How can the dairy industry reduce its environmental hoofprint? Michael Boccadoro, executive director of Dairy Cares and president of West Coast Advisors, explains how California is leading the world in reducing methane emissions from cattle and how other regions can adopt new dairy technologies and practices for more sustainable production.

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

Tom:                          Greetings! I’m Tom Martin, and joining us from Sacramento, California, is Michael Boccadoro, executive director of Dairy Cares and president of West Coast Advisors. Hello, Michael.

Michael:                     Good morning.

Tom:                          So, let’s begin by talking about your presentation at ONE: The Alltech Ideas Conference, “Reducing the environmental hoofprint of dairy farming.” You talked about the ways California dairy farmers and their families are leading the world in planet-smart farm practices.

                                    And so, first, if you would, give us some perspective: Where does California fit among contributors to global greenhouse gases?

Michael:                     California contributes, globally, about 1% of all greenhouse gases in the environment.

Tom:                          And then, what proportion of California’s total emissions come from farming, from agriculture?

Michael:                     Just 8% of California’s emissions. Most of the emissions are coming from fossil fuel use, electricity production, industrial, and the big elephant in the room is transportation in California; that accounts for only about half of all greenhouse gases in the state.

Tom:                          And then, breaking it on down further, how much of (the) farming share of California’s greenhouse gas emissions come from cattle?

Michael:                     About 78% come from cattle, 13% from crops, and about 8% from agricultural fuel use.

Tom:                          So, cattle. Methane. Why is methane such an important emission to keep watch on?

Michael:                     For a couple of reasons, right? Methane is an important greenhouse gas because it’s a short-lived climate pollutant, and we’ll talk about that. Methane breaks down in the environment after 10 to 12 years, compared to carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas in the environment, which can last as hundreds of years — and some people say as long as a thousand years.

                                    The other reason why methane is important is it’s more potent than CO₂, carbon dioxide. It’s 24 to 28 times more potent, which means a little bit of methane goes a long way.

                                    But even when you account for that increased potency, as you had already asked the question and I’ve already answered, it’s still only a small fraction of the total greenhouse gases here in California and, for that matter, across the United States.

Tom:                          Why would reducing methane emissions produce results faster than reducing CO₂?

Michael:                     For that simple reason: It’s a short-lived climate pollutant, because it leaves the environment on its own after 10 to 12 years. And this is a really critical point: Carbon dioxide accumulates in the environment. So, every year, as we add additional carbon dioxide, it’s like adding an additional blanket to the world, to the globe, and we’re increasing global warming as a result.

                                    With methane, after 10 to 12 years, as you add a blanket of additional methane, the blanket from 12 years ago comes out of the equation, or out of the environment. So, you’re not accumulating methane the same way we accumulate carbon dioxide.

And so, by reducing methane in the short term, we can actually achieve something called climate cooling, not climate warming.  You heard me right: climate cooling. Because if you reduce methane to compared to where you were 12 years ago, you’re actually accounting for less methane in the environment, in that twelfth year, than you were previously. You’re putting less in in the twelfth year than it’s coming out from 12 years ago. So, you’re actually cooling the climate a little bit. An amazing thought, when you really think about it.

Tom:                          Well, it is. And in 2016, the California legislature passed a bill that was aimed at reducing methane emissions (by) 40% by 2030. It’s a pretty tight time frame. So now, four years later, how is that going?

Michael:                     It’s a great question, and the California Air Resources Board is currently doing an assessment of the progress that’s being made toward that goal. And I think all indications point to the fact that the California dairy farm families have really stepped up and are doing a fantastic job.

                                    And with the projects that are currently being built to reduce methane — these are digesters and what we call alternative manure management practices; things like solid separators, converting from a flush system to a scrape system and so forth — (with) all these projects combined, by 2023, 2024, (we) will achieve 25% of that 40% reduction that the state is looking for. So, we’re making good progress in just four short years. We’re on path to get to the 40% reduction by 2030.

Tom:                          You’ve mentioned that some people tend to misunderstand this legislation. What are they misunderstanding? What are they missing here?

Michael:                     The big misunderstanding about the legislation in California and the dairy industry were — to structure the legislation properly — is that this is not a regulatory approach. This is what we call an incentive-based approach to getting these voluntary methane reductions from the industry.

                                    What I mean by that is the state is stepping up with a significant investment in terms of grants, in terms of programs to support the purchase of the energy and the fuel that’s being produced. And so, this incentive-based approach is leading to this significant reduction.

                                    If the state had taken a hard regulatory approach — and many people were pushing, particularly from the environmental community, for that — it would actually have backfired on the state. And I give credit to the state regulators for realizing that. It would have backfired because it would have just pushed these dairies out of California, and pushed dairy production — because demand is not decreasing for dairy; it’s still increasing across the world. It would have pushed this production to other places, where they’re far less efficient than we are here in California, where the greenhouse gases produced per gallon of milk are much higher. And it would have backfired; it would have led to actual, significant — more methane and significantly more global warming, as a result, across the world.

Tom:                          At first, the energy that was being produced by these methane digesters was being supplied to the state’s grid. Has that changed? And how?

Michael:                     It has changed, and you’re correct. Many of our early projects were producing electricity using internal combustion engines on the dairies. Dairies were sometimes using some of that energy to energize their own projects on the farm, but most of it was being sold to the electricity grid, to the investors on utilities in California, who provide that power, then, to the ultimate consumers. And we’re transitioning away from that.

All the projects being built in the last few years — and this is true in California, (and) I think it’s true across the United States as well. And we’re transitioning to producing renewal natural gas, and basically, that gas can then be utilized in the transportation sector to replace diesel fuel in heavy-duty trucks. And so, you not only get the methane reduction on the dairy, but we’re actually reducing the use of fossil fuels for transportation, and you get substantial benefits from that. So, we’re seeing a lot more renewable natural gas trucks come online in California and, I think, to some degree, across the U.S. as well.

                                    But it has provided a new halfway for us to be able to generate even more revenue for these projects, which is important — to keep this, you know, sustainable from an economic standpoint as well as an environmental standpoint. So, it’s providing the revenues that the farmers need to be able to make the decisions to put these investments in. And so, it really is making this program work a lot better.

Tom:                          Michael, we’ve been focusing on methane here, but I’m wondering: What other pollutants are being reduced?

Michael:                     That’s also a great question. And so, when you look across the board with these California digesters, you’re looking at significant reductions in what we call criteria pollutants. So, these are the air pollutants that cause, basically, smog in California.

And most of our dairies are located in the San Joaquin Valley in California, and that’s an area of the country — not just the state, but an area of the country — with some of the worst air quality around. And so, there, reductions are immensely important.

                                    But we’re seeing reductions in nitrous oxide, or nox. Also, organic compounds — ammonia, hydrogen sulfide — and we’re seeing some water quality benefits from this project as well. So, from an environmental performance standpoint, they’re fantastic for the state, and on the criteria standpoint, (they’re) very important as well.

But once we move the gas into the transportation sector, it really allows us to get the air quality benefits at a much cleaner burning fuel than diesel in those heavy-duty trucks. And that’s where you get your nitrous oxide reductions, and that’s where you get your particulate matter, or soot, from diesel engines reduced greatly.

Tom:                          Any additional steps or practices underway to reduce farm emissions in California?

Michael:                     Yeah. We’ve got another program — digesters are the primary program, but we have another program called the Alternative Manure Management Program that’s also funded by our California Department of Food and Agriculture with grant funding.

                                    And basically, you know, the concept there — (the) concept of the digesters is to capture methane that’s being produced. The concept with this alternative manure management practices is to prevent methane from being produced in the first place. And so, they’re all geared around the concept of keeping manure outside of those anaerobic conditions that occur when we store manure in a lagoon so that we can use it for fertilizer later in the growing season. And these practices include things such as solid separators, compost pack barns, converting from a flush system to either a scrape system or a vacuum system. Keeping the manure in a much more dry form allows for much less methane production.

                                    And so, those programs are also being implemented. We’re seeing that on some of the smaller dairies, in particular, in California, and the larger dairies are tending to move towards the digesters. They make a lot more economic sense, purely from an economic standpoint.

Tom:                          I have to believe that, as these technologies and programs are introduced, deployed, implemented, that there is a great learning opportunity going on here. What would you say has been learned so far from all of this work?

Michael:                     I think we’ve learned a couple of things, and we’re still learning. Believe me, these projects are not easy to implement. I think the most important thing we’re learning is that digesters and these other programs work very well. We’re learning that the incentive-based approach works very well.

                                    And I think if you, you know, hopefully carry forward what California is doing, it’s critically important. I think, from a global standpoint, we’re also gaining a better understanding that it’s really important for other countries to come up with ways to stabilize their methane, and the best way to do that is through production efficiency.

                                    And California and the U.S. (are) very efficient in terms of production. We produce far more milk with far fewer cows, and if we can get the rest of the world to follow our lead on efficiency alone — not even talking about all these other additional things California dairies are doing — but if we could just bring the rest of the world up to our level of efficiency, we’d achieve — and this was recently calculated by one of our researchers at the University of California — we would achieve a 1.72% reduction in global greenhouse gases. And that’s huge.

If you go back to what we started with in this conversation, we talked about how California accounted for just 1% of all global greenhouse gases. So, this 1.72% reduction that can be achieved just by bringing the rest of the world’s dairy production up to the same level as California, it’s amazing. It’s almost twice as important as California getting to net-zero carbon.

So, it can’t be understated that we’re learning a lot here in the state, and we need to extrapolate that and move that beyond our borders, beyond the U.S., beyond North America, and into the rest of the world.

Tom:                          So, it sounds as though California is something of a model for the rest of the country — the rest of the world, for that matter. And where can the rest of the world go to get more information about what California is doing to reduce greenhouse gases?

Michael:                     A good place to start is our website, at www.dairycares.com, and that will lead you to a lot of other important websites in California. I think another place to go is University of California-Davis and the Clear Center that is run by Dr. Frank Mitloehner, also known as the “GHG Guru.” And he’s got a lot of wonderful information about all these issues on his website as well.

Tom:                          This has little to do with methane, but it’s a question we have to ask you in these times. How have the coronavirus pandemic and COVID-19 affected dairy production?

Michael:                     It was a huge challenge, but you know, farmers are very good at adapting. And I think the challenge initially was one of distribution, right? We went from, you know, a significant amount of dairy sales that are done through restaurants, and that changed almost overnight when restaurants were closed and schools were closed.

                                    And so, we saw a lot of our normal channels of distribution for dairy products immediately shut down. Grocery stores became much more important in terms of sales. And I think there was just a distribution lag there for a couple of months while, you know, these channels of distribution were being figured out, needing many more trucks to get product to grocery stores and far fewer trucks needed for getting product into restaurants and schools and the other venues. So, that was probably the biggest challenge.

I think, for the rest, the dairy industry has really adapted quite well. You know, we got a few minor outbreaks in some of the plants, but for the most part, I think we’ve come through this about as well as can be expected. It’s been a challenge, without a doubt, and difficult, without a doubt. And farmers are very resilient, and they adapt, and the industry adapted to a very significant challenge here.

Tom:                          Michael, as you keep watch on the trends and track the data, what would you say lies ahead for the future of dairy?

Michael:                     I think the future is very bright. We’re seeing some clear changes from consumers. There’s a lot of competition in beverage markets, as we all know, so we’ve seen declining milk sales, and that may or may not continue as we move forward.

                                    But more has been picked up on the other end, with butter, cheese, yogurt and other commodities that are also very important to consumers. And so, I think, moving forward, it’s really important, because consumers are looking beyond nutrition; they’re looking beyond food safety. They’re looking at the environmental performance of the products that they purchase, the food products that they purchase.

                                    And it’s going to be really important for the dairy industry to continue producing more with less — with less water, less energy, fewer fossil fuels — and make every glass of milk more sustainable. That’s going to be the key, I think, to maintaining the growth that the dairy industry is still seeing and dairy production is still seeing in a world like this.

Tom:                          Michael Boccadoro, executive director of Dairy Cares and president of West Coast Advisors. Thanks for joining us, Michael.

Michael:                     My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.

Agricultural communicators are essential to help educate and bridge the gap between rural and urban audiences on food production, innovation and technology. Traditional and new media platforms allow for these stories to be told and shared beyond traditional borders, with the next generation of agricultural communicators leading the way.

The Livestock Publications Council (LPC) Forrest Bassford Student Award, sponsored by Alltech, honors excellence, professionalism and leadership among students. Katelyn Harbert, a senior in agricultural communications and journalism and global food systems leadership at Kansas State University, was announced as the recipient of the 2020 LPC Forrest Bassford Student Award during the LPC Annual Membership Meeting, held virtually on Nov. 9, 2020.

“Receiving an award in honor of someone as influential as Mr. Bassford is incredibly humbling,” Harbert said. “I hope that I can spread my passion for agricultural communications in such a way to make a fraction of the impact he made on the industry and in the Livestock Publications Council.”

Harbert credits growing up in a small town in rural Kansas and spending much of her childhood on tractors and combines for her passion for agriculture and love of the industry. In high school, she was an active member of the Kingman FFA chapter, going on to become the first female American FFA Degree recipient from the chapter in 2019. Harbert’s involvement in FFA showed her the opportunities available in agricultural communications and inspired her to pave her own path.

In addition to being an officer in Kansas State’s Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow chapter, Harbert is also involved in the College of Agriculture Ambassadors, Agricultural Communications Advancement Team, Alpha Zeta Agricultural Honorary Fraternity and Royal Purple Yearbook at Kansas State University.

The application process for the LPC Forrest Bassford Student Award was competitive, with talented agricultural communication students as candidates. In addition to Harbert, the finalists for the award were Kylie Harlan, Texas Tech University; Hannah Chambers, Texas A&M University; and Lacy Jackson, Texas Tech University.

“As a voice for the farmers and ranchers who work hard to feed our growing world every day, agriculture communicators help educate consumers about our industry and how food is produced,” said Jenn Norrie, communications manager at Alltech. “Alltech is proud to sponsor the LPC Forrest Bassford Student Award and to support future agricultural communicators.”

More information about the LPC Forrest Bassford Student Award and past recipients can be found here.

The International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) and Alltech have announced the call for nominations for the IFAJ-Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism. The award will be presented during the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience in 2021. Now in its third year, this global award recognizes excellence and leadership demonstrated by young journalists within their IFAJ guilds.

The recognition honors Alltech’s late founder, Dr. Pearse Lyons, who was a passionate storyteller with a great respect for agricultural journalists. The award upholds this legacy while keeping an eye toward the future as it supports the next generation of leaders who connect agriculture to a global audience. It’s an endeavor that aligns with Alltech’s vision for a Planet of Plenty^TM, in which a world of abundance is made possible through the adoption of new technologies, better farm management practices and human ingenuity within agriculture.

“Producers throughout the food supply chain are implementing smarter, more sustainable solutions to positively impact plants, animals, people and the environment,” said Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech. “However, progress does not end at implementation. We must also amplify the message that we are in the midst of a new era in agriculture led by science, data-driven decision making and a passionate dedication to farming with the future in mind.”

Journalists aged 40 years or younger by Dec. 31, 2020, can be nominated through their IFAJ guilds via the online application form. A global winner will be selected by an international committee based on their journalistic achievements and the leadership they demonstrate within their guild. The global winner receives complimentary registration to attend the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience and will be honored during a presentation.

“IFAJ shares our commitment to supporting journalists who give a voice to the farmers and producers, the innovators and change-makers, the scientists and scholars all working toward a Planet of Plenty,” continued Dr. Lyons. “We are excited to once again partner with IFAJ as we honor excellence in journalism and ensure that the stories of agriculture continue to be well-told.”

The two organizations have enjoyed a longstanding relationship, having also co-founded a young leader program in 2005 that continues today.

"Alltech's respect for agricultural journalists and commitment to cultivating leadership skills among young reporters has strengthened the profession around the world," said Lena Johansson, president of the IFAJ. "The company's emphasis on the importance of accurate reporting on science and agriculture is more important than ever, and Alltech's dedication has helped many talented journalists build their careers. It is a pleasure to work with them." 

The deadline for nominations is Dec. 18, 2020. For more information about the IFAJ-Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism, contact press@alltech.com.

Alltech believes that inclusion cultivates creativity and drives innovation. Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but it is also essential to advancing society and the global agri-food industry. To gather real-world insights into the professional landscape for women in agriculture, Alltech has announced its support of the second annual Women in Food & Ag survey. Launching on Oct. 27, the survey aims to collect feedback that empowers the agri-food industry to create a more equitable environment.

The 2019 Women in Food & Ag survey results revealed specific barriers for women in agriculture and a gap between female and male perceptions but reflected an optimistic outlook overall. As 2020 ushered in unprecedented challenges for agriculture, new questions have been added to the survey to gauge potential inequalities exacerbated by COVID-19. To further globalize this effort and increase accessibility, the survey is available in six languages.

This initiative reflects Alltech’s commitment to the U.N. Global Compact and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) related to gender equality. The SDG recognizes gender equality as a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.

“In order to achieve a Planet of PlentyTM, it is more important than ever for the agri-food industry to perform at its full potential,” said Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech. “Human ingenuity is our Earth’s most valuable resource, and a diverse workforce is essential to building a more sustainable future.”

Women and men in all sectors of the food supply chain are encouraged to contribute to this important global conversation about gender equality in agriculture by taking the survey here.

The survey results will be published on Jan. 26 on the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience website.

While many people working in the agriculture industry were raised around animals and farms, there are others who do not have this background and, instead, learned from the ground up to start their careers. Dr. Keith Latson, a board-certified equine veterinarian and co-founder of FullBucket Health, joins us to share his experience of breaking into the agriculture industry at a young age with no prior experience. Dr. Latson discusses how those who might not have a past in agriculture can break through to build a successful career in the industry, as well as the importance of mentorship and being willing to say yes to opportunities that arise.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Keith Latson hosted by Brian Lawless. Click below to hear the full audio.

Brian:             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.

                        Today, the World Bank reports that the agriculture sector represents 28% of all employment globally. In the U.S., agriculture represents only 1% of all workers. Across most of Europe, agriculture hovers around less than 5% of all jobs. Many people working in the ag industry today were raised in agriculture, whether they showed animals, had a parent in the industry or grew up working on a family farm — yet there are others who didn't, who didn't have a background in ag, had to learn it from the ground up, and who also became very successful. So, the question for today is: How can young people who are not raised in agriculture break through to begin a successful career in the agriculture industry?

                        Welcome to an exciting episode of the Ag Future podcast. I'm Brian Lawless, North American brand manager at Alltech, and today, I'm joined by Dr. Keith Latson, a board-certified equine veterinarian and co-founder of FullBucket Health. Dr. Latson serves as NBC's on-call veterinarian for the Kentucky Derby and has even worked with Triple Crown winners across his impressive career. But unlike some in his career, Dr. Latson did not grow up in the world of agriculture, equine or animal health; he grew up as a military kid living all across the U.S. So, how did Dr. Latson even get into the world of agriculture? What is he doing now? And most importantly for our listeners, what lessons can Dr. Latson's story teach to those of you who are not in the agriculture industry today but want to work in ag in the future? I'm really looking forward to this. Dr. Keith Latson, welcome to the Ag Future podcast.

Keith:              Thanks, Brian. It's such a pleasure to be here with you.

Brian:             Someone wise in my life once said, "Begin with the end in mind," so I'd like for our listeners to know a bit of where your story not necessarily ends but is today. I think I stole a bit of your thunder in the intro, but what do you do for work these days?

Keith:              Well, that's always an interesting question to answer. After having quite a career at the racetrack as a veterinarian and a surgeon for Thoroughbred racehorses in Southern California, I left the racetrack for a life of entrepreneurship. That's been an interesting lesson to learn, entrepreneurship itself, as well as keeping that end in mind every time we start something new. There are so many lessons that had to be learned in building our companies and our brands that distracted us from that end in mind. So that, in and of itself, is a really big lesson to really focus on versus just learning. We've all heard it before, but oftentimes, it takes someone to reach out and say, "Hey, keep in mind why you started this."

Brian:             Absolutely. Yeah, the "begin with the end in mind" concept runs true through all of our career, not just in the beginning, and that's where I want to start right now. You were not raised in the ag or animal health industry. Can you tell us a little bit about how you were first exposed to agriculture?

Keith:              Sure. I grew up, as you said, as the son of a military officer, and so we moved every two to three years. There wasn't really anything in my life other than youth soccer and suburbia as a kid. Occasionally, we would go on field trips or something to expose us, in our schools, to agriculture or farms, those sorts of things. The real first trigger for me was, as a Cub Scout, we took a trip to Monmouth Park while we were living at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. Fort Monmouth is now closed for the military, but we took this trip to the barn area. As soon as I got there and saw the horses being saddled up and coming back from the tracks steaming with sweat, the first time I laid my eyes on a real, live, Thoroughbred racehorse, I thought it was the most impressive, spectacular athlete or animal I'd ever seen. That was the first time for me that I really got a taste of what else was out there besides what I was being exposed to every day as a suburban kid on a military base.

                        That really stuck with me as we watched the Kentucky Derby. That was really the only horseracing you could find on TV back then, when we had 26 channels in a wired cable box. So, the first Saturday in May every year, my family and I would watch the Kentucky Derby. There are so many of those races that I remember watching and seeing Bob Baffert cover his mouth with one finger when Real Quiet was running. There are so many of those experiences that I was watching on TV, and I wished that I could connect with that more. Ultimately, I did. I just didn't know how it would happen.

Brian:             Well, I can definitely relate to you on the fact that I grew up in suburbia and grew up playing soccer, and that the first Saturday in May was huge. I'm a Kentucky native, so I can definitely relate to those things. For you, what was the turning point where you said you took ag seriously or really jumped in in a meaningful way with the equine industry?

Keith:              Well, I think it was a stroke of luck, honestly. My dad was a Texas resident, and he told me I could go anywhere I wanted for college as long as it was in Texas. My sister had already gone to Texas A&M University for her freshman year of college while I finished high school, and I knew that I was headed west. We were in Georgia at the time. I knew that I was headed west for college, but I didn't know if that would be University of Texas or if that would be one of the smaller schools or whether it would be Texas A&M. Well, my first stop was Texas A&M in College Station. As soon as I got there, it was like being home. There were so many different, interesting people there. There were people in cowboy hats and Wranglers. There were people in flip-flops and cut-off jeans. You name it, those people were there.

                        As you wandered over from main campus to west campus, there was this whole area of animal science, veterinary school, and all of those things were there. I just looked around and it felt comfortable, and it felt like it fit. I didn't really realize that, after my first couple of years in engineering — slogging through an engineering program and not really knowing why I was doing it, other than that I wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon. I thought that that's a nice angle to take, bioengineering, as a launching pad into orthopedic surgery for humans. Along the way, I met a person named Amy Reed, whose dad happened to be one of the premier racehorse veterinarians in Louisiana. I needed a summer job and he needed someone who was willing to work hard six days a week, so Amy connected me with Dr. Reed. I got a phone call over Christmas one year and he said, "Hey, I hear you're interested in horses. I hear you love racehorses. I'd love to offer you a place to live and a job for the summer at the racetrack with me." I just said "yes". I had no idea what I was getting into. I knew I was willing to work hard and I knew it was going to be hot, but I knew nothing else. So, when I went for that first day at work, I knew that was it. I did not want to be in a human hospital. I wanted to be with the horses.

Brian:             If I'm hearing what you're saying, it seems like you said "yes" to a lot of different unique opportunities. You went to Texas A&M, the school in Texas you could go to. You said "yes" to not pursuing something that you thought you would in orthopedics, and then you said "yes" to this opportunity with Mr. Reed. At least to me, that jumps out as a really important point for those of us who are looking to get into agriculture: When you get the opportunity, even if you're working six days a week, you jump in. Maybe early on, when you're getting into agriculture, are there any other keys to success that maybe you would want to point out?

Keith:              Well, I think saying "yes" is the first step for a lot of people. It's really easy for all of us to sink back into our comfort zones and not really push ourselves into unique experiences or the unknown. For me, that certainly was the unknown, other than (the fact that) there was a person on the other end of that phone who made me feel very comfortable saying "yes".

I think the other thing, too, is just being willing to be a beginner. In these days, with so much information out there, it's really easy to get analysis paralysis, and we start looking for that perfect thing. I think if we keep looking for that perfect thing, we'll never uncover the other opportunities that are out there that may come to us from that unperfect thing that we've said "yes" to.

Certainly, for me, working six days a week, 13 hours a day in the Louisiana sun was not necessarily perfect by a lot of people's standards. There were certain things that I didn't like about the job, but it opened up this world to me (that) combined my passion for orthopedics and for building things. I grew up rebuilding motorcycles and riding dirt bikes, so it uncovered that opportunity to be able to put fractures back together in high-level racehorses. It uncovered the world of science behind the racehorse and the mechanics behind the racehorse to me. All of those things were topics that I was exposed to as an engineering student or rebuilding those motorcycles that I had no idea existed and I wouldn't have (known had) I not said “yes” to Dr. Reed. Certainly, I wouldn't have met the person who became such a great professional mentor for me through the years, not just through school and vet school but as a young professional veterinarian as well.

Brian:             Absolutely. You've touched on saying "yes" to these opportunities, but someone like a mentor has to provide those opportunities, and it seems like Dr. Reed was that for you. It seemed like there were a couple of different paths you were considering. I think a lot of our listeners would be at a point in their life where they'll be choosing, like you did with Dr. Reed. What made his mentorship or his impact on your life so attractive?

Keith:              There are a few things. One is he allowed himself to be a little bit vulnerable with me in that he was happy to talk about the things that worked for him and the failures that he'd had as he encountered his success, as he built his business, as he was trying to balance his family life with his work life, as he worked with difficult clients, as he celebrated successes with some of those clients. (It was about) really watching and learning and being open to me peppering him with questions about all of those things and about the horses just as I was learning about what are the common injuries of racehorses, what are our options for treating those injuries. And then, discovering what's beyond what we have today and what's possible, what's coming down the pipeline in terms of science, medicine and treatment that we may be able to use five, 10 or 20 years from now.

                        Now, I'm standing in a position where many of those things that were just conceptual 20 years ago, we're actually using every day. I think that's one of the really exciting opportunities that a lot of us as seasoned professionals within the agricultural industry, that's one of the opportunities that we have, is to help young people who are trying to break into this really niche world of agriculture and all of the different channels within agriculture. It's really an opportunity for us to reach out to them and help them imagine what the opportunities can be for themselves.

Brian:             Yeah. I like that point of being okay with being vulnerable. You've touched on this: Within two seconds in a Google search, you can be an expert on a given topic. I think having someone who's okay with saying, "I don't know how to solve this problem. I looked at all the answers, but maybe I still don't have them. They don't exist on Google" — and I think particularly for younger folks who are trying to get into an industry like agriculture. If you look in the U.S., we have 99% of the folks who would not be in agriculture and only 1% who would be in it. We make, I think, a lot of 99% and 1% comparisons, but I do think it takes someone getting involved in someone else's life to make that happen. Maybe now, as you're looking at the next generation, how do you think the industry should approach getting the next generation involved in agriculture? But maybe (also) talk about getting the next generation involved in the equine industry.

Keith:  Oh, there are so many opportunities for all of us who are involved at all levels of our industry, whether it's as a veterinary technician who is encouraging young people to come and shadow and say, "Hey, look at what I do for these animals that are sick. We're helping them get better. This is what I do every day.” It could be the scientist who is studying some of the new technologies in microbiome science. There are so many things out there. Even for me to just try and think about these things as you and I are talking, there are so many channels that it can be overwhelming to pick the few that we talk about, which makes me realize that young people who are exposed to all of these things, plus more, it can be so difficult for them, too.

I think the opportunities for us are to be open. Listen. If somebody reaches out to me on LinkedIn and says, "Hey, I'm really interested in knowing more about something. Can you help point me in the right direction?" This is somebody who has had the courage to reach out, has shown some real interest, and I'm going to respond to that because that's how I broke in.

I think it can be on an individual basis like that. I also think that some of the larger corporations and industry organizations — like the American Association of Equine Practitioners, with which I've been associated for many years — have created real opportunities to help people connect within their industries. I think it takes a young person being resourceful in looking for those opportunities or for those people who might be willing to connect on social platforms like LinkedIn. Many of us are not on Snapchat, Instagram and those places. I think that there's a little bit of a divide between how young people commonly communicate and connect and some of the more seasoned people in agriculture. So I think there has to be that open communication both ways and the willingness to take on a little bit of a mentorship role and take a chance on people, because when we say "yes" and they say "yes," the opportunities are endless.

Brian:             Yeah. I think you touched on something, (and) I just want to drive it a little bit deeper in, because I think you've touched a lot on what it takes to be a good mentor, but you just began to start on what you would look for in a potential mentee, someone who would be bold enough to reach out directly on LinkedIn. When you're looking at the next generation, what are you looking (for) in a potential mentee, someone that you would mentor?

Keith:              When I was young and trying to break into the Thoroughbred industry, I used to put my hands in my pockets. It was a habit that I had, and I didn't realize I had it. I didn't realize that I was communicating that. Maybe I wasn't sure of myself. Maybe I wasn't interested. Whatever that message was, it wasn't the message of, "Hey, I'm enthusiastic. I'm ready to do whatever it takes."

                        I think moving beyond constantly looking at that phone — move beyond that. Show that enthusiasm, that courage to reach out. Show that you don't have your hands in your pockets or that you're constantly on your social media. Look, let's work. Let's discover. Let's talk. Let's interact, because those human relationships are the things that I think we all really revel in. That's what drives us forward in our profession. That's what I'm looking for in a young mentee. I'm not looking for somebody who has already had a few experiences, has already taken a few chances. Maybe I'm the first chance that they've taken to reach out to, but certainly, if they're showing that enthusiasm and that they had researched multiple things around what I do, I'm willing to answer questions. I'm willing to point them in the right directions that they think they want to go.

                        Man, that's an exciting person, when they come to me. There are three or four who come to mind throughout my career that it's been really fun to watch develop from young college students who were doing something in a horse-racing club or Darley Flying Starts, some of these development programs. Young people who have reached out from those programs and said, "Hey, I've seen what you do. I'm really interested in it. Could I spend a day with you in your truck at the racetrack?" "Absolutely. Come on. Let me introduce you to some other people." And that really becomes their first working interview with me. Those are the types of things that I'm looking for.

                        As a mentee, I want to give them everything I can that is actionable and thought-provoking. If we both have done that for each other as mentor and mentee, I think we've really accomplished something together.

Brian:             Yeah. Seeing someone succeed who was a mentee of yours, I can only imagine it's just got to be so encouraging and must give you a ton of energy to keep reaching out to others, because it's not just being a mentor yourself. It's being a mentor to someone else.

It's interesting. You've touched on “no hands in the pockets.” Our (Alltech) owner and founder, the late Dr. Pearse Lyons, had a big thing of “no hands in the pockets.” That was just a bad expression of body language that didn't show enthusiasm, just like you touched on. So, I think there are some cool correlations there.

                        Moving us into maybe the last segment, the question, always, is: What's next? To you, what are some of the positive opportunities you see in equine moving forward?

Keith:              I've touched on it a little bit earlier. I think one of the most exciting things that we're seeing coming out in equine health — and this expands beyond just equine health and into total animal health — is the concept and the science behind the microbiome and the metabolome, the microbiome being the living organisms in the DNA that's within the GI tract and then the metabolome being everything else that's in there. Are there inflammatory mediators? Are there other things that can tell us what's going on with the overall health of an animal? And what the risk or health profile is of an animal.

                        I think there's so much on the frontier to be discovered there and to really discern how it relates, how each of those findings relates with not just equine health, but how those findings drive certain discoveries in human health, in pharmaceuticals, in supplements, in feeding, in wellness, in food as medicine, not just as a function of nutrition. I think that is such an exciting frontier where what we do in animal health and what we do in agriculture contributes so much to the overall health of the populace of our world. There's opportunity, on an individual scale, to greatly contribute to society and to our world in that way from agriculture.

Brian:             As a global animal health and nutrition company at Alltech, I could not endorse that statement any more. We have our researchers working on things from the microbiome, but we have people all throughout the process bringing that to fruition. We even take it into the human health side. I think that connection between the science that we do, connecting between animals and people, really just starting with the microbiome, is so exciting. I think the future is really bright for that.

                        What I'd love to do is just leave us with a specific takeaway for our listeners. Say someone has heard this (podcast). What's the first step someone who's interested in agriculture should take if they're not currently involved but want to get involved?

Keith:              Pick up the phone and connect with people. That is number one, even beyond a connection on LinkedIn, even beyond a colleague calling me and saying, "Hey, I have a niece or a nephew who is really interested in what you do." When I receive a phone call from a person or an email asking for a phone call from a person who is interested in what I do, who has researched what I do, I'm going to take that call. I think there are so many people within our industry, within agriculture, who would be so excited to have somebody connect on that human level to say, "I'm interested. I'm excited about what you're doing. I would love to know more about how you did it, how you got there and what's next for you, where do you go (next) from where you are." That is somebody that has a bright future, and they're showing it to me with their first action.

                        That's a difficult thing to do. I know a lot of people have trouble picking up the phone and making that cold call. It's not my favorite thing to do either, but it has created massive results in my life. I know other people whose lives have been changed by a single phone call. Pick up the phone and make a call.

Brian:             Keith, I think there could not be any better message and more clear message. If you're interested in getting into agriculture, pick up the phone. Call someone. Make a contact and go meet with them.

There's so much to unpack here. I think this has been extremely helpful for our listeners. Just maybe to sum up a couple of things that I heard (that) you said that were really interesting, point one just being to say "yes" to things. If you have an opportunity to meet and be mentored by someone, take them up on it. The second point being not only have a mentor in your life but be a mentor to someone else and be willing to receive that phone call that you just talked about. Beyond that, be willing to be a beginner. I really liked that comment because I think, in this Google age, we can all be “experts” within five minutes, but not really. So, with the point that Dr. Reed made of being okay with being vulnerable, I think that's a really important step for long-term success. Bringing it all together, show enthusiasm. Don't put your hands in your pockets. Be willing to take chances. Last but not least, pick up the phone and call someone. You'll be well on your way to a successful career in agriculture.

This is Dr. Keith Latson of FullBucket Health. Thank you for joining us on the Ag Future podcast.

Keith:              I sure have enjoyed it. Thank you.

Brian: 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 and leave a review if you enjoyed this episode.

In a recent study, the American Institute of Stress reported that 75% of today's employees believe that they have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. This stress has been amplified within the past year, especially for those in agriculture, as they have worked hard to maintain the global food supply chain. Padraic Gilligan of Gilligan’s Farm in Roscommon County, Ireland, joins us on the podcast to discuss some specific solutions he has implemented on his farm to de-stress his operation.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Padraic Gilligan hosted by Brian Lawless. Click below to hear the full audio.

Brian:           Welcome to AgFuture, 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.

                     Do you feel stress? Are there certain activities, either at work or at home, that bring up specific fears or concerns? In a recent study, the American Institute of Stress reported that 75% of today's employees believe that they have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago. This may be from a multitude of sources, but it begs the question: How do we reduce stress at work, especially as work continues from one generation to the next?

                     Well, today, we have an extremely helpful episode of the Ag Future podcast. I'm Brian Lawless, North American brand manager at Alltech, and I'm joined by Padraic Gilligan of Gilligan's Farm. Gilligan's Farm is an award-winning lamb and beef operation in Ireland with its own farm store and many customers throughout Dublin and the world. But like many of us, they feel stress both personally and in their business — yet within their family business, they’ve found multiple ways to reduce stress, and it's making a big difference. The question is: How, specifically, can Padraic and Gilligan's Farm work to de-stress their operation? What has this meant for their business? How can we take these lessons and apply them to de-stress our own lives and work? Padraic, welcome to the AgFuture Podcast.

Padraic:        Thanks for having me. It's a great opportunity. Thanks very much.

Brian:           I'm excited to have you. Before we dive into the topic of stress, which we'll get to, you've built a really fascinating business. Can you tell us a bit of the history of Gilligan's Farm and your role within the business?

Padraic:        Yeah, I suppose. Gilligan's (has been) in operation for over a hundred years. My father started it back in 1911, and (it) has proceeded on over the years with stops and starts, good and bad. I reared animals on the farm. We have a great love for animals. When I sold animals, whether it be in a mart or factory, I always felt like — I like to sell myself to the public, to have a product that you could feel proud of. That's how I started the farm.

                     The stress part of it, it's been very stressful for the last six or seven months, especially with the COVID. It's very depressing for our farmers, especially here in Ireland — people who have been living on their own. The pubs are closed. We can't go for pints, and that has a big bearing on how people live and how they live their lives. People need to have fun along with work.

Brian:           Yeah. Obviously, not being able to have a bite with some friends is no fun. Talking about your farm, what changes has Gilligan's Farm implemented to manage some of these new stresses with COVID-19? What's changed for you guys?

Padraic:        What has changed? Lots of things have changed. With stress, animals are no different than humans. They get stressed. Our philosophy in that is to play music to the animals and to see them as well. With people, people have to have an outlet, have a bit of fun, try to lessen the stress factor of everyday living and just get them down. You have to open the drawer and deal with it and just close it and move on to the next drawer. That's how we are dealing with it — or my way of dealing with it.

Brian:           Yeah. I do want to touch on the music for animals here in a bit. I guess you started talking about the business that you had. Your father started the farm. You've taken it over, and we're now moving on to the third generation, which would be your son, Alan. It seems like the first way you've looked to de-stress your business is just to have a proper succession plan. I guess, maybe, give us a little insight (into) how you've been preparing or maybe removing the stress for your son, Alan, to take over the business, or as he's been taking over the business.

Padraic:        Well, I suppose it's funny. Look, if you're in business, it's stress-related. In the succession plan that I have to hand it all over to my son, which is — he's running the business and he has full control of it now. I'm taking a backseat. It's stressful for him because I have been in the business over the years, and of course, business has moved on. You have to be on top of it at all times to deal with it. He's probably saying sometimes, "Why would you let yourself in for all this huge workload?" In running a business — we have 22 people employed, and it takes management to do that. It is stressful, but you have to deal with it and not bring it home with you. Customers can be demanding. Ninety percent of them are very easy to deal with, and you've got the 10% that would be very finicky, and you have to deal with them as well. Do you know what I mean?

Brian:           Yeah. I feel like you've touched on two really important things. It seems like you've actively taken a transition in your own job responsibilities, where you're now saying, "Hey, I was the one managing the farm. Now, I'm actively the one taking the backseat." I would assume, for Alan, that's made a world of difference, that it's not now having two people in charge. There's been a transition of responsibilities within the business. Then the second thing that I think you touched on was, in some ways, not taking what you do in your family life during the day, during business hours, and taking it home with you. I feel that that can just add to stress, when you have the same people that you could be dealing with at work that you're then at home with, and you're taking that stress from one place to the next.

Padraic:        Absolutely. When you go home in the evening, you need to be chilled out. There's nothing better than listening to music or having a chat with the wife. All that is very important.

Brian:           Yeah, sometimes it is. It's just those simple things. Maybe moving on, to the second way of de-stressing a business, really focusing on this concept of educating your customers in a very clear way. Some consumers are conscious about where their food comes from, but many aren't. I think that even applies to cuts of meat and to the opportunities that could be available to chefs. Gilligan's Farm prides itself on top-quality meat. If I understand correctly, you are a supplier to celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, and I read that you literally brought a lamb to him and showed him and his team the cuts. Now, I envision you walking into the restaurant with this entire lamb strapped to your back, but I'm guessing that's not the case. How did that relationship begin, and how did you educate Jamie and his team?

Padraic:        He's one of the guys that we deal with that's running a restaurant in Dublin. He's one of those people that is a perfectionist and really loves the products that we give him, and it's direct off the farm. He has a big thing about that. He said to me one day, "Would it be possible to take a lamb in here just to show the staff where all the cuts come from? We'd cook it and test it and we'll invite people in." I was meant to do it. Yeah, I thought it was a great idea. I brought the lamb and the saw and the knife and went to the restaurant. We had good fun. They found it very interesting. The staff then could relate to the customer of the lamb, where it came from, all the different cuts of the lamb, from the best to the worst. It's good education for people — especially people (who) live in the cities, (who) don’t understand animals.

Brian:           It seems like, within your business, there's this element of trust with the consumer. How important is consumer trust? How do you build that reputation and relationship with customers?

Padraic:        Well, it's funny you should say that. I find that fascinating, because when I deal with someone in a restaurant that's a Michelin-star restaurant, the first thing I'd say to them (is), "This is a marriage. This is going to be a marriage. You have trust in me, and I have trust in you." We take it from there, but I suppose you can bring in ten pieces of meat (that are) absolutely mouthwatering, and if you bring in the eleventh bit that's not as good, you're breaking the trust.

                     It's a matter of consistency in your product. You're not 100%, or there's nobody that's 100%, but you definitely have to be over 95% consistent with the product. That builds the trust. As the customer, when you have a meal or have a steak and you say, "Yeah, that was a lovely steak. Where did that come from?" All of that builds a relationship, and that's what you should be looking for.

                     To produce such a high-quality product is vital. I suppose Pearse Lyons was very fond of — when he'd come to Ireland, he'd always buy our meat for his conferences. That's how I got to know Alltech. Alltech has done huge work for us here on the farm. They are always at the end of the phone and would advise on different ways to treat animals, the feed for animals and all that. All that's important. All that is the link in the chain to the end customer. Does that make sense?

Brian:           Yeah. Speaking about links in the chain, I know Dr. Lyons was famous for wanting to (be able to) cut steaks with a spoon. Were you the man behind wanting to cut steaks with a spoon?

Padraic:        Yes, I am. To be truthful about it, there was a video here on the farm going back a number of years ago. They wanted me to cook a steak at seven o'clock in the morning. I said, “Yeah, we better cook it in the house.” I got my wife up anyway. My wife said she's not taking any part in cooking the steak, but I proceeded to cook it anyway. I was thinking to myself, “Well, how can I make this different?” I just got the brainwave: “Would it be possible to cut a steak with a spoon?” I tried it and it worked. I said, “Yeah, let's go for it.” It's on the video, cutting a steak with a spoon. That is, I suppose, a reflection on the product that we have. Tender and tasty, I suppose, is the slogan that we always used.

Brian:           Yeah, and Dr. Lyons was famous — he took that back to the U.S., and the late Dr. Pearse Lyons would show the quality of the steak by cutting it with a spoon. That's amazing.

                     Let's move into the third way to de-stress your business. You kind of touched on this a little bit when you talked about the animals and the music and just this theme of keeping your business fun and productive at the same time. I guess maybe my first question is — so, it's true that you constantly play music around the farm, and it's for the animals?

Padraic:        Yeah. We have a system in the farm to play the music. I suppose it goes back to animals being stressed. Animals can get spooked or stressed very easily. It's all about not stressing animals, and this is why I started playing music to them. My mother, when she'd be milking the cows years ago, when I was a kid, she'd milk the cows by hand, and she'd always sing to the cows, and they'd always give more milk, so I said, “Why not play music to the animals?” We started playing music to animals, I suppose, maybe 15 years ago.

                     There are particular songs that we play to them. Percy French was the greatest Roscommon man, a great Irishman, and he wrote lots of songs. Some of them would be "The Mountains of Mourne" and "McBreen's Heifer," all those. The lyrics in all those songs are absolutely class and really becoming of playing music to the animals. If you Google "Percy French," Brendan O'Dowda sang his songs. He has a lovely, soft voice, and animals really love it. It's amazing. We use it here in the abattoir when the animals are being slaughtered. We play the same music to them in the abattoir here, which is adjacent to the farm. The abattoir is on the farm. We have full facilities on the farm to do from slaughter to dispatch in whatever form the customer wants it. It really adds to, I suppose, the stress levels in the meat.

Brian:           Yeah. I peeked on the music charts in Ireland and there was one artist, Dermot Kennedy, that was very popular. There are also a bunch of global stars, like Justin Bieber, that are on the Irish charts right now. Have you found any music that the cows and the lambs do not like?

Padraic:        I suppose we just have this Brendan O'Dowda, Percy French's songs with Brendan O'Dowda, and it just continuously plays. There are about maybe 20 songs in the list, and they just keep playing. I suppose the animals get familiar with the sounds and the different — the voice is the same with Brendan O'Dowda. I wouldn't like to be changing to different artists because their voices can be sharp or different. I feel that the animals wouldn't get as attached to it, if you know what I mean. It's a particular type of music.

                     Now, young people might say, "You're silly. This is not for real," but it is actually. It is. We had RT on the farm here and we were slaughtering the animals, and they couldn't get over the animals, how relaxed they were in the abattoir just before they were killed. There was no stress. It's completely different. It's amazing. Over a period of months, they're familiar with it and it's not spooking them.

Brian:           Yeah, and it seems like this is something that has bled all the way into your relationships with the consumers and your customers, that there needs to be consistency of the final quality of the product and there needs to be consistency in the music or the rhythms for the animals themselves, to keep that going from beginning to end.

Padraic:        Absolutely. If I brought in different music, like rock music or whatever, it would spook the animals. It wouldn't be common for them.

Brian:           Yeah. Moving on to the fourth way to de-stress your business, it really revolves around taking care of your environment and, really, the whole supply chain. We know customers would like to be conscious of where their food comes from and not only how the animals are treated but the environment and how it can impact them. That's going to be a big challenge, and it's going to continue to be a big challenge, but I understand that Gilligan's Farm aims to be carbon neutral within ten years. Can you tell us a little bit about the plan? And probably just more importantly, why does this matter to you?

Padraic:        Well, it matters. I have grandchildren, and I'd love to see them in (the) environments where I grew up, going back 70 years ago, where things on farms were very simple. For instance, if you go out and plough the land, you can see the worms. They're there visually. You can see them in the ground. I feel, over the years, that was lost with different ways of getting rid of slurry and all that, spreading those in the wrong times of the year, when the worms are, I suppose, coming up in the springtime of the year now.

                     I remember, going back years and years ago, when slurry was a new thing, and when you spread it, you'd see seagulls in the field the following morning. My God, it's an awful sight to see, because you have worms killed by the thousands, which is frightening, really. I suppose, over the years, we always used straw bedding for animals. We're bringing that back out on the land, and it's actually good for the nutrients and it's good for the clay and to bring the worms back. If we plough a field now, we see hundreds of worms in a small area. It's very rewarding when you see that.

                     I suppose, going back to your point, the environment has to be minded, especially now, because with the climate, it has really changed in Ireland. We're getting periods of really dry weather and periods of really wet weather, and that is very stressful — especially on farmers with crops, saving crops and all that. So, we have to respect the environment. We have a program now where we grow trees, hectares and hectares of trees, to enhance the carbon.

Brian:           Yeah, so looking at the concept of how do we make sure we have nutrients in the soil, how do we make sure that we have even the basics, like worms in the soil, but then how do we look at things like planting trees and revitalizing or keeping carbon at the forefront of what's going on.

I really like what you said previously, though, because I think it wraps into this concept of succession that you're thinking of — "Hey, when I have my grandkids and my great-grandkids, I want to make sure the land works well for them." That's almost the first step in a succession plan where you're helping out your son, Alan, in his taking over of the business.

Padraic:        The land will always be there to feed the people, and to have it in good shape, I think, is very important.

Brian:           Yup. Finally, bringing this all to a close, I've been on your website. It's a beautiful website, by the way. The meat looks delicious. I saw just some of the cuts on there. It looks amazing. What website do people need to get to to buy the meat? How do they get access to this?

Padraic:        We have a click-and-collect. We also do a door-to-door delivery in Dublin. We started this about six months ago, when the lockdown came. People in Dublin would be ringing and wondering could they get meat, so we started this online shop. It's actually very successful. Our biggest problem is deliveries. I'd be a stickler on doing the job ourselves, so we deliver ourselves. I know it's time-consuming, but when people order meat and they pay for it online, we deliver to them, and we make sure that they get it when they're supposed to get it.

Brian:           Yeah. That's fantastic. Well, the website, I see here, is gilligansfarm.ie. You guys do deliver. You accept payment online. You do have an in-person store, but yeah, the challenge of delivery. COVID, in some ways, has really challenged us to be innovative, and it sounds like you guys are quickly adapting to the times and finding it challenging.

Padraic:        You just have to change with the times. People like Jamie Oliver in Dublin — we supply Chapter One, all those places where people would be going there to eat, (and) all those restaurants were closed. Suddenly, those people that love our meat were ringing, wondering: where could they get it? This is how that started.

Brian:           If there's an additional point of ways to de-stress, it certainly would be (to) change with the times. Be flexible. To sum up some of the things I've heard, I've heard, really, four specific ways to de-stress your business. The first would be have a succession plan, eliminating the fears of, "Does this all depend on me? What happens after I leave the business?" And you've put in that place with Alan, currently. The second thing seems to be (to) educate your customers clearly. If that means bringing the product to them, making sure they understand the value of it and how to handle it — particularly chefs and cooks — that's very important.

                     From the music end of things, the third way I heard to de-stress the business was keep your business fun and productive. It eliminates the concern of burnout. It keeps the animals consistent every day and keeps that consistent all the way from the farm to the fork, at the forefront of what's being done. Last but not least, de-stressing the business by taking care of your environment in the supply chain. You're just addressing concerns of, "Will there be enough resources? Can I look for my grandkids and great-grandkids to still have a good environment?" And just being part of the solution and not the problem.

Padraic:        Yeah, that's it. Just play your part as you go along. That's it.

Brian:           Padraic, you've given us a ton to think through. Really, I've been fascinated to talk to you and hear more about your business. Padraic, thank you for being on the AgFuture podcast.

Padraic:        Thank you very much, and thank you for having us. It's a pleasure.

Brian:           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 and leave a review if you enjoyed this episode.

India is the largest dairy market in the world, with over 300 million cows and buffaloes, facilitating many fascinating opportunities for the sector. Speaking at the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience, Shrirang Sarda, CEO of the Sarda Group shared with our audience how an engagement-based perspective of doing business in India has worked for his dairy venture, Sarda Farms.

About Sarda Group and Sarda Farms

The Sarda Group began 99 years ago as a startup with three workers producing inexpensive cigarettes. Now, Sarda Group is one of India's most reputable firms, with more than 25,000 team members across six verticals. Its diverse business includes Sarda Farms, a pioneer in the dairy industry in India.

Sarda Farms has differentiated itself based on quality and delivers antibiotic-free, hormone-free milk in glass bottles directly to customers’ doors. This project is the brainchild of Shrirang Sarda, who grew up in the business, getting involved in the IT department from the eighth grade, and then succeeding his father as CEO at the young age of 25. He has continued the successful growth of the business, moving into new markets and a new age.

Insights

The dairy venture started in the late 90s, early 2000, as a part of the company’s vision to diversify. At first, it seemed like a good opportunity to make profit. However, there was discomfort with the quality of the product.

Ten years later, Sarda reassessed the business, and his criteria for choices were more refined. The company developed a more institutional view as an organization; its vision was clearer.

“It was more about fulfilling a need in the market — or need in the environment, actually, more than a market — and rather than just chasing market share,” noted Sarda. “And that kind of helped us not see it as an exploitative opportunity but more as an exploration of what can be done, what needs to be done. It’s evident that engagement really matters.”

The company started to recognize the importance of engagement. It observed that in the areas of business where it underperformed, it lacked an element of engagement.

Goals, strategy and results

There were several gaps in the market to be addressed through an engagement-based perspective:

1. The whole supply chain was not optimized: Cold chain was non-existent in the first and the last mile of transportation. As a result, the milk coming into the dairy processing unit and the milk going to the house both had high bacteria loads.

2. There was a lack of high-quality milk: “Good milk was simply not available in India,” stated Sarda. “Even in 2010, nothing was right about the market and the product we looked at in the dairy business. The milk quality was just not right. Every household in India, virtually, boils the milk as soon as they receive it because the bacterial load is so high.”

3. There were many fundamental structural challenges: This is from the cow's productivity to feed sourcing to traceability of the milk. “It is also very easy to make spurious milk in terms of just drink the brand name of somebody else and add a white liquid and sell it,” said Sarda.

4. There was no service orientation: According to Sarda, this is a very large category, but there was no service, even though home delivery was available in most places in India.

“So, some sort of an agenda began to form in our heads based on the gaps we saw in the market,” said Sarda. The mission became clear: to produce good milk and provide a good service for India.

This was not an easy or inexpensive task. The milk quality depends on several factors, including how the milk is produced, packaged and delivered. This is where engagement came in to play through different facets:

• Milk quality: Sarda aspired to the EU or the U.S. standards, which were not met in India. “[Global standards] need not be the whole market, but it certainly should be a choice in India.” In the end, he used the European family farms model as a benchmark, as the corporate farms model in the U.S. was too large for them to apply to India at that time.
• Environmental and food safety needs:
  • Packaging: Sarda Farms started using glass bottles because they are blemish-free, do not react with the milk and are reusable and environmentally friendly. Furthermore, it is easier to see if glass has been tampered with, so the consumer can be assured of the quality.
  • Testing: Sarda Farms used engagement as a basis of transaction to substitute for the lack of institutional arrangements. “We do this in our own farms, simply because that institutional arrangement is missing,” said Sarda. “And we can't just send it to a lab and get it tested.”
• Supply chain: Sarda shared that “one big thing in this agenda that emerged for us was this whole idea of education of all the stakeholders and all the different elements that we interact within the supply chain.”
  • Improving farm management: A farm manager from Holland was hired to make sure best practices from developed markets came to India. “And one side note here is, obviously, Alltech was hugely instrumental in educating us in turn,” said Sarda. “And we got a lot of technology transfer done to us and a lot of knowledge transferred onto us through Alltech.”
  • Silage: Timely delivery was required so that silage can be made. Silage was not a common practice then, but it was important for Sarda Farms to have the right kind of maturity and synchronization of plantation dates across farmers.
  • Cold chain: Because the need for cold chain was obvious, a cold chain was put in place even though it costs a lot more money. Delivery guys were required to understand the importance of cold chain in transportation, to the extent of what temperature is desired.
  • Home delivery: This was a new element in India's dairy market, which worked well before and after COVID. The pandemic did not only increase awareness of hygiene and demand for higher quality, traceable milk, but also enhanced appreciation for milk delivery during the lockdowns.
• Customer needs: The target market segment was identified as the discerning customer, someone who would appreciate the added value and be willing to pay more for a premium product.

“The reason? So, because all these costs were stacked, if somebody did not value this offering, it would seem an extravagant or very luxury kind of offering, whereas we saw it as the bare necessity of having good milk,” explained Sarda. “And somebody who did not value it would think it too expensive.”

The strategy was to start with early adopters to establish a higher quality choice in the market, then influence the rest of the market later.

Despite being a small size business with no familiarity or experience in the industry, Sarda Farms has made a significant impact in India's dairy industry by addressing the gaps in the market and being engaged with customers and suppliers. “We’re only 10 years old,” said Sarda. “But we certainly have seemed to establish a new kind of offering and a new kind of choice in the market.”

Indicators of success

Sarda noticed changes in Indian regulation, copycat products in the market, and business opportunities during COVID times.

• Stricter institutional regulations for quality: “We've seen some changes in regulation in India,” noted Sarda. “Maybe not as much as we'd like to see, but some changes which are in the right direction. They're making it more stringent. Some new parameters have been added.”
• Appearance of copycats: Sarda shared that the biggest indicator showing they are doing well is that “many, many, many "me-too" products have been launched. And many people seem to be jumping on this good milk, farm-to-home model.”
• Trust and quick response time from suppliers and partners: Sarda Farms has conceptualized and launched three different products, all post-COVID. Sarda credited this success to the trust-based ecosystem, in which suppliers and partners rose to the occasion, and negotiations can come after delivery. The high-end trust was a result of Sarda Farms’ good reputation and relationships with suppliers and partners.
• Word-of-mouth marketing: “Our experience has shown that if somebody tries our milk for a month, we have more than a 75% conversion rate at a reasonably premium-priced product in India,” explained Sarda. “And these are people who are not necessarily even seeking to buy a premium milk, but they know that they're unhappy with the milk they have. There are children at home, or there's somebody senior at home, or there is a patient at home suffering from some health issue or the other, and they need to get high-quality milk. And they look for it, and they ask their friends. And their friends refer us, and it has worked really well for us. It also gets us the right kind of people, who care about milk, instead of putting customers in some sort of a sales pipeline, where you may sell to them on the wrong basis. So, we are very clear that we want people who appreciate what we do, who value what we do, and the rest is easy. In a very B2B environment, I think it kind of works the same way, especially in an engaged business. But we wanted to do the same in a B2C environment.”

The key learning

Looking back on Sarda Farms’ journey for the past 10 years, Sarda believed engagement is a big part of Sarda Farms. “And that engagement seems to be the big reason why we're punching above our weight in this category,” Sarda said. “We're a teeny, tiny player. And despite our really small size, we've gotten disproportionate publicity, we've got a disproportionate position in this market, and we've got an extraordinary number of copycats. So that, to my mind, tells me that our impact is very high, despite our size. And I believe the real reason is engagement and how engaged and responsive we've been.”

Future implications

Sarda offered his insights and ideas to better cater to current and future consumers:

1. Create new products in response to customer needs: Sarda told a story of how his customers called to say they did not get unsalted butter in Bombay and asked Sarda Farms to make it for them. “And we had no idea how that was made or what kind of shelf life we would get. But within five days, we made the first batch of unsalted butter and sent it to the customers to try and give us some basic feedback on. And then eventually, a product was done.” Similarly, they created a new ghee product (stratified butter used in India for cooking) purely based on customer demand for high-quality ghee. “We are not too keen on doing product, per se, but we will do them if the customers so require.”

2. Pay attention to the shift in consumption habits: Sarda asserted this will happen in the larger food sector as well as the dairy industry. According to his entrepreneur friend, India can be segmented into three buckets:

• India One (about 22% of India) is everybody who has domestic help at home, whether part-time or full-time.
• India Two (about 50% of India) is the people helping India One, such as drivers, maids, cooks, restaurant staff.
• India Three is somebody else, like construction laborers and beauty workers.

India One is growing at a rate of 1% each year, which is a big growth in terms of the number of people. Interestingly, the children of India Two will likely grow up to become India One.

“To us, that was very attractive, that we saw India One fundamentally changing habits, becoming more demanding about what they wanted, in terms of how they see movies to what kind of food they consume to what kind of digital experiences they want or don’t want,” commented Sarda.

This is why Sarda is determined to cater to the present and the future by providing acceptable standards of milk and dairy, as well as the herd’s health and productivity in India.

3. Experiment and apply on-farm technologies 

• Experiment on becoming a sensor-driven farm: “We experimented with a full range of sensors, for example, an ammonia sensor, which will detect if the farm is clean or not,” said Sarda. Sarda Farms also started with cow motion sensors. For example, to ensure animal welfare, they use an activity monitor for notifications of stresses from the cow. “When a cow is no longer productive, we ensure they go to a cow sanctuary where they can live the rest of their life in a relaxed way.” In addition, Sarda sees a lot of need for using newer hardware for sensors “to get the milk even more right and get the cow care even more right.”
• Applications on-farm, logistics and retail: On-farm, they are increasing the autonomy of the cow and calf. For logistics, they are looking at Bluetooth sensors for cows and thermal inks on their packaging to detect temperature quality. In retail, they are focused on engaging with and understating the shopper.
• Applications for sustainability: “Our entire farm runs completely on biogas energy,” said Sarda. “We also try to minimize and avoid plastic use and have optimized our routes to minimize distances traveled. We also strive to get the maximum efficiency from feed.”

4. It’s not just about technology: “We are also sensing that it's not just about tools and technology, but it's really about behavior,” Sarda noted. “And if you don't have the right practices and the behaviors in place, there's only so much that technology can help. And there's only so much that you can expect from the technology. So, at the moment, we are very focused on getting the analytical part going in the dairy business.”

Final thoughts

“I think challenges have always been there,” Sarda commented. “Epidemics have always been there. And certainly, in the short term, there is a fair amount of misery that comes in certain amounts of periods. There is this really wise, age-old saying — I believe it originates from Gautama Buddha — that this too shall pass and that nothing is permanent.

“And I see a lot of good signs. In India, for example, we had a huge problem of migrant laborers returning home in these COVID times, and the amount of compassion and empathy generated in India was unprecedented.”

To Sarda, COVID is a short blip, and we should continue to stay focused on what we can do, how we can solve problems and how we can contribute.

Visit one.alltech.com for more information.

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.

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.

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