How can dairy producers overcome labor shortages? Dr. Luke Miller, dairy technical support specialist at Alltech, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how dairy farms can attract, train and retain labor, as well as his thoughts on the future of hiring as dairies adopt more automation in their operations.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Luke Miller hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. We hear about this from every segment of the economy: Labor — most acute in industries that call on workers to perform especially hard work — is a big concern these days. That definitely goes for the dairy industry. How do we properly manage and train employees so our farms can be successful for years to come?

                     That question brings Dr. Luke Miller to Ag Future. A veterinarian, Dr. Miller is a dairy technical support specialist at Alltech with expertise in every level of the dairy operation. Before joining Alltech, Miller was the general manager of a 6,000-head multisite dairy in central California, managing operations and a team of 45 employees and designing and building a state-of-the-art, 80-stall rotary milking barn. He's worked with local and national government agencies on grants and permitting. For eight years, he served as a large-animal veterinarian and eventually became the owner of a practice that addresses all facets of large-animal medicine. Dr. Miller also aided in the design and implementation of dairy protocols and standard operating procedures. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Miller.

Luke:            Good morning, and thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate the invitation.

Tom:            As I said, labor has been and is a major concern for the dairy industry. The prospects of that changing anytime soon are pretty bleak.

Luke:            Slim to none.

Tom:            How should we educate dairymen in the ag community about what the labor force really looks like now, and how we might go about retaining teammates that we want to keep?

Luke:            The basics to begin with are to start understanding who we're trying to hire and understanding where they came from and their basic levels of both education and interest in the group, in the dairy. We know that many of our laborers are not loyal to a particular place or particular farm, so we try to invest in them as much as we can and get them to want to be with us, (since they) want to be wanted. That's kind of one of those deals. Everybody appreciates it when you're a good employee. How do we keep those people once they're good? Losing good employees is never, never a positive. We want to retain the good ones and sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff as much as we can when we're getting new employees running through the dairy on almost a daily to weekly basis.

Tom:            Let's say you're somebody with an operation that's experiencing this and you want to do that — you want to figure out how to retain people. What are some ways to do that?

Luke:            I think one of the basics is knowing and having an organizational chart. I preach this every place I go, that — understanding employees want to have a box. They know where the top is and know where the bottom is. They want to be put in that box, and they want to understand the basics of their job so that they can fulfill what you want them to do, and they feel like that’s gratifying to them. When they do a good job and you tell them they do a good job, that’s the thing. But I think a basic organizational chart is one of those keys that every dairy, no matter the size, should really have — especially small family farms that we deal with a lot, where an uncle or a dad or a mom or a cousin or a brother is on the dairy. Having them understand where they fit into the organization, how they move throughout the organization, up and down that organizational chart — it’s very important. So, I think that's one of those keys.

Tom:            If we want to meet expectations, we need to know where they are.

Luke:            Exactly. Right. That's the other part of it, is the job description. Very many of these dairies do not have any job descriptions for their employees. They are simply hired because you showed up that day. Yes, it's important to get the cows milked, to get the harvest in, to do many of the things that are daily emergencies on a dairy, but at the same time, we don't want to hire the wrong person to come in. Job descriptions and some early vetting of who we're actually bringing into the dairy is important.

Tom:            Making that investment to attract, retain (and) educate employees can often be seen as a secondary priority in the grand scheme of things, but why is it so crucial that employers make it an operational priority?

Luke:            I've had a couple of dairymen tell me, and I've kind of come to this one on my own, that if a car full of employees pulls up and we say — there's four or five people that are new to your dairy that pull up, and they say, "I want a job," very few of us dairymen at the time would say, "Nope, I don't have room for you." But in reality, at least 20%, at least one of those guys in that car, or girls in that car — (I) try not to do that anymore; we have a lot of new females in the dairy business — but someone in that car is going to hurt you, and it might be through OSHA. It might be through morale. You might turn around and six months later, your entire workforce has flipped over and it's a negative experience, and that is not what we want to do. We need to understand who we're bringing in.

                     So that first understanding of the damage that an employee can do to your operation may not be immediate. It may not be that day. You may not really see them. Obviously, the animal rights or animal welfare — somebody's trying to take advantage of your operation with film or with video, with audio recording — is also very damaging, and we want to limit that access as much as possible.

Tom:            Does this involve some sort of an intake process where you can kind of tease out these issues?

Luke:            An onboarding process is extremely important for dairies. I think that having the 10 questions, right? And they don't have to be my 10 or your 10 or anybody else's 10, but having the 10 for our dairy — you can sort a lot of things out if you just ask basics. The second step of that is (to) train the trainer. We have to have somebody on the dairy who knows how to train people, and we put them in charge of — not the hiring but the actual onboarding of the person when they start. We find a guy we like. We find someone we want to put on the dairy. We send them out with a trainer. You have an hour, two hours a day — whatever it takes to appreciate their skill level.

                     It's very obvious when somebody comes to us and says, "I can do this," and then you put them in that position and they can't do this. But you need to have trust in your trainer, a manager, even, or a lead or a foreman who can sort them out and say, “They have no idea what they're doing.” That puts flare one up in their file. They've already lied to us once. What else (in terms of) damage could they be doing?

Tom:            Why is it important to make sure that employees are educated in stockmanship?

Luke:            Stockmanship has come about in the last, probably, 20 years, and stockmanship has really been infinitely old(-fashioned) about how to handle an animal and how to deal with them. Thirty years ago, it wasn't a problem, because facilities were small, dairies were smaller. It was more mainly family-oriented — so a new stockmanship was going to happen because you were raised in it. But stockmanship is the basics of understanding animal husbandry. How do we move them? How do we speak to them? How do we work with them?

                     So many of our new employees now have absolutely no appreciation for stockmanship and have no appreciation for what it takes to just do the basics with an animal. That's one of those things we need to work with. Stockmanship training is very important. It's also not really that hard to teach. We go back to “train the trainer”. Follow somebody who knows how to do stockmanship and the basics: moving animals from one pen to another, giving medications to an animal. There are ways to do that where it's non-confrontational to the animal. It's easy. Everybody's calm. I go on dairies a lot where I know the stockmanship is good, and I can walk right in front of all the cows and nobody jumps, nobody moves, nobody runs. I go on to dairies where stockmanship is not good, and it's like a stampede every time somebody new comes into the pen. It's very obvious when stockmanship is a priority on dairies.

Tom:            Have emerging technologies helped improve the dairy-farm work environment in some way?

Luke:            That's a really plus/minus question. I think there are — technologies have made it really beneficial to know who you need to go work with as an employee with an animal. But at the same time, when you do a lot of emerging technologies, that tends to turn the animal back into a machine, and that's what we don't want to do. We do not want to have, “That's just a machine that makes milk.” Nope, that's a cow. She's an individual, and she might be individual 1,473, but she's still an individual, and appreciating her for what she does every day is different than making her a machine.

                     I do love emerging technologies. I think there are great things to be done with pedometers and necklaces and rumination collars and robots in the milking industry. But at the same time, you also have to have an appreciation that it's still a cow. It's still an individual, and we still do need stockmanship, and we still need to have that human-animal interaction.

Tom:            Let's talk about that interaction between human and animal on a dairy operation and how critical that is for both the dairy and for peace of mind.

Luke:            Yeah, it's something I just started learning more about. Having had one for a long time, you take it as just for granted that you know what a human-animal interaction is, and how it works is very similar with children. Their first interaction can often be, once they learn it, “It's bad” or “It's good,” and it takes a long time to train them out of (that thought process). So, if you think about doing something poor — you were shouting, you were loud, cows were scared — you have to have repeated interactions for that to go away, for them to be retrained.

                     (We need to be) teaching our employees who may have worked in a peach orchard or maybe have done seasonal labor and now they want to go into a full-time type of agricultural job that there's a difference between a peach tree and a cow. We need to have them understand that there's interaction. If you form that interaction good, the cows will appreciate you, they'll interact well with you, and they'll do what you want them to do. (This is) not highly researched, but it is out there, and it's getting better. Because of the human/animal welfare kind of exhibit, we see that actually trending in both ways, right? That's one of the big breakthroughs, is that, if you're good to cows, it can be enriching to your life. We've seen this in the service-animal industry for years. Everybody knows the commercial where the dog comes into the hospital and makes the kids feel better. It's the same kind of thing. Your job can be way more enriching if you like what you do, if you like the animals you work with. If you fight them all the time to get your work done, it becomes very unpleasant. That's why we lose a lot of our employees. They just don't understand that it can be enriching in reverse.

Tom:            Does that become kind of a loop, a feedback loop? If you're uncomfortable with them, they sense that?

Luke:            Yes. Oh, for sure. It's not just one worker. If you're doing the right thing during the day shift, the night-shift guy can be doing the wrong thing or the not-as-good thing, and the animals, when you come back, will feed on that as well. There's a positive and a negative feedback loop. The negative feedback loop is production. If we're rough, if we're tough, if we're too loud, if we cause some releases of pheromones that say, “We're scared,” we get decreased production. If we're good and we're happy and we move nicely, the cows just remain calm and everybody's good. That leads back to you as the employee, and you feel good about doing your job, and your boss doesn't yell at you. It is definitely a feedback loop, both positive and negative.

Tom:            I'm imagining the (Gary) Larson cartoon here, and all the cattle are saying, "Oh, here comes a good one."

Luke:            Oh, Gary was spot-on. I would say that if I was going to ever pick out a true advocate for agriculture and how it really is, Gary Larson is one of those guys. I think every vet's clinic in the universe has one of his calendars still on permanent repeat because so many of his things were so true. I don't know how he went from horses to cows to every facet of agriculture and nailed it.

Tom:            It's fascinating. By the way, in the introduction, I mentioned that you had designed and built that state-of-the-art, 80-stall rotary milking barn. I wondered if that design has worked, in some way, to improve these interactions between human and animal.

Luke:            It's a funny thing of rotary, and we see it with the robot barns that are coming now and the usage of more technology. But the robot (barns), they go to (them) on their own, and that was the design with the rotary, is we didn't want to bring them — we didn't want to force them into the milking barn. When you see cows ride a rotary, it's one of the funniest things. They walk on it of their own volition, and they go off of their own volition. It's the only time they move — aside from that one time at the end of their lifespan — for free. They don't have to walk, they're not to do anything, they get on, and they ride. You watch these cows come up. You never have to push them into the barn. That's a common thing with all new barns, is we need to get them into the milk barn to be milked. With rotaries, they line up and they get on and they ride. It's truly funny and exceptionally efficient when you don't have to have somebody do that. But it's one of those loops that we talked about. It's enriching for the guys, because I don't have to force them to get on. They want to get on. They get on that rotary and ride. Yes, that technology, that thought process, was in my brain when we decided to build that barn, was — what can I do to make it easier for them, also make it easier for my guys, and still get the efficiency and the production we need to be a viable dairy facility?

Tom:            Sounds like another one for Larson.

Luke:            Right. Yeah, you'll put the wings on when they fly around in a circle. It's right there.

Tom:            Well, ultimately, the ultimate goal here is to produce. So why is a good human-animal bond good for production?

Luke:            I don't know that it's any better for production when you have a good one. We do definitely know that it's bad when we have a bad one. This is one of those “do no harm, first” kind of deals, is — no matter what, we want to let them produce to their expectations. Given the genetics that we've bred into these cows over the last 30 years and the leaps and bounds that we've made there, we don't want to hinder that. To not hinder that, we want a good human-animal relationship. We don't have any research stating that if it's good, it's better (for production). We would have to go, probably, back to little, more companion animals to pull that out a little bit — dogs and cats and horses. In fact, that — we're going to see progress with that. We do know that any negative interaction does cause a negative consequence in production. Just be good. We're not expecting more. We just need “good”.

Tom:            How about the human side of this equation? How does this bond affect human welfare and job performance and satisfaction, the things we were talking about earlier?

Luke:            Yeah, I think retention is that key, right? If you work in a place where this is valued, you know that you're at a place that values you. This has been one of those recently formed ideas. Jorge Delgado was one of my compatriots here at Alltech. He brought this to me and said, “I think you need to talk about this.” We need to speak of it this way, is — we've educated and we've pushed dairymen and bosses across the country to teach employees to treat their animals like they want them treated, right? “Be good to my animals, because they're important to me, and I want you to be good to them.” I think we need to flip that a little bit — and it's worked in the cases that we've done it, which is “I don't want to treat the animals the way I want. I want to treat the employees the way that I want — to treat them well — and they will take care of my things.” It's the inverse, a little bit, of what we've been taught, and what we've worked on is getting job satisfaction, but we do that through treating the human well, and then the human will take care of our assets. And we've seen this work.

                     That is the opposite rule of, typically, “I want you to be good to my animals. I want you to take care of them. Don't hit them. Be nice to them and do these things. Don't break the tractor and go that way.” No, you know what? We're going to say, “I've fixed your house. I give you good bonuses. I'm treating you well. I say hi to you. I know your name. We interact with you. I treat you well. Because of the respect you will give me for treating you well, you will then treat my things well, which is important to me.”

                     To get back to your original one, retention is still the key. We want to keep the good ones there. We want to sort out the bad ones. But to do that, we need to get past a couple of weeks, we need to get past a couple of months, and show them that they're important to us — and that's really the key, is they are important to us. They are the basic cog in our industrial dairy. Without the people, we simply cannot do what we need to do. For too long, we have said, “Just bring another one in. Just get another person. Just revolve the door.” That's so expensive, and it's so damaging to morale. We need to be good with the ones we have. Train them. Train, train, train, train again, and then look at, “How do we make them happy so that they want to stay with us?”

Tom:            Now, one thing I'm really curious about is — and we're talking about the environment now. (What I’m curious about is) whether or not music can play a role — certain genres of music, certain types of music — in calming cows as well as the people working.

Luke:            I had this argument when I was running the dairy, and I walked into milk barns for 20 years that have had blaring music of various sorts. Obviously, in California, it's usually a little more Hispanic in flavor, but you can certainly go to the middle of Michigan, where I grew up, and hear (dairies) blaring classic rock. Cows are exceptionally adaptive to whatever we put in front of them. Once they're used to it, it becomes the norm. Yes, there is work out there that — saying calm, basic, smooth jazz or smooth classical music does relax the cows when they come in.

                     But if you've walked into most modern barns right now, I really don't want to hear anything. I don't want to hear humans yelling. I want to hear the machinery. The new machinery is quiet. The fans, you'll hear the buzz from the air, and you'll hear ambient noise in the background. But to me, that's how I know I'm on a place that's really well-run, is when I walk in and I don't have the blaring boombox in my ear when I walk in. Because it is about the cow, not about the human. I understand we need to be entertained.

                     And then, secondly, all I hear is cow, right? It's just breathing, chewing, hanging around, and a little bit of mooing. That's how I know cows are exceptionally calm, and that's one of those things — and calm before anything else. If they're calm with mariachi music, then they're calm with mariachi music. I don't have a problem with music, per se, in the milk barn. It's about the cows’ reaction to it. If everybody's tense and the workers are fast and they're moving and this and that, that's bad. We want everybody to be calm.

Tom:            Well, to bring our conversation full-circle — this has been fascinating — would you come back around to the labor question and what it's like out there? Is it even possible, at this point, to think a decade ahead about what the labor market is going to look like? What do the next 10 years look like for dairy?

Luke:            Yeah, that's a good question. I think the last 10 years have been really fun. I go to dairies now, and everybody, with the recent COVID pandemic, and everybody — not everybody — and people's lack of desire to work in the office and not come in, the dairymen are laughing, because they've been living this life for 30 years. If I don't want to come in there — so there’s the popular meme where the dude’s in the noose and looks over and goes, “Your first time?” And they're going to go, “No, it's not my first time at all.” They laugh and they think it's funny, because they've been dealing with this forever. This is nothing new to them. They've always been scrambling for workers and trying to get there.

                     I don't think that changes. I had a dairyman this week that we met with. We were on a tour this week with some visitors from out of the country that were, in fact, coming to the (Alltech ONE) Conference, that — he asked them, “Would you do it like this?” It was a new robot facility. “If you had a new place, would you build it like this?” He was pretty flat-out, and he said, “In California, no, I would build it just like this. If I was in another state, I'd probably build a rotary, because I think I could get people.”

                     It's not going to stop. Part of my talk that we go through is I want people to appreciate the fact that they're not a “milker”. They're a technician. We're asking them to do a very specific technical job, to remove a product from an animal and make it work for us for a profit. They're no longer “milkers”. We need to call them “teammates,” we need to call them “technicians,” and we need to value their position on the dairy. I think that we're never going to stop arguing about labor. It's an entry-level job. People are going to come to it, they're either going to like it or not like it, and they're going to leave.

                     The problem we're going to face is probably the rising wage issue of who we have to hire and how much we have to pay them to get (them) to do the job. California is going to go a lot more robots, because we are typically ahead of the curve when it comes to minimum wage, but in the next 10 years, I would expect to see a lot more automation. Unfortunately, that means that you’re going to have to pay your guys more, because they have to operate a really good computer to work with the automation you've put in front of them.

                     But I don't see it changing much, honestly. I think we'll see the same migrant labor force. People in the United States do not want to do this job. We've tried, right? We see it through the Midwest a little more. But on the West Coast, on the South coast, it's a migrant labor force. We're forced to deal with, “How do we train, educate and make them appreciate the job they have?” And we need to appreciate their labors. But, yeah, the answer is like, in this specific one question, it'll be the same problem (in) another 10 years. We'll just have more automation. We'll have more robots. We'll have removed, maybe, a few of those basic-level guys, but we'll have more mid-level guys. Maybe that's what we want, are some thinkers on the dairy.

Tom:            Well, maybe we'll talk again in 10 years and see if it's the same or not, but it's certainly fascinating to think about. Dr. Luke Miller, dairy technical support specialist at Alltech. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Miller.

Luke:            Thank you very much for having me.

Tom:            For the Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Alltech, a global leader in animal health and nutrition, has appointed Tara McCarthy as its global vice president of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG). McCarthy will support the advancement of Alltech’s vision of Working Together for a Planet of Plenty™, which underscores the ability of the agri-food sector to provide enough nutritious food for all while revitalizing local communities and replenishing the Earth’s natural resources.

“Agriculture is the sector most integral to planetary health, from its role in the nourishment and well-being of humans and animals, to the capabilities it has to not only safeguard but benefit our Earth’s environment,” said Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech. “We have well-founded optimism about the future of agri-food and our planet, yet it is a moment for bold action and collective courage. Tara’s strategic approach, relationship focus and vast experience within the agri-food sector will add firepower to the advancement of our Planet of Plenty vision. In addition to furthering the alignment of our vision throughout our business, Tara will be working closely with our customers and partners on the environmental and social issues that we believe businesses within agriculture and food can positively impact.”

Prior to joining Alltech in June, McCarthy had served as the chief executive officer of Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, since 2017. Her 25 years’ experience in the food industry also includes serving as chief executive officer for Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), Ireland's seafood development agency.

McCarthy is passionate about the opportunities that can be found within sustainably produced food and has worked across the supply chain to develop insights and industry partnerships. She has led numerous capability initiatives and developmental support programs for students, early career executives and entrepreneurs within the food industry for more than a decade, forming successful partnerships both nationally and internationally. In 2019, McCarthy co-founded Agdif, an industry initiative championing diversity in the Irish food industry. She has also represented Ireland’s food industry globally, speaking on Origin Green, Ireland’s unique national sustainability program. In 2021, McCarthy led the establishment of the Origin Green Global Council.

“Our world is changing, and the role that agriculture can play in the future is, in many ways and places, being reset,” said McCarthy. “I am delighted to have the opportunity to join Alltech in this new role at this pivotal time. It has never been more important to build networks across the supply chain, to start new conversations and to understand different perspectives. Supported by the ambition of Alltech’s Planet of Plenty vision and their global reach, I look forward to supporting and working alongside Alltech colleagues and customers.”

McCarthy received a bachelor’s degree in commerce from National University of Ireland, Galway (UCG) and a master’s degree in business studies with an emphasis on marketing from the University College Dublin (UCD) Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. She is an affiliate of the IMD Business School in Switzerland. McCarthy has been recognized with several awards, including UCG Alumna of the Year for Business and Commerce in 2017; a Fellow of the Marketing Institute of Ireland, as well as Ireland’s Top 25 Most Powerful Women Public Sector Leaders Award in 2018; and UCD Smurfit School Alumna of the Year in 2019.

The newly established role of global vice president of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) represents another exciting milestone in Alltech’s longstanding mission to develop sustainable solutions for agriculture. In the early 1980s, Dr. Pearse Lyons, the late founder of Alltech, established the ACE Principle, which guided the company’s efforts toward providing nutritional solutions that promote the health and well-being of animals, consumers and the environment. In 2019, Dr. Mark Lyons, Pearse’s son, carried that principle forward with the announcement of his vision for Working Together for a Planet of Plenty^TM.

Why should beef and dairy producers consider organic trace minerals? Laurentia Van Rensburg, technical mineral manager at Alltech, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how including organic trace minerals in maternal diets affects female cattle and their progeny.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Laurentia van Rensburg hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, and here with us is Laurentia Van Rensburg, technical mineral manager at Alltech. With a master's degree in animal science from the University of Kentucky, Laurentia has more than 15 years of experience in livestock and animal science, serving the industry in South Africa, the Netherlands, Latin America and the North American market. She joins us to talk about the impact of organic trace minerals on cow-calf nutrition or fetal programming. Welcome, Laurentia.

Laurentia:      Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            What are the roles of organic trace minerals in maternal diets?

Laurentia:      Trace minerals are essential nutrients, so even though they're required in very small amounts, they have, actually, a wide range of functions involved in many metabolical and physiological processes that can influence growth. It can influence reproductive efficiency. Therefore, maternal nutrition is especially important because it can have a direct impact on the fetus or the developing calf in utero as well.

Tom:            What factors influence livestock nutrition?

Laurentia:      Well, Tom, that's a really interesting question, because we know that nutritional requirements can differ among breeds, among different gestational phases, and even growth requirements can be different, too, from regular maintenance requirements. Then we have much different requirements for optimized immunity, health and reproductive efficiency as well, so definitely, life stage plays a very important role in nutrition — especially trace mineral requirements.

Tom:            Under what conditions do you most often find a nutrient deficiency in cows?

Laurentia:      Nutrient deficiencies can actually be due to a couple of factors. First of all, it's when the animals don't have access to the nutrient. But for the most cases, when we see nutrient deficiencies in cattle, most of the time, it's actually due to mineral-to-mineral antagonisms that can actually have a negative effect on (the) absorption of certain essential nutrients. I think, with today's modern cattle production, we see a lot of people (who) do supplement their cattle, and we still see suboptimal performance due to marginal deficiencies. In this case, it's definitely due to mineral-to-mineral (interactions) or interactions between (the) mineral and other essential nutrients, including vitamins.

Tom:            Thinking about the various stages of gestation, what are the roles of maternal nutrition in those stages?

Laurentia:      There has been a lot of work that looks at the negative impact of nutrient restriction, especially focusing on that last trimester of gestation. The reason being is we know that during the last 90 to 60 days is when the calf really grows very rapidly and, therefore, (can) put a drain on the cow's mineral or nutritional status. However, it's also very important to keep in mind that maternal nutrition is important from conception and (the) early developmental stages during gestation, because nutrient status can have a direct impact on the developing placenta and the development of the fetus as well.

Tom:            How can (the) proper management of cow nutrition during gestation make a difference in progeny, performance and health?

Laurentia:      There has been a lot of research that shows trace mineral supplementation during gestation can have a positive impact not just on short-term outcomes such as (the) birth weight and weaning weight of the calf, but we can also see that maternal nutrition can have a significant impact on, for example, reproductive efficiency of the calf later on in life. Yes, there is a big impact (of) maternal nutrition on future performance, not just in terms of reproductive efficiency but even carcass weight as well.

Tom:            What kind of changes in the dairy heifers can a producer expect to see after they make the switch from inorganic to organic trace minerals?

Laurentia:      When it comes to dairy heifers, we've actually seen a study done by Dr. Heinrichs out of Penn State where maternal nutrition has not only impacted (the) reproductive efficiency of the heifer calves, but we've also seen milk response as well.

Tom:            Is there a carryover effect when you improve trace mineral status in cows? Does it carry over?

Laurentia:      Oh, absolutely. We have seen several studies that show that calves from cows that were subjected to organic trace minerals, and specifically Bioplex and Sel-Plex, have actually had — they reached estrus earlier. They cycled earlier. They got bred earlier and had higher pregnancy rates as well, so there is definitely a carryover effect.

Tom:            What are the long-term effects of organic trace minerals on growth and reproductive performance and first lactation in dairy heifers?

Laurentia:      Tom, with the work done in dairy, we have actually seen that trace mineral supplementation — specifically with Bioplex and Sel-Plex — can have a profound impact on these heifer calves reaching puberty earlier. Also, this resulted in them getting bred earlier. They calved earlier compared to their inorganic counterparts, and actually, that can have a direct impact on lifetime performance as well.

Tom:            Okay. We're talking about dairy cattle there. What about beef?

Laurentia:      We have seen very consistent and similar responses in beef animals as well. For example, (in) a study that was done at the University of Florida, not only have we seen that maternal supplementation increased weaning and birth weight, but we've also seen that heifers from cows supplemented with Bioplex and Sel-Plex once again had better pelvic measurements. They had better reproductive track scores. That did result in them getting bred. They reached puberty earlier and they got bred earlier as well.

Tom:            What are the consequences of an unbalanced nutrient supply during gestation?

Laurentia:      When we're talking about “unbalanced,” it's very important to realize that oversupply can be just as detrimental as undersupply of certain nutrients as well. There is a lot of research showing us that nutrient restrictions can actually have a negative impact on pre-wean mortalities. It can also have a negative impact on birth and weaning weights as well.

Tom:            Has there been an increase in the bioavailability of organic trace minerals? If so, is this increased availability having a positive effect on reproductive efficiency?

Laurentia:      Absolutely. One of the main differences we see between inorganic and organic trace minerals is that organic trace minerals have higher relative bioavailability values. This means that the animal is not only going to be better able to absorb it but also utilize it in a much more efficient way. However, just as there are differences between inorganic and organic trace minerals, there's also going to be very much (of a) difference in relative bioavailability between different categories of organic trace minerals as well.

Tom:            Should we be sure to know where our trace minerals are coming from and (their) form and source?

Laurentia:      Absolutely. I think it is very important to educate ourselves not only on the form of trace minerals. For example, if you look at your feed tag, inorganic trace minerals will typically include sulfates, oxides, chlorides or even hydroxy minerals, where organic trace minerals — for example, Bioplex — will be denoted as proteinate. That answers the first question.

                     Now, where do your minerals come from? We have to keep in mind that inorganic trace minerals are typically byproducts from other industrial processes. This means that they're relatively inexpensive, but there is not a lot of quality control associated with this type of product. They also have very low bioavailability, which just means our animals really are not equipped to maximize (the) utilization of trace minerals in this specific form.

Tom:            Everybody's concerned about sustainability in whatever endeavor they're involved in. It's a huge concern these days. I'm wondering: How do the benefits of organic trace minerals — using them in a nutrition program for our livestock — how does that contribute to sustainability?

Laurentia:      I think trace minerals — and, specifically, organic trace minerals, such as Bioplex and Sel-Plex — can contribute to sustainability in a few different ways. For example, we know if you can improve production efficiency, then, ultimately, that will mean you are a more sustainable producer as well. Secondly, trace minerals in the inorganic form — since they are not as bioavailable — typically, they get excreted at high concentrations back into soil and water sources. In Europe, for example, that is why certain trace minerals in certain species are being regulated. With organic trace minerals, such as Bioplex and Sel-Plex, we know we can actually feed much lower inclusion rates and get the same or even better performance and, at the same time, have less excretion of these trace minerals into soil and water as well.

Tom:            All right. That's Laurentia Van Rensburg, technical mineral manager at Alltech. Thank you, Laurentia.

Laurentia:      Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Nestled on the banks of the Clyde River, overlooking Vermont’s widely reputed lush, forested hills sits Poulin Grain. Proud to call Vermont home since 1932, this fourth-generation family-owned business offers personalized service — including one-on-one animal nutrition consultations, lab-based forage analysis and customized recommendations — along with the manufacturing and delivery of premium animal feeds. Poulin Grain’s diverse customer base includes livestock producers and animal enthusiasts throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada.

As noted by company president Josh Poulin, the nearly 90-year-old business “[has] always been committed to delivering high-quality animal nutrition products at a fair value, and taking care of [its] people, animals and customers.”  

Based in Newport, Vermont, Poulin Grain serves a wide range of customers throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada, including many dairy producers.

Managing mycotoxins in feed and forage

Poulin Grain maintains a steadfast focus on serving the animal and meeting their requirements, which is why they are consistently exploring new technologies that can help them implement superior quality control and produce animal feeds of only the highest caliber.

The company’s northeastern U.S. location — a region often referred to as “mycotoxin central” — led to them initially building a relationship with Alltech. The two companies worked together to implement a mycotoxin control program at Poulin’s mills while also helping their nutrition teams and customers understand more about this dynamic problem on-farm, which includes a central focus on enhancing forage quality.

Why mycotoxin testing is necessary

A 2021 study from Weaver et al. highlighted the prevalence of these toxic compounds in U.S. corn grain and corn silage by analyzing the results of almost 2,000 grain and forage samples across seven years. Findings showed that the mean numbers of mycotoxins per sample were 4.8 and 5.2 in grain and silage, respectively.

These findings are often replicated in the ongoing testing carried out by Alltech’s 37+^® mycotoxin analysis laboratory network. For example, in 2021, over 7,000 tests revealed that an astounding 95% of samples contained two or more mycotoxins.

In recent years, several factors have combined to exacerbate the mycotoxin risk in animal diets worldwide. More extreme weather patterns, such as droughts and floods, are creating extra stress on crops, which is one of the primary predisposing factors for mold and mycotoxin development. Additionally, the shift to no-till crop establishment and reduced crop rotation is leading to a greater buildup of crop residues, which only serves to increase the mycotoxin risk in subsequent crops.

How mycotoxins impact animals

Mycotoxins can be the root cause of numerous problems on-farm. However, some of the more common mycotoxin symptoms include:

• Digestive disorders, such as diarrhea.
• Reproductive challenges, such as decreased fertility and abnormal estrous cycles.
• Reduced animal performance, often linked to reduced feed consumption and nutrient utilization.
• Compromised health, related to suppressed immunity and increased disease risk.

As demonstrated by the routine mycotoxin analysis mentioned above, the presence of multiple mycotoxins in grains and forages tends to be the norm rather than the exception. This may lead to additional or synergistic effects, further compounding the mycotoxin problem for livestock producers.

Taking a proactive approach to mycotoxin management

Although mycotoxins are often chemically stable enough to survive food and feed processing — meaning it is virtually impossible to eliminate them from the supply chain — there are some key steps that can be taken to enhance control efforts.

John Winchell serves as Alltech’s Northeast U.S. territory sales manager, where he has worked with Poulin Grain for nearly two years. When working through mycotoxin challenges, John has always believed it’s best to take a more proactive approach.

“When you think of mycotoxin management, I think it’s much more than just a product — it’s a program; [one that involves] looking at pre-harvest and post-harvest strategies, and [considering] different things, such as climate, population, and varieties,” John explains. “[This paints] a total picture as opposed to [taking a] reactive [approach].”

Aided by Winchell’s support throughout the crop-growing season, Poulin Grain and their dairy nutrition customers have implemented steps to help enhance forage quality and produce superior quality dairy feeds.

For example, to manage grain and forage quality post-harvest, John introduced Poulin Grain to both the Alltech 37+ mycotoxin analysis and Alltech RAPIREAD^®.

Alltech 37+ is a lab-based mycotoxin detection method that can identify up to 54 individual mycotoxins, including those in total mixed rations (TMRs).

Alltech RAPIREAD utilizes a portable testing module to quickly detect six key mycotoxins. It is typically used directly on-farm or in the feed mill due to its ability to deliver quick results, often in less than 15 minutes.

“Working with [Alltech] 37+ to look at the different samples on different commodities and forages has really helped us get closer to where we need to be on forage quality and cow health,” states Winchell, while also highlighting how Poulin Grain were early adopters of Alltech RAPIREAD, thereby allowing mycotoxin control decisions to be activated on the same day that a challenge is identified.

Optimizing dairy forage quality is a key focus area for both Poulin Grain and Alltech.

Maximizing livestock productivity

Poulin Grain is no stranger to adaption and innovation, as noted by general manager and senior vice president Mike Tetreault, “One of the key things for Poulin Grain to continue to be leaders in animal nutrition is we must be innovative. And part of being innovative for us is having the right products, services and technologies [in place].” That is where John Winchell and Alltech come in.

According to Tetreault, “[Winchell] has been a tremendous asset for us — he’s been really committed [to serving] all our customers and covering every area. He’s been a true source of support, education and growth for all our customers and [our] company. I don’t know what we’d do without this Alltech service.”

From starting with a simple introductory webinar to today implementing the latest in mycotoxin detection, Mike feels the Poulin team has now become experts in managing mycotoxins and is far more able to make informed decisions.

What lies ahead

As Poulin Grain’s business continues to grow and develop the ways in which it serves its diverse customer base, Tetreault is excited about what lies ahead.

“When we find problems that really need further investigation, Alltech’s 37+ [program] has been there to support us dramatically for the last year,” he says. “We’ve had several situations where we’ve been able to help and correct management [on-farm]. It’s really been a great run, and I know that going forward, utilizing these Alltech services, products and technologies will [continue to] truly be an asset for Poulin Grain.”

Five generations comprise today’s workforce — how can they all get along? Colene Elridge, a.k.a. "Coach Colene," CEO of Be More Consulting, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss why leaders need to exercise empathy, inclusion and listening to grow their businesses and foster future leaders.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Yasir Khokhar hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:             Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                      In many industries, five generations now comprise the workforce: traditionalists, baby boomers, Generation X, millennials, Generation Y and Generation Z. Most traditionalists have retired. Baby boomers are following suit, (or are) at least trying to figure out how to retire. Gen Xers are in high demand for their unique abilities to bridge generations. Millennials are approaching 40. Gen Z is entering the workforce. Can they all get along?

                      I'm Tom Martin. In this episode of Ag Future, we put the question to Colene Elridge, CEO of Be More Consulting and vice chair of the Board of Regents at Transylvania University. Thanks for joining us, Colene.

Colene:          Thank you so much for having me.

Tom:              Let's begin with that burning question: Can these generations — given the vast differences in their lived experiences — can they all get along?

Colene:          They can. It's so interesting because I think, most of the time, the conflict isn't rooted in the generational difference; it's rooted in the different expectations that we have. That can happen with people of the same generation or with people of a different generation. I think part of the key is just that awareness and that empathy and understanding that we can bring into a workplace that we all bring different strengths and weaknesses and skill sets into an organization.

Tom:              When you have the combination of skill sets and so forth under one roof, somebody has to lead, has to pull it together, make it coalesce. Can that be taught? Are some people born leaders?

Colene:          I think some people are natural leaders, but I do think that there are skill sets that have to be learned in order to be successful at being a leader. I think all of us are leaders in some way. Some of us just do it a little bit better than others based off of our own experiences and our ability to learn and resources that we've had (access to). Some people are definitely born leaders. I think you can see kids on the playground and you can pick them out, right? But some people really do have to learn and hone and polish those skill sets to be great leaders.

Tom:              What are the non-negotiables of being a good leader?

Colene:          Communication skills, flexibility in how I communicate — I think that's probably one of the top things that I hear from organizations or from exit interviews of people from organizations: “My boss didn't listen to me.” So not just “How do I communicate out?” but “How do I receive communication?” That communication piece is key — building trust as a leader. I don't think we spend enough time actively and intentionally trying to build trust between leadership and employees. We trust the people that we work the closest with. If I'm two seats up on the hierarchy, it's really hard for me to trust you, because I don't know you. Building that trust, intentionally building that trust, I think, is a non-negotiable.

                      Then, having some flexibility. Oftentimes, I talk about communication and I talk about policies as either it's like you're running into a wall or you're running into cotton. How do I have that flexibility that — we need the structure here, but I also understand that circumstances happen and people are people. I can't just blanket a policy on every person equally.

Tom:              You have said that established leaders who want to grow their businesses and foster their successors need to unlearn and relearn their management practices to better exercise empathy, inclusion and listening — the things you're talking about. That sounds like a major change. That sounds like the “old dog, new trick,” that conundrum. What do leaders need to start and stop doing in order to find common ground across generations and to maximize returns from that?

Colene:          I have to share a funny story. I was doing a training for one-star generals that were about to be promoted to two-star generals. We're talking about generational differences in the workplace. I said, “The way that you've always done bootcamp probably will not have the same outcome now as it had 30 years ago. You need to be thinking about, ‘Where can we make some changes to bootcamp?’” What kind of reception do you think I got from that? They were like, “No, no, we've always done it this way. We've never let people have phones.” Well, right, because in 1970, people didn't have cell phones. How do we look at the policies that we have in place and ask ourselves, “Is this still relevant? Is this still necessary?”

                      I think some of the things that leaders have to unlearn is this thought process that just because it's there that it should be there. Just because we've done it this way that we should continue to do it this way. Recognizing that, “I, maybe, have built the ship, but now it's time for me to update the ship.” That's, I think, one of the biggest things that we have to be willing to unlearn, is the thought process of “I've always done it this way.” 

Tom:              A great leader that I once worked under said that the key to everything is flexibility. But again, being flexible, making yourself flexible, opens you to the possibility that things are not going to go your way. It’s very important to learn that skill of flexibility, isn’t it? How important to the success of a business are effective communication skills? You mentioned that among leaders.

Colene:          Yeah. It will make or break an organization. Lack of effective communication mixed with a lack of trust, which — those two things go hand in hand (and) can really make or break an organization. I often joke about communication. One — this part is not a joke — but if information can be shared, it should be shared. I think that that’s so important, because when leaders choose to not share information, employees, we're human, we go to worst-case scenario. No one ever comes to you and says, “Tom, I need to talk to you,” and you think, “They're just going to tell me how great I am.” You think, “What did I do wrong? What do I need to fix?”

                      I think, when we look at that on a massive scale of an organization, each of us are left to our own devices to make up worst-case scenarios. Then I'm going to go to my friend, and we're going to come up with an even worse-case scenario together. I think, when we think about how we communicate in organizations, there's this thought of “I should not communicate a message until it's polished, until it's shiny, until I know 100% that this is the outcome.” People want to be brought along on the journey. You can get better buy-in if they've seen the process versus (if) you just give them the end result. Transparent communication and progressive communication, I think, can do tremendous good in an organization.

Tom:              Where that gets you is probably the ultimate goal, and that's trust. What are some hallmarks, the kinds of communication skills between employers and employees, that can make a real positive difference in a company's performance?

Colene:          Checking for understanding. It goes back to that listening skill. I think there is a thought with leaders sometimes: “I'm going to tell you what I need you to do, and then I’m going to send you off to do it. I’m not going to give you an opportunity to ask questions. I’m not going to give you an opportunity for feedback.” Then, you present me with this final result, and it's nothing at all that I wanted. Now I'm frustrated as a leader. Now you're frustrated as an employee, because you've spent all this time, energy and resources. How could we have avoided that?

                      Number one would have been transparent communication along the way. Before I sent you off, I could have checked in. “Do you have any questions? Is there anything that you don't understand? Anything that you need clarity on?” (I could) use that as an opportunity to get the feedback. Maybe you weren't as clear as what you thought you were. I think we're just in such a rush to get things done that we forget that getting things done the right way matters as well.

Tom:              Colene, the question for the times — I think a lot of people would like to hear your thoughts on this, (and) that is: How do we lead remotely, digitally? Is it even possible?

Colene:          It is. I think it requires a lot of effort and way more intention than what it would be in a traditional workplace. I think, when we look at what good remote leaders do is they do have that personal connection with their employees as well. They're making the time to ask questions about how their family is doing. They're checking in with them as a person. “How are you doing?” Seeing me as a person, not just the machine. I think that's really one of the keys when it comes to remote leadership: It's still building those relationships and those connections.

Tom:              Back to communications for just a second, and that is gaining those skills. How often should people be trained on communication skills in order for them to become effective and impactful?

Colene:          Communication skills are a practice, much like people go to the gym. You don't get fit by just working out one time. You have to actively practice it. I think the difference with communication skills is people think, “Well, I talk all the time. I'm good at communicating.” There's a difference between talking and effectively communicating. You have to practice that. You have to be open to getting feedback. Oftentimes, you have to be willing to ask for that feedback on my communication skills. “Hey, was I clear in that meeting? Is there anything that you feel like I could have done better to have gotten my point across more succinctly?” What are the skills that you really want to work on? Then, you have to be able to create measurable goals towards that. That way, you can see the progress that you're making.

Tom:              Sometimes, pride and ego can get in the way.

Colene:          One hundred percent. Yeah. People like themselves a lot. When I like myself, sometimes it's hard to hear that feedback.

Tom:              It can be. Well, what is the one thing that everybody can be better at when working in a multigenerational team, which just gets us back to where we began with the conversation?

Colene:          The one thing — can I give you two instead?

Tom:              Absolutely. Three or four, if you’ve got them.

Colene:         The two things — the two things I would say is, one, to pause, to pause and think before you speak. Think before you interact. I think that applies not just across generational differences but any differences that any of us bring to a workplace. Pause and try to not necessarily put yourself in the other person's shoes, but wonder what might be causing their reaction, how they said something, before you react. That pause is a game-changer for a lot of people.

                      The second thing is to recognize that generational difference is just one piece of the differences that we bring into work. I love talking about generational differences, but it's probably not even the most exciting piece of who you are and who you bring to work. That one dimension does mean something, but that one little attribute of diversity is one piece of who you are as a person. Get to know people and not just the perceptions of the generational difference that they might bring into the workplace. 

Tom:              Sometimes I think we forget that, in thinking about the pause — that even that, that moment of silence while you're sitting there processing, that's communication. It can be interpreted in a lot of ways.

Colene:          Yes. There is no need to react. There is no need to respond as quickly as what everyone thinks they need to. The pause is a gift.

Tom:              Given the experiences that you’ve had in training and working with people in these roles, what's your takeaway today about the state of leadership? Are we doing it well? How are we progressing as a community of leaders?

Colene:          I think it's so interesting, because COVID hit, and I think what we saw was a humanization of leadership. That was very appreciated on the employee side. They got to see their leaders in their kitchen with their cats running up (beside them). They got to see them as people and not just the person in the big office that's making the decision. I think what is not helping us right now as leaders is this rush to try to revert back to February 2020. Those leaders that are trying to do that, trying to make things exactly what it was like pre-COVID, I think, are not going to be successful, because people just have different expectations now of, “What does it even mean to be a leader?”

Tom:              Would you say that genie's out of the bottle?

Colene:          Absolutely. I often say, it's like once you squeeze the toothpaste out; you can't get it back in. A lot of leaders are now walking around with messy hands because they're trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube instead of just saying, “Okay, now what? How can I continue along this path?” I know it made so many of them uncomfortable to have that vulnerability and that transparency, but that is now what people want. It's what people wanted beforehand. I think people just got to see that it could be a reality, and now that's the expectation.

Tom:              Well, it's not every day that the whole world goes through a paradigm shift at once.

Colene:          Absolutely.

Tom:             That's what we've been through. It's pretty incredible.

Colene:         That one thing, I think, has exponentially increased the speed of change at work.

Tom:             Colene Elridge, CEO of Be More Consulting. Thank you, Colene.

Colene:         Thank you so much.

Tom:             For the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Connecterra is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help dairy farmers increase productivity on-farm while reducing their impact on the planet. Yasir Khokhar, CEO and founder of Connecterra, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss the importance of turning data into actionable insights and how programs like the Pearse Lyons Cultivator are helping ag-tech startups navigate the global food supply chain through commercial pilot projects.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Yasir Khokhar hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:                   Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                             The business startup is both beauty and beast, an idea or concept driven forward by passion and commitment but also a set of spinning plates that could come crashing down at any moment. For many, that tension is what makes the world of startup companies such an interesting and exciting place. It's where you will find our guest on this episode of Ag Future.

                             I'm Tom Martin. With me is Yasir Khokhar, founder and CEO of Connecterra, an Amsterdam-based company, where Yasir focuses on the commercial side, structuring agreements with some of the world's largest dairy brands and setting a strategic direction in partnership with the Connecterra executive team. Under his leadership, the company has grown from an idea to winning startup of the year at Web Summit in 2015, Google's Demo Day in 2016, and Dell in 2017. Welcome to Ag Future, Yasir.

Yasir:                  Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Tom:                   A bit more background, if we can. I understand that you led the transformation of Microsoft Office into a cloud business for the Middle East before heading up the Microsoft Office Business Unit for Western Europe. You authored the smart city strategy for the company, overseeing its global implementations. Tell us about smart city.

Yasir:                  I think that was the genesis of Connecterra in many ways. I was living in Dubai at the time, and they were building everywhere. I was tasked to come up with an idea of how we could use Microsoft technology in buildings. That’s kind of where I formed a vision of how we could make buildings more sustainable, more efficient, with energy use and all of that, using tech. That then translated into what is today Connecterra, in many ways.

Tom:                   That technology is now pretty pervasive, isn't it?

Yasir:                  It is indeed. This was back in 2007, just before the subprime mortgage crisis.

Tom:                   Seems like a long time ago.

Yasir:                  Yes.

Tom:                  You relocated to Amsterdam. When you moved there, you moved next door to a Dutch dairy farm. Did that turn out to be something of an alignment of stars? How did that influence your thinking?

Yasir:                  It was. I think that was a watershed moment, because I was toying with this idea of sensors, which I'd gotten to know in my smart city days. I was looking at how farmers work. They're working in fields, but there's no data that they're using to make decisions. What they are using was just absolutely archaic. I was like, “Well, surely, I can do better than this.” It started as a hobby to try and work with farms and see what could we do with data. That eventually translated into Connecterra. If I hadn't moved to the farm, I wouldn't have, perhaps, come up with this whole incentive to build something around it.

Tom:                   What are the challenges of the dairy industry that you address beyond that, bringing them along into technology?

Yasir:                  I think about this — there are three big categories of challenges that I see. First of all, dairy is an industry that is continuing to grow, despite what we might find in the media. Globally, dairy is still growing two to three percent. The average age of a farmer is 59 years. You have massive labor problems. Now, you need to transition this industry from its current status quo, which is known to be less sustainable than where it could be. You need to transition this industry to be more sustainable. You've got an aging workforce. You've got labor problems.

                             This is where technology has been known to make a huge difference in other industries. You can automate things. You can make better decisions. You can use data to really try and make farms more efficient and productive with the resources that you have. This is a big lift. This is not going to be easy. But I believe that there's a massive difference that we can make with technology within the dairy space and transition this massive industry to its full potential. 

Tom:                   Let's say that the industry does that. What does it look like on the other side? What's the potential?

Yasir:                  Let me put it this way. The average dairy cow globally does about 2,000 kilos of milk a day. If you take the world's most efficient farms in Europe or the U.S., they're doing about 10,000. That's a 5x improvement in productivity. A lot of this productivity can come from automation and technology. Simple answer: You can make it five times more efficient and sustainable.

Tom:                   Is the industry making progress with transitioning operations to make the most of digital technology?

Yasir:                  I think it is. The COVID pandemic really accelerated a lot of this. We're seeing this in our customers and partner engagements as well. Climate policy and what's been happening in the whole net-zero transition has also come to dairy in a big way. A lot of the big players in the world — Arla, Danone, Fonterra, etc. — now have specific programs for regenerative agriculture, which is going even beyond net zero and saying, “Could we use livestock to store carbon and soil to store carbon in the ground?” Yes, these things (have) happened in the last two years. There is progress being made. It needs to go faster.

Tom:                   What do you see as the role of artificial intelligence in the future of dairy farming? How do you see AI technology working cohesively with human ingenuity?

Yasir:                  That's something that we've been doing in Connecterra for a couple of years now. Artificial intelligence is a technology. It is not going to solve things on its own. You need to find the right use cases where you can apply it. One of the things that we've done with our technology, Ida, is use farmers to train an algorithm that can help you run the world's most efficient farm. We're actually using the wisdom of farmers who've been doing this for 20, 30 years, capturing that information with our data and training algorithms that can help you make better decisions.

                             These decisions lead to operational efficiencies. These decisions lead to sustainability insights, which can help you out on your net-zero transition. Very recently, we released a new machine learning model that can actually help farms reduce their carbon footprint by five to ten percent or more. I think it is the application of this technology in these spaces that is really key for this industry to move forward in the vision that I just outlined.

Tom:                   Well, often, with much of the technology that we're talking about comes fresh data. What are your thoughts on avoiding data overload within agriculture versus actionable insights?

Yasir:                  That's a great question. This was, again, one of our early insights as well when I started Connecterra, is there was too much data and still is too much data on farms. Farmers don't have the time nor are they trained to analyze data to understand what it means. Technologies exist today — explainable AI, for instance, takes data, interprets it into insights. In my view, data needs to disappear. What needs to happen is that all of this data needs to be translated into very specific, understandable insights for the farmer and their stakeholders. We talk a lot about saying, “Oh, data is going to solve everything. It's going to help you build better insights.” Yes, it's the insights that (are) going to help you solve things.

Tom:                   So, it has to make sense.

Yasir:                  It has to make sense, and it has to be right.

Tom:                   And relevant, I suppose, to what's happening on the ground.

Yasir:                  In the context of the farm.

Tom:                   You've been working with the Pearse Lyons Cultivator, which connects ag-tech startups to producers or other industry stakeholders. How crucial are pilot projects in forging a path to market for startups, especially for those that are trying to disrupt an industry?

Yasir:                  They're absolutely essential. We've seen them being the first step for startups to break into the industry. It is not easy to get access to farms and farmers there. It's an inherently fragmented industry. You need the support of large players to take these innovations that entrepreneurs and startups like us are making and bring them into the real environment. That's where pilots really help. On the flip side, I would say that pilots need to be faster, more agile, and they need to be able to translate into specific rollouts. I think a lot of the problems with pilots tend to be (that) startups need to move fast (while) large companies move a little slow. That impedance mismatch does need a look at in a broad sense within the industry.

Tom:                   Is the startup space in the ag sector pretty crowded now? Is there a lot of activity there?

Yasir:                  Not enough.

Tom:                   Not enough. So, bring it on.

Yasir:                  Yep, absolutely.

Tom:                   Well, what are some other innovative agricultural startups that have grabbed your attention?

Yasir:                  I'm really intrigued with some of the startups that are working with satellite data, for instance. Vision came around in dairy. I think there are some interesting use cases around it. Satellite technology in some of the work that Planet is doing is super interesting. Google is working on a moonshot where they've coined this new phrase called computational agriculture. (There’s some) super interesting stuff going on over there. There's a couple of these areas which I'm very intrigued with its early stages. These are very complicated problems to solve, but they're very promising.

Tom:                   Shifting back to startups and just seeking a little bit of advice. What are some key obstacles to holding true to a business development plan?

Yasir:                  Speed.

Tom:                   Speed?

Yasir:                  Yeah.

Tom:                   Haste?

Yasir:                  Speed. Well, yes. Let me qualify that.

Tom:                   Okay.

Yasir:                  Startups, by definition, are young and prone to — they need to move fast. If you don't move fast, you're going to run into real problems when you're running a startup. However, the ag industry doesn't move at the speed where other industries move, where, typically, startups have been very successful, whether you take fintech, social, mobile, etc. Entrepreneurs and investors, as well as corporate, need to be very aware that ag things will take time. They need to be able to support startups in a manner which gives them the room that is needed for these cycles to happen. You can't take the traditional VC model of Silicon Valley and apply it straight to ag-tech. It doesn't really work. It makes things very risky for startups. As a consequence, I'd say the industry could move a little faster, and startups need to be more aware that things will take longer in ag.

Tom:                   That startup phase can always be grueling — a lot of long hours, a lot of late nights — but there are some rewards on the other end, right? What are the rewards of hanging in there through that rough and tumble startup phase?

Yasir:                  It's the feeling that you've made a difference to a fundamental human activity called agriculture.

Tom:                   All right. I understand that you climb mountains.

Yasir:                  I do.

Tom:                   How do the challenges of mountain climbing influence your views about what you do in your work and about business?

Yasir:                  Resilience. When you're climbing, your body will give out way before your mind will. In all of my different climbs, and if I chart my history, I've actually seen my mind change. When you're climbing, it can be life and death. At times, you can be caught in a snowstorm. You can be caught up on a mountain, very exposed. You just got a cramp in your leg. You’ve just got to push through it, because if you don't, you're done. I think that mental resilience translates very well into startup land, because you're going to have to go through a lot of tough decisions, a lot of tough situations, but you can't give up. You’ve just got to keep going.

Tom:                   It's Yasir Khokhar, founder and CEO of Connecterra, online at connecterra.io. Thank you, Yasir.

Yasir:                  Thank you, Tom.

Tom:                   For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

The science of how we perceive and taste food is an emerging field of study with powerful implications. Dr. Dan Han, Psy.D., CELM, FANA, chief of the division of neuropsychology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, is among the healthcare professionals uniting with agriculture experts, chefs and scientists to explore fascinating brain-behavior relationships through neurogastronomy. Dr. Han joins the Ag Future podcast to share how this groundbreaking science could influence quality of life and support global food security. 

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Dan Han, Psy.D., CELM, FANA hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     With more than 40 million Americans currently suffering from food insecurity, and with an estimated nine billion people to feed around the globe by 2050, we need deliverable answers to questions of hunger, and we need them now. How can the science of neurogastronomy, the relatively new science of how our brains taste food, move us toward a goal of global food security?

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast, and with me is Dr. Dan Han, chief of the Division of Neuropsychology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Dr. Han is a fellow of the American Neurological Association (and) a co-founder and past president of the International Society of Neurogastronomy at UK. He has received federal and state funding and foundation grants in support of clinical trials of studies on brain behavior relationships, curriculum development and program development.

                     Dr. Han's work in translational neuroscience has been featured in Newsweek, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, on the BBC and CBC, (in) the Atlantic, HuffPost, Business Insider, New Scientist, STAT, Brain World, Alive Magazine, the ASCO Post, and the American Psychological Association's Monitor on Psychology. Welcome, Dr. Han.

Dan:             Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Tom:            The fact that our experiences with food are related to neurology hadn't occurred to me before, but it seems to make a great deal of sense when you think about it, and you wonder why we didn't think about it much earlier. But the term neurogastronomy didn't appear until it was coined by Dr. Gordon Shepherd, I believe, of Yale. He was first writing about the concept in the journal Nature in 2006. Why did it not become a focus of formal scientific inquiry until so very recently?

Dan:             Oh, good question. The concepts and mechanisms and foundations were there for decades, if not centuries, actually. The movement to translate what we know in the context of neurosciences, individual perception, psychology, how that shapes an individual desire for food consumption and what that means for macro-level agricultural technology, consumerism and so on — as a movement, it hasn't been conceptualized until relatively recently, about 2015 or so. Dr. Gordon Shepherd at Yale conceptualized the term and coined the term and published it in Nature years back. The challenge was set for the scientists and clinicians and other academics by Dr. Gordon Shepherd to come out of the silos and actually talk to each other, educate each other, and have larger optics to look at some tangible questions that are needing to be asked and answered relatively quickly, because we have nine to ten billion people to feed by 2050.

Tom:            The International Society of Neurogastronomy, which you have served as president of, is based at the University of Kentucky. Why UK?

Dan:             The concept was born out of Yale University, but there were many academic clinicians and bench scientists at the University of Kentucky who, out of serendipity, decided to form a group and answer that call. The story actually goes back to 2012 when the book first came out. Dr. Gordon Shepherd, who coined the term, wrote the book called “Neurogastronomy,” and it was published in 2012, which happen to be the year when I was in Montreal for a neuroscience conference. The story is actually quite interesting. I'll get into it as a lay topic.

                     Gina Mullin, who was working with me at the time at UK Healthcare, she was my staff support, and we worked together on getting flights and so on. She was in charge of making sure that my conference travel itinerary was set in place at the time, and the server went down. I'm not terribly computer-savvy, so I was trying to pick her brain and trying to set up the hotel and flight, et cetera. I also asked around among my foodies in town. I asked them, “I'll be in Montreal for a few days. What is the restaurant to go visit?” Everybody told me to go visit Joe Beef in Montreal. That's where the chefs hang out. That same year, Anthony Bourdain did a special on the Travel network and featured Joe Beef as the restaurant to go visit when you're in Montreal. So, we figured, “All right, let’s go ahead and put that on the calendar.”

                     Gina Mullin helped me put that on the calendar, but at that time, the server went down. Internet got cut off and we didn't know if the reservation took. We were in Montreal. We figured, all right, let's just go and see if the reservation took. We went to Joe Beef. Of course, the reservation didn't take. Murphy's Law, right? I was there with some of my academic colleagues. We were there for a neuroscience conference. We figured, “Well, how often do we come to Montreal and visit a restaurant like Joe Beef?” So, we waited, and then we got sat late, about 9:30 p.m., I believe. But because of that serendipity, we ate late, and then things were starting to wind down in the restaurant. That's when Fred Morin — enter Fred Morin, chef extraordinaire and world-renowned chef — decided to come out of the kitchen with a bottle of wine in his hand and decided to make the rounds, saying hello to the patrons.

                     He saw us at the corner, and he immediately said, “Well, obviously, you guys are not from around here,” because we have lanyards and everything. We looked like dorks. We said, “Yeah, we're here for a neuroscience conference.” He invites himself down and actually brings out additional wine and champagne and some hors d'oeuvres on the house. He said, “I just read this book called ‘Neurogastronomy’. I'd love to pick your brain, since you guys are neuroscientists.” He sat down, and lo and behold, it turned out he was a bioengineer by training before he got into culinary arts. We started sparking up a conversation. Thanks to being lubricated with wine, he said, “Doc, if you could get some scientists, legitimate scientists and doctors together, I could get chefs, sommeliers, distillers of that ilk, and then we should have a meeting of the minds,”
because that's what Gordon Shepherd in the book actually called for.

                     That was quite intriguing to me. I said, “Of course, yes, let's do it.” But I didn't really think too much about it. I thought it was just one of those dinner conversations. I came back to Kentucky, and then I didn't really think too much about it. It was a cool enough story that I decided talking to my other colleagues. Brett Smith, who's no longer at University of Kentucky, but he was the former chair of the department of neuroscience, I told him about what had happened in Montreal. He said, “Well, Tim McClintock, who's a physiologist, a smell physiologist and a nationally renowned scientist who's at the University of Kentucky, actually did his fellowship training at Yale,” and there was Gordon.

                     Tim McClintock and I met and sat down and started having our discussions. And then I told him about what had happened in Montreal. He immediately said, “Okay. Well, let's call Gordon Shepherd.” The next thing you know, Dr. Gordon Shepherd not only gave us his blessing; he volunteered generously to mentor the whole process, to initiate a movement, an international society. For your audience, Dr. Gordon Shepherd is an internationally renowned neuroscientist, a living legend with nine seminal textbooks in the field. So, it was an honor for us to really take up the mantle and answer the challenge, but it's written in history. The University of Kentucky is where the movement was birthed, with all these different scientists, chefs, culinary artists, food technologists and agricultural scientists coming together out of their silos to ask the right questions and try to come up with an answer for global health, hunger and feeding ten billion people by 2050.

Tom:            Sometimes, messed up reservations can lead to big things, can't they?

Dan:             Yes.

Tom:            Well, let's get down into the science here for our audience. I'm wondering what factors, such as dimming lights or adjusting music or even saying grace at dinner, can influence our perceptions of food and help us digest food even better.

Dan:             Flavor perception is a truly multidimensional experience. It's just something that we don't think about because it's one of the most complicated sensory processing mechanisms that we know of — in fact, because the evolutionary process has dictated that you don't have to waste too (many) calories in your thinking process to how all this works every time you eat. Otherwise, we'll be burning off the calories that we'll be consuming. It's incredibly complicated, but seldom do we actually pause and think about the mechanism (of) smell, taste, flavor. Smell and taste constitute flavor, but the entire experience also draws from sight and other senses, like texture, sound. They all connect to your long-term stored memory and reward circuits of the brain and so on. There are aspects of anticipation before you actually bite into your first piece of steak and so on.

                     All of that has been studied in independent silos for a long time. Industry has done a marvelous job actually looking at what creates the perfect crisp for a potato chip or what lighting or what decibel makes the perfect ambiance for umami flavors, for a steak dinner with red wine and so on. But what we're trying to do is to identify all those variables and come up with ways to — I don't want to say manipulate them, but actually modulate them and use them so that we're not just merely using them for consumerism but to expand that concept to modulate the brain to want to eat and then desire flavors that come from smaller-carbon-footprint ingredients and create that demand for the masses so that we could actually have an efficient way of delivering food and nutrients for, again, ten billion people.

Tom:            Okay. There's a lot to unpack in that response, and I want to get to the latter part of it soon. But first, just to focus on one of these elements, there have been several studies that have shown that perceptions of sweet and salty can be skewed by noise, by sound. Any idea how sound can affect our sense of taste?

Dan:             Yes. Let me give you the macro version first. There's a phenomenon called the synesthetic experience, and we all have it. If I show you a picture of red jagged edges, you're more likely to call that “kiki” than “mubu”. Again, the words “kiki” and “mubu” are just made-up words. They hold no intrinsic meaning behind them, but your brain is already wired — and this is cross-cultural. We could do this in Asia. We could do this in Africa. We could do this in Europe. We could do this anywhere. Your brain is already wired to draw from the references that are already networked in and from memory, even before you had your own frame of reference, just what the species have actually packed into our evolution.

                     So, when you're thinking something jagged, we're drawing from the library in the brain that is associated with something a little more sharp as a consonant and so on, and then with something more like a cloud-like, fluffy visual. Your brain is drawing from more smooth-sounding vowels and so on. Imagine for a moment how complicated that network is, and we just take it for granted, and we don't think about it. Now, that same principle applies to other senses. Sound, decibel — depending on what kind of sound it is and so on — that's going to actually draw from the referential library in your brain and affect other senses, including smell and taste.

Tom:            Finally, there is a science behind why my wife loves coconut but I don't. It's not about taste for me. It's the texture. Coconut is coconut, yet we have these completely differing perceptions of it. How come?

Dan:             Yes, that's what makes the field quite exciting, because everybody has their own unique, subjective referential library in the brain, and that can be influenced and modulated by your own personal experience. On one extreme end of the spectrum, you have taste aversions. You could have something that you enjoy quite a bit, but if you have too much of it, you will get sick of it. That will be your personal and unique subjective experience that's going to have a lasting change documented in your brain's library.

                     Afterwards, it could be coconut for you, or it could be pork and beans for others and so on. The next thing you know, your brain is wired to create aversive reactions for that stimulus, even in the future. For me, it's pork and beans. If I smell it 20 yards away, it'll start a feeling in my stomach. The funny part of that is that that occurred after (something happened). When I was a preteen, I used to very much enjoy pork and beans, and then I had a gallon of it by myself. I got sick and threw up. There was the referential library deposit, if I may, that was the impetus for this taste aversion for the rest of my life.

Tom:            Well, I had pneumonia as a child, and I loved pickles up until then, but for some reason, the illness made me have an aversion to pickles, and that lasted for years. I finally overcame it after later years as an adult. Is that common?

Dan:             Yes. It's actually quite, quite common, and it has nothing to do with pickles. It could be any kind of food. These taste aversions can occur as the experience is correlated in your brain with something that you used to enjoy. The next thing you know, your brain has this referential library of that entire experience being something awful. Now, fortunately, they can also go extinct, meaning after some time passes and that matching reference is not continuously reinforced over time, then your brain does become more forgiving to the stimulus. So, if you haven't had an aversive reaction to pickles and haven't had pneumonia for some time, you could ease your way back into some artisanal pickles a little bit at a time and then enjoy the experience again, especially if you reinforce it with positive experiences.

Tom:            Right. How can the principles of neurogastronomy guide the design of experiences that encourage us to eat more fruits and vegetables, for example, and fewer high-sugar, high-sodium foods?

Dan:             Well, that's a very complicated question, because not all fruits and vegetables are actually good for you. There's a lot to unpack there. The principle of neurogastronomy really matches all other principles of biological sciences: everything in moderation. There's a Goldilocks zone for all of this. There's a way to maintain homeostasis for any biological entities. Too much of anything is actually no good for you, especially when it's at the expense of other balanced, nutritious diet intake, and too little of anything is not good for you.

                     Now, in North American culture, (the) culture, over the years, has driven to excess of certain types of ingredients. For example, if there is a consumer demand for sugar, then agriculture technology is going to meet that demand by providing sugar. It's a very, very simple economic principle. But what we're trying to do is come up with modulating effects for the brain so that the brain desires just the right amount of sugar but also desires other ingredients that are healthy and with smaller carbon footprints.

                     Once that desire is set at the individual level, then (the) market will just follow. Big ag and agricultural technology and food technology will just follow that trend and that demand. To your initial question about how do we get people to eat more fruits and veggies, well, there are a lot of tricks of the trade to foster that and then promote that. But I'll throw back this question to that question, which is, why are we not thinking about coming up with ways to actually permanently change the habits of the individual so that we don't have to ask those questions? That's the principle behind neurogastronomy.

Tom:            Okay. Bringing it around to the subject of hunger and global food security, I'm going to begin this part of our conversation in kind of a novel way, but it's something that's come up during our conversations here at the Alltech ONE Conference. There's this emerging industry in farming certain types of insects as a potentially important source of protein supplements for human food. We humans, however, tend to almost universally loathe the very idea of eating bugs. These would be ground into a powder. They'd be mixed in with some sort of more widely acceptable Trojan horse, let's say, to get beyond that aversion. But in following up on what you just said, can we trick our brains into enjoying a food that we have not liked? How can neurogastronomy play a role in making insect meal acceptable to humans as a source of nutrition?

Dan:             Excellent question. I'll start off by saying that one of the assumed variables behind that question is wrong: (that) humans do not eat bugs by design to begin with. It's very culture-specific. You can go to other parts of the world, and eating bugs is just a base rate. It's a baseline phenomenon. It's not thought of as an alternative source of fuel that you just make do (with). Rather, it's something that is actually sought out.

Now, I'll actually pose this as a question to derive at the answer. I love cheese. I'm a sucker for cheese. Give me gouda, some brie, what have you — I'm a sucker for all sorts of cheese. My wife is not. Now, if you take the umami, the savory, salty, addictive flavor out of the referential library that I talked about from your brain, if you just purely logically think about what cheese really is, it's pretty gross actually, if you think about it. Nobody thinks about it in Western culture as an example, because it's something that we've been saturated with. You don't think about the process. You don't think about the mechanism. You don't question it. You taste it and then realize, “I like the savory experience.” Then you get to a point where you crave for it.

                     Let me actually provide a reason behind that before we even unpack this. If we could get an entire culture for hundreds of years, if not thousands, to not ask the question about the entire process of making cheese, which is taking lactation from a different species and making sure it rots and then, later, trying to see if you could salvage it by eating it — (if) we could have an entire part of the species not questioning that and actually craving that process, you could do the exact same for bugs.

Tom:            You always want to ask, “What is wrong with us?”

Dan:             Right.

Tom:            First of all, mea culpa, I think I am guilty here of a little bit of parochialism and assuming that this aversion to insects was universal. It's probably more of a Western cultural phenomenon.

Dan:             Yes, even anecdotally — I don't even have to provide other cultural references. I could tell you anecdotally, growing up in South Korea, eating roasted grasshoppers was a very common thing. If you like nuts, you'll actually very much enjoy roasted grasshoppers. It's a very, very sustainable, rich, nutrition-packed source of protein. There's really no reason why we should shy away from this alternative fuel source that can be a culinary delight.

Tom:            Most of the talk about food shortages revolves around population growth on that part of the equation, but how can the science of neurogastronomy play a role in moving the world toward greater food security in the years to come?

Dan:             (The) food shortage and population growth ratio, when the average person conceptualizes the problem, so to say, it's based on a misunderstanding of the data spread. That ratio is off, so the balance is off. It's not so much that we have too many people. We have plenty of people, yes, and we're going to have more, but there are also plenty of nutritional sources that (are) available as is. It's just that that balance is off right now because certain cultures have higher demand for certain specific ingredients. Again, simple economics, supply is always going to follow the demand. Again, we have to re-ask the question before we identify the problem.

                     What is the problem? Well, is it truly that we have too many people and growth in the species and not enough food for them? Data actually suggests otherwise. It's the imbalance of what we desire and what is available for producing crops and so on. So, the question has to be reframed to ask, well, how do we actually regain the balance? I think, by coming out of everybody's silos and crossing the aisles, so to say, and then learning from each other and getting better optics and a bird's-eye view of what we didn't know could really help all these different fields of sciences come together and come up with an innovative solution, which is what neurogastronomists are doing.

                     We have bench scientists who are working from labs, and then we have clinicians like myself who are seeing patients for different sorts of disease. Mine happens to be in the brain disease arena, and then agriculture and food technology scientists in their respective labs and, of course, culinary artists to put all the variables together and actually be able to deliver it to the masses. Because if I prescribe it, then it's a prescription. Nobody's going to follow my regimen. If a lab scientist writes it down, then people are going to fall asleep before they decide to incorporate it into their eating habits. So, we also need the artists to really teach us how to deliver it so that the average person could look at the meal and the concept and the construct and say, “Oh, I want to eat that.”

Tom:            We just have a little bit of time left, but this is really important, and you've touched on it earlier. Can this science, this neurogastronomy, help create the desire for ingredients with relatively small carbon footprints and thereby impact both global hunger and climate change?

Dan:             That's our goal. That was specifically posed as a query and a challenge by Gordon Shepherd himself. Well, the fundamentals of basic economy dictate where science and where food and where agriculture go. Again, the principle is predicated on the fact that supply is always going to follow demand. Right now, humanity has created an imbalance in that structure, so the domino effect also occurs. That imbalance has created a monoculture of crop sciences, which is not the fault of the crop scientists at all. They're just following where the demand is. It's not a blame game, but it's the starting point for this imbalance. It really starts with the individual's desires.

                     Now, you can't blame humanity for that either, because that's baked into our genes. We can't just unbecome who we are. So, how do we come up with an innovative way to have our cake and eat it, too, for creating a Planet of Plenty? The presuppositions behind those statements are the following: We do have plenty. How do we make people understand that the power is in the individual to actually access that plenty? How do we do that psychologically? How do we do that physiologically and neurobiologically with our genetic memory and so on? That's a tall order.

                     Now, where does climate science come in? One could argue that the seven-plus billion people that we have in the planet right now and the domino effect that caused post-industrialization has caused an environmental change that is harmful for our species. I actually dare to say that climate change is not what the average person thinks of as is. Climate has changed, yes. Life will still continue. It's just bad for our species. We have created a climate that is bad for us. Jellyfish are doing great right now. They're actually proliferating more than ever. There's a pretty significant problem that is being posed in sailing and marine life, because there's too many jellyfish now.

                     Life will go on. It's just we created this imbalance for ourselves because our demand for certain ingredients have been met. Again, how do we undo that and recreate that balance? I think our colleagues would agree with me that by coming out of each (of our) fields or silos and getting better optics, we can actually address the individual desire at the micro level and then create a demand for a crop science supply chain that has the least amount of problematic impact creating high-carbon byproducts and then reverse that process and then have multiple ways to actually address carbon in the air.

Tom:            Well, I think this conversation has “to be continued” written all over it because, obviously, the research is underway and the answers are profound for all of us. So, if we may revisit (this topic) sometime down the road, I'd appreciate it.

Dan:             Yes. Thank you for having me. This is a very passionate topic for me. I think the gravity of the importance of what we're trying to achieve here for global health and to establish a Planet of Plenty is just an exciting venture, but beyond this excitement, it's —

Tom:            It's profound.

Dan:             Yes, it is. It is.

Tom:            Dr. Dan Han, chief of the Division of Neuropsychology at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine. Thank you so much.

Dan:             Thank you very much.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

How can beef genetics improve sustainability on dairies? Philip Halhead, a third-generation dairy farmer and the founder, owner and CEO of Norbreck Genetics, Ltd., joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how dairies can utilize beef genetics to protect the planet, create jobs and increase profitability.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Philip Halhead hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, and I'm here with Philip Halhead, founder, owner and CEO of Norbreck Genetics, Ltd., based near Lancaster in the United Kingdom. Philip founded the company to improve the beef-on-dairy offerings for global dairy farmers. He's with us today to focus on beef genetics and how genetics play a role in the sustainability of dairies. Welcome, Philip.

Philip:           Yes, good afternoon.

Tom:            Tell us about your work. What does Norbreck Genetics bring to the cattle industry?

Philip:           Well, (I’d like to give) a little background, if you will, if you'll just forgive me for a second.

Tom:            Please do.

Philip:           (It’s) a really interesting, passionate story. I'm a third-generation dairy farmer at Norbreck Farm, and it's the unique ability, I think, of the family and myself to understand dairy farming. I am a dairy farmer myself. I'm also unusually in the beef space. We've bred beef cattle. We have a small Aberdeen Angus herd, a small British Blue herd, (and have been) involved across multiple breeds of beef cattle over 25 years now. It's that ability to understand what the dairy farmer requires, how the industry has changed (that’s crucial). Sexed semen technology has rolled into the industry since the year 2000, and it's taken a number of years to develop and become popular and successful.

                     On the back of that, beef genetics have become imprinted into the dairy herd. We've talked extensively over the last two days about dairy-beef. It's the ability of the dairy cow and its miraculous genetic potential to produce high volumes of luxurious, highly nutritious milk, (and it’s) also producing, now, a beef calf. Ordinarily, we would require some replacements for our dairy herd. Around 25% a year would be replaced, and the sexed semen does that for us. That leaves a lot of cows to carry a beef calf, and the income stream, critically, for the dairy farmer that that provides — and the sustainability piece, which is a big piece of Alltech this week. We're talking sustainability, longevity and, ultimately, supply chains.

Tom:            How can beef genetics improve a dairy cow?

Philip:           So, it's not about improving the dairy cow; forgive me. It's more a case of producing beef from the dairy herd. What the supply chain and, ultimately, the consumer enjoys is a consistent product. So, if we imagine for a minute the 1,000-cow dairy herd, the 500-cow dairy herd, that beautiful Holstein cow, which carries little flesh — it's using its metabolizable energy and its reserves to produce that milk. When you cross that with an Aberdeen Angus or British Blue or Longhorn beef bull, you'll get this almost perfect beef animal that you can then follow through rear to possibly 12 months or a two-year-old grass-fed beef animal that then, ultimately, ends up on somebody's plate.

                     I've talked today during my piece at (the) Alltech (ONE Conference) about food with a story. That's the exciting piece in the future, is providing red meat to a consumer who wants to enjoy a consistent, tasty meat-eating experience and understand the provenance of what they're eating.

Tom:            I'm a layman, so this is a layman's question. Is beef-on-dairy a relatively recent opening up of the industry?

Philip:           That's a great question. If we look back to the U.K., I've been doing this business now for over 25 years, and beef-on-dairy has been something that's been in Europe and in the U.K., particularly, for a long time. Certainly, we could look back 40 to 50 years, and there’s been a small percentage of beef in the supply chain coming from dairy cows. But as I explained previously, it’s now accelerating, and it's accelerating all around the world with the advent of sexed semen allowing just the very best cattle genetics, the very best dairy cows to be bred for replacements on that dairy herd and allowing beef semen to be used across the rest of the herd.

Tom:            So, how is beef-on-dairy changing things in the dairy and the beef industries?

Philip:           Well, I think, again, at the cutting edge of this and the stark reality of sustainability in Europe and in the U.K., we're seeing what you call cow-calf operations; here in the U.S., (that’s) what we would call a suckler herd. Keeping one cow for a whole year just to produce one calf is questionable at best. Now, there are opportunities in more arid areas, in more rugged areas; we think about Montana and states where there are vast ranges of grassland. There's little ability to produce milk in those areas, so the cow-calf operation will survive, and it will be a major part and an important part of the beef industry.

                     But for the supply chain, for the retailer, it's almost been like a gold rush for dairy farmers to buy into the whole supply chain piece. Those herds can provide big numbers of very consistent calves that then go through the chain, and they are finished, critically, quite fast on reasonably intensive diets. Therefore, that sustainability piece, again, that is ticked, and the metrics are met that we're looking to lower imports. We have a phrase in the U.K.: sustainable intensification.

Tom:            How has this impacted the economics of the business?

Philip:           For the cow-calf operation in the U.K. and in various parts of Europe now, it's catastrophic, and that's not just the beef-on-dairy story. That's just the economics of keeping a cow for a whole year to produce one calf. We also think about (how) not every cow has a calf every year, so there's an impact of that on profitability.

                     Subsidies in Europe, as you may well be aware, have been a big piece of that pie. Subsidies are now getting withdrawn, going into environmental schemes. Some of these farmers, their land, they're rugged, so there are more arid areas. (They’re) planting trees, thinking about the ecology and actually destocking — so no sheep, no beef cattle — again, driving that change for getting the beef from the dairy herd and accelerating the change. The profitability in the dairy is an extra income, so it ticks all the boxes. Beef farmers are finding new ways to operate and looking at new environmental stewardship schemes.

Tom:            When selecting beef bulls to breed the dairy animals, which breeds are the most in demand and why?

Philip:           Well, in the U.K., it's the British Blue. It's the quite extreme double-muscle animal that was created from the Beef Shorthorn many years ago. Once the Beef Shorthorn was taken out to Belgium, the myostatin gene was identified, and this incredible animal, which is double-muscled, was developed called the Belgian Blue — now the British Blue. When you cross that onto a Holstein dairy cow, it gives an easy carving (and a) short gestation period, (and you get) the ultimate beef-cross-dairy animal because of the two extremes. You're putting a Holstein cow together with the animal and the breed that has the most amount of meat.

                     The efficiencies that are around that, the killing-out percentages we talk about in the supply chain, those British Blue-cross-Holstein would typically kill out 5% to 10% more carcass yield at a set given time. Those sorts of metrics hooked onto price create an added value both for processor and retailer. Those are the important percentages that we talk about.

                     But also, today, I've talked about the Longhorns. We think about Robert Bakewell, who is the godfather of cattle breeding. He was born in the early 1700s. In 1760, I believe, he took over his father's tenanted farm in Leicestershire and developed this Longhorn breed, which was originally a cart animal for plowing and for doing all sorts of strange things in the fields, as they did back then in the 1760s. But today, it's an animal with a great story. It's a wonderful beef animal. It's got the long horns, as the name suggests.

                     When we think about the higher-end consumer who is maybe eating less red meat but they want meat with a story — so they go to Chicago or they go to New York or they're in London for a high-end, red meat-eating experience in a restaurant. They know they're going to pay a whole heap more for that choice compared with chicken or a vegetarian dish, but they're prepared to do it because they're reading about the Longhorn, maybe about Robert Bakewell, maybe about the fact that it was produced in the Lake District fells. It creates a lovely story. They're comfortable with the provenance and the consistency of the product. It eats well, and then (there’s) that nice bottle of Malbec, Argentinian Malbec, to go with it.

Tom:            You touched on this earlier, but to zero in on it, what is the role of genetics in supporting the sustainability of the dairy operation?

Philip:           For me, the three pillars are planet, people and profit. Sustainability can be talked about in many different formats. I think there's a need to talk about the sustainability of the planet, of course, and that's the mission. Farmers, we are the solution. We're not the problem. I think that narrative is something — it's a story. We have a great story to tell about how we manage the landscape, produce food in a sustainable manner and its efficiencies. It's producing food in a more efficient way. If we can use less artificial fertilizer, think about a greater output from a similar area. Think about the genetic potential of crops and animals. That's a wonderful story.

                     But around sustainability on the dairy and the beef piece, if we can get that extra income from selling beef-cross calves from dairy cows, it puts more finance on the table. It gives, hopefully, a slightly more profitable business. The third piece of that sustainability is people; therefore, we can employ the best people in ag. One of my big things is encouraging young people to come into agriculture. It's an amazing and an exciting future for many, many young people. We need people, certainly a lot younger than I am, to teach me about technology, data and some of those wonderful tools we're going to need in the future.

So, attracting people, protecting the planet and creating more profits at farm level — and the sharing of the profit. I talked about that this morning. In the past, I think it's been a bit disproportionate. We found the retailers taking a disproportionate margin for some of these food products that the farmer produces. Possibly, the processor also tries to capture some margin, and it leaves the poor farmer quite often with either a negative margin or a very small margin. So, we have to close the supply chains down. We have to have a more open dialogue, and the sustainability comes from that.

Tom:            Buyers tend to dislike uncertainty. How would you rate the predictability and the consistency of the beef-on-dairy concept?

Philip:           We heard yesterday from the Texas university professor about the scientific evidence around beef-cross-dairy animals. There's a hormone — well, I say hormone, but it's a natural hormone; this isn't an artificial thing — around dairy cows that gives extra flavor and consistency. There's a certain pack size as well. In the U.K. — I'm not too au fait with the USDA standards, but in the U.K., typically we're looking for a 350-kilo carcass. It's a standard pack size.

                     When I talk to retailers, they try and fit a pack size to a price. Typically, in the U.K., you need a 4.99- or 4.95-pound price tag, just below the five-pound level. People are happy to pick that up so that the thickness of the steak they're collecting off the shelf, the look of that steak — in Europe, we would have less requirement for intramuscular fat, whereas in Asia, the wagyu breed is very popular. It's quite a greasy meat-eating experience but one that's sold as the ultimate meat-eating experience. So, really understanding your consumer, really understanding what it is you're trying to provide, for whom, and at what price level.

Tom:            You collaborate closely with supply chains. And in these times that we're in, many of the world's supply chains are backlogged (or) even overwhelmed right now. How are supply chains that are essential to beef and dairy operations performing in this environment?

Philip:           Certainly, there's some challenge around carcass balance. We see some of those prime cuts, the filet steak, some of those higher-end cuts are needed (and) provided — we just talked about that — in some of the higher-end restaurants and (for) the wealthier consumer. The danger is that a bigger proportion of the carcass is devalued into the minces and the smaller primal cuts that just end up in a really discounted format. That's a challenge for processes, but we've got a slightly bigger challenge, and I think that is one of supply and supply disruption.

                     We are seeing record prices in the auctions for cattle. We're seeing record demand. I'm certainly looking and thinking, “Globalization.” Whilst it's still alive and well, it's possibly been looked at as not the solution for the future. There's a sort of realization — and some countries are actually preventing exports of food products, so that creates disruption in supply and availability. There's an opportunity for farmers to capitalize on that, but not in a greedy way. We need these supply chains to run efficiently.

                     It's a very tight-margin business we're all in, but we also have to capture more value because just in the same way that beef prices are at a record level, all our commodity products that we're buying into the farm are also. We think about fertilizer, wheat and some of the major products that we buy into our dairy units, into our beef supply chain, (our) beef finishing units. They are seeing record price increases. Unfortunately, we're all just moving up a level to a higher reality of expensive food.

Tom:            In your work, do you follow consumer trends? If you do, what are you seeing happening out there?

Philip:           Yeah, very much so. The early signs are of a distressed consumer. Energy and food poverty is going to be on the increase. The worry there is not really too much for a European (or) U.K. consumer and some of those wealthier, more developed countries, but I think my worry is for less developed nations around the world and the potential for literally malnutrition and starvation on a scale we haven't seen — or we thought we'd solved, to some degree — over the last 10 or 15 years. I think that's really back on the table. It's going to give a lot of people thinking time. The Arab Spring, of course, was caused by disruption to food supply and increases in commodities, and it wasn't at anywhere near the levels we're seeing now, (with) 200% and 300% increases in some food staples.

                     There's a political instability that we're going to have to watch and be very nervous about. But ultimately, we can also turn and be positive about where we are. As farmers, I've said it before, we have got the solutions. We've got the tools. We've got the knowledge. We've got the education. We've got a wonderful story to tell. I think we have to be brave about doing that and making sure that investment is continuing into good production systems that are sustainable for the planet and ultimately feed more people.

Tom:            All right. That's Philip Halhead, founder, owner and CEO of Norbreck Genetics, Ltd. Thank you very much, Philip.

Philip:           Thank you very much.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

The research behind food security suggests that only a handful of nations are protein-insecure. But is the data overlooking the importance of protein quality? Dr. Vaughn Holder, ruminant research director at Alltech, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss the role digestibility plays in getting an accurate gauge of global protein security and the positive impact that cattle have on the health of people and the planet.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Vaughn Holder hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin with the Alltech Ag Future podcast, talking with Dr. Vaughn Holder, director of the Ruminant Research Group at Alltech, and he joins us to talk about the contribution of beef to global food security. Welcome, Dr. Holder.

Vaughn:        Thanks, Tom. Great to be here.

Tom:            How would you characterize world food security today?

Vaughn:        This is a really important question to start this conversation, Tom, because it's important to know where you are before you can decide whether we need to do something about the situation. I think it's a really important thing that we look at this.

Now, Paul Moughan is a researcher from a university in New Zealand, and he was the one who actually discovered that the way that we're looking at food security in the world today is probably incorrect, which is quite the realization to come to in 2022 — or this was probably 2021 when it was published. Basically, what it is is that they've been looking at the amount of protein that populations get and using that on what they call a gross protein basis. What that means is essentially the total amount of protein that those populations are getting and comparing it to how much we need.

Now, the problem with that is that we've known this in animal nutrition for a long time, so that's what makes it kind of entertaining for an animal nutritionist, but you need to correct the protein that you're eating to the amount that you can actually absorb and the amount that your body can actually use at the end of the day. When you do that, you go from a small handful of nations being protein-insecure to probably almost half of the planet being protein-insecure, because you are correcting for the poor digestibility primarily of plant proteins, because plants are quite difficult for us to digest as a species.

Tom:            Why is it important when we're talking about food security to include protein quality in the equation?

Vaughn:        That's just it, is that the requirement of our body is in a certain amount that can get into our body and that we can utilize.

Tom:            Is a protein a protein no matter where it comes from, or are there differences between proteins derived from plants versus animals?

Vaughn:        No. Certainly, that's the point. Proteins coming from animal origin are usually complete proteins. They are usually highly digestible because they're in the form that the body needs them. It's how the animals store them.

Tom:            What are your views on plant-based meats and milks and so forth and talks that they will someday replace conventional products?

Vaughn:        This is a really interesting conversation because we need to be very careful about how we talk about them replacing it. I think it's fine if you talk about them replacing it in terms of the food that we eat, the taste of the food. But we need to be really careful to not make the statement that the plant-based meats and milks are actually being produced. In other words, they are not a source of food production. They are made from existing food that we have within our systems and essentially mixed in recipes to taste like meat and milk. That's no problem in and of itself, but if we start replacing protein production with protein processing, we're going to end up with a starving planet pretty quickly.

Tom:            So how do ruminants fit into this world's food supply picture?

Vaughn:        I'm a little biased as a ruminant nutritionist, but ruminants are essentially the natural recycling centers of the world. They turn all the things that we can't use, all the nutrients in the world that are locked up in these plants —  particularly in grasses, byproducts and also food waste — it allows us a second crack at those nutrients. It allows us another way of getting those nutrients back into our systems and actually being able to utilize them through the ruminants themselves.

Tom:            We've touched on this a little bit a few seconds ago, but I want to just take it a little bit further. There may be only a handful of countries in the world that are experiencing protein malnutrition, but for many of the rest, are there issues and concerns around the quality of the protein that their populations are consuming?

Vaughn:        Yeah. That's at the center of Paul Moughan's work, and that's saying that on a gross protein basis, there are only a handful that are protein-insecure. But when you factor quality into it, the amount that people are actually getting into their systems means that probably more than half the world is protein malnourished.

Tom:            What are the implications of that on human health?

Vaughn:        There are dramatic implications, particularly on development in children. We had a speaker at the conference now this week who spoke specifically about the role of protein, protein quality and brain development in infants. It's critically important both to brain development and in terms of development of the body itself. Stunting is obviously a very, very big issue in nations where protein security isn't what it should be.

Tom:            It's been interesting. In the course of the interviews that we've done over the past several days, there's been something of a recurring theme about how we're awakening to just how really profoundly food — what we take in — really does govern how we feel, our actual overall health. I don't think we think of it that way day-to-day.

Vaughn:        No, we certainly don't, but it is at the heart of everything. It's the interaction, it's the direct interaction between us and our environment.

Tom:            It should make sense, but I just don't think we realize it.

Vaughn:        It doesn’t take a lot to step back and just think about why it should make so much sense, Tom, because that's everything that goes into our bodies.

Tom:            Right. Many food production industries generate byproducts. Rather than allowing those byproducts to become waste to be tossed aside, are some provided to the livestock industry as feed?

Vaughn:        Yeah. I was just giving a talk today about the dairy industry's use of these byproducts. There are two factors with that. The byproducts — about 40 metric tons a year — are all fed into the dairy industry, and those byproducts have another crack at entering our food system, at being nutrients that we can actually utilize.

                     But the second piece of that, Tom, is that if there aren't cattle utilizing those byproducts, those byproducts end up in compost heaps or landfills. And as byproducts entering compost heaps, they will end up generating five times the amount of greenhouse gases that they would if they went through a cow and 49 times as many greenhouse gases if they actually went into a landfill as if they went into a cow. So, the role that cattle play at keeping those byproducts out of the environmental greenhouse gas picture is one that we don't really talk about very much.

Tom:            When we're talking about byproducts, are there dominant byproducts in the industry?

Vaughn:        Yeah. It depends on where you are regionally, but if we're talking about North America, probably the biggest one would be distillers grains. We put a lot of infrastructure and funding into ethanol production in this country to subsidize the fuel industry. There's a ton of byproducts that come out of that. That's probably the most dominant one, but then you go back to the more traditional ones, like soybean meal, canola meal. These are the things that we use as the basis of many animal nutrition rations.

Tom:            What are the advantages and the benefits of using byproducts in countering the effects of greenhouse gas emissions in climate change?

Vaughn:        I referred to it a little bit earlier on in the conversation, but it's essentially keeping those things out of landfills and compost heaps. It reduces the greenhouse gas footprint of those. It seems counterintuitive, right? We're all told, “We feed cattle, and when we feed cattle, that makes methane,” but those products that are going through those cattle will make a lot more methane if they don't go through the cattle and get a lot of those nutrients actually captured up.

Tom:            Any unintended consequences of the process?

Vaughn:        Of the use of byproducts by cattle?

Tom:            Yeah.

Vaughn:        I think that it's been in use long enough that we know pretty well what they do in the cattle, and it really is quite well-quantified.

Tom:            Back to quality protein. I seem to be stuck on that, but it's interesting. When a society that has been protein-deficient transitions to higher-quality protein sources, what happens? What sorts of changes take place among the consuming population?

Vaughn:        It's interesting. We had a speaker speak in our beef session earlier in the week. He actually spoke about (how) if we could fix the protein insufficiency in the nations of Earth that are protein-deficient, that the IQ of the world population would go up by ten points. We're talking about the world population as a whole. The entire world population's IQ would go up by an average of ten points. You can imagine the knock-on effects on economies of stunting and brain development and these types of things in the poorer nations. You expect these nations to lift themselves out of poverty, but if they are stuck with a situation where they have improper physical and brain development, that becomes quite difficult.

Tom:            I have a question here that, if you have the answer for it, I think the world will beat a path to your door, but let's go for it. Agriculture, food and climate join at the hip pretty much. How do we fix food insecurity while staying mindful of the climate crisis and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Vaughn:        I think the world assumes that these things are in diametrically opposite directions, and they are not in diametrically opposite positions. As we learn how to do food production better, it involves the elimination of waste necessarily. The better we get at this, the less waste (that) gets generated through the process of generating protein. We've been doing this all along. I know it sounds like a cop-out for agriculture to say, “This is what we've been doing all along,” but it is what we've been doing all along. We just have to now become a little bit more deliberate about the environmental side of things to say that, now, (it) becomes very much a primary part of our consideration alongside food security.

Tom:            Can environmental impact provide a new value proposition for agriculture?

Vaughn:        I think that that will happen eventually. There is going to be a situation with — agriculture sits in a unique position in that we actually capture carbon to produce food as our industry. Our industry is capturing carbon and turning it into food, so we're halfway there. We're the only industry that captures carbon for a living. I think, certainly, there's no other industry that exists at the scale and at the interface between carbon and the Earth as agriculture does, so I think we certainly will. It's just going to take carbon credit systems to come into place to fund a lot of this stuff.

Tom:            How close to that are we?

Vaughn:        Very certainly, by marketplace, I think there are some market drivers that will push that forward. Places like Europe have active carbon trading systems. Places even like California are actively trading carbon, so it's happening at varying degrees in different places, but I think it's not going to really take off the way the world envisions until everybody gets onto the same program (of) this trading carbon internationally.

Tom:            What's going on out there in your world, in your field, right now that really excites you?

Vaughn:        We're a group of ruminant nutritionists at Alltech. That's my group, and that's our major role. As ruminant nutritionists, we look very, very closely at the cow. A major mind shift that's occurred with us probably in the last two years, since we've been working with an ecology group down in Florida, is to change our mindset a little bit as to what the unit of production is. Instead of looking at the cow as the unit of production, we are looking at an ecosystem as a unit of production, because not only do we want to look at what the cow is doing — what's coming in and out of the cow — but the most important thing is what's coming in and out of the ecosystem.

                     If we're talking about carbon, how much carbon is captured? How much carbon is going out? We need to know what the ecosystem is doing, so we have to really have a mind shift in how we think about this and think about (the) ecosystem production of protein with cows as a piece of that ecosystem.

Tom:            That's fascinating. Dr. Vaughn Holder, director of the Ruminant Research Group at Alltech. Thank you so much, Dr. Holder.

Vaughn:        I appreciate it very much, Tom.

Tom:            I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

During the 38^th annual Alltech ONE Conference (ONE) in Lexington, Kentucky, Alltech was pleased to host 65 journalists from approximately 20 countries. Another 213 were in attendance virtually, representing nearly 35 countries. In a presentation on Monday, several awards were presented to honor a few of those international agricultural journalists for their excellence and leadership in sharing the stories of agriculture.

“Compelling, fact-based communication has never been more important for society, and that holds especially true for agriculture,” said Dr. Mark Lyons, president and CEO of Alltech. “No other business sector is as integral to planetary health. The stories of agriculture production, industry innovations and sustainability efforts must not only be told, but told well, which underscores the importance of the work of agricultural media.”

In partnership with the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ), Alltech is pleased to announce Lindi Botha of South Africa as the recipient of the 2022 IFAJ–Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism. This recognition honors Alltech’s late founder, Dr. Pearse Lyons, who was a passionate storyteller with a great respect for agricultural journalists.

Botha is an agricultural journalist and communications specialist and serves as the deputy chairperson of Agricultural Writers South Africa. She has an unrelenting passion for agriculture and for writing stories that serve to enhance the sector and arm farmers with the knowledge they need to succeed in these times of political, climatic and economic uncertainty. The fast pace at which the agricultural landscape is changing necessitates an increased awareness to ensure that journalists are up to date with the latest trends and technology, and Botha prides herself on effectively and timeously communicating these advancements to farmers. A core focus of her work is communicating success stories within agriculture and ensuring that the sector is seen as a positive contributor to social change and economic upliftment.

Alltech is also proud to partner with the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Agricultural Communicators (Red CALC). The ninth annual Innovation and Quality Awards in Agricultural Journalism were presented to Sofia Neumann of Chile and Nicolás Gómez Bernal of Ecuador.

Neumann’s winning article, entitled “5 Chilean innovations that will impact the agricultural industry,” was published in Chile’s Financial Journal and addressed the impact of the adoption of research and development in the fruit sector of Chile.  Neumann highlights how the country has positioned itself as the main fruit exporter in the Southern Hemisphere with advances in areas such as breeding technologies, the automation of labor and fruit processing. Today’s biggest challenge is the transfer of knowledge to medium and smallholder farmers.

Gómez Bernal’s award-winning report, “RAZA 4 joins Latin American countries in defense of their plantations,” published in the newspaper El Productor de Ecuador, focuses on the banana industry as the first export area of many Latin American countries. However, the new Fusarium fungus, known as Tropical Race 4, could directly affect this sector. As such, different regional agencies and governments have begun taking proactive steps to help prevent the spread of this plague.

The IFAJ–Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism and the Red CALC Innovation and Quality Award in Agricultural Journalism align with Alltech's vision of Working Together 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. Alltech is proud to partner with these organizations and to support the mentorship and education of these communicators, who connect agriculture to a global audience and share the stories of agriculture through balanced, independent, evidence-based information.

“IFAJ and Red CALC share our commitment to supporting journalists who give a voice to the farmers and producers, the innovators and change-makers, and the scientists and scholars all working toward a Planet of Plenty,” said Lyons. “On behalf of Alltech, I congratulate Lindi Botha, Sofia Neumann and Nicolás Gómez Bernal as the well-deserving recipients of these awards.”

For more information about the IFAJ–Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism or the Red CALC awards, contact press@alltech.com.

-Ends-

Contact: press@alltech.com

Jenn Norrie

Communications Manager, North America and Europe

jnorrie@alltech.com; (403) 863-8547

Video download: https://bcove.video/3kM8Sct

Image download: https://photos.alltech.com/pf.tlx/w2dw2cXwdGbR5

Image caption: Lindi Botha of South Africa is the recipient of the 2022 IFAJ–Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism.

Image download: https://photos.alltech.com/pf.tlx/5wM5I2v5oabsc

Image caption: Steve Werblow (left), vice-president of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists, accepted the 2022 IFAJ–Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism on behalf of Lindi Botha of South Africa from Dr. Mark Lyons (right), president and CEO of Alltech at the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference.

Image download: https://photos.alltech.com/pf.tlx/2W2yDd2yI4jf6

Image caption: Sofia Neumann of Chile was recognized by Alltech and the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Agricultural Communicators (Red CALC) with an Innovation and Quality Award in Agricultural Journalism.

Image download: https://photos.alltech.com/pf.tlx/H3EH84MH8PQs2Z

Image caption: Nicolás Gómez Bernal of Ecuador was recognized by Alltech and the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Agricultural Communicators (Red CALC) with an Innovation and Quality Award in Agricultural Journalism.

Image download: https://photos.alltech.com/pf.tlx/yDEycYdyi9zoN

Image caption: Dr. Mark Lyons (left), president and CEO of Alltech, presented the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Agricultural Communicators (Red CALC) Innovation and Quality Awards in Agricultural Journalism to Sofia Neumann (right) of Chile and Marlene Bernal Munoz (middle), accepting on behalf of Nicolás Gómez Bernal of Ecuador, at the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference.

Image download: https://photos.alltech.com/pf.tlx/vwvZcvXIhnod

Image Caption: Alltech is proud to partner with the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) to recognize excellence and leadership by young journalists with the IFAJ–Alltech International Award for Leadership in Agricultural Journalism.

Image download: https://photos.alltech.com/pf.tlx/VzGVtfVfnjMD

Image Caption: Alltech is pleased to partner with the Network of Agricultural Communicators of Latin America and the Caribbean (Red CALC) to recognize the winners of the Innovation and Quality Award in Agricultural Journalism.

About Alltech:

Founded in 1980 by Irish entrepreneur and scientist Dr. Pearse Lyons, Alltech delivers smarter, more sustainable solutions for agriculture. Our products improve the health and performance of plants and animals, resulting in better nutrition for consumers and a decreased environmental impact.

We are a global leader in the animal health industry, producing specialty ingredients, premix supplements, feed and complete feed. Strengthened by more than 40 years of scientific research, we carry forward a legacy of innovation and a unique culture that views challenges through an entrepreneurial lens.

Our more than 5,000 talented team members worldwide share our vision for a Planet of Plenty™. We believe agriculture has the greatest potential to shape the future of our planet, but it will take all of us working together, led by science, technology and a shared will to make a difference.

Alltech is a private, family-owned company, which allows us to adapt quickly to our customers’ needs and maintain focus on advanced innovation. Headquartered just outside of Lexington, Kentucky, USA, Alltech has a strong presence in all regions of the world. For more information, visit alltech.com, or join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.