Busy First Day of Meetings
Today was the first day of our meetings on our California trip! After a day and a half of getting to explore the city of San Francisco over the weekend, we started our week off bright and early by heading to the first of five meetings. While we were all looking forward our first day of meetings, I think it is safe to say that none of us were quite prepared for just how busy we would actually be. However, even though our day was packed with walking from place to place as well as meeting with a number of interesting people, we all learned a great deal about the agriculture industry today.
Our first stop on the trip was Valent USA, a chemical manufacturing company that works on creating integrated technological solutions for crop production and pest management. We heard from three presenters at Valent, the first being Andy Lee, the CEO of Valent as well as an Executive Officer at Valent’s owner company Sumitomo. Mr. Lee discussed Valent’s background and the goals of both Valent and Sumitomo, which are in accordance with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Valent’s focus for their products and research consists of reducing food waste - around forty percent of food is discarded between the farm and grocery store - innovation, and digital innovation to increase precision agriculture. We next heard from Eric Tamichi who is the Director of the Regulatory department at Valent. Eric works with the EPA to make sure their products follow EPA guidelines as well as submitting their own research to the EPA to use. Finally, we heard from Julie Schlekau the manager for Label and State affairs at Valent. She briefly discussed the California Department of Pesticide Regulation versus the regulations done by the EPA. An overarching message that all three speakers touched on was the importance of a consistence and science-based regulatory process. They also then pointed out how we can be of assistance in assuring such a process exists. Overall the trip to Valent was a great way to start the day and it is very refreshing and flattering to hear that there is a need for that in our prospective careers.
After leaving Valent, the class headed over to Granular’s headquarters where we met with Chris Lee, Sid Gorham, Libby Spalding, Erica Meade, and Derek Chu. The first speaker, Chris Lee, talked to us about the process that Granular goes through in order to sell their technology to farmers. We learned that many older farmers tend to be hesitant to adapt to new technology, so instead of reaching out to them first, Granular connects with someone from a younger generation to help convince the landowner that it is in their best interest to use technology to their advantage. It was especially interesting to hear from Sid Gorham who is the CEO of Granular. It was amazing to hear his story of how he got into agriculture. During the lunch that Granular was gracious enough to provide for us, Professor Scholl challenged us all to interact with one Granular employee and learn about their job as well as their background. It was cool to see that the majority of the people that worked for Granular didn’t really have a background in agriculture, yet they still work for a company that will be at the forefront of Ag technology for years to come. For me, this was the most interesting thing we learned while we were at Granular. It also showed there is a need for people like us, who do have a bit of knowledge about the Ag industry. This will give a lot of us a step up in an industry that continues to grow as it becomes more and more important to feed the world's growing population.
Next, we traveled to the Climate Corporation and met with product manager Ben Andreson. Climate Corp shared many similarities with Granular both being start-up ag technology companies. Both had open concept offices with collaborative spaces and large windows to let in lots of light. Ben, unlike many of the Granular presenters, had a background in ag and actually grew up on a farm in Iowa. He showed us Climate Corps main product, “Climate Fieldview” an application that plugs into all types of farm equipment and can then report data to the farmers via apps available on iPads, cell phones, and computers. Fieldview tells farmers everything they could need to know about their crops from planting patterns, to fertilizer layouts, to yields at the end of the season. Climate Corp showed us a real example of the innovations companies are working on for agriculture and it will be interesting to see how farms continue to improve with so many up and coming companies working on projects similar to Climate Corp’s.
(This is our class at Climate Corporation with Ben Andreson)
After we finished talking with Ben at Climate Corporation, we headed to the Environmental Defense Fund to speak with Ann Hayden and Ashley Boren. Ann is the Senior Director at the EDF, and Ashley is the Executive Director of Sustainable Conservation. Together their organizations make up the California Collaborative, which works towards helping unite Californians in order to resolve the states key environmental issues. I found this stop to be really interesting because they do a lot of the work that I’m interested in possibly doing someday. It was good to hear how they understand that in order to accomplish environmental goals, it is necessary to prove that it is economically responsible. They talked about how important it is to form personal relationships with the people who you are working with, in order to gain trust, which in turn will lead them to be more responsive to change.
The last stop on our busy day was to visit U of I grad Mak Kern at Capital One. Mak is the Director of the Food and Agribusiness Group at Capital One. Aside from seeing their awesome four-story office space, the most interesting part of this visit was talking to someone who was once in the same situation as us, and to hear how his experiences at the U of I helped shape his professional career into what it is today. It was cool to hear how Mak spent his time at the U of I, and the different career path that he took to eventually end up at Capital One. While Capital One is known as being a multi-billion dollar bank, today we learned that they also invest in a lot of high end production agriculture corporations. It was really cool to see how nice of an office that Capital One had. From multiple kitchens to a couple of nap stations, I think it is safe to say that every one of us would be happy working in a place like that.
Overall, I think it was a great first day of meetings. Even though we were busy and did not get to spend a ton of time with each company or organization, I think we were all able to learn quite a bit about different areas of agriculture. I think that today, we got an idea of what the rest of the trip will be like, and if it continues to be as great as it was today, then it should be an amazing week!