Farmhand Community News #8
What I'm reading about in ag and why it matters
Hello!
The chaos of conference season is chipping away at my every-other-Monday publishing aspiration. Oh well, Monday +/- 48 hours feels acceptable. Maybe I’ll send the next one on a Sunday to even out the average.
I’m in Denver right now for RFSI, where I’ll be co-leading 2 sessions:
Tomorrow (Wed) at 3:10pm MT, I’ll be co-facillitating “Bridging the Funding Gap: Mobilizing VC, Philanthropy, and Everything In Between for Regen Ag” with Eva Goulbourne, Venture Partner at Farmhand and CEO at Littlefoot Ventures
Thursday at 3:10pm MT, I’ll be co-facillitating a Shock Scenario workshop around “Labor Migration: Executive Orders Mobilize Workforce for Mineral Boom” with Sarah Nolet, Managing Partner at Tenacious Ventures and Renée Vassilos, Director of Ag Innovation at The Nature Conservancy.
Automation takes center stage in port negotiations
TL;DR: In case you missed it, there was a 3-day strike by longshoremen on the East and Gulf Coasts. It ended relatively quickly, which is a really good thing because $2B+ worth of goods (lots of ‘em agricultural) move through those ports, daily. Automation took a central point
My take: First of all, supply chains are a massive component of the agricultural system. Its foolish to invest in agriculture and not pay attention to critical points within ag supply chains.
Guess what the 2 primary demands were? Increased wages and “ a ban on the automation of gates, cranes and container-moving trucks at the union’s major East and Gulf Coast ports.” US ports are already outdated and inefficient. Banning autonomy here isn’t good for international competitiveness. Also, workers are humans who matter.I hope that tech bros/chicks pay attention to this. I hope that we’re thinking about how we might bring the people who’s jobs are going to be impacted by autonomy along with us such that we can leverage technology to together build a better future. If we don’t, resistance to change is inevitable.
Big, If True: Are Farmers Reducing their Nitrogen Appliction Rates
TL;DR: Nerdy deep dive into whether or not Iowa farmers are actually cutting Nitrogen application rates. They’re not really. Everyone is still overapplying.
My take: Nitrous oxide emissions are the best available ag emissions reduction opportunity today, and people don’t talk about it enough. This is a really great breakdown of the reality of fertilizer overapplication, including details on the fact that manure spreading is underregulated. I had a fun chat this evening with a fellow pragmatic Midwesterner and a new regenerative agriculture enthusiast about farmer behavior change. It’s really really hard to change behavior, and so far, none of the tools that are available to farmers have been sufficient to change fertilizer application behavior en mass. This is a tremendous opportunity and the clock is ticking on figuring it out.
Factory Farm Nation: 2024 Report
TL;DR: Food & Water Watch puts together a well researched and articulated report on CAFOs each year.
My take: I believe in scale and efficiency, and I believe that humans are more important than animals. And, there are a lot of “factory farms” (as defined by >500 head beef cattle, >500k broilers/year, >1k head hogs, >100k layers, and >500 dairy cows) with pretty harsh consequences. It’s worth reading the report and wrestling with reality.
I read this article this morning on my flight to Denver, and I got stuck on the manure section. As I’ve been absorbing about the news cycle about tragic destruction and death toll from Hurricane Helene, I’ve been on the lookout for reporting about manure overflows. We’ll be seeing those consequences for an unfortunately long time to come.
Whelp, on that shitty note, I’m off to sleep. Come to my sessions and reach out and say hi if you’re at RFSI!
Cheers,
Connie