Latest / Salt of the Earth / Ep 118: ReGrow Ag _ Anastasia Volkova

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Ep 118: ReGrow Ag _ Anastasia Volkova · Salt of the Earth

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Salt of the Earth Farm Stories.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: It just felt normal to know how food grows, how is it grown, who's involved, what's involved.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: Today we talk to the incredibly clever Anastasia Volkova, CEO and co-founder of Regrow Ag.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Recently named one of BBC's top 100 women.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Anastasia is a visionary leader helping shape the future of agricultural resilience.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: With a background in aerospace engineering and a passion for solving some of agricultural's biggest challenges, she has built one of the world's leading agricultural technology companies.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Regrow is helping provide the data, science, and confidence to turn good intentions into measurable outcomes.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Get ready for a fascinating conversation as we cross to California to speak with Anastasia Volkova.
• 2:00
  unknown: We can meet up in the country.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, Anastasia.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hi Darren, thank you so much for having me.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Really good to meet you.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: What part of the world have we caught you in today?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: California.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: And you're coming into your summer?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, we're coming into summer.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: I have uh lived here since just before the pandemic, and prior to that, as your listeners might know, I've lived in Australia for a couple of years and wish I could stay, but the global supply chain and capital movements have dragged me over here, so I decided to stay.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Whereabouts Australia where?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: In Sydney.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what first sparked your interest in agriculture?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: It is interesting to respond to this question, given now that I've worked in this space for over a decade, but originally I wouldn't have said that this is something that's so deeply of interest to me.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's more that it felt very close to home, very natural.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, mum always grew things.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Godmother had a little farm with research aspects because she was a scientist, and it just felt normal to know how food grows, how is it grown, who's involved, what's involved.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um I participated obviously.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I I planted our seedlings out, we grew uh vegetables in our garden.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there were a lot of production fuels across the road um in the southern Ukraine where I grew up.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um to me that felt like what people did.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, if you were in a city, you don't see that as much.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: But uh just like any Australian, you would have a connection back to the farm.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Any Ukrainian has a connection back to the farm, technically any American or European does too.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not until I was working on my doctorate at Sydney Uni that I was realizing that actually a way for me to contribute to positively impact the planet is to work with farmers and their agronomists with some of the information that was becoming available, trying to help them make better decisions to mimic the way that I saw my family raise food in a way that was very careful, very aware, and on a very small piece of land, of course, compared to the massive commercial farms that you can find in New South Wales or Victoria or in the middle of Ukraine.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you wanted uh healthier food and fiber, didn't you?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and you wanted more measurement tools, is that right?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so actually what we started with is the support from uh RDCs from both the grain and uh the cotton one, where they said, okay, well, this looks very promising.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: That what um satellite imagery is able to tell us is about the sufficiency of nutrients in the crop or deficiency of the nutrients in the crop.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, cotton gets into news regularly with the water use and the fertilizer use.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it is a crop that you can grow very responsibly.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and of course, it's a premium crop in Australia.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started experimenting, flying the drones over the fields together with agronomists, a lot of help from independent agronomists and collecting the um the bland samples and sending to the lab and checking that everything correlates from the lab to the aerial image from the drone to the satellite image and seeing what could be scaled out of that.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why measurement came to be the focus is because in spending time with agronomists, I've uh discovered that they're looking after 30, 50,000 hectare properties and it's impossible to know which paddock to go to on any given morning, and you only have so much time with any particular client that you're working with.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, the farmers, of course, themselves are very proactive about managing their land.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: So if you could have any signal that something might be going wrong in a particular area, wouldn't you want to receive it that day within a window of two to three days to head out there to see what's going on, maybe turning off irrigation, maybe maybe doing something else.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so these two ideas they coalesced that to look after very large areas of land, you can actually harness the value of the insights from satellite imagery.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the tool itself is just an aid to the experts, to the agronomists and the farmers on the ground.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the opportunity in the measurement was to see where we needed to direct our attention because in rural areas there's always a lack of skilled labor, and you can't just disperse your agronomists' time on everything and anything if they have time to check the paddocks.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: You ideally want to make sure that they're going to the ones that are vulnerable, to the ones that are needing the most attention, or to the representative ones.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where that idea started to grow.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: And like when you say we might go to just one paddock, that these some of these paddocks can be large, very large, and uh you might need different needs for different parts of the paddock.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Anastasia, can you tell me about Regrow Ag?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at that founding story and where we started with actually, I'll give her a shout out here because she's so incredible with Brooke Sawyer, uh, who was at the time with an independent retailer in Maury and uh a number of other agronomists that helped me get it started and collected the data and uh driving the youths with them, and then seeing that hey, actually this can be a valuable tool.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: We then moved it further into the supply chain.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So we realized that just the value proposition between the agronomist and farmer in terms of optimizing the inputs that were going into the paddock was a starting value proposition.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: But you could potentially get better deals in the supply chain if you were able to demonstrate that you were growing things in a more ecosystem-friendly manner, in a more biodiversity-friendly manner, that you were conserving the inputs, whether it was water or or nitrogen fertilizer.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so we found traction with vertically integrated food companies that was in specialty crops first, and then it started growing outside of potatoes into the grains as well.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is really where the beginning of regrow started, and that was six years ago compared to the business itself started with that idea in Australia 10 years ago.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: So now Regrow provides this measurement system or this pane of glass transparency into supply chains on more than half of the world's arable land, and it's powering the payments to farmers to participate in adoption of the practices that suit them the most, where they need the um support financially and risk sharing financially to adopt those practices if they're aligned with both what they're looking for agronomically and what the supply chain downstream from them is looking for in terms of the ecosystem benefits.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is pretty big.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's pretty significant scale, but it feels like there is still a need to act upon this information.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: We were just talking with the team about it earlier today that uh we've empowered more than$50 million of payments to farmers for what the farmers elected to do.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: But when you contrast it, you know, less than 10 million hectares of land that are managed in this way that we've we've touched, um, and I'm just rounding out that number, versus 1.4 billion acres or half a billion of hectares of land where we have the visibility, there is still a big gap in terms of activating the the finance and insurance and maybe additional incentives from the market to help the producers bridge the gap in what they're trying to adopt.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we've definitely started.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you we're done.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know why that some farmers might just switch off when we hear the words regenerative or carbon?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great question, Sarah, and especially for who I'm hoping we're speaking to as the audience here.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Australian farming community have has heard about ACUs, and that's probably the only acronym I would allow myself to use, the the carbon units.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been a conversation about okay, well, how what are we using to measure it?
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Are we going to sample the soil?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it seems like we're sitting on this pile of carbon.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, how exciting! Maybe we can monetize it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think Australia has this pretty isolated kind of national registry, which is fantastic for a national approach, but it hasn't been connected to the global supply chains.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'll give two different perspectives.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: That on one hand, nationally, those are independently registered projects where producers are probably saying, listen, this is what I've been doing, and it's so positive, I should be paying this ecosystem service.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Or in some cases, I'm willing to start doing something that's very positive, and I want to be paid for it because this is the national value, the the treasure of continuing to s to steward the land that we live on and to provide food security for not only Aussie's but the region and and beyond, because it's largely export-driven market.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're not saying anything new here.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: But if you look at the supply chains, they've been actually acting very differently.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't been about just selling carbon, it's really been about the resiliency of the supply chains.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because look at what's happened in the last 10 years.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: We first had bumper rains, you know, 2016 something, then we had historic droughts with the Red Cross supporting farmers.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: We we're now in a time of pressure and squeeze and unrest again on multiple fronts, and it hasn't been smooth sailing in between those data points.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So when we start looking at resilience of supply chains for Australia specifically, we are seeing constant disruption.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Every two to three years, it's an extreme event.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say everywhere globally, it's now the case, it's almost every year there is an extreme event: flood, drought, head stress.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a food company that's reliant on sourcing a particular ingredient, that you want to go to the dry-thru and get coffee a certain way, get your chips a certain way, that just might not be available.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: If the potatoes are not grown that season, that here from those farmers of those fields get flooded.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you start thinking about assurance of the supply chain.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where we partner with a lot of companies downstream from the farmer, not because we think they're so much better than the farmer, but because we're trying to bring that incentive upstream onto the farm, offer it to the farmers, offer those programs for enrollment to them.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is where maybe the word regenerative because it came with the frameworks that the companies had to define, as opposed to something that the farmers said, this is what I consider regenerative.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Can we actually be ever regenerative?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because regeneration is a process.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's a process of continuous improvement, ongoing improvement.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And all that is in contrast to just selling Australian carbon units, which of course is really beneficial.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's an investment on the land nationally, but looked at more broadly, it's in service of trying to build resiliency for the larger food system that the Australian farming sector supports.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, how do we make it sound a bit more practical than theoretical?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: What we have seen is when the farmer starts tuning out when they hear, oh, it's about regeneration.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: I could define regeneration, right?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm doing something to steward my land for you to come and tell me what's regenerative on my land.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe that language misses the just this the intention of continuous improvement and better livelihoods and better resilience, which is what it's truly aimed at.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And to make it more practical, what we see working well is working with the local advisors, whether it's a technical advisor, whether it's an agronomic advisor, someone who is able to say, I have this group of blokes, but they're really very innovative.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: They've been doing all the things, what can be the incentives for them?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I have this other group of producers that are interested in trying something new.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: They need a different kind of incentive to start something, to experiment with it, to take on that risk.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like those types of programs are better taken up by the community because they are grounded in the needs of the community.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: From our perspective, as a science-based software provider, that is effectively this transaction layer that says what you are doing is fair and honest, and you should be paid for it fairly and honestly.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of it, with a lot of sophisticated science that's wrapped around it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: That is offered with as much flexibility as possible.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're not prescribing what practices to use.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to experiment with variable rate nitrogen, if you want to experiment with more crops in rotation, because they'll give you soil more nutrients.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to experiment with some other new tools or technologies, drip irrigation, what have you, there's probably ways to make that included into the project and participating into it based on what the funders want to achieve too.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Resilience for the farming community, their inclusion, and their risking capital to flow into adoption of better practices.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's what makes it practical, makes it grounded on the land and those practices that a farmer chooses to adopt.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think a lot of us could do with your help, Anastasia.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's fascinating.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, Darren.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why we started and with the team are doing what we're doing, because we believe this information can drive more recognition of the good practices and can also drive attention to areas where things maybe are not working, like even working with governments and seeing where policies and for those governments that do offer subsidies to farmers, where those could be distributed better, better aligned with the private sector.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's all part of it, trying to understand how to actually have the food system fit for the future generations.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think our biggest barrier is?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Complexity, trust?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Multiple barriers.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, multiple barriers.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: It takes us so long to actually change, if you think about it.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've been doing things a certain way for thousands of years.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when you want to change, you really want everything to line up, the stars to be perfectly aligned for you, meaning that the government policy will be pointed in that direction, the private industry incentives will be pointed in that direction.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the new generation that wants to take over the farm would be interested in it, and there will be paths to be doing that within your community so that your neighbors don't look weird at you, that they have a turned over soil and it's black, and you're actually fiddling with some cover cropping or some you know mixes that are new.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: If the farmers don't get that alignment of signal, they get the disparity of signal, it actually feels risky to adopt something.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: At least that's what I've seen.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you can adopt it on a small area, um, but you wouldn't necessarily put your entire operation into something that you weren't entirely certain of, was say, compatible with like, is the government scheme compatible with my supply chain contracts?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is one better than the other?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: What should I do?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're seeing some of the alignment be broken now in certain countries around the world, but if you look to Australia, it's still coming into alignment.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: The government is saying, you know, we're on this path of resiliency and sustainability, but it's also not necessarily backed with huge additional incentives.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: So usually for the farmers to adopt it's undertaking the risk and to de-risk something, you need additional capital that uh is added to your balance sheet to be able to absorb that shock of it not working out.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you try a new crop, if you try a new practice, what if you don't get your normal operations in because you're starting to try this new practice?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So there needs to be a financial mechanism.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be a blank check, it could be a warranty or something that is a true financial instrument that protects you from this risk.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's this whole stack of solutions that are still coming together because it's relatively new.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, having worked on it for 10 years, I wish I could tell you, oh my gosh, this is so straightforward.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: This jump on board.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think for different farmers it's different.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I would say by and large, it's the capital that's blocking it.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you look a little bit more closely, where the capital is available, maybe it's the technical assistance that if it was there, you would have more adopters.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because there's a lot of pressure on farmers, isn't there?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, with demanding insurance costs and regulations and so forth.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: And we can't change the whole farm all at once.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: That would um not be a good business.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: That that would be too much too soon.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you do want to adopt it gradually, just like you don't change the entire business process, whatever is the business that you run, like your small business, my small business, listener's small business, you don't change it all at once, even if you think it's the best idea ever.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: You try it, you see if it's working, you try to scale it, you see if the scaling of it is working, and then when it's producing results, you are deciding to convert.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe those for the farm practice adoption look like different incentives.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the private company that has a supply chain contract provides the initial incentive, but then additional incentives maybe can come out from the operational PL of the farm.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, let's experiment with using less fertilizer here, let's lean more on the rotation here, let's lean on some new practices and see if that can drive us better margins.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's what that next chapter of adoption looks like, given that we can't necessarily rely on government um to provide us with incentives to transition around the regenerative practices or soil conservation practices.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we all want to have less inputs and because of the rising costs as well.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Those are pretty alarming, aren't they?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: And in the year where the yields are high and the input costs are low, the adoption of technologies around efficiencies and optimization is very low, and every economist know that that's a cycle, because now we're in that part of the cycle when the commodity prices aren't really high, but the input costs are extremely high.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're starting to really shift the mentality of like where else can be the incentives in the supply chain where I'm operating?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can I supply something maybe directly to market if I'm a small operation, if I'm a big broadacre operation?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do I want to enroll into a project that enables us to provide our grain, whether it's barley or wheat or other grains, as more regenerative input to companies that care about their supply chains and want to invest in them and protect them with it, potentially to lower the input costs over time.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that's something not everyone's mind in a year like this with the disruption we are all living through.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: And Anastasia, do we underestimate the importance of measurement?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is the easiest question for me to say yes to, because when it's available, um we take it for granted.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: We weigh our cattle, we measure how our children grow, we look at I don't know, our blood test results, and yet for us to really start understanding that the platform.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: It is so vast and we terraformed it so much that we do not have a good grasp anymore as to what is the impact of that terraforming.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when we think about huge floods or droughts, we are losing a lot of topsoil, we are losing a lot of nutrition, and it is going into ecosystems that don't need that nutrient profile.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we're all very, very aware of it.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: But when you start putting the numbers to it, it can be surprising.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we are underestimating the importance of measurement.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: I do think long-term, it's not just a prerogative of the companies caring about their supply chains to get access to that type of measurement, but it is really something that governments should take on a lot more seriously because right now we're talking about nationalization, um, off supply chains, local supply chains, seal milk produce.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it'll continue to be the trend.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't mean the globalization trend is over, but it is an additional trend as well.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And looking at that information, like uh one of your previous guests, look at the bird diversity, it's the same way.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're not listening in this case to the chirping of the planet, but we're watching it.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're watching its heartbeat in both the places where it's managed by human and where it's not.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to be honest about are we managing it, stewarding it responsibly, or do we need to change something?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes we might think it's too much data across one property, but this is where you guys can come in and help, isn't it?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I feel like it's such a misnomer that there can be too much data.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, each of us can get to a point where it's too much data, right?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like we have AI tools at our fingertips now, we can um search for any information and within minutes we will have it.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: On farm, you have so many data points as well, just an abundance.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: But if you're not making decisions with that, can you really say that that's data that's useful to you?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And ultimately, the way that we come with our solution proposition to the community is to say, we're actually trying to ask you the least amount of information possible.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: And if you choose to add additional ones, you will improve the estimates of the models that will improve your payouts.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: But realistically, you are being paid for your good stewardship that you can prove with the data, and that's where the value of data is actually important.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've been saying this for at least five years: that to monetize the data for Australian farmers, you actually need a use case to demonstrate what you are monetizing.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I've tried to center the last, you know, six years of regirl around, around creating that path for the incentives downstream to flow back to the farm.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because then you can say I'm monetizing my data.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you're just looking at this piles of data in different tests, they might not be tied to a use case that anyone is willing to pay you for in the supply chain.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And in that case, that's just data.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: But is it useful data?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something that can earn you money?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something that can help you tell the story so you can get a premium?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Not always.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: And are you using uh tools like uh satellites, AI, and you know, high-tech stuff, I guess?
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um when I was doing my doctorate at Sydney Uni, the satellites that have cameras that are particularly good for seeing crop health just came online.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: They were European satellites.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm European born, and to me, it was such an opportunity to start looking at that data over Australian landscape and start ground truth in it.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, then um, the team at Regrow has developed some of the cutting-edge generative AI models at the time, and we weren't, you know, making a big hopla about it because it's just a tooling that we need to translate myriads of pixels that are describing every particular place on the farm into a conversation that says, Oh, we're growing tomatoes over here, we're we're growing barley over here, and we know that these fields reach these particular quality requirements that we needed downstream.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, this field of wheat that maybe is a is a trial of a new variety, is is not performing as expected.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so we started there, combining satellite imagery with AI for interpretation, and then we understood that that was just a mirror back to the practices that were visible.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: There was also so much that we couldn't see from the satellite imagery.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And farmers could tell us this is how much input I've actually applied at the beginning of the season or in the in the first few months of the season, and then we would be able to put that through a crop and soil model to say, and now what?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what you can get.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is how you can consider management decision changes, this is how you can show that you're improving year on year.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where the technology fits.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's not necessarily, you know, a hammer in a search of a nail.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think any business can survive for 10 years being a hammer in a search of a nail.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: But we have found certain use cases where we can drive visibility into supply chain for companies that are willing to invest in what matters to them and for the farmers to participate in it monetarily as well.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that tech is involved, it just helps us scale.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not that scale is important for an individual farmer, but if you think about it, if you are part of a larger project, it actually is the case that scientifically and statistically you will get better outcomes because you're not an outlier, you're not a loan.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're able to be put into the context of everybody else how they farm, and that's how you're able to get the incentives.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: So scale in some cases actually is a path to efficient deployment of resources and real financial motivations.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: And would the satellites be looking at the colour, uh density, and working out what sort of plant it is and telling you?
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a little bit more nuanced than that.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've ever looked through the different colour glasses, this could be a good analogy.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you've gone to the movies and you've had this red and blue glasses that could help you see in in in 2D or 3D, it's more like that.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's invisible to a human eye that the plant is actually radiating in infrared and a different spectra of infrared.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost it's it's trying to talk to us, it's trying to kind of release that energy that it's not able to use.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we're providing it with the energy, we're providing it with nutrients, but there's something blocking it from growing out of that energy, from using it really well.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're able to see that in this near infrared infrared spectrum, you're then knowing where you should pay your attention.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that's on it's a little bit beyond the colour spectrum.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, you can see the the greens and the reds, and they're helpful in broad determination of the land management type that is there, you know, the evergreens, of course, or the eucalyptus forest, you'll be able to see them on an annually cropped broadacre farm.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: You would be looking for the crop health in these more nuanced infrared spectra from these sophisticated satellite cameras.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And to us, they just come as colored images.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: We just can't see them like that with a human eye, but we can draw that image from the scientific center sensor in orbit and then go and apply it uh in real life, walk into that area, see what's going on, and maybe see the first sight.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: And this is fascinating.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like at the end of the day, you're looking at the soil health, aren't you, from the sky?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking at plant health and soil health.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so the connection is as follows.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're able to see what happens to every crop that grows in rotation on that piece of land, if then you're able to see the residue, because the paddock that looks fully cultivated looks very different from the paddock that is direct drilled into and direct seeded into, they just look very different.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can infer that if you know this was the weed crop and afterwards there was this much residue left, this was the cultivation method.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you're able to see any additional crops in the off-season, you know that that helps to feed the popsoil microbes and that enables to support greater biodiversity in the soil.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: You're actually then piecing the puzzle together, like a bit of a Sherlock Holmes uh picture, where you collected all these cues and then you put them into a simulator and you say, Can you tell me if this farm's soil is improving in terms of its health?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Was actually decaying, or what would change it from one to the other?
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not trying to sense what is happening in the top layer of the soil, although with radar satellites, you can see the topsoil moisture.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is that can be used, but this is not what we're looking at.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking at how's the farm managed for the above ground?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it overall a nourishing, replenishing, sequestering process or an extractive process?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because we know some crops are way hungrier than others and they need to be constantly fed additional inputs.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you have a sustainable rotation, if you're cultivating the land in a sustainable way, then probably the model says, hey, I think this soil sequesters nitrogen, I think it has a very good structure.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Look, this last time it was flooded, it was infiltrated really well, the crop was established really well compared to this neighboring property that is managed differently, and the floodwaters you could see really did not stay on the property they left, they were washed off.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: So all these pieces together, you are starting to tell the story of the paddock from the impact perspective, rather than directly sensing it, if that makes sense.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: And what would a successful regenerative farm look like in 10 years?
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Say we start making some changes today.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: You have seen in the most on the first glance desolate of landscapes, the ability to regenerate them truly.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: I will go far away from the developed world.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you looked at Africa and the half moon dugouts that keep the water, then then become these cradles of new growth of plants.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're able to see local communities start the stop the advancement of the sub-Saharan desert.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: That is just so incredible that you can do that literally in the continent that has a desert that's encroaching on production areas.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: That gives me so much faith that you can do that in Australia.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And certain people are already doing it in Australia.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, what does it look like?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like a place with water security.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Someone from the south speaking to Australians, it looks like a place with a lot of water security, and with that water security, you start seeing the biodiversity that's dependent on that plant diversity that in the first place is able to improve the soil health, to capture the rainfalls, to have the soil water holding capacity to last the seasons that are inevitably dry at some points and incredibly wet some other times.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what regenerative farm of the future looks like.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And for us to come to that farm and maybe taste a product from it, even if it's actually grain, maybe it's a maybe it's a beer and a barley, maybe it's a regenerative grain for flour in the bread.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: I do think then 10 years from now we have very strong correlations between regenerative practices, soil health, and nutrition, human nutrition, not just the macros.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's new research by innovators like Cadacious that are showing that there is more certain types of vitamins, more certain types of fibers in crops grown regeneratively.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that in 10 years it's such an explosive success that we're just able to tell that nutritionally those products are really better for the soil and better for human health.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And with that alignment, I think we'll really drive the transition.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: Are farmers often expected to help solve climate changes?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: I believe so.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a very easy narrative to fall into.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Generally, the statistic is clear that agriculture is impacting climate, and climate is impacting agriculture, and then this vicious cycle.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at some of the statistics and data, you can see that between 10 up to 30% of different countries' contribution in greenhouse gas emissions, if accounted on that basis, are coming from agriculture.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that of course means that agriculture has room to become more climate-friendly.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: But realistically, we also know that soils can still sequester more carbon in many areas where it's still possible to continue in reaching the sequestration rates.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: What you could expect in those cases is for agriculture to be net positive to climate.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's if not the only industry where it's possible.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're not able to look at the steelmakers or automakers or airplane makers and say, please become net positive on your own, because you can.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's why farmers are often engaged in this discussion, because as stewards of the land, their decisions, their courage, their abilities to innovate and find partners and in many cases take on risks can improve the sequestration and soil health from their operations to a point where it's it's positive.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I know the Australian farmers have done so much of it, uh, given it was a necessity.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: In many other countries around the world, even the basic conservation practices have not been as widespread because it hasn't been a necessity.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I think the farmers carry a lot on their shoulders.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's feeding us, it's it's solving our climate change problem.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: But really, it's just like looking to the consumer to solve climate change problem.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the right framing, it's a systematic problem where we're each of us are a part of it, and we need to find the right role for ourselves to play within our communities.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's not an individual role for anyone to fix, any consumer or any farmer.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Is there one conversation you wish would happen a bit more around the kitchen table?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: I wish it was a conversation about how can those providers of capital, of inputs, of advice that come to the farm, how are they contributing to its long-term resilience?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think it's always prudent of us to think about the short-term and medium term, because farming business is like any business, it needs to survive the next season, survive the next fiscal year, financial year.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I wish we were a little bit more focused on what it means to drive profitability on that individual farm, to be higher, to drive the risking maybe with some partnerships, to bring capital providers that are willing to either lend capital or of other incentives in order to future-proof that land a little bit more.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: I could talk to you for hours, Anastasia.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is fascinating.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: But we're up to some off-the-wall questions.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: These are a little bit quirky, they're short answers and a little bit fun.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: What's the most unexpected thing a farmer has taught you?
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: They just taught me about life.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's very unexpected.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can just learn about everything in life if you stay on the farm.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: What's your favorite piece of old school farming wisdom?
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's formulated the same way in Australia, but my family, especially the one that farmed, the the old school wisdom was a version of this two shall pass, or you know, what goes around comes around.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like the fact that life is a spiral, and you might be finding yourself in the similar place multiple times, but in a from a different perspective, so to speak.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the natural cycles are such a clear example of that.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Anastasia, if you could magically fix one thing in agriculture overnight, what would it be?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I would put price on natural resources everywhere all at once.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Done.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: What's the most exciting thing happening in agriculture that people aren't talking enough about?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it's the connection between regenerative practices, soil health, and nutrition.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think it needs to be talked about a lot more.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's an extremely exciting new development.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you sat down with a young farmer today, what advice would you give them?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: I would tell them that they have agency beyond what they can currently perceive because the supply chain is really turning to listen to the farm to the first mile.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think they can get their voice in almost any room in any supply chain.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is where the farmers are welcome.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone wants to know that it's working for the farm because everyone depends on farm.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: And Anastasia, one question I ask everybody at the end, and and you've seen a lot of different parts of the world.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is not an easy question because I immediately run a multi-parameter climate optimization.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to say somewhere a little bit further north from the equator, just to be safe.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Put you in an awkward position, haven't I?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: If we want to know more about RegrowAg, where do we go?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a website?
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: There is a website where the team posts the wisdom and insights from the communities and the data of regrow.ag, like agriculture.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we also are very active on LinkedIn, also posting our insights and opportunities where there they are career opportunities for people in our network, or um, there are opportunities to join projects for farming communities.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you've got a quite a large team there.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: If we want to get in touch, there'll be someone to uh reach out to.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can reach out to like literally our LinkedIn, you can reach out to hello at regrow.ag and we will route your inquiry because it might be something that um community of working on marketing is better suited, or team that's working on science is better suited to.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: So just just reach out to us, and of course, you can hit my email directly.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's Anastasia at regrow.ag.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to quickly shout out to Alani who's helped set this up.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Alani.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that wraps up this episode.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Anastasia, I've loved chatting to you and learning about RegrowAG.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for your time today.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Darren.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for just sharing a spotlight around this incredible community in Australian land stewardship.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I could not agree more with the name of the podcast that you have.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: They are the salt of the earth, and they're just incredible people, and um it's a privilege to be serving them and other farms around the world.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for what you're doing.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Darren.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_02: For more information on RegrowAG, head to regrow.ag.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: A big thank you to Anastasia Volkova for joining us and sharing her insights.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a fascinating look into how data, science and technology are reshaping the way we understand and measure agriculture at scale.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: Please subscribe to Salt of the Earth Farm Stories and follow us on social media.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: And remember, keep your hands dirty and your spirits high.