John McKeon is the Senior Manager of Organic Compliance, Commission, and Consolidation at Tanimura and Antle. Founded in 1982, Tanimura and Antle is a farm company that grows and sells both conventional and organic produce. John has almost two decades of experience working in the agricultural industry with skills in operations, management, quality assurance, and compliance.

Today, John joins me to share how he and his company are working to fulfill the world’s surging preference for organic produce. He shares the difference between managing a conventional farm and an organic farm, as well as what it’s like to have both. He also describes the business benefits of growing organic produce as well as the challenges many farmers face when transitioning to organic farming.

“There's a lot more going into organic farming than just the health claim.” - John McKeon

 
This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast: 

• What is Tanimura and Antle and how it started?
• How many acres are organic and how many are conventional?
• What is the Organic Standard and what makes a food "organic."
• The hurdle growers face when transitioning to organic production.
• Financial benefits of growing organic crops.
• The logistical advantages of having both organic and conventional crops.
• Are organic crops difficult to scale?
• Various regulations regarding organic farming.

John McKeon’s Words of Wisdom:

• Changes to the organic regulations typically mean a change to the law as it's written in general.
• Organics take a little bit of a different mindset and toolset when it comes to scaling.
• You want to pay attention to the details when you're growing both organic and conventional crops.

Connect with John McKeon:

• Tanimura and Antle
• Email: johnmckeon@TAproduce.com

Check Out Our Sponsor for the “Sustainability at Scale” Series

Have you ever heard of Marrone’s BIO WITH BITE? Marrone Bio Innovation offers crop pest protection for the modern organic and conventional production systems. To make sure every grower using their products realize the best possible return on investment, Marrone invests time and resources to thoroughly test and demonstrate the efficacy of those new state of the art products. With serious trial data to back it up! You can see more and connect directly with Marrone by visiting them at www.marronebio.com

Marrone is very proud to support The Future Of Agriculture blog series on sustainability in agriculture with Tim Hammerich.

We Are a Part of a Bigger Family! 

The Future of Agriculture Podcast is now part of the Farm and Rural Ag Network. Listen to more ag-related podcasts by subscribing on iTunes or on the Farm and Rural Ag Network Website today. 

Share the Ag-Love! 

Thanks for joining us on the Future of Agriculture Podcast – your spot for valuable information, content, and interviews with industry leaders throughout the agricultural space! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please subscribe on iTunes and leave your honest feedback. Don’t forget to share it with your friends on your favorite social media spots! 

Learn more about AgGrad by visiting: 

Future of Agriculture Website

AgGrad Website

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Rachel Laudan is a food historian and award-winning author of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History, a book about the rise and fall of various culinary traditions and philosophies. She has over twenty years of dedicated research to the evolution of our food systems. She’s also an engaging speaker who helps industry professionals, students and professors, and public groups see food from a long-term and global perspective.

Today, Rachel joins me to share a brief overview of what food history is all about. She shares her thoughts on various food movements and diets, how traditional foods came to be considered traditional, and why people today have better food than most kings and queens in the past. She also explains the importance of separating processed food from what is “bad food” and what she believes we should consider to be “good food.”

“One should tell food history as a series of expansions, migrations, cuisines, or systems of eating.” - Rachel Laudan

 
This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast: 

• What encouraged her interest in agriculture and food history?
• Foods we think are traditional, but really not.
• Is there truth to having better sustainability in the pre-processed food era?
• Her thoughts on how to feed the exploding human population.
• Why she thinks corn is an amazing crop.
• Her perspective on the "Natural Food" trend.
• What counts as a "good" food?
• What is "Culinary Modernism"?

Rachel Laudan’s Words of Wisdom:

• We should realize how great modern food is. Average-earning populations can eat better than most kings or royalty in the past.
• Almost everything we eat has been transformed from its natural state.
• If we eat nothing but raw food, the human race will find survival difficult.

Connect with Rachel Laudan:

• Rachel Laudan official website
• Twitter
• Cuisine and Empire
• The Food Paradise

Check Out Our Sponsor for the “Sustainability at Scale” Series

Have you ever heard of Marrone’s BIO WITH BITE? Marrone Bio Innovation offers crop pest protection for the modern organic and conventional production systems. To make sure every grower using their products realize the best possible return on investment, Marrone invests time and resources to thoroughly test and demonstrate the efficacy of those new state of the art products. With serious trial data to back it up! You can see more and connect directly with Marrone by visiting them at www.marronebio.com

Marrone is very proud to support The Future Of Agriculture blog series on sustainability in agriculture with Tim Hammerich.

We Are a Part of a Bigger Family! 

The Future of Agriculture Podcast is now part of the Farm and Rural Ag Network. Listen to more ag-related podcasts by subscribing on iTunes or on the Farm and Rural Ag Network Website today. 

Share the Ag-Love! 

Thanks for joining us on the Future of Agriculture Podcast – your spot for valuable information, content, and interviews with industry leaders throughout the agricultural space! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please subscribe on iTunes and leave your honest feedback. Don’t forget to share it with your friends on your favorite social media spots! 

Learn more about AgGrad by visiting: 

Future of Agriculture Website

AgGrad Website

AgGrad on Twitter 
AgGrad on Facebook 
AgGrad on LinkedIn 
AgGrad on Instagram 

Olympia Yarger is the Founder and CEO of GOTERRA, an Australian-based waste management company that redefines the idea of food waste through decentralized waste management. Their company’s primary goal is to manage food and animal waste using insects of which the byproduct could be used as a feed additive. This approach is an alternative and sustainable way of feeding livestock that also reduces global waste.

Today, Olympia shares how maggots can help solve global food waste. She describes what it was like to start a maggot farm, how to manage one, and what makes it unique compared to typical farms. She also explains how maggots convert food waste to animal feed and how this could be the future of sustainable agriculture.

“It's one thing to get the flies to do the act and get viable eggs, but it's another to manage consistency of production at any scale.” - Olympia Yarger

 
This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast: 

• The problems they initially encountered with their maggots when they were starting out.
• What it's like to run a maggot farm vs a typical farm.
• What a Black Soldier Fly farm looks like.
• How much food waste could one shipping container go through?
• How they structure their business model.
• How long it takes to raise maggots.
• What they do with waste that wasn't consumed.
• Food items they can't use in the farm.

Olympia Yarger’s Words of Wisdom:

• You can streamline insect farming in a way that makes it affordable and also gives you access to a wave of ideas.
• There is a need to breed a lot of maggot eggs and refine the system in a way that is commercially viable.

Connect with Olympia Yarger:

• GOTERRA
• LinkedIn

Check Out Our Sponsor for the “Sustainability at Scale” Series

Have you ever heard of Marrone’s BIO WITH BITE? Marrone Bio Innovation offers crop pest protection for the modern organic and conventional production systems. To make sure every grower using their products realize the best possible return on investment, Marrone invests time and resources to thoroughly test and demonstrate the efficacy of those new state of the art products. With serious trial data to back it up! You can see more and connect directly with Marrone by visiting them at www.marronebio.com

Marrone is very proud to support The Future Of Agriculture blog series on sustainability in agriculture with Tim Hammerich.

We Are a Part of a Bigger Family! 

The Future of Agriculture Podcast is now part of the Farm and Rural Ag Network. Listen to more ag-related podcasts by subscribing on iTunes or on the Farm and Rural Ag Network Website today. 

Share the Ag-Love! 

Thanks for joining us on the Future of Agriculture Podcast – your spot for valuable information, content, and interviews with industry leaders throughout the agricultural space! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please subscribe on iTunes and leave your honest feedback. Don’t forget to share it with your friends on your favorite social media spots! 

Learn more about AgGrad by visiting: 

Future of Agriculture Website

AgGrad Website

AgGrad on Twitter 
AgGrad on Facebook 
AgGrad on LinkedIn 
AgGrad on Instagram 

Dr. Pamela Marrone is the founder and CEO of Marrone Bio Innovations, a company dedicated to finding practical, sustainable pest management solutions that are safe for people as well as the environment. She is also the founding Chair and former board member of the Biopesticides Industry Alliance, a cluster of over a hundred biopesticide and related companies. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research as well as a member of the Board of Trustees for Cornell University.

Today, Dr. Pamela shares the mission behind Marrone Bio Innovations and how their products help farmers through environmentally-safe pest management solutions. She describes what drew her to founding the company and explains why biopesticides are critical for tomorrow’s world. She also enlighten us on the technical aspect of their products and provides examples of how their products can help farmers.

“There's a lot more science and technology behind today's biological products, so they are better than they have been in the past.” - Pamela Marrone

 
This Week on The Future of Agriculture Podcast: 

• What the "biologicals" category is all about
• Why are chemical solutions still preferred over biologicals?
• Why "snake oil" products are all but gone.
• Limitations on biological pesticides.
• How they produce biological products.
• What it takes to get approval of their product.
• How they design their products according to storage, use, and user.
• How the agriculture and pest control industry has changed over recent decades.
• What are molluscicides and how do they work?
• The future products of Marrone Bio.

Pamela Marrone’s Words of Wisdom:

• Organic farming is difficult because of weed control, so expect biological weed control products to be a household name in the future.
• Many farmers are also fishermen, hence the need for solutions to water infestations.
• There are different residue rules between export and not export.

Connect with Dr. Pamela Marrone:

• Marrone Bio Innovations
• LinkedIn

Check Out Our Sponsor for the “Sustainability at Scale” Series

Have you ever heard of Marrone’s BIO WITH BITE? Marrone Bio Innovation offers crop pest protection for the modern organic and conventional production systems. To make sure every grower using their products realize the best possible return on investment, Marrone invests time and resources to thoroughly test and demonstrate the efficacy of those new state of the art products. With serious trial data to back it up! You can see more and connect directly with Marrone by visiting them at www.marronebio.com

Marrone is very proud to support The Future Of Agriculture blog series on sustainability in agriculture with Tim Hammerich.

We Are a Part of a Bigger Family! 

The Future of Agriculture Podcast is now part of the Farm and Rural Ag Network. Listen to more ag-related podcasts by subscribing on iTunes or on the Farm and Rural Ag Network Website today. 

Share the Ag-Love! 

Thanks for joining us on the Future of Agriculture Podcast – your spot for valuable information, content, and interviews with industry leaders throughout the agricultural space! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please subscribe on iTunes and leave your honest feedback. Don’t forget to share it with your friends on your favorite social media spots! 

Learn more about AgGrad by visiting: 

Future of Agriculture Website

AgGrad Website

AgGrad on Twitter 
AgGrad on Facebook 
AgGrad on LinkedIn 
AgGrad on Instagram