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Can the Plant Microbiome Revolutionize Farming? · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's talk about fertilizer. If fertilizer disappeared from the
0:25
Speaker 1: world tomorrow, we wouldn't be able to grow enough food
0:28
Speaker 1: and billions of people would die. The key ingredient infertilizer
0:33
Speaker 1: is nitrogen, the most abundant element in the atmosphere. It's
0:37
Speaker 1: in every breath we breathe, but plants can't get it
0:40
Speaker 1: straight from the air. In the early twentieth century, people
0:43
Speaker 1: figured out how to get nitrogen out of the air
0:46
Speaker 1: and into ammonia, a solid form that plants can use.
0:50
Speaker 1: It's called the haber Bosch process. Was an amazing breakthrough,
0:53
Speaker 1: one of the key innovations of the twentieth century. But
0:57
Speaker 1: getting that nitrogen out of the air and into solid
1:00
Speaker 1: fertilizer is wildly energy intensive, a big contributor to climate change.
1:05
Speaker 1: The process is also inefficient on the back end. Farmers
1:08
Speaker 1: wind up putting tons of nitrogen rich fertilizer on their
1:11
Speaker 1: soil that winds up just getting washed away. In other words,
1:16
Speaker 1: it's been about one hundred years since the last big
1:19
Speaker 1: breakthrough infertilizer, and we could really use another one. I'm
1:28
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein, and this is What's Your Problem? The show
1:31
Speaker 1: where I talk to people who are trying to make
1:33
Speaker 1: technological progress. My guest today is Carston Temmy. He's a
1:37
Speaker 1: bioengineer and the co founder and chief innovation officer of
1:42
Speaker 1: Pivot Bio. Carston's problem is this, can you use modern
1:47
Speaker 1: genetic tools in order to get microbes that live in
1:51
Speaker 1: the soil to grab more nitrogen for crops? So how
1:59
Speaker 1: how did you get into nitrogen?
2:02
Speaker 2: Well? I worked on this problem as the core focus
2:07
Speaker 2: of my PhD research. Graduate school, I got attracted to
2:13
Speaker 2: the West Coast to study a field that was brand new.
2:16
Speaker 2: It was called synthetic biology, and the premise was that
2:20
Speaker 2: we now know enough from sequencing genomes and from being
2:24
Speaker 2: able to apply all of the modern discoveries of the
2:30
Speaker 2: technology discovered by Silicon Valley to think about microbes in
2:35
Speaker 2: their DNA as a new type of programming language. We
2:39
Speaker 2: could reprogram microbes to do really useful things for humanity,
2:43
Speaker 2: maybe make better medications, or to be able to help
2:48
Speaker 2: make more sustainable building materials. And for me, one of
2:51
Speaker 2: the biggest challenges was right here at the crux of agriculture,
2:55
Speaker 2: how do we make better performing fertilizer? And synthetic biology
3:00
Speaker 2: offered a brand new set of tools that we might
3:03
Speaker 2: be able to go tackle that problem.
3:05
Speaker 1: So is it right that your first notion is to
3:10
Speaker 1: essentially engineer plants so that they can grab nitrogen directly
3:15
Speaker 1: out of the air, sort of a cut out the
3:17
Speaker 1: middleman strategy.
3:20
Speaker 2: It's been maybe an aspiration of academia of science for
3:28
Speaker 2: the last fifty or sixty years really since the first tools,
3:33
Speaker 2: the enzymes of genetic engineering, were discovered. It was one
3:37
Speaker 2: of the two or three examples cited as a real
3:41
Speaker 2: big holy grail for the field.
3:43
Speaker 1: Because you could just solve the problem. You wouldn't need
3:45
Speaker 1: fertilizer anything, exactly, if we could just literally the nitrogenists
3:48
Speaker 1: right there in the air all around the plant, if
3:51
Speaker 1: only it could grab it somehow exactly, Let's just put
3:55
Speaker 1: the DNA for that enzyme into the plant, and the
3:59
Speaker 1: plant can make its own enzyme, it can make its
4:00
Speaker 1: own fertilizer.
4:02
Speaker 2: VOILA will have solved everything.
4:04
Speaker 1: Very appealing, So tell me about your your efforts toward
4:07
Speaker 1: that end.
4:08
Speaker 2: Well for us, these seventy years since the first examples
4:15
Speaker 2: of DNA were discovered, the first enzymes from genetic engineering, collectively,
4:21
Speaker 2: scientists have reverse engineered how a microbe in its DNA
4:27
Speaker 2: that program for making the nitrogen producing enzyme is encoded,
4:32
Speaker 2: so they reverse engineered the whole blueprint of that program.
4:36
Speaker 2: I just happened to be in graduate school when we
4:38
Speaker 2: had the chance to complete the final last piece of
4:42
Speaker 2: that puzzle, and so we showed you could package up
4:45
Speaker 2: all of the genes, all of the DNA in a
4:48
Speaker 2: way that could make it transferable to a plant. The
4:52
Speaker 2: challenge was that we realized it wasn't the best, most
4:56
Speaker 2: efficient way to actually build a product that could change agriculture.
5:01
Speaker 2: It was a great example of scientifific discovery, was a
5:06
Speaker 2: great example of how to understand the beauty of nature
5:10
Speaker 2: around us, and there was actually an easier way. Rather
5:13
Speaker 2: than putting the whole program into a plant. We could
5:17
Speaker 2: just get microbes to do more of what they're naturally
5:20
Speaker 2: capable of doing.
5:21
Speaker 1: Was there a moment when you realized that going straight
5:25
Speaker 1: to the plant wasn't going to be the best way
5:27
Speaker 1: to do it.
5:28
Speaker 2: I definitely remember one day early in the days of Pivot,
5:34
Speaker 2: where my co founder and I had been working on
5:37
Speaker 2: some research for a grant. It had been our initial
5:40
Speaker 2: funding for the company came from the bill, and momited
5:42
Speaker 2: the Gates Foundation just a very tiny amount of money
5:45
Speaker 2: for us to explore the possibility of this blueprint from
5:50
Speaker 2: graduate school and turning that into a crop that could
5:53
Speaker 2: fix its own nitrogen. And we were having this challenge.
5:56
Speaker 2: We said, even if you could take the best of
5:58
Speaker 2: those new tools from Crisper and apply them to this challenge,
6:02
Speaker 2: it's going to be so many years before we can
6:04
Speaker 2: build a crop that can fix its own nitrogen. And
6:08
Speaker 2: how do we make this go faster? Because the farmers
6:11
Speaker 2: around the world need a solution faster. So we were
6:13
Speaker 2: walking to the coffee shop and we just stopped in
6:16
Speaker 2: the middle of the kind of grassy open space between
6:22
Speaker 2: our lab and the coffee shop, and we said, you know,
6:23
Speaker 2: let's let's get back to the thing that inspired us most,
6:27
Speaker 2: the microbes that have this capability already, and maybe we
6:31
Speaker 2: can figure out what stops them from being the solution
6:35
Speaker 2: and just attack that as the problems. Let's enable these
6:39
Speaker 2: microbes just to do what they're already able to do,
6:41
Speaker 2: but do it better.
6:43
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the microbes for a minute, just
6:46
Speaker 1: how they work in a state of nature. Tell me
6:51
Speaker 1: about these microbes like in a world, you know, pre fertilizer,
6:54
Speaker 1: non fertilizer, Like, what's going on? Where are they? What
6:57
Speaker 1: are they doing?
6:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, just like you or I have a microbiome
7:02
Speaker 2: when we hear about it related to digestive health a lot,
7:05
Speaker 2: and we can take probiotics, a plant has a micro
7:09
Speaker 2: biome in its root system as well. And the plant
7:12
Speaker 2: is part of photosynthesis, is taking some of that sugar
7:16
Speaker 2: that it produces and it actually exudes it out of
7:18
Speaker 2: the roots to feed the microbes in the soil, and
7:21
Speaker 2: in exchange, the microbes are supposed to be doing useful
7:23
Speaker 2: things like making nitrogen, or producing anti fungal compounds, or
7:29
Speaker 2: helping go acquire some of the other nutrients that are
7:33
Speaker 2: typically found in the rock. But the microbes can help
7:35
Speaker 2: make some acids that degrade those amazing. So they're an
7:39
Speaker 2: extension of the plant and its ability to survive all
7:43
Speaker 2: the different types of challenges and stresses it faces while
7:46
Speaker 2: it's growing.
7:47
Speaker 1: And this particular microbe or probably more than one, but whatever,
7:52
Speaker 1: this particular microbe or set of microbes that are you say,
7:56
Speaker 1: fixing nitrogen for the plants. Like, what are they? What's
8:00
Speaker 1: their deal? What do they want out of life?
8:03
Speaker 2: That's the most important thing that the microbiome of the
8:07
Speaker 2: crop is responsible for is is fixing nitrogen, so turning
8:11
Speaker 2: nitrogen gas into ammonia and an exchange for sugar from
8:15
Speaker 2: the plant. They're food source. They're doing something in return.
8:18
Speaker 2: So it's a nice symbiosis that exists between the plant
8:21
Speaker 2: and the microbes. And when we fertilize the soil, those
8:25
Speaker 2: microbes aren't shielded from all that nitrogen that enters the soil,
8:28
Speaker 2: and they sense the nitrogen in the soil and they
8:33
Speaker 2: can serve their energy. They stop making the enzymes that
8:35
Speaker 2: fix nitrogen. They don't give the plant any ammonia, and
8:39
Speaker 2: they just consume the sugars that the plant exudes for free.
8:42
Speaker 1: Because they have some whatever, some sense of equilibrium that says, oh,
8:46
Speaker 1: there's enough, there's enough nitrogen in the soil. I'm going
8:49
Speaker 1: to stop doing that now, that's right. That's right. And
8:52
Speaker 1: in sort of a state of nature, that's fine because
8:55
Speaker 1: whatever corn doesn't need to grow seven feet tall in
8:58
Speaker 1: a month or whatever it does in Iowa now, and
9:01
Speaker 1: it's fine and it's no problem. But in the world
9:03
Speaker 1: we live in, that's the fundamental problem is, well, those
9:06
Speaker 1: microbes don't fix enough nitrogen to grow the super sized
9:10
Speaker 1: crops we need to grow.
9:11
Speaker 2: Now, that's right. So crops go through growth sprits just
9:15
Speaker 2: like we do when we're growing up, and as the
9:18
Speaker 2: crop enters the kind of the middle part of its
9:21
Speaker 2: life cycle, it needs to grow very rapidly before it
9:24
Speaker 2: starts making the grain. And that's where the disconnect comes from.
9:29
Speaker 2: The mineralization rate, the rate of just background nitrogen availability
9:34
Speaker 2: from the soil can't keep up with that growth spurt.
9:36
Speaker 2: That's why we need fertilizer today because we've bread crops
9:40
Speaker 2: to be just so productive.
9:42
Speaker 1: So okay, So you have this idea, it's an elegant idea,
9:46
Speaker 1: it's an exciting idea. Do you choose as you're trying
9:51
Speaker 1: to make it work, Like, do you choose a particular
9:54
Speaker 1: microbe and say this is the one we're going with, Like,
9:56
Speaker 1: what is the process of actually making it work well?
9:59
Speaker 2: So we started Pivot in the fall of twenty eleven.
10:03
Speaker 2: We started the company and some of the first things
10:04
Speaker 2: we did is we wrote letters to different farmers around
10:09
Speaker 2: the Midwest, friends and family, anybody who owned land, and
10:13
Speaker 2: we said, hey, send us just a bucket of soil,
10:16
Speaker 2: and we want to use that to discover microbes that
10:19
Speaker 2: can change agriculture, and so we'd pay everybody for a
10:23
Speaker 2: bucket of soil, and then we'd start growing little baby
10:27
Speaker 2: corn plants seedlings or wheat plants in that soil, and
10:31
Speaker 2: the plants would act like a sponge. They would attract
10:35
Speaker 2: the microbes that are really important to be part of
10:37
Speaker 2: their microbiome. And so when you take a seedling and
10:40
Speaker 2: you uproot it, you can then take and the dirt
10:43
Speaker 2: off of the roots kind of get the microbes that
10:45
Speaker 2: live on the roots of that crop. And it becomes
10:49
Speaker 2: a great way to take the billions of different microbes
10:53
Speaker 2: that are in the soil and find just the ones
10:55
Speaker 2: that have a very close symbiosis with the crop.
10:59
Speaker 1: And so what do you find when you do that.
11:01
Speaker 2: Well, there's always a lot of great microbes. Some do
11:06
Speaker 2: nitrogen fixation, some do other types of functionality for the crop.
11:10
Speaker 2: And so we had to look at the DNA of
11:12
Speaker 2: all of those microbes and find the ones that have
11:15
Speaker 2: the program for making this enzyme for nitrogen fixation. And
11:19
Speaker 2: then we had to be able to figure out how
11:21
Speaker 2: do you reverse engineer what that DNA says, How does
11:23
Speaker 2: it control when that microbe operates the enzyme and from
11:28
Speaker 2: that process it gave us the first microbes that really
11:30
Speaker 2: could become workable for products.
11:33
Speaker 1: And do you end up arriving at one microbe at
11:37
Speaker 1: a suite of microbes like where do you land?
11:41
Speaker 2: Well, we have dozens of different species of microbes. They're
11:44
Speaker 2: all kind of distantly related that we work with today.
11:49
Speaker 2: But in our products, our very first product that launched
11:52
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, it had just one species of microbe
11:57
Speaker 2: and it's actually something that in our second version of
12:00
Speaker 2: the product, it's become two microbes, So two different species
12:03
Speaker 2: that work together. They eat different sugars provided by the plant,
12:07
Speaker 2: and they live in a little bit different parts to
12:09
Speaker 2: the root system, so they work together as a team
12:11
Speaker 2: to produce even more nitrogen for the crop.
12:14
Speaker 1: And that first one is it for corn? Is that right?
12:17
Speaker 2: It's part of our product for corn, and it's also
12:21
Speaker 2: part of our second product that we launched that that
12:25
Speaker 2: works on wheat. On the label you can use it
12:28
Speaker 2: on sorghum, on millet, and oats, barley, sunflowers even so,
12:35
Speaker 2: really something that associates with a range of different cereal
12:39
Speaker 2: crops and it has a different, a little bit different
12:41
Speaker 2: relationship with each of those crops.
12:44
Speaker 1: So okay, So you find these few microbes that seem like, yeah,
12:47
Speaker 1: these are the ones, but you need to you need
12:52
Speaker 1: to change them, right. The problem is that in their
12:54
Speaker 1: natural state they're not making enough nitrogen. How do you
12:59
Speaker 1: get them to act the way you want int act?
13:03
Speaker 2: Well, so let's dive in a little bit more on
13:05
Speaker 2: that very first product. So one of our earliest team members,
13:11
Speaker 2: Sarah Block, she had some farmland in the family that
13:17
Speaker 2: we got a pail of soil from one of the
13:20
Speaker 2: corn plants we grew had an amazing microbe living in
13:24
Speaker 2: its root system. It's a species of microbe called clubs
13:28
Speaker 2: Yella varicola, so a distant cousin of the Club's yellow
13:32
Speaker 2: pneumona that make us sick, except this one is not virulent.
13:36
Speaker 2: It is a beneficial microbe for crops, and it has
13:41
Speaker 2: the capability to fix nitrogen. The challenge though, is the
13:45
Speaker 2: way it's wired. It has a nitrogen sensor that it
13:49
Speaker 2: makes and it's part of kind of the cell membrane,
13:52
Speaker 2: the outer surrounding membrane around this microbe, so that when
13:59
Speaker 2: that sensor senses any sort of nitrogen in the environment,
14:02
Speaker 2: it stops the DNA from producing the enzyme for nitrogen fixation.
14:08
Speaker 2: And so the very first thing we said is how
14:09
Speaker 2: do we how do we get the microbe to unlearn
14:12
Speaker 2: this process? How can we disrupt that wiring, the genetic wiring,
14:16
Speaker 2: and how do we do it in a way that
14:17
Speaker 2: doesn't require building a transgenic organism, because we don't want
14:22
Speaker 2: to release any crazy GMOs into the environment. And so
14:26
Speaker 2: we used the modern tools of gene editing to make
14:30
Speaker 2: a very precise break in the DNA so that that
14:33
Speaker 2: nitrogen sensor doesn't stop the microbe from producing the nitrogen
14:39
Speaker 2: fixing enzyme. And so our approach at pivot is is
14:42
Speaker 2: really a concept of saying, we want to simply remodel
14:45
Speaker 2: the wiring of the cell so that it can still
14:50
Speaker 2: do the same exact things it did before, it just
14:53
Speaker 2: might choose to do them under a different set of conditions.
14:57
Speaker 1: Now you have a number of products like how does
14:59
Speaker 1: it work, what are you selling, who's buying it, and
15:02
Speaker 1: how does it work?
15:03
Speaker 2: Well, so let's talk about what it means to be
15:06
Speaker 2: maybe a modern sophisticated corn farmer across the US Midwest.
15:14
Speaker 2: One of the challenges is there are half a dozen
15:18
Speaker 2: different types of fertilizer and timings when you might apply fertilizer.
15:23
Speaker 2: The first big one you face is should I apply fertilizer,
15:27
Speaker 2: specifically anhydrous ammonia in the fall after I just got
15:31
Speaker 2: done harvesting my last crop. It's probably one of the
15:34
Speaker 2: cheapest forms of nitrogen you could go buy, but you're
15:38
Speaker 2: also going to expose it to all of the winter
15:41
Speaker 2: snow and all the spring rains, and so a lot
15:43
Speaker 2: of it is going to be lost, Maybe up to
15:45
Speaker 2: eighty percent of your investment is going to wash away
15:47
Speaker 2: before the crop ever gets planted. So there's uncertainty because
15:52
Speaker 2: who knows whether it's going to be a wet year,
15:53
Speaker 2: a dry year, a hot year, a cold year. And
15:57
Speaker 2: that same challenge persists every decision point a farmer makes.
16:01
Speaker 2: And they're also completely subject to the crazy volatility of
16:07
Speaker 2: the commodity pricing markets. So for anybody paying attention to
16:12
Speaker 2: commodity prices, across the last couple of years, the Russian
16:15
Speaker 2: invasion of Ukraine and all of the supply chain consternation
16:21
Speaker 2: sent fertilizer prices to record levels. So that ripple effect
16:26
Speaker 2: means the challenge of managing one of the biggest expenses
16:30
Speaker 2: on a farm is not just stressful, but it also
16:34
Speaker 2: could be the thing that separates a farm from being
16:36
Speaker 2: profitable or being underwater each year. So that's the challenge
16:41
Speaker 2: that we're operating in and what we try to do
16:44
Speaker 2: at Pivot is design these microbes that it makes everything
16:48
Speaker 2: easier and it reduces risk, and it means that what
16:52
Speaker 2: we're delivering is not just the best performing nitrogen, the
16:55
Speaker 2: best way to get that nitrogen into the crop when
16:58
Speaker 2: it needs it during its growth spurt, but it also
17:01
Speaker 2: is the most resilient when it comes to the return
17:06
Speaker 2: on investment for the farmer, imperviousness to the unpredictable weather,
17:12
Speaker 2: and also then the best as a ripple effect for
17:15
Speaker 2: the environment for the soil health, the water, no runoff,
17:19
Speaker 2: and no greenhouse gas emissions.
17:22
Speaker 1: So in more specific terms, like you know, just just
17:28
Speaker 1: more narrowly, yeah, what does it do? Like what are
17:31
Speaker 1: you selling and what does it do?
17:33
Speaker 2: So we've made two forms of our product today. One
17:36
Speaker 2: is a liquid and then the other is a dry powder.
17:40
Speaker 2: The liquid can get added to tanks on the machinery
17:44
Speaker 2: that plants the seeds for that crop, and as the
17:49
Speaker 2: planter is going across a field, a little squirt of
17:52
Speaker 2: microbes gets added on top of the seed and that
17:55
Speaker 2: furrow before the soil gets closed back up. And with
17:58
Speaker 2: the other product, before the farmer even takes possession of
18:03
Speaker 2: the seed that they're going to plant, are microbes. The
18:07
Speaker 2: little dried powder can get it added as a coating
18:10
Speaker 2: onto the seed. So then when the seed gets planted,
18:13
Speaker 2: our microbes are already present and the first routs that
18:16
Speaker 2: that form start forming that symbioso with the microbes. So
18:20
Speaker 2: in both cases simplify what it means to use our
18:23
Speaker 2: product and just kind of add it into an existing
18:26
Speaker 2: step in what it means to manage a farm.
18:29
Speaker 1: I want to read you aligned from this University of
18:33
Speaker 1: Minnesota study of proven some version of your product. It's
18:37
Speaker 1: said proven can have an impact on corn growth, but
18:41
Speaker 1: may not reduce the rate of nitrogen required by corn
18:44
Speaker 1: across all locations and benefits maybe specific to soil types
18:48
Speaker 1: and specific environmental conditions. Is that consistent with what you've found.
18:56
Speaker 2: What we've found is is the ability to improve how
19:01
Speaker 2: we use fertilizer and to lean on products that pivot
19:06
Speaker 2: makes the microbes that fix nitrogen as the new foundation
19:09
Speaker 2: for a fertilizer strategy. It really there's there's two big
19:13
Speaker 2: challenges that are important. One is these are living microbes.
19:18
Speaker 2: They require more TLC to be able to use effectively
19:23
Speaker 2: than that big bulky tons of chemical fertilizer that are
19:26
Speaker 2: farmers normally going to use. So we need to make
19:29
Speaker 2: sure that when our customers are using our products, we're
19:33
Speaker 2: keeping those microbes alive so that when they're in the
19:36
Speaker 2: soil they're growing in symbiosis with the crop.
19:39
Speaker 1: What does TLC mean in that context, Well.
19:42
Speaker 2: It's something where we want to make sure that when
19:45
Speaker 2: we're delivering our microbes, from the time we ship them
19:48
Speaker 2: until they get in the soil, the microbes aren't freezing,
19:51
Speaker 2: they're not left out in the sun to bake in
19:53
Speaker 2: one hundred plus degree weather.
19:56
Speaker 1: They're sending a living thing, right, that's not just sending
19:59
Speaker 1: a compound. Yeah.
20:01
Speaker 2: Interesting, And if it's our liquid product when they get
20:03
Speaker 2: put into that tank on the planter, we're not mixing
20:07
Speaker 2: in some sort of a anti micro all agent with
20:10
Speaker 2: the tank as well.
20:11
Speaker 1: Which could totally happen in this kind of totally totally.
20:14
Speaker 2: And that that's to be expected in some respects because
20:18
Speaker 2: this is a new technology that that we're we're introducing
20:22
Speaker 2: so just.
20:22
Speaker 1: Execution, just lots of just like nuts and bolts, logistics,
20:26
Speaker 1: execution stuff that is that's totally hard. And the environment
20:29
Speaker 1: is heterogeneous in a way that is hard.
20:32
Speaker 2: That's right. And and then the second thing that's important
20:35
Speaker 2: is when when we add fertilizer to a field, there's
20:40
Speaker 2: a point when additional nitrogen doesn't lead to more crop yield.
20:46
Speaker 2: Something else becomes limiting, whether it's the sunlight or a
20:49
Speaker 2: different nutrient, or or maybe the total rainfall that that
20:53
Speaker 2: crop receives. And so there's there's a point where you
20:56
Speaker 2: get diminishing returns on the amount of fertilizer you can add.
21:00
Speaker 2: Right now, the challenge is always trying to figure out
21:03
Speaker 2: what that best balance is, and that perfect point changes
21:07
Speaker 2: every year because of how much fertilizer can it's washed
21:09
Speaker 2: away by the rain since the amount of rain is
21:11
Speaker 2: different every year. And so the biggest challenge we have
21:14
Speaker 2: is trying to figure out how do you get a
21:17
Speaker 2: farmer to get the best possible experience when they're first
21:22
Speaker 2: using our product, to really build up the confidence in
21:25
Speaker 2: getting to a better outcome each year, when the most
21:29
Speaker 2: variable thing in that whole equation is fertilizer.
21:32
Speaker 1: You really want it to work the first time, Like,
21:35
Speaker 1: that's a big one for you, right, the first year,
21:37
Speaker 1: you really want it to be great.
21:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so there's a lot of things that can
21:42
Speaker 2: separate the perfect amount of nitrogen and the crop from
21:47
Speaker 2: turning into a perfect amount of yield, whether it's pest
21:51
Speaker 2: pressure or droughts or other types of nutrient limitations. And
21:57
Speaker 2: so everything we try to do is to set that
22:00
Speaker 2: farmer up to see the healthiest possible crop and put
22:04
Speaker 2: them in the best position to realize the potential yield
22:07
Speaker 2: of what that crop come pretty use, and do it
22:10
Speaker 2: in a way that really can overcome the unpredictability of
22:13
Speaker 2: the fertilizer involved.
22:15
Speaker 1: So how big is Pivot, Like, how many acres of
22:19
Speaker 1: farmland are have your microbes in them? You know? This year?
22:24
Speaker 2: Well, so Pivot has been around for a bit more
22:29
Speaker 2: than a decade and our products have been in the
22:31
Speaker 2: marketplace for just about five years. We've been able to
22:35
Speaker 2: deliver nitrogen on more than ten million acres across that time,
22:40
Speaker 2: So millions of acres of products being used just this
22:45
Speaker 2: year alone. And we're in a spot that our products
22:50
Speaker 2: are used on corn crops across the US on wheat
22:53
Speaker 2: and sorghum, sunflower, barley, some other small grains, and we're
22:58
Speaker 2: in the process of being able to establish an international
23:01
Speaker 2: presence in places like Brazil, with an eye towards Canada
23:05
Speaker 2: as well.
23:06
Speaker 1: Is it right? I mean, the idea at this point
23:09
Speaker 1: point is not to replace fertilizer, but to supplement it.
23:13
Speaker 2: Today, our microbes are supplying about a quarter of the
23:17
Speaker 2: nitrogen that the corn crop needs, Okay, And it's something
23:22
Speaker 2: where we have the ability to keep improving our microbes,
23:25
Speaker 2: improve their ability to make that enzyme and share the
23:28
Speaker 2: ammonia back with the crop, and improve their ability to
23:32
Speaker 2: match up perfectly with that life cycle the growth spurts
23:36
Speaker 2: in the plant, so we'll see that our products can
23:39
Speaker 2: become even a bigger portion of the total nutrient supply
23:43
Speaker 2: the crop needs and allow farmers to really start focusing
23:47
Speaker 2: on what's the next big challenge that prevents them from
23:50
Speaker 2: reaching the full potential yield that's baked into the crop genetics.
23:58
Speaker 1: After the break the best and worst things about trying
24:01
Speaker 1: to sell a new product to farmers, What are you
24:15
Speaker 1: trying to figure out next? Like, what's the lab side
24:17
Speaker 1: of your business look like now?
24:19
Speaker 2: We've been breeding crops for many, many years, for decades,
24:26
Speaker 2: for centuries, and especially over the last century with an
24:29
Speaker 2: intensivity and a set of technologies that have been unprecedented
24:34
Speaker 2: in our history. And we've underappreciated and not even known
24:38
Speaker 2: about the microbes in the roots of a plant until
24:43
Speaker 2: just recently. So our ability to tap into getting microbes
24:48
Speaker 2: to capture as much of that sugar that the crop
24:51
Speaker 2: can provide, being able to efficiently grow in tandem with
24:56
Speaker 2: the roots of the plant, being able to share ammonia
24:59
Speaker 2: back with the crop, and do that in a way
25:02
Speaker 2: that is really tuned with the metabolism of how a
25:05
Speaker 2: crop produces green and yield. There's a lot of opportunity
25:09
Speaker 2: to not just discover new science, but turn that into
25:13
Speaker 2: products that really can supply all the nutrient needs of
25:16
Speaker 2: the crop and beyond. I think we are very much
25:20
Speaker 2: in the early days of what can be a transformational
25:24
Speaker 2: technology and segment of the industry for decades to come.
25:28
Speaker 1: What's an interesting constraint you're trying to solve for at
25:31
Speaker 1: a technical level.
25:32
Speaker 2: And if you have a new idea for an app
25:35
Speaker 2: in Silicon Valley, you can program it and launch it
25:38
Speaker 2: or test it out as fast as the pace of thought.
25:41
Speaker 2: And in agriculture, everything we do is centered on how
25:46
Speaker 2: fast a plant grows. There are many parts of the
25:49
Speaker 2: world where you can grow just one crop every year,
25:51
Speaker 2: and so if we had a new idea and we
25:53
Speaker 2: wanted to test it out, it might be just one
25:56
Speaker 2: experiment per year that.
25:57
Speaker 1: We're so your rate living e step is that you
25:59
Speaker 1: got to wait for the plants to grow.
26:01
Speaker 2: Now, one of the things we've done at Pivot is
26:03
Speaker 2: we have built the most sophisticated models of how a
26:07
Speaker 2: micro behave and how what we do with the gene
26:11
Speaker 2: editing rewires when it chooses to make nitrogen, and we
26:16
Speaker 2: can integrate that with all the world's best models of
26:19
Speaker 2: how crops grow and a footprint that allows us to
26:24
Speaker 2: do real world experiments at a scale never before seen.
26:29
Speaker 2: Those things let us be able to tackle problems in
26:31
Speaker 2: a more efficient way or experiment digitally long before you
26:36
Speaker 2: ever do something in the physical.
26:38
Speaker 1: But you still got to grow the core and see if.
26:40
Speaker 2: You still got to grow all those crops.
26:43
Speaker 1: I mean, well, let's talk about sort of the future
26:47
Speaker 1: of chemical fertilizer and in particular ammonia. Right, super energy
26:51
Speaker 1: intensive would be wonderful if you could put it out
26:55
Speaker 1: of business. But like, what, what's that? What's that story?
26:59
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think that the fertilizer business and the
27:01
Speaker 2: Haberbosch process of making ammonia will go away anytime soon.
27:05
Speaker 2: And that's that's not a bad thing. It's it's not
27:08
Speaker 2: a thing where I think we are successful only if
27:13
Speaker 2: the fertilizer industry goes bankrupt. I think this is something
27:16
Speaker 2: where this is an opportunity to be able to do
27:19
Speaker 2: better and reach new places through a very innovative, disruptive technology.
27:25
Speaker 2: We're a better way to spend new capital. Our ability
27:30
Speaker 2: to expand our footprint our supply chain is radically cheaper
27:36
Speaker 2: than building a new Harberbosh facility that's going to cost
27:38
Speaker 2: billions of dollars and take you know, a decade to
27:41
Speaker 2: get operational. We're really just like a micro brim making
27:46
Speaker 2: a handful of Baker's East and I and and that
27:51
Speaker 2: is transformational. It means there's a lot more efficiency both
27:57
Speaker 2: in dollars uh and and and just physical time invested
28:01
Speaker 2: to be able to complement what the fertilizer industry is
28:05
Speaker 2: set up to be able to do.
28:07
Speaker 1: I know that the context we're talking about. There's a
28:09
Speaker 1: ton going on, and there's chemical fertilizer and there's pesticide,
28:13
Speaker 1: and the plants themselves are these weird superplants that we've read.
28:17
Speaker 1: And yet still I wonder, when you're changing the genome
28:23
Speaker 1: of this microbe, like, is there any worry that you're
28:28
Speaker 1: going to mess up the microbiome in some unintended consequences
28:31
Speaker 1: kind of way.
28:34
Speaker 2: There's a lot we do to make sure that we
28:37
Speaker 2: understand how our products work, that they are fitting into
28:42
Speaker 2: the crop system in a very smooth, elegant way, that
28:47
Speaker 2: they go back into the native microbiomes where they came from,
28:52
Speaker 2: and they're performing just like before. One of the things
28:56
Speaker 2: we know is that when we do the gene editing
28:58
Speaker 2: to turn on nitrogen fixational it makes the microbes less resilient,
29:04
Speaker 2: less robust than their original parents. That means that they
29:08
Speaker 2: die off more quickly than the native microbes do. So
29:12
Speaker 2: when we do testing, we don't see any traces of
29:15
Speaker 2: our microbes left in the roots. Once the crop really
29:18
Speaker 2: gets to the point of harvest that I just natively
29:22
Speaker 2: the crop. When it's harvested, it stops making those sugars.
29:26
Speaker 2: So the microbes in the soil die off when there
29:29
Speaker 2: isn't a parent crop to defeat it. But we especially
29:33
Speaker 2: see that with our products.
29:35
Speaker 1: So still a small company, what might go wrong? Like,
29:42
Speaker 1: what are some reasons you know things might not work
29:45
Speaker 1: out the way you hope.
29:47
Speaker 2: Well, I think the mode we're in right now with
29:50
Speaker 2: Pivot is we have this great disruptive technology. We have
29:55
Speaker 2: built a business model that is innovative and allows us
29:59
Speaker 2: to get our products into the marketplace when it's typically
30:02
Speaker 2: been very hard to innovate in agriculture. And now we
30:05
Speaker 2: have the challenge of how do we bring that to
30:07
Speaker 2: scale and how do we touch as many lives around
30:10
Speaker 2: the world as we can, all while we're trying to
30:12
Speaker 2: manage our cash reserves and what it means to have
30:17
Speaker 2: a growing team that needs to figure out how to
30:19
Speaker 2: work in more places around the world. That's a lot
30:23
Speaker 2: of operational risk, and I think the challenge that we
30:28
Speaker 2: face is there's a chance that that all might not
30:31
Speaker 2: work out. I think that the real risk is that
30:36
Speaker 2: we're not able to move fast enough to be the
30:38
Speaker 2: leading innovator in the space, that there becomes competition that
30:42
Speaker 2: slows us down and trips us up.
30:44
Speaker 1: So in that universe, somebody's going to do what you're doing.
30:47
Speaker 1: The question is is it going to be you or
30:49
Speaker 1: is somebody gonna.
30:50
Speaker 2: One hundred percent? Like what we've been successful is really
30:55
Speaker 2: showing the potential of where microbes in general and nitrogen
31:02
Speaker 2: fixation specifically can change agriculture. It will happen, We will
31:06
Speaker 2: see a transformational shift in how our agricultural systems around
31:11
Speaker 2: the world operate. And I think the operational risk for
31:15
Speaker 2: PIVOT is all about whether we are going to be
31:18
Speaker 2: the ones who lead the way in bringing the change
31:21
Speaker 2: to the world.
31:22
Speaker 1: So if you think about the work you're doing and
31:26
Speaker 1: project ahead, you know, often I'll say five years, but
31:29
Speaker 1: given as you pointed out that you got to wait
31:31
Speaker 1: for the cornder grow every year, let's say twenty years.
31:33
Speaker 1: You know, if you think I had twenty years and
31:36
Speaker 1: things happen the way you want them to happen, what's
31:39
Speaker 1: the world look like.
31:44
Speaker 2: I'll hit on three things that I think are going
31:47
Speaker 2: to be important to pay attention to, either because it's
31:51
Speaker 2: places we're investing internally to improve what we do, how
31:54
Speaker 2: we bring that a spotlight to these topics, or the
31:59
Speaker 2: potential of where this could could ripple. One of them
32:02
Speaker 2: is I think we're going to see a continued trend
32:06
Speaker 2: of improving agricultural productivity with better efficiency and especially better resiliency.
32:12
Speaker 2: And when it becomes even more challenging every day to
32:16
Speaker 2: be a farmer and turner profit every year, I think
32:19
Speaker 2: that we're going to have a big impact on the
32:23
Speaker 2: continuity of our agricultural system. So that's the first one,
32:26
Speaker 2: and the second one for me is we're seeing a
32:30
Speaker 2: massive potential impact on the entire sustainability of agriculture. So
32:35
Speaker 2: just in the last two years, we've seen that replacement
32:40
Speaker 2: of fertilizer by our customers has translated to nearly a
32:45
Speaker 2: million metric tons of avoided CO two emissions, either the
32:49
Speaker 2: CO two from the hybrid wash manufacturing process and the
32:52
Speaker 2: transportation of fertilizer, or the prevented nitrous oxide emissions from
32:58
Speaker 2: fertilizer degrading in fields. And we're just getting started. So
33:02
Speaker 2: that sustainability impact, whether it's clean air or clean water
33:06
Speaker 2: or healthier soils, is going to have the the potential
33:09
Speaker 2: to really multiply across the decades to come. And then
33:13
Speaker 2: I think the third is about really food security, whether
33:19
Speaker 2: it is the ability of more industrialized agricultural regions like
33:28
Speaker 2: the Midwest in the US being even more capable of
33:31
Speaker 2: producing a higher efficiency independent of some of the uncertainties
33:36
Speaker 2: of global supply chains, or places like Sub Saharan Africa
33:40
Speaker 2: where there are very uncertain supply chains for fertilizer, the
33:44
Speaker 2: chances that a farmer there may not even be able
33:47
Speaker 2: to acquire fertilizer, and if they can acquire it, usually
33:52
Speaker 2: at a price point that far exceeds the value of
33:55
Speaker 2: using fertilizer. So it's an ability to take many parts
34:00
Speaker 2: of the world and have access to the nutrients that
34:03
Speaker 2: are needed to fuel a crop in a way that
34:06
Speaker 2: can decouple many of the limitations of the traditional supply chains.
34:11
Speaker 2: So I think those are the three big areas that
34:13
Speaker 2: I see some really exciting opportunity in the decades ahead.
34:21
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round
34:36
Speaker 1: almost done. We'll just do a lightning round and then
34:39
Speaker 1: we'll be done. Do you have a garden, I do.
34:45
Speaker 1: What did best for you this year? What was the
34:47
Speaker 1: hit of the garden?
34:49
Speaker 2: Well, my kids. I've got a seven year old and
34:52
Speaker 2: a ten year old, and we love gardening together. I
34:55
Speaker 2: think pumpkins are always fun. We grow a lot of
35:00
Speaker 2: flowers that my daughter loves to grow, So zinnias and
35:04
Speaker 2: dahlia's are the ones that are high on her list.
35:10
Speaker 1: What's your second favorite element?
35:14
Speaker 2: Well, I will go with oxygen. I think it it
35:20
Speaker 2: is both such a fuel for keeping us alive. But
35:24
Speaker 2: I also I love wine and everything from viniculture and analogy,
35:30
Speaker 2: and oxygen is usually the enemy of wine. So oxygen
35:34
Speaker 2: is both powerful and also something that can really be
35:39
Speaker 2: a challenge for not just wine but the enzyme of
35:42
Speaker 2: nitrogen fixation itself.
35:44
Speaker 1: When was the last time you played the trumpet?
35:48
Speaker 2: Oh, man, that's a good question. It's been a while.
35:52
Speaker 2: It's probably been a decade.
35:54
Speaker 1: There was another version where you were like, it's right here.
35:57
Speaker 1: That was my dream. What's the best thing about working
36:05
Speaker 1: with farmers.
36:08
Speaker 2: In a world where so much seems more virtual or
36:11
Speaker 2: digital all the time? Being able to get back to
36:14
Speaker 2: something physical, something that just requires a lot of hard
36:21
Speaker 2: work in person. That makes for some really invigorating conversations
36:27
Speaker 2: and just a lot of times that I shared appreciation
36:30
Speaker 2: at the end of a day, end of hard work,
36:33
Speaker 2: to sit down together and spend time together.
36:36
Speaker 1: What's a hard thing about working with farmers?
36:39
Speaker 2: Well, on one hand, a farmer needs to be risk averse.
36:44
Speaker 2: So any new technology, any new innovation, it's not like
36:47
Speaker 2: you can just download a new app, try it out
36:49
Speaker 2: and delete it right.
36:50
Speaker 1: There's a huge downside if it's not.
36:52
Speaker 2: You might go out of business and lose that family
36:54
Speaker 2: farm that's been around for generations if you make the
36:56
Speaker 2: wrong bet. So the hardest part about trying to bring
36:59
Speaker 2: new technology on the farm is figuring out the risk
37:02
Speaker 2: portion of trying something out. So farmers want to experiment,
37:06
Speaker 2: but just do it in a way that is risk averse.
37:11
Speaker 2: And then the challenge with a lot of us that
37:14
Speaker 2: don't live on a farm is we don't appreciate just
37:17
Speaker 2: how sophisticated that farm is and how sophisticated that ability
37:21
Speaker 2: to experiment without risk or without unnecessary risk really is.
37:26
Speaker 2: And so how do we talk to each other in
37:28
Speaker 2: a way that moves ideas as fast as possible, especially
37:31
Speaker 2: when we only grow one crop a year like that
37:34
Speaker 2: is the hardest part about this whole thing bringing innovation
37:38
Speaker 2: into the world is there's a fundamental slow pace, a
37:42
Speaker 2: need to be able to minimize risk to the negative,
37:46
Speaker 2: and a real opportunity to work with some of the
37:49
Speaker 2: most innovative forward thinking entrepreneurs and business owners that exist
37:54
Speaker 2: in this world, if only we can figure out how
37:57
Speaker 2: to all communicate in something that isn't common terminology and
38:01
Speaker 2: familiar for most of us.
38:05
Speaker 1: Thank you, it was great to talk with you.
38:07
Speaker 2: Thank you as well.
38:12
Speaker 1: Carsten Timmy is the co founder and chief information Officer
38:15
Speaker 1: at Pivot Bio. Today's show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang.
38:20
Speaker 1: It was edited by Lyddy jeene Kott and engineered by
38:24
Speaker 1: Sarah Bruguer. You can email us at problem at Pushkin
38:27
Speaker 1: dot fm. I'm Jacob Oldstein and we'll be back next
38:31
Speaker 1: week with another episode of What's Your Problem.