Show Notes
On today’s episode, we celebrate the end of our first full year of the podcast by taking a look back at some previous episodes in order to take a look forward into the future of agriscience. In the spirit of Agriscience Explained and the fact that we believe true ag innovation has to be farmer-led, we’ve invited an innovative farmer to join the show for this episode.
Tim Nuss of Nuss Farms operates in Lodi, California. In addition to his day job on the farm, Tim also started a podcast called The Modern Acre with his brother Tyler about eight years ago. This weekly show that focuses on entrepreneurs in the ag industry also led them to launching something called AgList about a year ago. Tim is a great example of a farmer thinking differently about agricultural innovation. Our conversation connected very closely with several of our episodes we’ve done for this podcast this season. “ A lot of farmers are in really challenging situations right now and they're exhausted with financials of the business and just getting through the year of really keeping yourself open to new ideas and having those conversations takes a lot of work and takes a mindset…You just have to keep that positive growth mindset and know that if you have a limited budget, like don't put innovation on the back burner. It still needs to be a part of the budget.” - Tim Nuss Agriscience Explained hopes to not only emphasize innovation but to highlight that innovation doesn’t matter unless it can be applied. And in order to go from science to solution, effective communication has to happen.
As any good entrepreneur does, beyond farming and beyond podcasting, Tim noticed an additional problem that needed a solution. Seeing this chaotic landscape of the ag biologicals market, Tim and his brother Tyler decided to launch a website called AgList. AgList helps farmers and agronomists filter through various biological products and find out what real users have to say about them. Companies pay to list their products on the platform so that they can be endorsed by customers who have firsthand experience with them. “ It's very hard for individual farmers to talk to a hundred different companies to see if their product works…. We just saw this as an opportunity where there's a lot of challenge to understand as a farmer what works for you. The landscape map is cool to look at, but it's really challenging….So kind of leveling the playing field, putting it on an independent platform to kind of be able to click through and understand what products are actually relevant for you.” - Tim Nuss Previous Episodes Referenced: Agriscience Explained with Sam Eathington Crucial Conversations About Biologicals in Agriculture Unlocking Agriscience Innovation Gene Editing: Pathway to Progress Permanent Cover Crops Take Root Science, Sustainability and the Art of Farming Discovering Tomorrow’s Biotech Traits Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.
More from Agriscience Explained
Please send us your feedback on the podcast: [email protected] In this episode, we look back on the past 100 years, and highlight what will carry over into this next chapter in the company’s history. Corteva Agriscience chief technology and digital officer Sam Eathington and some really special guests discuss the past, present and future of agriscience innovation.
Dr. Carla Yerkes joins us to help us tell the story of Rinskor and explain the process of herbicide innovation and the persistence and creativity it takes to develop new solutions for farmers. Yerkes is a research biologist at Corteva Agriscience and has a Ph.D. in herbicide physiology. She has spent about half of her 30 year career in herbicide discovery research and the other half in herbicide trait discovery.
What is happening in agriscience today that we will be talking about 100 years from now? While it’s impossible to answer that question with certainty, there is a technology that has the potential to impact our industry in the next century as much or even more than hybridization changed the game over the past century. That technology is genome editing. The promise of this technology is very real and today you’re going to hear firsthand accounts of what changed in 2012 and 2013 to make all of this possible, what did it look like to test the technology in plant breeding, and what does the strategy look like to turn this science into better solutions.
In today’s episode, we’re following a molecule around the world, from being discovered in Japan to being developed in the United States to becoming a solution for farmers in the United Kingdom. Joining us is one of those farmers in the UK, Julian Gibbons. Julian has seen a variety of fungicide solutions come and go for important wheat diseases like Septoria tritici, or speckled leaf blotch. He’s really excited about the potential for a relatively newly registered product derived from a natural compound called Inatreq Active™. And the story of the need for Inatreq and the road to getting this product to farmers is the focus of today’s episode.
We celebrate the 100th year anniversary of Pioneer Seeds, and take a look back at the history of hybridization. The process may seem simple: to take two varieties or even species and cross them together to create more desirable offspring. But the concept of controlled hybridization, intentionally transferring pollen from a chosen male parent to a chosen female parent, is relatively new in the history of agriculture. But it has been nothing short of revolutionary.