Ag Innovation Forum

Thursday, February 18, 2021
9:00 AM 3:45 PM 09:00 15:45

Google Calendar ICS

Ag Innovation Forum
February 18, 2021

Virtual Event
9:00 - 11:15 AM | 1:30 - 3:45 PM

Your chance to connect with the region’s agribusiness community leaders who are focused on cutting edge technology and innovation

Program

Now in its fifth year, this forum will showcase innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. The program includes nationally recognized keynote presentations and panel discussions.

Keynote Speakers:

Carl Casale is the senior agricultural partner at Ospraie Management, LLC, where he is focused on identifying and investing in the next generation of agricultural production technologies. Expect his vision to focus on how to provide affordable food in a sustainable manner. A key driver may be how to accelerate farmer adoption of new technologies and practices. Casale brings three decades of experience leading globally influential companies across the food and agricultural sectors.

John Niemann serves as president of Protein Ingredients and International for Cargill’s North America protein business. Niemann, a graduate of Kansas State University, has served in a variety of roles in the protein group, including in plant management and product distribution. His remarks will highlight how Cargill is embracing technology to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the protein and ag industries.

Panel Discussions

(L to R) Dr. Bob Hutkins, Kevin Kimle, Dr. Jared Decker

Academic Community

Dr. Bob Hutkins, professor of food science and technology at the University of Nebraska. Dr. Hutkins is working to commercialize synbiotics (combinations of probiotics and prebiotics) for food, beverage and nutraceutical products. He will review how his research on the gut microbiome led to commercialization opportunities. He will also describe technological and other challenges for a start-up company.
Kevin Kimle, director of the Agricultural Entrepreneurship Initiative at Iowa State University where he leads public-private partnerships, including incubator programs. In 2016, the Iowa State University Agricultural Entrepreneurship Initiative helped launch Ag Startup Engine, a private investment fund and mentoring platform based in the Iowa State University Research Park. The model was created to fund early-stage agtech businesses from ISU students, technology created at ISU, and entrepreneurs attracted to the ecosystem. Ag Startup Engine Fund I has invested in 15 businesses that have went on to raise more than $30 million in follow-on capital, create more than 150 jobs, and had two exits.
Dr. Jared Decker, professor of animal science and state beef extension specialist at the University of Missouri, is using genomics to increase reproductive efficiency in beef cattle. By combining old theories with new technology, there is the opportunity to create new tools to allow farmers and ranchers to produce food more sustainably. Decker will discuss inter-disciplinary research that combines genetics, evolution, reproduction, nutrition, computer science, and engineering to create precision decision support tools for the beef industry.

(L to R) Renee Vassilos, Kerryann Kocher, Spencer Stensrude

Venture Capital Community

Renee Vassilos is The Nature Conservancy’s Director of Agriculture Innovation. She manages TNC’s investments in early stage solutions that will generate a return and impact on scaling soil health building production practices. Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy, Renée spent nearly a decade at John Deere- strategy & product development as well as sales and marketing. She also ran her AgriBusiness Consulting Group, Banyan Innovation Group, where they supported agtech companies and investors.
Kerryann Kocher, CEO, Vytelle. Vytelle provides cattle producers with a tool to convert individual animal performance data into genetic progress faster than ever before. Kocher says: “Raising capital during the startup phase of business is a remarkable opportunity. It’s about telling the story of how you drive value to your customers, authentically, to build a foundation of trust from the initial phase of contact with the investor(s) and all the way through the due diligence process.“
Spencer Stensrude, executive director, Ag Ventures Alliance. The cooperative, based in, Mason City, Iowa, is on a mission to increase farm profitability by investing in new technology. Spencer led the sourcing, evaluating, closing, and management of new investments at the firm for four years before moving into the leadership role. His business experience includes venture capital, commercial lending, small business management, in addition to being a real-life family farmer in North Iowa. Expect his topics to include: repositioning farmers in the value chain, aligning incentives of the farmer and startup, customer validation in the field, and the question of whether farmers are really slow to adopt?

(L to R) Matt Crisp, Karsten Temme, Naeem Zafar

Entrepreneurial Sector

Matt Crisp, CEO, Benson Hill. Matt is an entre-preneur, executive and former venture capitalist who is passionate about connecting technology and business with purpose to deliver global impact. He most enjoys empowering his colleagues, partners and stakeholders to help realize the vision of a healthier, more sustainable and more accessible food system. Benson Hill empowers innovators to unlock nature’s genetic diversity from plant to plate, with the purpose of creating healthier, great-tasting food and ingredient options that are both widely accessible and sustainable.
Karsten Temme, CEO and co-founder, Pivot Bio. For years, Karsten has been fascinated with the limitless potential of the unseen microbes that inhabit our world. While earning his Ph.D. at University of California, San Francisco, his graduate research focused on enhancing the nitrogen-fixing potential of soil-borne microbes. Seeking to produce “more than scientific journal articles” and driven by the desire to create meaningful change in the world, Karsten partnered with his friend and colleague, Alvin Tamsir, to create Pivot Bio. Pivot Bio was born out of an ambition to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizer with something more sustainable and safer for farmers to use. The firm has developed a new crop nutrition solution and have built a company to provide sustainable solutions for farmers and improve the health of the planet through scientific innovation.
Naeem Zafar, CEO, TeleSense. Naeem is a serial entrepreneur and currently serves as the co-founder and CEO of TeleSense, an IoT (Internet of Things) company creating real-time wireless sensing and predictive analytics solutions for the stored grain industry. He notes that grain never improves in quality once it is harvested. Growers and grain handlers need to make a myriad of decisions about conditioning, merchandizing, logistics, storage and transport to preserve their profits. A lot of these decisions are made with patchy data and heuristics. What if there were continuous data collected and prescriptive insights allowed people to make decisions with better outcomes? This is exactly the problem that TeleSense is solving. He will elaborate on how IoT technology and AI is transforming the post-harvest grain market.

Sustainable Solutions

Jason Clay, senior vice president-markets, World Wildlife Fund. Jason Clay launched WWF’s work on aquaculture, agriculture, livestock, commodity certification programs and market transformation. He currently leads the work of WWF-US to use markets and market platforms to make production more sustainable at a sector level. He is currently working with corporate platforms to understand and reduce GHG emissions, and use market signals to make commodity production more sustainable. Over the course of his career he has worked on a family farm and in the USDA. He taught at Harvard and Yale and spent more than 35 years with human rights and environmental organizations.
David Darr, senior vice president and chief strategy and sustainability officer, Dairy Farmers of America. David has been with DFA since 2001 and currently leads efforts to connect DFA’s strategy with members, employees and other stakeholders. In addition, David leads Cooperative efforts on sustainability, including environmental footprinting, animal care and corporate social responsibility. He is working with members to reach a science-based environmental target of being net zero by 2050 through a variety of strategies and technologies.