Welcome to the Veterans in Ag podcast, brought to you by AGD Consulting.
My guest for this first episode is Dr. Alex Thomasson – currently serving as the Department Head of Ag and Biological Engineering at Mississippi State. Dr. Thomasson retired from the Navy in 2014 after 22 years of service. He began his career as an Ag Engineer and Research Scientist for the USDA Ag Research Service, specializing in electronics and machines for cotton ginning. Dr. Thomasson then spent the next 15 years at Texas A&M University as a Professor and ultimately the Endowed Chairholder in Cotton Engineering, Ginning and Mechanization. It’s here where I first met Dr. Thomasson as one of my professors during my undergraduate studies in Ag Engineering. He is also an active member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Precision Ag Task Force, Rural Broadband Development Working Group, helping bring connectivity to rural farmers.
In this episode, Dr. Thomasson delivers one of the most comprehensive and easy-to-understand overviews of what’s happening within agtech that I’ve ever heard. If you’re even remotely interested in what agtech is and what’s happening right now, this episode is a must.
His approach to servant leadership within his department is something he extracted directly from his time in Afghanistan as an engineer and should be an example for us all. I am humbled to have had the opportunity to dig into Dr. Thomasson’s story; you’ll be surprised by what I find.
Enjoy!