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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keith:              I sure have enjoyed it. Thank you.

Brian: This has been Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a review if you enjoyed this episode.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian:           This has been Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a review if you enjoyed this episode.

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

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

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

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

Aldyen:                      Nice to meet you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom:                          That’s quite all right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aldyen:                      Thanks for having me.

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

While food can be a very emotional experience that brings people together, food producers must use technology and rigid analysis to recognize trends in consumer eating habits. Jarrod Sutton, senior vice president of Strategy and Innovation at the National Pork Board, joins us to discuss his role in making the pork industry more responsive to consumers through data-driven insights.

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

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

This is Tom Martin, and joining me is Jarrod Sutton, senior vice president of strategy and innovation at the National Pork Board. Greetings, Jarrod.

Jarrod: Hello, Tom. Thank you for having me.

Tell us briefly, if you would, for starters, about the mission of the Pork Board.

Well, the U.S. National Pork Board is the organization that represents all of America’s pork producers, and, quite candidly, our job is to strengthen the value of pork in the marketplace.

But really, we’re out to change the world. We’re out to feed the growing population, and we do that by, essentially, doing what’s right by pigs, doing what’s right by people and doing what’s right by the planet.

And do I understand correctly that you focus on what you just told us and that you don’t focus on lobbying or influencing policy?

Yeah. That’s correct. The National Pork Board is a quasi-governmental organization, so it falls under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Agriculture, and as such, we’re prohibited from doing any type of lobbying and advocacy influence in the political stage.

That being said, we do invest in research and in promotion, as well as consumer information. And that’s part of our mandate, which is part of the 1985 Farm Bill and is referred to as the Pork Act and Order.

Okay. I know that you’ve had marketing and social responsibility roles in the pork industry, and I’ve read that your current role is to help the industry be more future-focused, insight-driven and responsive to customers. And I’d like to look at each of those one at a time.

The first one (is) focusing on the future of the pork industry, especially in these times, when the food service industry has been knocked back on its heels by the coronavirus pandemic. What do you see in the future of the industry?

Well, clearly, it’s been a tremendous challenge for pork producers the last several months, given not only the closures in food service but the issues that have happened at the processing plant-level. You had people getting sick, and obviously, that’s a real problem. And those workers at the plant level were deemed essential workers by the current administration, but we knew they were essential workers long before the rest of the world did.

And so, when people start getting sick, clearly, that presents tremendous issues and challenges for the industry to overcome. We’re so glad that the government has been able to step in and provide the assistance and the proper equipment to help reduce the risk of those important workers from getting sick.

And so, that slowed down both the food service as well (and), at the processing level, created some challenges to farmers — just backing the system up, quite candidly. But when you look at things from a consumer lens, obviously, the buying habits shifted like we’ve not seen before, where people were rushing to their grocer or, certainly, purchasing online and stocking up on products, and the meat department benefitted from that.

What we saw and have seen, actually, through the first week of June is the most current data. The total meat department sales — and (the) meat department is leading all categories in the retail supermarket space. There is 24.2% (growth) versus in 2019, which is pretty significant. Pork itself is at 30%, so it has actually surpassed the growth of the entire category.

So, clearly, more people in the United States are eating more pork at home than at any given point in the history of the data and the record-keeping. (We’re) giving consumers information, which is, frankly, easier than ever before, right? Digitally, we can provide consumers videos and recipes. With more people with more pork on hand at home than ever before, we want to deliver those tools to people to ensure that they can have a successful eating experience so that (we can) sustain demand as food service starts to open back up.

And that’s really an important part of our focus as well, is to ensure that we’ve got all of our distributor partners, all of our restaurant partners, chefs included, really geared up and ready with the latest consumer-trend information to be as successful as they possibly can be with not only the products that they’re menuing — which, likely, will be a limited assortment — but also to menu in the right way to be most relevant with how consumer needs and demands have shifted.

And so, (we’re) really focused on sustaining that demand and experience and growth at the retail point of purchase and helping prepare our food service partners to be successful as they begin to reopen.

I mentioned that another of your roles is to help the industry become more insight-driven, and I would assume that that has to do with data and so forth, but can you elaborate? Tell us what it means to be insight-driven.

Yeah. Food is very emotional. It’s what brings people together. It’s what comforts us in times of uncertainties and unknowns. And, certainly, when we think about buying and selling and producing food, it can oftentimes be emotional as well. And it’s become, really, a central part of dialogue and debate and technology and innovation, obviously, in the geopolitical issues.

And so, I’ve learned a long time ago, Tom, that really everybody’s got ideas, everybody’s got opinions — that’s what makes the world go round — but data really is what it is. And if you can collect smart data and spend time strategically analyzing that data, you can quickly see, really, the trends that are taking shape.

So we just do trend-spotting, right? Then, you can anchor in on those things that are truly the certainties, the real moments of human truths. And given the digital technology and many people walking around with smart phone devices that, you know, really are demonstrating, by the hour, how we live — all that digital exhaust that we’re leaving a trail of is captured and reported back to organizations like the U.S. National Pork Board to effectively understand where to place that and how we can effectively drive innovation in our industry to ensure that pork remains relevant and continues to meet those changing consumer needs.

So, we talk about being data-heavy and assumption-light. The assumptions, I think — people say maybe they weren’t, and those are important points for dialogue, for sure. But I want to see a source and a reference. I want to be data-driven in the decisions that we’re making on behalf of a big pig industry to feed the world.

So, Jarrod, it sounds like that connects to the third leg of the stool, which is to help the industry become more responsive to customers. Has there been a need for improvement in that area?

Absolutely. I think the biggest challenge for our industry is truly understanding the implications for pork that these changing consumer needs present. And so, that’s why we set out on this journey, back in 2017, to conduct a comprehensive demand landscape throughout the entire United States to really get to know the different segments of consumers from coast to coast and how their lives had changed, how food plays a role in those lives and, you know, the expectations for the protein, specifically, that they are determining whether or not to purchase.

And that helped us. It’s kind of like the Stockdale paradox. You know, we’ve got a great product and we’re very optimistic and confident that, clearly, we’ll continue to be relevant with consumers. We had to face the brutal facts that there’s an awful lot of consumers in this country that just aren’t as comfortable, they’re not very confident in the kitchen, and they told us that (in) pretty massive quantitative surveys.

Of course, we have a lot of qualitative interaction with people, and (it’s) probably no surprise to many folks that, generationally, we’re mostly less confident in the kitchen. And so, that creates opportunities for businesses and industries to really innovate and deliver these products to be more relevant to fit into the way that people live today, their lifestyles today.

So, again, that’s the brutal facts that we had to really recognize and come to terms with and really (use to) fuel innovative ideas in terms of product development processing for their cooking, etc., to make our products fit into consumers’ busy lifestyles.

I’m just wondering: Are the numbers in? Do you have the data to know yet whether there has been a massive shift from dining out to preparing meals at home and — well, we know that’s happened, but how has it impacted pork sales?

Yeah. Well, pork sales are up. They are up significantly. And that’s a tremendous story, given the challenges that we’re facing, you know, globally with the pandemic. My goodness, it’s just been devastating, and you know, our hearts go out to all those that have been affected by the coronavirus. Certainly, our industry has.

But, in the same breath, when you look at the end product and the distribution channels that we have, we have been able, as a pork industry, to successfully grow the demand for pork and the sales, specifically at the retail point of purchase, and what a seismic shift — from food service and eating out on a regular basis to, now, obviously, almost exclusively, in most areas, eating at home.

And so, again, the entire meat department sales in this year, 2020, compared to 2019, are up 24.2% and that additional $6.2 billion in the retail meat category versus a year ago. It’s a huge, huge swing and shift in consumer behavior. For pork specifically, pork is actually ahead of the game and (is) taking some share from competing proteins in the category — beef and chicken, specifically.

Pork sales are up 30% in 2020 versus 2019. So, again, the category is growing significantly, and I’m proud to say that pork is ahead of the game (and is) significant percentage points ahead of the category as a whole.

During your (Alltech ONE Virtual Experience) presentation, you noted that pork is the number-one consumed protein globally, but fresh pork is the featured protein in less than 7% of entrée options when dining out in the U.S., as opposed to cooking at home. I wonder: What accounts for such low interest in pork on the part of American diners? Is there some kind of perception issue, do you think?

Well, that’s a great question. The fresh pork — you have to distinguish between fresh and the further-cooked or value-added pork.

Aha.

So, we look at bacon; bacon is ubiquitous. So, that’s sort of the outlier. We have to look at bacon somewhat separately because it’s across almost all menus.

Yes, we must have bacon.

[Laughs] Yeah. My job is to not screw that up. People love their bacon, and that’s a great thing.

Oh, this is the land of the BLT, I think.

Absolutely. And we’re in that season, and hopefully, that season will be extended. The challenge is — with fresh pork, candidly — is the perceptions of the labor and the time that it takes in the food service space. And as you know, prior to COVID-19, that was in-demand, right? And just in time, things were moving fast and got to be quick on the grill, and so, there’s this perception for most that perhaps fresh pork doesn’t fit into that systematic process as well as competing proteins do.

However, that being said, those in the know have proven to be tremendously successful with fresh pork on their menus. And they’re celebrity, high-profile chefs, like Matt Abdoo at Pig Beach in Brooklyn, as an example, or Jose Mendin at Pubbelly in Miami or Adam Sappington at Country Cat in Portland, Oregon. The list goes on and on. These well-known chefs that are truly on the cutting edge and driving trends in the food-service industry have embraced that farm-to-pork story and, really, sustainability in general, in terms of using all pieces and parts of the pig, specifically. And the tremendous value that comes from that (is) the story that comes from that and, obviously, the great flavor and variety of dishes that can be prepared with that.

And we know that a lot of food service operators are watching people like that. So, that’s why we choose to really spend a lot of time with those well-known chefs and have some great partnerships (with those) that are demonstrating pork on the menu differently than most people are probably accustomed to.

Well, Jarrod, you have said that you are data-heavy and assumption-light, and that’s an interesting phrase. Can you elaborate for us?

Yeah. We’ve built a confidence here at U.S. National Pork Board to capture big data. And you know, there’s a lot of businesses and industries that, obviously, are spending a lot of time looking at data, but the U.S. National Pork Board is looking at it a bit differently than any one of our stakeholders does individually.

For us, we’re capturing consumer trends through syndicated data sources. We’re fielding customers’ search stories — or studies, excuse me — to essentially, you know, discover some of the specific questions that we have and answer those through these quantitative studies. We’re obviously partnering with a number of land-grant universities to do production-related research, and the list goes on and on.

And so, the confidence we have at the U.S. National Pork Board is really building this data ecosystem, right? An ecosystem of partners, each having a very specific role for the information that they provide to give us a unique, holistic picture of what the world is telling us. That data exists because of, as I was mentioning earlier, the exhaust, the digital exhaust that we’re all leaving a trail of on a daily basis.

If you think about it smartly and you weave this, you know, ecosystem of data partners together, you can get a very unique view of how the world continues to evolve and its expectations for your industry and for your product. And that’s what exactly we’ve attempted to do. We continue to refine it, but our secret sauce, if you will, is truly that unique set of data partners that, essentially, can answer any question that we bring forward. And I’d say that’s a pretty unique offering at the U.S. National Pork Board.

Speaking of data, last year, the Pork Board released research looking at trends in consumer behavior related to dining out. More than 10,000 consumers were surveyed, many food-service operators were interviewed, and all of that was paired with volumetric data and syndicated food-service data. The study is said to have uncovered why consumers decide to eat the proteins they eat. What did you learn from that?

That’s exactly right, Tom, and that’s a great example of how to become data-heavy and assumption-light. It’s essentially a consumer decision (in) three (parts). You know, it starts with: What type of dish do I want? Am I looking at indulging taste? Am I looking for nurturing health? Do I just need something quick and convenient on the go?

And the next piece in the consideration set: Who am I dining with? Am I going out with friends or co-workers, my family? Do I have a date? Is it just me? Am I in my car? Right?

The third piece, then, is: What kind of moment is it? Are we going out as part of a celebration? Is this a business luncheon or dinner? And, at the last minute, (will) I need something in the car on the go?

All of these things are critically important to understand in terms of the consumers’ decision-making process, so that you can, obviously, position your products accordingly.

For pork, what we know (that) the number-one reason that people order pork is the flavor. It’s culturally relevant, it’s culturally exciting. Essentially, what that means is it just tastes good; it’s all about the flavor.

The next piece — which, candidly, is a tremendous opportunity for pork — is the whole idea of if it’s good for me or not. That’s the whole nutritional story that, unfortunately, we’ve got some work to do. People have the misperception that — a lot of people, I should say — that, maybe, “Pork isn’t as good for me as other proteins,” and that’s just simply not true. We have an opportunity, using the data, to convey that in a very, you know, story-friendly way. It’s an important piece of the consideration set.

And then, the third and final piece: Is it good for the planet? Am I making a responsible choice? That sort of “permission to eat” is really becoming much more prominent with the consumer decision-making process — especially away from home, right, in food-service restaurants, because of the stories that (have) really been brought in on the menus as well as the, you know, the story of the proprietor or the restaurant owner and how they source what foods, from farm to pork to locally sourced to et cetera, et cetera.

So, flavor, “Is it good for me?” and “Is it good for the planet?” are really three important parts of the consideration process for consumers determining which protein they’re going to consume.

So, Jarrod, what about antibiotics? There is concern about whether or not pork is good for the planet, as you mentioned. How is the industry addressing consumer concerns about antibiotic and antimicrobial resistance?

By being very transparent. We have public reporting to ensure that anybody who’s interested in knowing what antibiotics are used, how often, for what purpose — this information is readily available and easily accessible for consumers.

More importantly, there are production practices longstanding in the U.S. pork industry in place to literally reduce the need for the use of antibiotics. I have the experience — I actually grew up on a farm in north-central Indiana. And I have a lot of family and friends that farm back there. Antibiotics cost money, and if you have to use antibiotics, that means you’ve got some illness disease issues. No farmer wants to spend any more money than they have to, so point being, they’re not going to use these antibiotics haphazardly, by any means.

Secondly, farmers wake up every day to ensure that they’re giving the best care for those animals, and that means protecting their health. That’s why we have (the) veterinary-client relationship status that’s required as part of the pork quality-assurance program, which is required to sell pigs at any given farming house in the United States. The veterinary-client relationship is critically important. That means you’ve got a trained veterinarian who’s overseeing any type of administration of antibiotics — but more importantly, (is following the) process to exhaust all other options before prescribing any of those antibiotics.

The second piece — and, arguably, the most important — is biosecurity. (There are) lots of questions about U.S. pork production and pigs in these barns, and you know, there’s signs up, and you’ve got to shower in before you can actually enter into the barn. What are they keeping secret in there? The reality is it’s because humans are carrying around, as we now know, more than ever, all kinds of potential viruses and diseases and things that could — bacteria — that could potentially give (or) introduce the sickness to the pigs. It’s not protecting us from the pigs; it’s protecting the pigs from us.

And so, by improving biosecurity and really, you know, being smart about how we provide the most cleanliness, the best climate-controlled facilities for these pigs to grow in, we’ve been able to improve overall herd health and reduce the need to use antibiotics.

And so, again, being very transparent is critically important, (and establishing a) close working relationship with a veterinarian is, obviously, the most important. And then third is to improve our overall production practices, and biosecurity in particular, to reduce the need (for antibiotics).

A couple of years ago, when you were vice president of domestic marketing at the Pork Board, you noted then a need to know, from the value consumer all the way to the premium consumer, how they are thinking about their food needs and how pork currently fits into those needs. Have those questions been answered?

That, Tom, is a constantly evolving opportunity. I’m tired of saying the word “challenge.” It’s an opportunity for us — especially in the challenging economic times that we’re facing. There are more value-conscientious shoppers, and pork — especially fresh pork — is positioned well, versus competing proteins, as a valuable offering. The price is positioned well, especially as you look across the meat case.

And so, that’s a good thing for a number of reasons, but it’s not really something you want to anchor in on as your overall marketing strategy, right? We want to create more value, and so, thankfully, because of the versatility of the pig and the various cuts that come from the animal, we have a number of products that fit well into “white tablecloth restaurant” menus, which oftentimes get a premium for those products.

I mentioned those three chefs earlier; Adam Sappington in Portland, Oregon; Matt Abdoo in Brooklyn, New York; Jose Mendin in Miami. Those three restaurants, those three gentlemen’s restaurants — the County Cat in Portland and Pig Beach in Brooklyn, Pubbelly in Miami — those three are pork-centric restaurants. They’re incredibly successful and, again, clearly have, you know, positioned pork as a premium to likely introduce to a great number of consumers a different cut or a different way to prepare and serve that cut.

So, it continues to evolve. We obviously have a really important role to play in feeding a growing population in need, and thankfully, we have low-cost operating here in the middle of the United States, which gives us that value proposition and low-cost but also premium products that fit well into those five-star dining restaurant menus and really can meet both ends of the spectrum’s needs.

Okay. To briefly change the subject, if you could, tell us about your partnerships with Google and with YouTube.

Yeah. Google and YouTube really have been a tremendous experience for the U.S. National Pork Board — Google in particular, because I learned a long time ago that every sale starts with Google. Again, thinking data-heavy, assumption-light, Google is a tremendous partner to just give you a glimpse at culture (and) how trends continue to evolve, how they start to, you know, become a trend, and you really get a direct line of sight into what, you know, different segments of the population are thinking and how culture swings affect the actual search and purchase behavior. So, that partnership in it of itself has been tremendously valuable, because we want to make sure that when people are searching for information about pork, specifically, that we’ve got the factual, you know, right information at the right time. That’s critically important, and Google search enables that.

The YouTube partnership is really pretty interesting because, as we all know, YouTube continues to be a main stage for a number of up-and-coming content creators, and anybody who’s got a mobile device can post, you know, content onto YouTube. But there are a number of influencers who have millions of followers on YouTube who are delivering messaging and delivering information and, certainly, entertainment on a regular basis. So, with YouTube, we’ve been able to identify content creators that have significant numbers of followers — obviously, (we’re) primarily food-focused — where we can engage with them and, certainly, sponsor some episodes of their video series to feature pork.

The beautiful thing about YouTube is we just kind of give them some very broad talking points and direction. Obviously, we give them support, and then we watch them do what they do. That authenticity and that passion for pork and, you know, all of the things that make their videos worth watching — it wouldn’t work as a paid commercial; you’ve got to let those creators do what they do. And so, that means you got to release some of the control, and we’ve had a lot of great success doing that, with five videos over the last 24 months that the U.S. Pork Board has invested in with partnerships on YouTube. They’ve been trending videos, which means they’re at the top of YouTube worldwide, which is really a tremendous feat. It just doesn’t happen with “sponsored” videos.

So, it speaks to the authenticity and creativity of the content creators, the loyalty that they have in the fans that subscribe to their content — and, obviously, both of their passions for pork. And thankfully, we’ve seen a growth in favorability and, certainly, a growth in, you know, loyalty for pork products as a result of it.

Well, Jarrod, I have to ask, because I think inquiring minds want to know, but what’s your favorite pork dish?

[Laughs] I get that question a lot. You know, I’m the pork guy in a lot of circles — my social circles, in particular. And I never get tired of it, to be honest with you. If I had to choose, I’ve got to say two. One is barbecue ribs. You can’t beat barbecue ribs. Number two is tonkatsu, a Japanese dish, and it’s one of my favorites, for sure. So, I’d have to say it’s a tie: barbecue ribs and tonkatsu.

Jarrod Sutton, senior vice president of strategy and innovation at the National Pork Board. Thanks so much, Jarrod.

Yeah, Tom. Thanks for having me. It’s a great pleasure.

I’m Tom Martin, and this has been AgFuture, presented by Alltech. Thank you for joining us, and be sure to subscribe to AgFuture wherever you listen to podcasts. And leave a review if you’ve enjoyed this episode.

If you’re interested in watching video content from other thought-leaders from around the world, register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience at one.alltech.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                               Greetings, Rob.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom:                      Well, that is absolutely fascinating.

Rob:                        It’s cool, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack:             Thank you for having me.

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

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

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

Tom:            How do you identify those forces?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack:             Thank you.

Click here to register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom:                          How huge?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Movie clip]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SpaceX launch]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom:                          Now, about that flute…

[Music playing]

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

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

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

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

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

[Music playing]

Tom:                          Again, Mark Lyons.

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

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

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

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

[Music playing]

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

Click here to register for the Alltech ONE Virtual Experience

Let's face it: raising profitable pigs is hard work. Optimizing your bottom line while staying competitive is a challenge on its own. But add fluctuating feed costs, new regulations and an unpredictable market to the mix, and the task can feel daunting. In addition, supply chain disruptions have further exacerbated the need for producers to minimize losses, with many hoping just to break even to keep their farms afloat.

Whether we are in challenging or prosperous times, lowering the cost of production is essential because every pig producer is looking for ways to maintain their farm’s profitability and ensure its future for years to come.

Three strategies for reducing your pig cost of production

Feed costs represent the biggest input for producers, often accounting for up to 70% of production costs. Pig producers must adapt their feed strategy to maximize feed efficiency. Here are three ways to reduce production costs without impacting your herd’s performance.

1. Reducing feed costs for pigs

The biggest challenges the livestock industry currently faces are the pressure to reduce feed costs and the continuous effort to gain a better understanding of available feed ingredients. The animal cannot fully utilize around 25% of the available nutrients in feed ingredients due to anti-nutritional factors in feed. Keeping that in mind, producers worldwide are making a concerted effort to lower the cost of production and maximize feed efficiency based on nutritional and economic factors (which often vary) while maintaining animal welfare and using sustainable approaches to meet demands.

Pig producers look to increase feed digestibility to manage the short-term risks associated with reduced market prices.

Increasing feed digestibility helps:

• Make more nutrients available for the pig to absorb.
• Improve performance, allowing producers to send animals to market faster.
• Lower feed costs.

Enzyme technologies, such as Allzyme^® Spectrum Swine, help pigs optimize the nutritional values in feed, allowing for improved dietary efficiency while supporting sustainable swine production. The unique combination of enzymes in Allzyme Spectrum Swine increases cost-efficiency by maximizing the diet’s potential at every growth stage. Developed through solid state fermentation (SSF), Allzyme Spectrum Swine produces a multi-enzyme solution that works in synergy with the complete pig diet, optimizing nutrients — including amino acids, calcium and phosphorus — while enhancing the use of raw materials (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Solid state fermentation (SSF) process

As a result, a complete dual action matrix is produced. This matrix gives nutritionists flexibility in formulating diets and, in turn, the release of more nutrients for the pig, which leads to cost savings for the producer. Figure 2 shows an example of a finishing diet that utilized Alltech’s enzyme technologies to improve digestibility and lower the cost per ton of feed. This example is representative of a typical diet in the eastern corn belt of the United States.

Figure 2: Feed cost savings with Alltech’s enzyme technologies

2. Improving pig efficiency, starting with the sow

In recent years, genetics has played a major role in improving sow efficiency by increasing the number of pigs produced per sow per year. As litter size increases, piglet birth weight decreases and litter variability increases. Low birth weight is a major predisposing factor for pre-weaning mortality (Figure 3), and lower weaning weights often result in slower growth and fatter carcasses.

Figure 3: Effects of piglet birth weight on pre-weaning mortality

(Feldpausch, et al., 2019)

Increasing birth weight can:

• Improve piglet variability.
• Help reduce the number of pigs that require special attention.
• Decrease pre-weaning mortality rates.
• Improve piglet weaning weight.

Everything you want the piglet to receive comes through the sow until weaning, so it is crucial that the sow’s nutrition program is fully implemented as planned and that she can transfer vital trace elements, such as those found in Bioplex^® and Sel-Plex^®  trace minerals, to the piglet.

Some technologies on the market today are being utilized differently now than they have been at any time to improve sow reproductive performance. Alltech’s Mineral Management program has been shown to:

• Increase the number of piglets born alive.
• Increase the birth weight of smaller pigs in the litter without affecting larger pigs (Kalaw et al., 2009).
• Reduce variation within the litter at weaning and slaughter (Ma et al., 2020).

Figure 4: Litter birth weights from sows fed inorganic or organic trace mineral sources

(Bertechini et al., 2012)

Reducing weaning variation allows pig producers to market pigs in a much tighter window and reduce variation heading into slaughter. Reducing variation at slaughter can also reduce sort losses at the processing facility and lead to increased revenue per pig (Cheng, Claudy, Que and Schinckel, 2019).

Bioplex minerals have also demonstrated that there is less degradation of vitamins as well as enzymes. A reduction in enzyme effectiveness or vitamin activity can lead to an increase in cost or a less favorable production response. Research has shown that several enzymes are heavily reduced in the presence of inorganic minerals and less damaged when exposed to their organic counterparts in the form of Bioplex (Santos, Connolly and Murphy, 2014).

3. Improving water consumption

Does the water your pigs drink impact their performance and productivity, thereby reducing production costs? A pig’s water consumption is just as important as their feed intake because pigs that do not drink enough water will not consume enough feed. Pigs tend to drink around 10% of their body weight per day or roughly two times the amount of feed they eat.

Keeping the pH in a lower range for a longer period reduces the conditions that allow harmful bacteria to grow and flourish. Adding acidifiers, such as Acid-Pak 4-Way^®, to drinking water is an effective approach to acidification, especially when intake is low or variable, because it:

• Reduces water pH and keeps it in a more favorable range (<5 pH).
• Sweetens the taste of water, helping make young pigs more inclined to drink water.
• Improves water intake, which, in turn, improves the pig's ability to digest feed.
• Leads to better enzymatic activity.

Acid-Pak 4-Way is typically used following weaning or during stressful times in the pig's life.

The cost of pig production

While numerous variables can affect production costs, understanding the factors that affect feed quality and implementing a quality-assurance program will help ensure that the best possible nutrition is delivered to your pigs and help pig producers save more money in the long run. Use our pig profit calculator at Alltech.com/every-cent-matters to see how much you can save with Alltech nutritional technologies.

References:

Bertechini, A. G., Fassani, E. J., Brito, J. Á. G. D., & Barrios, P. R. (2012). Effects of dietary mineral Bioplex in pregnant and lactating sow diets on piglet performance and physiological characteristics. Revista Brasileira De Zootecnia, 41(3), 624–629. doi: 10.1590/s1516-35982012000300022

Cheng, J., Claudy, J., Que, Y., & Schinckel, A. P. (2019). PSII-21 Evaluation of the impact of the magnitude of errors in the sorting of pigs and market price for market on the optimal market weight. Journal of Animal Science, 97(Supplement_2), 231–232. doi: 10.1093/jas/skz122.407

Feldpausch, J. A., Jourquin, J., Bergstrom, J. R., Bargen, J. L., Bokenkroger, C. D., Davis, D. L., … Ritter, M. J. (2019). Birth weight threshold for identifying piglets at risk for preweaning mortality. Translational Animal Science, 3(2), 633–640. doi: 10.1093/tas/txz076

Johnson, R. J., & Campbell, R. G. (1991). Rhone-Poulenc Animal Nutrition and Bunge Meat Industries, Australia. In: Manipulating Pig Production III. Proceedings of the Third Biennial Conference of the Australasian Pig Science Association (pp. 138–138).

Kalaw, P.R., Yatco, J.T., Yatco, G.B., et al., The incidence of small piglets at birth and at weaning can be reduced by Bioplex Sow Pak (poster).  Alltech’s 25th Symposium.  

Ma, L., He, J., Lu, X., Qiu, J., Hou, C., Liu, B., … Yu, D. (2020). Effects of low-dose organic trace minerals on performance, mineral status, and fecal mineral excretion of sows. Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences, 33(1), 132–138. doi: 10.5713/ajas.18.0861

Santos, T., Connolly, C., & Murphy, R. (2014). Trace Element Inhibition of Phytase Activity. Biological Trace Element Research, 163(1-2), 255–265. doi: 10.1007/s12011-014-0161-y

I want to learn more about nutrition for my pig herd.

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

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

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

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

Massimo:       Good morning! Thank you for inviting me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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