The Modern Acre

John Bourne is the VP of Marketing at Ceres Imaging, a venture-backed company delivering solutions for irrigation and nutrient management, pest and disease prevention, and more. Tune in to learn how John and the Ceres team recently launched an updated product portfolio and corresponding rebrand to further scale and grow the business. Connect with Ceres Imaging Website | Twitter Connect with The Mo...

Julie Escobar is the co-founder of Global Women Fresh, a community focused on connecting, inspiring, and empowering women in the fresh produce industry. She has over 20 years experience in the fresh produce industry, achieving growth in domestic and international sales and marketing operations. Julie shares more about her background and the origin story of GWF. She shares details about how they ha...

Paul Schrimpf is an award-winning journalist who has covered the agriculture market since 1998. He is Group Editor of the Agribusiness Group at Meister Media Worldwide, with full editorial responsibility for  CropLife ® , CropLife IRON, and PrecisionAg® Professional . Paul shares his story of joining Meister and his perspective on the ever-changing agriculture industry, sharing insights you won't...

This is the last episode in a 4-part series sponsored by PMA ! John Hartnett is the founder and CEO of SVG Ventures and the THRIVE accelerator. SVG Ventures-THRIVE is a leading agri-food innovation ecosystem, comprised of top agriculture, food & technology corporations, universities and investors. With a community of over 2,000 startups from 82 countries, the THRIVE platform invests, accelerates a...

This is the third episode in a 4-part series sponsored by PMA ! Tommie Van Zyl is the CEO of ZZ2 , a South African produce grower, packer, and shipper. Tommie has helped develop and scale the business, which supports both the South African and global markets. He dives into the operation, supply chain, and their outlook for 2020. Tune in! Connect with PMA Website | Fresh Summit Connect with The Mod...

This is the second episode in a 4-part series sponsored by PMA ! Alicia Calhoun is the Vice President of Talent Portfolio at the Center for Growing Talent by PMA. She joins the podcast to give us her perspective on building and sustaining talent within the industry as well as the importance of creating a positive culture. Whether you have a few employees on a farm or hundreds in the corporate worl...

This is the first episode in a 4-part series sponsored by PMA ! Bob Whitaker is the Chief Science & Technology Officer of the Produce Marketing Association. Bob has has a incredibly successful career, starting in the biotechnology plant space. He then spent time in the processing side of the produce industry before joining PMA over 10 years ago. In his role Bob has responsibility for food safety,...

Chris Paterson is the North America Lead for Xarvio, the digital farming arm of BASF. Chris has been involved with agronomy and agribusiness across North America for 25 years, and for the past ten years has been directly involved with the development of new business applications and value streams around the Digitization of Farming, Agribusiness, and AgriFood. He shares more about his career, and i...

Paul Greive is founder of Primal Pastures, a pastured livestock farm that delivers high-quality, fresh meat direct to consumer. Paul shares his amazing story of founding the company to feed his family healthy, real food and how it grew to become a successful company. He talks about their focus on growing regeneratively, the role of social media, and how he has launched a wholesale company called P...

Gail Becker is the founder and CEO of Caulipower. Gail left an incredibly successful career in PR and marketing to launch a food company focused on making comfort foods with healthier ingredients. Caulipower came on the food scene with their incredibly popular cauliflower pizza crust. Gail shares her compelling story of starting and growing the company and you won't want to miss it. Tune in! Conne...

Ryan Jacobsen is the CEO and Executive Director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. He is also the host of the television show,  Valley's Gold , which provides a behind-the-scenes look of the California agricultural industry. We talk with Ryan about the current state of the ag industry, how we has managed and grown the Farm Bureau, and the importance of using your voice in agriculture. Connect with...

This is the fourth and final episode in a 4-part series sponsored by AgFunder ! David Farquhar is the CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions, a technology company that provides vertical farming systems for 3rd party indoor farms. IGS has been a leading innovator in the vertical farming space. David has an impressive background of scaling technology companies and shares the story and technology of IGS...

This is the third episode in a 4-part series sponsored by AgFunder ! Abi Ramanan is the founder and CEO of ImpactVision, which uses machine learning and hyperspectral imaging to detect the quality and composition of food products to a degree that has not been possible before. This will enable food supply chains to reduce waste, maximize yield, and improve quality. Tune in to learn more about how t...

This is the second episode in a 4-part series sponsored by AgFunder ! Sofia Elizondo is the co-founder and COO at Brightseed. She has an impressive background in CPG, pharmaceutical, and technology companies. Sofia co-founded Brightseed focusing on improving the nutrition in our food. The team has developed a computational search engine, Forager, which can identify plant compounds that can be inst...

This is the first episode in a 4-part series sponsored by AgFunder ! Michael Dean is the founding partner of AgFunder, which is a venture capital firm whose mission is to invest in technology that will rapidly transform our food and agriculture system. AgFunder has built it's investing platform on top of it's best-in-class news publications, which has become the go-to hub for the latest on food an...

Nick Halla is the Senior Vice President, International at Impossible Foods and was also the company's first employee. Nick has grown within the company as it has scaled into restaurants, food service, and now retail. Impossible Foods is a plant-based meat company that is committed to products that look, feel, and taste like animal meat, but with less environmental impact. Tune in to learn about th...

Nike Neal is the founder and CEO of DecisionNext. DecisionNext helps companies improve their market performance through machine learning and prescriptive analytics. Mike talks with us about founding the company and how it has scaled over time, including the focus on agricultural commodities. Tune in and learn more! Connect with DecisionNext Website Connect with The Modern Acre Website | Instagram...

Finally The Modern Acre podcast discusses hemp and CBD! The introduction of the new Farm Bill opened the floodgates to a new business opportunity. This week we talk with the founder of Nikkal Farms, Paul Clift, who talks all things hemp and CBD. He farms 7 acres of industrial hemp and is currently focusing on launching a retail line of CBD products. Learn more about his approach to this fast-paced...

Sign up for Acre Insights HERE 2018 Forbes Ag Tech Episode We had the pleasure of participating in the 5th annual Forbes AgTech Summit this year in Salinas, California. To learn more about what we learned at the show, sign up for Acre Insights . Aerobotics focuses on early pest and disease detection enabled by drone imagery and artificial intelligence. We talked with Aerobotics Chief Commerical Of...

Molly Toot is the Director of Sustainability at Land O'Lakes SUSTAIN. Land O'Lakes SUSTAIN is a leading conservation solutions provider, advancing and connecting stewardship efforts throughout the food system with scale – from farmers to ag retailers to partners like food companies. Molly talks about her background in the industry and how SUSTAIN originated as a merger with Land O'Lakes and United...

Interested in direct-to-consumer business? We are re-airing one of our most popular episodes to-date featuring the Farmer's Dog. Brett Podolsky joins The Modern Acre podcast to talk about how he helped create The Farmer's Dog, a dog food company focused on using real, fresh food and delivering customized servings to their customers. Brett shares the vision behind the company and why using real foo...

Sign up for Acre Insights HERE Want to learn more about our plans for The Modern Acre? For the first time, we sit on the other side of the mic and join The Farm Traveler Podcast for an interview! The host, Trevor Williams, asks us about how The Modern Acre started and what our vision for it is. We also discuss our take on the industry. We really appreciated the opportunity to be on The Farm Travel...

Sign up for Acre Insights HERE This week we are talking regenerative agriculture with Sara Harper , founder and CEO of Grounded Growth. Sara discusses her career on Capitol Hill working to implement policy change within agriculture and how that led her to the private sector to continue the effort. Grounded Growth is a network that enables, supports and grows business-enhancing relationships betwee...

Sign up for Acre Insights HERE Zach Sheely joins us to talk about how his interest in technology started on his family farm and evolved to his current position as President of Agworld. Agworld is one of the leading farm management companies, helping farmers take control of their business and operate more efficiently. Zach walks us through how he joined Agworld and helped them grow over time. This...

We're happy to continue to partner with the International Agri-Center, which is set to hold the 53rd World Ag Expo February 11-13, 2020. Listen to Jennifer's episode HERE Fieldin was recently awarded the AgFunder Innovation Award for Farm Tech category for its smart harvesting and spraying technology! We had the great opportunity to sit down with Neil Knaak to learn more about Fieldin. Neil shares...