Dr. Emma Fuller is a Lead Data Scientist with Granular, a farm management software company working to apply data science to the agriculture industry. In her role, Emma tracks consumer trends in sustainability and works with NGOs and startups to identify opportunities for Granular growers to get rewarded for their stewardship. Today, Emma joins Christophe and Michael Leggett, Director of Product at Nori, to discuss the partnership between Granular and Nori and share their pilot program’s progress to date.
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Christophe Jospe: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. My name is Christophe Jospe and I am here with a new co-host, Michael Leggett.
Michael Leggett: Hello.
Christophe Jospe: He’s sitting in for Ross and I think, listener, you’ll find out why he’s sitting in because Michael has been working quite closely with our guest over the last several months, almost a year. Yeah. Been quite a journey. I’m excited to do this episode. Actually, sometimes we do this thing on episodes where we say like, we’re coming for you, fill in the blank. And we’re going to kill two birds with one stone because we said we’re coming for you, Big Ag. And we said we’re coming for you, Emma Fuller, which is great because Emma Fuller is sitting across from us.
I had the pleasure to meet Emma back in the day. Actually, we invited her to Reversa Palooza, which was an event that we threw in April 2017. Very early days where Nori was just a bright-eyed company with large ambitions. We’re We’re less bright eyed. We have the same large ambitions, but we learned a lot then. That was our event where we tried to bring together a lot of the stakeholders and lay out the plan of here’s our approach and here’s what we are going to do to launch, which is generate a methodology to help US farmers monetize the incremental gains of soil organic carbon.
And I think that caught Emma’s attention and we stayed in touch and things evolved to where we actually figured out, well, there are software platforms that are collecting a lot of the data that we need. Maybe we could work directly with those platforms and find new value propositions. I’m sure we’ll get into that. And what else can I say about Emma? I was on her farm the other day. It’s really idyllic. I had a bit of like biophilia and farm envy. What am I doing living in a small apartment? I need my own greenhouse and I need to plow with horses.
Do you have horses? Yeah.
Dr. Emma Fuller: It’s a different type of agriculture than what you guys are used to.
Christophe Jospe: But Emma, you’ve heard a few of our podcasts. You know our shtick. We like to start with people’s story. We want to know how they got to where they are. Who are you? What are you doing here? I didn’t introduce you. You’re the lead data scientist?
Dr. Emma Fuller: A lead data scientist.
Christophe Jospe: A lead data scientist at Granular. And you are, excuse me, Dr. Emma Fuller.
Dr. Emma Fuller: That’s correct. I am Dr. Emma Fuller. Yeah. Yeah. So how I got to where I am sitting across this table from you guys won’t go through the whole blow by blow. Let’s see. I, I am a lead data scientist at granular. And before that, I got a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology. Have always been really interested in how do we manage natural ecosystems, how do we balance human well-being and also environmental outcomes that we all value as a society. So I ended up studying commercial fisheries on the U. S.
West Coast for my PhD as a nice sort of example. Not simple, but more straightforward where, again, you have fishermen who are sitting in between this economic system where they’re responding to price signals, demand, and also this ecological system. Abundance and distribution of fish and there’s interesting interactions between how economic signals transfer to ecological outcomes and vice versa. So in doing that, my husband decided to farm full time, which I thought was fabulous. I started just thinking about food systems more broadly as another example of how do we manage these systems and came across Granular as one company that was working on that.
And as someone who works a lot in data science, machine learning, that sort of thing, this was one of the best opportunities and coolest data sets to sort of start to really understand big commercial commodity ag, which is certainly not the farming that my husband and I do at home. And I think maybe the other thing that I took away from my PhD was that Often in those fisheries systems, one of the things that researchers find and managers find again and again is you put in some sort of policy incentive, you put in this new management technique, whether it’s putting in a marine protected area or instituting a new quota.
And a lot of what academics focus on is, okay, what are the likely outcomes of this and how do we make those policy decisions? Most of those papers then get written and said, we forecasted X would happen and Y happened. And it almost always is the case that because these systems are not command and control systems, we don’t have complete control over how people use fish or go fishing and things like that. What’s missing was a full understanding of the incentive structure and the sort of decision making process that the fishermen themselves are making.
And so that sort of brought home to me again and again that the most important thing we can do when we start to build policy interventions or market interventions is really make sure that we understand the incentive structure that the folks that we’re trying to manage or influence are faced with. So again, that sort of drove my interest in joining Granular and getting to talk to growers and understand the data that they use, they have access to, they make decisions, just sort of wrap my head around how does the agricultural system work in the United States.
So I’ve loved being at Granular. And then let’s see, I guess how I ended up in this chair across from you guys in Nori. I also have obviously been thinking a lot about how do we find opportunities for our growers to document and demonstrate their own stewardship. I think building tools to help Showcase the metrics and outcomes they’re already participating in is really important and will help drive and smooth those incentives that people want to put in place, like Nori, to reduce coordination and transaction costs. So that’s how I ended up at Granular and that’s why I sought out Nori to chat with.
Christophe Jospe: And you’ve dropped a lot of juicy bait there. Yeah. I really want to go off on some of those tangents. I think Michael does too. Go ahead, Michael.
Michael Leggett: I was going to ask just for a little bit of color. Tell us about Granular. Who’s Granular? What do they do? Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Emma Fuller: So Granular is a software company and the mission at a high level is to help growers both run stronger businesses and steward the land for generations to come. And specifically what that means is that we have several different software lines that help growers manage their business. The main one, I think, or one of the main ones is what we call Granular Business, which I’m sure we’ll come back to, which is a farm management software, an FMS system for those in the biz. And that basically helps a grower run every single part of their business in the cloud, right?
It’s a cloud-based software. And we can see profitability field by field. So one of the things that the founders of Granular realized was that when they were visiting some of these really big commercial farms that are churning through millions of dollars, a lot of them are managing their books in Excel, pencil and paper. That sort of thing. So there’s a real opportunity to help those farms be able to organize their businesses. And then they’re collecting tremendous amounts of data, but then crunch it and make it usable and ingestible so that you can make those really important decisions of which fields are more profitable, how should I renegotiate my rent with landowners, what crops should I choose, which markets should I target, those sorts of things.
So that’s granular business. We also have granular agronomy, which is focused on sort of what you might call Often it’s called precision ag, though I think a lot of, we can get into what that term means. Oh, that’s fine.
Christophe Jospe: You’re allowed to just see your own questions and answer them.
Dr. Emma Fuller: As we go. So that’s sort of stuff like variable rate nitrogen applications, precision sort of irrigation applications, that sort of thing, sort of the more agronomy side of things. And then we also have something called acre value, which is easily described as the Zillow for farmland, as much as we all hate that sort of terminology, but pulls together soils, weather. And we also build a valuation model to estimate the value of farmland. So in general, it’s a suite of software meant to help growers manage their businesses from the agronomy to the business to the land acquisition side.
Awesome.
Michael Leggett: Yeah. So from that, so I mean, that’s fantastic background and great context. What trends, like working with farmers at all different levels and different sizes, what trends in agriculture are you seeing and The adoption of these tools and the different ways in which these tools are being used kind of give us a broad stroke of how are things in agriculture today? What do you find interesting?
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that we’re seeing increasing consolidation. So farms, there are fewer and fewer farmers every year. And the farms themselves, the size is getting bigger and bigger. So that’s like an overwhelming trend that’s happening in the background. We’re also seeing quite a lot of generational change. So a lot of farmers are passing it down to the next generation. So either leaving or passing it down to their kids. And so that also drives... Quite a step change in terms of adoption of technology, right? As you see across sectors, not just in ag.
So those are the two big things that are happening in ag in the U. S. at least. Aside from that, I think the other big trend that’s happening, and this affects farmers and it affects everyone in the food chain, is increasing pressure from consumers, from society about additional... Value that they’re putting into their food, whether it’s transparency, whether it’s environmental impacts, whether it’s human rights impacts, there’s increasing pressure for those sorts of additional metrics to be demonstrated. So those are sort of the three big things that I see showing up today.
Christophe Jospe: I’m interested to go back a little bit and better understand your role at Granular. So, you know, are you some data wizard who just crunches numbers or do you enter? The farmers, I mean, to put it in language that Michael can understand, let’s use UX, right? User experience, because that’s sort of it, right? You’ve got the user experience of yesterday, which is a farmer keeps a bunch of paper records and they go through a folder, a binder, binders upon binders of like what they bought, what they applied, when they did it.
They look at weather patterns and then they come up with some plan that helps them make some agronomic decision. And maybe there’s someone who sits down with them and is like, well, you should maybe tweak this a little bit because it’ll make you more money. And it seems like granular comes in and is like, we got this for you. We’re going to digitize a lot of this and just make it easy and help you do it on a field by field level in real time. So where do you sit in all that?
Yeah.
Dr. Emma Fuller: So I have done a little bit in many different places in the company. When I started, I was definitely the data wizard behind the scenes. So I worked a lot on the eco-value land valuation model. So I owned that pipeline from data ingestion to building the model to publishing those results and work closely with engineering. To make sure that the site, anytime you went and clicked on a parcel, it had the right valuation score. So definitely did that. And that’s where I started. I started at Granular at a great time when we were big enough that the work-life balance in a startup was somewhat reasonable, but not so big that there was still a ton of space for me to move around.
And so over the last, I would say, 12 months, I’ve also moved increasingly into sort of what I would call a product strategy role. Where we have a strong mission, and this is part of what attracted me to Granular, of helping growers steward their farmland. But we’re still working on identifying where are the best places for us to sink our time and our resources in that will actually reward growers. I think you guys know That sustainability broadly is both extremely vague as a term, right? It can encompass so many different things.
And it’s not highly valued, right? Like there’s a lot of language around consumers wanting to see things that are quote sustainable and quote green, but not a lot of money that’s moving through those channels, I would say yet, especially in commodity ag. So a lot of what I’ve been doing is sort of trying to sort through where are the real opportunities that will really drive value for our growers and thus drive value in our softwares. Granular sells directly to farmers. That’s our main go-to-market channel. And so it’s important to us to...
I mean, growers are paying money for our software. And so if I can’t make the business case to the rest of the engineering and the product and the UX teams that this will actually drive sales, then I don’t... It’s going to be a much slower process for me to integrate and get sustainability features off the ground. So it’s a really challenging but very helpful process. So that’s what I’ve been doing a lot is helping some of our product management folks identify the opportunities and prototype, which is one of the things that the Nori pilot represents a strong opportunity there.
Christophe Jospe: Totally. When I was hearing you talk about people don’t really value sustainability, I would argue that as a consumer, Who tries to make the right decision, but gets really frustrated when I see bogus labels. Like the other day I was walking through the store and I was like, why do I want to buy gluten-free organic water? And I know you’re charging more for that. So on the one side, actually you have rather uninformed consumers who might be chumps enough to pay more for organic gluten-free water.
Michael Leggett: I hate it when there’s insecticide in my water. Yeah.
Christophe Jospe: But yeah, I’m just kind of curious where you see things filtering up to farmers. I mean, no farmer wants to be told how to do something, right? People want the freedom of they think they’re doing the right thing. And I think genuinely, they take a lot of pride in doing the right thing. And so where do you see that tension or the people maybe trying to transition to do something a little bit differently, but not necessarily sure what they’re doing, whether it is.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, so I guess the two sort of observations, I think that’s a good call out on that sort of throwaway. Sustainability is not valued. What I mean when I say that is based on the two sorts of observations, where we sit in this value chain from farmers who then sell to aggregators, whether it’s Cargill or ADM or some other sort of grain buyer who then sell on to a food company like General Mills or Campbell’s, who then sell on to someone like Walmart, who then sells to a consumer, right? Like you have these many different chains.
We sit right next to the farmer, right? So we gather, we provide a service to gather all the growers’ data together and help them make decisions and then be able to share that information with any partner that a grower decides that they want to, whether it’s their agronomist, whether it’s their landowner, whether it’s one of their buyers, whether it’s someone like Nori. And we see a lot of requests coming into the grower to say, tell us what your greenhouse gas metrics are. Tell us what your biodiversity scores are, however you calculate that.
Tell us what your water quality is. Tell us about your tillage practices. Tell us about your seeding. All of the things. And a grower says, great. I would be happy to. What are you going to give me in return? And the buyers are saying, nothing. Can you tell us these things? And then the growers are saying, yeah, but are you going to give me anything? This takes time. This takes energy. These are, in many cases, my trade secrets. And they’re quite sensitive. So what are you going to give me? And that conversation just repeats itself again and again.
So there’s definitely demand coming through those channels in the supply chain. But as of yet, there is very little incentive structure. And it doesn’t have to be necessarily even a grain premium. It could be differences in the contracting terms, right? So it could be a long-term contract or cost of production plus sort of pricing schemes, things like that. And you do see a few of those, like Danon has one, a few others. But again, those are exceptions rather than the rule. And so that’s where I see it, where there’s definitely demand, but I don’t think food companies, from my perspective, farther down the chain, I don’t think food companies and retailers have decided exactly how much that’s worth.
They know it’s worth something, which is why they’re asking for it, but they’re not putting any money to it.
Christophe Jospe: Right. It’s like, I’ve got a pollinator strip. Cool. A lot more butterflies. The birds are coming back. And that’s great. But like, how do you- How do you market that?
Dr. Emma Fuller: And how do you tell that story to consumers? Yeah.
Michael Leggett: Is anybody trying to market that? I mean, like we have like organic and- You know, GMO free and these different kind of labels that have borne up. I mean, I think this is probably a bit off topic, but it’s interesting. And I feel like that’s come up with some of the customers we’ve talked to of like, well, I want to sell my product at a premium because I want to use this to kind of verify that I am doing a certain thing and say this product should be valued more highly.
Have you seen much like effort around that, like in the industry at all to say like this is certified sustainable or certified sustainable? I don’t know, butterfly, whatever that is. I don’t know what that term is. And I think a lot of, to your other comment, a lot of times these terms are just thrown around as marketing terms and they’re not. It’s natural. Well, natural doesn’t actually mean anything legally. Anybody can just put natural on something that’s entirely not natural. Which makes it harder for the consumers to actually understand what is valuable.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah. So there’s a lot. And I think it’s a little bit of a chicken and egg problem. So one, I think We all recognize or food companies have recognized there’s value in these terms, which is why there’s so much labeling, labeling noise that goes on, right? That’s why you see GMO, non-GMO water or sustainable water or whatever. So I think that contributes to the challenge. There is definitely tremendous interest in sort of in the food system about labeling these things, right? So I would say that regenerative agriculture is a term that didn’t have nearly as much traction five years ago or even three years ago as it does today.
There’s still no formal labeling scheme around what regenerative ag means. And in fact, there’s like some, I don’t know, some dramatic call outs going on between General Mills and, you know, maybe Patagonia Foods, if you look at that, right? So Patagonia has one set of things that they want to see as regenerative ag. And General Mills has been using the term to mean something slightly different or slightly less comprehensive. And so there’s still a lot of arguments about what those two terms mean. And that’s very difficult for a consumer who’s like, look, I just want to like And I’m that consumer too, right?
Like we grow food for ourselves and we sell food, but we also definitely don’t grow all of our food. And so when I go to the grocery store, I’m also sitting there being like, well, should I buy this soup or that soup or which stock should I get? You know, like all of the things. So there’s a lot of argument, a lot of churn. But again, I think that the, I think that also has to do, and this, again, it would be interesting for you guys to continue to explore this with other guests.
I think it also has to do with how marketing and procurement is set up in a lot of these food companies that, you know, how integrated those two are, because certainly marketing wants to tell a story about procurement. And it really depends whether or not marketing can influence procurement and procurement can influence marketing and what other factors procurement is judged on their performance, right? So their reliability, their costs, things like that. And I think historically, a lot of Food companies procurement, especially for commodities, when by definition the product is a commodity, it is totally indistinguishable.
There is no quality differences. It’s a system that is also really difficult to change because you’re trying to add additional qualities that differentiate commodities and essentially decommoditize them in some way. And this whole system is built on that not being the case. So that’s a huge structural issue to undo. And certainly there’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of effort and opportunity there. But it’s non-trivial. And I think, I guess one last point just to riff on that is that I think why we all get excited about commodities is that they also represent a huge footprint, right?
So like of the hundreds of millions of acres of farmland we have in the United States, most of it is in quote unquote commodity ag as row crop, broad acres sort of situation, corn, soy, wheat, that sort of thing. So if you drive change in an acre of corn, that scales in a way that an acre of lettuce may not in terms of just the amount, the percentage of land affected by Yeah, it brought to mind a John Muir quote, when one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it’s connected to the entire universe.
Christophe Jospe: And it’s kind Yeah, when you try to decommodify agriculture and realize that it’s not that easy and there’s this whole system in place. And one of the things that excites me as sitting here with two software-oriented people is we’re living in a world with an explosion of data and an explosion of ways that you can get that data and use that data in ways that can help you make better agronomic decisions and also find multiple values for that data. So can you talk a little bit about some of the innovations or data that’s coming online and that’s coming available?
And then to layer on that question to make it even more complex, how you see that affecting what you were just talking about, which is the decommoditization of agriculture?
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah. So in terms of the data that I see being increasingly available, so I think a big part of this just has to do with the proliferation of sensors and the internet of things, right? Most of those, all of those crops are harvested with tractors and combines that are extremely sophisticated and are generating meter by meter layers of data of yield, of moisture of the grain crop. And there’s additional sensors that you can put on in terms of measuring down pressure to understand soil compaction, all sorts of things. So you get that like meter by meter layout of what’s happening on your farm for planting, for whether input applications, whether it’s nitrogen or crop protection, for yields, that sort of thing.
You see drones being applied increasingly, right? So you have really fine scale imagery in real time that you can process. We have increasing amounts of satellite data, again, not unique necessarily to agriculture, but being applied to agriculture. So we have three meter resolution satellite imagery that’s almost daily depending on cloud cover. So you see just a ton of environmental data coming in a way that was really costly previously to capture. And I think there’s an interesting, like previously this data was only really available I would say like on research plots or academic or long-term sort of agronomy trial situation.
So whether it’s an R&D organization that makes herbicides, pesticides, or seeds, or university extensions agencies, that was where that data lived. But now it’s sort of being democratized to every single field across the entire country, which is like amazing. And I think we’re still grappling with like, wow, what do we do with all this data? Which is like, Again, I think every single sector has gone through that process of like, oh my gosh, all of the data, what do we do with it? So we’re definitely there with ag.
Michael Leggett: It’s going to be great. Someday we’ll have all this data. We have the data.
Dr. Emma Fuller: We have it today. So I would say that we have just tonnes of environmental data. One of the things that I really like about what farm management software is able to do, of which granular is one example, is start to marry economic performance to that, which comes back to this marrying of environmental outcomes with economic business performance and understanding how those two interact. And so this now lets us and lets growers make their decisions and understand how this kind of environmental outcome, this kind of agronomic outcome drives profitability, drives business outcomes.
So I think that’s, yeah, sort of superficially, that’s sort of some of the data that I’m seeing, just a ton of environmental data to sum that up. And then the second part of the question was, how do we...
Christophe Jospe: You kind of answered it. I don’t think I was necessarily being fair, but it was more along the lines of there’s a shift in agriculture because, I mean, what we’re seeing is a trend that is maybe not long-term sustainable, and we’d like to see something which is more viable. And so it’s understanding how does that availability of data in new ways potentially shift systems that wasn’t previously possible. Yeah.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, I think one saying that I love to return to is you only manage what you measure, right? Or you only measure, yeah. Oh, dear. Let me try to say this again.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, it’s fine. You can’t measure what you can’t manage.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, something like that.
Christophe Jospe: Can’t manage what you don’t measure.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah.
Michael Leggett: You manage what you measure.
Christophe Jospe: For a long time, listeners actually probably heard me go on a rant after having read The Tyranny of Metrics, where I pushed back to say, well, we don’t want to be hyper-focused on metrics, because if we’re only focused on that one thing, actually, we’re missing the forest from the trees.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Sure. So there’s some discussion about the holisticness of the metrics that you choose and the right metrics. But certainly, if you’re not measuring anything, you can’t manage it, right? And so all of this environmental data opens up new opportunities to actually manage these outcomes in a way that we just never had, right? The soil conditions and understand what nitrous oxide emissions are and soil carbon sequestration is, lets you all of a sudden now start to manage for those outcomes and reward and build incentives around those outcomes. And so I think that opens up really exciting opportunities both to, one, fully know the scope of the problems that we’re faced with, but two, gives us some of the tools to start developing market or other incentive structures to start addressing them.
So that is what really excites me. And that’s what I think drew me to software of like starting to build the metrics because I saw that opportunity is like, okay, now we have the data. Let’s start putting it together in ways that are meaningful to drive decision-making.
Michael Leggett: Yeah. So we’ve talked about trends in agriculture and you’ve talked about both precision ag becoming a bigger thing, you’ve talked about generational changes, you’ve talked about different ag tech and software being made available, both with managing farms as well as the actual equipment and where do I apply the nitrogen, how much, and different things. What do you think is driving all of this? Is it just about profit? Is it just about, like, I want to make more money, you know, more dollars per acre? Are there other things driving the adoption of all these things and kind of making things more complex as well as you talked about farms becoming bigger and bigger?
Is there something deeper and more, you know, interesting behind what’s driving that?
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think a really big part of this, honestly, is consolidation as sort of perhaps less fun. It’s like a less exciting example or explanation. So my farm on Bashan Island, Washington is 15 acres, one five, huge, right? We have maybe three under cultivation. We’d be what you call a market garden situation, right? And that’s a tremendous amount of work, especially because a lot of it is by hand. But the growers that we work with at Granular, a small farm is a thousand acre operation, like You know, most of our customers fit into like sort of the three to five, right?
And we are increasingly seeing growers that are 30, that are 70, right? That like are, you know, thousands of acres. And a lot of these are family farms, right? It’s run by four guys, right? Dad, sons, and maybe a cousin.
Michael Leggett: All like 30,000 acres run by four guys?
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yes. So, right. Software, machinery, complex machinery, sensors. Robots. Robots.
Michael Leggett: It’s like right from Interstellar where he’s got like the remote control.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah. I thought that the Interstellar movie was so interesting for a variety of reasons, both for the way that environmentalism was portrayed in that movie, but also for the farming aspects of that. Yeah. So you go to the Midwest and you look out over this like rolling, beautiful hillside and you realize that two guys farm that probably. And what used to take, you know, pre-mechanization used to take three months to pull in a harvest. Now it takes less than a week. We have folks who work at Granular as customer success managers who also farm their own operations, which works really well because their customers, their accounts are the most busy through planting and harvest.
So they can take some time off themselves and also go do their planting and harvest. And those things take like a week or two weeks. And it is an exhausting back-to-back marathon for those two weeks. But the fact that three guys can do thousands of acres is insane and I think speaks to the efficiency of Sensors, mechanization, and software. And so I think that’s a big driver for how you keep and manage these operations.
Michael Leggett: What is, you said mechanization. What is that sound?
Dr. Emma Fuller: So I guess to me, that means tractors, right? So as Christophe mentioned, our farm, we use draft power, we use horses. So that would be not mechanized. Well, maybe you could argue about the plow, but we’ll not go back that far. But that would be not mechanized farming. And on a scale of one to three acres, I think we can do it because at that scale, I think that the We can argue about the time trade-offs, but it’s pretty low. But as you start to scale to 20 to 50 to 100, and especially as you go to grain crops, that sort of efficiency in order to get that kind of acreage done, you would either need tonnes and tonnes of people or machines that can do it very efficiently and do the work of 10 people or hundreds of people in the same amount of time.
So I think that those two, the huge gains we’ve seen in agriculture is actually quite consistent with shifting to digitization and shifting to software. It’s just the next evolution. And I would say... Maybe this goes back a little bit to like the trends in agriculture and ag tech. I think that from the 1950s to pre sort of like digital revolution, you saw this huge amount of efficiency that was often associated. A lot was associated with the green revolution, which is synthetic fertilizers, improved genetics and grain crops, corn and wheat and things like that.
And in increasing homogenization, right? So efficiency gains were driven because you could homogenize the environment, control all the weeds, get a perfect stand of these monocultures, right? That makes it operationally extremely simple and thus very easy to scale in size. So you get increasing operational simplicity and efficiency. And I would say that precision ag now represents being able to go subfield level to address the variability per field. And Like optimize for every single meter, right? So even though you have these monoculture stands of corn, there are sort of sources and sinks.
There are places that you can put nitrogen down or put seed down. And it’s just like, either it’s very compacted or it’s like constantly flooded in ponds. So you just don’t get a good yield there. So you’re essentially pouring money into that, those sort of like sink areas without getting any return. And so the type of sensors that we now have will let you identify those areas and say, don’t plant anything there. Leave a hole there or plant much less there, right? To be able to optimize and for exactly the right amount of inputs that would actually get you a return on investment.
And so I think that’s really exciting. And that I think is where the next set of efficiency gains are going to come from is that sort of like really fine scale optimization. And I think it’s cool to think about how you could start to back off from some of this operational simplicity and start mixing crops together or mixing... Anyway, different cultivation practices that as we start to measure at a really fine subfield, subacre scale, that you can start to manage again at that subacre scale.
Michael Leggett: So just a short follow-up, is the consolidation largely driven just because the profit per acre is lower? Like the margins are shrinking and so you’ve got to farm more acres to be able to keep your head above water?
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, especially for these commodities. The margin on these are so slim. So again, our customer or the crop segments that we The growers that we serve tend to be corn, soy, wheat. So again, like row crop operations rather than what’s called specialty crops, that’s lettuce, those sorts of things. And so for these big row crops, yeah, the margins are so, so low. I don’t know. It depends, but often you see margins of anywhere from $1 to $5 per acre, right? And you multiply that, how many thousands of acres do you need for that to turn?
It’s like annual margins. Right, yeah. Wow. And sometimes they’re losses. So you need to have a lot of acres in order to make that be a livable profession.
Christophe Jospe: I’m so tempted to ask a question, but I really want to get us over to talking about the pilot. So I’m just going to make a statement and not allow you to respond. Beautiful. And then she’ll respond. But I’m going to tie it into the pilot so you’re going to be forced to talking about farmers taking activities that are sequestering carbon dioxide and adding it to their soils. But I just want to push back a little bit on the mechanistic mindset. We’ve had Charlie Massey on, who’s an Australian farmer who...
You know, is very much of the holistic mindset. And you look at the regenerative organic certification, which is propagated by the Rodale Institute. And when you sort of describe the dynamics between Patagonia and General Mills, it’s right. Those are the battlegrounds, right? Because you’ve got the regenerative organic certification. Which is extremely hard to do and is very, very stringent and doesn’t actually, it’s not compatible with large scale commodity cropping. And I even remember being in a conference where someone, it was a farmer conference, no till on the plains. And the topic was regenerative organic.
And people asked, all right, how many people are organic? And a couple of hands went up and people said, how many are regenerative? And a couple of hands went up and said, how many people are regenerative organic? And no hands went up. People said, is that even a thing? So it’s just kind of interesting to see that we’re being pushed in this commoditization, commoditization, like bigger, bigger, bigger. But also, you say, well, it’s not profitable unless you farm bigger. But is that actually true? Because are farmers being pushed into debt to buy things that are bigger and bigger so that they can farm bigger and bigger?
And then they’re suddenly in this cycle of I mean, I’m kind of evoking Wendell Berry right now because I’m reading the art of loading brush. And like, if Wendell were here in the room, he would not be down with what you’re saying at all. He would be saying, no, Emma, like actually what we need is smaller farms and they can still be profitable because they’re reducing their inputs and they’re getting more diverse in their crops. And this is improving the soil organic matter, soil organic carbon, which is what Nori cares about, right?
So let’s tie it now to the pilot. So we’ve got farmers like Trey Hill. Who actually, you’re allowed to respond to my comment there.
Michael Leggett: I was going to say, you’re really not going to let her respond at all.
Dr. Emma Fuller: I love that you’re reading The Art of Loading Brush. That is like, that’s a great book. And Wendell Berry is one of, I think, the motivations and inspirations behind both my husband and I’s own personal adoption and involvement in farming of knowing the land and being involved intimately in that scale. There’s so much, I think, to go on there. A few thoughts that come to mind. So one, well, just to start, I think there’s also just an interesting power imbalance in how we market and sell food today that growers really don’t have a lot.
They’re price takers, right? So growers, unless they’re part of co-ops, have a very difficult time setting their own prices and demanding premiums, and especially when you have a commodity system. And so it’s a very difficult position to be in. To be able to identify markets and drive those changes. And I’m not saying that there isn’t demand and really savvy farmers can do it. It’s just not easy. So that’s just the first thought that comes to mind. And I think, let’s see, where else was I going to go with that? I also read Charles Massey’s book, which is a great one.
So it’s cool that you guys had him on the podcast. I think the other piece, nope, I think I’ve totally spaced. So we can move on to the pilot.
Unknown speaker: No, you’re good, everyone.
Christophe Jospe: I want to talk about Trey Hill because Trey is one of those people, he’s doing it. He’s a pretty mid-sized farm, I guess, for granular. He’s pretty big. He’s doing it. He’s commodity farming, but he’s also planting green and improving his carbon numbers. We’ve actually run the data through the pilot. Trey, I’ve got all this data. Tell us what it means. That is a weird dystopian future that I don’t want to live in. But, you know, there are a couple parts that I think we want to get into. And this is really why we have Michael on this podcast here, because Michael is the one who’s leading the pilot and leading what we’re trying to do from it.
And I think, well, first of all, what sort of reception are you getting when farmers see this? Like, wait, is this some climate change thing? Like, how are farmers thinking about climate change?
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah. So the way... I think that often the words differ, right? So I think climate change often has a political tinge to it that indicates gets into identity politics and that sort of thing. But by far, far and away, growers, farmers are the most aware of year-to-year weather conditions in a way that most of us who live in cities are not. And so beyond a doubt, understanding extreme weather, understanding shifts in growing seasons, the duration of growing seasons, the amount of water you get, the timing of the water that you get, All of those affect business decisions every day.
But when you’re going to do your planting, when you’re going to do your harvesting, forecasting, that sort of thing. So growers are really aware of it. Certainly the summer has been a really, the fall was tough. The spring was tough. The summer was tough, right? We’re just seeing huge amounts of disruption, whether it’s flooding. A lot of it’s coming from water in the Midwest right now. So I think farmers are really, really aware of it. Again, it gets tough because we’re talking about things that have political implications. And so that’s where I think communication breaks down.
I think another place that communication breaks down is that there has been a lot of, I would say, consumers and society telling farmers they are bad, that they are doing things wrong, and that the environmental problems are their fault, whether it’s the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone or it’s greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture, the worst, right? Which is not a super... And so there are very impressive growers like Trey that are willing to say, look, I’m willing to come to the table and talk about these things because these things matter and can see past that kind of vitriol.
But I definitely- Enter the hostel. Yeah. And it’s super impressive. But I think that totally makes sense that a lot of Both farmers and farm organizations are just not interested in engaging because they’re villainized. And so one of the things that I’m hoping in general with helping build the sort of sustainability and stewardship tools is help growers tell their own story and be empowered to tell their own story and have the tools and the data to back up their own story so that they can say, you know, because a lot of our growers, and this gets to the pilot, especially a lot of the growers that I’ve had the opportunity to chat with, to let them know about this opportunity with Nori.
Are amazing stewards, right? And are already doing amazing things with their farmland and are generating huge amounts of value for society, for us that don’t farm at that scale, whether it’s water quality, whether it’s sequestering carbon, for no charge. They just do that, but they have no way to tell their story in this big food system. So I think helping growers, and I think that’s going to be a side effect of actually participating in Nori, is for them to be able to say... Look, I can document how much soil carbon I’m sequestering.
I can put it in context so you understand what kind of impact I’m having on this global problem. And I can get rewarded monetarily for that in a way that previously they could not. And I think the other part of this, of farmers getting villainized, the system is set up to not value these things that society is telling farmers they value. Biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, water quality. There’s no price on that. There’s no policy regulations on that. And so it makes total sense that farmers are not somehow You know, in their businesses also going to go ahead and pay all the operational costs for the things that we want as a society.
So I think it makes total sense that they farm the way that they do. And like, honestly, any of us run, you know, like all of us operate in a society with incentives, right? As much as I care deeply about climate change and I care deeply about the environment, I fly in a plane all the freaking time, right? Because like my professional career depends on me being in places and showing up for things and That I personally will be penalized. So anyway, I think we’re all subject to these same incentives.
And so I think that’s part of why growers sort of disengage from the climate change thing in a way that I find unfortunate, but that I think the pilot starts to help pilots like these start to help sort of undo that not a little bit.
Michael Leggett: And you think we’re having success by like, I see different approaches to this of like, well, let’s just not put climate change up front or not talk about that. Or like, let’s talk about like, hey, we want to, you know, help incentivize you to improve the health of your soil or different things. Is it better to kind of just not talk about it? Is it better to talk about like, hey, we think a great way to combat extreme weather.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, the two ways that I’ve heard just in conversations with some of our growers about this There’s definitely a group of growers that are already engaged in these practices and have already come to this conclusion themselves. This is better for their farmland. This is better for their margins. And this kind of gets back to that complexity, Charles Massey, Wendell Berry sort of thing that you actually can see some really exciting gains in business outcomes from investing in soil health. So they’ve already decided that’s the right thing for them. And it feels really validating to them to be like, yeah, like there are other external parties that are speaking to a larger consumer audience that are also now validating this.
And this feels really good. And that’s really exciting to find those growers that were already doing it and saying, yes, let’s connect you and let’s get you rewarded and valued. Thank you for doing that. Thank you.
Christophe Jospe: And your tool kind of does that, right? Because you’re helping these farmers identify where they can reduce input costs. And so you’re helping them go even further faster.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Right. Yeah. So it’s helping. Exactly. It’s just speeding up that process and making it even more clear. So I think that’s one segment. I think the other segment where I think that it really speaks to them is, and this goes back to the consolidation and the generational change sort of pieces, is that it takes resources to make changes in your practices, right? When you farm, you get one data point a year, right? You get one outcome a year. So 40 seasons of farming, 40 years of farming is 40 data points, right?
And in a system...
Michael Leggett: Your yield is at the main... Right, yeah, your yield.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Or even your profitability, right? You get one sort of iteration of that every single year, right? So it’s a slow process to generate...
Christophe Jospe: Bushels per acre.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Right, there you go. But... So that process is so slow and there’s so much noise, especially now with climate change. So how do you, as a businessman or a business person, how do you look at that pattern of variation and identify any signal out of that and make business decisions? Which is why often if your father or your family farmed generations, you are starting to build up now a data set that you can really use across hundreds of years. More than 100 years, right? In some cases, and why it’s very difficult to be a new farmer and have five years worth of data points, like five data points, what are you going to do with that?
So all of that is to say, it takes a lot of effort to learn new production practices and to invest in new machinery, both capital, but also time. And so to help growers have this incentive of their thinking about changing their practices and to provide additional financial incentives to do so, I think is also the other place where these pilots have real traction. And the only reason that connects to the generational change and consolidation is that when you have growers that farm part-time and work off-farm, it’s even harder for them to invest the necessary time and effort to make these transitions in business practices.
So those are the two things. It’s either saying thank you to the growers that are already doing this, but also helping growers that have thought, okay, I’m going to transition 100 acres. I’m going to transition this handful of fields. And then this is one more piece to help them do that.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. So Emma, you’ve been throwing so many nice softballs our way and I’m going to start swinging at them. We try not to talk about ourselves too much. We want these podcasts to be educational and get into nuances and we’ve sort of done that already. So let’s talk about like, I mean, and it’s funny because it’s been quite philosophical and you guys are software people. I thought we were going to be talking about software. So Michael, this question is actually for you. Why do you think, so Michael came on and actually we already had a partnership in place with granular.
And I remember some of the early days when we were onboarding, I was like, Michael, look, like there’s a lot of things you got to focus on. It’s going to take you a long time, but trust me, like focus on granular because this is, this is where the product’s going to really scale and work well. So Michael, why, why does Nori work with data farm management information software like granular? What does that help us with?
Michael Leggett: Oh, yeah. I remember we’ve had a lot of conversations around this. I remember, yeah. The short of it is, so I think we think of how do we maximize our impact, the impact of the time we spend in different things. So I think that when we look at how are we going to not only measure or quantify how much CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere and stored as carbon in the soil via photosynthesis, And then left there via, you know, reduced tillage or no tillage. You know, the way to quantify that, and we’ve gone through a bunch of different, you know, research to look at the best way to do that.
We think the best way and the most effective way is through Comet Farm, the model, which we’ve talked about previously. On the podcast, which is this great tool built out of Colorado State University with the NRCS and some great people there, which you actually got to meet recently to spend some time with, which is fantastic. And love those people. They’re fantastic. Fantastic. So when we look at that model, though, still requires a lot of data. So the first requirement is how are we going to get detailed data on how the land was managed?
Going back quite a few years, we really ideally want to go back to some amount of information about how the land was managed all the way back into the 80s.
Christophe Jospe: If only there were a zero for agriculture. Yeah.
Michael Leggett: And so, I think the data requirements are immense. And then thinking of, okay, let’s say you even have the data. Let’s say you’ve been keeping meticulous records. The labor involved in putting that data in is immense. And then how do we reach the farmers to say, hey, you can do this. If you’ve got this data, you can spend this time and you can... Find out how much CO2 you’ve been storing as carbon in your soil. And we’ll issue carbon removals or carbon removal certificates, which you can then turn around and sell on the Nori market that we’re building.
Isn’t that great? Those three things, get the data. I missed one already. Get the data, something else, and kind of reach the farmer’s scale. Yeah. I think that I don’t see us being able to do this at scale easily without... Great partners like Granular Data Platforms where farmers are storing their data already because farmers are trying to find better places, as you said, to store their data. And there’s a number of data platforms out there and there’s always any data You know, no one of them is perfect, but it’s been a fantastic partnership in helping us, you know, meet like Trey was a granular customer.
I went to Emma and was like, Hey, let’s start talking often. We started talking weekly. And I said, you know, love to start with somebody. Do you have anyone in mind? I’ve got two farmers in mind. Why don’t you talk to Trey and Rourke? And they’ve been fantastic. So kind of, I think those are a lot of the reasons, the value we’ve gotten out of it so far.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Just to add on to this love fest, I mean, I think that the opportunity to find Nori was so exciting in part because, again, our growers are putting in all of this data and sort of be able to find additional value for the data that’s already digitized. So the marginal cost in sharing this data, once the growers decide they want to, is so low, right? And they’ve done all of the work to drive and understand their businesses. And it’s really high quality data, right? Because they are making business decisions off of it.
So it’s just super exciting to be able to find that because a lot of the sustainability Reporting that I’m seeing is trying to walk this line between like, how do we get data out of growers and not waste their time? But that means that it’s really coarse, right? So it’s like, do you use integrated pest management, right? Like, which is like a check a box, yes or no, right? Right. Which can tell you something, but it really doesn’t reward the best performers from the worst, right? So the people at the lower end of the spectrum get pulled up by that box track and the people at the top get pulled down.
So it’s so exciting to find opportunities like Nori that can really tie financial incentives to environmental outcomes to reward the amazing people like Trey that are doing amazing things and really see them rewarded at the top of their game for that. So it was just super exciting and that’s why I like these ecosystem service market Setups in general that they set up the incentives simply and straightforward and it’s really straightforward. So yes, it’s been a great partnership so far.
Christophe Jospe: So what are we actually doing together today? And what do we want to be doing after we do that thing we’ve been doing today? We’re recording a podcast right now. Hey, listener, we pulled a fast one on you. There’s actually nothing other than just like randomly doing a Yeah, in the pilot, I imagine.
Michael Leggett: Oh, this is the pilot. This is the pilot.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Sure, yeah. So today, what we’re doing is letting various granular business customers know that they have the opportunity to participate in this pilot project with Nori, which is where they can export their granular business data. So that’s been the process that we’ve been involved in so far. And so it’s been a lot of Michael and I working together to figure out how do we actually do this handshake to get the data transferred in the right way using both Trey and Roark as examples. And then Now, on my side, going back to the larger customer base and saying, who are the right growers that are excited about this, that would be interested in this, and starting to understand and enroll them into the pilot project.
Michael Leggett: Yeah, who’s next? And kind of, and trying to improve the process. And I feel like we’ve been really, I feel like we have similar mindsets. And one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about working with Emma is you’re both very willing and excited and want to do things really well, but you’re also like scrappy and like, okay, You know, here’s the Cadillac version, you know, the really, the way we can do this and we want to get to there, but what’s the really cheap way we can do it so we actually get something done next week and let’s learn from that and improve.
And so, I think we’ve been, you know, and really especially you’ve been really mindful of like what’s the next baby step we can take to get us further down the field. So, what have we been learning? Yeah, what have we been learning? I mean, I think that a lot of it is We knew nothing would be perfect, but learning about where the imperfections are and developing strategies to improve them. That’s both in how to transfer the data. I think, like you said, it’s not just a box check. We want to know what brand of fertilizers you put down, how much nitrogen is in it, how many gallons of fertilizers you put per acre on this field versus that field, not just across your whole farm.
I think a lot of learnings is just getting to know each other and the intricacies. It’s like a really robust relationship where we really get to know, you know, how things work on each other’s platforms and how to make that work in a reasonable way, you know, and find a way forward.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, I would say that also tactically we’ve identified a ton of like little places where sort of like data translation. There’s challenges that you wouldn’t expect. So for example, the definition of tillage, right, is a challenging one. Ooh, that’s a fun one. Right? So there’s full till, there’s conventional till, there’s reduced till, there’s like strip till, there’s no till.
Michael Leggett: Vertical till.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Right. Yeah, vertical till.
Michael Leggett: But then there’s mulching and mowing.
Dr. Emma Fuller: That’s right.
Michael Leggett: What about broad spectrum herbicides?
Dr. Emma Fuller: What about broad spectrum herbicides? Indeed. And so those sorts of nuances, I think, we’re getting the opportunity to like really stress test How the rubber meets the road. And I think this is something about ag tech that’s broadly true is that we’re in this process of building up tonnes and tonnes of data, but there’s still relatively low interoperability across systems. Whether it’s between different farm management systems or between drones or satellite, there’s just a lot of data transference that’s tough. And so that makes this tough also where Comet Farms is expecting one set of data, but we have a slightly different data model.
And so how do you marry those two together?
Michael Leggett: I was going to say, there’s like the love square of like the farmer and how they think about it. And then granular and how you think about it. And then there’s how Comet Farm thinks about it. And we’re kind of stuck in the middle of like trying to translate between.
Christophe Jospe: And in a way we take that on ourselves and then offer that as a value prop and hopefully not trying to standardize, but at least harmonize a lot of these disparate efforts.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah.
Michael Leggett: We are. I mean, we’re definitely, I think one principle that’s come out of the pilot is we believe strongly that it’s important for us to capture what happened as much in like either the terms of granular or the farmer. So I’d rather the farmer say, I do vertical tillage and let’s say, great, that classifies as X. And does that make sense to you? You know, as reduced till, which, you know, leaves 70% of the residue on the field or whatever that might be. And trying to create the best mappings we can that Comet Farm needs so that if those mappings ever change or improved, we can improve them on an instant.
And when we go to verify, the verifier is not saying, I see you did reduce tillage. And the farmer is going, sure? I don’t know. I do vertical tillage. Well, it says here reduce tillage. So trying to make sure that the verification is also easily done, that they’re verifying what the farmer said in the farmer’s own words.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah, this has been a great love fest. We’re getting to the top of the hour. I mean, there’s so many more things that we could talk about. It’s, man. So, well, okay, before we wrap it up, so today, you know, people are, they’ve got their data on granular, they’re downloading it, they’re exporting it over to Nori. This is a manual process. And then slowly we’re figuring out, like, how do we automate this so that there’s a software handshake? So ultimately, this... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No one just wants to be one of the first.
And eventually that software can talk to each other. I think that’s a real differentiator we have from other carbon markets so that we’re starting with software first. But I’m just interested for you, Michael, to spell out a little bit of some of the phases where you see this evolving.
Michael Leggett: Yeah. So I think it’s super exciting where we’re at. I feel like we’re on the cusp of that next phase. And I think the first phase was getting to know each other. You know, we chose a couple of farmers in Trey and Rorick’s farms through which we got to know each other and got to kind of feel out, is this, you know, work for the farmers? Are they excited about it? And so now we’ve created some material and you granular are talking to your customers about it. And more farmers are saying, yeah, actually, I’m interested.
I want to know more. So I’m excited about enrolling more farmers. I’m excited about going to the next step of how do we make this a bit more automatic or a bit easier on everyone as kind of getting the data from granular to nori in the formats that we need to. All the while, this is the farmer’s data and respecting that. You know, and I’m really excited to take that next step. And I’m really excited about kind of the, you know, phases down the road where farmers are getting paid, where we start, you know, spending some time thinking about like, how can we better support farmers selling the crops at a premium and saying, this is...
Whatever it is, you know, regenerative, organic, nori, sustainable. I don’t know what that label is, but, you know, either trying to take what the industry is running with or... Because I think that there’s value in... Look, there’s a lot of platforms for data out there, but the quality, you know, garbage in, garbage out. So how much effort are you putting in, you the farmer, into putting that data in correctly and accurately and completely... Well, Nori kind of requires it to be a certain level, right? And then it’s going to get verified by an independent verifier that doesn’t work for Nori, that doesn’t work for the farmer, that doesn’t work for the seed company.
It’s going to be an independent third party. And so I think that elevates the confidence in that data and should therefore elevate the value of that data, which is a whole other interesting dynamic in all of this. So I’m just excited about all these gears, you know, mashing into each other and kind of clicking and, you know, things spinning up.
Christophe Jospe: Just to riff on Emma’s Zillow metaphor, it’s kind of like we want to incentivize people renting houses where they can see what improvements that last tenant did over the last 10 years before. And having that decision power as a farmer and an ecosystem service market mandating that actually helps everyone and hopefully pushes and creates this trend that is broadly beneficial, hopefully with the best interest of the farmer at mind.
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah. And I mean, one place that I see nothing so far, but really exciting potential is how this shows up in the land market. So just like what you’re saying, right? We know that it takes five to 10 years before you really start to see turnarounds or changes in your soil structure and productivity. And so being able to have a platform on which we can document and demonstrate that and then Landowners or farmers get rewarded for that, for being good stewards of the farmland and whether or not you care about in terms of a financial asset that you own farmland and it’s just one place to invest, or you care about it from an environmental perspective, or you care about it as a combination of both.
Being able to show that with metrics like that you guys are generating with Nori is so exciting. One thing we didn’t talk about, but part of what comes with that consolidation and generational change is a lot of rented farmland. So there’s a lot of what are called non-owner operated farmland. So this is either kids that inherited it from their parents and decided not to farm. And often these are smaller, quote unquote, smaller parcels, right? They’re 40 acres or 100 acres or 200 acres, not big enough to generate enough revenue to be a sole business on its own, so often rented to other big farms.
And so being able to show a grower who says, hey, landowner, I would like to rent your farmland. And I am a fabulous steward. And look at this demonstration of my past performance, I think is also extremely valuable for being able to say, for a landowner to say, great, I would love to see that. And also for landowners, honestly, to understand the financial value that’s associated with this, I think. A whole can of worms we didn’t even get into is the sort of dynamics of the landowning side of things, right?
That a lot of landowners see rent checks from farmers as a reliable source of income, right? But they don’t want to necessarily, either they don’t know about it, the opportunities, they’re not familiar with the space enough to know that they could be investing in these ways that require long-term views. So I think there’s a tremendous opportunity there that I’m really excited about exploring with you guys as we start to build. But this foundation of having strong Environmental metrics that are linked to management performance is the absolute required foundation in order to move to that space.
So I think it’s a really exciting set of next steps that we could also be thinking about post the successful launch of Nori’s Marketplace.
Christophe Jospe: We’ve got a lot to work on, a lot to figure out. Any closing words, Emma? If someone is listening and they’re interested in finding out more from Granular, should they just go to the website?
Dr. Emma Fuller: Yeah, you can definitely check us out at granular. ag. You can also find me on LinkedIn. I obviously love talking about all of the things that we talked about on this podcast. And so finding folks that are as excited about food systems and sustainability and economic systems and that sort of thing, love talking about it. Yeah, I think those are probably the two best places to start.
Christophe Jospe: Well, wonderful. Thanks so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in iTunes or your podcast app of choice. Please share this with people who you think would be interested in the topic. Please subscribe. We’ve got a weekly newsletter. If you are interested in the pilot, feel free to email us at pilot at nori.com. We’ve got a lot to do, a lot of exciting things to announce in the near future. So stay tuned. All right, take care.
