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Transcript – Digging In: The Future of Food

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For us to successfully and sustainably feed our global population, the farm and agriculture community must have a good working relationship with governments. They also need the consumer to understand where their food comes from and how it is grown and made. Only then, will farmers be profitable and be able to continue to adopt to a changing climate and exciting new technologies.

First, let’s start with the basics:
You are all one of 600 million farmers in the world, and almost 2 million in the United States. The average farm size is 466 acres. Of course, we hear of the demise of the family farm, but if you look at farmland in 1885, when you first began, total acreage was 354 million, the size of Alaska, and today it is 876 million acres. About the size of Alaska, California, Texas, and Nebraska. 95% are family farms. Each year, on average, one U.S. farm feeds 170 people in the world.

We can appreciate Elon Musk with DOGE, SpaceX, and Tesla. Or Jensen Huang with Nvidia – the scaffolding of AI. But without the basics of food, we would go the way of the Mayan Civilization.

Our history is replete with advances in food production. Beginning with the shift from hunters to gatherers to mass cultivation. But going from chasing animals down with a bow and arrow to driving a John Deere tractor took about 13,000 years. Then, our population was 5 million and today we are 8.2 billion. In the next five years we will add the entire population of the United States to the world. In the next 15 years, we will add three more United States’ population to the world for a total of 9.7 billion people.

What makes this exciting is that the changes in agriculture are moving at the speed of light. In the next 15 years, we will make more advancements in agriculture than we have in the past 13,000 years. We have amazing innovative technology, better inputs, and more responsible production and natural resource management tools.

We also have the moral obligation to keep people and animals alive and healthy by increasing our agricultural production by 50%. We must be even more efficient as demand for food will exceed freshwater supply by 40%.

Today, we grow and produce 3,000 calories for each of the 8.2 billion people around the world. As an aside, on average, we eat 2,000 calories and we throw away the remaining 1,000 calories. I am sure you have heard about food waste.

Population and income levels drive food. Once you begin making more than $3,000 a year, you incorporate more protein into your diet.. Protein, mainly from cows, chickens, pork, all need to be fed – primarily corn and soybeans.

The world produces about 9.9 billion metric tons or primary crops each year. If you were to put all the food we grow on a freight train, it would circle the earth about 50 times.

To feed the growing population, and it’s need for protein, we need between 45 – 55 million metric tonnes a year. Just for fun, we go back to the train. For corn, the train goes from Minneapolis to the North Pole. For soybeans, it goes from Minneapolis to Singapore.

Let’s talk about the role of government: today is food security, tariffs, and biofuels.

The first thing I would like you to remember is the importance of global food security. You will do anything when you and your family are hungry. If you think people will get into fist fights over a tank of gas, just imagine what you might do to make sure your family is fed. If you are a Somalian, you could become a pirate. If you live in Venezuela, where over 87% of the population received some sort of food subsidy, you would turn to crime. The number one cause of hunger around the world is not lack of food, it is civil wars, inter-country conflict, and governmental interference.

Take one of our most favorite foods: chocolate. The U.S. supply chain of $4 billion starts in West Africa where governmental interference has stripped farmers of healthy profits and where child labor is an issue. Now, add on four years of underperforming yields due to weather and climate and it is no surprise that the price of cocoa has gone from 2,000 a ton to a high of 12,000/ton earlier this year. I can assure you that the farmer is not getting even $2,000.. Because of government mismanagement, cocoa is picking up its beans and headed elsewhere, mostly likely Brazil. Of course the recent trade announcement has only created more uncertainly as Ivory Coast and Ghana face 21% and 10% tariffs to export their cocoa to the U.S.

This brings us to the importance of trade.
The U.S. agriculture trade is in a deficit of $37b from a trade surplus of $35b as of 2014. We still export about 20% of our agricultural products. Most of that is big ag: corn, soybeans, canola, cotton.. For every $1.00 of ag exports, we have $2.00 of domestic economic activity. What happened to our agriculture?

Part of the story is the stronger dollar making imports cheaper. We still make enough calories to feed every American, but we are importing more products such as tropical fruits, coffee, and cocoa that we don’t produce here. For instance, bananas our our number one import. We like international variety in our imported beer and wine: think Corona Beer and European vineyards. And because our labor costs are higher than other countries, we are importing more vegetables and processed foods that we could profitably make here.

Without fair trade, U.S. farmers are under economic stress. There is a global surplus of soybeans and corn, futures are down, and the uncertainty of Trump’s new tariff policy is foreboding. . Our top trading partners are where the tariffs are going to hurt the most: Canada, Mexico, for imports and China for exports.

Uncertainty is difficult. At what point will the immigration and fentanyl issues be resolved? How long will Trump use tariffs for leverage against Chinese investment in Canada and Mexico?

What impact will retaliatory tariffs have? Particularly with China? US corn and soybeans are export dependent. 51% of our soybeans are exported to China, Argentina, Japan, Mexico and Spain. Think about that, half of our soybean crop is part of the tariff war.

Brazil is our number one competitor and together we supply over 80% of global soybeans for animal feed and cooking oil. Tariff wars cause us to lose market share. After the US-China trade war in 2017, the US market share of soybeans to China went from about 45% to 20% whereas Brazil’s is now 70%.

With Corn, 30% is exported in the form Mexico, Japan, China, Columbia, and Canada.

Besides trade, how did we get to this global surplus? All roads lead to oil.

Since the oil shocks and the environmental awakening of the 1970s, we have seen steady growth and farmer dependence on ethanol and other biofuels. Today about 40% of our corn crop is used for ethanol and 45% of soybean oil is used for biofuels.

Biofuels are one of the reasons of our oversupply. Since the 70s, farmers have added yield and acreage to accommodate the fuel and food needs of our country and the world. Biofuels are critical for farmer profitability. Breakeven for corn is around $5.25 bushel, today’s price is 4.68/bu. For soybean breakeven is about $12.50 bushel, today, we are at $9.97/bu. You can see the immediate effect of tariffs and biofuel uncertainty and record global stocks.

The Trump 2.0 Administration is more favorable, toward biofuels than his first administration. On his first day, he released the American Energy policy that ‘unleashes America’s affordable and reliable energy.” The U.S. leads the world in biofuel production. Back to the train, each year, this train would go half-way around the Earth’s circumference.

As I mentioned earlier, food consumption is expected to increase – and so is global energy. It is anticipated to increase by about 24% over the next 15 years. Demand for AI data centers and electric vehicles are certainly part of it but the bulk will be rising demand in and China (depending on how they handle the tariffs), SE Asia, India, and S.America. Are biofuels part of the conversation?

One positive piece of news is the coalition between big energy and big ag working together to push the EPA to increase the biofuel mandate. The conversation around energy will be interesting in the coming days or months given OPEC might reduce production by 400,000 barrels a day.

The question for farmers, is , Will there be a subsidy? The Inflation Reduction Act, while overall controversial, did have a $1.25 credit for biofuel production. Trump also gave farmers $28 billion to offset the China trade war of 2017. There is talk today of giving farmer’s tariff funds to offset any additional China import issues.

What is the answer for farmers? Tariffs and biofuels policies are a challenge at the moment. But the anticipated global growth can balance this out. Of course, there will always be weather disruptions. No one, with any pride, likes a handout. We are in a unique economic time – and not just for agriculture. It is an interesting situation for sure

As I mentioned, food unites all of us. Growing food sustainably is important.

There is a lot of emphasis on regenerative agriculture. Keeping your soil healthy, enhancing your crop nutrients, not letting water run off your fields and increasing your yield – is no easy feat. It can mean. no-till farming and cover crops which in turn means healthier soil and less synthetic inputs. The beauty of regenerative agriculture is that it can be uniquely applied to each farmer, location, weather pattern, and differentiated crops.

General Mills, Pepsi, Unilever, Walmart, Danone, Nestle are just a few CPG companies that have committed to sourcing ingredients from regenerative ag. Cargill, and, I don’t like to admit, ADM also, and other buyers partner with farmers to help them make the financial commitment for regen ag.

Now comes the exciting technology: Precision Agriculture uses technology to manage farms more efficiently by using real time data to make informed and immediate decisions about where to apply fertilizer, pesticides, water, and seeds on distinct parts of the field.

John Deere is solving both the agricultural labor issue and addressing sustainability. I was speaking with Aaron Wetzel, VP of Production & Precision Ag Production systems at John Deere. They have asked themselves, ‘How do we best help our customers be more successful?” The answer? Technology. They are not just a tractor company anymore. A few years ago, they paid hundreds of millions of dollars to hire just 65 software engineers from Silicon Valley. Their investment has paid off. It is not easy to remake yourself from a plow to a software company after 180 years

They have See and Spray technology on their tractors which enables each spray nozzle to recognize a weed, spray it, all without herbicide drifting to nearby plants. Their farmers have reduced their chemical inputs by 60%. For more on John Deere, I am putting a plug in for a Dirt to Dinner podcast I did with Aaron.

John Deere Isn’t the only one on the field. AGCO, Trimble, CASE, and DJI Agriculture are just a few at the forefront of this revolution, developing integrated solutions that combine advanced software platforms with sophisticated machinery.

I see the future, and it is robotics. The autonomous tractors are the real revolution. Basically, these are just gigantic robots moving down the field. The John Deere tractors can till, plant seeds, and harvest on their own. They have 16 cameras for a 360-degree view, powered by 2 NVidia chips. Farmers can precisely farm from the dinner table, from a conference, reducing labor, inputs, and of course, increasing yield.

These autonomous machines rely on inputs such as cameras, light radar, satellites, density altitude, and other environmental sensors. They learn, make spot decisions, and then move some type of actuator like a wheel, a sprayer, an arm, or any part of a robot. This information goes into the cloud to help train other machines. But not just like machines. A John Deere combine can train a John Deere lawn mower or a construction vehicle.

What used to take days and lots of labor to harvest anything from lettuce to Brussels sprouts, now can take only minutes. Machines are not just more efficient; they have an autonomous life of their own. Greenfield robotics is an AI powered robot pulling weeds all day and all night. No herbicide and no labor needed. Farm-ng has an automated robot that can tailor seeding, weeding, and compost spreading to a specific crop. It can cut down weekly labor by 50-80%. Robotics Plus, purchased by Yamaha Motor, combines data analytics and automation in the field to produce growing insights for farmers.

Who would have thought that agriculture would be the forefront of physical AI.

These machines are not just on the field. I think of the ‘factory of the future’ where labor is needed for dangerous jobs, heavy lifting, or monotonous tasks such as packing fruit. I have seen entire sections of processing plants, that used to have 50 people, are incredibly productive without a human in sight. That is the future of agriculture – and many other industries.

To be honest, no one is ordering a brand new autonomous John Deere tractor if their corn and soy is underwater. I mentioned the importance of government policy. I mentioned that the way we are farming is changing at the speed of light. What is equally important is consumer education.

Misinformed people make bad decisions – about their diets and ultimately the health and well-being of their families. They support quick fixes to complex problems – and risk undoing much of the incredibly productive, efficient food system that we have today. I honestly think people think we should deliver our eggs via bicycles and cook with beef tallow.

I will do a speed finish with just a few examples of misinformation:

  • GMOs let the world meet its food needs, sustainably. There are no health issues to humans, soil, or water with GMOs. Which leads to glyphosate.
  • Roundup Ready, if used correctly, in your backyard or on the farm field is safe for humans, water, and soil. Regenerative agriculture works the best with genetically modified crops to be resistant to glyphosate.
  • Oilseeds, canola, soy, corn, and palm are fine to cook with. It is all about the smoke point, not the oil ingredients
  • Organic still has chemicals. They are just ‘natural’.
  • You must eat a bathtub full of red M&Ms every day in order to be negatively impacted from the red dye.
  • Processed food is not terrible if you eat it as a treat and not depend on it as a food.
  • Eggs are one of the best whole nutritious foods.

As a farmer, or investor in farmland, you are the ones who feed us every day. Successful agricultural profits, like most other businesses, with less regulation, fair trade policies, and educated consumer choices. There is not one country in the world that doesn’t rely on imports or exports for food and agriculture. The U.S. has built the best food system the world has ever seen by embracing change and making it work for us, not against us.

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Transcript: Are Girl Scout Cookies Safe?

 

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You know, when you’re scrolling online, maybe late at night, and a headline just grabs you. Well, lately, especially if you look forward to Girl Scout cookie season like I do. You might have seen these posts from February 2025.

The glyphosate claims and heavy metals, too. It definitely makes you pause before grabbing another cookie.

It absolutely does. And look, that’s a normal reaction when you hear pesticides, heavy metals, especially with food.

Yeah. Food for your family, right? Caution flags go up immediately. It’s understandable.

Okay. So, let’s really dig into that because that’s what we’re doing today. This deep dive. We’re looking past the, you know, the social media noise. Trying to get to the science of it.

Yes. What’s actually going on with these cookies? Our mission here is to sort the facts from the fear, understand the science, and figure out if there’s anything we genuinely need to worry about. Exactly. We’re not trying to dismiss anyone’s concerns, but we want to give it some real context, you know, based on the data we have.

Context, right? Science, not just scary headlines.

So, you can make up your own mind without hopefully needless panic.

Okay, first big one. Glyphosate. How on earth does that stuff get into a cookie? The idea someone’s adding it in is well, it’s weird, right? And that’s the first uh really critical point. It’s not an ingredient. Nobody is like one expert said, spring sprinkling glyphosate into cookie dough.

Instead, if it’s there at all, it’s in these tiny tiny trace amounts and it gets there indirectly through the farm ingredients.

Okay, indirectly. How? Break that down.

Well, there are basically three main ways this can happen. First is something called preharvest desiccation.

So maybe about 30% of farmers, give or take, might spray glyphosate on crops like wheat or oats right before harvest.

Why would they do that?

It helps everything dry down evenly. You get a more uniform crop, better yield, makes harvesting more efficient.

Okay. So, it’s used on the ingredients. What’s path number two?

Second is just um environmental spread. Think of it like pollen. Glyphosate can drift on the wind, get into water sources. So, even if one farm doesn’t use it, tiny amounts might just be present in the environment from nearby areas. It’s hard to avoid completely sometimes.

Okay. Like background noise almost. Yep. Makes sense. And the third way,

Cross contamination. Tiny microscopic residues might linger on milling equipment, maybe baking equipment, even after cleaning,
from processing other stuff before.

Exactly. Though, it’s also worth mentioning glyphosate isn’t super stable. It tends to break down, especially with heat, like, you know, baking.

Baking probably helps break it down. So, these are really small indirect routes, not someone dumping it in the mixer.

Correct. That feels a bit better already, doesn’t it?

It does. But then you see the numbers they throw around in those posts, parts per per million.

Yeah, sounds bad. Let’s talk about the actual amounts.

Yeah, the numbers. This is where context is absolutely everything. So, the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, they set something called an acceptable daily intake or ADI. That’s the amount they estimate you could consume every single day for your whole life and not expect any harm. For glyphosate, that ADI is 1.75 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day.

Okay? 1.75 mg per kilogram. Let’s make that real. Say someone who weighs, I don’t know, 130 lbs. That’s about 70 kilos, right?

Right. 70 kg. So for that person, the daily acceptable intake would be, let’s see, 70* 1.75 about 103.25 milligrams of glyphosate per day.

Over 100 milligrams a day. Okay. Now, what did they find in the thin mints?

The test showed around. 28 parts per million. That sounds like a number, but let’s translate it. In a standard serving, say four cookies,
which is, let’s be honest, the starting point.

Ah, maybe. But in those four cookies, that translates to about 0.00896 milligrams of glyphosate total.

Okay. My brain hurts, but that sounds incredibly tiny compared to the 103 mg daily limit.

Exactly. So, let’s do the fun math. How many of those single cookies would that 70 kilo person need to eat in one day to hit their 103.25 mg limit?

Uh-oh. This is going to be big, isn’t it? works out to something like 46,116 thin mints.

46,000 in one day. Okay. Right. Nobody is eating 46,000 thin mints. I think even I have my limits.

Precisely. It puts the risk into perspective. And there’s another piece to this. Our testing technology is just ridiculously good now.

It’s better than it used to be.

Oh, way better. We used to measure in parts per million. Now we can often detect parts per trillion, even parts per quadrillion. Think of like an Olympic swimming pool being able to detect one single drop of dye in all that water. That’s the kind of sensitivity we’re talking about.

So, the headlines might pop up just because we can find these microscopic traces now, not because there’s suddenly more of it or it’s dangerous.
That’s a huge part of it. The sensitivity drives the detection, which can drive the headlines even if the actual health risk hasn’t changed or is negligible at those levels.

That analogy helps a lot. It’s not necessarily more stuff in the food. We just have sharper eyes scientifically speaking.

You got it. Okay. So, maybe we should switch slightly talk about why farmers use glyphosate in the first place. It’s easy to just focus on the scary headlines.

Good point. They aren’t just spraying it around for fun, presumably. What are the benefits?

Well, it actually plays a pretty big role in modern farming. A key thing is it allows for less tilling of the soil.

Less digging up the fields. Why is that good?

Tilling can lead to soil erosion, loss of top soil, big problems. By using glyphosate to handle weeds, farmers can use no till or reduce tail methods that helps preserve the soil, reduces erosion. And it can even mean lower greenhouse gas emissions from farming operations.

Yeah, that’s a side you don’t hear much about in the scary posts.

Not usually. No. Plus, it helps increase crop yields. Better weed control means more food grown on the same land. That’s vital for, you know, feeding everyone. Global food security.

So, it’s tied into bigger issues, efficiency, sustainability.

Absolutely. There was a review in a journal, Frontiers and Aron. me back in 2022 that really laid out its importance. And frankly, as the expert we looked at said, there isn’t really a scalable alternative right now that does the same job with the same benefits, especially the reduced tilling part.

So, if we just banned it, we’d likely see higher food prices, probably more food waste from lower yields, maybe needing to clear more land for farming. It’s complicated.

Definitely more complex than just weed killer bad.

Okay. What about the other thing mentioned, heavy metals, right? Heavy metals: lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury. This is a bit different. These are naturally occurring elements.

Natural. So, not from pesticides or farming chemicals.

Mostly not. No, they’re just in the soil in the water. Plants absorb them as they grow, just like they absorb nutrients. And this happens whether the crop is grown conventionally or organically.

Oh, interesting. So, organic doesn’t automatically mean no heavy metals.

Correct. You find trace amounts in lots of common foods, root vegetables like carrots, sweet potatoes, especially in the skin, leafy Greens like spinach, grains, brown rice, and oats can sometimes pick up arsenic from the soil.

Wow. Okay. Even seafood, right? Mercury.

Yep. Certain fish like tuna, swordfish can accumulate mercury from the water. It’s pretty widespread in trace amounts.

So, if it’s natural and in lots of foods, when does it become a concern? Is it the amount?

It’s about the amount and the frequency. The real concern is repeated highle exposure over a long time consistently. eating large amounts of foods that happen to be higher in a specific metal. And this is especially important for little kids. Their bodies are still developing. They’re more sensitive.

So again, it’s not about the occasional cookie setting off alarm bells.

Not usually. No, it’s the overall dietary pattern. And there are things you can do to minimize exposure.

Like what what’s practical?

The biggest thing is eating a varied diet. Don’t eat the exact same things every single day. Mix it up. Rotate your foods.

Makes sense. Reduces the chance of getting too much of any one thing.

Exactly. Also, peeling root vegetables, especially if you’re making baby food, can help since metals sometimes concentrate in the skin.

Okay, peeling carrots and potatoes. Easy enough.

Rinsing all your produce while even organic helps wash off any lingering soil which might contain metals. A little vinegar in the water can help too. And then, yeah, limiting those high mercury fish, particularly for pregnant women and young children. Standard advice there.

These are all pretty sensible things. And again, our fancy testing plays a role here, too, right? Right. Finding these natural traces.

Totally like the experts said, we can just see so much more now. We have more information than ever. The trick is interpreting it correctly. Finding a trace amount isn’t the same as finding a dangerous amount.

Context. Again, it always comes back to context. Are the regulators like watching this stuff? FDA, EPA.

Oh yeah, definitely. Both the FDA and EPA are heavily involved. The FDA has this program called Closer to Zero.

Closer to zero for what?

Specifically targeting lead. arsenic, cadmium, and mercury in foods for babies and young kids. They set action levels like for lead in infant cereal, it’s 10 parts per billion. Okay?

They guide manufacturers on how to reduce levels, then monitor foods, and the FDA is clear. There’s really no safe level of lead for kids. So, the goal is always to get it as low as possible, push it closer to zero.

That’s good to know they’re actively working on it for the most vulnerable group. Yeah. What about the EPA side for pesticides like glyphosate?

The EPA regulates pesticides. Their latest big review on glyphosate concluded it doesn’t pose a cancer risk from dietary exposure at the levels we see. They say it’s safe when used correctly following the label and they keep studying it including its breakdown products the metabolites. So these agencies provide oversight data updates. It’s an ongoing process, right? It’s not static. Science evolves.

Okay, so let’s pull this all together for the listener. What are the practical takeaways here? If you’re that person who saw the scary post, what should you do?

I think the biggest practical advice is is focus on variety for the whole family. Avoid getting stuck in a food rut eating the same few things constantly. Mix up the fruits, veggies, grains.

Exactly. Rinse your produce thoroughly. All of it. And yeah, processed treats like cookies. Enjoy them, sure, but in moderation. Part of a balanced diet, not the main course.

And maybe the best advice we heard, that quote.

Ah, yes. Don’t get your science from Tik Tok or, you know, unsourced social media posts in general.

Absolutely. Go to the credible sources, FDA reports, EPA assessments. Look for peer-reviewed studies and journals. The outline mentioned comprehensive reviews in food science and food safety, frontiers in aronomy, food chemistry. Look at established health organizations, NIH, WH, EFSA in Europe.

Be skeptical of stuff without sources or that sounds super dramatic, right? And be careful comparing things like food safety limits to say drinking water standards. They’re set differently for different reasons. Apples and oranges sometimes.

Okay, so let’s try try to summarize the absolute key points.

Okay. One, glyphosate is regulated. It plays a role in modern farming and the trace levels found in foods like these cookies are considered safe by regulatory bodies.

Two, we can test for really tiny amounts. Now, that doesn’t mean food is suddenly dangerous. It means we have more sensitive tools and more data. Context matters.

And three, the best strategy for overall food safety and health isn’t obsessing over trace amounts in one specific food. It’s focusing on a varied balanced diet rich in whole foods and moderating the processed stuff.

So for everyone listening, yeah, those concerns you felt totally valid starting point, but the answer seems to be context, science, and variety, not panic.
Well put. It’s about informed choices, not fear-based ones.

So enjoy a thin mint or several, just maybe not 46,000.

Probably a good guideline. Enjoy them in moderation as part of that bigger picture of a healthy, varied diet.

All right. And maybe a final thought to leave everyone with. Now that you’ve got this deeper understanding of the science and the regulation around this food scare, what other food topics might deserve the same kind of careful look beyond the headlines?

That’s a good question. Staying curious, staying critical. That’s always a healthy approach to what we eat.

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Transcript: Digging In with John Deere’s Aaron Wetzel

Lucy Stitzer: Welcome to our Dirt to Dinner podcast with Aaron Wetzel, Vice President at John Deere with their Production and Precision Ag Production Systems. Growing up on a farm in Illinois, Aaron has over three decades of experience at John Deere. He is a seasoned leader and expert in the global ag industry, holding roles across sales, marketing, finance, and product development. Speaking with Aaron, I was so impressed with John Deere’s running journey from the self-scouring steel plow in 1837 to the John Deere tractors to the company’s evolution into a pure technology company serving their farmer customers. We welcome Aaron Wetzel.

Good morning, Aaron. Thank you so much for joining Dirt to Dinner and we are very excited to have you on our podcast. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your introduction to John Deere?

Aaron Wetzel: I have been fortunate to work for John Deere now 37 years. I always like to say I started when I was 10, but that’s not real. I  started right in the middle of my college studies at Augustana College. I was studying accounting and became a summer student working at our corporate offices in Molen, Illinois. And that  ultimately transferred into full-time employment.

On my graduation, upon working for Deere, I started in the accounting finance function. I quickly realized that accounting was not necessarily what I wanted to do. It was a great foundation to have, but I wanted to  make the beans instead of count beans. And so I moved into the sales and marketing function and worked my way through the organization.

I’ve been fortunate in my career to work internationally. I lived and worked in Europe for a few years and also lived and worked in Latin America primarily in Brazil running our Brazil operations for several years from 2007 to 2012. I’ve worked in not only sales and marketing but in manufacturing and product development.

I’ve worked in our financial services business as a chief marketing officer for John Financial and  today I lead our production and precision ag business. So really the culmination of coming together of our equipment and technologies and how we create value for customers. And so it’s as I look back as a farm kid from central Illinois never in my wildest dreams, what I have imagined, who have experienced what I’ve experienced and lived where I’ve lived, all as a result of my career at John Deere.

That’s a great story, a great career. And so tell me how John Deere has been running like a deer since 1845. So what values have kept you at John Deere and that have also kept John Deere going for over 180 years?

I would say first and foremost is our commitment to our customer. You know, I think that’s what has enabled Deere to exist for now nearly 200 years is through the thick and thin of agriculture in the good times and the bad times, Deere is there and working to support the customers that we serve, looking at the opportunities to help create value for them and  we’ve been doing that over and over and reinventing ourselves as a company over that almost 200-year history.

I think another thing that’s important is our focus on commitment to quality and innovation. We’re continually bringing the latest in technologies to our customers and that started in even in the iron space with the self-scouring plow back in 1837 that started the whole company and we’ve been very much focused on how do we bring that innovation but it’s it’s steeped in us having a deep understanding of the customers that we serve.

As I’ve worked across the globe I also think our commitment to  what we call all the how in doing things the right way has also enabled Deere to navigate through challenging times and make sure that we’re doing the things that are right for our customers and that’s what’s kept me at Deere and it’s been an amazing journey but at the end of the day what passions me to get out of bed every morning is what can we do to help create new value for customers and as a as a farm kid myself and making decisions as growing up in the mid-80s when it was a very challenging time in agriculture farming was not an option for me to be able to be in the industry and to be able to do what we do is really rewarding.

So creating value for the customer and that means helping them become more profitable, helping them with their labor and helping them be as sustainable as possible given the times really with the new technology starting as you said earlier with the plow, you know, changing the plow so instead of just going straight through it can dig up the earth a little bit better and make it easier for the farmer.

Were there some tough years. Were there lessons that you’ve learned that have carried you through to today?

Yeah, I would say, in agriculture is a series of really great times and a series of challenging times. And  that’s been the interesting piece during my 37-year history is I’ve seen both. I’ve seen the really positive euphoric times, but I’ve also worked through some challenging times. And for our business, it’s again staying focused on what the customers need. How do we create new opportunities to deliver value for them?

I think about working in Brazil during the 2008 financial crisis and a significant change in credit availability caused a tremendous decrease in  demand for products and we needed to get creative in how we manage our business, how we manage our inventories, but also keeping in mind what customers are going through. And so with with our financial services business. How did we step in and help them through a really challenging time by offering credit available to them?

That’s I think probably in the most critical times our John Financial, the financial services side of our business has been a real key  partner in working with our customers, especially during times of hardship and being able to work specifically with customers in their specific needs and then arranging payment options that need their cash flow requirements to be able to navigate through a challenging time. And I think that’s what’s helped Deere navigate over nearly 200 years of history is that real close connection we’ve built with our customers.

I can imagine that the John Deere financial was a lifeline for customers, especially in 2008. So all of your inventions are helping the farmer become more productive as I said earlier, more profitable, more sustainable. And how did you end up just focusing on the customer? Did you make a conscious effort with your focus is completely on the customer and anything that you invest in to grow is all pertaining to the customer.

I mean it sounds so obvious and it sounds so clear but was there ever a time in your history where you veered off and you had different focus and you were focused on more on machinery or doing something different than your eye only on the customer?

Yeah, it’s been a very long journey of transformation for our company. Lucy, you said it well. You know, if I look back 25, 30 years ago, we were a very product focused company and  machines, bigger, stronger, faster, wider machines to be able to maximize productivity for a person in the cab. And we optimized our business around each of those products, whether it’s a combine, a tractor, a planter, or a sprayer.

What’s been exciting over the past few years as we’ve really doubled down on our technology stack and reorganized our company around our customers. Like today, I’m responsible for the portfolio of opportunities to serve the large scale producers in our business. So, corn and soybean producers, sugarcane, small grains, and cotton producers globally. And so now we’re optimizing our business around what does the customer need?

And it’s that combination of the technology with the product to create that value. And that’s been a real exciting time for me to see that trans information take place, but it’s also helped our business accelerate some of our developments in the technology space to create that value for customers. And really, it’s bringing that technology to help us more precisely place seed, chemical, and nutrients in a time where customers are very much focused on their bottom lines and how do they optimize their inputs.

By doing that, a more precise placement, we’re seeing customers improve their yields because  you’re doing the job better, doing the job of planting better, you’re doing the job of spraying better. And that’s continuing to propel our investments to say how do we create those values in those particular production systems that  help those customers and help us. And so that transition of just being a singular product focus to now being a customer focus is aligning our investments. It’s aligning the organization  our channel and really more deeply understanding the challenges our customers face every day in field.

And you’re really helping the customers make the world a better place, feed more people on existing land sustainably. That’s a higher purpose than just making machines. So before we go into the technology, can you just explain to our listeners a little bit about what kind of crops the farmers harvest? You know, corn, soybeans, cotton, but you also work with lettuce farmers? So what’s the broad range of farmers? And then you also are in construction and timber.

We also have a business focused on turf. So as I said earlier, we’ve we’ll separate our businesses kind of into three separate categories. We have our what we call our production and precision ag business which is what I’m responsible for in creating value for customers that produce corn and soybeans, small grains. So that would be wheat, canola, lentils primarily in Canada, Australia, the great plain states of the US, Europe, sugarcane producers primarily Brazil but also Australia and parts of Asia and some in United States. And then cotton, a fiber that is important for the clothes that we wear and produced in the US, Asia, but also in Brazil predominantly.

And so we’re creating a portfolio of products to help customers produce those crops and technologies to help them do it more sustainably and with better focus on their input. So that’s the production precision ag business. The small ag and turf business we call is really focused on dairy and livestock customers. So bailing, mowing, as well as high value crops. So that would be lettuce producers, orange producers, orchard and vineyards and we’re building out a suite of technologies that we can then leverage from our production and precision ag business into those segments to create the value for customers in a similar manner of more precisely placing chemicals and nutrients.

And in some instances it’s on our own machines, but also in a lot of instances it’s on non- Deere crops. And so being able to take advantage of the technology suite that we’ve got to create value for them were focused in that business. And then we have a turf business that’s a part of that which is commercial landscapers, homeowners, golf courses where we create a series of products that enable us to help create value for them and doing the job faster.

So, I worked in that business for a very long time in my career and on our consumer space, for example. I love having a very nice looking yard, but I don’t want to do it. So, I outsource it to a commercial landscaper that does it for me. And so, we create the machines to be able to do that for them. And then we have our construction and forestry business. So again, all the machines that are in place for earth moving.

You mentioned the timber. So our forestry business that helps harvest lumber around the globe to produce  pulp and paper. And then we have a road building business through an acquisition called Verkett that  gave us a leading position in building roads around the world.

So those I would say are the main business units of Deere today that encapsulate our global operations and then we have some supporting services like our aftermarket business so the part support that’s mission critical for our customers and then we have our financial services business that I mentioned so we really cover the gamut.

When people think of John Deere, you mostly think of farming but didn’t really realize that you were in the lawn and turf and really the timber business as well as road building.

And then in the center of all of that we have what we call our technology stack and that’s really the organization that builds and develops the leading technologies to create the value for customers that we then incorporate into each of these customer segments and product portfolios that I mentioned earlier.

Well, let’s move into technology and I think we can start with the See and Spray technology which is very exciting.

It’s an exciting technology. It’s one that we’ve been working on for quite some time. It’s really helping customers tremendously save on inputs with our technology. We’ve got a series of cameras systems computing on the machine itself. highspeed computing and machine learning capabilities that as a customer is going through the field at 15 miles an hour with their self-propelled sprayer.

We have the technology on the back of the sprayer that’s controlling the nozzle system on the boom that’s only spraying the weeds. And  I’ll use the analogy I go back to being the kid that was 8 years old in a field in central Illinois and we used to walk beans. I don’t know if you walk beans, but we walk beans to kill the wheats. And I always had this dream that I said, “Why can’t we have like a laser beam that would just shoot down the field and only kill the weeds. So I don’t have to be out there walking beans as a kid.

And what’s exciting now nearly 50 years later is the technology exists and we have machines now traversing through fields only killing weeds and that is saving our customers nearly 60% chemicals and in today’s environment that is a significant portion of their P&L and that’s really helping them save money in a time where commodity prices are the challenging and that’s helping them improve their profitability especially at this period of time.

That also not only is it saving them money, it’s also more sustainable for the environment because we’re putting down less chemicals. And so it’s a win-win from being able to improve profits, but also the environmental impact is very positive. And we’re doing that through incorporating these leading technologies into our machines ultimately to create this value for customers.

So does the customer have to program for its specific crop or does the machine just know exactly, okay, this is soy, this is corn, this is what it is, this is how much distances between the rows and knows exactly what to do?

Yeah, it knows. So, we’re spending an enormous amount of time and energy and investment to train the models. As we said, it’s got a machine learning model. So, it’s we’ve taking these machines across thousands and thousands of acres to educate the model on what’s a weed, what’s a soybean,  we train it into different crops and then once we feel confident on where that  particular performance is then we will make it available to customers.

And so right now we’re in soybeans and cotton and we intend to expand that across all of the crop segments that customers produce. And so  it takes some time to get the machine learning capabilities in place, but as it gets faster as we continue to develop into each crop because we learn from one to apply it to the next. And so that’s what’s super exciting about the technology.

It’s the pace of with which it improves and the ability for us to then take that not only to different crops but we take it to different geographies. Crops grown in central Illinois or Iowa slightly different than what we see growing in Brazil. So we need to train the capabilities for those particular applications in that and we’re doing that as well. So we intend to take this capability not only across crops but across the world in terms of offering to customers

Is there something or someone on the tractor monitoring them, making sure that they don’t veer and go astray?

Yeah, so these are it’s designed for a self-propelled sprayer. So, it’s a dedicated machine form that does spraying. You still need to have a person in the cab that’s operating the product, but we have other technologies that are enabling customers to do things in an autonomous way.

And that’s another key pillar of our strategy going forward from a technology perspective to help address some of the challenges customer face and that’s tough.

We’ll talk about the automation in a little bit. When you’re spraying, one question one would have is: is there drift a little bit over to the crop so the crop has to be Roundup Ready or it has to have that, as well?

So there are there are special nozzles that we have that help reduce drift. Drift is a concern for many customers. We have a pulse width modulation system on our sprayers that increase the droplet size so that it reduces the drift and we’ve launched that technology probably about 10 years ago that  is now widely used by our customers and it really addresses that concern you just had around drift because there are some chemicals that are very concerning for customers in terms of drift.

Let’s say you’re spraying  Roundup Ready soybeans and you’ve got a corn field next to you. You got to make sure that reduce that drift otherwise you’ll have a negative impact. So our technologies and our products are positioned for customers to be able to do that to the best of their ability.

And then how about nutrients? Does the same machine do nutrients as well?

Nope. We will be able to do nitrogen and you can do a myriad of other opportunities but  those are still in development but today it’s really focused on glyphosate and other weed management chemicals.

So you were talking about when you were younger and you were walking through soy and you were spraying the weeds and you thought well wouldn’t it be great if there was a laser that would get rid of weeds. There are some tractors out there that have robotic weed pullers and I don’t know have if the laser is available but is that something you’re moving towards is eliminating the weeds without any spray?

We see those opportunities. A lot of startup companies today that are looking at mechanical weeding solutions. A lot of those are primarily focused in the European markets. We have not specifically targeted any investments in that space primarily because the productivity of those machines for the customers that we want to serve in our primary markets like the US and Brazil and corn and soybean producers whereas the main lead investment areas for our technologies.

It’s really not hitting the productivity levels that those customers are looking for. So, we’ve really started, we’ve really stayed focused on the CN spray and the machine learning and the cameras and the computing capabilities that deliver on that productivity that those customers are looking for.

So, now let’s move on to automation. I was at a conference somewhere and someone was on their phone and he’s like, “Yeah, I’m farming my field.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s interesting.” So, he was on his phone and could program his tractor. So that’s what you see as the future is farmers can stay home and have a nice dinner and their tractors will just be moving through the fields 24/7?

Yeah, it is  definitely a vision we have for our future and what customers are able to do. You know, if we think about our customers we serve today, labor is becoming a greater challenge for them. Finding qualified labor to do the work and because of that we’ve really made some investments in automation of jobs so that you can put less qualified workers in the cab, but also in fully autonomous solutions.

 And that’s what’s exciting is to see where we’re going with this technology opportunity to really create a whole new opportunity of value for customers. And that’s getting the operator out of the cab over the long haul. Not only are we doing that in our large ag customer space, we’re doing it across the portfolio.

And I don’t know if you saw the most recent consumer electronic show that we participate in where we showcased our focus on autonomous solutions not only for our large ag producers but for orchard and vineyards and for our construction customers. And what the unique opportunity Deere has is we have this centralized tech stack that is developing the capabilities and then we take that and leverage it into the various customer applications.

And so there we had the same technology opportunity move from large ag producer We had the same camera systems and computing capabilities on a small zero turn mower for a commercial landscaper. We had that same technology stacked into an orchard and vineyard application for customers to blast spray or mow through the vineyards and orchards.

And then we had an example of that same technology being applied to earth marine business with dump trucks being autonomously maneuvered through a job site. And so that’s the power I think of what Deere is able to provide is making some investments around one customer segment but then leveraging that across many and creating a whole new stream of value for them.

That’s incredible. So you have the same technology for a lawn mower that you do for a huge combine and then for cutting down trees. And how is that programmed and how do you teach the machine what to look out for or what not to run into where to go? And you’re using satellite imagery or using Blue River technology?

So, we’re using an acquisition that we made back in 2017, Blue River. It is a machine learning capability that combined with the camera system that we’re developing to place on each of the machines, those images that are being captured, we’re really looking at what’s in front and around the machine. And  if we see people or animals, we stop and then determine if the area is now free and then allow the machine to proceed forward. And again, like I talked about in the CNS spray opportunity where we’re educating the algorithms to discern what is weed and what is crop in all of the various crops.

We’re doing the same thing from an autonomy perspective to learn more about what do obstacles look like in a corn field, what do obstacles look like on a golf course, what do obstacles look like on a job site. So that we educate that to understand when those obstacles arise, stop the machine. and then allow it to clear and then allow it to be. And so that’s really the work that we’re doing, not too dissimilar from what automotive industry is doing.

And I think what’s unique is we’re sharing a lot of the same challenges automotive has, but we’re also having additional complexity because we’re doing jobs. We’re not just moving people from point A to point B. We’re out tilling the soil. We’re planting the seed. We’re spraying the crop. We’re  mowing the turf. So we’ve got to also ensure that the job is being done to the level of satisfaction that the customer expects and that’s an additional complexity we have in this whole new autonomous world.

I think that’s just absolutely incredible and I think you’re way more advanced than automated driving because driving you have all these nuances. What does the stop sign look like? What if the stop sign is bent…is it still a stop sign? You have to put so many other inputs into the driving aspect, but you still have a lot of inputs on the farmer.

The difference between a farm and my backyard and the golf course – there’s just a huge variety. So, the technology, did you have to buy or acquire or hire a lot of programmers to do this? I mean, how did you come about just going from making a machine, thinking about a great engine to now programming the machine to do everything that one can do without someone sitting in the cab?

It’s been a journey building the technology capabilities I would say over 20 plus years. It started with initial investment we made in a company called NavCom in 1999 that gave us the global positioning capabilities to drive really basic what we call autotrack and that was just driving the machine straight through the field and reducing the overlap of the implements that increase productivity and then we fast forward to today or in the near term where we talked about the Blue River acquisition in 2017 that gave us machine learning capabilities.

In 2019, we bought a company called Bear Flag that also was working in the autonomy space and in 2020 we purchased a company called Harvest Profit that helps customers identify really their P&L income statements for their operations and that those are some of the basic tenants of  elements of our technology stack in addition to our own development opportunities of us going out and hire ing software engineers to do the work of embedding a lot of the electronic capabilities into the machines.

Building the capability of getting the data from the field into the cloud and then  a team of folks to help us analyze the data and help support customers in decisioning and managing their operations from their phone. And like you mentioned at the very beginning of this question, I’ve been in numerous conferences where the customer I’m talking to will show up with his phone. He’ll say, I’ve got my operations going on. And they’ll open up their operation center and they’ll show me where their tractors are and their combines and what they’re doing. And it’s changing the game for many of our producers that they don’t need to be in the farm every single day. They can do it remotely.

And so it’s really freeing up their time to do other things that are more  productive for them or more value added for them. But it ensures that the job is still getting done. We’ve really, I would say, been on a very long-term journey that we’re accelerating here. within the past five or six years but  and we’ll continue to accelerate that as we see more and more opportunities for customers.

So what are you going to do with artificial intelligence and how are you going to utilize that going forward? I mean you certainly are using it to an extent right now for machine learning and trying to program the machines for today. But what do you do with all the data and how do you do any predictive analysis or where are you taking that?

AI is relatively new and I think companies are trying to figure out exactly how to make the best use of it and what questions to ask and again how to do predictive analysis. We are at the forefront of our artificial intelligence. You know the key opportunities that we see right now is how do we help do the job better.

You know the See & Spray capabilities, the autonomy capabilities, other automation of job steps is another application for us to take advantage of. You know you mentioned about the customer’s data. We’ve been very firm in saying that the data that that we’re collecting is the customer’s data and so they choose who they want to share that data with and we enable that sharing of data to happen but it’s all at the decision of the customers.

where does AI go in agriculture? I think we’re still trying to figure that out. We have an enormous amount of data and insights and so how do we help customers at the end of the day make better decisions in their operations? How do they better optimize their machine performance? We have an enormous amount of data just on the machines themselves. in terms of regular maintenance  engagement with their dealer.

We have data around the execution of the job and ultimately the yields that come out of all of those job steps during the course of a growing season. And so we’re starting to work with customers to say what are you looking for in your future? What are the problems that you’re facing? And how can we work with you with the data to help solve those problems? And I would say we’re at the infancy of that right now, but it’s definitely going to be impactful for customers. And it first starts with building a robust data set that I think we’re uniquely positioned to have to be able to then create those insights for the long term.

I would think it would be helpful when it comes to variant weather patterns, flooding, droughts, you could reprogram or you’d have to reprogram your machine to adhere to very wet circumstances but still get the same yield that you would want to get for just a regular year.

Yeah, it’s interesting. We just were at a recent farm show and using the data in a macro level, we’ve actually been able to help educate customers that if you plant soybeans earlier, it actually has a positive impact on yield and by 5%. And so, and that’s meaningful for producers, especially in today’s environment, that just the day or the planting window that you start  has a meaningful impact on what your actual yield outcome is.

And we’ve done that based on  us looking at the data to say, “Hey, there’s an opportunity here, customer, for you do something different. And that’s one example of how we’re using data to help customers do the job better.

Or if it’s a very wet spring and it’s planting season, maybe you would reconfigure the tractor to plant differently. So, why would a farmer choose John Deere over your competitors? You’ve given us all sorts of advantages, but your competition must be doing some of the same things that you’re doing.

That’s a great question, and I have a great deal of respect for the competitors that we compete with in our industry. You know, we’re all out trying to serve our customers, but I think why the customers choose Deere and I think it’s really a combination of several factors.

One, it’s the quality and the performance of our products that are in the field day in day out. It’s the technology that we have incorporated into those machines. It’s the seamless flow of data into the John Deere operations center that helps them manage their operations more efficiently and effectively. And I think the final piece is really around our dealers and the dealer network that we’ve established around the world is I believe second to none in terms of how we support our customers in the field.

And at the end of the day, we can have all the great technology and we can do all great things, but the machine has got to work in the field. And that’s what our dealers do every day is ensure that the customers have the product and the technology they need to do the job. And they’re there if something happens, they reduce the downtime and ensure that customers are up and running, especially during critical times during the course of the year, planting, harvest, spraying, and customers rely on those dealers. They’re one of their trusted advisers.

So, I think that combination of product, technology, and channel really differentiates Deere in the markets that we serve, and that’s what helps us garner the support from customers, and I’m very thankful for the customers that do business with us.

Is there any question that I didn’t ask you that you would like to answer or leave our listeners with any other key insights?

You know, I say deer’s been around for nearly 200 years. We want to be around for at least another 200 years and we’re going to do that by staying maniacally focused on the customers and how do we continue to reinvent ourselves year-over-year to understand the challenges that customers face.

We’re committed to make the investments necessary to create that value for them. We want to continue to be their trusted partner on this journey of helping them create the value in their operations. We want to do that through the products that we create, the technologies, and the combination of those together supported by our channel that at the end of the day gives them the confidence they need to do out and do the job.

And especially in challenging times, we’re there for them to  help them be more productive and more sustainable for the future. And at the end of the day, we got a growing population to feed and we want we are excited to be a part of that and more importantly to partner with our customers to make that happen.

Well, thank you very much, Aaron, for making the world a better place through our farmers and through sustainability and having everyone have a better yield and enable us to feed a growing population on existing land. We won’t need to put more land under plow because of John Deere.

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Transcript: What Does it Mean to be Healthy?

This podcast is based on this post. 

All right, welcome back everyone. Ready for another deep dive?

Definitely always up for a good deep dive.

Awesome. So, today we’re tackling something that feels, I don’t know, super basic, but also kind of mysterious.

Oh, like why?

Health. I mean, we all want it obviously. But what does it actually mean to be healthy? It’s a big question.

It really is. And it gets even more complicated when you think about this. Uh the US spends something like $5 trillion every year on healthcare.

Crazy, right? But are we really the healthiest nation out there? I’m not so sure.

Right. You’d think with all that spending, we’d be like the gold standard of health, which is exactly why this article, uh, what is health totally caught my eye. That one too is pretty interesting.

Goes way beyond just eating your veggies and hitting the gym. You know, it even suggests there are some like unexpected ways to measure how healthy we are.

Yeah. And that’s important because even people who seem to be doing all the right things can still have health issues. So, what’s this article say? Is it like whole lifestyle thing?

That’s exactly it. It’s like health as a way of life, a mindset almost.

And get this, it uses these three kind of unusual measurements to get a more complete picture.

Oh, okay. I’m intrigued. What are they? Laid on me.

All right, get ready. V2 max, grip strength, and the sit and rise test.

Hm, interesting. Some of those ring a bell, but honestly, can those really tell us how healthy we are? Like really?

That’s what I was wondering, too. So, let’s break them down one by one. Maybe we’ll be surprised. Starting with V2 max. Any idea what that even is?

V2 max. Well, basically, it measures how much oxygen your body can use when you’re exercising. Like really pushing yourself.

So, like how efficiently your lungs and heart are working together.

Exactly. The more oxygen you can use, the better shape your heart and lungs are in. And studies have shown that a higher V2 max is actually linked to, well, living longer. The article mentioned this one study that followed over a 100,000 people. And guess what? Those with higher V2 max scores had a lower risk of dying.

Wow. Okay, now you’ve got my attention.

So, how do you even measure this V2 max thing? Do you have to like go to a lab and run on a treadmill with tubes and stuff?

Well, yeah, that is the most accurate way. You’re right. But some fitness trackers are getting pretty good at estimating it these days, too. And the really cool part, you can actually work on improving your V2 max.

Oh, for real? I’m all ears. How do you do that?

High intensity interval training or HIIT is one of the best ways. You know those workouts where you’re going all out for short bursts and then you get a little break.

Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about those. They sound intense. But what makes them so good for V2 max specifically?

Well, because they push your cardiovascular system to the max. Literally. Like boot camp for your heart and lungs. makes them stronger and more efficient. And get this, there’s research that suggests HIIT can even help your brain function, too.

Seriously, that’s wild. Okay, I am definitely intrigued by this whole V2 max thing now. All right, let’s move on to the next one. This uh grip strength measurement. This one honestly has me a little stumped. How how strong your grip is tell you anything about your overall health? It just seems so random.

I know it does seem a bit out there at first glance, right? But grip strength can actually tell you a lot about your muscle mass and strength, particularly in your upper body.

And think about it, we use our grip for so many things. Like carrying groceries, opening jars, you know, even just shaking someone’s hand.

Yeah. We totally take it for granted.

Exactly. And this is where it gets really interesting. Some studies have actually linked a decline in grip strength to an increased risk of health problems as we age.

Like what kind of problems?

Things like heart disease and even some types of cancer, believe it or not.

Whoa. Okay. Okay. I did not see that coming. I guess weaker grip strength could be a sign that someone’s maybe not as active or they’re losing muscle mass which could lead to all sorts of other issues. Right. Exactly. It really shows how different aspects of our health are all connected in ways we might not even realize. Oh, and the article even gives some like target numbers for grip strength based on your age. For example, they say a 40-year-old woman should be able to hang from a bar for like a minute and a half.

A minute and a half. I don’t even know if I could do that. All right. This deep dive is making me want to hit the gym like right now. Okay, so you’ve got one more measurement to cover, right? The sit and rise test. What is that exactly and how does that relate to health?

Okay, so it’s actually a pretty simple test. You just sit down on the floor and then stand back up. The catch is you can’t use your hands or arms to help you.

I feel like that would be easy for some people and really tough for others. What makes it so important?

Well, it’s a really good way to assess your mobility and flexibility, which are super important for, you know, staying independent and pre ending falls as we get older. And there was this study, it’s mentioned in the article, that found something pretty amazing. People who had trouble with the sit and rise test actually had lower survival rates over time.

So, being able to move around easily is actually linked to a longer life.

That really makes you think about all the time we spend like sitting at desks and looking at screens.

Does, doesn’t it? This test is kind of like a sneak peek into your overall uh what’s the word? Muscular skeletal health. It shows how well you’ll be able to get around as you get older. And speaking of aging, the article brings up this really big question. How do we age well and stay healthy for as long as possible?

That is the million dollar question, isn’t it? And I’m guessing this article suggests that these measurements can help us do just that.

You got it. It’s all about getting a more complete picture of our health beyond just like weight or blood pressure. But it also points out that health isn’t just about the physical stuff. Our mental and emotional well-being play a huge role too.

That’s true. I mean, you can be physically fit but still struggle with things like stress or anxiety. So, how does the article address that side of things?

Well, it really emphasizes, you know, having a positive mindset, managing stress,

and having those good social connections. It even suggests those things can help boost your immune system, you know, protect you from chronic diseases and all that.

Wow. Really? So, it’s not just what you eat and how much you exercise. It’s about how you think and how you connect with other people too.

Exactly. It’s all connected, right? Physical, mental, emotional. You can’t really separate them.

It’s like a holistic view of health, taking care of the whole person.

Exactly. And that kind of brings us back to those three measurements we were talking about. They’re a good way to like check in with your physical health and maybe see where you can improve, you know.

Okay. I like that. So, let’s get practical for a minute. If someone wants to, you know, boost their scores on those measurements, where should they start?

Well, with V2 max, remember that’s all about how well your body uses oxygen during exercise. And like we said earlier, high intensity interval training, that HIIT stuff can be a real gamechanger.

But for someone who’s never done HIIT before, it seem a little daunting. Any tips for easing into it?

Absolutely. You don’t have to go all out right away. Start with like a shorter workout, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, and slowly increase the intensity and how long you do it as you get more fit. And you can always modify the exercises too.

Like instead of sprinting, maybe you do a fast walk or a light jog.

Right. Right. So, it’s all about finding that starting point that’s challenging but not like impossible and then just pushing yourself a little further each time.

Exactly. And listen to your body. Don’t be afraid to take rest days when you need them.

Good advice. Now, what about grip strength? How can we, you know, pump up those numbers?

There are a few easy exercises that can really make a difference like the dead hang. You just find a bar or something you can grip comfortably and hang there as long as you can. Oh,

Okay. Sounds simple enough.

It is, but trust me, it’s a great workout for your forearms and grip.

How long should someone aim to hang for?

Start with what you can do. Maybe like 10 or 15 seconds and then gradually increase the time. And you can also try different grips like overhand, underhand. Just mix it up a little.

Yeah, variety is the spice of life even when you’re hanging from a bar. Any other exercises?

Farmers carries are another Another great one, farmer’s carries.

What’s that?

It’s just like it sounds. Pick up a weight in each hand and walk with it. You can use dumbbells, kettle bells, even heavy grocery bags if you want. And it works your grip, but also your core, shoulders, back, even helps with your posture.

I’m definitely adding farmers carries to my workout routine. All right, last but not least, the sit and rise test. That one seems like it’s all about flexibility and mobility, right? Any tips for improving in those areas.

Yoga and Pilates are both great for that. Lots of movements that challenge your balance and flexibility and all that.

Yeah, I’ve tried yoga before and I always feel so much better afterward, but it can be intimidating for beginners. What would you say to someone who wants to try it but doesn’t know where to start?

Oh, there are so many beginner friendly classes these days. You can even find videos online that are specifically for the sit and rise test.

And you don’t have to be a yoga master to benefit either. Just taking a few minutes each day to stretch can make a huge difference.

So, it’s all about finding what works for you and making it a regular part of your routine.

Exactly. And that actually brings up a really important point from all of this. You don’t have to make these big crazy changes to live a healthier life, right?

It’s about those small sustainable changes. You know, the little things you can actually stick with and building those habits over time.

Yeah, that’s really encouraging. So, we’ve covered the physical side of things pretty well, but the article also talked about mental and emotional well being. any practical tips for you know taking care of those aspects of health?

One of the simplest things but also one of the most powerful is mindfulness like meditation, deep breathing, even just taking a few minutes to appreciate the little things that can help reduce stress so much and it’s good for your overall well-being.

Oh yeah. Just slowing down and being present in the moment.

Exactly. And another big thing for mental and emotional health is nurturing your social connections, spending time with people you care about. Having meaningful conversations, being part of a supportive community, that can make a huge difference in how happy and resilient you are.

That makes sense, but it’s easy to let those connections slip, especially when life gets busy. Any tips for strengthening those social ties?

Just make an effort to reach out to people, even if it’s just a quick call or text. Join a club or group that interests you. Volunteer. There are tons of ways to connect with others.

Those are great ideas. So, we’ve covered a lot in this deep dive. We’ve talked about those surp rising measurements of health. We’ve discussed practical strategies for improving our physical and mental well-being and we’ve highlighted that, you know, holistic approach. What’s the main takeaway you want listeners to walk away with?

It’s about realizing that health isn’t like, you know, it’s not a finish line you cross. It’s a journey. It’s something you keep working on.

It really is. And it’s different for everyone. There’s no one right way to be healthy.

Exactly. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about finding what works for you. Making choices that make you feel feel good, you know, in every way.

Totally. It’s about pushing yourself, but also being kind to yourself along the way.

Yeah, for sure. And remembering that health is about so much more than how you look. It’s about how you feel physically, mentally, emotionally. It’s about having the energy to do the things you love.

It’s about feeling alive, right? Having that spark. And I think those three measurements, the V2 max, grip strength, sit and rise test, they can really help us see where we’re at on that journey.

Totally. They give us something concrete to track. But it’s not about obsessing over the number. numbers. It’s about using them as a guide to help us live better lives, healthier, and happier.

That makes a lot of sense. Until next time, everyone, stay curious.

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Transcript: Digging into Biofuels


Transcript from January 11, 2024 podcast

Lucy Stitzer:

Welcome back to Dirt to Dinner’s Digging In podcast.

This is Lucy Stitzer and today we’re digging into renewable fuels and the Biden Climate Initiative, which aims to be carbon neutral by 2050. This includes all petroleum that fuels motor vehicles. The standard is to replace the billions of gallons of fuel the United States uses each year with bio with biofuels. Currently, the US uses about 35 billion gallons of ethanol biodiesel, renewable diesel and in limited form sustainable aviation fuel.

Today’s guest is Colin Murphy who is the Deputy Director at the Policy Institute for Energy Environment and the economy at the University of California Davis. In this podcast, he explains the importance of biofuels and how we are going to get to net zero by 2050. Welcome, Colin Murphy.

Colin Murphy:

I am the Deputy Director for the Policy Institute for Energy Environment and Economy at UC Davis and I also co-lead the Low Carbon Fuel Policy Research Initiative. We’re big fans of excessively long wordy titles here at UC Davis, and really what that means, most of my job for the last several years has been to lead our research and engagement efforts around fuel policy.

The main thing we work on is the Low Carbon Fuel standard, which is a policy that was first adopted by California and British Columbia in 2010. Oregon implemented their own in 2016, Washington did theirs last year. So it’s a policy structure that has been very effective in the places that have had it at reducing the amount of petroleum that we consume for transportation. It’s seen as one of the gold-standard fuel policies out there. Certainly not the kind of thing where you’d want it to be the only policy you’re using a transportation, it needs to work with things like electric vehicle policies and policies to switch to renewable electricity and sort of a broad economy-wide portfolio.

But it’s an important part of that portfolio. And so we do research on it. We publish papers like any other academic, but we also spend a lot of our time working with regulators and other policymakers to help understand the topic and help guide them as they make decisions about how they want their jurisdiction to do this. So we have interest from a number of states all over the country who are thinking about, or at some step in the process of adopting a low carbon fuel standard as well as a number of other countries.

Canada just adopted essentially a low carbon fuel standard at the federal level in addition to the one in British Columbia. Brazil has one. It’s limited to liquid fuels only, but they have a very similar policy as well, and a number of other nations are considering it. So yeah, my life for most of the last 10 years has really been largely focused on low carbon fuel standards. But we’re also, we do work on the federal renewable fuel standard, which is a different kind of policy doing increasing amount of work in Europe where they have their own approach to decarbonizing fuels. And we’re really just trying to think about that and make sure we have policy that’s informed by the best science we can.

Lucy Stitzer:

So you’ve been a consultant for the renewable fuel standard for the national one for our country as well as Europe, and then you’re helping Canada and then a variety of different states who are trying to implement their own standards as well?

Colin Murphy:

Yeah, yeah. Not really a consultant so much. We’re an academic research group, so our mission is public benefit and to help also train people. We have grad students coming through and working with us. But yeah, we do research and policy engagement, working with policy makers to help them make good decisions at a wide variety of jurisdictions, mostly in California because it’s obviously where we are and university, it’s California, but we work with jurisdictions all over the world.

Lucy Stitzer:

Well, that’s pretty exciting.

Colin Murphy:

It certainly doesn’t give me a lot of opportunities to be bored.

Lucy Stitzer:

No, I would think not. Well, let’s just talk about the renewable fuel standard and just talk about the United States as a whole in the 2050 green energy, I guess, mandate by Biden indicated that we needed carbon-free electricity by 2035 and carbon free overall by 2050. And so I’m curious about what part biofuels will play in this, and when we think about fuel, I just want to clarify that when I think of fuel, I think we’re talking mostly about cars, trucks, airplanes, and not necessarily to go back on the grid. I think that’s a different subject, but we could certainly talk about what goes back on the grid. But just as far as most of this conversation goes is mostly about, I’ll call it motor fuel, and the UX today uses, yeah, vehicles uses about, I’m thinking, yeah, 135 billion gallons of fuel. And the renewable fuel today is about 37 billion gallons. So am I correct in thinking that there’s just a huge ramp up for the next 25 or so years and to do that?

Colin Murphy:

So there’s definitely going to need to be a huge ramp up, but for most vehicles, so most of that fuel that the US uses is used to fuel on-road vehicles, cars, trucks, buses, stuff like that. And most of it, about 50 or 60%, I’d have to go back and look at the numbers to be sure, is light duty vehicles, passenger cars, cars, trucks, SUVs, things like that.

For the light duty vehicles, battery electric vehicles are almost certainly going to be the main technology that we are using in a world where we have successfully reduced emissions. They have the best combination of low cost, high performance flexibility and everything you need to do that. Very large parts of the medium heavy duty vehicle sector, so these are commercial vehicles, trucks, vans, buses, stuff like that. Most of them can also go onto batteries as well. And in most cases, batteries, because they’re much more efficient at converting energy into motion than an internal combustion engine.

And because they don’t have as many moving parts of an internal combustion engine, their operational costs are a lot lower. So in most cases, it’s actually cheaper. Even today for some vehicle classes, it’s actually cheaper to own and operate an electric vehicle over its full lifespan than it’s internal combustion engine. And batteries are still going to keep getting cheaper over the next 10 years. So most of that 135 billion gallons of fuel is going to be replaced by electricity.

And so we definitely do not have to figure out where we’re going to get 135 billion gallons a year of liquid fuel, which is great because we don’t have the slightest clue where we get 135 billion gallons a year of liquid fuel. So even as important as EVs are, they can’t do everything by themselves. And there’s two real limitations. One is that they’re just some parts of the transportation system where batteries do not have the characteristics to really be a good fit.

The big one is aviation, especially long haul aviation, anything near going more than 500 miles, maybe a thousand miles, batteries just don’t look like they have a trajectory to get to enough energy density where they can satisfy that need. There are also a few specialized applications. Some of the very long haul freight trucks, maybe batteries are not a great fit there. Places people live in really remote areas or really mountainous areas, maybe batteries aren’t the best fit there. So there’s a few other niches of the transportation system besides aircraft that are likely to need something else, probably a liquid fuel for a long time.

Lucy Stitzer:

What about anything on the waterways, barges? They transport a lot of food.

Colin Murphy:

You’re absolutely right. That’s another one where we currently think liquid fuels are likely to be the issue. It’s possible in those hydrogen or renewable natural gas could end up being the fuel there. But for those, yes, liquid fuels may be switching to ammonia or methanol instead of the current kind of heavy oils, or you can make synthetic oils. The thing is waterways, they’re relatively small fraction of the total fuel pool. So even though we definitely have to find a solution for them, it’s not as pressing or scary a problem as is with aviation.

The other thing is with most boats, they have more space and they have looser technical requirements. So with an aircraft, because of the need to be extremely safe with an aircraft and be able to handle a wide range of temperature fluctuations because they fly up very high where it’s pretty cold, the number of potential technical solutions that work in aircraft is a lot more limited than it is in shipping. So while shipping is absolutely something that we have to think of and liquid fuels look like they’re probably going to be the solution there, it’s not, at least to me, not quite as scary or challenging a problem as aircraft.

Lucy Stitzer:

Well, definitely. I mean, your air, you’re in the air and if something goes wrong, there’s

Colin Murphy:

Pull over and wait for someone to bring you another can of gas.

Lucy Stitzer:

Yeah, exactly. And what about trains?

Colin Murphy:

Trains, again, in terms of total magnitude, they’re relatively small. For a lot of trains, you can use electricity and just have a cable overhead or running next to the track. That’s the way a lot of the rail in Europe works is they’re electric and there’s cables running along the track and they get their electricity that way. For trains, hydrogen is a potentially good idea. Hydrogen has a great energy density by mass. So energy for every kilogram of weight is pretty high, but has a lousy energy density by volume.

But with trains, you can put a car full of hydrogen going right behind the train to fuel it to go for thousands of miles, and that doesn’t really affect the train’s functioning all that much. So hydrogen’s one of the ones where I think it’s uniquely well-suited to work in rail applications, possibly maritime, but there’s a little bit more space constraint on the water. So yeah, there’s certainly options there. But again, because the technical requirements are a lot looser than they are for per aircraft, we’re not quite as certain that it has to be a liquid fuel, whereas with aircraft, it’s probably going to have to be a liquid. Right.

Lucy Stitzer:

Yes, I would agree. And then you have the weight and the balance, and as you said, the temperature fluctuation. So there’s a lot with aircraft. So you’ve run through all the different vehicles. So that would bring the 135 billion gallons of fuel that we use today. Would you anticipate that it would come down to fewer, all that? Yeah.

Colin Murphy:

So aircraft, the US consumes about 40 to I think 42, 45, somewhere in their billion gallons a year of jet fuel, excluding military applications. We don’t have great data on that for obvious reasons. With some of the aircraft, like short range lights, 500 miles, maybe a thousand miles probably could go to battery electrics or hydrogen fuel cells. So some of that 40 billion gallons probably could get switched out for or something other than liquid fuel.

But then the needs of shipping, so back of the envelope, probably 40 or 50 billion gallons a year of total demand for liquid fuels over the long run is probably what we’re looking at. And that’s still a lot, but at the very least, it’s not so far out of the realm of what we’ve produced from things other than petroleum that we can at least put together a coherent story about how we might piece together a portfolio that works.

Lucy Stitzer:

So you’re saying we could take out about a hundred or 90 billion out of the petroleum business and we can replace most of that with actually what we’re doing today, our renewable fuel usage is about 37 billion today. And you’re saying we only need about 40? So

Colin Murphy:

Yeah, now from

Lucy Stitzer:

Going to be a big ramp up,

Colin Murphy:

I mean, so of the 37 billion that we’re, yeah, of the 37 billion we’re producing, a lot of that is ethanol, which has a lower energy density. So you have to go and take a few billion gallons off that number to reflect the fact that ethanol is not as energy dense. But yeah, we’re looking at an order of assuming we can take all this fuel and push it to the sectors that need it, that don’t have any other options, doubling the amount may be tripling at most.

There’s a lot of uncertainty here with how quickly is air travel going to keep growing? It’s been the fastest growing form of transportation over the last several decades. So are we going to try to reign in the amount of growth in fuel consumption for air travel or are we going to say no air travel has value. Let’s give people this opportunity to experience the world in a really meaningful and important way.

So we’re going to find a way to make enough fuel to keep supporting, giving more people access to it. And that’s a values question as much as it’s an analytics question. But yeah, we’re looking at something where doubling, probably tripling at most, should be able to give us enough fuel to have a transportation system that provides equal or more total access to mobility than it does today. And the other thing to point out is that there are a number of options for producing liquid fuels that aren’t biofuels.

They’re still kind of in their infancy, but there’s been a lot of interest in a process called electrically derived fuels. And in these, you take electricity, you use the power to break apart carbon dioxide, which you can either capture from the air or capture from an industrial source. We’re going to need a lot of carbon capture under any climate plan that’s going to work, use electricity to break the CO2 apart into carbon monoxide. And then you combine the carbon monoxide with hydrogen, which again you make with electricity using electricity to split water apart into hydrogen and oxygen, combine those together and you can assemble them into liquid fuels using a process called Fischer–Tropsch synthesis. And this is something that’s been done for many decades. It’s not terribly efficient.

Lucy Stitzer:

You can use Fischer–Tropsch for everything. It seems like you could use it for biofuels, you can use it for biodiesel, renewable diesel. I mean, it seems like Fischer–Tropsch is the gold standard for converting any type of matter into a fuel.

Colin Murphy:

Yeah, yeah. I mean the process with biomass is you basically break the biomass down into carbon monoxide and hydrogen and then catalytic assemble those into whatever you want. So as long as you have the carbon and the hydrogen coming from somewhere, you can make a liquid fuel. And in this case, we’re using carbon out of CO2 and hydrogen from water. Previously we’d gotten them out of biomass. The thing is, it’s not terribly efficient.

So right now, if you’re trying to do a fisher to synthesis using this process, you’re losing at least half, sometimes more, like even 60% of the energy you put in to things like waste heat and making unwanted chemicals. The chemical process to synthesize this stuff is not perfectly specific. It makes a lot of different things, only some of which are the molecules you actually want. So we’re pretty confident that we can improve that efficiency somewhat.

We can get the energy losses below 50%, definitely maybe down into the 40% level. And so that at least makes it a lot more tractable for us to be able to make several billion gallons, maybe even 10 or 20 billion gallons a year of liquid fuels out of this  Fischer–Tropsch synthesis process. Now, the problem with it is it requires a whole lot of electricity at a time when we are trying to rapidly retire the fossil fuel plants off of our grid because they are what is emitting most of the carbon from the US and from most industrialized economies.

So while we’re trying to go in and retire fossil plants and build enough renewable or other non emitting energy to replace them, if you add on this very large demand to also make a whole bunch of transportation fuel, that really increases the degree of difficulty in terms of getting the electrical grid in turned over. So eels are one of the things where they have the best argument for being a large scale supply of very low carbon fuels in the 2040s probably.

But for the next 10 years, while we’re still getting so much of our electricity off of fossil fuels, it doesn’t really make any sense to burn fossil fuels and then use it to make an EFU when you’re losing half the energy to waste or useless byproducts. So there’s sort of a technology where we need to deploy a few of these facilities at commercial scale in order to start letting the technology mature to get experience with it and to figure out how we’re going to make it more efficient, but it’s not going to be able to provide us a lot of really significant volume at the carbon tendencies. We need until probably at least 10 more like 15 years from now.

Lucy Stitzer:

So like the Fischer–Tropsch technology, we have 2.0.

Colin Murphy:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it has been used in many cases for many decades, but the problem has always been it hasn’t been very efficient. And part of the low efficiency is that lack of selectivity that it makes a lot of different chemicals and not always the ones that you’re looking for or ones that are particularly useful. It’s the kind of problem that humans are usually reasonably good at solving. We’re good at optimizing technological systems, but you have to go and build it to full scale and give people years of experience running these things to figure out, oh, if I tweak this thing here and add a little heat exchanger there or change the chemical composition in this other place, then I can keep incrementally improving the efficiency. So it’s this weird spot where we need to build a few of these facilities at full commercial scale to have that opportunity, but we also need to be careful not to sort of too much of it in the short term because it’s not going to have a very good carbon intensity for a number of years until the grid is much, much cleaner.

Lucy Stitzer:

Really, the biofield market is going to continue to ramp up until 2035, maybe 2040 until we get and solve some of these issues and then also Fischer–Tropsch. And so we really still need corn and soybeans for the next foreseeable future.

Colin Murphy:

So I think that’s the most likely outcome as well. So most of the volume of biofuels used in the US has been determined and driven by the federal policy, the renewable fuel standard, certainly all the corn ethanol, the amount of corn ethanol that the US makes is essentially the amount of corn ethanol that the RFS incentivizes. They don’t go much beyond that level. And the same thing has largely happened with the soybean based diesel substitutes that are growing pretty rapidly right now. And the industry is asking the government to keep expanding the size of the RFS to let them continue growing.

And if you look at the targets that the EPA put out earlier this year, it looks like they’re starting to say it might be time to tap the brakes and not continue this level of growth because they recognize the potential problems that you get into, particularly with land competition as you get to two larger and larger amounts of biofuels.

But the issue is that for both corn and soybeans, biofuels are only part of what they make. So you have about 15 billion gallons a year right now of corn ethanol that’s being produced, and the corn that goes into an ethanol refinery, what the ethanol refinery does, it takes the starch out and makes ethanol out of the starch. But all of the protein, the fiber, most of the other nutrients, and even some of the starch doesn’t convert. Everything gets left behind and gets sold as annual feed called distiller greens.

Most of what would happen, what would’ve happened to that corn if it hadn’t been used for ethanol is it would’ve gone to the animal feed market anyway. So you lose the starch part of the ethanol and that no longer goes to feed the animals. But all of the yeast that ferment the ethanol and grow in the starch, the sort of spend yeast gets added into this diller grain. So you take this corn that would’ve gone a hundred percent annual feed, and instead you have kind of a slightly smaller volume of a higher protein version of animal feed.

All this is to say, at least in the case of corn, we make 15 billion gallons of ethanol. I think it uses about 30% of our corn crop, but it’s not like that 30% of the corn crop goes away, that 30% of the corn crop is still going into annual feed and not having a terribly large impact on the net acreage not a zero impact. It absolutely does have zero impact, and it does cause some land exchange, but it’s not like that 30% is gone and completely out of the food system just comes into the food system in a different way.

Lucy Stitzer:

So I think if you could just explain the four different types just so people can understand what we’re talking about a little bit.

Colin Murphy:

So like you said, ethanol’s kind of the simple one. The way we predominantly make it now is we pull starch out of something in the US it’s pretty much all corn in Brazil or other countries that have a sugar cane industry. The sugar cane is another great way to make ethanol. And then you ferment, you break starch down into sugars, and then you ferment the sugars into alcohols. Essentially the same process you make used for making beer, wine, or spirits just done on an industrial scale. And it wouldn’t taste very good if you tried to drink it directly. And ethanol is currently in the US blended into all gasoline at about a 10% level. That’s what we’ve been doing since the mid two thousands. The having some ethanol gasoline helps the gasoline burn cleaner. You need about six or 7% to really get that clean burning, the oxygen effect.

Beyond that, you’re just trying to reduce the amount of petroleum you use and replace with something that’s lower carbon than petroleum. And there has been a lot of controversy over corn ethanol, whether it is actually lower carbon. There was a very famous study that came out last year, guy named Tyler Lark was the lead author on it, and he made the argument that the RFS was actually ultimately worse, made the corn ethanol worse than petroleum. So I don’t think his methods were quite right. Part of it. The problem with biofuels is a lot of the impact and a lot of greenhouse stuff comes from what we call indirect land use change. And this is where because you have fuel producers now starting to consume agricultural products that historically has only gone into feeding people or animals or a really small number of other industrial uses.

Now the demand for these industrial, these agricultural commodities goes up and somewhere someone in the world is going to have to make more of the stuff to replace what went into fuels. And some of that replacement comes from plowing more land and bringing more land into cultivation. And there’s a big carbon impact from plowing more land. So the LARC paper said because of I luck, the renewable fuel standard and the corn ethanol was worse than the petroleum, there has been a lot of back and forth, there’s several back and forth in terms of open comment letters published by various groups of researchers on that topic. So a lot of methodological uncertainty over that. Beyond that, even if you believe the LARC paper, I think the appropriate take home message from it is maybe we shouldn’t have gone from 15 billion gallons of ethanol we did. And you can’t really unring that bell, even if you sort of stopped and said, well, any land that was cleared, we’ll return to natural form, the carbon’s lost and takes many decades to recover.

And we don’t have that sort of time. So the question I think now is what’s most useful? What’s the way to get the best use out of it? So the other thing with ethanol is there’s a process that some companies have been developed and are looking to commercialize right now where you can convert ethanol into aviation fuel. It’s not entirely unlike the Fischer–Tropsch synthesis we discussed earlier. And it’s small molecule, I’m sorry, it’s a small molecule that you can catalytic assemble into other bigger molecules like the ones that we used to fly planes on. So that might be one of the ways eventually as more EVs take over the on-road space, there’s not going to enough gasoline to blend the ethanol into, and there is some opportunity for us to increase the amount of ethanol we use. Most cars are on road, they can handle 15% ethanol without any problem.

And that would be a way to, again, push petroleum out of the system quicker, or you could turn the ethanol into jet fuel and use it to push petroleum out system that way. And that’s some of the stuff that we’re researching right now for the diesel substitutes. There’s biodiesel and renewable diesel. So biodiesel is made by a process called fatty acid methyl ester, or it’s a relatively simple low energy process to convert. Vegetable oils could be used cooking oil, could be soybean oil or any vegetable oil. You sort of heat it to a medium temperature, add some chemicals, and you can convert it to this biodiesel biodiesel. You can run it into written into most existing diesel engines up to about 20%. If you go over that, you have to start modifying the engine a bit to handle it. Plus, in cold weather, biodiesel starts to, just like most vegetable oils will start to get kind of thick and sludgy and gel up.

So most of the time, biodiesel is blended into regular diesel at a 5% or 7% level, and it’s fine. Doesn’t really cause a lot of problems that way. But because of these infrastructure issues, because of the cold weather performance and the need to only blend to a certain level, it’s not really what people are focused on right now. There’s not a lot of growth in the biodiesel space. Most producers have turned to renewable diesel. They can add some more hydrogen, and if they add a bit more hydrogen, you get a bit more of a coming out like SAF or jet fuel. So you can sort of choose whether you’re going to emphasize the production of renewable diesel or emphasize the production of SAF of renewable jet fuel. To date, most of the policies in the US have made it more beneficial for them to make renewable diesel. So that’s what they do. But with the SAF tax credit under the IRA, it’s likely we’re going to see a lot of the producers starting to tweak their process a bit to push more of their total product out through the SaaS pathways and a little bit less through the diesel pathways. Right.

Lucy Stitzer:

Well, plus the airlines have committed to a higher SAAF percentage.

Colin Murphy:

In the US it’s mostly voluntary commitments and incentives. The Saban challenge, which was the target that was put forth by the Biden administration but didn’t have a whole lot of regulatory teeth behind it, at least not yet, but there’s the SAAF tax credit that’s actually going to make a pretty big difference. Now, there’s a lot of controversy, surprisingly enough in this space controversy around the SAF tax credit and how exactly you’re going to define it. Most of that, again, comes down to this indirect land use change issue. So the way that the tax credit was set forth by Congress was if you’ll have to be at least 50% cleaner than petroleum and you get an additional bonus for every percentage point below 50, they’re able to get. So if you make it even cleaner, you get a larger and larger per gallon incentive.

Lucy Stitzer:

So you go around $1.25. The issue with that is to determine whether you get $1.25 or $1.50 or $1.75 is don’t you have to go back to the farm to determine how they’re growing the corn and determine what type of agriculture they’re using, whether they’re using cover crops or not. And that bodes a whole other series of questions of how do you verify how much carbon they’re sequestering through their growing methods.

Colin Murphy:

That is a big part of it. So we have good tools in the field of lifecycle analysis to understand how much fertilizer and how much diesel and how much electricity is used. For every ton of corn that comes off the field, it’s a lot more complex to understand how the use of a cover crop would affect soil carbon. We know with very high confidence that you can improve the amount of solid carbon retained in the soil by using things like cover crops or compost or possibly biochar or changing the types of crops or the harvest patterns or tilling the soil less. We know there’s a lot of things that can improve it, but soil is a really complex and dynamic system. So knowing that at least pushing that certain things move the needle in the correct direction is one thing, but being able to quantify it and say how many tons per acre are actually being saved?

There is another level of complexity altogether. And then on soil carbon, you also have the issue of permanence. So a farmer can make choices to use cover crops or use compost or switch to no-till agriculture and build up a lot of solid carbon in their soil. But if in five years or 10 years they decide to switch and need to start tilling the soil again, that carbon goes away. And if they received incentives to build up carbon and then in the future they till it and they lose it, all that money is kind of wasted. What they’re being paid for is permanent sequestration of carbon, and it’s not permanent at that point. Or if they sell their land to somebody else, then whoever else has it in the future, they could do the tillage and lose it. So this permanence or reversion risk is one of the things that really makes a lot of the regenerative agriculture policies, incentives so complex on top of the fact that there’s still a lot of uncertainty, and we’re still not able to effectively quantify it without doing a lot of really expensive and time consuming measurement that is probably just too expensive to really allow the farmer to receive much of an incentive, enough incentive for them to want to change their behavior.

So it’s the kind of thing we’re working on, and I think that we’ll keep getting better at it, but there’s a lot of uncertainty around soil carbon. The other big issue is that indirect land use change. The thing with indirect land use change is there’s really no way to develop a sensor that can measure it directly. Because what happens is because somebody is using more soybean oil in the US to make renewable diesel or saf, somebody else in the world might be slashing and burning rainforest in Southeast Asia to do a palm plantation, to grow palm oil, to sell to somebody on their side of the world because the lack of soybean oil coming out of the US has now changed international commodity flows. So there’s really no way for us to very precisely know how much indirect land use change every ton of soybean oil causes.

The only way you can really try to quantify it is through a model. What our models, the uncertainty is very large, and there’s a bunch of places in the model where you have to make these assumptions that are ultimately they’re subjective. There’s no objectively right or wrong way to make it. There’s only a bunch of different subjective ways. For example, when you go soybeans, you get soybean oil and soybean meal. We know how much fertilizer it took to grow the soybeans, so we know how many tons of carbon or grams of carbon were emitted in order to produce this ton of soybeans. But how much of that carbon is the responsibility of the soybean meal versus how much of it is the responsibility of the soybean oil? There’s a lot of different ways to do that. You can look at the mass, you can look at the energy content, you can look at the economic value.

None of them are objectively right or wrong, but they’ll all give you very different answers. And so that’s one of the problems with the model and with modeling eye luck, it’s the only way to assess indirect land use change, but you’re never going to get one definitively correct answer out of it. And so what’s happening with the SAF tax credit is a lot of the producers are asking the Department of Treasury, the ones that have to make the decision because a tax credit, and they’re obviously, they’re not biofuel analysts by nature at Department of Treasury, but they’re asking treasury, okay, well, let’s use this one particular model. And the US uses this model called greet to do lifecycle analysis. It is this fantastically complex model that’s been being developed for 20 years now, and it’s dozens of papers behind it. But in the current version of Greek, they include one IUC estimate based off of a different model.

And this estimate happens to be extremely friendly towards things like corn and soybeans. And so the industry’s saying, well, look, Greek’s the gold standard. This is the thing that they’ve decided to put in for their best guess. So let’s just use that and use that model with that estimate of eye look in order to determine whether we are 50% cleaner than petroleum, and if we are how much far below to figure out the per gallon range. Whereas a lot of other environmental saying, well know you don’t want to use one model. You have to use multiple models and look at the average or look at the range of options that comes out when you make these subjective decisions in different ways. That gives you a better sense of what the actual impact is not to use one of them. And if you do that, then in more justified and reasonable and certainly risk averse way than a lot of the soybean oil fuels or the corn ethanol alcohol to jet fuels wouldn’t be eligible for these credits.

I also recently gave a talk and published a blog post, which is available through our website if you go to lowcarbonfuel.uc.edu under presentations. I gave a talk over the summer talking about this and sort of why you can’t trust any one single model and why you have to go and look at the ensemble of various approaches out there. And even looking at going through the, if we know that we’re, whatever number we pick is probably not going to be right or it’s going to be too high or too low, we need to think about the risks of whether it’s better to overshoot our IUC estimate or to undershoot our ILAC estimate. And when you start thinking through all the various risk factors, it is much, much safer for us to overestimate IUC to take conservative approach and consume maybe less biofuels than would be theoretically optimal because it keeps us away from the more scary and irreversible risks than to error on the other side. So is there a

Lucy Stitzer:

Chance then that the US farmers or any farmer won’t be able to qualify then for selling their corn into the ethanol market?

Colin Murphy:

Well, no, this wouldn’t change the RFS, so this is just whether there would be the option to get an additional credit for producing jet fuel. But yeah, the existing markets aren’t going to change. They’re going to continue the trajectory set by the RFS volume.

Lucy Stitzer:

This is just for SAF, this is, so there’s a possibility then that us farmers wouldn’t be able to sell into the a f market, the ethanol market, but they could sell into the regular ethanol market.

Colin Murphy:

Yeah, that would be it. And so I think the worry is if you adopt too lax of a policy and bring too many biofuels in the system, then you could really start getting a lot of land conversion. And I don’t think there’s necessarily a problem from the food versus fuel standpoint. I mean, that would increase food prices, but probably not a huge amount. It’s more the carbon impact that if we’re going to go and expand agriculture a lot, there’s a huge carbon impact from doing that. You have to do it to feed people. Okay. Feeding people is obviously a priority. We need to do that. So if we have to have some carbon impact and expand land to keep feeding people, that’s one thing. But if we shouldn’t be doing things that have huge carbon impact in the name of, reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, which is really the goal of these biofuel policies. So that’s where we’re sort of getting hung up on, and we’re waiting for treasury to make the decision and see what they ultimately do. But if they choose to take the really lax approach on I luck and let these incentives be given out to a lot of farmers, there’s a chance you could get enough total growth here that you’ll start converting a lot of land globally and the carbon benefits could be pretty bad or they wouldn’t be a benefit at that point.

Lucy Stitzer:

Right. As it pertain to the land use.

Colin Murphy:

Yeah.

Lucy Stitzer:

Portion of the conversation. So let’s circle back to the original actually purpose of this conversation is really, as we do increase renewable fuels with all the ones that we’ve talked about, is there enough land and will there be a food versus fuel debate, putting aside the land use changes and putting aside the regulations and the great standards and all of that, just is there enough land and will there be enough food?

Colin Murphy:

So absolutely there’s enough land. Like we just said before, we jumped ahead a little bit. But the worry here is that we will be producing more corn and soybeans than would be good for the climate. And again, if we have to produce it to feed people, yes, that’s the choice we make, and that’s the right choice. But yeah, so we’re not worried that there’s going to be an absolute lack of land, nor really an absolute lack of food in any way. Are there risks that biofuel policy could increase the price of food? Yes, there are to date, outside of a couple of transient spikes, often around the drought we had in the early 20 teens, we haven’t seen a really massive increase in food prices as a result of fuel policy. It is definitely there, but in a lot of cases, having alternative supplies of fuel means you are less vulnerable to price fluctuations in petroleum.

So yes, there is some increase in the inflation applied to food prices, but less inflation applied to gasoline prices. I’m not enough of an economist to have a really well-informed opinion on the whole, is it better or worse than not having a biofuel policy? But nothing I’ve seen makes us seem like it’s terribly bad. Beyond that, we know that climate change is going to be incredibly bad for a lot of things, including for the food production system because many, many parts of the world that are highly fertile right now won’t be due to higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. So as long as the fuels that we’re making are actually lower carbon than the petroleum, they’re displacing. And that has not always been the case. There’s absolutely been several examples where we produce large amounts of fuels that are worse than the petroleum displaced, but many of them are at least lower carbon. And as long as that’s the case, then the value of reducing greenhouse gas emissions probably does more to help secure the long-term food supply from the effects of climate change than it does to hurt it.

Lucy Stitzer:

So it’s not like we’re only growing corn and soybeans only for fuel.

Colin Murphy:

Yes, absolutely. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so hard to analyze the greenhouse gas impacts of biofuels because almost every input has that dual purpose. And so one of the other things that we’ve been seeing is because we had a biofuel policy through the RFF that really until the last five years or so was almost entirely ethanol, really, renewable diesel wasn’t a big thing until five, six years ago because of this policy. We were actually starting to see more growers in the Midwest go from rotations where they do alternate corn and soy every other year, and soy helps add nitrogen because of nitrogen fixing plants. And then also by having different species of plant, you sort of provide a bit of a break in the pathogen cycles, so you need maybe a little bit less herbicide or less additives to controlled diseases for a while.

We’re starting to see more growers going from corn soil rotation to continuous corn because you had this demand for corn biofuels. Well, now with renewable diesel coming online and demanding a lot of soybean oil because that’s the cheapest oil that you can grow really in the western hemisphere, you’re now seeing people go back to corn soy rotations, and that has some additional benefits in terms of slightly reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer they need, and slightly reducing the amount of herbicides and other pathogen, chemical pathogen control measures that they have to use. These are, I’m sure, likely to be much smaller than just the big impacts of are these fuels, in fact clean up the petroleum? But they do make a difference. And so the fact that we’re seeing soy growth, there’s some benefits in terms of agronomy there.

Lucy Stitzer:

Well, thank you very much. This has been fascinating and certainly provides a lot of clarity around the renewable fuels conversation.

Colin Murphy:

Yeah, certainly. Happy to help. This is a really complex topic and one that’s going to become increasingly important in the next few years. So very happy to help you and your listeners start to learn more about it. And again, there’s a lot of data and resources available at our website at low carbon fuel dot uc davis.edu.

Lucy Stitzer:

Great. Well, thank you very much.

Posted on

Transcript: Digging into RMPs

Transcript from November 29, 2023 podcast

Hello, everybody. Garland West here with another Digging In episode, where we try to take a little bit deeper dive into subjects involving our food and the incredible system that produces it.

Today we have a really fun topic for you and one that I bet tells you some things you didn’t know before. We all know how important research is to our food system. We use sound science to open all sorts of doors, better plants and better animals through improved nutrition, better genetics, better production techniques. The list goes on and on and on. Scientists work every day to unlock more value in the commodities and the staples we’ve relied upon for literally hundreds of years. We get better, more nutritious food and innovative new uses that meet real market needs, and we get smarter consumers to boot. Our food system does more than ever before to provide a steady stream of the data and the information that comes from data so we can all make better, smarter food decisions.

None of that happens by chance. It doesn’t fall out of the blue like manna from heaven. It takes money and lots of it. It takes work by thousands of researchers all pointed toward finding answers to some of the toughest issues we still wrestle with in our food system. It takes a concerted effort to get the word out to people. Today we want to tell you a little about the role played by producers in making all that happen. Not the government, not fancy think tanks, not big business or big universities. All those folks play an important role, but we often overlook what hardworking, financially challenged farmers do to drive research and better consumer understanding of our food.

Today we’re going to talk to two people at the front lines of that effort. Bob Parker and Ryan Lepicier have spent years guiding what’s called a research marketing and promotion organization, or RMP, which are producer funded organizations that take farmer dollars and channel them into highly valuable research and public education. Bob and Ryan head the National Peanut Board based in Atlanta, and for more than a dozen years, have work to turn the commitment of peanut producers across the United States into something really, really important Today, we’ll ask them to tell us a bit about RMPs and especially what the peanut Board has been doing to help in peanut research and promotion.

Bob & Ryan, thank you for joining us at Dirt to Dinner. Digging in, you have a friendly audience here. Peanuts are one of my favorite stacks, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich may be my ultimate comfort food, but in a world hungry for protein and with farmers needing every market opportunity they can find, there’s more at stake here than snacks. Let’s start with the basics. Tell us what an RMP is and why the work groups like yours is so important to the interests of consumers everywhere.

Bob Parker:

An RMP is a research marketing and promotion board. It’s an organization created by the producers of a commodity where they come together and they vote whether to establish an official research marketing and promotion organization with their producer dollars. And the goal is to increase demand through promotion and marketing. And the other goal is to improve efficiency and production through production research.

Garland West:

Well, how many of these organizations are there? I know I’m familiar with the National Peanut Board, but how many of these organizations exist across US? Agriculture?

Bob Parker:

How many stars are in the sky?

Garland West:

Good answer.

Bob Parker:

I counted up at least 25, and it ranges all over the board from beef, pork and egg fluid milk. There’s even a paper and packaging board that was created by the paper industry to generically promote the use of paper. And they do an exceptional job with saying, send a personal note, someone that’s very effective. There’s the mushroom board, there’s cotton, there’s even a honey board, there’s multiple avocado boards. Oh my goodness. Three or four avocado boards, Mexican avocados and avocados and mango board, which is mostly imported. So importers help pay an assessment. They help pay for the funding of these boards.

Garland West:

Is there some Christmas organization? How do you coordinate all of these activities? Or are they totally independent of each other?

Bob Parker:

Well, we’re all under oversight from the agricultural marketing Service of USDA. We’re all, we’re an instrument of the United States Department of Agriculture, if that makes any sense. So we were authorized by 1996 Act of Congress that allowed producers to come together and vote whether to assess themselves a certain amount per unit of sale. In our case, $3 and 55 cents a ton to fund our program. And that’s how most of these boards were created, but some were created through their own act.

Garland West:

Sorry to interrupt, but you said something that really got my attention as a taxpayer. It sounds to me like these organizations are self-funded. This is not taxpayer money.

Bob Parker:

There’s not a penny that goes to fund our operations from taxpayers. In fact, I would argue that we benefit taxpayers by our production research and increasing awareness of the benefits of consuming peanuts, for example. And because of our support for production research, we’ve lowered the cost of production to the point that the price of a serving a peanut butter or snack peanuts today is only 19 cents per serving. So the consumer I think, benefits from our work through lower cost to buy our products.

Garland West:

Is there any kind of measure, how do you go about assessing the effectiveness of the money you spend? Is there any kind of economic projection about every dollar you spend generating X number of something?

Bob Parker:

USDA requires that we do a return on investment analysis every five years. And with that analysis as an econometric analysis, the economist looks at where we focus our efforts and spending and then looks at the impact that our efforts had on those specific areas and calculates a return. And our last return on investment analysis was performed in 2019 and showed over a $9 return to the farmer for every dollar invested by Farmers

Garland West:

Nine to one.

Bob Parker:

Yeah. Did

Garland West:

I hear you correctly on that? Yes. So if I test a buck, I get $9 in return.

Bob Parker:

That’s right.

Garland West:

That’s pretty good return. That’s better than what I get at my local bank by a long shot. Well, you talk about research and you talk about marketing and promotion. Can you give me an example or a couple of examples in each of those areas? What kind of research do you support?

Bob Parker:

We support research in several areas. So we do production research and we also support food allergy research in the production research arena. It’s bottom driven, I would say. What we do is we have so many dollars that we’re required by our charter to spend on production research, and we will allocate this money to each state based on its percentage of the production of US peanuts. We’ll ask the states to seek proposals from their research community and bring those proposals to our board for approval. So the farmers on the ground, the state organizations who know better than anyone what they need and what their issues and problems are actually submit to us how to spend their allocation of the research dollars. On top of that, we also spend money, additional research funds on areas such as genomic research. So how can we improve the genetics of conventionally farmed peanuts without having to resort to transgenic peanuts? Because right now there’s consumer resistance, manufacturer resistance, and so we’ve funded substantial amounts of research along with other industry organizations in mapping the genome of the peanut and then putting that knowledge to use through genetic markers. So breeders now, instead of making a cross by trial and error and hoping it took and actually do a DNA test and see if the trait that they were seeking to introduce into another plant actually took. And then I’ll let Ryan talk about some of our food allergy research because I’ve been doing all the talking so far.

Ryan Lepicier:

I think it’s interesting in the simplest terms, I think of research marketing and promotion programs as a self-help tax that producers impose upon themselves to help solve problems. Like in our case with peanuts in the late 1990s, we saw consumption way down. And remember the nineties were a time of low fat everything, and of course peanuts have healthy fats. So the industry got together around this idea of let’s create one of these research marketing and promotion programs so that we can help to solve some problems that the industry is facing. And one of those was the need to communicate about nutrition to the consumer, about the fact that peanuts are healthy, about the fact that peanuts contain heart healthy fats and protein and things that we need to have healthy lives. On the allergy front, I think this is one of the most interesting stories about the peanut board.

Ryan Lepicier:

How did a bunch of peanut farmers get onto this issue of peanut allergy? When the board first formed in the early two thousands, they got this giant truck that went around the country to state fairs and festivals, and it had a stage that was on the back of the truck and this giant peanut popped up and there were chef demos and performers. And as they took this truck around the country from time to time, someone would come up to them and say something like, how does it feel to grow something that kills people? And they kind of scratch their heads and they’re like, Hmm, this is happening more than once. We’re getting negative comments here and there. What’s going on with peanut allergy? We better learn about this. We better get smart about this. And so they formed a scientific advisory counsel of some of the world’s top experts to advise them, and they ended up getting connected with this guy, Dr.

Ryan Lepicier:

Gideon lack, a researcher in London who had spoken about his theory that children in western societies like uk, the United States, Australia, we’re not getting peanut in the diet early yet. He knew from his work that kids in Israel got a peanut snack called Bumba when they were teething age. And so he was looking for funding to do a study about that very issue, and the board gave him some money. And that study was published and it showed indeed that kids in Israel were fed this peanut containing food early, and the prevalence of peanut allergy was much, much lower in Israel. So fast forward, he puts together this larger study, it’s called the LEAP study. And the LEAP study took over 500 kids and put them into two different groups. One group of kids, all the kids were at high risk of peanut allergy, meaning they had eczema or egg allergy already.

Ryan Lepicier:

And half the kids got peanut between four and six months and half the kids did not get peanut. And when the study was completed after many, many years, it turned out that you could reduce the prevalence of peanut allergy in the peanut eating group by 86%. So those kids by age five. So those kids that got peanut early in the LEAP study, say that again, I want to make sure That’s really impressive set of numbers there up to the Yeah, so the LEAP study took hundreds of kids and put them into two different groups. All these kids had egg allergy or eczema. That’s a risk factor for developing peanut allergy. Half the kids got peanuts between four and six months of age. The other half the kids got no peanut food. Fast forward, the kids are five years old, the study ends and the kids that got peanut early, they had a reduction peanut allergy by 86%.

Garland West:

Wow, that’s really impressive.

Ryan Lepicier:

So when you talk about research and promotion programs and how farmers are making a difference, they’re not only helping themselves, right? They’re helping society at large by funding nutrition research by funding allergy research. In this case a landmark study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine that has changed the way that we feed our children. The dietary guidelines for Americans now say that kids should get all foods in the first year of life including allergenic foods like peanuts.

Garland West:

You’re telling me that the peanut industry, the peanut producer in particular, has funded this kind of important research work. Are we talking about tens of thousands of dollars of research, hundreds of thousands of dollars of research or million dollars of research,

Ryan Lepicier:

Try nearly $40 million in research education funding on the food allergy front,

Garland West:

Paid by peanut producers in America,

Ryan Lepicier:

Paid by peanut farmers in America.

Bob Parker:

Absolutely.

Garland West:

That’s

Bob Parker:

Very, that many could have gone for other things, but we felt like it was important to address that issue.

Garland West:

Absolutely, absolutely. I’ve also heard rumors that you get involved in some very interesting kind of marketing promotion activities, trying to organize this little podcast. For example, the travel schedule you guys have, the people of the peanut board are on the road nonstop telling the peanut story. How much time do you spend on the road trying to tell that story?

Ryan Lepicier:

Well, we have a great team here at the National Peanut Board of both staff members and partners like from our marketing agency or consultants that we bring in to help us with the work. And we keep everyone really busy. But the good news is that we are able to cover a lot of ground with a pretty modest budget. So we’re looking at consumer marketing really in two or three big buckets. So the first bucket would be consumer marketing, talking to consumers directly about the benefits of peanuts. And then we have a whole segment of our marketing work that’s focused on business development. How do we encourage new uses for peanuts, innovative new uses for peanuts? How do we encourage food service operators to use peanuts in their operation? And then a third thrust of our consumer work is really about reputation management. How do we defend the reputation of the peanut?

Ryan Lepicier:

So the allergy work would sort of fall under that bucket. How do we work to make a difference to improve the lives of people who suffer from peanut allergy? Of course, we’re working to eradicate peanut allergy, right? That’s the holy grail for us as we want to see peanut butter, I’m sorry. We want to see peanut allergy gone, right? We want it out of the picture, but there’s a lot that we can do in the interim to improve the lives of people who have peanut allergy. So for instance, we’ve funded research on oral immunotherapy that’s using the peanut or peanut protein to desensitize an individual with peanut allergies so that they have what’s called bite protection. The accidentally consume peanut. They’re not going to have a severe reaction. They’re not going to be peanut eaters eating PB and J every day, but they can consume peanut and live their lives without that nagging constant fear in the back of their heads that if I accidentally eat something with peanut, I could die.

Ryan Lepicier:

So those are really three areas of work. Of course, to me, and I’m a marketer at heart, is the consumer work is just so much fun. And that’s really because consumer marketing has changed at the speed of light and it continues to change at the speed of light. For many, many, many, many, many years, it was print, tv, radio out of home, and those marketing tools are still in the marketer toolbox, but we have so many amazing tools we can use now that provide us with data to help us improve what we’re doing on the next round. So I think our key platform now is TikTok and the National Peanut Board doesn’t even have a TikTok account. That’s not how you market on TikTok. So the fun thing about TikTok is being able to work with influencers or content creators have a following to help leverage their voices to tell the peanut story, right? We’re not telling it directly from the peanut board. We’re partnering with people who have followers who care about what they say and then using them to tell the peanut story.

Garland West:

Well, you’re dealing with somebody who has a very strong bias. I’m an old geezer who grew up on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. One of my favorite snack foods is peanuts. We’ve got jars of peanuts all around our house, half consumed from where I leave them, wherever I wander around the house. And then as I’ve grown older, I’ve recognized that in a world that needs more and more protein, especially plant proteins, this is a wonder crop. I mean, this is an incredible product that could help the world meet its growing need for more protein, better our consumers generally understanding that. Is the awareness of this as a, I won’t call it a miracle food, but it is a super food. Is the consumer aware of that? Is there growing evidence that consumers recognize what peanuts can offer?

Bob Parker:

If you went by consumption numbers per capita? I would answer yes. They’re aware that peanuts and peanut butter are a healthy choice for plant-based protein. As we’ve seen per capita consumption rates hit all time records during the pandemic at 7.8 pounds per capita in 2021. It fell back slightly to 7.7 and 22 and held at 7.7 in 23. We do, those numbers are updated at the end of July each year. So we’re holding our,

Garland West:

But still respect,

Bob Parker:

We’re holding our ground. We would love to see an 8.08 pounds per capita consumption number one day. And that’s a difficult thing to attain because peanuts are a very, very mature market in the United States. Ryan mentioned over 90% of pantries already have at least one jar of peanut butter in them. So how do we get people to consume more peanuts?

Garland West:

How do you get food manufacturers to make more products in which peanuts are a component? I mean, how much of your time do you spend dealing with food manufacturers to try to sell the wonders of peanuts?

Bob Parker:

Well, we’re doing the best thing we can do, I think on that end is keep the cost of peanuts affordable to the manufacturer so that it is a really high powered but low cost ingredient. And when you look at the cost wholesale cost of peanuts today, even though it’s up a little bit recently, it’s still half of what it was 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation half.

Garland West:

Wow.

Ryan Lepicier:

One thing that’s encouraging to me is that in 2023, peanut butter reached a record high all time record high consumption of 4.4 pounds per capita. So here’s this staple food that’s been around forever that people still love and are continuing to buy. And the opportunity there for manufacturers is to leverage the popularity of peanut butter, of the flavor, the nostalgia into new products. And we see that all the time. Peanut butter and jelly flavored coffee creamer, for instance, was one that I saw recently. So manufacturers know that there’s something special about peanut butter. They know that there is something special to the consumer in terms of nostalgia. But I do think, to answer your earlier question, that consumers do recognize the wholesomeness and goodness of peanuts as both a food and as an agricultural crop. But at the end of the day, it’s all about they love the way the peanut butter tastes. They like the way that they feel when they eat it. They love the nostalgia of eating in shell peanuts like you get at a baseball game. These are emotional ties that people have to the food that our farmers grow.

Garland West:

Very, the very definition of comfort food,

Ryan Lepicier:

Yes, peanuts and peanut butter are the very definition of comfort food, and it’s pretty amazing to work promoting a product that so many people have an emotional connection to. It makes marketing so much easier.

Garland West:

Let me serve up a softball question to you. What could our government do to help spread the word about peanuts above and beyond what you’re doing? What could they do to help people understand the important benefits of peanuts as a source? Not just of tasty, pleasant comfort food, but something that’s really good for them? Is there something the government can do that they’re not doing? Now?

Ryan Lepicier:

I don’t know that we want to talk about what the government can do since we’re a quasi-governmental agency.

Garland West:

I wanted to give you the chance, so now I’ve done it. We can edit that out, don’t worry. One thing that I wanted to circle back on, I keep coming back to this nine to one ratio, which just boggles my mind. You say you have to have periodic assessments by your producers to sort evaluate the work that you’re doing and judge it. What’s your track record and support among peanut producers? Do they like what you’re doing? Are they supportive of it? Are there pockets of support that are stronger than others, or is it kind of a universal support across all the growing areas?

Bob Parker:

We have a referendum every five years, and since I’ve been here, we’ve had referendums in 2014 and 2019, we will have another referendum in 2024, and our support from producers has increased in each of the last two referendums to well over 90% affirmative for continuation.

Garland West:

Over 90% more than nine out of 10?

Bob Parker:

Yes.

Garland West:

Okay. How does that compare with some of these other RMP organizations now? Do you seem to have stronger grower support than some of the others, or is that pretty much a typical rating?

Bob Parker:

I think our support is stronger, frankly. One board recently got voted down by its producers and failed to get a majority vote.
So some industries have opposition from within and from external groups. Some of the animal boards have opposition from animal rights groups that have spent a lot of money targeting these boards, which is to me a vote of confidence because that means obviously that animal rights groups think that RMPs are effective in marketing and increasing demand and consumption for meat, so they wouldn’t bother to attack them.

Ryan Lepicier:

I think what we have Garland, I think what we have going for us as a peanut industry is that we’re a pretty tight-knit industry. We’re a much smaller crop than say corn or soybeans, but we’re delivering results where it matters to the producer, right? We are funding research that’s helping solve problems on the farm. We were part of the funding for the genomics initiative, which unlocked the genome of the peanut, which our scientists are now using to create varieties that help solve problems that producers face on the farm. And then we’ve already talked about food allergy, but we’re made great, great progress on peanut allergy and people can see what we’re doing and they can say the peanut board is doing some really unique work that’s really helping to solve some problems that we have, but let’s keep it going.

Garland West:

Well, between the two of you, you’ve got decades of practical frontline experience in this. So I’m going to put you on the spot here and say, I want you to apply those decades of experience, put on your Johnny Carson Carac, the magnificent hat, and tell me what’s going to happen to you, your organization and organizations like yours in the years ahead. How are you going to be called upon to do something more and different than you’re currently being asked to do? Do you have any projections in that

Bob Parker:

Area? I’m sure that, and I’m going to tee this up for Ryan, 10 years ago, the way we marketed to consumers was totally different than the way we market to consumers today. We were doing print advertisements, was our main method of promoting to consumers, and we shifted totally to online and digital. And the risk with that is that our producers may not see our ads in a magazine because we’re not advertising or we’re not promoting where maybe our producers are. But what lies ahead, I think in five years, 10 years will be totally different from the way we’re marketing and promoting today. And now I’ll hand it off to Ryan to talk

Garland West:

About, Hey Ryan, you’re on the spot there. Tell everybody about your new job.

Ryan Lepicier:

Well, I agree with Bob that, and I mentioned this earlier, that marketing changes at the speed of light As a marketer in 2024, you can’t employ the same tactics that you did every year for the last five years. You’ve got to be abreast of what’s coming down the pipeline. Where are the consumers you’re trying to reach? And you’ve got to be on those platforms. I think the exciting thing for marketers though is that we are going to see a revolution in the way that data is used to reach our audiences. And we’re just at the tip of the iceberg with generative artificial intelligence. But I’m super excited to see where that goes. But I also think, not just in marketing, but one of our challenges is that as our yields increase because of the productivity on the farm increasing, we’re growing a million more tons of peanuts today than we were 10 years ago.

Ryan Lepicier:

And the trajectory is that in 10 more years, we’ll be growing in other million tons taking us to approximately 4 million tons. So what are we going to do with all of those peanuts? We can use them in the domestic market as edible food. We can crush them for oil, we can export them. But I think we’ve got to think seriously in our industry about what are some new uses for peanuts, non-edible uses? And Bob has laid the groundwork for exploring can we produce a peanut that has a higher oil content than the peanuts that we eat that could be used to be crushed as oil. So they would basically, the path would be from the farm to the oil refinery. We’re importing peanut oil that we eat, yet we are growing more peanuts. So it seems like there’s an opportunity there to unlock a potential new use. I think it’s been well publicized that a major oil company is exploring peanuts for biofuels. So what opportunities are there for biofuels? As you mentioned earlier, that peanuts are a crop that’s sustainable to grow. It’s affordable and as a food, it’s delicious. But there are other properties of the peanut, like the oil that make them valuable to market segments that we’re just now starting to explore and tap into.

Garland West:

Wow.

Bob Parker:

There’s also been some research on using certain types of peanuts in a chicken ration for layers and for meat chickens that’s showing some real promise enhanced nutritional profiles of eggs and possibly meat, which could increase demand for peanuts if that takes hold.

Garland West:

So peanuts playing a role beyond their own, beyond them being a source of protein. They’re also potentially something that could improve the production of other forms of protein that the world needs. Really interesting stuff. How in the world do you maintain connections with the producers? I mean, peanut peanuts are produced across the entire southern tier of the United States. How do you go about making sure that you stay in touch with the producers that support you? Especially when you talk about the distance between the traditional marketing tools and the experience of producers increasingly in a modern age. How do you maintain contact with your producers?

Bob Parker:

One thing is a biweekly newsletter that goes out to the industry as a whole and then a quarterly print magazine that goes out to the industry as a whole that talks about really interesting issues around peanuts and highlight some of our work that we’re doing. We certainly have an obligation to make producers aware of our work so that they want, we have an obligation to make producers aware of the work we’re doing, so they’ll feel like they’re getting a benefit from the assessment that they’re paying in to fund our programs.

Garland West:

How much time do you spend actually walking peanut fields? How much do you go out there and get dirt between your toes?

Bob Parker:

Living in Atlanta, it’s not easy to get out into peanut fields. I try to get out as much as I can, but it’s difficult to be everywhere else. We have to be and do that. But we do try to go to every state meeting. We have 12 board members. We have 11 primary producing states that have a board seat and we have a large seat. We’ll have someone at every one of their meetings. And Ryan or I try to go to as many as we can, but if we can’t make it, one of our staff members will be there and we’ll talk about our work.

Garland West:

Well, if you’ve got over a 90% approval rating, it sounds like you’re doing something right?

Bob Parker:

Yeah, I think so. But we can’t take that for granted either.

Garland West:

Alright. Well, this is another

Ryan Lepicier:

Powerful way that we’re able to keep in touch with producers Garland, is through the relationships we have with grower leaders in the industry. So for instance, we’re members of the American Peanut Council, our trade association for the US peanut industry. And many of the states will send a delegation of peanut producers who are leaders in their state. And when those leaders know what you’re doing and they value the work that you’re doing, they’re talking about it to growers in their area. So it kind of helps us to maintain those relationships that we have.

Bob Parker:

We have 24, 25 peanut industry organizations, and I’m probably leaving some out when I try to count them up. And so trying to get alignment is extremely important. And once a year we have a marketing summit where we bring in, we cover the cost of travel for the state executives from each major peanut producing state, and their board chairs and other industry organizations are invited as well. This week we head to Chicago for that meeting and we unveil our marketing plan for the upcoming year at that meeting. And we try to get alignment. We say, here’s what we’re doing. Our resources are there for you. All you have to do is ask and we’ll share our resources so that we, hopefully we’ll get them to also focus in the same direction that we are. And that’s something that Ryan has led and hatched some years ago, and I think it’s been very effective in creating industry alignment and coercion or cohesiveness. It’s been very important in developing industry alignment and cohesion.

Garland West:

Excellent. Ryan, you want to add anything to that? Don’t have to.

Ryan Lepicier:

I don’t think so. Bob said it. Well,

Garland West:

You have been very, very generous with your time. This has been very educational. I think that the listeners to digging in will find it of interest. I’d like to thank you for your time and give you one last chance to deliver the magic message at the end of the podcast. If you want consumers to know one thing about peanuts and the National Peanut Board, what would you like them to know?

Bob Parker:

Peanuts are healthy. They’re incredibly, peanuts are healthy. They taste amazingly, start over. Peanuts are healthy. They’re good for you with any and nutrients and healthy fats. They taste great and they’re sustainable like no other nut.

Garland West:

Very

Ryan Lepicier:

Nice. Since Bob covered the functional benefits of peanuts, I’ll talk a little bit about the other thing that I love about peanuts, and that’s our peanut farmers. Our peanut farmers are amazing in many cases. In most cases, running multi-generational family businesses. And if anybody thinks being a farmer is easy, they’ve got another thing coming. Our farmers put a lot at risk every year when they grow the crops that they bring to market for the consumer. And fortunately, I think many of them take great pride in doing that work and are willing to take the risks that come their way.

And it’s very exciting to see some of the things that young farmers are bringing to the table. Their dad, their grandparents, their moms may have been farmers, but these young farmers are a new generation and they’re bringing the same but a little bit different level of excitement and approach to making sure that their business is sustainable for their children.

Garland West:

Wow, that’s very, very good. You’re telling me that they’re tasty, they’re nutritious, they’re sustainable environmentally, and they’re sustainable in terms of perpetuating the family farm that’s made our American Ag system what it’s today. That’s a pretty good summary of an industry. Bob & Ryan, that’s a great note to end on.

Thank you again for being with us on Dirt to Dinner’s, Digging In podcast. I might add a personal note of congratulations to both men, Bob, for a remarkable career in service to peanut farmers in the entire peanut industry and agriculture in general for that matter. And Ryan for his recent selection to follow Bob as the peanut board’s next president and CEO. Guys, thanks for a job very, very well done.

I’m Garland West reminding you to visit us at www dirttodinnedev.wpenginepowered.com. I’ll promise we’ll make it fun and informative.