Tag: #vetsinag

#22 Andrew Patrick (USMC) – Deveron

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#22 Andrew Patrick (USMC) - Deveron
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I wouldn’t say it’s a distrust, but rather potential customers not understanding who we are and what we do

Our guest this week is Andrew Patrick, Marine Corps veteran and Sales Development Representative at Deveron, a Toronto-based agtech company using proprietary algorithms, third-party data collection platforms, and teams of agronomists and data scientists to provide insights to growers and ag enterprises.

Throughout this interview, you’ll hear Andrew describe the intention with which he made some early decisions in his life – from joining the Marine Corps, to forgoing deployments to continue to pursue his education, to finding a passion early in agriculture through FFA. The thought with which he made some of these difficult decisions early in life has to have some relation to his time in the Marine Corps.

His understanding of the current challenges agtech companies face around trust and education within the farmer community is an important one to recognize and appreciate for client-facing representative like Andrew. While he is new to his career in ag, I hope the freshness of his transition from military service and the decisions he’s made around his chosen career path can be an inspiration to other vets who might currently find themselves in the same place.

#18 Amanda (Curtis) Burkhardt – Nutripeutics

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#18 Amanda (Curtis) Burkhardt - Nutripeutics
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“Now we’re moving to a town with 100 people and a language I don’t speak and I’m gonna have to try and make a career.”

Our guest this week is Amanda Burkardt, Founder and CEO for Nutripeutics, a science and technology consultancy currently serving several different animal and human health start-ups, investor groups, and universities. Amanda brings a unique background of science (BA in Animal Science and Masters in Molecular Biology) and business (MBA with an emphasis on Entrepreneurship and a Masters of Management Information Technology) where she works with innovations to help develop and fund new products.

In this episode, Amanda details the sacrifices she made in the beginning of her career to be a supportive military spouse for the first time…in a foreign country. She articulates the realities of these situations through her own personal experiences in a way I have not heard before. How people finally reach a point in their lives where they decide enough is enough, it’s time to change has always fascinated me. Amanda still fits that mold to a tee.

We also talk about her fascinating early research into alternatives to antibiotics within animal health, how these compounds work, and what they could mean for animal health in the coming years. The concerns she articulates around drug resistant bacteria are real and something we all need to pay attention to. What Amanda has been able to accomplish and build using this type of scientific and business foundation is absolutely something you need to hear.

Be sure to listen to the end as Amanda outlines six major global trends she sees taking shape in the coming years within animal health.

#15 Ryan Delany (USMC) – Coffee Trading Academy

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#15 Ryan Delany (USMC) - Coffee Trading Academy
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You only have one reputation, what are you doing with it?

This from our guest for this episode – Ryan Delany – as he works through his relationship between his personal ethics and their fit within his professional career as a trader.

Ryan Delany is a US Marine Corps veteran and Founder of the Coffee Trading Academy, an information and training service focused on providing an independent voice in the coffee market.

Ryan spends some time in this episode unpacking the origins of his military service, from family ties to the Tuskegee Airman in WWII and slavery in the US to why he felt compelled to service in order to protect this heritage and the rights his relatives fought for. It was this military service and his subsequent education at Columbia and Harvard, as well as a career in stock and coffee trading, where he realized that his personal and professional ethics didn’t have to be separate; they could influence each other.

He makes a strong case for the value of a trader in the coffee supply chain and why he ultimately decided to start a training academy to help others understand this industry the way he does. His program intentionally points out the importance of mindset and ethics in this field, something he feels is lacking in other industry publications.

Have a listen as Ryan describes this unique heritage and his arguments for the profession of traders

#14 Jon Jackson (USA) – STAG Vets Inc

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#14 Jon Jackson (USA) - STAG Vets Inc
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We only grow in our discomfort

This from our guest this week – Jon Jackson – US Army veteran and Executive Director at STAG Vets Inc – as he described one of their central and differentiated themes. STAG Vets is non-profit organization focusing on acute veterans crisis care using sustainable food production and agriculture as the methodology by which to support veterans struggling with PTSD and other issues. Comfort Farms, named in honor of US Army Ranger Captain Kyle Comfort (KIA May 8th, 2020), is located in central Georgia.

This conversation with Jon solidified for me the manner in which many veterans tell you about their experiences – through story. In the first 15 minutes, we’d been through several stories from his time as a necropsy technician to how seeing research animals dissected on an autopsy table opened his eyes to sacrifice as a sense of service, which is what originally drew him to the military.

What Jon is doing at Comfort Farms is different in the sense that it forces the veteran to look for meaning in their surrounding – in this case agriculture – and to be personally ready to work for themselves through their issues.

Have a listen to find out what Jon is doing and his unique take on behavioral therapy within agriculture

#13 Dawn Breitkreutz (USAF) – Stoney Creek Farms

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#13 Dawn Breitkreutz (USAF) - Stoney Creek Farms
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We don’t need to learn new things, we need to learn old things.

This from our guest for this episode – Dawn Breitkreutz with Stoney Creek Farms – as she describes how we should approach the adoption of regenerative practices. These are essential old practices, she describes, that were used by our parents and grandparents to farm. We don’t need to necessarily learn new methodologies or technologies, but rather we need to become familiar again with the practices of our past.

Dawn is a US Air Force Veteran and Co-Founder of Stoney Creek Farms along with her husband Grant. Along Minnesota River near Redwood Falls, Minnesota, Dawn and Grant have converted a conventional crop and cow/calf operation into a multi-enterprise regenerative family business over the last 20 years.
As an analytical person by nature, Dawn began questioning modern-day practices on their own row crops acres – why are we doing things this how, why do we have to add this chemical product, etc. It was this inquiring nature and a degradation in their farm and livestock operations that caused both her and Grant to stop and think about how they were farming.


Dawn’s gradual and self-motivated approach to change sets a path, I think, that can be followed in a very practical way. It doesn’t have to happen over night nor does it need to be a full reversal right away – change begets change and in this case, small victories gave them the confidence to continue and even start to being veterans into their operation.


I’ll bring you into the conversation as Dawn and I discuss a documentary titled Farmer’s Footprint which centered around Dawn and Grant’s farm as an example of how regenerative practices highlight farming as a complete system and how the student, Dawn, eventually became the teacher.