IFPA Takes on Tech

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Welcome to PMA Takes on Tech, the podcast that explores the problems, solutions, people, and ideas that are shaping the future of the produce industry. I'm your host, Vonnie Estes, Vice President of Technology for the Produce Marketing Association. And I've spent years in the ag-tech sector. So I can attest, it's hard to navigate this ever-changing world in developing and adopting new solutions to industry problems. Thanks for joining us and for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. My goal of the podcast is to outline a problem in the produce industry and then discuss several possible solutions that can be deployed today.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
This week's podcast is being sponsored by Paine Schwartz Partners. A global leader in sustainable food chain investing, Paine Schwartz Partners is a private equity firm with a demonstrated 20 plus year track record of investments across the food and agribusiness value chain. The firm leverages a thesis-driven approach and operational expertise to enhance value across its portfolio. Please visit www.paineschwartz.com to find out more about the firm and its activities.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Today we will listen to a conversation I had with Sarah Nolet on her podcast, AgTech So What. Sarah is extremely knowledgeable around all things ag-tech. Along with the podcast, she is a partner with Matthew Pryor and AgThentic, an advisory group, and also Tenacious Ventures. Sarah and Matthew recently announced the final close of their first VC fund, raising $26.8 million from a diverse group of limited partners to target seed and series A rounds. Our conversation spans many areas of mutual interests, from molecular breeding to carbon markets to biologicals and supply chain. Let's jump in.

Sarah Nolet:
Hello, and welcome to AgTech So What, brought to you by the AgThentic group. I'm your host, Sarah Nolet. I'm really excited about today's guest, Vonnie Estes. Not only is she an industry leader in food and ag, but she's also refreshingly candid about her own experiences working for large and small ag and food companies. This is Vonnie remembering the U.S. biofuels craze of the mid-2000s.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
They said, "Build these gigantic plants." And my job at the time, I was working for DuPont, and I was in charge of a program that we were looking at converting corn stover into fuel. And I had, it was a beaker in a lab. That's where my technology was. It was a beaker fermenting in a lab. And people were saying, "Here's a check for 100 million dollars. Go build a 100 million gallon ethanol plant." So it was a lot of push without really looking at the system.

Sarah Nolet:
These days, Vonnie is the vice president of technology at the Produce Marketing Association, or PMA. Her role is to help fruit and vegetable growers in industry to adopt and integrate new technologies. Previously, Vonnie's worked for Monsanto, Syngenta, and with numerous ag and biotech startups. In this episode, you'll hear some of the hard lessons she's learned along the way, what the future of gene editing might look like, and the parallels between the hype around biofuels two decades ago and the hype around soil carbon today. But first, this is how Vonnie came to join the ag and food world.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So I got my undergraduate degree from New Mexico State University in horticulture, and worked for a little bit in greenhouses and realized that I was never going to pay any bills working in greenhouses. But I did have that early experience of working in indoor ag as a greenhouse. And then I went to UC Davis and got my master's degree in plant pathology. And so that was the beginning of that. And my first job out of graduate school was working with a company called DNA Plant Technologies, which was one of the very early genetically engineering plant companies. It doesn't exist anymore. But that was a really exciting time. I got to be on very early stages of what was happening with genetic engineering and crops and where that could go.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And so for the next 15 years, I worked in ag biotech in Nashville area, really on the cutting edge of, what is this technology? What can we do with it? How can we grow more sustainably? How can we make better crops? So that was a really exciting time. I worked for DNAP, like I said, and a company called Paradigm Genetics, and worked for Monsanto for a while, and also worked for a company that was buying seed companies all over the world and helping integrate some traits into those.

Sarah Nolet:
Vonnie was at Monsanto in the mid-1990s. It was a time when Roundup could be found in garages across suburbia, used commonly as a spray for weeds. But for agriculture, the '90s brought about major leaps in biotech when Monsanto introduced the first Roundup Ready seeds in soybeans, corn, and cotton, using genetic modification. At the time, the science was revolutionary. But no one imagined how much pushback there'd be against GMOs. Vonnie was right in the middle of this and learned a lot about social license.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Now, when you say you worked for Monsanto, everybody cringes. So that was in the mid-nineties. And I'm sure there were conversations in the board room that are different than this. But for me being there, it was, we had these cool tools. Like we can do these really cool things so that you don't have to spray insecticide and so that you don't have to till, and so that you can do all these other things that are more sustainable. So the conversations internally were like, this is really cool stuff, and this is going to allow us to grow more sustainably. So that was the conversation. And what we completely missed out of arrogance, certainly, was that we needed to bring people along with us in that little journey of that thought process.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And so, when it wasn't communicated to consumers in a good way, and consumers certainly didn't see any benefit for them in Bt cotton, then that's when a lot of the problems happened. But it's really interesting to think back on. To me, it was quite exciting that the technology could do this and really seeing the missteps that happen from a communication, social license point of view.

Sarah Nolet:
Yeah, for sure. Was there ever a moment or a story of consumer pushback, or something happening where you started to realize maybe you got it wrong or that how you guys were thinking about it internally was really different than how the world was seeing it?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. Actually, I'll tell you a more recent story that even reflects on me worse. So I was up in Washington State, summer before last, before COVID and we were still traveling. And we were doing grower visits, and we did a dinner with a bunch of apple growers. And I was talking about the Arctic Apple, which is a GMO apple. Right? And non-browning, great sustainability food waste story. I think they've done a pretty good job of communicating to consumers. They don't hide it. They tell people this is GMO. And so, we're at this brewery outside. There's like hops growing in the background, and it was really beautiful.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And so I started talking about technology, because that's my job. And I started talking about technology, and there's always great technology. Then it's coming to apples, and I start talking about the Arctic Apple. And I just see the room just go dead. Well, it wasn't. It was outside. But I see the group go dead in the eyes like daggers. And I'm like, this is very familiar. Like I remember this, and of all people, I should know not to bring up a topic like that until you really understand how it affects the people in the room and what their feelings were.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And their main feeling about it was that before Arctic Apple, when they were trading outside the country, like when they're selling their apples, they never had to answer the question, is this GMO? And so that was one of, they said, "We're getting hit. We're getting the negatives and not the positives about this." So that was an interesting flash-forward 20 years later, that you really need to pay attention to who you're talking to and how you talk to them about technology and food.

Sarah Nolet:
Yeah. My sense is that the industry hasn't fully learned this lesson, because it's not an easy one to learn. That we say now, "Oh, we need to listen more, and we need to have more conversations and highlight the benefits." And then we sort of do that. But the response isn't really all that different. And yet at the same time, there's lots of research about how agriculture is really trusted, and we have all this goodwill and people do believe in farmers. So I guess my sense is, I don't know what we do differently. Do you have a good sense of how to do this differently or any hope around what's changing?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Well I think we've got another opportunity with gene editing, and I've worked in gene editing at a couple of different companies and done a lot of consulting work on gene editing. So one of the big differences is that we can do a lot of good consumer traits with gene editing. And so, if you lead with a trait that consumers want, like if you have better-tasting strawberries or a pit-less cherry or foods that are more convenient, foods that are more nutritious, foods that have a better sustainability story that you communicate correctly, I think consumers are going to come along. And I think it's possible, through COVID and some people getting a better understanding of science and what science can really do to help us, that there's going to be a more openness to what is science doing for our food in a way that's helping me.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So I'm hopeful. And I think we're trying to do the right things with gene editing of, this really can help with climate change. I mean, so many crops are going to have to be grown in different places or different varieties or grown differently because of climate change. And this is one way that we can do something about that.

Sarah Nolet:
What's the conversation like with growers? You're now at PMA, and you'd be talking to companies that are on the production side and marketing side as well. Thinking about how to have these conversations, but also what technologies to invest in and adopt and which ones maybe to wait a little longer and kind of see how it goes. What's the sense from industry around gene editing in particular, but to ag-tech more broadly?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
I think with gene editing, there's a real fear of production breeding and production companies, that they don't want to be first. They don't want to be the ones that the consumer says, "Oh, you're the biggest blueberry company, and we know that you're using gene editing. We're not going to buy it." And they don't want the blow-back. And so, I think we're in this really funny state right now, because lots of companies are using gene editing in their breeding programs, but they're keeping it very separate. So hear me, that is not mixing. People are not doing it on the slide. But they're keeping very separate breeding programs just to see what the technology can do, but they're afraid because they don't want the consumer backlash.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And so, I think there's companies like Pairwise that's in North Carolina, that's doing a lot of breeding in produce. And they're a straight-up firm. Like that's what we are. We're a breeding company. We use gene editing, and we're going to come out with these four crops. And I think companies like that, being out in front and seeing what the benefits are, is going to help. And producers will be willing to grow it if there's pull on the other side. And one of the examples that I use, and other people use this too, is looking at Impossible Foods and the Impossible Burger. So that is GMO soy. And they use a heme protein that's made in a genetically modified yeast. And people can't get enough. Right?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And they're going to IPO. They're going to really be big. And so, I think if you can be upfront, be transparent with consumers, and give them something they really want, then that's going to bring things forward.

Sarah Nolet:
Hmm. How do you think that gene editing will change? Or will it change supply chain dynamics and who owns what part of the industry? Like does ownership change when more companies have access to gene editing or can differentiate in different ways at different parts of the supply chain? Like does it actually shift how traditional lines have been drawn, in terms of who does breeding and then who does growing and who does marketing? Do you see more vertical integration, more fragmentation?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
That's a really interesting question. I think if you look at corn and soy. Now you have big broadacre crops. I mean, you have people that do the science and own the germplasm and sell the seeds. Those crops, I don't think it's going to change. I think it'll be interesting in some of the crops that I work in more in the produce area, because those companies that have the germplasm probably aren't going to invest in the tools and hiring the people to do that work. And I've done some projects with a variety of people trying to look at, okay. Say we want to do gene editing in table grapes. How do we do it? Like how do we even do it? It makes sense to me for it to stay separate and for there to be platform-based companies that do genome mapping and that do the actual edits and that test in the greenhouse.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And I'm hoping that those companies stay separate from the germplasm companies. Because it just doesn't make sense for, say, a grape producer to make big investments in that type of technology. That should be a separate platform company. And as far as how the value goes, that's what these companies have to look at. Like who captures the value, and where is that value captured? And that's a lot of what these companies that are doing the breeding. They're like, how do I get to capture the value that happens at the Kroger store? Like how do I get that value? And so that is something that I think everyone's trying to work out, is if you're capturing consumer value, how does that go back to the genetics company? And that isn't worked out yet, but I think those are going to be interesting conversations.

Sarah Nolet:
These questions, like who pays and what business models will win, are not just playing out with gene editing, but also with all kinds of emerging technologies in food and ag. Soil carbon markets are another very hot example.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. I listened to your last podcast that was talking about carbon, which is fabulous, because it's such a hot area. And there are some parallels, I think, in just trying to figure out who owns what and where does the value accrue. I think it's a little different, because right now, that whole breed and all of that is just better set-up. It's more established. And I think with carbon markets, it's the Wild West right now of like, what are we trying to do? And what is the government going to do? And what are the tools we're going to use, and how do we affect this huge system? You can't just have something that measures soil carbon and that's all you have. You have to have this whole system that it's in. And so I think that's the broader thing with carbon that I think is pretty fascinating.

Sarah Nolet:
And you've drawn parallels to biofuels, and I'm really curious to hear your thinking there. And I would say probably U.S. listeners are decently familiar with biofuels and what's happened. Maybe international listeners or Australian listeners, less so. So maybe give us a little bit of 101 there and why you see parallels with carbon.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
All right. So when I was talking about my history, so ag-tech ended up consolidating into a very small number of companies. And so, I was off looking for the next thing, because I didn't want to work for another Monsanto and I really wanted to stay in more cutting-edge technology. And so, this was in the early 2000s, like 2004. And everyone was really looking for, we need a different source. We need something besides oil and gas, because the prices were going up so high. And so everyone started looking at biofuels, and first it was corn ethanol, which I was personally less interested in just because there was no great technology leaps we were going to have there.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And so we started looking at second-generation fuels, is what I ended up working on for 10 years of my career. And that was taking either crop residue or crops that were grown specifically for energy crops, like sorghum and switchgrass, miscanthus. So it's a number of others that were grown to make biofuels. And so, this kind of got going. And this was one of the parallels that I was thinking about with carbon is like, so in 2007, then-President Bush made a comment in the State of the Union Address about switchgrass. And then suddenly switchgrass was a thing, and everyone was working on switchgrass. And the government started putting so much money and said that there was going to be 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017 that was going to be made. And half of that was going to be from second-generation fuels.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So lots of money started pouring in, and people who'd been very quietly studying switchgrass and some of these other things, they were in the limelight. And so much money went into this. So the U.S. government tried to create this market by saying, "You're going to produce this amount of fuel." And they put a bunch of money, and they picked companies to put money in. So in 2007, they invested over a billion dollars into developing the technology for this. But they started with the technology at a really high level. They said, "Build these gigantic plants." And my job at the time, I was working for DuPont, and I was in charge of a program that we were looking at converting corn stover into fuel. And I had, it was a beaker in a lab. That's where my technology was. It was a beaker fermenting in a lab.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And people were saying, "Here's a check for 100 million dollars. Go build a 100 million gallon ethanol plant." So it was a lot of push without really looking at the system. One, without looking at what technology do we need? What's the state of technology? And what entire system do we need to change for this to work? And then letting the government pick winners and losers. So I think when we look at carbon now, the government's got to be involved, because they set emissions. They set a lot of the standards, so the government's going to be involved. But how do we make sure that we're going after this in the right way and we're not getting too far ahead, putting too much money in when the technology's not ready?

Sarah Nolet:
Hmm. And do you see parallels now, with Biden's talk about climate change and a possible carbon bank and the conversations today?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. And it's like, ugh. I've lived this before. And so, I'm actually very interested in it, and I'm starting to dig deep into it too, just because it is the next shiny thing. And so I'm really interested and have talked to a number of startups that are thinking about different ways of doing things and how do you measure. And I'm putting together some conversations at PMA about, how do we get the people that are thinking about it, like some of the people you've had on your podcast from Cargill and from General Mills and those people that are having those conversations. How do we talk to produce about that? How does produce get involved in it? And how do they get something out of it? How do they not go down the wrong path? How do they make money, not lose money?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So, yeah. I think it's a very exciting time, but there's a lot of pitfalls and just, fools rush in. I mean, the amount of money that the government may put in the wrong place. And here in the U.S. when suddenly all of the venture capitalists are trying to string together the carbon buzzwords and fun things. I think we just need to be kind of cautious.

Sarah Nolet:
100%. I talked to an investor this week who was saying, "Wow. You guys are really understanding this carbon stuff. Great to hear it on the podcast. You've made the investment in Nori. We just feel like we don't know enough yet. And we're going to always be behind the curve, because it's moving so fast. And the people that are on the top of the wave are just going to stay on the top of the wave. And so we'll just stay out." Which I thought was really interesting.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
That is interesting.

Sarah Nolet:
There's others who are like all in. And so you're almost already seeing the fragmentation and whether more capital will come in or everyone will go, ah, too confusing. Just see what happens and let it crash. Or actually, this is really big. We need to get involved. So we'll see, I guess.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Well, I think, at least in the U.S., when the government starts putting money in, then I think that gets investors interested and they'll start pushing along. Because they'll know that that money's there. And so, a lot of what happened with biofuels is there was a company called Range Fuels. I think they got, I don't know, I'm going to get the exact numbers wrong, but it's around 200 million from the government. And then Vinod Khosla came in and put in a whole bunch more money. And so, I think that pushes things along. And so I think in the U.S., with all the people looking at climate change and the DOE world.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So it kind of mitigates the risks a little bit for investors. So I think we will see investors rushing in. And hopefully we're just smarter about it, because it's a good thing. I mean, we're solving a very important problem. I don't want to make it sound like I think it's the wrong thing to do. It's just cautionary.

Sarah Nolet:
Hmm. Yeah. That's kind of what I was going to ask, is how do we balance the sense of potential hype or frothiness with the actual need to have solutions to climate change? Like over a large period, but also ones that enable growers to be profitable and meaningfully participate. Any thinking on how growers can and should be getting involved, especially in produce?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. I think that's something I'm exploring right now. Because I certainly don't want to get people involved with, here, buy this. Buy this other new tool, or try this other new thing. And you're already putting the risk and the cost on the grower. And we've talked about this before, that that's not where it belongs. And so, how do we incentivize them in a way that makes them interested and that mitigates the risk from them? And so, I think with carbon sequestration, look at trees. I mean, you look at all the trees that grow produce, and that's a pretty good deal.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
You've got a lot of carbon that's staying there for a long time. And so we should be able to figure out a way that if that's what we're looking to do, is to reward that, then there should be way to do that without them having to bear a lot of costs. So it is something that I'm exploring right now. And I don't know the answer, because the carbon systems that are getting set up through places like Indigo and FBN and some of the commercial carbon systems aren't really looking at the produce industry. And so, I just want to be cautious to not get people into something that then ends up being so much work and so much time, just trying to figure out what tools do I use to measure it and filling out the forms, that it's not worth it.

Sarah Nolet:
That's for sure the number one thing we see and hear from growers, is the sense of it's a lot of work for a very uncertain benefit, other than the practices that I can do that improve soil health and create a more productive farm. And all those things obviously make sense. But any of this exploration of other credits or markets feels a bit tenuous right now, especially in produce. Maybe I'll just wait. Where we have seen a difference is when it can be consumer-facing, like wine brands, for example.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah.

Sarah Nolet:
Looking at branding as a carbon neutral winery, or when they actually have that connection to consumers, especially around sustainability. What are you seeing in that space?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Certainly with consumer-facing brands, where you can tell that story, then there's going to be a real plus there of how to tell that story, and consumers hopefully will pay for it. I'm not seeing, I'm trying to think of anything that I've seen that is specifically pulling through yet. And consumers, I mean, we've found this on everything. You put a bunch of people in a focus group, and you and I would be guilty as well. It's not saying anything negative about anybody. But you'd say, "Oh, would you pay more for this great brand?" "But of course I would!" But then you put them in front of a shelf, and you look at their basket, and they really won't.

Sarah Nolet:
100%. We say this to startups who are testing their market, where it's like the diet question. When you say, "Would you like to have a six pack and a beach body and all these things?" Like yes, of course, great. And you give them the celery versus the cheeseburger, and they choose the cheeseburger every time. It's like, what people say they'll do is not actually what they'll do, and that's pretty challenging.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. For a while I was working in bio-controls, and it was a consumer brand. And so we had a number of bio-control consumer brands, and we put them in the aisle of the garden stores. And these things, they were before their time. They did not sell. And so we started saying, people want legs up. People want to see bugs' legs up. And so I think it's hard, and we see this in all sorts of ag-tech companies. You see this as well, is that people go and they talk to two or three really forward-thinking producers. And then they think, okay, I can base a business on this. And it doesn't always work out that way.

Sarah Nolet:
You mentioned bio-controls. I'm really curious what you're seeing in this space. Is the time now for that? And it's exactly, as you said, a psychology problem with some of these products. Like does it actually work? How do we know? And what are you seeing in terms of solving that psychological problem and just bio-inputs, I guess, more broadly? Has the time come?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. I think the time has come, I think for several reasons. One is the reason that you say, is that we're actually able to measure it now, much better than we were 15, 20 years ago. And the products have gotten so much better. They've gotten a lot more specific, and they just work better. And I think also because we're starting to see resistance, and a lot of insecticides and fungicides and some of the bio-controls don't have that resistance. And maybe it's not you can stop using pesticides completely, but you can mix them so that you can use those other chemicals a little bit longer, because they don't build up resistance. So I do think the time is now, and I think it's really exciting.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Because I beat my head against that one for about five years, and partly, products just weren't good enough. So you have to have a product that works. But I think they are now. And I think just with all we're looking at in the soil and using microbials in soil, and all the things that we can do and test and understand what's happening in the soil, I think it's really positive. That's an exciting area.

Sarah Nolet:
Vonnie's also excited for the future of plant breeding, which has always been her first passion since the greenhouse days. But now she sees breeding as a critical tool to help meet some of the big climate challenges we're facing.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So you're going to have a lot of issues where you're not going to have as much water if it's places that aren't irrigated. Or even if they are irrigated, and you won't have enough water to put on. So I think certainly drought resistance is a big one. I think there's going to be areas that are going to freeze where they didn't freeze, or not freeze where they used to freeze. And so that's why blueberries expanded. Why they did was through genetics, where you could grow them where you couldn't grow before. And that wasn't GMO, that's just genetics. So I think there's a lot of just, the climates are changing, hotter and colder and wetter and drier. And we need to be able to respond to those.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And breeding is a great way to be able to do that. Storm events, too much water or too much wind, or all sorts of pests that blow in that weren't there before, what kind of resistance can you get? So I think there's a lot. Breeding takes a little longer, but I don't know. Developing a new pesticide takes a long time, too. But breeding is just kind of a better way, if you can do it through breeding.

Sarah Nolet:
Yep. And one of the things we've dug into is this changing landscape due to climate change and how these weather events will be more extreme. But also certain things won't be able to be produced in certain areas, or other things will be able to produce there that weren't, but we don't have a supply chain infrastructure. Do you see this combination of new breeding technologies and pressures from climate re-engineering landscapes, like changing what it means to be a farmer? Like are companies going to have to move locations? Will they have stranded assets and have to do something else with them? What's the shift in, again, how the structure of the industry or even what the landscape looks like might be?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
I think that's likely to happen maybe over a longer period of time. But I think one of the things that's happening anyway is that people are starting to think about monoculture and do I really want to just be growing this one crop, and maybe I can grow different crops. And I think that's going to continue to happen, and that's climate change. And just do we need this much corn? This is just my view, but I think that's going to happen slow enough that the supply chain can react to that. It's not going to be like, you're going to have to change this tomorrow.

Sarah Nolet:
Right. And how about other countries getting involved in this? Like we've done a little bit of work looking at the Middle East, and obviously Singapore has massive food security goals. Some other countries are looking at, how do we think about food security? How do we think about breeding and using these technologies to grow things here that we maybe couldn't, or now that we have to? Is that a trend you're seeing?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Well certainly. I've been having conversations in Singapore this week. And so, they import 90% of their food. And especially during COVID, this was a very scary time for them. And so the government has started to pump quite a bit of money into looking at eggs, fish, and vegetables, are the three areas. And they're trying to produce 30% of their food in Singapore by 2030 and putting lots of systems in place. And it's vertical. All they can do is vertical. They can't go out. They have to go up.

Sarah Nolet:
Nowhere else to go.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. One guy was telling me about, they're doing vertical sheep farming, which I just can't imagine. Some of them are on the 20th floor. But that's certainly happening in Singapore, where they're looking using different technologies. And countries like Brazil are certainly adopting a lot of different technologies and looking at, what else can we grow? How can we grow it? How can we do this better? So it's certainly happening around globally.

Sarah Nolet:
Vonnie also predicts a shakeup in some of the traditional food supply chains.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And so when you look at the whole supply chain, starting from that first mile of leaving the farm gate, getting all the way to retailer or food service in the produce industry, and all that needs to happen there. And I don't know if you've seen it, the landscape map on the supply chain that Seana Day and Brita Rosenheim have done. It's amazing how many different companies are in there. And they really looked at the different verticals, and how do we do supply chain that works? That really goes all the way from the farmer to the retailer and what kind of systems need to be in place. And there's all sorts of systems, computer vision systems, and just the traceability that's important. And so I think that's an area that's really under-invested in and super important.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And especially, I think, since COVID really exposed how scary that supply chain is, I think people are starting to look at it differently. And I was talking to a company the other day, SWARM Engineering, and it's a bunch of guys from Microsoft. And they're really looking at, how do we do this logistics system all the way through and figure out how to save money and really support the industry? And so I think that's an area, not exactly the area I know the most about, but I think it's a really important area for food to really understand how can we do things there. There's so much going on in the field. And I know you guys work in this area a lot. A lot of the robotics and the automation and artificial intelligence, and then in what's happening in the field.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And I was talking to a company the other day about this, and I almost had this feeling of, oh yeah, this. And it's so ridiculous that I'm thinking that this is just like old hat. Because it's amazing. It's amazing what they're doing. And I think the adoption on that is going to be slower. I think it may be faster in some ways in produce, because the farms are smaller and the information is more valuable. But it is amazing what's happening. Like being able to know exactly when to pick and knowing exactly which apple flowers to reduce so that you have a better crop. And really using AI to be able to see almost every plant and make a decision on how to treat that. So it's pretty amazing. Yeah.

Sarah Nolet:
We're actually seeing that connect to the supply chain, what you made before, where when you have more information about what's happening in the field, what does that mean for how you can re-engineer the supply chain? Do you need as much cold chain infrastructure, or do you need different kinds of logistics support? When you know, basically ahead of time, what you're going to pick or when it's going to be ready or what you're going to do in the field that's going to be highly responsive to what consumers want and on-demand. Does that actually change how supply chains look and work and, to your point before, who creates and captures value? That scenario we're really excited about.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. And so when you look at what you just said, that whole piece. I mean, how do you look at interoperability? Like how do you talk to people about that? And that's, I think, one of the biggest issue. It's like you've got 20 dashboards and all those different pieces of data. And so, I guess just all industries go through a process of maturing and that putting together. But have you seen anyone that's trying to crack that?

Sarah Nolet:
I mean, we've seen people trying to crack it both from like a, we'll build dashboards and we'll be a kind of Power BI, or whether they're ag-tech specific or not. Kind of aggregate data and give you your view of it, which I think is interesting. Probably hard to get to venture scale, but useful tools that we see growers really, really appreciating right now. There's, I think, a play around some kind of open source approach to creating the standards and helping build the pipes in this space. The challenge is there's a lot of initiatives doing that, OpenAg Data Initiative and different industries. Specific initiatives to say, here's how we talk about vine rows, or here's how we talk about broadacre cropping and what the farm looks like.

Sarah Nolet:
It really can be a whole industry approach, but who has the incentive to do that? Who wins? And that's where we are increasingly thinking about open source. How do you harness the momentum of the community to build those tools? But you can still have a venture scale business model, which I think you do need, and world-class tech and software talent, because it really is a tech play. But right now we're in the early stage of industry maturity where everyone's building their own APIs, doing their own work to connect the dots. And that just makes it more confusing. But over time, I think we'll see more standards and more pipes being built. And there are opportunities there for sure.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. So do you think that, sorry, I'm interviewing you now.

Sarah Nolet:
That's okay. Yeah, yeah. Great.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So do you think that's five years? Do you think that's eight years? I mean.

Sarah Nolet:
Gosh. Yeah. I mean, we haven't seen any companies that are doing that, that we would necessarily bet on. We're starting to see companies recognize that problem and think about how it might be solved. So that's exciting. And if you look at a venture timeframe, then maybe it's five years. Three to seven, ideally, for venture capital. But I would say that's probably the next phase of industry maturity.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. It has to happen, and it happens in other industries, but it's hard to get a sight on how long that's going to take and how everybody fits into that.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
That's it for this episode of PMA Takes on Tech. Thanks for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. Be sure to check out all our episodes at pma.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe, and I would love to get any comments or suggestions of what you might want me to take on. For now, stay safe, eat your fruits and vegetables, and we will see you next time.