What insights can we gain about enzymes and their role in animal nutrition? Dr. Amy Petry, assistant professor in the department of animal and food sciences at Texas Tech University, discusses how these enzymes can enhance gut health and fiber fermentability in pigs and improve the energy contribution of fiber in pig diets. Additionally, Dr. Petry shares her experience as a graduate student and provides advice for those interested in pursuing research careers.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Amy Petry hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast. Joining us is Dr. Amy Petry, an assistant professor in the department of animal and food sciences at Texas Tech University and an expert in nutritional physiology. Over her career, she has received more than half a million dollars in federal or industry research grants and has published more than 30 referred journal articles, abstracts and book chapters. Dr. Petry leads a multidisciplinary research lab that works collaboratively with the swine industry to conduct basic science that supports, develops or evolves solutions for producers. She's with us today to talk about her work and observations around the use of carbohydrase enzymes in pig diets — particularly xylanase. Welcome, Amy.

Amy:             Thanks, Tom.

Tom:            I mentioned xylanase is a carbohydrase. Tell us about that and how it's beneficial in pig diets.

Amy:             Absolutely. Xylanase is an enzyme that targets dietary fiber. You, me and the pig, we don't produce enzymes that can break down dietary fiber, so we rely on microorganisms to do that. One way that we can help promote fiber degradation, which can be good for improving calorie uptake in the pig — and then, some of the research we've done to improve gut health — is through the use of these carbohydrase enzymes.

                     Xylanase is an enzyme that targets this fiber called arabinoxylan. Arabinoxylan is this really complex non-starch polysaccharide that's found in a lot of cereal grains. Here in the U.S., one of the more predominant sources of this fiber is corn and a lot of the industrial corn co-products that can be commonly seen in U.S. swine diets. Over the past 20 or so years, we've seen an increase in the amount of fiber in a pig's diet due to least-cost (diet) formulation and utilizing more of these industrial corn co-products.

                     What xylanase can do is help break down that dietary fiber. The original goal of supplementing that enzyme was to help improve feed efficiency (and) fiber digestibility and, overall, (to) increase the energetic contribution of fiber. But what has been more fascinating and more consistent of that is this effect — that xylanase likely improves pig viability or reduces finishing pig mortality.

Tom:            You earned your doctorate at Iowa State University. You did that by investigating the properties of xylanase. What were your findings? And how did the information influence your work going forward?

Amy:             Sure. In my Ph.D. work at Iowa State, we really wanted to find out why this enzyme was potentially improving finishing pig mortality, and then (we) tried to “de-dupe” some of the reasons why this enzyme can be ineffective in corn-based products. One of those things comes down to the mechanism of action of this enzyme, what it's actually doing in the pig's gut. We conducted two pretty large experiments that tested five different hypotheses as it relates to how this enzyme might particularly be working in the gut. We did this with seven other collaborators and did a whole slew of data collection. We looked at digestibility across the gastrointestinal tract. We looked at the microbiome, (the) influences of different biomarkers within the serum and within the gut of the pig, as well as taking microscopy pictures of the actual fiber structure.

                     What we found is that this enzyme appears to be doing more than just improving fiber fermentation. When we supplement it, we do get (improved) fiber digestibility. We get a breakdown of this really complex polysaccharide that's in the pig's diet. But in the process of doing that, we really establish more symbiosis with the microbiome.

                     It appears that this enzyme is eliciting two different mechanisms (through) a prebiotic-like effect. In this case, it's selectively upregulating microorganisms that confer health benefits within the pig. We observe this in the small intestine. When we fed pigs this enzyme in the presence of corn-based fiber, we saw an upregulation in three bacterial groups: Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium and fecal bacterium. The interesting thing about these microorganisms is, in the human sciences, (they) are largely associated with gut health, probiotic candidates and improving gut barrier integrity. The reason for that is they establish this cooperative microbial metabolism where they take these very complex arabinoxylans, the xylanase, (which) we supplement to the pig, (who) breaks it down into these oligosaccharides, and then these microorganisms beneficially digest those oligosaccharides into these things called short-chain fatty acids. Particularly, we see an increase in butyrate production, which is associated with improving gut health. In these studies, we also saw improvements and markers of gut health.

                     This (is the) first indication that there may be a health aspect to feeding a fiber-degrading enzyme that might partially be the causation for why we see a reduction in finishing pig mortality in commercial production. The other half of that is, when we look at the microbiome in the large intestine, where a lot of fiber fermentation actually occurs, xylanase appears to be eliciting what we call a stembiotic mechanism. The concept of stembiotics — particularly in swine nutrition — is pretty new, but it's this concept that an additive can increase fiber digestibility through stimulating the microbiome to further ferment fiber than what the enzyme or the additive is doing itself. We saw that in these pigs, in that, in their cecum, where most of the microbial organisms (reside in) this kind of little vat, that they have actually had more diversity, and they could ferment fiber (at a rate of) three to one compared to that of the control. It was another indication — along with the changes in the microorganisms — that we were indeed improving fiber fermentation. So, those were the two big findings we found.

Tom:            Well, the use of xylanase in pig diets is becoming more prevalent or popular. But does it live up to the promise, to the hype?

Amy:             I think it does for improving finishing pig mortality. We certainly, here in the U.S., know of several field trials — 15-plus — that have shown an improvement in the number of pigs that make it to market. There's still a lot of research to be done in terms of proving feed efficiency. It appears, with this enzyme, when we supplement it with this corn co-product DDGs, that it doesn't really break down the DDGs as much as we had anticipated that it would.

                     I think, for further use of this enzyme, we really need to be able to improve its ability of breaking down DDGs so that we can improve feed efficiency. There's still a bit of a misalignment between those two things. I think, for continual use of this enzyme and improving feed efficiency, we need more research in that area. But certainly, as a tool to potentially improve mortality, it's appearing to live up to the hype.

Tom:            A lot of your enzyme work, as I understand it, has been in growing pigs. How does enzyme supplementation translate to use in cell diets?

Amy:             Yeah. For me, this is a really interesting area, and something that we're trying to do quite a bit of research on. I think that the mechanism that we showed in terms of improving gut health and improving fiber fermentation likely could translate to a cell. There (is) some evidence of that now within the literature. I know of several people, including our own lab, that are doing work in that area. But I think, in terms of improving fiber fermentability and microbiome symbiosis, I certainly think that xylanase could have that role in the cell as well, but it's an area of opportunity for both research and with the utilization of this enzyme in production.

Tom:            I think this began for you as an undergrad at Texas Tech. If you would, tell us about your interest in how diet influences energy.

Amy:             Early on in my research studies, I spent a lot of time reading about dietary energy. My master's work has dealt with, a little bit, in dietary energy. Energy is one of these really complex things that nutritionists have to deal with. It's not a nutrient; it's a part of what nutrients do within the body. We have four different components that provide energy. We have protein, fat, and then we have simple and complex carbohydrates. Particularly in the swine nutrition realm, I think there's a lot of interest in how we can improve dietary energy, because feed costs are high and calories are expensive. It's accounting for — more than 65% of the cost of nutrition in pig production is due to meeting the energy specification of a diet.

                     So, it’s something that I'm really passionate about and keeps me going, and it started early on in my graduate career and then all throughout my Ph.D.: (the question of) how can we improve the energetic contribution of fiber, which is where a lot of the enzyme work comes in. Because fiber is this interesting thing — particularly insoluble fiber from corn — that we don't actually get a lot of calories out (of). In diets that we feed pigs that have DDGs, if you go from 0% DDGs in the diet to about 30%, you increase the amount of fiber in that diet by about 60%. You go from a level (of) between seven and eight (percent) upwards to 15% fiber. Yet the contribution of that fiber to energy is quite small if it's coming from corn — (it accounts for) less than 5% of the total calories that are in the diet. I certainly think there's an opportunity there to improve the amount of energy we can supply the pig if we can understand fiber better and understand fiber fermentation.

Tom:            It's interesting how timing can influence which fork in the road we take in life. I know that you had it on your side after being told that professor John Patience, with whom you'd hoped to do your Ph.D. work, that he was going to be retiring and probably would not be available. But what happened?

Amy:             Yeah. When I was doing my master's work in the area of energy, I was reading a lot of papers around energy. A lot of those came from John and his lab — and particularly his work around energy and feed efficiency. During my master's work, I was looking at a place to go do a Ph.D. I really wanted to study with John because of his interest in energy. At the time, my master's adviser (said), “I don't know if he's taking any more students or if he's got any opening in his programs.” I was pretty early on in my master's (studies), but call it fate. John sent an email to swine nutrition faculty (members) and said, “I am looking for my last Ph.D. student.” I applied and then ended up being John's last Ph.D. student and got to do this really neat stuff with studying xylanase.

Tom:            It's highly unusual to hear of a graduate student who devotes the kind of time and the patience involved in writing a grant to fund their own dissertation research. It's hard work — a full-time job almost.

Amy:             Yes.

Tom:            But you did it. The effort certainly paid off. I think you received about $300,000 (in grants).

Amy:             Yep.

Tom:            I'm just wondering: What advice from that experience can you pass on to others who might be intimidated by that process?

Amy:             The grant writing that happened in my Ph.D. work was in collaboration with John, but John knew that I wanted to do research as, probably, as a future career — and potentially in academia, like I'm doing now. Being involved in the scientific process of putting together hypotheses and an idea and then eliciting funds through it with the industry was a really rewarding experience. I think anybody who's looking to do that kind of work — or in graduate school, in general — you have to have perseverance and a lot of what I like to call grit, the mental fortitude to overcome any kind of obstacles.

                     I think of a lot of times back in my Ph.D. (studies) — you always hit roadblocks when you're doing research. It wouldn't be research if we didn't, and so the persistence of being able to do that (is important). I think, also, being in an environment where you have high collaboration, like we did in that lab, and the ability to learn from others and be supported in those areas was hugely valuable.

Tom:            I did a little bit of reading about your background, Amy. I see that you were a horse girl. Of course, we're here in the horse capital of the world (Lexington, Kentucky), so that leaps off the page to us. But you were a horse girl by upbringing — riding, judging. I just wonder: Could you have imagined then that you would someday become a rising star in the swine world? What attracted you?

Amy:             No, I didn't think that I would. My dad laughs a little bit. When I was graduating college, I said, "I'm going to go (get) a master's in swine nutrition." My dad said, "Of all of my children, I think you're the last person I ever thought would work with pigs." I didn't really know about pigs growing up. I didn't even really know about agriculture a ton. I grew up in an urban background.

                     I was involved in 4-H. That — my connection to horses — was largely through 4-H. But in college, I was able to be exposed to pigs. Working in collaboration with some professors at our pig farm, doing some undergraduate research, was hugely valuable. At the time, I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, in undergraduate. I really liked chemistry and biology. I was one of those types of students that uncannily liked the hard sciences, but I also liked animals and agriculture. Nutrition really bridged the gap there for me. It combined my interest and learning of chemistry and biology in an application that seemed beneficial to the agriculture sector. Pigs was the model for me to do that, partially through that exposure of undergraduate research, but also because of the swine industry and how committed the swine industry is to making advancements.

Tom:            What sorts of exciting innovations are you seeing in your field, and how will those developments impact your research work?

Amy:             There's a lot of exciting things going on with dietary fiber. You know, our lab, we really focus in on a couple of different areas — looking at the non-nutritive functions of the diet, increasing the energetic contribution of fiber, and then looking at disruptors of the maintenance energy requirements of pigs. In the fiber realm, there's a lot of really interesting data coming out of Europe, where they use a lot more fibrous ingredients, a lot more soluble fiber. (There is some) really interesting work that's looking at the influence of fiber on farrowing efficiency and the rate of stillborns from PEER fields lab. Then there are some others coming out of the University of Queensland.

                     When we think about all these relationships to fiber, I always go back to (one question): What can we do here in the U.S.? There's not all of these things that we — (things that) can be done in other countries maybe are not applicable to the U.S. swine industry. Our group is trying to bridge the gap. How can we utilize fiber? How can we improve our utilization of fiber and really maximize its health potential and attenuate its antinutrient effects? I think enzymes play a role in that. I think there's certainly a place for that — this concept of using designer fibers.

                     So, specific fiber types that we can actually put in very small concentrations within the diet, to me, is really interesting, and (that is) something that's shaping our lab. And then, also, how is the pig actually using the fiber? We've got a really large project coming up that is taking it back to the basics. We're taking it back to, actually, how is the pig utilizing fiber without enzymes? Then we can try to understand what's happening from a host side but also (from) the microbiome that's there fermenting it, from a metabolism perspective, so we can hopefully develop better candidates or evolve current enzyme or other solutions to help improve that contribution of fiber to energy.

Tom:            We've been talking with Dr. Amy Petry, an assistant professor in the department of animal and food sciences at Texas Tech University and an expert in nutritional physiology. Thanks for joining us, Amy.

Amy:             Thank you for having me.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode of the Ag Future podcast, we're joined by Dr. Yael Joffe, founder and chief science officer at 3X4 Genetics, to discuss the emerging field of nutrigenetics. Dr. Joffe explains how understanding the relationship between food, genetics and health can be used to personalize diets and lifestyles for optimal health. They also discuss the importance of personalized nutrition and the challenges of building trust in the field of genetics.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Yael Joffe hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     We think we know ourselves pretty well, but do we really? So much more information about who we are and how we respond to the world around us has been locked up in our genetic codes. But now, it's possible to understand that code and use that information to actually switch genes on and switch them off.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, and I'm joined by Dr. Yael Joffe, founder and chief science officer at 3X4 Genetics in Seattle, where she has mastered the emerging field of nutrigenetics to build products that are shaping the future of healthcare. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Joffe.

Yael:             Thanks, Tom. I'm very happy to be here today.

Tom:            First is this term, this science: nutrigenetics. How do you define that?

Yael:             It's pretty much exactly as it sounds — the idea of nutrition and genetics. It's a little bit bigger than that. Sometimes I use the word “lifestyle genetics”. But in essence, we can think of it as: What is the relationship between the food we eat, the food we expose ourselves to, the world we expose ourselves to and our genes? And what is — the relationship between those two elements really defines our health.

Tom:            Your company name, 3X4 Genetics — why 3X4?

Yael:             It's a little bit of a story, and it goes back about four or five years. One of the challenges that I've had in my career is: How do you get genetics to become something that every one of us can use in our daily life? I'm sure everyone listening has been to a practitioner, be it a dietitian or a doctor, and you've come away going, “That was all very well, but that really wasn't about me.” We know that one of the greatest trends in the field of medicine, nutrition, health and wellness is personalized nutrition, personalized medicine. So, I was trying to figure out: How do we really make genetics so consumable that, in one page, I can understand how my genes are going to personalize every single thing that I do every single day?

                     The reason we came up with (the name) 3X4 is — I actually started an education company called Manuka Science to teach practitioners how to bring genetics into their practice. We built this kind of methodology called 3X4, and the idea is (that), by using genetics, you should be able to understand, for an individual, the three most important places to focus on when you're starting to work with that client — the three most important dietary changes that you need to make. Not 300, not 10, not 20, because we know that overwhelms (people) completely. The three most important lifestyle changes, and the three most important supplements. So, when you put three, three, three (and) three together, it comes up to 3X4 — essentially, one page of a real summary that shows why you're different and how your genes would really personalize your intervention.

Tom:            Your approach is based on a set of principles. Can you tell us about those?

Yael:             My approach is based on, I'd say, two major principles. Let's go with that. The most important thing in genetics is to have science you can really trust and understand and that is proven, because we know that the genetic-testing industry has actually, largely, failed the consumer and actually failed the practitioner as well. We've been around now for 20 years. The human genome was mapped in 2003, but genetics hasn't really delivered the promise and the dream that, 20 years ago, we thought it was going to change our lives (and) prevent disease.

                     The first principle that I built 3X4 in is: How do we build a company that the consumer and practitioners can really trust? That meant going back to (the) basic principles of science and going, like, “How do we build something with a science we can trust, that is transparent, that is robust and resilient?” That was the first thing, and there's quite a long story to that.

                     The second thing is, if you just have great science but you have no way of translating it into a person's life, then all you're selling is data. One of the things that I've spent most of my career on is trying to figure out: What is that clinical translation? What is that translational value? Tom, you wake up in the morning and you have a whole lot of decisions to make. You can grab your phone and check your emails. You can immediately put on the coffee machine and have a double espresso. You can meditate for 20 minutes. You can go for a walk. You can have a look at the weather. You can have a cold shower. We make all these decisions, and every single decision is going to impact the way our genes express themselves, the way our genes behave.

                     If we can understand our genetics, we can make these decisions so much better. For me, one of the foundational principles of 3X4, really, is this idea of translation. How does it actually change my decision-making? How does it actually change my life? So, I really wanted to build a company that gave all of us — whether you're a practitioner or a consumer or a client — better decision-making. We needed to, really, not just build another genetic-testing company or build another genetic test; there are 300 to 400 (of those) in the U.S. alone. How do you fix the whole industry so that we can really raise (its) value? I'm not sure that was the question, but I hope I gave you a good enough answer.

Tom:            No, it certainly did. I'm wondering, (and) tell me if I'm right about this — am I understanding that we can actually have more control over our bodies or our health than we may have realized? How's it possible to manipulate our own genetic codes and overcome issues that might have been hereditary or unavoidable?

Yael:             That's an excellent question. In fact, I think one of my talks (at the Alltech ONE Conference) is going to be exactly on that, is that, for the last couple of decades, we've had this sense that our genes are our destiny. I think that this is very much part of the media conversation, is that our genes are set in stone and there's not much we can do (about them), so we might as well just get on with it and hope for the best — hope we don't get cancer or hope we don't get Alzheimer's. This was genuinely believed to be the truth, but actually, it couldn't be further from the truth.

                     We need to understand, in genetics, that there are two different parts to the conversation. I call it insight and action. The first part is we all have this genetic code, which you refer to. It's a language like English or Spanish. It's got an alphabet. It's got words. It's got sentences. It's got chapters, and it tells a story. Our DNA sequence code is exactly that. We have a code that tells a story of who we are and how we live in this world and how we respond to the world around us. But at 0.1% in our code, we differ from each other.

                     You and I have 0.1% of our code, which means — at three to four million places in our code, in our spelling, we differ from each other. We look different. We sound different. I don’t have and wish I had such a beautiful voice like you do. You're taller than I. We're different from each other, and that's at 0.1%. But it's also: How do I respond to the coffee that I had this morning. How do I respond when I eat gluten? How do I respond when I go and do a five-kilometer run?

                     A lot of the work in genetics has been in understanding why we're different from each other, and I call that insight. But one of the most exciting transitions in the world of genetics deals with the question you asked, which is: If I know who I am and I know how I'm different or how I respond to the world around us, what can I do about it? What we've discovered, really, (is that) genes are just a series of switches. Imagine you walk into your house and you switch on a light switch and something happens. It's exactly the same as genetics. As I described, I had some lovely lunch before I came here. I chose to have, for lunch, some salmon and some salad. Excellent choice. I probably wouldn't have told you if I'd had the pulled-pork sandwich, so I had the salmon.

                     When I had the salmon, there were nutrients in that salmon that had an impact on my genes. What they do is they actually send a signal to the gene to switch on, to make an enzyme or a hormone or a brain message. It's these switches, this signaling, that switch on hormones and enzymes in our body, which is actually what runs our body, which actually allows our body to heal (and) to optimize our health.

                     So, in one sense, we use genetics to understand what we are. On the other hand, we use the choices we make — whether it's nutrition, supplements, exercise, meditation, stress management — to switch on these genes, which is ultimately what's going to determine whether we choose health and heal ourselves or whether we choose behaviors that actually lead us to ill health. This idea that genetics is set in stone or is our destiny is simply untrue. We actually, every minute of every day, have the choice to change the way genes behave.

Tom:            This is fascinating. To me, a layperson, it borders on profound. It sounds as though, if we can determine our genetic code and it's time for lunch, we can determine what we should have to manipulate something that's going wrong with us, perhaps, or that we want to enhance.

Yael:             Spot on. That's actually my work, and that's what I've been doing for 20 years. I can do a test on you. Remember, I spoke about these differences, these spelling changes in your DNA. I can understand — let's call it metabolic dysfunction, things in your body that are not working as optimally, whether it’s enzymes or hormones. It’s around areas like: How do you detox toxins that you respond to? How do you manage your glucose and insulin, especially around hormones? It could be around cholesterol. It could be around how you consume calories, how hungry you feel, how you store energy. I could go on for hours.

                     If I understand that about you, I can now help you make a much better choice at your lunch, for two reasons. One is (that) I want to make sure that, knowing those spelling changes, those differences, I'm optimizing your choices. But to take it a step further, I'm going to help you choose foods that actually go further than that and switch on genes or switch off genes — because my salmon that I had for lunch was doing a couple of things. One is it was switching on genes that decreased inflammation in my body. We all know about these amazing omega-3 fatty acids that we get in oily fish that actually switch off inflammatory genes, but it also can switch on what we call anti-inflammatory genes, and there's a whole lot of other stuff it does.

                     So, knowing this knowledge — and I talk about “know thyself,” the self-knowledge, and working with someone who really understands how nutrition can change gene expression and not just nutrition. Let's talk about profound. You go and you hug someone. (You make a) connection. We know that, (because of) COVID, the last couple of years have been really hard, because we've all been at home. We haven't had connection. Suddenly, we come to an amazing conference, and we see someone that we've only seen onscreen, and we give them a big, solid hug. That connection, in itself, can switch on genes.

                     So, when I say (that) every single thing that we do in our life changes the way our genes switch on and off, I literally mean every single thing. One of my favorite topics is cold-water immersion — to have a cold shower versus a hot shower. We go and dip in a cold tub or in an ocean or in a lake when we go hike a mountain (or), obviously, when we exercise. Every single thing we do is now in our control. To be able to change the way our genes are behaving — that is how we step forward to health and wellness.

Tom:            Can a consumer obtain a customized set of data that helps guide them in their diet and lifestyle?

Yael:             Yeah, absolutely. There are many, many companies in the marketplace that are doing this. I've tried, at 3X4, really, to try build the best company, and one of the fundamental things that we do differently, perhaps, is we insist that you have a professional work with you. Genetics is only data if you don't have someone to translate it for you, (someone who) knows who you are, what's important to you, what your goals are, what you want to achieve, what your concerns are, what your medical history is.

                     You're able to get a test. We look at everything that I've described — how you consume energy, your exercise activity, your nutrition, stress, mood, anxiety, depression, detox, you name it. And then we have these amazing (people), whether they're dieticians or medical doctors or chiropractors, who have been trained, mentored and educated to sit with you and say, “Well, this is what I'm understanding about you. Let's plan ahead and see what we can do better.” So, that's exactly what we do.

Tom:            Can you give me an example of a case study, let's say, of someone who has done this, who has realized that they had something to overcome, and they've managed to do that through genetic manipulation?

Yael:             Yeah, I have many cases. Let me think. One of the interesting areas — I'll give you just one off the top of my head. I'm actually presenting a whole lot of case studies (at the Alltech ONE Conference). I won't use one of those, but we actually had a staff member at 3X4 who suffered from recurrent migraines. Migraines are so debilitating. They really are extraordinary, and we are seeing them more and more often. Even in our company, which is a health and wellness company, we probably have 20% of our staff members who are suffering from migraines. One of them in particular was suffering it recurrently, (which has a huge impact) — never mind the loss of productivity and days of work, but in terms of family and quality of life.

                     So, we ran our genetic test on them, and this is interesting. One set of genes that we look at in our test is around something called histamine. I'm sure anyone who's at this conference knows about histamine, especially in agriculture. It's a molecule that is found in a lot of foods, but for some people, they're not able to break down histamine, so it stays in the body, and it does kind of weird things. It's very pro-inflammatory. A lot of people who suffer from a lot of allergies, seasonal allergies, have a lot of histamine in their system.

                     Histamine can manifest in different ways, one of which — of the ways it does — is migraines. Often, when you get a migraine, you'll often go to a doctor and they'll give you a whole lot of drugs, a whole lot of medicine that you'll take, and you'll end up getting into bed and be wiped out for the whole day to manage your migraines. We discovered that this person had an inability. Genetically, it was missing the kind of amino acids that help break down histamine.

                     So, what we did — it's amazingly simple, actually — is we removed all the foods in their diet that are high in histamine. Now, the interesting thing about histamine is that some of the foods that we think are the healthiest — like avocado is actually a high-histamine food. So, we put them on what we call a low-histamine diet, and it's just extraordinary. Just from that, we were able to resolve all the migraines. We talk about genetics as this idea of “You don't know what you don't know.” We think we know ourselves, but we don't necessarily.

Tom:            Well, if we are able to take this level of control over our personal health, doesn't that have enormous implications for healthcare in general?

Yael:             Absolutely. This is the journey we've been on for 20 years, is trying to move away from what I call those “USA dietary guidelines” concept, that every single person gets the same diet, or it's the ketogenic diet, or it's the intermittent-fasting diet, or it's the Paleo diet. This idea that every single person will respond to the same diet is completely flawed.

                     I've been working with health professionals for 20 years now, and we have had incredible traction in certain groups of practitioners. We call it integrative medicine, lifestyle medicine, functional medicine. But in terms of mainstream Western healthcare, the big healthcare systems, we haven't (been completely accepted). It's starting. It's taking our time. But if you think about it, why wouldn't you want to understand?

We call it trying to get rid of trial and error because, at the moment, what happens with the practitioner is you'll have migraines and they'll say, “Well, let's try this drug. Oh, that didn't work. Let's try this. Oh, that didn't work. Oh, let's try this.” We’re trying to get away from that, because if we can know what we don't know, we can save not only financially, for a patient, but we can actually save (them from) psychological and emotional (damage), because every time we fail — don't even get me started on weight management. Every time we fail, we set someone back emotionally, psychologically and financially.

So, we're starting to see some traction. There's an inevitability to it that, ultimately, we'll all know our genetics, and every single piece of advice we get will be through the lens of genetics, and that's where we're headed. We've certainly grown exponentially in the last 10 to 20 years, but we've got a long way to go.

Tom:            Your company maintains a global network of accredited practitioners. Is this service widely available? Is it expensive? Is it covered by health insurance?

Yael:             It is not covered by health insurance. Everything is cash pay. Unfortunately, some of the best medical care outside, at the moment, is cash pay. At the moment, it's only available in the USA and in South Africa. We're starting to look at other countries as well and how to expand globally. But right now, we're still quite a young company. It's only launched four years ago in South Africa — I'm from South Africa — and launched in the USA two and a half years ago.

                     The way it works is the test is $349, but you only do it once in your lifetime. Your genes don't change. Your code does not change. You do it once and you're done. But then you need to have a consult with a practitioner who's been trained by us, educated and mentored, to make sure that you get the value out of it that you really need. I always say, “If you don't know what to eat for breakfast the next morning, you've bought data, and then it doesn't matter whether it's $349 or $1,999. It's just not valuable.”

                     We've got 2,000 practitioners in the USA at the moment that are trained and up and running. We do also a lot of telehealth, of course, but at the moment, we haven't quite got to global domination. We're working on it.

Tom:            It sounds like you're on your way. Well, I was perusing your website, the company website, and it says on your website that you are obsessed with your customers. What does that mean?

Yael:             Yes. Well, we are obsessed with our customers — be it the practitioner or the consumer — because, ultimately, we have this dream. When people (ask me), why did I start 3X4? Well, I wanted to build a genetic testing company that did everything right, and so many companies (are) just not. To do everything right, I needed to create an experience and engagement for the consumer that had great value to them, that really changed their life.

                     We have this idea of ten million lives. We believe we will impact ten million lives, and that means something different to everyone. It might be having enough energy to get out of bed in the morning. It might be managing that migraine. It might be managing anxiety. It might be preventing Alzheimer's or cancer. We wanted to take genetics, which has traditionally been quite a dead science — almost like computer science has zeros and ones; genetics is just kind of data letters — and bring it alive and make it meaningful.

                     We've done this in multiple ways, (including) engagements, using color, infographics, pictures and storytelling, because we want to make sure to bring value to your life. I think this is something that has been missing from the genetic testing industry. So, we're quite obsessed with (learning): What is your experience of genetics? How does it feel to you? Is it meaningful? Because remember, these are your genes, not mine. I might be able to drink coffee all day, but you may not be able to drink coffee all day. What does it really mean to you, and how does it really change your life?

We spend a lot of work working on (understanding), how do we have, (as) we call them, visual conversations with you — not just the way medicine is normally done, which is, “Here's a lab report, and good luck, and off you go.”

Tom:            If you are able to wave a magic wand and you have a vision of a world that understands and makes use of nutrigenetics, what would it look like? What would life be like in that world?

Yael:             Interestingly, in 2005, I wrote a book called "It's Not Just Your Genes!" and that was quite optimistic of me in 2005. There was this chapter at the end of the book. It was kind of (asking): What does the future look like? As I said, this was almost 20 years ago. I had this idea that every single person had, like, a DNA passport. Imagine a credit card with a little chip, and everywhere you went, you had your DNA passport. Now it’ll probably be like a smartphone or a chip under your skin or something. Anyway, you would go to Whole Foods or the shops and everything, and you would scan your DNA passport. It would make recommendations on the best foods for you to buy. “You better buy organic. Here's some broccoli for you.”

Ultimately, I guess what I'm trying to say is that, in the future — and I think it's a magic wand in terms of timing, but I do think there's an inevitability to it. Every single decision we make will have a lens, whether it's shopping on Amazon, whether it's sports training. It's how we prevent injuries. (It will help determine) the foods we eat, the supplements we take — we'll never take a supplement ever again without knowing our DNA — the drugs you take, the pharmaceutical drugs you take. We already know the field of pharmacogenomics is huge. Only 50% of drugs work, and that's (due to) genetics, because genes determine how a drug is metabolized. So, imagine that this big lens that covers every single decision that we make and that we do — that is the future of health, of wellness, of medicine, of sport, of fitness.

I think the ultimate part of that wand is integration. One of the amazing areas we're working on now is (asking): How do we take genetic information and integrate it with other data about us? I've got a Garmin watch on my hand. I've got an Oura ring. These two devices give me information about my heart rate, my heart rate variability, and whether I slept well. The way we see the future, the next five to ten years, is that there will be genetic integration into all our data. So, we're not just measuring my heart rate and my heart rate variability and my sleep, but we’re layering it with some amazing lens of genetics and finding out, “How does this look at a personal level?” I think that's the future we're looking at.

Tom:            That magic wand has already been waved, actually. It's hard at work.

Yael:             We're waving. We're waving.

Tom:            Dr. Yael Joffe, founder and chief science officer at 3X4 Genetics, based in Seattle. Thank you so much.

Yael:             Thanks, Tom. Thank you so much for having me.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

What happens when technology and the swine industry collide? Dr. David Rosero, a technical officer at the Hanor Company, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss the latest game-changing technologies in the field, such as cameras for estimating pig weights and sensors for measuring feed consumption. Listen to learn how these technologies are creating opportunities for innovation and increasing efficiency in the industry.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. David Rosero hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     One of the interesting benefits of having done the Alltech Ag Future podcast over the years has been the opportunity to observe an industry undergoing a full-blown evolution driven by a pretty relentless convergence of agriculture and technology. This is happening across the industry, but today, we’re focusing on a particular sector: swine, where technologies are revolutionizing pork production as we know it.

                     Joining me is Dr. David Rosero, a technical officer at the HANOR Company, where he oversees the diverse technical aspects of the company’s operations, including nutrition, research and development, business intelligence and innovations. Welcome, David.

David:           Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            What are some examples of important (and) maybe even game-changing agricultural technologies that have emerged in recent years?

David:           Well, I have a couple of examples that I can speak of. I think (the use of) cameras to estimate the weight of pigs, that's very, very exciting to see — the accuracy on how those cameras are predicting how well or not-as-well our pigs are growing. Another one, I think, to me, that's very impactful is the sensors on the bins (that are) estimating how much feed is going into the bins and how much consumption is occurring in our barns of the feed. (That’s) just to mention a few.

I've been working and connecting with other companies. I'm very excited to see that more and more people are coming into smart farming and the digital transformation, (much like) what I said — using software to improve productivity. Pig flow is an example, for instance. I think some analytics are coming along (as well), just to mention a few, Tom.

Tom:            The first item that you mentioned — cameras can give us the information on (pigs’) weight?

David:           Correct.

Tom:            How do they do that?

David:           It's a process — and I'm not an expert in that. I'm a nutritionist by training. But as I understand it, the computer will analyze the image — but you'll need thousands of pictures of pigs, and you'll need the weight of the pig along with that image. That's an example of artificial intelligence the computer will create, I think, to guide the algorithm. The computer will analyze the variables in the image. It will allow for a better prediction of the weights. In the process, we had to weigh, as you can imagine, thousands and thousands of pigs to improve that accuracy (of the computer program).

                     Something else to be speaking on as something we'd like to see in any technology that's measuring something (is that) it has to be accurate. For that specific example, on the camera, we have gotten to 97% to 98% accuracy in predicting the weights of pigs in any given phase of growth.

Tom:            How do these technologies create opportunities for innovation in the swine industry?

David:           That's a good question. Maybe I'll follow up with the same example of the camera. Imagine (that) you can measure how your pigs are growing in the multiple barns you have in the (different) regions (of the world). In Iowa, for instance, where we have the majority of our pigs, we can understand how pigs will grow in the different environments and the different flows of pigs that we're having. It will be so much (more) powerful for us. It's where we can find opportunities to make improvements. I can think (a lot) about that example.

Tom:            It seems like a time-saving efficiency, too, in terms of the time it would take to weigh living pigs versus being able to shoot a photo or at least observe them through a camera.

David:           That's correct, Tom. It's almost impossible to think that you can take the scales to the different sites of pigs to try to collect that information. Maybe some of the other ways we're using (this technology), where you weigh a truck of pigs, it might be not as accurate. So yeah, I think it's labor-saving. I think it's also the increase of data that's coming to you to understand your business (at a) deeper (level).

Tom:            You mentioned artificial intelligence. What's the latest on ways that AI — and the Internet of Things, for that matter — are making impacts on commercial pig farms?

David:           I think we're starting to see the beginning of something (that's) going to go big. I think, to get to that point, we need to have sensors. We have to have camera devices that collect this data, but these will have to be very robust, and they will have to be reliable. We have hundreds of sites in any given region and thousands of pigs growing at the same time. To expand these (technologies), they have to comply with the requirements of the environment.

                     I think we're passing that point now. I think we can install sensors in barns and they are going to last for a long time. They are going to provide you reliable data. I think that's the (next) phase and what I see in the commercial side that we are into. The next phase is where you can use that data to move it through the computer’s artificial intelligence algorithm and drive the business. I haven't seen clear examples on that yet.

                     Something that I can think of now, from the top of my head, is the health (aspect). I know the softwares we have explored and we have seen being watched are (analyzing) pictures of pigs that are sick. Veterinarians will send a picture, and the computer will analyze the picture and suggest some diagnostics of the pig or the disease. If you can tie that to how pigs grow, maybe diagnostics of samples that are coming back from the lab — that's also very powerful. That'll be a good example of what I can think of quickly on artificial intelligence.

Tom:            Sure. It's a weighty subject, for sure. What about robotics? How is robotics being used in pig farming, and what are the benefits?

David:           I can see many benefits, but we probably are still in the first phase. A good example would be washing the barns. I think there are automatic washing machines now that you can put into barns. I have seen it. We haven't tested it. Probably, it's going to come to another generation, where they're going to be more affordable and more precise in what they're able to do, but that will be impactful for the labor, especially thinking about the activities in the barn, in commercial operations, where you can make it more efficient. I can think about robotics taking some of those tasks that are very repetitive and doing it in a better way.

Tom:            How are technologies like augmented reality or 3D printing being applied to farm operations, and how do they impact efficiencies?

David:           I haven't seen much on the 3D (printing aspect), Tom, to be honest, that are (being used) in the commercial level (or) being applied, but I can see where augmented reality is starting to come into our hands. I have seen examples (of the use of augmented reality) on the dairy operations. If you have the information for every animal, if you know the age of — think about, in a sow farm, where you have 2,000 to 6,000 sows in operation. If you can have the information of every sow, their history and their health status, and if you can manage it, I think it's going to be more powerful to manage individual sows.

Tom:            A key goal for you has been to advance sow nutrition and to create feeding programs that maximize the lifetime productivity and the profitability of sows. How have technologies moved us toward that goal?

David:           I think those are helping us to apply these technologies and nutrition programs in a better way. It doesn’t relate much to smart pig farming, but I can think about a great tool in the last years that we've been having, which is a sow caliper. It's a very simple tool, but yet, (it’s) very powerful. I've been thinking about applying (that tool to) my nutrition programs. It allows me to be more precise in how I measure the body condition to feed the herd better. I think these will be a good example for what we can do with more advanced technologies (and) implementing those (within) feeding programs in a better way.

Tom:            Swine industry productivity has been trending upwards over the past 15 years or so, and much of that increased productivity is due to increased pigs per litter and increased market weights. What's driven those improvements?

David:           Well, you can go back into the years of genetic selection. I think that's key on getting the number of pigs born (to be) higher. I think we are also getting to understand better some stress situations and disease situations where we can manage our sow herds better. Feeding programs, too — I think they have made an impact.

                     I think we will be talking a little bit about my work and my doctorate on essential fatty acids. That addressed one of the situations we had in the sows with heat stress and where we had seen seasonality and seasonal infertility. I think it's a combination of multiple things, mainly driven by the genetic selection on the number of pigs that a sow will have. I think, in the marketplace, I think that's what the market is demanding today. That's what the plan is paying you for. I think we have, as nutritionists, learned how to feed those heavier pigs better.

Tom:            What challenges have producers faced as a result of COVID-19, and how have they overcome those challenges?

David:           Well, it was a very challenging situation, all things considered. Everything came quickly to us. One of the challenges, I suppose, is to manage the number of pigs we had to process to plants. I think labor came later and is still an issue, not just to farms but to the plants and their capacity to process the pigs. I think we've gotten better in predicting our flaws. A number of pigs are going to go through the system, and managing the weights of the pigs to get to a target weight. I think we have become more precise. With labor, I think we have optimized tasks that needed to be done. I think we had to reanalyze ourselves on what are the basics, and we had to do the correct basics.

I think biosecurity is another positive thing I can get out of COVID. I think it taught everybody how a virus can move so quickly into the environment. For the pig business, it's no different. In our daily challenges, we have different viruses coming along. Just think about how conscientious the people will become after knowing (about the reality of dealing with) a virus — and (how that relates) to herds (and) how to care better for our sows.

Tom:            I'm just wondering if you have a finger on the pulse of what's going on in the industry's research and development labs. Anything exciting going on there?

David:           I think so. Thinking about COVID again, another positive thing I can get out (of the pandemic) is the development of vaccines and the new technologies that it has brought to us. One of our biggest challenges, Tom, is health challenges we have in sow herds and pig herds. I think, (in terms) of how to deal with those viruses, we have gained a large amount of knowledge into that. I think, coming up, the smart pig farming, it will allow us to manage our barns with less labor, and that's going to address the current issue we have.

Tom:            You touched a few minutes ago on your own research focusing on understanding the nutritional value of essential fatty acids and their effects on long-term sow productivity. Tell us more about that.

David:           We started focusing about (the question of) what can we do with sows during summer? That was the original question: Can we increase the energy by providing more fat into the diet? That's something common to do, especially in the sow. Something that triggered the next question on the essential fatty acids is that we tried different fats, and the outcome was different. When we analyzed the fats, the biggest difference was the level of essential fatty acids in one of the sources.

                     Investigating about the (role of) essential fatty acids, you'll learn about these being a precursor of hormones that are important for reproduction. Then (we) started thinking about the seasonality, the infertility during the summer that occurs in the sow herds. So we tested it out, and I think we had a really good outcome and an understanding that if you provide the right level of linoleic acid, the sow will maintain pregnancy longer. They won't lose (that) pregnancy over time. I think that explained, in a portion, what happens during your seasonal infertility.

                     By doing that, I think we have eliminated it. Obviously, heat stress is going to affect sows. Unless you provide the right environment and can afford (to completely avoid) it, sows are going to have heat stress. But the portion that is nutrition-related, I think, to me, it comes (down) to the linoleic acid or the essential fatty acids. If you provide the right level (of those ingredients), you won't see much of that problem.

Tom:            All right. That's Dr. David Rosero, technical officer at the HANOR Company. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Rosero.

David:           Thank you, Tom. My pleasure.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Can animals harness their intrinsic abilities to adapt and heal after an injury? Dr. Mark Revenaugh, veterinarian and owner of Northwest Equine Performance in Mulino, Oregon, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss the science behind regenerative therapy and what it means for equestrians. 

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Mark Revenaugh hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     Regenerative therapies have been rapidly expanding in the horse market. These treatments of joint disease, as well as soft tissue and musculoskeletal injuries, are revolutionizing equine sports medicine. They are (also), at the same time, raising many questions.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, and joining us is Dr. Mark Revenaugh, the veterinarian owner of Northwest Equine Performance in Mulino, Oregon, and a leading expert in the diagnosis and treatment of lameness and performance-related issues. For more than 20 years, Dr. Revenaugh has served as a U.S. Equestrian Team or assistant team veterinarian, selecting, treating and advising elite-level professionals in the equine industry on maintaining health and maximizing performance. Thanks for joining us, Mark.

Mark:            Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Tom:            Would you mind explaining for us what regenerative medicine is and how it works as a healing therapy?

Mark:            Sure. Regenerative medicine is really an entirely new branch of medicine. What we're doing is we're looking into harnessing the body's own intrinsic abilities to adapt, to heal and to strengthen. We're finding that those signals are all there; we're just in the process of learning how to best utilize those processes that are already existing.

Tom:            This is a recurring theme, and the conversations we're having in the field of neurogastronomy, in the field of genetics — that we're equipped for many of these ailments, and, of course, our animals are as well — (are related to topics) that we've addressed in other ways for generations.

Mark:            Yeah, that's absolutely correct. I think the pendulum swings in most industries, as it has in medicine, over into (the) pharmacy, to be the answer to the afflictions of our horses and our people. But it turns out that there might be a better way — or, certainly, another way — that we can be modifying and impacting our (horses). You know, I work with athletes, primarily. They have very, very high demands on them. We're always looking for ways that we can keep our athletes healthy and strong and in the game.

Tom:            Well, what sorts of injuries or ailments can be successfully treated with regenerative therapies?

Mark:            Well, we're still trying to figure that all out. I would tell you, at this stage, there's a lot of experience and quite a bit of research behind it (related to its) use in treating joints, injured joints (and) inflamed joints, to a lesser extent, but also there's a fairly robust research base behind the use of these products for soft-tissue injuries. Those are very, very common, and those are, I would say, the lion's share of what we're using them for — although there are exciting new areas where (regenerative therapies are used in the) treatment of lung problems and even spinal cord injury. I know that's a bigger deal for human orthopedics, but it does happen. Nerve and nerve-root and spinal-cord problems do also occur in horses. It's a frontier at this stage for us.

Tom:            Well, Dr. Revenaugh, what brought you around to this approach? How were you persuaded that it holds beneficial promise?

Mark:            Well, sports are really, really competitive, and we're always looking for ways to do things better and to get a better end result. This line of thinking really started in the late '90s. Our industry has struggled to keep up with the rapidly changing body of research and the rapidly changing body of clinical experience. Interestingly, clinical experience, actually, is probably leading the way. We have tremendously high numbers of case experiences. There's so much to read and so much to try and keep track of that it can be really difficult to stay on top of it, because as soon as you learn something, there's something else new to replace it.

                     But it's driven by results in the end. At first, it's driven by the hype. There's a hyperbole when there's something new and everyone thinks it's going to cure everything and that doesn't work out. But once you're through the hype, you can really realize where some of these products can be helpful. Like I said, at this stage, we just are doing more and more. It's done by request by the client from (their) firsthand experience with some of their other patients.

Tom:            Sounds like the old (adage), “The more you know, the more you know you don't know.”

Mark:            Yeah, absolutely.

Tom:            Well, last year, I know that you in the high-performance sports group offered a series of courses where top-level horse vets, academic veterinarians and MDs specializing in regenerative treatments got together to compare notes about this field. What's the most current clinical thinking about its applications in veterinary medicine?

Mark:            Wow, that's a very broad question. I would say that the reason that we organized this virtual summit was because we're looking to see what different perspectives we're finding. And until that point, largely, the MD world, the human regenerative field, was running parallel with the veterinary regenerative field without an awful lot of communication between the two different groups. It's fascinating and has been an amazing process to see (and) kind of compare notes on all levels — not only (in terms of) results but how things are being validated, how we measure success. I mean, some of the real fundamental, important pillars of determining whether something does or doesn't work, I would say, at this stage, are coming back into question for us.

Tom:            Well, I know that you have not shied away from making investments in advanced technologies and cutting-edge therapies. That requires a certain amount of tolerance of risk. What's your view of the value of risk in this area?

Mark:            Risk is — anytime you intervene at all, you have to consider that there's some risk associated with your intervention. You don't want your intervention — you don't want the cure to be worse than the disease, as the saying goes. But I think it's very easy to be so risk-averse that you don't (try new things) or that you miss out on some really, really valuable and important new options that are out there.

                     Literally, for me, when I'm wanting to consider a new product, we've developed a network of clinicians and academicians that we can run some ideas by and kind of get a collective experience base (from). This is our data-tracking program also. The idea is that if we collaborate — say I see 100 cases in a year of a certain injury, and there's another practice that sees 100 in a year, and you get 10 practices (together). All of a sudden, if you've really worked together and compared notes and tracked your data, you've just gotten 10 times or more (of the original) experience base and an awful lot more objective (data). Because, hopefully, each of us — bias is also a really big problem in medicine in general. Hopefully, by having different perspectives, we really try to cancel out some of the bias as best as possible. But bias is also a really big factor, and one that we always have to try to keep in check.

                     That's a long answer for your risk question because, in order to calculate risk, you have to know what the risk is. In many instances, we really don't know. If you're talking about treating 10 cases and they all went well, that doesn't mean it's (necessarily) a safe thing to do. It means that one in 10 (of those cases), it's safe on. So, it's interesting. The industry is pivoting away from just looking at small numbers of cases in a perfect environment to getting bigger numbers of cases in a less-perfect environment. But just the sheer number of cases that you’re tracking, theoretically, will give us a better read on how safe, certainly, or effective a product is.

Tom:            Well, I'm wondering what you're seeing here. In your opinion, what are, as yet, (the) unrealized but achievable potentials of regenerative medicine in equine therapy?

Mark:            Well, what I've talked about today at my meeting (at the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference) were some of the common things that we have been using and continue to use. But there are — if you look into the real hardcore science, the regenerative field is going to be able to reproduce or recreate kidneys and things of that nature, which is really a completely different conversation than what I'm talking about at this stage. Really, it's kind of open season on where this whole thing can go. But it's important to say that just because it's new doesn't mean it's better. Like I said earlier, there's kind of a hyperbole or a hype that happens, and we really have to kind of keep ourselves in check — that we're not using a new product just because it's a new product.

Tom:            This interview is happening in Lexington, Kentucky. We bill ourselves as the horse capital of the world — and now, home of this year's Kentucky Derby phenomenon, Rich Strike. We will never let the world forget that. I'm betting you're quite familiar with many a clinic, barn and stable in this area.

Mark:            That's true.

Tom:            Dr. Mark Revenaugh, owner of Northwest Equine Performance in Mulino, Oregon, and a leading expert in the diagnosis and treatment of lameness and performance-related issues. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mark:            Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Can you reduce your pet's carbon pawprint? Megan Wade, senior manager of research and development at Canidae Pet Food, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how Canidae is pioneering sustainability efforts in the thriving pet food industry, including innovative initiatives like their kibble refill stations, which aim to reduce single-use plastics. Tune in to learn more about efforts in the pet food industry to create a more sustainable future for our furry friends.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Megan Wade hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, here with Megan Wade, senior manager of research and development at Canidae Pet Food, to talk about sustainability in the pet food industry and pet food packaging. Thanks for joining us, Megan.

Megan:         Thank you so much for having me, Tom. I'm very excited to be here.

Tom:            Well, as senior manager of research and development at Canidae, you work with the company’s commercialization team to take new products to market. Do you go into discussions about a new product with a checklist of criteria that has to be met in order to make it to the marketplace?

Megan:         Absolutely. Depending on the type of innovation that we're exploring, there'll be unique considerations, but no matter what, there are two key boxes that need to be checked — the first being sustainability. So, this is incorporated into everything that we do and all of our future innovations, whether it be packaging, ingredients or operationally. And then the second thing being the benefit to the pet. At the end of the day, this is why we're in business in the first place. Canidae was started because our founders were not able to find a product on the market that just focused on simple, real ingredients, and so they made their own. Today, we're still aiming to provide the best nutrition possible with all of our products.

Tom:            You pointed out that there are nutritional solutions on the market that can contribute to your pet's wellness and Mother Nature's health at the same time. Tell us more about that.

Megan:         Sure. This is something really interesting that we've found as we've dug more and more into sustainable ingredients. We're finding that there's an added health benefit (to focusing on sustainability). If you take wild-caught salmon, for example, it's higher in vitamin D, among other nutrients, compared to farmed salmon. Then another big focus of our company is regeneratively farmed crops, and research is showing that these are often higher in certain nutrients, compared to traditionally farmed crops. And the practices being no-till, no use of synthetic pesticides, and utilizing cover crops; (utilizing those practices) helps to reduce the carbon footprint.

Tom:            Let's talk about that. The Canidae blog makes it very clear that the company's leadership is not only aware of the dangers of climate change but is willing to function in ways that recognize and address the imperative to reduce that carbon footprint. You even market dog food under the Sustain brand. Tell us more about the company.

Megan:         We're really aiming to set a new standard for the pet food industry in terms of sustainability, and it's ingrained in every aspect of our business. It's not just an afterthought, but it's the main priority. As I said before, we believe that benefiting the environment is just as important as providing the optimal nutrition for pets. We're also not afraid to think outside of the box or push the envelope. Our kibble refill station is really a great example of something that no one thought that was possible, but we invested in it and prioritized it and made it happen.

Tom:            How does the kibble refill station work in a store?

Megan:         Sure. It's a bulk kibble merchandiser, and it works just like a bulk coffee merchandiser, (or) any type of bulk food merchandiser, where customers can take a reusable bag, put it on a scale, fill it with the kibble of their choice and then bring it up to the register to pay by the pound. Our goal with this is to reduce or eliminate single-use plastics, which — most pet food bags, or kibble bags, anyways, are not curbside-recyclable, so this is a solution to that.

Tom:            I believe you've launched this, if I'm correct, at Petco stores in Southern California. Is that right? Or is it expanding across the country?

Megan:         Yep, that's correct. Right now, the program is in its pilot phase. We're in five Petco stores, and this summer, we'll be expanding to 100 stores.

Tom:            What other sorts of innovative products have you had a role in developing?

Megan:         One of our most innovative lines is called Sustain dog food, and that's our most sustainable product line yet. We have kibble, and then we've recently launched some wet food and treats within the same category, and all of it is focused on being as sustainable as we can. The kibble incorporates the regeneratively farmed crops, as well as responsibly sourced proteins, and we recently expanded into jerky treats made with responsibly sourced proteins, and then (we also offer) wet foods. We have pâtés and bone-broth toppers in Tetra Pak cartons. Those are little wet-food cartons that are made with fewer resources. And then the treats and the kibble are in PCR packaging — so post-consumer recycled materials.

Tom:            Are those distributed nationwide? Can we find that brand in most stores?

Megan:         Yes, it's nationwide.

Tom:            Let's talk about packaging. In developing packaging, are you mindful of the principles of sustainability? I know you've touched on that, but tell us more.

Megan:         Absolutely. Yeah, that's a huge area that we're focused on. As I mentioned, PCR packaging is a big thing that we're working on. We have several products in (that kind of packaging) already, and it is 40% post-consumer recycled materials in our kibble bags where we utilize that technology. And then, in other products, we have things like the Tetra Pak, as I mentioned. And then, (we’re) looking into recyclability as well — and then, of course, (we have) the kibble refill station, which eliminates that need altogether.

Tom:            What would you say is the most fun thing about your work?

Megan:         Yeah, there's a lot to choose from, but I would say the most fun thing is just the fact that we're constantly looking to do something new. So, every day is different. Every day poses new, interesting challenges and problems to solve. I think it just never gets boring, for sure.

Tom:            Megan Wade, senior manager of research and development at Canidae Pet Food. Thank you so much, Megan.

Megan:         Thank you, Tom.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this episode of the Ag Future podcast, David Montgomery, a MacArthur Fellow and professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, discusses how soil health can affect human health and the environment. David, the co-author of the books "The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health" and "What Your Food Ate," examines how regenerative farming practices can rebuild and maintain healthy soils. Join us as we dig into the world of soil and explore its vital role in agriculture and human health.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with David Montgomery hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     People, plants, food, health (and) the environment (are) all connected in some way or another, and paying close attention to those connections is our guest for this episode in the Alltech Ag Future podcast series.

                     I'm Tom Martin, and with me is David Montgomery, a MacArthur Fellow and professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington. He is an internationally recognized geologist who studies the effects of geological processes on ecological systems and human societies. His work has been featured in documentary films, on network and cable news, and on a wide variety of TV and radio programs, among them NOVA, PBS NewsHour, Fox and Friends, and NPR’s “All Things Considered”.

                     David is the co-author, with his wife Anne, of “The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health,” a book that examines our tangled relationship with the microbial world through the lens of agriculture and medicine. Their latest collaboration, “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal the Land and Reclaim Your Health,” explores connections between soil health and human health. David is here to help us sort out our tangled relationship with microbes, plants, food, health and the environment. Welcome to Ag Future, David.

David:           Well, thank you. It's pleasure to be here.

Tom:            David, you have dirt on your hands. In fact, you have literally written the book on the subject. It's titled “Dirt”. Tell us about that thing that is most vital to life: soil.

David:           I’m a geologist, so, by training, I was taught to look past the soil to the rocks underneath. But in the last 15 years, I've really come around to seeing that soil is one of our most valuable — and least-valued — resources, planetarily. We rely on fertile soil to feed ourselves. Civilization after civilization has been built on fertile land. The societies in the past that have degraded their land to the point that (it) impacted their agricultural productivity? Those are the ones that did not last.

                     We've been writing about soil and its importance for civilization health, and now, (we’re) looking at the health of us (humans) as individuals. It's something we should all pay a lot more attention to and care more about, because just like we have health — and for good or bad — the soil can be healthy or unhealthy as well. Most of us don't think about it that way. We tend to take soil for granted and treat it like dirt.

Tom:            There's a great Kentuckian, the poet and writer Wendell Berry, who has commented many times that when we scrape away topsoil, we're actually scraping away millennia of development there. I don't think we do appreciate what's at loss when we do that.

David:           Yeah, when you think about how long it takes nature to form fertile soil, you're talking centuries to millennia to form an inch, a simple inch. When you look at how fast topsoil can erode under conventional agricultural practices — tillage, primarily, because that accelerates erosion by water (or) by wind — we can lose that same inch in decades. That imbalance — something that we can lose in decades but that takes centuries to rebuild — is something that means that we're losing it, slowly but surely. That's been the story of society after society around the world. But we don't have to do that. We can actually turn it around and rebuild healthy, fertile soils, and do it remarkably fast. It just takes a different style and way of farming.

Tom:            I think we think of it as inanimate, but isn't it what's in that soil — and, to that point, what lives in that soil — that determines not only the health of a medium that plants grow in but, also, our own human health?

David:           Yeah, and the health of our crops and the health of our livestock, that — you can trace connections from soil life and its abundance, the community composition of it, its health, if you will, right on through to human health. That's what we do in “What Your Food Ate,” the new book (I co-authored), and it turns out that the life in the soil — the whole subterranean ecological system of microbes, bacteria and fungi, and worms and little arthropods, and all that life in the soil — is really important for cycling nutrients, getting them out of the mineral particles that are in rocks and getting them into the crops so that they can get into our livestock and into us.

                     That life in the soil also has a long history of partnerships, of symbiotic relationships with plants, that we kind of neglected and forgot about in our modernization of agriculture in the 20th century. We paid a lot of attention to physics and chemistry — which, of course, are very important in terms of soil health, soil fertility and crop production. But biology is the part that is now coming back into the forefront of thinking about, “Well, how do we not only maintain high crop yields today, but how do we keep doing it into the future?” Because that simple story is that our conventional mix of agricultural practices today has been degrading land for a long time, and we've been using agrichemicals to sort of cover that up and compensate for it. But to maintain it over the long run, biology is really the basis for a solid foundation for sustainable agriculture.

Tom:            How would you define regenerative agriculture, and how does it compare to traditional and organic farming?

David:           Yeah, there's a lot of arguments today about how we should define what's labeled today as “regenerative agriculture”. I consider it (to be defined as) farming practices that build and enhance the fertility of the soil as a consequence of farming. I like that simple definition primarily because, in looking back at the history of past societies in writing “Dirt,” the common element, in terms of societies that “went out of business,” shall we say, is that they degraded their land through their farming practices. We can't afford to do that at a global scale today. We need to regenerate soil fertility, rebuild soil fertility. There's lots of different ways to do it.

                     When you take the definition I just offered, it's a fairly broad-tent, broad-umbrella kind of a view of it. In relation to conventional and organic farming, there's ways to do both regeneratively, but to do conventional farming, generally, one has to so greatly reduce the reliance on agrichemical inputs and synthetic fertilizers as to be moving really close to organic farming. What organic farming needs to do to go regenerative is to disturb the soil less and do less tillage. There's sort of multiple paths, in my view, for getting to regenerative (agriculture), but they're both dependent on prioritizing building the health of the soil, which means that there's particular ways of doing things that would work in those two different systems.

                     The combination of practices that appears to work really well is to minimize disturbance of the soil, to keep living plants growing in the soil at all times — and that translates into cover crops — and to grow a diversity of crops. They're not simple two-crop rotations, but one can get that diversity in either through the cash crops or through cover crops. There are different ways to get at that same idea of trying to build soil fertility and build soil health as a consequence of farming. But when you look at it at that simple level, it would be a real sea change if that was sort of the underlying objective in agriculture, as opposed to maximizing yields over the short term, which is where we've pretty much gone for last 80 years.

Tom:            Why is that diversity of crops important?

David:           Yeah. When you think about those three practices, the “minimize disturbance” is important, because if you're plowing up mycorrhizal fungi, for example, you're breaking their connections and their life that actually are central to getting nutrients delivered from the soil into the plants. If you look at cover crops, they're essentially feeding that microbial community for exuding carbon-based substances into the soil that those microbes eat and rely on and provide benefits to the plants in return.

                     That third piece, the diversity, I like to think of in terms of, “How functional would a baseball team be if it was made of all catchers or all pitchers?” It's just not going to do the same thing, as a team, that a fully outfitted team of all-stars could do, for example. When you look at soil life, it's kind of similar. Different plants will exude different compounds to recruit different microbes, and a community of microbes in the soil can actually do more for the next crop or sequences of crops for building health. They work better as a team.

                     It's — the diversity really comes in in terms of a diverse suite of plants growing above-ground, (and that diversity) is going to be reflected in a diverse suite of organisms below-ground. And that minimally disturbed, well-fed diversity of soil microorganisms is the recipe that seems to work for suppressing pathogens, for enhancing the benefits that flow to crops (and) maintaining yields with lower inputs. That simple combination can work really well. There are opportunities to enhance that through intelligently managed livestock grazing, for example, but it's just not the way we intended to do and intended to teach it for the last 100 years.

Tom:            Well, what can the regenerative approach to farming do to support efforts to deal with climate change?

David:           The regenerative farms that I've visited around the world that have been very successful at rebuilding the health and fertility of their soil — and what my wife did to our garden at home — and turning it into a very fertile land is all reflected in the color of the soil, going from sort of a degraded khaki color with very little organic matter to a rich dark or black color, and that difference is due to carbon being integrated in the soil organic matter and that building up in the soil. That carbon all came from the atmosphere.

                     I mean, there's a very, very powerful way to take carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it, if only for the short term, depending on where it goes, and that's known as photosynthesis. Plants grab carbon from the atmosphere, build biomass out of them, and eventually, some of that gets into the soil. And the darkening of soil under regenerative agriculture can basically keep that carbon in the ground, put more of it in the ground than had been there before. Much of it will cycle. It doesn't necessarily stay there all the time. But if you have more of it coming in and less of it going out, you can build it up to it, and that's what's reflected in the darkening colors of regenerative agriculture.

There's lots of arguments today about how much carbon could be put in the world's cropland soils as a result of regenerative agriculture. I think the jury's out still in terms of the number that one might point to as, “Oh, you could do this much.” There's a lot of variables involved, and the answer is probably not the same (for everyone) depending on where you are in the world, and sort of integrating that becomes horribly complex. But the short answer is: A lot. You could probably (sequester) on the order of maybe a quarter of the world's fossil fuel emissions fairly reasonably if a lot of farmers adopted these regenerative practices. That may not sound like solving the climate problem — and it won't at those kinds of numbers — but it's a big down payment on doing so.

                     I think that what we might want to focus on, in addition to the carbon going into soils, are all the other benefits that can flow from increasing the carbon in soils and increasing soil organic matter. We can maintain the productivity of our land. We can enhance the water storage capacity of our soils and the ability of water to infiltrate, to sink down into the soil, and so not to run off over the surface. That translates into crop resilience to droughts and climate change.

                     The latest thing that we talk about in “What Your Food Ate,” the new book (that I co-authored), is looking at what increased soil organic matter and soil health can do to the traditional quality of food. We did a bit of a study around the U.S. comparing regenerative farms to conventional farms, and we found that not only could the soil organic matter content be, on average, roughly doubled in the uppermost part in the topsoil, but it also affected the nutritional profile of foods, increasing the mineral composition of certain micronutrients and certain crops but also increasing the vitamin content, again, in certain crops and, almost across the board, increasing the phytochemical content.

                     What are phytochemicals? Those are plant-made compounds — literally what the name says — but those are things that have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant effects when they then get into our body, and our microbiome in our gut diet helps us digest them and their metabolites. What they turn those compounds into (can) have demonstrated medical effects in terms of reducing many of the root causes of what we now know of as an epidemic of modern chronic diseases. There's a lot of ancillary benefits to improving the health of our soil, one of which — and a very important one of which — is the climate connection, but there's a lot of other ones that go along with it.

Tom:            Drought is becoming severe in many parts of the world, including the American West. How can soil be made to resist a loss of moisture?

David:           Well, there are two ways to make soils resist loss of moisture. One is to get more moisture in the ground in the first place, and the other is to essentially keep it there. Regenerative farming can help with both in the sense that if we're tilling land regularly, if we're plowing it all the time, you're breaking up the structure of the soil, and if you think of soil as having conduits through which the rain that falls on the surface sinks down into the ground to get to the roots of plants. But what happens when you break up those moisture highways? You create a crust at the surface. I've been in many fields that are so crusty after just a little bit of a rain. It's kind of like if you take a bag of flour and put it out in the rain. What happens? All the flour at the bottom of that bag doesn't get wet. The stuff at the top crusts over, and then, essentially, water would run off over the top of that.

                     Soil is very similar once it's been powdered by tillage. Regenerative farming can get more water down into the soil. If you always have the land just covered with a mulch, it's better at keeping the moisture in the soil. (I’ve seen) figures that, if I can remember them properly, (say) that for about every 1% increase in soil organic matter, you can store like 20,000 acre — (or) feet of water in an acre for that increase. So organic matter-rich soil, healthier, more fertile soil can essentially recruit more water — can capture more water, is a better way to put it — from precipitation, but it can also keep it there better in ways that it actually gets to the crop. That's what translates into crop resilience to drought.

Tom:            You touched earlier on carbon-capture sequestration. What advances are being made in the science of pulling carbon from the atmosphere and returning it to the soil?

David:           Well, that combination of principles: If you combine no-till with cover crops and a diversity of crops, it’s a pretty good recipe for feeding the microbes in the soil, whose dead bodies then become the soil organic matter that can turn a khaki color into a rich dark-chocolate color. There's lots of ways to do that in terms of the specific practices, but there are general principles of minimizing disturbance, keeping living plants growing in them, and recruiting a diversity of microbes, which means growing a diversity of crops. (That) is a recipe that's proven and seems to work pretty well.

                     It's not enough to just go no-till. The studies are kind of one way or the other: It can increase or decrease soil organic matter depending on the location. Cover crops tend to help increase it, but where people (have) found the biggest increases are if you do all three together. That makes a lot of sense because that's essentially how you cultivate a beneficial community of microbes in the soil. If you're basically harvesting their bodies to build the soil organic matter, you want a thriving, abundant community of life in the soil.

                     There are different ways to do that. There's a lot of arguments over how to measure it and how to think about how much to keep there (and) for how long. There's plenty of arguments, still, about that. But I think we kind of know the broad outlines of what we might think of as a new farming system that could help build soil organic matter to the (greatest) extent possible in different areas. In “Growing a Revolution,” a book that I wrote between (writing) “The Hidden Half of Nature” and “What Your Food Ate,” I visited farmers around the world who shared their methods for building soil organic matter that were very different in Ghana from Costa Rica or the United States, but they all follow those three simple principles I mentioned.

Tom:            Can regenerative farming in a farming community make a difference to that community’s local economy?

David:           That was one of the big questions that I (asked myself as I) went into writing the last couple books on (farming). What I found was — the short answer is yes. The longer answer is (that) what I found is that the farms that had been very successful at rebuilding their soil, at cultivating fertile soil and putting a lot of organic matter back into it, had been able to greatly reduce their use of synthetic fertilizers. Why? Because they didn't need so much of them. They greatly reduced their use of pesticides. Why? Because they didn't need so much of them, and they burned less diesel. Why? Well, if they're not plowing, if no-till is that first piece of the puzzle, then they're driving tractors across your fields roughly half (of) the time. If you translate that into the actual operating costs of a farm, those three things — fertilizer, pesticides and diesel — are three of the big-ticket items for modern farms in the developed world.

                     If one can basically — by rebuilding the fertility of the soil, and (if you) do it as a productive farm and cut down your input costs, if you're harvesting the same amount or comparable amounts and you're spending less to do it, it's a recipe for a better bottom line for the farmer. That's what started (to) turn me into an optimist on the issue of whether we could really turn around the state of the world (through) farmland soils, because a system that works for farmers is one that may, itself, be sustainable in terms of agricultural economies.

                     I've visited a lot of farms across North America in the last 10 years, thinking about these issues and writing about them. There's an awful lot of small towns with boarded-up main streets, and it's kind of a side effect of going from small farms to really big farms. One of the things that regenerative agriculture can do is help make smaller farms more profitable. Of course, it can make large farms more profitable as well, but there's different methods and technologies and equipment that one needs based on that. But I view farming practices that can rebuild the health and fertility of the land as, actually, a very solid foundation for trying to rebuild and enhance the economic situation of rural regions, not just in the developed world but all around the world.

Tom:            We're very busy creatures, we humans. It seems to make sense to, at least once in a while, slow down and think about that — think about how we fit into the whole food-chain picture. Do you find that, as a rule, we don't do that as often as we ought to, if ever?

David:           Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. I mean, many of us in the Western world think about food as something we grab out of the grocery store. We don’t try to trace it back to thinking about how it was grown, where it was grown, what it means for the people who are growing it along the chain. Yet one of the things that has really come into great focus for me in writing “What Your Food Ate” was (the fact that) how we grow our food actually ends up mattering to our own individual health.

                     I think that may actually help us, as individuals, put more focus on thinking about the path that our food took, from field (or) farm to fork, and thinking about that. Because the kinds of things that we've been able to see that farming practices can influence are things like the mineral micronutrient content of our food, the vitamin content, the phytochemical content, the polyphenols, the antioxidants and anti-inflammatories in fruits and vegetables, in particular, but also in even things like grains, and also in terms of the fat composition of our meat and dairy products.

                     It turns out that it matters what our food ate, for (that impacts) what is in that food and what that, then, does when it gets into our bodies. It's less about, really, sort of preventing infectious diseases. I mean, modern medicine has become really good at preventing infectious diseases, the recent pandemic aside; that's sort of a whole different story. But if you look at the kind of disease profile in the Western world and how it's evolved over the last half-century, we've pretty much got infectious diseases under reasonable control, unless there's a pandemic. But the epidemic of chronic diseases has just exploded since we adopted modern agricultural techniques after the second World War.

                     There's a number of probable causes for that. One is what we're choosing to eat, how we're processing our food. But (my wife) Anne and I became convinced, based on the research we did for “What Your Food Ate” and the bit of data and the studies that we've sort of conducted along the way, that there's another piece of that, and that's how our food is raised, how our food is grown — and that we should really all be caring about what our food ate, which, for crops is how we fertilize it, how we grow it for our livestock. It's what they're eating and how it was grown. In the book, we try and trace the scientific connections between each step along the way for how the way we treat the land affects the soil health, how soil health affects crop health, how crop health affects animal health, and how the latter two directly or indirectly affect human health.

                     The connections are complex. There's a lot that goes into our own individual health. There are our genes, our genetics. There's whether or not we get any exercise. There's what we choose to eat. There's also, I think, how our food is raised.

Tom:            All right, that is David Montgomery, MacArthur Fellow, professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, and co-author, with (his) wife, Anne, of “What Your Food Ate: How to Heal the Land and Reclaim Your Health”. Thank you, David.

David:           Thank you. It's (been) a pleasure to talk.

Tom:            For the Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

The beef industry is constantly evolving, with new technologies and practices emerging to help producers improve their efficiency and profitability. Mike De Groot, a founding partner and director of TD Beef, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss the growing trend of dairy composites and how TD Beef is bridging the gap between the dairy and beef industries through its beef-on-dairy supply chain, which tracks cattle and data from conception to consumption.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Mike De Groot hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin with the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, and with us is Mike De Groot, founding partner and director of TD Beef, an ESG-friendly cattle procurement company positioned to bridge the gap between the dairy and beef industries. TD operates a beef-on-dairy supply chain that tracks cattle and data from conception to consumption. De Groot and his partners, Jake and Jason Tuls, raise cattle on the Tuls family’s ranches in Eastern New Mexico and West Texas. Thanks for joining us, Mike.

Mike:            Thanks for having me.

Tom:            Mike, you have a very collaborative philosophy about working to make sure that everybody in the supply chain profits. Tell us about that supply chain. Who is in it?

Mike:            Thanks, Tom. In its most basic form, what TD Beef is trying to do is make better beef faster. Everything starts with the selection of the genetics, and then, at conception — but that doesn't necessarily mean that they just move down the supply chain and become great beef at the end. There are a lot of partners, and every one of those partners has a responsibility for the genetic expression of the semen that we're using. For example, it starts at conception with the dairymen. That calf, when it's born, will move through a calf ranch, which is where my partners are and (where) all of the TD cattle are housed. From there, they go to a feedlot (and) from the feedlot to the packer and then, eventually, to your plate.

Tom:            In your promotional materials, you tell us that your company creates black cattle that offer green solutions. Tell us what that means.

Mike:            Yeah. That's fun, and that's a developing space right now. I'm not a scientist, and that's going to be very clear, but I love systems. I'm a dairy kid, and so, systems are what make us (in the dairy industry) function at high levels of efficiency. What I know is (that) the carbon created follows the mother and the milk. Therefore, the calf that comes out, the black calf that comes out, is carbon-neutral. In some cases, a story can be told that it might be carbon-negative if it's produced off of dairies that are capturing methane in the form of methane digesters.

                     We know, from that level — we’re obviously reducing our carbon footprint, and there are some offsets there that people can be participating in. However, something more specific is how quickly our cattle convert and perform because of the genetics that we're using. For example, our cattle get to 350 pounds 18 days earlier than their generic counterparts. Now, a Holstein steer could not even get to 300 pounds in the same time that our TD beef are getting to 350. So, you can imagine — what we're looking at there, from a data standpoint, is how many days on feed less are we (achieving) by feeding TD beef as compared to feeding Holstein steers.

Tom:            Mike, I watched a promotional video that featured a client talking about the hardiness of TD black bulls. What distinguishes TD bulls?

Mike:            When beef-on-dairy originally started, the only criteria was that they needed to have a black hide. That was the only selection criteria. Now, a black hide is not necessarily conducive to performance or value down the supply chain. And because we have the ability to select genetics with specific traits that favor everyone throughout the supply chain, it's easy for us to create cattle that are uniform. To that gentleman's point (in the promotional video), all of our bulls meet certain requirements that favor a feedlot and a packer. Therefore, when the babies are produced and they're on the ground, they're noticeably different than their generic counterparts.

Tom:            Dairy composites are a growing market in the beef industry. What are dairy composites, and how did this concept get its start? How did it find its way into the beef world?

Mike:            In 2015, sorted semen made its way to the market in a major way, and dairymen adopted that technology. What it allowed them to do was create as many heifers as they needed from the animals that they desire to create them from. So, there was this strategic approach in their breeding program: create heifers from the superior animals that could help you, and then you're still left with other animals that needed to get pregnant. But it made no sense to use conventional semen because, if it were female, then, of course, it would go into the lactating herd. If it were male, then a Holstein steer is not as ideal as a beef steer. In fact, there's almost a $130–150 difference between the two. So, a dairyman, he doesn't need a calculator to understand (that he can) just switch the type of semen and you're going to make more money.

Tom:            So, was this the advent of beef-on-dairy?

Mike:            Certainly so. It was just very simple at this point. There wasn't a lot of strategy because the main driver of revenue for a dairy is always going to be milk, but a lot of people weren't necessarily focusing on anything other than just the black hide.

Tom:            Did that break down a barrier that had been in existence for as long as we can remember between beef and dairy?

Mike:            Yes, it was an incredible paradigm shift in the market.

Tom:            How does beef-on-dairy production affect the beef supply chain?

Mike:            That's such a great question. I'm really, actually, glad you asked that. It does not affect the beef supply chain. The reason for that is we're not creating any more beef animals than we were before; they're just a different color on the hide. For example, Holstein steers have always made their way into the feedlots and through the packer. They were great animals because they were predictable, but they were inferior to their native counterparts. However, the dairyman now can create the same animal but (can make it) more marketable and more ESG-friendly if they choose, for example, TD beef.

Tom:            These last few years have been unstable, even volatile. The markets have been — and there's plenty of uncertainty about what's going to happen in the future. If you're in the dairy business, does it make sense to have a Plan B, like breeding a portion of your herd to beef sires, as a way to create that second revenue stream?

Mike:            Well, multiple streams of revenue is always a good idea.

Tom:            It's always a good thing.

Mike:            I think dairymen are strategically positioned with the most sustainable unit on the planet today, and I'll flush that out for you. A cow can produce 25,000 pounds of milk, a 600-pound carcass, and now we're capturing their methane for renewable gases that can fly jets across the pond. These are just from cows that people started out just to produce milk (with).

Tom:            That's working sustainability, isn't it?

Mike:            Absolutely.

Tom:            What beef bull breeds are most in demand for breeding to a dairy animal, and what makes those breeds most desirable?

Mike:            Well, it's still a relatively new space, so I would say it's undetermined. But the data would start to suggest that the Angus/Holstein cross is the most ideal cross. But we use Limousin, SimAngus and Charolais as well. All of those do have different values, but right now, we're still trying to collect all of the data to be able to articulate that accurately and to figure out which is the best.

Tom:            What considerations — such as a genetic plant, for example — should be developed before we launch into a beef-on-dairy line?

Mike:            Inventory. You need to know how many animals you need. Again, going back to the main driver, it's milk production. A dairyman really needs to keep his eye on the ball, but that does not mean that there's not a tremendous opportunity for him in the beef space. The priority is to identify which heifers and how many you want to create, and then, the excess animals that will not be bred to sorted semen can be bred to TD beef or any desired beef breed.

Tom:            Are feedlots and packers expecting more data on genetics?

Mike:            They are, and that's exactly the problem that TD Beef solved. In 2015, because the criterion was only a black hide, all of these animals made their way through the supply chain and into the packer. I talked to a lot of feedlots and packers that said, "We would prefer the Holsteins rather than what you're sending us." I said, "Wait. We're solving this problem." They said, "Well, what are you doing?" I said, "We're going to start demanding that they use certain semen with a genetic profile that suits you. We're going to reward the dairymen by paying them a premium for that product. If you give us enough time, we will start to deliver and demonstrate that we could change what you've had."

                     Now, it wasn't entirely easy to walk that back — that sour taste in their mouths. But we are at a point now where feedlots and packers who originally were not interested in these cattle are incredibly interested. But there are some market dynamics that we have to consider as well. So, the fundamental right now is that there's a deteriorating native cattle supply, drought, feed costs (and) access to feed, but the dairymen create these types of animals every single day, and they offer us the ability to age, source and capture any other data that we want. So, it's very attractive to feedlots and packers now, but it wasn't originally.

Tom:            That's really interesting. Some in the industry are calling for more transparency and more consistency, which would flow with what you were just talking about. Do you agree with the need? If so, what solutions does TD Beef bring to that problem?

Mike:            Transparency is the only way to go, and that's how we're going to do this. (At) TD Beef, all of our cards are on the table face up. We've postured ourselves to lead with transparency in an effort to collaborate with everyone in the supply chain. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that others have participated to that degree, but we're certainly making that effort. The shift is happening. We recognize that we're better together. A rising tide lifts all ships, and that's what's happening here in this space.

                     People want a story about their beef. That's why I came up with “from conception to consumption”. (The period) between those two points is 500 days. In this supply chain, we have no issue telling you where the animal came from, how it was raised, what it was fed, its performance in the feedlots. Maybe we'll get to a point where there's a QR code on there, (and) when you're eating your steak, you’ll simply swipe that and you'll see the story about TD Beef.

Tom:            That would be interesting. I'm just curious (about) what kind of smart technology that's come into play in your work and what you're doing (with it).

Mike:            Well, it's that technology that helps all of us do a better job. Specifically, we're starting to work with a company out of the U.K. called Breedr. The CEO and founder there is a gentleman by the name of Ian Wheal. What he does is he allows us to understand what is happening to the cattle with data collection, and then, (Breedr) extrapolates all of that data and then articulates it to everyone within the supply chain.

                     What I mean by that is everybody is always concerned with performance, first of all, because if you don't have good performance on the front end, we already know you're not going to have good performance on the back end. But we can demonstrate (that) certain groups of cattle are more likely to hit prime (and) then separate those cattle and sell those specifically to people who will reward us for doing it. Prime is a grade, of course — a specific grade. It's really limitless. But prior to this, we didn't really collect that type of data or share it. We're very excited about what the upper limits of that look like now, (and we’re becoming) very agile in our ability to progressively improve the supply chain because of that smart technology.

Tom:            Well, Mike, based on your experience, and in your view, what are the biggest opportunities in this dairy composites market?

Mike:            Having experienced my first Alltech ONE Conference, what I recognized when Dr. (Mark) Lyons was speaking today and then the lady right after him was (that) all of the science suggests that we could aim at (achieving greater) profits and protect the planet at the same time. You need the science, but you (also) need a system. They're equally powerful but uniquely different — and apart from one another, their purpose is limited. But when you're in this space and you can adopt the science in a system like TD Beef, it gives everyone an opportunity not just to create a more marketable product, but it allows you to care for the environment in the same way. I go back to how quickly these cattle are converting and gaining weight simply because we are starting by choosing the right semen and then allowing full genetic expression on our ranches by maintaining a good environment with a great nutritional program.

Tom:            It's science, isn't it?

Mike:            It is science.

Tom:            Mike De Groot, founding partner and director of TD Beef. Thank you, Mike.

Mike:            Thank you so much.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

What role does nutrition play in poultry production? Dr. Fernando Rutz, technical manager for Alltech Latin America, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss the importance of a well-designed nutritional program for improving immunity and maximizing performance in poultry.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Fernando Rutz hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin with the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. Dr. Fernando Rutz is a technical manager for Alltech in Latin America. He teaches physiology and monogastric nutrition at the Pelotas Federal University in Brazil. He's the author of several book chapters and newspaper articles and (is) a speaker at seminars and symposiums, both in Brazil and abroad. Dr. Rutz's research interests include organic minerals, enzymes and polyunsaturated fatty acids, and poultry nutrition and reproduction. He joins us to talk about nutritional solutions to digestive tract issues in poultry. Welcome, Dr. Rutz.

Fernando:     Thank you.

Tom:            Let's begin with this: How can a nutritional program improve immunity in poultry?

Fernando:     What happens in the field is that you have lots of challenges. You have a DNA that wants to be expressed, but you have a lot of challenges. What we have to find here is a balance in between the challenge and what we can do to help the bird. What are the challenges? The challenges are virus, bacteria, all the parasites you can find in the field. What can we do to help the bird? Then we have to find the (right) strategy there. This strategy would be (implemented) through nutrition, through cleanness and, I mean to say, the biosecurity that you can find for the bird. Also, how can you help the health of the bird using some management practices? About these management practices, I mean, good vaccination allows the little chick to have an opportunity to absorb all the yolk in which all the antibodies come from the mother to the little chick. That means — this is how we can help. We need a strategy over there to make it better for the bird.

Tom:            Let's say we have a strategy in place. How do nutrients interact with that immune system in the bird?

Fernando:     (In) two ways, I would say. (With) some nutrients, you can have a pro-inflammatory effect, and (with) some other nutrients, you have an anti-inflammatory effect. We have to go in between them. This is what you call immune modulation. Some other nutrients would just neutralize the free radicals that you have in the field.

Tom:            How important is it to find just the right nutritional balance to boost immunity on one hand while also providing the nutrition it takes to maximize performance?

Fernando:     Well, chicken really have different requirements. The lowest one would be, really, for performance, and the highest one is for immunity. First of all, we have to fulfill the requirement needs, and then, in the second place — and then give some extra nutrients, probably some more specific nutrients, (or) some specific feed additives, also, that can help the immune system to become better.

Tom:            Does Alltech produce products intended to play a role in fortifying the immune system?

Fernando:     Most of the products (produced by) Alltech will do it. Let me give you some examples. For example, we have organic minerals over here. About these organic minerals, one of them is called Sel-Plex organic selenium. With the Sel-Plex, it neutralizes free radicals. It's one of the ways it works. Another way it works is that it has a chemotaxis effect. That means to say it will bring all these neutrophils with the macrophage — which are cells that will fight off the disease — to the place in which a challenge is happening.

                     Another one would be zinc. Zinc is very important for the synthesis of proteins because it participates in a protein called the zinc fingers, mainly that. With the zinc, you form a barrier, help form a barrier against the microbes that want to penetrate. Not only that, we have also Viligen. (With) Viligen from Alltech, it does not allow the E. coli and the Salmonella bacteria to attach to the glycosphingolipids in the intestine, so they cannot colonize the intestine. Besides that, the Viligen, (as well as another Alltech solution called) Actigen, also acts on improving the acquired immune system and decreasing the inflammation.

                     The other product Alltech has that works very well in this one is called the Viligen. Viligen acts against the gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria. With this Viligen mode of action, it acts (by) increasing the epithelial cells, which (are) a barrier in the intestine but also improve the mucus production. Improving the mucus production of a dairy (animal) will help the immunoglobulin A, which protects all the mucosa, (the) mucosal system. One more important point (about) this Viligen is that it increases the antimicrobial proteins (that are) produced by animal, by itself. These antimicrobial proteins have a very good effect, a very nice effect, against the gram-positive bacteria.

                     I would tell you (about) one more (Alltech product). That is the Nupro. Nupro is a nucleotide-based product. It's a very rich nucleotide. It's extracted from the yeast and cells. The immune cells cannot synthesize all the nucleotides they need, so you provide them through the diet. That makes it very good for the chicken.

Tom:            Have there been recent innovations that have captured your attention and interest?

Fernando:     A lot. I would say a lot. Those that do call, more and more, my attention today is that — people are realizing that they need to interact, the whole areas need to interact. That means environment and nutrition, sanitation, everything that (is involved in animal production) needs to interact. Probably, where most people are putting the emphasis right now is in microbiology and how this microbiology can interact with the host. When I mean microbiology, I mean the one that is in the GI tract, the one that is in the skin, the one that is in the respiratory tract, because this microbiology can educate the immune system, so it's extremely important.

Tom:            Tell us about your research, Dr. Rutz, in the area of organic minerals. What's come from those studies that would be of interest and useful to poultry producers?

Fernando:     Well, we've been doing some interesting studies in that area. For example, (we) have shown that if you feed those organic minerals from the beginning to a rooster since (the time that) they are baby chicks, you improve the sperm cells' capability (and) motility when they are old. This is a big problem today in the industry. People start complaining that the roosters, when they get old, they cannot copulate well anymore, and they have not (got) good sperm cells.

                     Another important point that is that we've been working a lot with the total replacement of inorganic (with) bio-organic minerals — and with excellent results. (We’ve seen) 100% success when we talk about, for example, layers in terms of actual production. Besides that, we've been also working some with the skin-scratching stuff. If you add Bioplex zinc in combination with Sel-Plex (to the ration), you improve a lot the quality of the skin and, really, the carcass — (it will) really look like the silky carcass (as a result). That attracts a lot the attention of the client or the consumer when it goes to the supermarket.

Tom:            You've also concentrated on the role of polyunsaturated fatty acids in poultry nutrition and reproduction. What have you learned?

Fernando:     Well, (there have been some) very interesting studies we have conducted over there. For example, if you talk about layers, with layers, you have a better yolk color and, also, you can enrich the egg with DHA. What's extremely important is omega-3 (in the animal product) for human beings later on to eat. For breeders, for roosters, you improve the fertilizing capacity of the sperm cells. We've been talking about this DHA all the time for human beings. Before we forget all about that, the DHA is also important for the chick. You have a decent amount of DHA in the brain of the chick, too. Some studies with swine have shown that if you use DHA for swine, the little piglets, they become smarter. They can go, then, and look for the teats (or) the sows better.

Tom:            Interesting. It's Dr. Fernando Rutz, the technical manager for Alltech in Latin America. Thank you so much for joining us.

Fernando:     Okay.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast series, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Aquaculture is the fastest-growing sector of animal protein production, but ensuring optimal health and performance in aquatic species can be challenging. John Sweetman, international project manager for aquaculture at Alltech, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss sustainability, innovation and helpful information found in a reference guide he co-authored with fellow aquaculture specialist Gijs Rutjes, "Inside/Out: The Essential Guide to the Skin, Gills and Guts of Fish," which promotes the development of mitigation strategies to achieve optimal productivity.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with John Sweetman hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:            Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                     I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. For 40 years, John Sweetman, (who is) in charge of Alltech's international aqua operations, has been a passionate advocate for aquaculture based on (his) extensive global (and) practical experience in freshwater and marine finfish farm design, construction and management. Well, John is here to offer us a sneak peek at "Inside/Out." It's a new book produced by the aqua experts at Alltech about the key factors that contribute to healthy skin, guts and gills in aquatic species around the world. Welcome to Ag Future, John.

John:            Thank you very much.

Tom:            In your role at Alltech, you are charged with developing and implementing scientific advances in all kinds of industrial aquacultural practices. What's topping your to-do list these days?

John:            I think the objective here is to really establish the industry with sustainable roots to enable aquaculture to develop — and to look at the opportunities that each species have in different regions of the world and enable (producers) to feed properly (various) populations, whether it'd be poorer populations in Africa or the higher-income regions where more sophisticated products are required in the marketplace.

Tom:            Let's take a look at this book that we're getting a preview (of) here. First of all, "Inside/Out" — what's it about?

John:            Thank you. "Inside/Out" is really a description of the function of the three organs (in aquatic species that) are in direct contact with the environment: the skin, the gills and the guts of a fish. All (three of) these have a unique commonality, and that is (that) they're in touch with the environment. They are sensitive to the environment and their condition is sensitive to the quality of the environment in which they live. If the environment challenges them, they need to respond dynamically to be able to maintain their integrity and to be able to function properly in order to enable the fish to be strong, healthy and perform well in an aquaculture environment.

Tom:            You point out that ensuring optimal health in aquaculture production starts from within. I assume (that you mean) within the animal, correct?

John:            Within the animal and within the management practices that are associated with the operations of aquaculture. What's important is that people observe; they understand. They listen to their fish; they can see how they're reacting, and they're able to respond accordingly to their demands. All this helps to manage that balance between the environment, the nutrition of the animal and the challenges associated with pathogens that may be in the environment around them.

Tom:            I know you talk about this in the book. What are the key factors that contribute to healthy skin, guts (and) gills in aquatic species?

John:            Well, the skin, the gills and the guts have one common aspect, and that is a mucosal coating — a coating of mucus, which is secreted from the cells (and) which acts as a protective barrier. So, while the skin itself is a protective barrier — and the gills as well — the actual surface of those cells are covered in mucus. Those mucus cells, they have innate immune characteristics, which enable them to defend against disease, parasites, bacteria (and) viruses — to repair themselves in case of damage because of rubbing or handling stress.

                     When we talk about operations and aquaculture, we're talking about optimizing management practices and ensuring (that the) nutrition and the health of the animal is optimal. This gives you a (quality) performance, which results in profitability for the aquaculturalist.

Tom:            Aquaculture is continuing to make strides in becoming more sustainable. We touched on that. What are the biggest opportunities to continue that effort, from your perspective, and what's the role of feed in technology?

John:            Yes, aquaculture is the fastest-growing sector of animal protein production. It exceeds beef and poultry production (in) growth. Fifty percent of the aquaculture fish species we eat today are produced in an aquaculture environment. Only 50% are now coming from the wild — and that wild population is reducing.

I think that aquaculture's future is dependent on its ability to be sustainable. So, we're looking at nutrition. We're looking at individual components of that nutrition to be able to select from a raw material basket (that) is wide enough to provide for certain areas of the globe different components (that) still match the nutritional requirements of those animals. It's all about a wide basket of nutrition, and it's all about the ability to provide the elements within that nutrition (that) are essential for growth, health, performance and welfare.

Tom:            And customizing those ingredients according to location?

John:            Yes. If you have a location (that) has a natural resource, then you should use that rather than importing it from long distance, for example.

Tom:            What kind of innovations are you seeing coming online that really excite you?

John:            Well, I think, in the last 15 years, the technological advances (that have become) available to modern aquaculture (are) phenomenal. Today, we have automatic underwater cameras (that) can look at health and welfare, monitor the status of the skin, look for lesions, identify parasites on the outside of the animals and even, with laser attachments, are able to actually shoot down these parasites and remove them directly from the skin. These technological advances are backed by multiple tools for the veterinarian groups and the fish health specialists around the world. They have molecular tools — which are beyond our expectations — for identifying diseases, for looking at the status of the animal. These technologies today provide a suite of tools (that) are quite extraordinary.

Tom:            A few years ago, there was a great deal of concern about sea lice and the impact (they can have) on salmon. Does that continue to be a concern? Has it improved?

John:            Sea lice are still the major concern within the salmon industry, and they are approaching it holistically. Multiple technologies are being employed. Mucosal expression — through the use of our Actigen, for example, and Bio-Mos combinations to improve mucosal expression in the skin — helps to prevent the deposition of these little parasitic juveniles, which reduces the infection rates but doesn't quite completely clear it. But if you then use a combination of those technologies, as I mentioned earlier — with laser techniques, for example, and also with cleaner fish, which are animals that can actually live within the population of the salmon and pick these lice off the skin — we're now able to manage lice control in a much better way.

                     When you combine that with a better understanding of how these parasites move within a water body from area to area, it enables you to manage the location of fish farms and to be able to control that to effective levels, which means it's not the problem it was so many years ago.

Tom:            Let's say I'm an aquaculture professional. What can I gain from having this book on my bookshelf?

John:            The objective of the book is to reach out to every level of aquaculturalist and nutritionist from around the globe on multiple species. It highlights the dynamics of the skin, the gills and the guts. It talks about their structure, their function. It talks about how we can improve their structure and their function. And in doing so, it helps inform people of the importance of those skin, gills and guts within the aqueous environment. In doing all this, we enable people to understand more the function (of those organs) and the way that you can actually manage the function and respond to stress within those animals.

                     The "Inside/Out" book is designed to give a better understanding (of these elements), which helps the farmer when he's observing animal behavior, fish behavior in the tanks, or he's looking at fish, either through a microscope or visually. It enables him to say, “Aha! I think I see what's going on here. Let's see how we can improve this particular aspect.” By observation and by understanding, you improve standard operating procedures. By improving standard operating procedures, you improve efficiency, and in doing so, you improve profitability.

Tom:            I think, when we talk about sustainability, we tend to relate that to the environment and to protecting the Earth's resources and so forth — but what about talent? What about talent in the aquaculture industry? Is there enough talent, future talent, in the pipeline to sustain the industry?

John:            It's a very good question. I think, globally, in many, many businesses in this particular decade, we're facing a crisis of available talent — but aquaculture is developing so fast. The technologies are so diverse. We need technological specialists in aquaculture that range from electrical engineers to scientists to vaccine producers. All these aspects are growing, as well as the farm itself and the farm operations. It's a really diverse industry with a huge range of talents.

                     Yes, the talent that we now have is enabling the industry to grow. The expectations for the industry to grow are huge. If you look only at (the) Norwegian salmon industry, which is heavily supported by research and development, its projection for growth will increase its capacity twofold in the next ten years. So, we are really looking forward to growth in aquaculture, and we are trying to draw those young people, the talent that we need, to bring them into the industry, to give them opportunity. By doing this, we create the correct environment for the growth of the industry.

Tom:            And you do this (personally), don't you? I know that you mentor and support students who see themselves someday working in aquaculture. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about that experience — what you're seeing and hearing in these bright, young minds that you're working with.

John:            Well, I'm seeing a suite of technology that they have within their grasp now, which is vastly improved on (what was available) when I was their age. I see that they are keen, that they are motivated, and they're looking for innovation. Innovation is a success for this industry. As it grows, it's innovating at a tremendous pace. What I try to do is just give them a little background about the experiences I've had, maybe point them in the direction of, perhaps, what they could achieve and why they should always ask that question, (that) critical question: “Why this? Why is my fish doing this? What can I do to help that fish?” So, not just (following) the rule book but opening the mind to new ideas. That's how I like to help, if I can.

Tom:            Maybe they should read "Inside/Out."

John:            Oh, I hope so.

Tom:            John Sweetman is international projects manager of aqua (at) Alltech. Thank you, John.

John:            Thank you for having me.

Tom:            For the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.

Today's food system was scaled to prevent hunger, and is now facing new demands and expectations, particularly in the healthcare space. However, with innovative advancements in agriculture and nutrition, we can wage battle against diet-related chronic diseases, which are a major driver of healthcare costs.  Dr. Patrick J. Stover, director of the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture (IHA) at Texas A&M AgriLife Research, joins the Ag Future podcast to discuss how shifting focus from producing food, fiber and fuel to promoting human, environmental and economic health can create a more efficient and resilient system.

The following is an edited transcript of the Ag Future podcast episode with Dr. Patrick J. Stover hosted by Tom Martin. Click below to hear the full audio or listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google Podcasts.

Tom:                  Welcome to Ag Future, presented by Alltech. Join us from the 2022 Alltech ONE Conference as we explore our opportunities within agri-food, business and beyond.

                             I'm Tom Martin for the Alltech Ag Future podcast series. Diet-related chronic disease is among the greatest societal challenges facing the world, driving up healthcare costs and disproportionately affecting minority communities. Dr. Patrick Stover is director of the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture at Texas A&M AgriLife Research, the world's first research institute to gather, under one roof, precision nutrition, responsive agriculture and behavioral research with the aim of reducing diet-related chronic disease while also considering the environmental and the economic effects.

                             An international leader in biochemistry, agriculture and nutrition, he has served as vice chancellor and dean of agriculture and life sciences at Texas A&M AgriLife and as director of the division of nutritional sciences at Cornell University. Dr. Stover joins us to talk about how shifting from a focus on producing food, fiber and fuel to promoting human, environmental and economic health has influenced expectations for the food system over the last decade. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Stover.

Patrick:              Thank you for the opportunity. It's a pleasure to be here.

Tom:                  Whenever we talk to a working farmer, we're nearly always struck by a realization that we're talking with a scientist. I thought we would begin by exploring that for a moment. Farming — it's inherently science, isn't it?

Patrick:              Oh, absolutely. This was recognized by President Lincoln in 1862 when he established the land-grant universities for the purpose of both advancing mechanics or engineering and agriculture. In every state in this nation, we have a land-grant university that is dedicated to advancing all aspects of agriculture, from understanding soil to understanding plants and plant breeding, animals and animal breeding, animal health, all the way to agricultural engineering — how can we mechanize better? How can we produce food faster, cheaper, more abundantly?

Tom:                  We have one of those here in Lexington: the University of Kentucky.

Patrick:              Absolutely — a very good one.

Tom:                  What is meant by “responsive agriculture”?

Patrick:              If you look at the food system that we have today, this really came out of the post-World War II era, where — during World War II, there were great demands on the food supply. There was rationing of food to make sure that our soldiers had the nourishment they need to perform well on the battlefield. At the same time, we have the Depression that led up to World War II and the post-Depression era, where there was a lot of hunger in this country. There became this sense that hunger was unacceptable, both in this country and abroad. You saw many efforts, humanitarian efforts, to scale up agriculture for the sole purpose of eliminating hunger — and again, both domestically and abroad.

                             That's the food system we have today. It was scaled to preventing hunger. Hunger is not a disease. Hunger is a physiological response to a lack of calories. Therefore, we scaled agriculture production to meet the caloric needs not only of the nation but of the world. That's the food system that we have today. But now, we see there are other demands on agriculture, new expectations. We see (that) the agriculture system we have today and the food system we have today makes hunger rare. It still exists, but it's not due to a lack of abundance of food. It's more (related to) access issues. But now, we see that there are other costs that food produces.

                             Some of those in the healthcare space, we see the diet-related chronic diseases, (which are) the major driver of healthcare costs. Diabetes alone costs about $160 billion to $170 billion a year — more than most state agencies receive in their funding. We see a total cost of about $4 trillion a year. No one can afford those costs — no government or individuals. At the same time, we also have expectations around the environment. Certainly, agriculture has an environmental footprint in terms of emissions and runoff and such. But we also see that agriculture can be the solution to some of our environmental issues and actually capture carbon from other sectors.

                             Of course, economic health is also critical. The margins in agriculture are so thin, and we are losing much of our precious farmland to other, more profitable purposes. Now we see, not only do we have to produce food to eliminate hunger, but we have to do it in a way that supports human health, environmental health and economic health.

Tom:                  A century ago, it was the Great Depression. Would you say that, today, climate change presents that same imperative to get ahead of the hunger curve?

Patrick:              Certainly, there are many concerns about climate. Climate affects agriculture, really, in two domains. Number one, we are seeing extreme variations in temperature over short periods of time. That plays havoc on our agriculture systems and our ability to produce food looking forward. Certainly, the climate has an effect on agriculture. We also see, again, that agriculture has an environmental footprint. The question is: How can we lower that environmental footprint?

There's so much innovation out there, from capture of carbon in soil to creating biomass — all of these innovations to reducing methane production from agriculture. All of these innovations we see are out there that really give us the promise of having agriculture not only have a very low environmental footprint but potentially even capturing environmental footprints from manufacturing, from travel and those other areas that have much larger environmental footprints.

Tom:                  I understand correctly that you're engaged in behavioral research. What can you tell us about what you're doing?

Patrick:              Absolutely. Well, that is really the third leg. That is so key. We can do all of this work to produce food in a way that better supports the environment and human health and the economy. We can produce food that the consumers want and (that) also supports their health. But if all this science is not accepted by society, we're not going to achieve our goal. That science will just sit on a shelf. So, what's absolutely critical is to understand human behaviors.

Everyone eats. Everyone makes food choices. We have to understand how people, how communities, how societies make those choices, and how we can use science and convince the population that a science approach to health behaviors will be better for them in the long run, for their personal health, for their community health. We have a long way to go in that public trust area, but the social behavioral science will be key so that we can adopt these important technologies to actually implement out in society.

Tom:                  What sorts of major impactful changes have occurred in recent years in each of these areas: farming, food production and nutrition? Let's take them one at a time — because it's a big question — beginning with farming.

Patrick:              Certainly. If you look at farming — and I'll put farming and food production together, if you don't mind.

Tom:                  Sure.

Patrick:              What we have seen is great efficiencies. In the United States, the average American spends less than 9% of their available resources on food. That's remarkable. It's not like that anywhere else in the world. It's never been that low anytime in human history. That's because of the great innovations that have occurred, all the way from what we grow to how we process food. We have created an unbelievably efficient system through advances in plant breeding, through advances in engineering and irrigation, through advances in pest control to how we process food. We have created a highly efficient, vertically integrated system like the world has never seen.

                             Now, during COVID, we saw some of the vulnerabilities where, while it was very efficient, it wasn't very resilient. So now, you're seeing other innovations that are trying to tap into this wonderful system that's been effective in producing food — but (we are trying to) add more resiliency through more local agriculture, through urban agriculture and other innovations that are enabling our system not only to be efficient but to be resilient, and technologies will be key to continue to drive that.

Tom:                  How about nutrition? What's been happening in nutrition that is exciting (and is) going on now?

Patrick:              Nutrition potentially is one of the most transformed fields (of) the past few years. If you look historically, the goal of nutrition has been to understand how much of all the various nutrients you need — how much iron you need, how much B vitamins you need, et cetera — and how those translate into foods you should eat so that you don't become deficient in any of these nutrients. That was the goal of nutrition, was to understand the chemistry and the biochemistry of these nutrients, and how much you needed to make sure you could carry out fundamental functions in your body.

                             Well, we've now moved the needle. Because we see that food is a major driver of healthcare costs, Congress essentially said of the National Academy of Sciences — which is charged with determining how much of each nutrient you need every day, the so-called RDAs — said, “Well, we don't really have diseases of deficiency anymore. What we have is diet-related chronic disease. So, rather than setting these nutrient standards based on preventing diseases, let's have the endpoint as a chronic disease so we can use food to lower healthcare costs.”

                             That, essentially, was the advent of food as medicine. This becomes a much more complex problem, because people respond differently to diets in terms of their disease risk. Virtually all populations — if you make them deficient in a nutrient, everyone in the population responds the same, and you can have population-based guidance, whereas, when you have a chronic disease outcome, people respond differently based on our population history. Now you have responders and non-responders — and this whole idea that, if we're going to use food to lower healthcare costs, we have to understand how food interacts with an individual at that level.

Tom:                   I guess most of us are walking around not really realizing or appreciating that what we consume, the food that we eat, actually has the ability to switch on and switch off genes.

Patrick:              Oh, it's incredible. Again, if you look throughout all of human history, populations emerged all over the globe. Those that were able to survive and expand were those that adapted to their local food environment and their local pathogen environment. That's what you had to do to survive. If you look at populations in northern Canada, they metabolize fat very, very differently than native cultures there. And the native populations metabolize fat very, very different than you and I do. If you look at Scandinavia, there's very little iron in the soil. Therefore, there was this selective pressure genetically to get every little bit of iron out of food. But now, when you put those individuals on an iron-rich diet (through) a global food system, you see hemochromatosis, and they result in cancers and other types of, essentially, diet-related chronic diseases. You can look at lactose intolerance. It goes on and on.

                             So certainly, the food systems out there, around the globe, have really shaped who we are. In turn, the foods we eat turn our genes on and off. It's a very complex system. We are all different based on our population history, but that's the opportunity to use food as medicine to understand those differences — how we interact with that food, how food changes us, and how, historically, we have adapted to food systems to understand that diet-disease connection at the level of the individual.

Tom:                  Could agriculture, food production and nutritional intelligence be made — or maybe they do work in concert — to improve public health?

Patrick:              Well, that's the big challenge. Historically, we have siloed the food system at the level of science, at the level of public policy. Even in the Farm Bill, you have the nutrition title over here, you have the ag component over here, and they don’t talk to each other — yet we know (that) if we are going to make agriculture the solution to human health, environmental health and economic health, that's what the mandate is. We have to consider this as the complex system that it is.

                             When we change dietary guidelines, that has a ripple effect back across the food system. When we have soil erosion, we lose quality components in that soil, (and) that affects the food system in the other direction. We have to understand and make decisions respecting the fact that this is a very complex system that goes from farm inputs to consumer behavior. And we have to make sure that the research that we do considers that. We have to make sure that the public policy that we have considers that.

Tom:                  We've touched on hunger earlier. Food scarcity and malnutrition remain significant issues, even in developed countries. What is agriculture's role not only in producing enough food but in producing enough nutritious food?

Patrick:              This is the challenge, and it gets down to definition. Certainly, the world population is growing. By 2050, there'll be another two billion people on this planet. And as you said, we already have food insecurity and lack of food in some places, so we have to make more. But we also recognize that we have to make better, if you will — that we have to make food that is better aligned with human health, environmental health and economic health. Technologies have to be the answer there. We're going to have to continue to be more efficient so that we can produce more and feed the world, but we have to do it in a way that both respects cultures — because there's a strong cultural component to food — so that people accept the food that's being produced. But we also have to use these technologies to make sure that it can be medicine to these populations, that it lowers healthcare costs.

Tom:                  Is there an appetite today for finding ways to more tightly coordinate these disparate sectors of the industry, the entire food ag value chain, as a strategy to bring about those improvements?

Patrick:              Well, that's a big focus of our institute, is to try to make sure that we do have this better-integrated, systemic approach. To do that, everyone needs a seat at the table. We need to do this to be successful. But, for instance, we have technologies through gene editing to create plants that have virtually any quality we want in terms of disease resistance, in terms of nutrient value, et cetera. But we have to bring along the regulators to make sure that we are producing something that not only is going to benefit society but is going to be safe as well.

                             We need to bring along the regulatory community. We need to bring along the general public. They have to accept this food that is produced that is going to improve their health, and they have to have trust in that food. We need to bring the farmers and the ranchers. They need to understand how this is going to help their bottom line. Their margins are very thin. They have to be risk-averse or they don't succeed in their business. We have to convince them that this is good for them, good for their operations. We need the related policies and incentives, again, so that technologies — so that advances in crops and crop breeding will be accepted by that group.

                             Everyone needs a seat at the table, and we need to start with the endpoints. We have a very segmented approach to addressing the food system and constituencies across the food system. We have consumers who blame producers and food manufacturers, who then say — well, they blame the consumer, because (their belief is), “We just respond to consumer demand.” We need to not have a food fight. We need to bring everybody to the table (to) decide: What are these endpoints that we want, and how can we reverse-engineer back to the food system to achieve those goals that are so critical to our society right now?

Tom:                  There is a lot of risk in farming. I'm just wondering how this holistic approach reduces at least some of that exposure to the uncertainty and the stress that it causes.

Patrick:              Certainly. If you look, currently, at the food system we have today, we have to understand that farmers and ranchers — which make up just about 1% of our society today; 1% of the population produces food for the rest of the 99% — they are businesspeople. They make decisions every day (about) what they grow, how much they grow, when they grow it, based on what the market will bear. They are businesspeople. The biggest threat to their operation is uncertainty, because their margins are so thin. With a couple of bad years, their enterprises are in danger. That has to be the role of science, and that will be the role of our institute at Texas A&M.

                             We need authoritative voices out there about what the science says related to any question around the agriculture and food value chain, from farm inputs all the way to consumer behavior, and we have to be very clear about what the science says. Right now, much of our food system is driven by preferences, values and beliefs, on both the health side (and) on the environmental side. And often, people quote their favorite study — “Well, this study says this,” “But my study says that” — rather than looking at the totality of the scientific literature like we do in medicine, where we actually don't look at papers individually, but we combine all of the research together in a statistically appropriate way. And we say, “Well, our current scientific knowledge is X, Y or Z, based on that synthesis, and this is how certain or strong it is.”

                             We don't have that in food and agriculture. That's something at Texas A&M that we would like to see happen in this country, is to have science lead. People will always have preferences, values and beliefs around the food system. There's a deep cultural component — a deep moral, if you will, component — to food, but that's not science. We have to say what the science says so that people out there who make decisions can weigh between what the science says and, then, what individual values, preferences and beliefs are.

Tom:                  Dr. Stover, we've witnessed the sudden disruption of an important source of the world's grain, and I'm talking about the war in Ukraine. Has this development inspired new thinking about the resources needed to feed the world and to keep them secure?

Patrick:              Certainly. What we're seeing going on in Ukraine is a tragedy, but there will always be wars. In fact, Norman Borlaug once said, “You can't build a peaceful world on empty stomachs and human misery. Food is fundamental to a peaceful world.” What we have to ensure is that all countries around the globe have the capacity to feed their populations; (it’s) absolutely essential. This was the work of Norman Borlaug in international agriculture: to build that agriculture infrastructure in every region, in every country, to avoid hunger.

                             Now, local agriculture is imperative, (but) we also need that global agriculture system as well, because sometimes there are droughts. There are catastrophes that happen that limit a given region's ability to produce food, and they need to tap into the global food system. But we need to think very carefully about how we marry capacity to grow food in every region with a global food system and how those two are integrated together to ensure that we have peace, to ensure that we have food for everyone.

Tom:                  Dr. Patrick Stover, director of the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture at Texas A&M AgriLife Research. Thank you so much.

Patrick:              Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Tom:                  And for the Alltech Ag Future podcast, I'm Tom Martin. Thank you for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to Ag Future wherever you listen to podcasts.