Tag: vetsinag

#19 Jed Dunham – Kansas State U.

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#19 Jed Dunham - Kansas State U.
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It’s impossible to hide poor work on a farm

Our guest this week is Jed Dunham, a consultant with Kansas State’s Office of Military and Veterans Affairs. After graduating from Kansas State in 1996, Jed spent the next several years working in a variety of industries; from building playgrounds across the Midwest, heavy construction in Montana, coaching lacrosse in Virginia, working to bring veterans into agricultural educational opportunities, and riding a bicycle 4,600+ miles across North America. Once back in Kansas, his background as a historical researcher uncovered an incredible set of stories involving WWI soldiers. This work did more than just bring their lives to light again, it showed how their individual stories told the narrative of an important developmental time in American history.

This collection of stories, which Jed has called 48 Fallen 48 Found, led to the formal dedication of a World War I Memorial Stadium on the campus of Kansas State University in 2017. Jed continues to honor the sacrifices of our past through his work with Kansas State’s State Military Affairs Innovation Center.

Have a listen and weight-in how you think these soldier’s stories can best to told.

#17 Art De Groat (US Army) – Kansas State Military Affairs Innovation Center

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#17 Art De Groat (US Army) - Kansas State Military Affairs Innovation Center
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My team’s confidence in my competency as a leader gave me a margin, in the human dimension, from which I could take risks that would ultimately be in their best interest

Our guest this week is Art De Groat, Founder and Director for Kansas State’s Military Affairs and Innovation Center as well as a retired US Army Armor Officer of over 20 years. In his current role at the Innovation Center, Art and his team are conducting applied research and outreach focused on adult developmental aspects of military transition and social reintegration.

Art describes how is military service was a defining pillar in his life – from experiences in the Gulf War where he had to make calculated decisions about how to deal with an out-matched enemy in order to preserve the mental health of his soldiers to dealing with a traumatic life event and having to strike a balance between service to country and family. The strength of character and resilience Art displayed and many veterans, I think, is exactly what should make military veterans attractive hirees to agribusinesses.

His post-military career has allowed him to continue to support the service member, this time during their transition into the private sector, where he’s gathered decades of experiential data and academic research that makes him uniquely qualified to discuss the issues facing veteran transition today and how ag can be a natural fit.

#16 Ben Gordon (ARNG) – Corteva

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#16 Ben Gordon (ARNG) - Corteva
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War is local and agronomy is local. It’s about human terrain.

My guest today is Ben Gordon, US Army National Guard veteran and Corteva’s Carbon and Ecosystem Services Global Portfolio Leader. This program seeks to quantify sustainability outcomes for farmers and economically reward them for stewardship outcomes, supported by Corteva’s partnerships, digital tools, and leading agronomic science.

Throughout the conversation, Ben weaves together the lessons he’s learned from military service around humility, regionality, and the dynamics of local leadership into the work he’s doing with agriculture in a way, to me at least, that is beyond his years. He describes the role of the leader, in both the military and within ag, as someone who recognizes the experience of their team, his own shortcomings, and how sometimes, your role as the leader is simply to provide them the latitude to exercise that expertise.

The platform Corteva has created within the carbon space seems to be one borne with the farmer in mind – optionality, premium payment terms, short-term contract, separation of incentives, etc.

Be sure to listen all the way through as Ben alludes to which markets Corteva may be scaling into next.

He asked that we include his email in the show notes for any veteran interested in Corveta or in need of some guidance during transition to please reach out – benjamingordon@granular.ag –

Enjoy!

#12 – Steven Valencsin (USN) – Growers

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
#12 - Steven Valencsin (USN) - Growers
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You don’t make an excuse, you make a way.

This from today’s guest – Steven Valencsin – as he talks about the last 10+ years starting and scaling a new business in a competitive environment today like agtech. Steven is the CEO for Growers – a software data analytics company designed for the farmers trusted advisors – agronomist, ag retailers, and crop consultants. Growers offers an all-in-one dashboard that allows users to organize all their data into one place, quickly adjust variables, and facilitate recommendations directly to their customer’s farms.

Steven shares one of the most articulated and executable examples of how veterans can translate a certain soft skill into an industry where they have no precedent experiences. It doesn’t take any special equipment, circumstance, or software; merely a strong initiative and a drive to improve. 

I want you to listen in this episode to the approach Steven has taken with Growers in partnering with the farmer’s trusted advisor rather than creating a tool that attempts to disintermediate them. There are a lot of companies out there today that have chosen this business model, but Steven has made the intentional decision to chose a model of collaboration instead.

Have a listen to his rational and see if you agree with his arguments. Also, be listening for the skill Steven says all veterans have and how it can be practically translated to any industry, including ag.

Episode 11 – Mark Bishop – ACP Capital Markets

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
Episode 11 - Mark Bishop - ACP Capital Markets
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It was like a knife fight in the closet.

This from our guest today, Mark Bishop, as he described a complex Brazilian farmland assignment they worked on during the height of the financial crisis, which including hiring armed guards to protect the asset.

Mark Bishop is a Managing Director and Partner with Aldwych Capital Partners, a specialized merchant and investment bank focused on cross-border capital raising, M&A, and advisory assignments within the real asset sector. ACP is heavily concentrated within this sector in large scale agribusiness, water, and energy as well as related components of the value chain including transportation, logistics, storage, and power generation. They also work opportunistically in the defense/security and special situations areas.

In this episode, Mark talks about his original involvement with the veteran community in New York and how impressed he was with their innovation and dedication to helping other veterans. My sense is that this was an uncommon virtue within the everyday world of investment banking that Mark immediately lacked onto this and the sense of servitude it demonstrated.


It also speaks to what originally drew Mark to agribusiness and investment banking within the emerging markets in the first place – the sheer complexity of the asset class and how intellectually interesting it was. There are some people who seek the harder problem simply for the challenge and the rigor required to solve them – Mark is one of these people. The harder the problem, the happier he is.

Have a listen as Mark talks about the fog and friction of war is very much something you have to contend with in the business sector, especially if you’re operating in the emerging markets.

Episode 10 – Chris Rawley (USN) – Harvest Returns

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
Episode 10 - Chris Rawley (USN) - Harvest Returns
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“The good thing was we didn’t know a lot about this field. The bad thing was we didn’t know a lot about this field.”

This from Chris Rawley, CEO for Harvest Returns, as he describes what it was like to start something as new as an equity crowdfunding company in an industry as disaggregated and specialized as agriculture.

Harvest Returns is an equity crowdfunding investment platform connecting both accredited and non-accredited investors with growers looking to raise capital. To date, they’ve raised over $10M for more than 20 different companies across the world – from livestock, specialty and permanent crops, indoor ag to row crops and artificial intelligence-driven ag technologies.

Chris and I have known each other for a number of years, in fact, we got started about the same time, both AGD Consulting and Harvest Returns, back in 2016. I had just returned from a 6-month, 6-country due diligence trip in Latin America and was keenly interested in what Harvest Returns was pursuing in the specialty crop space in Central America.

As we have supported and watched them grow over the years, I’m continually impressed with Chris’s vision for Harvest Returns – not just what they are doing now, but for the kinds of products they can create. I’ve never seen Chris static; he’s always thinking of new ways to innovate and solve increasingly complex problems within ag finance. The fact that they’ve nearly bootstrapped their entire company’s development, which for me as a veteran entrepreneur who has bootstrapped our own firm, gives me a tremendous sense of pride in what the veteran community is capable of.

Chris has been in the Navy for over 30 years now and in every clime and place he’s served, including the deserts of the Middle East and Afghanistan, he’s managed to see agriculture as an integral part of life, national security, and economic development.

Have a listen as Chris describes the veteran’s unique perspective around risk identification and management, distributed command and control, and remote work and what that means in today’s world.

Episode 6: Keith Alaniz (USA)

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
Episode 6: Keith Alaniz (USA)
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Keith Alaniz is the Co-Founder for Rumi Spice, a producer of high-quality, sustainably farmed saffron from Afghanistan. After graduating from Texas A&M, Keith was deployed twice to Iraq in 2007-2008 as a combat engineer– focused on finding and neutralizing IEDs. Keith talks about how his time at A&M helped shaped his leadership style in a theater of war, but also how he began to recognize that he didn’t fully understand the people or the culture he was trying to protect. So, he made the intentional decision to leave the traditional career path for an Army officer and participate in a specialized Afghan training program where he was equipped with economic, language, and cultural skills focused on rural Afghanistan.

It was directly because of these skills and the trust they built within the community that a local farmer approached Keith with the idea of growing and exporting saffron from Afghanistan to the international market. And the idea for Rumi Spice was born.

Listen as Keith describes a story of persistence, trial and error, and ultimately success as three former US Army officers built Rumi Spice into now the world’s largest exporter of saffron from Afghanistan. It involves knocking on countless doors, the creation of an e-commerce platform, an appearance on Shark Tank, and legitimizing a crop like saffron as an economic and sustainable alternative to poppy cultivation for Afghan farmers.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did!

Episode 5: Bill Ashton (USN)

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
Episode 5: Bill Ashton (USN)
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My guest today is Bill Ashton, the USDA’s Military and Veterans Agricultural Liaison Program Manager. Bill was born and raised in New York City where he joined the Navy right after high school and spent the next 10 years as an enlisted sailor. Most of his career was spent either onboard or supporting the submarine community.  Following active duty service, Bill continued to service the Navy, this time as a civil servant where he was the Program Manager for the Navy’s Pay and Personnel Program.  After 14 years in this capacity, he then became the Director of Security for Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington DC before joining the USDA in January 2018.  This position was established by Congress in the 2014 Farm Bill with Mr. Ashton serving as the first full-time government employee to hold this job.

We covered a lot of ground in this interview, from how skills Bill learned in the submarine community were brought forward into the ag sector to an overview of the impressive amount of veteran and career-focused initiatives at USDA. This episode is filled with stories of how Bill was plucked from different professions to turnaround and lead groups in completely different fields; a skill set he attributes to his time in the service.

Be sure to listen through to the end of the interview where Bill describes his thoughts on hydroponics aboard submarines; it’s really fascinating.

Episode 4: Chris Narayanan (USMC)

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
Episode 4: Chris Narayanan (USMC)
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From ag consulting firms and brokerages to Wall Street investment banks and agribusiness power houses like John Deere and INTL FCSTone, Chris brings such a broad perspective that I think this episode has a little bit of everything for everyone.

We sat down with Chris Narayanan – currently an Extension Farm Management Specialist at the University of Tennessee Institute for Agriculture. After earning his bachelors degree from Texas A&M in Ag Economics, Chris then spent the next ten years as a Marine Corps infantry officer. Following his time in the service, Chris then went back to school to earn Masters in Rangeland Ecology and Management as well as an MBA from the University of Texas. This then ultimately launched Chris into the private ag sector where he has been working in a wide variety of sub-sectors within the ag industry for the past 15+ years.

One of my favorite parts of this episode was listening to Chris describe what he called “kitchen table” moments with farmers. I think this is something many transitioning vets seek but struggle to find after they leave active duty service; a way to connect with their profession in a way that is meaningful and service-based.

Have a listen to find out how Chris finally found this balance.

Episode 3: John “Glad” Castellaw (USMC)

Vets In Ag Podcast
Vets In Ag Podcast
Episode 3: John "Glad" Castellaw (USMC)
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From driving mules to mechanization, from stuffing fresh-picked cotton in his shirt to keep him warm at night to enclosed, climate-controlled tractor cabins, it was impressive to see how far agriculture had come over the years through John’s stories.

My guest for this episode was John Castellaw – Co-Founder and CEO for Farm Space Systems and retired Marine Corps 3-Star General. For 36 years, John led Marines around the world from a unit of 40 young men and women to a Marine Aircraft Wing of over 7,000. He flew over two dozen different aircraft during his tenure, served on the UN staff during the Siege of Sarajevo, executed humanitarian operations in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and commanded the American forces in stability and security operations in East Timor. John also served as the Chief of Staff for the U.S. Central Command during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even more impressive than reliving the evolution of agtech through the stories of a single man was to see John’s realization that we can’t keep beating the dirt into submission. He fundamentally understands that we need to adopt more regenerative and sustainable practices, a sentiment not always shared by multi-generational farmers.

John takes me through his upbringing on the same cotton farm in W. Tenn where we reside now and how these experiences drove him into service and ultimately led him back to the farm after nearly 40 years. This interview is filled with words of wisdom about life and business tied up in stories such as ag as a component of national security, the importance of servant leadership, and the military’s advances in technology which are being more widely adopted within ag.

My favorite story involved a well drilling unit and a veterinarian in East Africa.

Have a listen to find out how it ends!