of that cycle?

Aldyen:                      When I say (that) the big companies have talked the talk and not walked (the walk) so far, it’s because, yes, what you just attributed to me is true. And more than that, when you look at the investments they’ve made in new energy solutions, yes, their commitments have always been conditional. And they maintain some revenues from fossil fuels and have margins that they then dedicate (to) new energy solutions. But in fact, most of the time, too, the private-sector investment is conditional on also getting a government subsidy. And as I said, when we get into that trap where reducing pollution requires government to say, “Oh, gee, yes, I approve the solution, and I'm gonna give it this subsidy,” it’s never worked. It's never worked in the past.

                                    It's not just about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. It's about every pollutant we've tried to move out of our supply chain. We get into this very, very difficult, slow process where market signals are perverted and the ability of the market to do what it does, which is innovate and compete on price, is impaired. So, yeah, I know (that) when we move off that way of thinking and say, “Okay, like I said, if you deliver energy, report your global fossil carbon content per million BTU of energy delivered, I don't care if the energy, you know, what the makeup of the energy product portfolio is you deliver, and leave it to the marketplace to find solutions,” the market will just bloom, and they’ll come up with ideas that you and I have never thought of to date.

Tom:                          Well, Aldyen, can most of us just go on with business as usual and rely on science and technology to save us from climate change?

Aldyen:                      No. As I think you’ve heard in my comments so far, I think we need to, as citizens, ask our government to seriously consider moving forward with the kind of command regulation that I just mentioned — again, the key being (that) it’s a command to reduce the fossil carbon content in the product supply chain and not to dictate what they sell and how they price it. We do need that regulation. I would argue we all know that, for example — and I know this is a source of debate in the U.S. at this time — but I think most experts, certainly, agree that the energy efficiency accomplishments we’ve seen realized in the traditional car fleet wouldn't have happened unless our government had said to the manufacturers, “You have to increase the efficiency of the fleet of cars you produce every year on this schedule over time.” That's called the cafe standard.

                                    One of the reasons you need regulations is because even when everyone who’s a leader in the industry thinks they know how to achieve a higher efficiency or deliver a better product, they still have to make a very risky up-front in investment. And often, when you’re in a competitive marketplace, you can’t afford to take the risk of doing that on your own and being the only one. So, sometimes, a simple, straightforward regulation levels the playing field, and then you’re motivating all of those very, very capable companies to compete for market share in the new context, where the requirement to lower the pollution — it’s called the pollution precursor — content in the supply chain exists. When you take that approach of basic regulation to level the playing field and leave it for the private sector to go for it in that context, we have lots of history that tells us (that) we surprise ourselves every time.

Tom:                          Aldyen Donnelly is a cofounder and director of carbon economics at Nori, a carbon-removal marketplace based in Seattle. She joins us from Vancouver. Thanks, Aldyen.

Aldyen:                      Thanks for having me.

Tom:                          This has been Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

As more and more companies promote anti-meat products, many consumers have been left with misconceptions about the relationship between livestock and climate change. Dr. Frank Mitloehner, professor in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis, joins us to discuss the myths about livestock’s impact on the environment and why agriculture is not to blame for climate change, but how it is key for a more sustainable future.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Frank Mitloehner hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                          Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us as we explore the challenges and opportunities facing the global food supply chain and speak with experts working to support a Planet of Plenty^TM.

                                    As the scale and impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, meat is a popular target for action. Many climate activists urge the public to eat less meat to save the environment, and some have called for taxing meat to reduce consumption. Their key claim is that, globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, and its persistence has misled people about the links between meat and climate change. These words begin an article by Dr. Frank Mitloehner, a professor in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Mitloehner specializes in the measurement and mitigation of airborne pollutants from livestock production, including greenhouse gases, such as the methane produced by cattle. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Mitloehner.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, thanks for having me.

Tom:                          So, we’ve turned to you to talk about confusion among consumers about the climate impact of the methane produced by cattle. And much of the confusion is due to marketing strategies and tactics by corporations such as Burger King, touting that it's adding lemongrass to cows’ diets to try to cut down on methane emissions, or Starbucks’ decision to stop using dairy products. And I like to begin by asking you to tell us about messaging that has resulted in these misperceptions about the relationship between livestock and climate change.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, a lot of this originated in a 2006 publication by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and they made the claim that livestock produces more greenhouse gases than transportation. And that is very unfortunate because when such an authority makes such a claim, then it has a lot of credibility. However, I proved to that this assertion was wrong and that they used different methodologies when they looked at the impact of livestock on climate versus those of transportation. And they actually corrected that and said, “Whoops, yeah, we were wrong, and we have gone back to the drawing board, and we now use the same methodology when comparing things.” But the horse had left the barn, and all those critics of animal agriculture glued on to this and gloomed on to this, and damage has been done. And so, now, many corporations are using the climate impact angle to either promote their own products or disparage the use of animal-source foods.

Tom:                          Advertising and marketing can be very pervasive and very persuasive. How have these messages been damaging for agriculture?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, when you repeat falsehoods over and over again, then, after a while, it becomes truth, at least in the eyes of many of the consumers, and that’s really unfortunate. And one of the reasons, one of the ingredients in this disaster is that agriculture has responded too late or, if so, with some PR (public relations) campaigns as opposed to a real educational effort in infusing truth into this discussion, because it is just propaganda and nothing more than that.

Tom:                          Let’s back up just a bit and talk to that consumer, who most likely has heard that cows produce methane, that methane is a significant greenhouse gas, and that beef production contributes to global warming and climate change. And first, if we could ask you, Dr. Mitloehner, to give us a bit of a primer on the chemistry that’s involved here.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. So, methane is CH₄, and it’s a gas that is indeed very potent as a greenhouse gas. However, when looking at methane, we have to think about where does the carbon in the methane that we’re also concerned about — where does it come from, and where is it going?

                                    Where it comes from is atmospheric CO₂, atmospheric carbon dioxide, which, during photosynthesis, makes it into plants. The plants suck it in, and then those plants convert some of that carbon from atmospheric CO₂ into carbohydrates, such as cellulose or starch. Sooner or later, a bovine comes along and eats, and then a portion of that carbohydrate it ingests will become methane. That methane, however, stays in the atmosphere for a relatively short period of time — 10 years — and is then converted back into CO₂, which then goes back into the cycle as plant food and so forth. So, it is a cycle called (the) biogenic carbon cycle, which is very different from fossil carbon, let's say, from fossil fuel extraction and use, which is carbon that was in the ground for a very long time (that) has been extracted, burned and, therefore, is now a new additive to our atmosphere.

                                    So, biogenic carbon from livestock versus fossil carbon from fossil fuel use are very different with respect to how they contribute to actual warming. Just to give you one idea here — because people are exaggerating the impact of livestock — in the United States, all beef production contributes to about 3% of all greenhouse gases (and) all dairy production to about 2% of all greenhouse gases. Okay? So, this is in the United States. Globally, all beef contributes to 6% of all global greenhouse gases and the dairy industry to 3% of all global greenhouse gases, just to give you a general idea. And one last thing: I just told you beef contributes to 3% in the United States. Contrast that to the fossil fuel sector contributing to 80% of all greenhouse gases. I view this campaign against animal agriculture as a smokescreen by those who are really mega-producers of pollution.

Tom:                          Okay. Let's dig into some of the discrepancies. You published a white paper; it’s titled, “Livestock's Contributions to Climate Change: Facts and Fiction.” And in this paper, you cite a claim that U.S. livestock greenhouse emissions from cows, pigs, sheep and chickens are comparable to all transportation sources. You found a very different picture. Tell us about that.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yes. So, the different picture is that those people who painted that picture comparing livestock to transportation used one methodology to look at the impact of livestock on climate and a different methodology to look at the impact of transportation on climate. Let me explain. For livestock, they use what's called a lifecycle assessment, in which you look at all components of producing, let’s say, a pound of beef or a gallon of milk on climate, including the soil where the plants grow. The plants themselves that are then ingested by animals, the animals then produce some greenhouse gases themselves during enteric fermentation, meaning they are belching it out or their manure produces some. And then, sooner or later, the product makes it from the farm to the distribution center, from the distribution center to the processing center, and so on. Eventually, it ends up in a commercial restaurant or in your kitchen at home. A lifecycle assessment looks at the impact all the way from cradle to grave, meaning from the field to the fork. And that's the way it should be done. And the organization that made this comparison did that for livestock and they did it well. But when they compared livestock to transportation, they made a big mistake: namely that, on the transportation side, they didn't do a lifecycle assessment, but they only looked at direct emissions coming out of the tailpipe of vehicles — not the production of cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships, streets, harbors, airports and so forth. By doing so, they truly compared apples to oranges, using one methodology for the one and another methodology for the other. And as I said, they later corrected that comparison.

Tom:                          So, when we’re talking about climate change, why is it important to actually avoid comparing livestock emissions with those from other main sources of greenhouse gases?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, first of all, I think agriculture appreciates its contribution to a warming climate. We are contributing greenhouse gases, and we are actively involved in reducing those. So, that's just a little prelude. But comparing livestock to, let’s say, transportation, or power production and use, or the cement industry or so on is a dangerous exercise. And the reason is that the main greenhouse gas from livestock is methane, and methane undergoes cyclical conversion into CO₂. So, it is atmospheric CO₂ going into plants, going into the animal, and then that goes back into the atmosphere as CO₂ again. So, this is a relatively short life cycle. As long as you don't increase livestock herds, as long as you keep them constant, you're not adding new additional carbon to the atmosphere. Okay? This is really important. As long as you do not increase livestock herds, you're not adding new additional carbon to the atmosphere.

                                    But every time you use fossil fuel, you extract carbon from the ground in the form of oil, coal and gas. You are burning it, and you're converting that into CO₂, and that CO₂ has a lifespan of 1,000 years. Meaning every time you use fossil fuel, let's say, by driving a car, you are adding new greenhouse gases to the existing stock that's already there. So, livestock is cyclical and its impact is relatively short-lived versus fossil fuels, (which) are not cyclical. That's a one-way street, from the ground into the air, and its impacts are long-lived.

Tom:                          You argue that, in fact, the U.S. livestock sector has shown considerable progress during the last half-century in reducing its environmental footprint. Tell us about that.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, yeah. There's no doubt about that. So, for example, on the dairy side, back mid-last century, 1950, we had 25 million dairy cows in the United States. Twenty-five. Today, we have 9 million dairy cows. So, a large reduction of cows. But with this much smaller herd today, we are producing 60% more milk. Sixty. Sixty percent more milk with much fewer cows. And that equates to a two-thirds reduction of greenhouse gases from the dairy sector. On the beef side, we had 100 and — so, in 1970, we had 140 million beef cattle. Today, we have a little over 90. So, much fewer beef cattle. Fifty million fewer. But even though we have 50 million fewer cattle, we're producing the same amount of beef. The progress we have seen in this country is remarkable. We are producing 18% of all beef globally with 8% percent of all cattle. That is remarkable.

Tom:                          It is truly a model of efficiency. And is that, indeed, what has brought this about: science-driven efficiency?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Partly. I think there are four main tools that the animal agriculture industries have used. One is research and development in the area of genetics, using better genetic material for both plants and animals. The second one is that we have improved reproductive efficiencies in livestock. The third one is that we have installed a veterinary system that can both prevent and/or treat diseases. And last, but not least, we have developed a feed system, a nutrition system, that optimizes nutrient use for livestock and poultry. And the combination of these four — of genetics, of reproduction efficiencies, and improvements to the veterinary system and the nutrition system — the combination of those four has allowed us to shrink our herds to historic lows (while) producing more than we ever have before.

Tom:                          What would you say needs to be improved right now? How can we get accurate and fair emissions assessments so that we're on the right path to solutions?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, that’s a really important question, and if you ask a scientist what needs to be done, a scientist will tell you, “Listen, you know, there is not enough funding in this field.” And I'm not different. I’ll tell you it is dismally small, what the public sector pays to get information on the impact of our food supply chain. There hardly is any funding, and there's very little funding in the private industry sector as well. And the reason why that matters is because of the lack of funding, most scientists just keep the fingers on their hands off that type of research when, indeed, it's urgently needed and constantly in the media. I would hope that particularly the public sector, federal and state agencies, would support investigation into the true impacts of livestock and into, also, research that further reduces those impacts.

Tom:                          Earlier, you mentioned the FAO, the U.N.'s food and agricultural organization. The FAO has formed an international partnership project to develop and adopt a gold standard of lifecycle assessment methodology for each livestock species in the feed sector, and that’s been a few years now. Where does that stand today, and is it, in your opinion, making a difference in the public's understanding of the role of livestock in the production of greenhouse gases?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. So, this project is referred to as LEAPP, and that stands for Livestock Environmental Assessment Performance Partnership. And this partnership is comprised of three sectors: governments, on the one hand, and then NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and the industry sector. So, that’s all livestock, poultry, feed and so on. And that’s under the auspices of the FAO, and I was actually the first chairman of this committee. And we developed many guidelines on how to do a proper lifecycle assessment for livestock, for feed — not just for greenhouse gases, but also for nutrients, for biodiversity, for water use and so forth. In this context, we have developed, I would say, at least one dozen guidelines that are now considered the global gold standard for LCA, for lifecycle assessment. And I think that, as a result of that, accurate quantification has really taken off.

                                    It's really important that the public understands that nobody is sitting on their hands — that there are active measures (being) taken to find ways to accurately quantify and further mitigate emissions from animal agriculture, from agricultural overall. The agricultural sector is very involved but, unfortunately, (is) oftentimes behind the curve in communicating this.

Tom:                          In your white paper, you make note that all regions have unique demands and abilities and, thus, require regional solutions. So, taking the United States as a as a model, as a microcosm of the globe, is U.S. agriculture presently structured in a way that would accommodate a more regional approach, or does this imply the need for a restructuring and better coordination?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. So, the United States is indeed the most efficient of all agricultural systems in the world. I don't think there's much debate about that, but that's not to say that what we do here and how we produce, for example, animal-source foods in the United States could be a model for all of the rest of the world. We could be a model for much of the developed world, but not for much of the developing world, where efficiencies, first of all, (in) livestock production are much lower, but that's largely a result of a lack in infrastructure. So, for example, I told you already that we have 9 million dairy cows here in the United States. In India, they have 300 million dairy animals, both cows and buffalo. And it is a religious belief that eating bovines is a sin. So, they don't eat cattle, but they have a lot of them. So, we're not proposing or suggesting that they should change their religious belief system, but we are suggesting that if they want to meet their nutritional needs and use cattle to do so — for example, (via) dairy products from cattle — then they could do the same that they do currently with one-quarter of the current cattle population, because having such massive number of animals does have a considerable environmental footprint, one that can be strongly reduced. And we here in the United States — scientists, practitioners and so on — can assist other people throughout the world, other nations throughout the world, (to) become more efficient. For example, we can assist them in building a veterinary system, or we can assist them in building a nutrition sector or a genetics sector that's really called for, and it needs to be done in a very sensitive way, where we work with these different places to develop what's right for their respective region.

Tom:                          The challenge, Dr. Mitloehner, of supplying food to a drastically growing human population is foremost on the minds of researchers and organizations concerned with nutrition. A Planet of Plenty, (for) example, is the aspirational goal of Alltech. Do you believe such a goal can be achieved — and, if so, sustained?

Dr. Mitloehner:         Yeah. That is a very important question. You know, I just turned 50. And when I was a little boy, we had about 3 billion people in the world. Three billion. Today, we have 7.6 (billion). By the time I'm an old man, we’ll have 9.5 billion people. In other words, we will triple human population throughout our lifetimes. And at the same time, we don't really triple natural resources to feed those people. In other words, we have to. It is imperative that we do drastically increase production of food for a wildly growing human population, because if we don't, we'll have some big problems on our hands.

                                    Can it be done? Can we produce more with similar inputs as we do today? The answer, in my mind, is yes. We have shown it, for example, here in the United States over the last 60 years. We have kept the inputs for animal agriculture constant, but we have tripled the outputs. Tripled the outputs. I mean, that is just an unbelievable success story. And, (as) I told you, we cannot transfer the U.S. model to the rest of the world, but we can assist others in drastically improving. For example, a country like China, which produces half of the world's pigs — 1 billion pigs per year — has a pre-weaning mortality (rate) of 40%. They are losing 400 million pigs every year (during) pre-weaning, and that is just a travesty and something that's totally unnecessary. We can help the Chinese. We can help the rest of the world do much better without really sucking up a lot (of) additional resources. We can do more with less, and that's at the core of sustainability.

Tom:                          Dr. Frank Mitloehner, professor in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis. And we thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Mitloehner:         Well, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Tom:                          This is been Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Click here to register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience

On the one-year anniversary of committing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations Global Compact and the Science Based Targets initiative, Alltech has released its 2020 Sustainability Report.

In addition to reflecting Alltech’s vision for a Planet of Plenty^TM, the submission reaffirms the company’s alignment with a growing global network of organizations around the world that are united by their mission to build a more sustainable future.

“As a global company spanning the entire food supply chain, we are uniquely positioned to have a positive impact on a diverse range of sectors,” said Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech. “The Global Compact has helped give direction, value, and alignment to existing projects and inspiration for new ones.  The pages of this report reflect our call to customers and partners to join us in a collaborative effort to adopt new technologies, improve business practices and embrace innovation in order to create a world of abundance.”

As part of its pledge to the U.N., signed on July 12, 2019, Alltech announced its focus specifically on nine of the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on which the company felt it could have the greatest impact due to their alignment with its core business. Selected SDGs include zero hunger, good health and well-being, quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, climate action, life below the water, life on land and partnership for the goals.

Alltech’s 2020 Sustainability Report outlines the key efforts that impact these chosen SDGs, including product validation by the Carbon Trust, education initiatives, support for women in agriculture, and applying 40 years of research in animal nutrition to advance human health.

The report also reaffirms Alltech’s commitment to the U.N. Global Compact (UNGC). The UNGC provides organizations with a value system and principle-based approach to conducting business. Alltech strives to operate in a way that meets fundamental responsibilities in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment and anti-corruption. The company continues to incorporate the Ten Principles of the U.N. Global Compact into its strategies, policies and procedures.

In conjunction with signing the U.N. Global Compact, Alltech also committed to the Science Based Targets initiative, which is designed to help companies reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and share their progress through transparent documentation and reporting. Alltech has initiated data collection for the first year, then goals will be set to benchmark its work to lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy and water consumption.

In December 2019, Alltech had the extraordinary honor of welcoming the United Nations Security Council to its headquarters in Nicholasville, Kentucky. U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft, originally from Kentucky, selected Alltech to host their meeting, in part because of the company’s commitment to the U.N. Global Compact and focus on nine Sustainable Development Goals. The 13 members in attendance represented the U.S., China, Poland, Peru, Russia, the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Vietnam, Belgium, Kuwait, Equatorial Guinea, Tunisia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

The U.N. Security Council’s enthusiastic interest in the company’s Planet of Plenty vision and SDG commitments represent a significant opportunity for Alltech to lead positive change within the agri-food industry.

“We are excited to reach this milestone in a journey that began in 1980,” said Deirdre Lyons, co-founder and director of corporate image and design at Alltech. “Our purpose-driven mission to benefit animals, consumers and the environment — and to make a difference in the world around us — has a new framework for success that will help guide us into the future.”

Click here to read the Alltech 2020 Sustainability Report in full.

Rob Saik, CEO of AGvisorPRO, believes that the next thirty years could be the most important in the history of agriculture, and he claims that in order to support the global population in 2050, agriculture will have to become infinitely sustainable. Listen in as he explains his vision of farming technology and how innovation is the key to sustainable agriculture.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Rob Saik hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                      Rob Saik is a professional agrologist and a certified agricultural consultant. He is CEO of AGvisorPRO, an agricultural connectivity platform, and CEO of Saik Management Group, which provides advisory services to farmers in the agricultural sector.

                               Rob is the author of two books, “The Agriculture Manifesto” and his latest, “Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future.” And Rob joins us from Olds, Alberta, north of Calgary.

                               Greetings, Rob.

Rob:                        Good to be on your show, Tom. Thanks for having me.

Tom:                      And Rob, so, as we all know — we’re here on the phone as proof of it — we’re in the midst of a pandemic at the moment, and its effects are rolling over (into) just about every aspect of life. But you argue that we may have lost historical perspective where outbreaks of infectious diseases are concerned. Can you elaborate on that?

Rob:                        Well, the opening line of my book, “Food 5.0,” is, “This morning, when you woke up, did you worry about a pandemic?” And that book was released in August of last year, so it’s highly prophetic. But when you put our world into context, Tom, and you just look back a hundred years, the Spanish flu took out over 50 million people off the planet Earth a hundred years ago.

                               Simultaneously, World War I had just ended, and somewhere north of 15 million people had lost their lives in the World War I. And also, at this time a hundred years ago, the Persian famine had taken out 2 million and climbing people, and this was just ahead of the Stalin-imposed famines in Ukraine that took out somewhere between 12 and 16 million people.

                               So, when you put what we’re dealing with today into context of where we were a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, even though we’re faced with a great deal of challenge today, we live in a much, much better place than we did even fifty or a hundred years ago. And I think that we should pause and reflect on how good we actually have it.

Tom:                      Okay. Let’s turn to farming. In your book, you proposed that the next thirty years could be the most important in the history of agriculture, which is quite a statement. Why do you believe this?

Rob:                        Well, I was born in 1960, and you know, we experienced, in my lifetime, a dramatic increase in the population of the planet, and we fed everybody. (The ideas of) people like Norman Borlaug and science and agriculture was adopted around the planet, and you know, we don’t have that much more land base in agriculture than we did twenty or thirty years ago, and yet, we’re feeding everybody.

                               But if you stare into the future, as the population grows from 7.6 to 9 or 9.5 billion on the planet by 2050, these are some of the facts: We have to grow 10,000 years worth of food in the next thirty years. We have to increase food production everywhere on the planet by 60–70%. That’s everywhere on the planet, and that puts extreme pressure on exporting nations like the United States and Canada and Australia and so on and so forth. And we have to do so in the face of a public that is extremely disconnected from agriculture, and a public that’s being fed misinformation on a daily basis, leading to panic, leading to policies by politicians that are stripping tools out of agriculture’s hands.

So, the reason that I am so concerned about the next thirty years — and the reason I believe it’s going to be so challenging — is because we’re not connected to agriculture as a society like we used to (be), and so, a lot of people are out advocating the stripping away of tools from agriculture. And if we did that, then I’m fearful for our ability to feed the planet.

On the other hand, with the glass half full, if we’re allowed to adopt the technologies that we’re seeing implemented all around us, then I’m quite optimistic that we can have a world of abundance to 2050 and beyond.

Tom:                      Okay. I want to get back to that disconnect that you mentioned between the public’s understanding of what goes into farming in just a few minutes. But you just made an eye-opening observation: that to support a population close to 10 billion by 2050, agriculture is going to have to become infinitely sustainable. What do you mean by that?

Rob:                        Well, in the book, I talk about, you know, food as a religion — and it has turned into a religion. Veganism, vegetarianism, whether it’s paleo or meat-atarians, or organic and non-GMO — and you can get into an argument with everybody about the truth, the light and the way. But if you put up your hands and say, “Can we all agree (that), so long as there are human beings on the planet, agriculture must be infinitely sustainable?” Well, that stops people from talking, and they start nodding their head, and then they agree.

                               Well, what would make agriculture infinitely sustainable? What are the factors? And then they really scratch their head, because they have to do something they haven’t done for quite a while: they have to think, and eventually, things like soil health come up, because the epidermis of the earth is soil that feeds us all.

                               Water. Yeah, water use efficiency is important. Eventually, (the) greenhouse gas balance comes out. So, being able to mitigate, remove, reduce greenhouse gasses from agriculture. And then they forget one, and the one they forget the most, it is the most important, and that’s farm viability. Because without viable farms, without farms that are making a profit, without farmers that are advancing themselves year after year business-wise, you have zero sustainability.

                               So, the first step in sustainability, infinite sustainability, is farm viability and then we look at soil, water and greenhouse gas balance.

Tom:                      History has shown us that these pandemics tend to come in waves of three, typically, with the second wave (being) the most serious (and) the third decreasingly so, as herd immunity finally begins to catch on. How do we feed a soaring world population with an unchecked virus on the loose?

Rob:                        Well, I think this is going to put tremendous pressure on our food — not necessarily food production, but food distribution channels. People react to seeing dairy farmers dump milk. Well, the reality is that there’s no food bank out there that can take a 6,000-gallon tanker full of raw milk; (a) it’s illegal, and (b) it’s unsafe. So we have to find a way to be able to manage, and we’ve done that. We’ve developed food supply systems that could take large amounts of agricultural produce, turning them into safe, abundant and inexpensive food for the populace.

So, I think one of the things that we’re really going to be challenged with as we consider what might happen with a second round of infection will be how we deal with the supply sector, the logistics, the processing sector. I think this will be a challenge for us. I think that it will open up opportunities for people to become more closely connected to agriculture; maybe people will plant gardens, maybe people will start to connect with local producers. I don’t believe that’s the answer to feeding New York City or Los Angeles, but at the same time, I do think that there’s an opportunity (with) COVID to have a greater conversation about the importance of agriculture and, perhaps, with a greater population, to connect (with it) more closely.

But I do scratch my head a little bit as to the challenge we’re going to face. If the second wave gets worse, how are we going to deal with, you know, meat packing plants and milk processing facilities, distribution and transportation, and grocery stores? All of those things are questions in my mind.

Tom:                      It’s a little bit difficult for us to wrap our minds around now, but eventually, COVID-19 will be in the rearview mirror. We all have faith in that, I think. So I’m wondering: What do you see out there? What do you foresee for agriculture in a post-COVID world?

Rob:                        Well, the first thing is that, you know, you alluded to it in your question, and that is that we anticipate there will be a cure for COVID. Now, that cure for COVID will likely come in the form of a vaccine. I don’t think anybody’s arguing that, that it’s likely to come in a vaccine. So, how will the vaccine have been built? How will it have been invented? Well, that vaccine will have been invented through genetic engineering. GMOs? Oh my God! We’re talking about genetic engineering, manipulation of genome — something that’s “not natural”. Well, if you realized that the likely cure for COVID will be a vaccine, then genetic engineering will be at the heart of that whole process. That genetic engineering science is exactly the same science being implemented in agriculture.

                               So, in a post-COVID world, I’m hoping that the population will begin to wake up and realize that the science involved in human genomics, in medicine, in vaccine invention, is the same science being employed by agriculture. And in the face of climate change, in the face of greater salinity, in the face of rapidly increased food production, in the face of trying to decrease the environmental footprint by farming to feed the planet, then genetic engineering is one of the technologies that we absolutely must embrace.

                               The other thing that I see is a way, a new way, for agriculture to communicate. And so, we’ve started a firm called AGvisorPRO, which is a platform, a connectivity platform. It can be downloaded in iOS and Android and desktop, and that platform, effectively, can put experts on the farm without having to be on the farm. So, we found a way to basically shrink time and space and provide seekers who need answers to questions (with) instantaneous connectivity to experts in the agricultural industry who can provide some solutions to their problems.

                               I think we’re going to see quite a few innovations — everything from increased sensor technology, call it the Internet of Things, on the farm, all the way through the connectivity devices that will be kind of a legacy through this COVID experience.

Tom:                      Would you agree that the farmer of the 21^st century must be a scientist, must be a technologist, to compete and to stay in business? And I wonder if — you mentioned the disconnect between what the general public understands about farming today and what the reality of farming really is. Why should we be concerned about such a disconnect?

Rob:                        Well, we should be concerned about the disconnect because we live in a democracy, and theoretically, everybody has a vote. And if you put the issues of GMO, yes or no, to a vote of the public right now, the public, through ignorance, would vote “down with GMOs.” If you put pesticides, yes or no, to a vote, the public, through ignorance, would vote “down with pesticides.” Same thing with fertilizers. So, the danger is that, when you have a public that’s so disconnected from the realities of agriculture today, you have policies that are generated out of panic and ignorance rather than out of knowledge and wisdom and an understanding of science.

                               Today’s farms — I just completed a yearlong stint as CEO with DOT autonomous robotic company. So, DOT Technology Corporation, out of Regina, Saskatchewan, is a 100% autonomous robotic platform to broad-acre agriculture. It’s utilizing all of this technology that you would find in a Tesla car. We’re using radar, LiDar, we’re using motion sensors, we’re using massive computing power to basically run machines across land without any operator, 100% guided by GIS or satellite guidance, doing things such as variable rate application of fertilizer as they move across the field 100% autonomously.

                               I mean, when you think about that, you think that that’s sci-fi world; it’s not. You can go online right now and see all sorts of developments with robotic technology. That will be another outcome of COVID, is where we can utilize robots to reduce human interaction regarding repetitive work. Robots are very well-suited for dull, dangerous and dirty work. A lot of agriculture (is) dull, dangerous and dirty work, so we’re going to see that rise.

                               And so, when you think about genetic engineering and you think about internet sensor technology, massive computing power, data systems, robotics, satellite integration — most people that are in the city think of farmers as bib overall-wearing, straw hat-wearing, you know, little red barns and round-fendered pickup trucks. Well, those two images don’t match. There’s a disconnect there between what’s going on in the farm today and what people have in their head as their great-grandfather’s or grandfather’s farm. It is not the same thing. That’s, like, History channel-made.

Tom:                      That’s a lot to wrap one’s head around, and it’s fascinating. And I just wonder: What are the cultural implications of that sort of technology, and especially the autonomous aspect of it? How does that change a farmer’s life in terms of what it frees them up to do?

Rob:                        Well, we have a problem in agriculture — and your listeners are, probably, if they’re from the rural landscape, they would understand this; city listeners won’t understand this — but we have an acute labor shortage in agriculture today. It’s estimated that, in the next few years, in Canada, we’ll have 125,000 job vacancies at the farm level that simply can’t be filled. And the problem is finding qualified operators. Every piece of equipment today on the farm is north of $500,000, and many of them are over $1 million. And so, you have to have trained operators.

                               And because farmers live in remote areas, there are a number of sociological things going on. Number one is (that) the average age of farmers is like 60 years old. Sooner or later, Mother Nature takes care of things, and these people have to sell their farming operations to attrition, so whosever is left is getting bigger. So farms, because of economy scale, will continue to get larger. That’s a fact. The equipment costs go up. That’s a fact.

                               Trying to get young people attracted back into agriculture, back onto the farm — the thought of spending sixteen hours a day in a glass cage in a self-guided tractor is cool for the first couple of days, but after about three weeks of that, you’re going insane. So, why can’t we utilize robots and sophisticated sensory technology to allow us to scale our knowledge and wisdom? Why can’t we use aerial imagery or satellite imagery to do field scouting for us? Do we have to really be walking corn and soybean fields, every acre, to find out what’s going on? Or a company like IntelinAir, for example, is doing a wonderful job of using algorithms and analytics to provide alerts to farmers about what’s going on in fields in Illinois right now.

So, this is — this is where we’re headed, and it creates tremendous opportunity for young people to enter agriculture as systems integrators. We need these various systems integrated together so that we can take advantage of the technology and move farmers forward. But, again, everything that I’m talking about is quite a disconnect from what the average person thinks is actually going on in today’s agriculture

Tom:                      We’ve touched on convergence throughout this conversation, and the one that really captures my attention is biodigital technology. How does this example of convergence become an important tool in farming?

Rob:                        Well, as I wrote the book “Food 5.0,” I said (that) I think there’s five iterations of agriculture. There’s the age of muscle, the age of machine, the age of chemistry, the age of biotechnology or genetic engineering, and the age of convergence.

                               And as I think about that, there’s two kinds of things that, really, we’ve been living through in the past two, three, four decades. And one of them is Moore’s Law, which most people are familiar with, which is the doubling of computing power and the decrease of computing cost by half every, you know, six to eighteen months. Moore’s Law.

                               That has been predicated upon something called binary code — 1s and 0s. Again, most people would have an understanding of binary code. What about genetic code? And what happens when we combine binary code with genetic code? What happens when the new language of programming really moves from binary code over to As, Ts, Cs and Gs, which are the four proteins that make up genetic complex? So, what happens when the new programming really becomes one of As, Ts, Cs and Gs? How do we intersect bio with digital? So, bio-digital technology is going to result in the generation of brand-new crops, brand new food types.

For example, a company out of Minnesota right now, called Calyxt, is using a TALEN technology that’s creating soybeans that have high oleic oil content in the soybeans, over 80% high oleic oil. Now, you may be wondering what that means. Well, everybody buys olive oil because they think it’s Mediterranean, it’s healthy, while olive oil is 69% high oleic oil, but soybeans through Calyxt are 80%. So, all of a sudden,  we have a brand-new food coming from a conventional crop that’s been derived through bio-digital technology. 

I can go on with all sorts of examples of new crops. But one of the things that I think your listeners will be fascinated by is the burgeoning or the emerging science of nutrigenomics. And nutrigenomics is where you take your human genome — and I’ve had my genome sequenced — and through the course of time, you start to identify food attributes that are important in my genome. So, you, Tom, would have your genome sequenced, and there’d be foods that would be more and others that would be less beneficial to your specific genome.

                               So, when the cost of genomic mapping starts dropping, where every human being has their genome sequenced, we can start to map out and match food to the human being, and that’s going to open up, I think, some really interesting opportunities for agriculture based on attribute-based tracking.

                               In other words, if we could grow a wheat crop high in selenium, and (if) you were predisposed to prostate cancer, then maybe the bread that you eat should be a high-selenium-derived bread. So, these are things that are going on inside of my head, and I think it paints a pretty exciting future of how we’re going to create this bio-digital technology convergence.

Tom:                      Yes, nutrigenomics is quite a focus of Alltech, as a matter of fact. It was a favorite focus of the late Dr. Pearse Lyons and is being carried on today.

                               Let’s get back to AGvisorPRO for just a second. I want to ask you about that app. And let’s say I’ve got it on my phone. What’s it going to do for me?

Rob:                        I built a company called Agri-Trend and Agri-Data that was acquired by Trimble. That was a twenty-year journey for me, and Agri-Trend was acquired by Trimble, and I began to think about, “If I was going to build the consulting firm all over again, how would I do it?” And the answer is: I wouldn’t. What I would do is build a connectivity platform.

                               And so, AGvisorPRO, (if you) think about it, is as a mash-up of eHarmony together with Uber and FaceTime and Twitter. If you mash all of those things together, I think you have the idea. AGvisorPRO         is the Uberization of knowledge and wisdom. We are creating a connectivity matrix between seekers, people who want answers and experts, people who can provide answers now. And so, this interconnectivity matrix involves farmers and independent advisors and industry and government and the public.

                               And so, you would download AGvisorPRO on iOS or Android or desktop, and you would fill out a profile of your agricultural expertise or your farming operation — and it’s free. So you download (it), and we have several ways that you can connect. The first is we have an industry offer called TechDirect. So, industry partners would list their company, their proprietary products or services and their graphs, and a farmer can type in a company like Taurus Ag and instantaneously be connected to the technical representatives of Taurus. So, no 1-800 number, and it’s all free for the user.

                               Additionally, a farmer might want to talk to a sprayer expert. We have a renowned sprayer expert in Canada. His name is Tom Wolf. He’s an independent advisor. He doesn’t need his brain picked; he needs his brain paid for. So, you would say, “I’ve got a question about spraying,” and you would find Tom, the algorithm would match you up to Tom. And you would say, “Okay, so it’s going to be $60 for the session.” You say yes, just like you do with Uber, and you’re instantaneously connected with Tom. You have your conversation; he answers your questions. The session is archived for your future reference. You’re allowed to rate the session, just like you do with Uber, and then you can connect that session to social media, if you like.

So, we built all of that. All of that has been built. And Tom, this was built starting in 2019. So, we’ve been working on this for over a year. And, lo and behold, COVID hits in March, and we knew the winds of change were blowing, so we had set our sails to capture that changing wind and how we’re going to communicate in agriculture.

But AGvisorPRO is set for this COVID and this post-COVID world. We’re effectively stretching brains and not bodies, and we’re helping people monetize knowledge and wisdom. And so, that’s, in a nutshell, what we’ve been able to do with AGvisorPRO.

Tom:                      Well, that is absolutely fascinating.

Rob:                        It’s cool, yeah.

Tom:                      Rob Saik, author of “Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future.” Rob, maybe we’ll get to meet next year in Lexington at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference.

Rob:                        Well, you know, I was thrilled to be involved in the ONE Virtual Experience by Alltech. Alltech has got a great reputation as a leader in the agriculture sector, and the virtual experience was a blast. And I’m still dealing with questions from the session that was online. However, I think I’m looking forward to getting to Kentucky and being part of the live event, where you rub shoulders with — literally rub shoulders with — some of the greater thinkers in agriculture.

                               So, thank you for having me on your podcast, Tom.

Tom:                      Well, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

                               I’m Tom Martin, and this has been AgFuture, presented by Alltech. And thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to AgFuture wherever you listen to podcasts.

As a futurist, Jack Bobo works to stay ahead of consumer trends by detecting the disruptors that trigger them. We spoke with him about the rapidly changing global food supply chain, what will impact future trends in agriculture and what he believes is in store for the future of food production and consumer habits.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Jack Bobo hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:            The agricultural landscape was rapidly changing even before the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the global food supply chain. The way we produce, distribute, and consume food will soon look very different. What lessons can we take away from this to guide how we feed the planet in the future?

                     As the CEO of Futurity, Jack Bobo makes it his business to stay ahead of the trends and detect the disruptors that trigger them. He joins us to share his insights on the challenges and opportunities awaiting us in the next era of agriculture. Welcome, Jack.

Jack:             Thank you for having me.

Tom:            First, if you would just help us calibrate our expectations. What is the role of a futurist?

Jack:             Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, a lot of us think about the future, but we're not necessarily thinking about what's going to happen 10 or 20 years from now and what that's going to mean for our children and future generations. Part of what I try to do is to help people not just look ahead for next year, but how do you look around the corner of what's happening.

                     Sometimes, I describe it this way. Imagine you're in a car and you look in the rearview mirror. Well, that's what hindsight is, and then you look through the windshield. Well, that's foresight. You can see a certain distance down the road, but insight comes from the GPS because that's what tells us what's around the corners. For a futurist, that's what we try to do. We try to not just look at the trends that everybody else are talking about, but what are the forces that shape the trends. That's how you get ahead of a trend so you don't get run over by them.

Tom:            How do you identify those forces?

Jack:             Well, what we do is we look for signals. There's a science fiction writer named William Gibson and he would say, "The future is already here. It's just not widely distributed." So what we're doing is we're looking around at what are those innovations that have the opportunity to scale and have a broader impact. Once you do that then you want to try to figure out how do those signals connect to each other. Let me give you an example. Today, people think about robotics all the time and they think about things like AI, artificial intelligence. Well, when you take artificial intelligence and you put it together with a physical embodiment, well, that's what a robot is. You're putting together two ideas and forming something new.

                     Another way of thinking about it is people often worry about robotics taking away jobs and that's one order of magnitude separation, but what about the fact that we manufacture a lot of things in China because labor is cheap? Well, if robotics comes along and reduces the cost of labor, why are we even producing things in China anymore? Because then transportation becomes a much bigger part of the challenge. So why not bring all that production back to the United States or Ireland or other parts of the world?

                     What we're really trying to do is we're looking for those little things that other people are talking about and then we connect them in interesting ways and it gives us insights that we wouldn't have otherwise had if we try to follow that trend directly at the single line.

Tom:            This is fascinating, so you crunch data, you watch trends, you have all sorts of resources. Can you tell us what the trendscape, if you will, what it looked like as the world -- we're just beginning to come to grips with the meaning of the term "pandemic". What sorts of behaviors peculiar to such a crisis have you observed?

Jack:             Yeah. What I'm seeing is some trends are accelerating, some trends are decelerating, and some trends are being disrupted. An example of a trend that's being accelerated, well, we were already moving to online purchases of foods and other goods, but if you look at the month before the pandemic hit, only about 5% of Americans were purchasing their food online. A month or two later, 40% of people had tried purchasing food online. When it comes to things like online purchases, it's a huge barrier to get people to try that for the very first time. It's pretty easy to get them to try it again if they have a good experience. And so we actually just compressed five to ten years of growth in online food purchases into two months and that's something that's going to have a long-term impact. It changes the dynamics of where people purchase food. Of those purchases, nearly 50% of those people were purchasing online for the first time, and of those, Walmart captured about 60% of that opportunity. There are really interesting dynamics that are happening because of that and it's shifting the landscape.

                     If we look at food purchases before the pandemic, most people were beginning to eat food outside of the home, more than half of food purchases, but of course, after the pandemic, almost everybody's eating their food at home. This is a trend that has a potential of staying power and it shifts the direction that things were going and has moved them backwards to a different place. This is a trend that's going to have a long-term staying power because of the economic implications of the pandemic as well. Coming out of this, people aren't going to have as much disposable income, they're more likely to go back to basics, and this is going to have ripple effects through production, how we consume food, nutrition, and how we engage with food and culture as well.

Tom:            Let me pick up on that term "long-term consequences" because they're so fascinating to try to contemplate right now not only economic, not only social, but also mental and psychological. They're all linked to the myriad of changes that are being forced upon us by this outbreak. Do you see anything there of consequence?

Jack:             Yes. Well, it seems like every two weeks, there's a new sort of psychological aspect to this conversation. During the first couple of weeks, I was talking to people about panic buying and retail therapy, and then I started talking about are there food shortages happening, and then we were talking about food production squeezes. Now, we're beginning to look forward and say what are the longer term implications to our food supply and how we produce food that are going to come out of this, and so there are definitely consequences.

                     How people think about food, well, when you look at what people are purchasing, there's this trend back to basics. People are looking for foods that create comfort. Before the pandemic, big brands, big food was considered a bad thing. People were looking for small niche startups, things like that that were interesting and cool. Now, all of a sudden, the fact that you're buying brands that you were buying 20 years ago or when you were a child is bringing comfort to people, and so that's changing how they're thinking about the food brands that they buy.

Tom:            It's still very early in this crisis to be able to make definitive statements about what I'm about to ask, Jack, but I wonder if at this stage, you are already able to see what sorts of consequences are in store for Generation Z.

Jack:             I think people haven't quite wrapped their minds around the fact that this is the biggest economic impact since the Great Depression. Obviously, the Great Depression marked an entire generation of people who even today, their purchases and spending patterns are influenced by what happened to them back in the 1930s and early '40s. I don’t think most people grasp the fact that many young people today are going to have just as much of an impact on how they view the world.

                     For students who are at universities and are graduating this fall, but also for the next five or ten years, they're going to be entering the worst economic climate since the Depression in trying to find jobs. People were already struggling a little bit -- younger individuals -- to find jobs who've just been out of college, and so that's going to be dramatically more challenging for them. You have to remember that the income that you have in your first five or so years out of college really determines how much income you're going to have when you're retiring, so the impact on their financial well-being will reverberate through their entire lives.

Tom:            Okay. Let's turn to how COVID-19 is revealing some issues in the ways we get the right food to the right people at the right price. What have these disruptions shown us about our food systems?

Jack:             Well, I think they've definitely shown that there are some vulnerabilities in the way that we've been producing food. Historically, there has been an emphasis on the efficiency of our food supply and for really good reasons. If you go back 50 years, about a third of all the people in the world went to bed hungry every night. By 2020, only about 12% of the people on the planet were going to bed hungry, so efficiency has done an amazing job of raising people out of poverty and improving health and nutrition. On the other hand, that consolidation of our food supply system has an impact when there's a disruption to it.

                     If you have only a handful of companies that are producing the livestock products in the country and one facility is shut down, that can impact 5% of all production and then that becomes a bottleneck for the entire food system. A repercussion of that is that with that shortage then consumers end up paying more for their food, so just a 5% disruption can raise prices for the consumer.

                     On the other side of that equation though, livestock producers have fewer places to send their animals, and so all of a sudden, they're getting paid less money for each head of cattle. Think about that. Consumers are paying more and the people producing the food are getting paid less, and so that sends terrible signals to our market. It encourages people who produce food to produce less just at a time when we actually need more. So we're going to have to figure out how to maintain the efficiency of our system, which we need, but to add to it a resilience that's currently lacking.

Tom:            Is this what you're talking about when you described friction in our food systems or is that something else?

Jack:             Yes, that's one example of friction in our food system. Another would be when workers get sick, that's one example, but also drivers for transportation. If they're sick and they're not able to move the food from one place to another, the people that are working in the retail space are also a risk point or pressure point for this food system. Ports are also a place where there could be pressure, export markets, import markets. Each of these, if there's just a little bit of impact of the pandemic on them, just 1% or 2% then that has a ripple effect because it creates a friction that disrupts that entire chain from the farmer in Indonesia to your dinner plate.

Tom:            You touched on this just a few minutes ago, but I'm wondering if you could elaborate on it, how the consumer mindset has been changed and where you think it's going in regards to food trends.

Jack:             Well, one important outcome from this is that consumers are paying far more attention to our food systems than they ever had. Something that I often talk about is how consumers have never cared more nor known less how their food is produced. Well, that was true before the pandemic. Now, all of a sudden, people do have a better sense of how their food is produced, and because they're paying attention to that, that means that they're likely to ask for changes in that food system, so the relationship of the consumer to the food supply has been forever changed.

Tom:            Well, as a result of the stay-at-home imperative of the pandemic, farmers have been forced to euthanize millions of hogs and chickens, give away tons of unwanted potatoes or even plow them under, pour out enough milk to fill a small lake. Restaurants have closed of course all over the country that's thrown the food industry into chaos. It has convulsed the very specialized supply chains that are struggling to adjust. In light of all that, what does the future of farming and food production hold?

Jack:             Well, a lot of that goes to the question of the resilience and having diversified food systems so that if you're a farmer, you can sell not only to the retail market, but you can go to grocery stores or directly to the consumer. One outcome from this is that there are likely to be more direct consumer opportunities for farmers. That's a good thing because that gives farmers more opportunity to make a little bit more money when they're doing it, but it also helps them to explain to the consumer so that they can better understand how that food is produced. That's going to be a good connection that's coming out of all of this, but part of it is just the complexity of our food supply.

                     When we talk about having to euthanize animals, and pork industry is a good example of that, what people forget is that the animals that are going to slaughter this week, well, those sows were impregnated 300 days ago, and so the decisions that are being made today are decisions that really were being made 300 days ago. We need to keep that in mind because producers today have to decide, "Do I start to have the sows have a new litter today? Will there be a market for them a year from now?" People have to really think far into the future and that's just part of the complexity of our food supply, is people were thinking about this a year ago and now, we're seeing the benefits of their preparation, and what changes will they make though in this uncertain environment.

Tom:            Jack, at this early stage, who do you see coming out of this thing as winners and as losers?

Jack:             Well, I think that certainly online purchases are going to be big winners in all of this. The big food brands are coming out of this in a better position. Restaurants and small businesses are going to be hammered and that's going to be really unfortunate, and so I think we need to figure out ways of helping to maintain those smaller businesses because in many ways, small businesses are the engine of growth and it's going to be really impacted by all of this. I think the largest impact though still comes back to the financial implications for people that are going through such a massive financial challenge and that's going to again reverberate for a long time to come.

Tom:            Well, Jack, this is all so fascinating. I'd like to suggest that we revisit in about six months. Six months seems like another time zone for all of us. It's just incredible to think about what could happen in six months given all that's happened in only a few.

Jack:             Yes. Thank you. I really appreciate the conversation.

Tom:            Also, I have to imagine that going through life as a futurist must be pretty fascinating.

Jack:             Well, it's been a lot of fun because I get to work with a variety of organizations, associations, startups, big food brands, and I like to tell people that my personal mission is to de-escalate the tension in our food system so that we can all go about our business of saving the planet in our own way. I'm always excited to see what different organizations are doing in terms of their part of making the system better.

Tom:            Futurist and Futurity CEO, Jack Bobo. Thank you so much, Jack.

Jack:             Thank you.

Click here to register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience

Cady Coleman has spent more than 170 days in outer space on various missions and truly knows what it means to be isolated. Despite our differences, she says we are all on a mission together during these times of change and uncertainty. In this episode, Cady explains the importance of diversity within teams and how seeing other people’s perspectives can help us work better together and get through difficult times.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Cady Coleman, hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Tom:                          This is Tom Martin. Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us as we explore the challenges and opportunities facing the global food supply chain and speak with experts working to support a Planet of Plenty.

Mark:                          Hello and welcome to the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience. My name is Dr. Mark Lyons and I’m the president and CEO of Alltech. It's my great pleasure to welcome you to the first session of this event. For 35 years, ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference has been encouraging our attendees to think differently, to innovate in the face of disruption, and that's what we've done with our program this year: creating, for the first time, a virtual offering — something that we've been hoping to do for a number of years. At this time more than any other, these world-changing ideas, big-picture thinking and, more importantly, inspiration are perhaps what we all need a little bit of. So, we hope that these sessions are very useful for you, and we look forward to the interaction that we're going to have in our Q&A sessions. Fitting that this is our launch day, it seems most appropriate that our first keynote (speaker) has been to space and back.

Tom:                          Cady Coleman, chemist, two-time space shuttle astronaut and a pretty good flute player — we'll have more on that later — was aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule as part of a crew of three headed for the orbiting International Space Station on December 15, 2010.

Cady:                          It's an amazing ride. It's 8 and a half minutes to get to space. To me, as a person that just believes there's always more to define and explore in terms of ideas, in terms of horizons, in some ways, you know, even though I loved this ride, it's actually like the taxi to the place that we're really exploring, which was space.

Tom:                          In a virtual conversation with Alltech president and CEO Mark Lyons, Cady Coleman lifts us, in a time of so much turmoil, illness and uncertainty on our planet, to the unique and profound perspective of a perch looking down on Earth from 220 miles above.

Cady:                          To me, I used to think that space was someplace different — like, “I'm on Earth. I'm gonna go to space.” But actually arriving up there, it just made me realize that Earth and the place that we live is just bigger than we thought, and yet, it's home.

Tom:                          This is Cady’s story about experiencing half a year of living in weightlessness with five other people from very different countries and cultures.

Cady:                          People always feel kind of bad for us that it's small and terrible up in space. And I think they have this kind of image in mind. This is what the taxi ride looks like on the way up to space in the Russian Soyuz. So, I launched in and actually came back home to Russia for my stint up on the Space Station. And it is actually quite, quite tight. And even though it's only physically 8 and a half minutes to get there, to get to orbit, we actually spent, you know, hours and hours and hours practicing and getting ready and making sure we understand how to operate all the equipment in the Soyuz. So, it is small, but the Space Station itself is giant and huge.

Tom:                          How huge?

Cady:                          It's like 10 train cars all put together, but not just in a row; some are up, and then some are down, and some are sideways. And so, we have, really, these 10 train cars without the seats in them to be living in in that Space Station. We have really just a lot of room up there — privacy. And actually, we need all that room to keep all the equipment, to keep the experiments. I mean, storage is actually the biggest problem up there.

Tom:                          Okay. Let's back up just a bit. Cady mentioned practice. You don't just one day drop what you're doing and you board a rocket ship and escape Earth's gravity for almost a half-year aboard the Space Station.

Cady:                          So, I had some pretty exciting practice missions, so to speak. I got to live for 11 days underwater off the coast of Florida in the Aquarius Habitat. It's usually used for research, and it's also lent out to NASA for us to practice. Well, the other place that I got to do that is Antarctica, where I had a last-minute opportunity. I was the backup for this mission, and I had a last-minute opportunity to spend two and a half months in Antarctica. Six weeks of that was in a tent. There were four of us, two in each tent. And we were 200 miles from the South Pole. And I am not a camping girl. But where I wasn't camping girl, I sure am now. And that's the nice thing about these kind of jobs is they actually teach you all these things and how to stay safe — although I'm actually reminded of some of my lessons from Antarctica in terms of, you know, equipment and safety and, you know, for us to take your gloves off when you're outside as much as you want to.

                                    I mean, you’re wearing, you know, three layers of everything, and let’s say you have to go to the bathroom during the day, which is going to happen. You know, you’re just so tempted to take those gloves off, because it’d be so much easier — your zipper is Velcro, all those things — and (it was all about) learning that patience of just, “Slow is fast and I have more time than I think.”

Tom:                          Learning to survive in such unusual and uncomfortable conditions may have been the immediate goal, but for Cady, there was another benefit that would serve her well aboard the Space Station.

Cady:                          I’d say most of the lessons I learned were about people, about being a crew.

Tom:                          And that perspective about people learning to get along and cooperate, collaborate.

Cady:                          Forty different nations (are) working all together every day — it's an International Space Station — on work that can't be done anywhere else.

Tom:                          So, what's it like, day to day, living and working in zero gravity, where just the touch of a finger can send you literally flying across the entire Space Station?

Cady:                          It's like living the life of Peter Pan, and everything is different, and everything is a discovery, but we're still human. You know, we bring our own, you know, things that we love to do. We each have our own way of bringing that experience back home. And we each, as humans, look out at the Earth and get to think about what it means that we're in space and people are down on the Earth.

Tom:                          And Cady, displaying a photo of herself with her Space Station crewmates, tells us that this situation — six people from the U.S., Russia and Italy together in this fragile habitat, circling Earth — offers a lesson that can be lost in the demands, the routines and the realities of life.

Cady:                          Every single person in this picture, I guarantee you, feels like there's something about them that is theirs that they bring that other people either don't know, don't understand or aren't open to. And so, I think it's really important to think about that — especially now that we don't get to connect with each other as much as we used to, now that we're isolated to phone calls and Zoom meetings and things like that.

Tom:                          And here's where Cady’s story gets really interesting, bringing together the experience of a long-duration space mission with present-day conditions down below — a pandemic, racial injustice and the challenges of overcoming differences to work in collaboration.

Cady:                          (Here’s) a little bit about getting along as a crew, and I say this because I think all of us are, you know, in unusual circumstances right now in terms of isolation and it being, you know, smart to stay separated from friends and family sometimes, but also at work, at school. I mean, I think that all of us work in groups where we don't get to pick who we are working with.

Tom:                          During her presentation, Cady mentions a recent hit movie.

[Movie clip]

Tom:                          An important eye-opener for many, an affirmation of injustice for many others.

Cady:                          I show you this picture from the movie “Hidden Figures” because I think, first of all, if I was talking to you in person, I would ask who's seen this movie, and then I would implore those of you that didn't raise your hands to go and see it. I mean, first of all, it's a fabulous movie. It's fun; it's interesting. I think it's just really charming. And at the same time, it makes this really big point. I mean, this is Katherine Johnson. She has a doctorate in mathematics, and she did the calculations that figured out how we get people from the Earth to space and safely back home again to their families, and (she) did this for Gemini, for Mercury, for Apollo and for the space shuttle, and yet her work was not celebrated until very late in her life. I mean, look at this picture. Our movie is called “Hidden Figures”. And in every picture that I've seen of her in in real life, Katherine is wearing — she’s a woman of color wearing a dress of color and (is) typically in a work picture in a sea of white guys in skinny black ties. And so, there's — I mean, you can't miss her. Right? But we didn't see her. And it comes back to my point that all of us bring something that needs to come out on the table if we're going to solve the problems that are in front of us today as a nation, as a world, as a planet.

Tom:                          Cady herself has encountered discrimination as an obstacle to realizing her dream of space walking. The women of “Hidden Figures” encountered (this) and persevered despite the dual blows of racism and misogyny. Cady, who is white, never experienced the pain of being underestimated because of the color of her skin. For her, it had to do with stature and gender.

Cady:                          Myself, I was the smallest person to be part of the space-walking team up on the Space Station. And it was kind of a big thing because, for the space shuttle, we had small space suits and mediums and larges and extra larges. But for the Space Station, they couldn't afford to have all those sizes, for various reasons. And what that meant was the smaller people, like me — actually, all of them women — then did not fit into the suits that we had on the Space Station. And I was on that edge. I mean, I looked at the space suit and I knew that I had a job that I could do in that space suit. I knew that I brought things to that team that others didn't. And I cheerfully showed up to meetings that I wasn't invited to, not because people said, “Oh, I don't think we're going to ask Cady, we don’t like her,” or anything else. It was just that they looked at me and they just couldn't imagine that I should be part of that team — but I knew. And when it’s something as important as exploring space, it gives you that extra, like, you know, that extra courage to just say, “I know. I am showing up.”

Tom:                          Cady, now herself a role model for many young women, had one of her own: the first American woman to fly in space, astronaut Sally Ride.

Cady:                          She actually made all the difference in the world in that — my dad was an explorer. He lived under the ocean. He was in charge of the building one of those capsules where men lived under the ocean. He was a deep-sea diver, and exploration was really real to me growing up. I was born in 1960, and yet the fact that I could be one of those explorers never occurred to me until Sally Ride came to my college and gave a talk. And I just thought — you know, you see somebody that you can relate to — and I just thought, “Wow. Maybe I could try to do that.”

Tom:                          And try, she did. More than try. Cady Coleman has logged more than 4,300 hours in space. The mission to the International Space Station, where she supervised more than 100 experiments, was her last before retiring from the Astronaut Corps in 2016. She has since been an advocate of expanding the role of private companies within NASA. And the recent SpaceX Dragon launch, carrying a crew of two to the Space Station, is the most dramatic example yet of the success of those efforts.

[SpaceX launch]

Tom:                          After her own 159 days in Earth orbit, Cady Coleman returned from the Space Station with fresh perspectives on the human condition, gained from weeks on end cooped up with five other human beings. The only thing between them and the deadly vacuum of space? A one-tenth of 1-inch aluminum pressure hull of the orbiting Space Station. Under these conditions, you really gain a more complex understanding of your crewmates.

Cady:                          And so, realizing that everyone has those different perspectives, it’s another way to think about, you know, how we relate to each other. The fact that when we look down at the Earth — I mean, our Space Station is pretty close there. Because we’re upside down and right side up, we learned to think about things and see things differently.

Tom:                          Cady Coleman’s advice has particular resonance in these times of division and increasing difficulty to communicate with people who view life differently.

Cady:                          Try to bring that to the conversations that you have at work, at home. When you're trying to convince someone of something new that is unfamiliar to them, try to look at them from a different direction, and find out something for yourself about them that allows you to work more closely together.

Tom:                          Recently, as the spread of the coronavirus mushroomed into a pandemic, Cady reached back to her experiences as a member of a team on a mission to suggest that we're now all on a mission.

Cady:                          We have this advantage as space explorers that, you know, we're part of a mission. I mean, we have jackets, you know; we’re wearing space suits. And it's really clear to you that, you know, you've got a job to do, and a lot of people are helping you do it. And so, it's easy to think, “It's important for me to be ready, and all these actions, they're important.” But I think with COVID-19, the mission can be less tangible. And just the fact that you can stay in your house with your family and stay safe and not do some of the things you'd like to do, it doesn't feel like this like step forward, mastering the engine systems — and yet it is. It's a step toward the mission. I think what can help people is just identifying. Give it a name. You know, this is the mission: staying safe. And these are the things we're doing today. And by focusing on that mission — I mean, to me, it’s interesting that I think the whole world understands this word “mission” in a different way because of this pandemic.

Tom:                          There was a Q&A portion during Cady’s virtual presentation, and COVID-19 was on the mind of Alltech’s Mark Lyons.

Mark:                          I think, through COVID-19, we're all hoping that there's some positive, there's some kind of silver lining, something that we're going to gain in terms of perspective. But I think there's also a sense that maybe we picked things up, we learned something, but then we maybe lose it. So, I wonder, you know, through your experiences, you know, having that new perspective, how do you make sure that what you learn, you can retain, and what do you think you did learn from that time in space?

Cady:                          Wow. You know, I was going to say that, you know, I see a lot positive happening. You know, there's sort of this, I call it, “activation energy” or some barrier to change, to doing something differently, and yet, you know, something helps you over that barrier, and in this case, the need during COVID-19 for people to solve all sorts of problems together, it's just there — and I see this. I see it on the internet. I see it in the news. Different people coming together, seeing something that they can do together and doing it. You know, asking each other, helping each other. Competitors making things together. I mean, it's so hopeful. You know, in the case of Alltech, I know you think so much about the planet and how your work is, you know, good for sustainability, for the planet, and people realize that's even more imperative now that, suddenly, the food chain is more real to all of us.

Tom:                          Now, about that flute…

[Music playing]

Tom:                          Cady is a member of the astronaut group, Bandella, performing here at the Folk Alliance Conference in 2015. At one event, the band had been invited onstage with Ireland's legendary Chieftains.

Cady:                          When I was at NASA, Paddy Moloney, who's the leader of the Chieftains, his son was an intern at NASA. And he actually stayed with a family that was kind of just a — they were just the people that were so good at gathering. I mean, (they) gathered people like me: all these people that love to play (music) but don't really play together. And it was a group of like 18 of us that would play some form of Celtic music, and then we ended up in small groups. And so, I knew Padraig, Paddy’s son, from my days there playing music. And when it came to going to the Space Station, one of the things I thought about was, you know, how do I bring people with me, and what's important to me, if I get to bring a few things, what's important to bring? And I really loved the spirit of Irish music. And I actually had decided I would learn how to play the Irish flute. Now, this doesn't mean that I knew how to play the Irish flute or that I, even though I carried it around with me on the road, that I learned enough. But I was inspired to go through Padraig to Paddy and to ask if I could bring some flutes with me to space. And by that time, actually, I knew the whole band. When they would come to town, we would go. And our astronaut band would get to be their guests, coming out on stage at the end, or they would kindly play along quite a bit.

                                    Anyway. So, I knew them, and Matt Malloy sent this flute that is like, I think, a treasure of Ireland. It’s an E flat Irish flute and just this beautiful instrument. A little bit smaller, for somebody like me, with small hands. And Paddy sent a tin whistle, and I brought them up to space. I brought a couple flutes. Every flute has its own little T-shirt that it was wrapped in so the pieces wouldn’t float away. And it just gave me really great pleasure to be up in that cupula looking out over the world and playing music. It kind of brings me into a little place that’s just mine. And it’s the same place where I come when I’m down here on the Earth, but then I got to go that place in space and look out at the world and just kind of, I don’t know, just feel a little more settled.

Tom:                          It would not be Cady’s only orbit-to-Earth performance with a legendary artist; there was another duet with the flute of the legendary Jethro Tull.

Cady:                          Tonight, Ian Anderson and I would like to honor Yuri Gagarin for his brave journey 50 years ago, and we would like to celebrate the role that humans play in the exploration of our universe, past, present and future, by sharing some music between Earth and space.

[Music playing]

Tom:                          Again, Mark Lyons.

Mark:                          You know, one of the questions we keep getting, obviously, given your background and our present time of social distancing and isolation is: Given the experience you had, of course, in the tent in Antarctica, under the ocean and in the Space Station, how do people respond? You know, what ways should we think about this isolation? You had, you know, professional, obviously, the best training in the world preparing for that. For a lot of us, we've been shutting doors all of a sudden. So, are there any tips that you might share with the audience?

Cady:                          You know, some of them are, you know, kind of like family tips where, you know, I look at — and you say, “Well, you got professional help.” It's surprisingly not as much as you might think, you know. We kind of have to put those things together for ourselves. But you know, when there's some behavior that is causing strife or some situation, (the best thing to do) is to think, sort of, further than the situation. It's almost like — I think back to when our kid was little and there'd be some, you know, bad behavior after picking up from school in the first few weeks of school. And you know, what I learned about — and I actually had somebody, you know, to help me talk through some of these things, because we commuted, but anyways. But you know, picking him up from school — I mean, this is a kid that’s, like, worked really hard all day long to hold it together, and then there he is with the people that he loves and you just lose it, right? And don't behave as well. And so, do you deal with the behavior, or do you think about what the reason is? And I think it has some applications to our time now.

                                    You know, I found, in our family, we're all kind of a little grumpy when it got to, like, dinner. First of all, we're hungry. And second, you know, we have three adults who are all working full-time from the same house, and suddenly it’s 6 o’clock, and who was in charge of figuring out what to eat? And so, you know, we ended up, you know, coming up with a little bit more of a system and actually acknowledging like, “Hey, everybody, you know, I thought I —” You just feel like you're the only one working, when actually, all of us are working really hard. So, recognizing the behaviors and then realizing that there's probably some, you know, there's some things behind them.

                                    And the hardest thing that we don't actually have to wrestle with much in space, I don't think, is that we know (that), eventually, we're coming home. I mean, it's pretty finite. I mean, I was up there for 6 months, and you know, the mission was extended by 2 weeks, which I was incredibly thrilled about, but I mean, it's still finite. Whereas with COVID-19, there's a lot of uncertainties — and uncertainties about finances, about dreams, about what you're going to be able to do next. And I guess really just owning that uncertainty, I think, is really helpful — realizing that it's hard, and don't expect it to be easy, and just acknowledge you're working through hard things.

[Music playing]

Tom:                          Astronaut Cady Coleman with Alltech president and CEO Mark Lyons, launching the 2020 Alltech ONE Virtual Experience. If you're interested in seeing Cady’s view from space, and to watch more video content from other thought leaders from around the world, register at one.alltech.com. I'm Tom Martin, and this has been Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us, and be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts — and leave a review if you’ve enjoyed this episode.

Click here to register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience

Italy was one of the first countries hit by COVID-19, and after an eight-week lockdown, the next phase of reopening businesses has begun. Massimo Zanin of Veronesi, a major Italian animal feed company, details how Veronesi was able to safely help maintain the food supply chain throughout the lockdown and what he is hoping will happen for his country and the agriculture sector in general beyond the pandemic.

This episode is part of a special AgFuture series on the impact of COVID-19 on the food supply chain. Join us to hear how those on the frontlines of the global pandemic are working to overcome adversity and feed the world.

The following is an edited transcript of Michelle Michael's interview with Massimo Zanin. Click below to hear the full audio.

Michelle:       Hello! I'm Michelle Michael. In this special series of AgFuture, we're talking with those working along the food supply chain about the impact of COVID-19. My guest today is Mr. Massimo Zanin. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Massimo:       Good morning! Thank you for inviting me.

Michelle:       And I guess it would be good afternoon to you; you're in the northeast part of Italy, right? Near to Venice?

Massimo:       Yes, close to Venice, about one hour by car from Venice. Verona is the name of the city where we are based.

Michelle:       Italy was hit quite hard by the coronavirus pandemic, but you're starting to see a glimmer of hope, I think, right? What's life like for you right now?

Massimo:       Well, personally, let's say that, now — we had these eight weeks (of) lockdown. That means that in the last eight weeks, the only things we were able to do was come from home to the office and from the office going home. The other thing was shopping, but not so often. That's all. The rest of the things were not allowed, really. I think what the Italians in general demonstrated in these last eight weeks was (that) they were able to follow the rules given by the government, so really, they stayed home for eight weeks, (which is) incredible for the Italians.

Michelle:       It is incredible. Are things now starting to open back up slowly, though?

Massimo:       Yes, we are starting to go out. Today, after eight weeks, we begin the so-called phase two. That means that more industries are going to start, to restart, to produce, so that means that around four and a half million people are going out every day from today. I think that we (will) begin to see a sort of light at the end of the tunnel and we hope, really, to see a better time in the next (few) weeks, and “a better time” means more freedom to go out — and also from an economic point of view, because we cannot forget that not only the industry but all the shops, all the small activities (that) are here now, (were) shut down, so really, we hope to see all these activities starting again, because it's important for our people and for the economy of Italy to start again.

Michelle:       Speaking of business, Massimo, you're with Veronesi, one of the biggest poultry, swine and rabbit integrators, and you have a feed mill there as well. On a very basic level, can you explain what that means? What does a poultry, swine and rabbit integrator do?

Massimo:       Well, as an integrator, we are involved in all the activities along the supply chain. That means producing feed. We are in the market of raw materials. We breed many, many different kinds of animals — chicken, poultry, but also cattle, pigs, rabbits and so on, and then we slaughter and we transform these meats into products that we sell in the supermarkets. That means that we are involved in the whole supply chain.

                        At Veronesi, I imagine that Veronesi is, nowadays, a company that employs directly almost 9,000 people, but if we go also to the people working for us, even if not directly employed (by us), we are talking around 15,000 people working for the group. It's one of the most important agribusiness groups in Italy, one of the biggest in Europe, (with) a consolidated turnover of over €3 billion, or US$3.3 billion. And because Veronesi was founded 62 years ago in 1958, I have to say that it started on the first of May, and a few (weeks) ago, we celebrated our 62nd anniversary.

It was founded by Apollinare Veronesi, our founder, but in 1958, he was already 47, so not exactly a young guy starting this new adventure after the Second World War. He was already married and was the father of five children when he saw that animal feed was a new, important sector for the growth of the country at that time. At that time, we have to imagine that, in Italy, animal breeding was not exactly what we see today. Every family had, at that time, a couple of pigs or ten chickens to feed, but what did the people give to the animals at that time? Probably the waste of their meals, their family meals, so Apollinare Veronesi saw how important it could be to improve the quality of the feed given to the animals, so he started in 1958 with the feed production, and ten years later, in 1968, he began his involvement in the poultry sector, breeding first chickens and then turkeys, importing the turkeys from the U.S., because turkeys were not present at all in Italy. Then, later on, in the '80s, he expanded his activity to pig breeding and slaughtering.

                        Over the years, I'd have to say that this remained as the main sector, but the activity has been integrated or completed via internal growth and also acquisitions. Nowadays, we are involved in many activities, but we can, let's say, organize all the activities in three large areas. We call them the three Fs: feed, farming and food. We farm thousands and thousands of animals, and we go down after slaughtering, after processing the meat, to the market with two main brands, which are AIA and Negroni. AIA is the brand we use for fresh — even if processed, but still fresh — meat products. AIA is a product sold mainly in Europe, North Africa and Europe. Negroni is our brand for salami, ham, these great, typical Italian products. Negroni products, you can find all over the world, from Japan to the U.S., so everywhere. Now, our consolidated turnover is €3 billion, and almost 15% of our turnover is export.

Michelle:       Being one of the largest and most important agricultural companies, what are you facing today because of COVID-19 in your business?

Massimo:       Well, I have to say that we have (had) to change completely our way of work. We were, let's say, lucky because agribusiness has been considered, personally (in Italy) but also in other counties, as an essential business. That means that we choose and we're in the position to continue to work, but obviously — you remember that Italy was the first country outside China to be hit by the COVID-19 epidemic. It's true that the first stages were in a small area south of Milan. This area is really small, but it's a high-intensity area for our sector. In this area, there are a lot of farms, mainly dairy farmers, also pigs, and many feed mills. One of our feed mills — we have seven feed mills around Italy, but one of them is close to this area, so our involvement, I have to say, was immediate.

                        I remember the first time they came (with news of) the so-called patient zero. The first case of (COVID-19) positivity found in Italy was on February 21. It was Friday evening, and the day after, we had our first talk. They called up the board of the executive committee to decide how to manage the situation. It was really a new situation for everyone, and it was really unexpected, a new situation for everybody. We were afraid about the health of our people because we knew that we could go on with the production, but on the other side, we wanted to be sure to let our people work in a safe and healthy position.

                        So, really, we worked a lot that week to define protocols together with the workers, together with the unions, because the unions were afraid about this new situation, so we worked together in order to be able to continue to work without any risks, and so far, we have done it, I have to say.

Michelle:       That's great news. What does that mean specifically? What precautions did workers have to take on the job so that they remain safe? What did that look like?

Massimo:       Of course, there are different situations in different factories. If we look to the slaughterhouse, we can imagine how many people are working in the slaughtering line, and so the first concern was to give more distance between one (person) to the other. So, we intervened in the number of people working at the same time in that slaughtering line. That means that we have to slow down the rate of the slaughtering. That means that we try to reduce the number of the people involved in every single shift in the slaughterhouse. On the other side, we built a special track to go in and to come out (of the building on). Of course, every one of the people working in this situation was equipped with masks, gloves and all the equipment needed in those situations. I have to say that after two months of work in this situation, we are really — I don't want to say it out loud, but everything went really well.

                        On the other side, if we look to the feed mills, the situation is completely different because, thanks to high investments in the last years in automation, in the feed mills, we have limited staff presence, so it's easier to manage them, to make them operate in a condition of safety. Also, the people working in the feed mills were equipped with masks and gloves. Also, in the feed mills, we try to reduce the number of people per shift because the big concern was, from the beginning, to avoid the risk to have a stock shortage, because in the event of (COVID-19) positivity, of course, we should put in quarantine all the people working together, so we reduced the number of people per shift in the feed mills. Also, in the feed mills, I have to say there's (been) no problem until today.

                        Also, the truck drivers, looking to the truck drivers, they were the first figures involved in the program because in Italy, there was the so-called red area, the first area, the small area south of Milan, and they had to go there to deliver the feed, so they were the first people involved in the emergency. Also, to them, we gave our procedures. We gave them masks and gloves needed to get in contact with the farmers. They were invited to follow all the safety rules of the group. I have to say that in the last eight weeks, it's (been) really difficult to enter a donation factory, but really, it was necessary.

Michelle:       We know the workers were dramatically impacted. What about the customers? Were the customers of the company affected as well?

Massimo:       Of course, our customers, which are the farmers, they were involved also in the confusion of the market, but first, in our behavior to the customers, the farmers, we tried to find different ways to maintain this kind of comfort. Really, we invented different ways (to stay connected), like more frequent calls to them.

                        Our first concern, also there, was to say to the sellers, to the consultants that would usually have contact with the farmers, to be more frequently than normal getting in contact with them. We invented many ways to make it under a hashtag. The hashtag is #veronesiconvoy, #veronesiwithyou. Under this hashtag, we prepared more frequent newsletters, personalized WhatsApp messages, corporate videos explaining to them what we were doing in order to maintain the same level of service, of quality of the product and of services. We were giving them video messages. Of course, our experts, our technicians, (since they were) not in the position to ever have physical or personal contact, they began to use these platforms — like WhatsApp video calls — to give, in a remote way, their suggestions, the advice that the farmers needed. So I have to say that our breeders, we know that our customers are really our greatest asset, so they cannot think that they've been left alone for even one minute, so Veronesi has to be always there together with the customers, the farmers.

Michelle:       As much as it seems impossible to prepare for a pandemic, do you think the agriculture sector could have done things differently? And on that note, what lessons can we learn from this in the way our food supply chain works?

Massimo:       To be prepared, to be really prepared for such a pandemic, I think, was impossible. The question is, probably, “What can we do to improve in order to be better prepared for it?” There is not only one answer, of course. If I look to the Italian market, we are, for example, a net importer of raw materials. So, even if we think (we should try) to be more prepared, we cannot change our way of (importing) the crops in Italy. We are trying to increase the quantity of raw materials to grow in Italy, but it's impossible. We are a small garden. We cannot be competitive with the production in many other countries, so we still remain a net importer. I have to say that even if we were not prepared for the pandemic, after the first few days, where we were all afraid about the risks of shortages of raw materials — both macro raw materials, grains and so on, but on the other side, also, of micro ingredients — after the first day, we had to say that everything has come in the right time.

                        What we need is a better dialogue between the producer of the products like milk, like animals, and the final market, the consumer market, because the problem, for example, for some sectors was where to sell the product that usually went to export, went to foreign countries. When the flights were stopped, of course — for example, the wonderful mozzarella di bufala, the buffalo-milk mozzarella, had no more market, or the part of the market (where it sold the most), which was the export market, was stopped, so we had a surplus of production. We probably need a better dialogue between the first part of the production and the transformation, processing and distribution. This is what we need. For the future, what I see is a better dialogue along the supply chain.

Michelle:       That certainly could hold a lot of positives. How long do you think the agricultural sector could feel the impact from COVID-19?

Massimo:       When we talk of the agriculture sector, we are talking of so many different products. Look to the wine. Look to the vegetables. Look to the tourists and so on. Look into our sector, the sector we are involved in, the meat sector and the dairy sector — meat because we process and sell meat products, and on the other side, the dairy sector, because we sell feed to the dairy farmers. Probably the impact will be, for Italy, relatively long.

                        I'm positive about the future. I'm for sure positive about the future, but I have to say that remember that the tourism, for Italy, represents 13% of our GDP. Imagine that only in the last two and a half months — that means the beginning of spring, Eastern time — we have, usually, in Italy, 80 million tourists present. If we consider that they eat usually twice a day, that means that we lost, in the last weeks, around 160 million meals. This means, of course, meat, cheese. It means processed products like ham. It means wine, too. What we lose with tourists, we cannot recover with the consumption of the Italians. That's why I think that we need time to go back to the normal situation, to the situation before the pandemic.

Michelle:       As every economy has struggled around the globe, when things are safe again, I'm sure you want those tourists back.

Massimo:       Well, sure. That's for sure. This new experience, the experience of the pandemic — which is a first for everyone, I think, in the world — tells us that we can't wait to do things. As Latins say, "Carpe diem." So, the message for all the people listening to us today is: don't wait. For the next year, plan to visit Italy. We need everyone's support, really. Here in Italy, you'll find culture, history, nature, people who know how to work with you and push you, and the best food in the world, so we'll wait for you.

Michelle:       What do you want consumers to know about you, about the food supply chain?

Massimo:       As I said before, our business, our activity, has been considered as essential. I think that, really, they gave us the awareness of how important we are for the entire supply chain. We are important because we are preparing the food for the Italians. I say Italians because we are based in Italy, but it's the same for the industry working in the same sector in other countries. We were allowed to work because it was important to bring the food to the people staying home.

                        I remember, I served in the U.S. a few years ago on a farm, on a big farm, and we had shirts, and it was written on this shirt, "Our family is proud to feed your family." It is really important that our work or our job is to feed people. We are open to the people. We want to be transparent with people so that they know what we do and how we do it. It's really important. We invested, in the last year, a lot of money in animal welfare because we believe that better welfare breeds better animals and shows better results. As I said before, to work together with the supply chain, with all the players of our supply chain, is the only way, I think, we can really face the worst.

Michelle:       I want to go back to talk about empathy and a sense of family, a sense of community. Is there a stronger feeling now that we are all in this together, the agricultural supply chain, the consumers? Is there more of a connection now?

Massimo:       Well, a sense of family, I think, is, for us as Italians, at the top of our thoughts. We have seen in the last few weeks that everyone is facing the same problem, and probably the mistake we did (make) was to think, at the beginning, that the coronavirus was the Chinese (people's) problem; then we found it in Italy. Still, everyone thought to close Italy. Then, in a few days, we found it all over Europe, the U.S., South America, and all over the world, so we probably need to share more information. Sharing more information probably could have (been correlated to) less victims, so the method is, when we have difficulties like this, we need to face the difficulties together.

                        What we have seen in Italy is that we have a lot of volunteers helping families, helping other people living alone without having the possibility to go out or to go shopping. Really, what we noticed in the last few weeks is this kind of mutual help to other people, so at different levels — family level, private level, or at the highest level, between different countries. I think that we have to see all these things more in a community way.

Michelle:       Veronesi is a family company. Is that correct?

Massimo:       Yes, it is. It is. Still now, after 62 years, it's still a family company and was founded by Apollinare Veronesi, managed by the five sons after his death, and now we have the third generation in charge. Actually, the president is one representative of the third generation of Veronesis, but they're still now a family company. Yes, it is.

Michelle:       Alltech is also a family company, so we certainly have that in common. Mr. Massimo Zanin, thank you so much for joining us today. Stay safe. Stay well.

Massimo:       Thank you. Thank you so much, too.

Michelle:       For additional resources on COVID-19, visit alltech.com.

Click here for additional COVID-19 resources.

One of the primary goals of all livestock producers is to keep their herds healthy. Unfortunately, however, illness is often unavoidable — and some very easily transmitted but deadly ailments can be traced back to one source: Clostridium.

What is Clostridium, and how do you know when it is causing problems in your herd?

Clostridia are gram-positive, anaerobic, spore-forming bacteria that are often found in the soil and manure or in feedstuffs that have been contaminated.

“It’s around us all the time, everywhere,” said Dr. Luke Miller, a veterinary elite dairy advisor at Alltech. “Because it’s a spore former, soil contamination caused by clostridia can last through the winter. It can last in the desert, during heat stress, cold stress — all that stuff has very little effect on clostridia.”

Unlike many other disease-causing bacteria, clostridia are not contagious or passed from animal to animal.  

“There’s pretty much two ways you’re going to get a Clostridium infection,” said Luke. “You’re going to get it through either ingesting contaminated food or through a cut, an open wound or something like that. There’s always some insult that has to occur for a clostridial infection to flourish.”

It is possible for an animal to ingest clostridia and not be affected, as spores can lay dormant in the intestine. Clostridia become pathogenic when something about the animal’s diet, habitat or body changes — if the animal eats too much starch or carbohydrates, for example, or experiences a tissue injury, either internal (e.g., liver abscesses) or external (e.g., cuts or gashes). These issues — namely, a decrease in or lack of oxygen within the tissue — create favorable conditions for the proliferation of this bacteria.

Homing in on Clostridium perfringens

There are numerous types of clostridial bacteria, but cattle producers should be specifically concerned about Clostridium perfringens, which can have a major impact on an animal’s gut health — especially young animals, including calves that are less than 2 months old, because they have not yet developed a fully functioning rumen or a complete gut flora.

C. perfringens lives on starches and sugars, which explains why it proliferates when cattle start eating more carbohydrates. It can also spread when the animal experiences stress or is dealing with another condition that affects the gut, such as diarrhea. When elevated levels of the toxins released by C. perfringens enter the bloodstream — including alpha toxin, which is highly virulent — animals can experience inflammation, shock, cardiac arrest and even death.

What are the symptoms of clostridial disease in cattle?

Clostridium can lead to gut distress in cattle — especially when they are specifically dealing with C. perfringens, which can lead to symptoms and issues that include:

• Enterotoxemia (also known as purple gut; when toxins from bacteria that are usually found in the intestine enter the bloodstream)
• Severe diarrhea/stomach upset
• Abdominal pain
• Bloat
• Decreased appetite/intestinal movement
• Abomasum distention
• Leaky gut
• Bubbles in the manure
• Hemorrhagic bowel syndrome (HBS)
• Stalled calves
• ADR (“ain’t doin’ right”) — general malaise, etc.
• Blindness
• Sudden death

How can clostridial infections be prevented or defeated?

While it can be difficult to treat enteric diseases in cattle, including infections caused by C. perfringens, it is not impossible. Learn more about the various ways you can protect your animals against dangerous clostridia below.

1. Work with your vet to implement a vaccine protocol

Consult with your veterinarian about creating a proper vaccination program for your herd, as vaccines can help protect against some of the most common clostridial diseases in cattle, including enterotoxemia, blackleg, redwater and tetanus.

“There are many kinds and brands of vaccines for Clostridium,” said Miller. “Meet with your veterinarian to decide a proper vaccination protocol that addresses your operation’s needs and takes into account your regional pathogen load and issues.”

Miller also recommends being as proactive as possible about making sure your other cattle don’t contract clostridia once it has been identified in a member of the herd. After all, while clostridia can’t be transmitted from animal to animal, if the entire herd is eating the same contaminated feed or is walking on contaminated soil, more instances of infection are likely to crop up.  

2. Help the gut microbiome flourish by feeding probiotics

As defined by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), probiotics are live microorganisms that can provide health benefits by helping digest food, destroying disease-causing cells and producing vitamins. Some of the microorganisms contained in probiotics are similar to — or even the same as — microorganisms that live naturally in the bodies of humans and animals. As such, probiotics help “complement the gut biome,” in Miller’s words, making it more robust and bolstering its ability to fight off colonization by detrimental bacteria like C. perfringens.

“You can get colonization with good bacteria every day with probiotics, and they simply out-eat the competition for nutrients,” said Miller. “When they eat more starch, the Clostridium won’t be able to. They’re keeping the pH where they like it, not where the Clostridium likes it.”

3. Keep the gut healthy with products like Select BAC™

While the methods mentioned above can help protect against clostridial diseases in cattle, some intestinal issues caused by C. perfringens are not addressed by vaccines and/or probiotics. Select BAC™, a new product offering from Alltech, serves as a great nutritional solution for helping solve the problems created by Clostridium. This complete gut health pack includes both enzymes and probiotics, which play a pivotal role in maintaining the health of the gut.

“We’re throwing in the whole kitchen sink of what science thinks is good for the gut in Select BAC,” Miller said. “We’re helping you heal your herd’s gut.”

Clostridium is nearly impossible to avoid, and the effects it can have on cattle herds are difficult to grasp. Fortunately, a variety of Clostridium perfringens treatments and methods of prevention are available, including establishing a vaccination program and feeding probiotics and enzymes. Hopefully, by utilizing these techniques, producers can begin to feel more at ease about the health of their herds.

References

“Clostridial disease.” MSD Animal Health, http://www.msd-animal-health.ie/diseases/cattle/clostridial-disease/information.aspx.

“Clostridium perfringens infections in baby calves.” Drovers, 26 March 2013, www.drovers.com/article/clostridium-perfringens-infections-baby-calves.

Thomas, Heather Smith. “Calving Tips: How to Prevent Acute Gut Infection in Beef Calves.” Beef Magazine, 22 March 2013, www.beefmagazine.com/calving/calving-tips-how-prevent-acute-gut-infection-beef-calves.

Thomas, Heather Smith. “Clostridial Infections in Calves.” Angus Journal, 26 April 2017, www.angus.org/Media/News/FullArticle.aspx?asTitle=Clostridial-Infections-in-Calves&aiId=786.

I would like more information about Clostridium in cattle.