In this Pre-Event conversation for our CES 2024 Coverage we discuss the fascinating world of food and agriculture technology with special guest Vonnie Estes, the Vice President of Innovation at the International Fresh Produce Association.
Guest: Vonnie Estes, Vice President of Innovation at International Fresh Produce Assoication [@IntFreshProduce]
On Linkedin | https://www.linkedin.com/in/vonnieestes/
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Hosts:
Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
Sean Martin, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining CyberSecurity Podcast [@RedefiningCyber]
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/sean-martin
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Episode Notes
In this Pre-Event conversation for our CES 2024 Coverage Marco Ciappelli and Sean Martin discuss the fascinating world of food and agriculture technology with special guest Vonnie Estes, the Vice President of Innovation at the International Fresh Produce Association. As part of their coverage of CES, the trio explores how technology is revolutionizing farming practices to reduce waste and improve sustainability.
The conversation begins with Sean and Marco's excitement about the topic, as food and eating are among their favorite things. They delve into Vonnie's background and her extensive experience integrating technology into food production, covering areas such as breeding, genetic modification, automation, and robotics.
The discussion highlights the vital role technology plays in addressing the challenges faced by farmers, including labor shortages and crop waste. They explore various innovative solutions, ranging from automation in weeding and planting to using computer vision and lasers for pest control. Vonnie also emphasizes the importance of technology in optimizing crop production while reducing food waste throughout the supply chain.
Furthermore, the panel addresses the potential for technology to connect the entire agricultural ecosystem, from small farmers to large companies, fostering collaboration and sustainability. They touch upon the advancements in data-driven decision-making, AI applications, and the emerging concept of regenerative agriculture.
Overall, this thought-provoking episode showcases the incredible potential of technology in revolutionizing the food and agriculture industry, offers insights into ongoing initiatives, and encourages talented individuals to join the sector's quest for a more sustainable future.
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Resources
The Connected Farm: New Tools for Farmers to Reduce Waste: https://www.ces.tech/sessions-events/agt/ag03.aspx
Learn more about CES 2024: https://www.ces.tech/
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
_________________________________________
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: Well, hello, everybody. Sean, I just I just jumped the gun. I'm too excited. You did.
[00:00:08] Sean Martin: This is, this is exciting. I mean, if, well, if you think about it, this is related to probably my favorite topic. Eating? Eating. Food and eating. We're going way, we're going, we're shifting way left on this though.
[00:00:27] Marco Ciappelli: But he's at the origin of what then you like to do. You need to produce things and then you can cook them and then eat it. It's amazing. Like, Vani, you know what? We're just going to do this as it is, Vani. Welcome to the show.
[00:00:43] Vonnie Estes: Thank you. I love eating and I love growing food. So yay,
[00:00:47] Marco Ciappelli: there you go. That's it's always an ongoing joke for Sean and I, even if we talk about cyber security or artificial intelligence, we end up talking about pizza as well.
So I don't know if it's me being Italian, Sean being half Italian and You know, that's where we end up. But the point here is that we're talking about an event that is about to happen. That is CES in Las Vegas. And we already had a bunch of amazing conversations. Some will be coming, uh, even after the event.
So we talked to people that would tell us how, uh, how things went. And, um, With you, we're very excited because you are the Vice President of Innovation International Fresh Produce Association. And I know you have a panel there, but let's start with you. Who is Voni and how did you end up doing what you do?
[00:01:44] Vonnie Estes: It's been a long path, not completely planned out, but I have spent my career integrating technology into food production. So I've worked all the way from breeding and genetic modification and biologicals and fermentation, and then also any kind of technology on the farm, whether it's AI and machine learning or sensing or, Automation or robotics.
So just across all the different kinds of technology, I've spent my career trying to figure out how do we take this technology out of the hands of developers and scientists and actually get it on the farm to solve some of our biggest problems. Yes.
[00:02:25] Marco Ciappelli: Very cool. Very cool. And, and, um, Sean, I know you're passionate about this, so I'm going to let you go.
[00:02:33] Sean Martin: Well, I'm so little, little known secret. I grew up on a farm and on a dairy and, and so I'm very, and, and, and took agriculture classes for, uh, future farmers, FFA, all that stuff, which doesn't, doesn't connect to security.
[00:02:51] Vonnie Estes: I know. You
took a different turn somewhere. I'm very passionate about it.
[00:02:58] Sean Martin: I'm very, very passionate about all, all of the agriculture stuff.
And funny enough, I thought I was going to pursue a degree in technology and, and agriculture that didn't pan out. Um, but I was always curious of what, what was possible. And I'll use the use of the phrase throwing spaghetti against the wall to seeing what sticks. I don't know. Is there, is there a, do you find that a purposeful way that technology is brought to agriculture or is it a?
Is it a game of, we're trying to figure out what, what is possible when we try a lot of things, some work, some don't.
[00:03:39] Vonnie Estes: Well, I don't know that it's that much different than other industries when you have new technologies that are coming along. And so a lot of it is just trying to figure out where it fits in.
So I don't know that it's that different, but I think we kind of started digitization, you know, years ago, everything was. And in some places still is a spreadsheet and text messages. That's how everything was done, but now we're kind of getting digitized. So that technology gets adopted and GPS has been used on the farm and tractors for decades.
And, um, so that got adopted pretty quickly when it was available. I think a lot of the new tools, um, Farming is a little different in that if something doesn't work, um, a lot of crops you only get to harvest once. And if you try some new technology and it doesn't work and you lose your crop, that's very bad.
And so that's one of the challenges of getting technology adoption on the farm, is that all the risk and the downside is put on the farmer to try something new. So there's a lot of programs that are coming along trying to get adoption faster where you take that risk off the farmer and then you're going to get things picked up a lot quicker.
[00:04:53] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. I'm going to jump in because again, we're talking about our background. I grew up in Tuscany. So if you want to talk about wine, you want to talk about olive oil, you want to talk a lot of produce that are very well recognized, like there are in France, they're in California and all the places. When people think about Farming, they think of still probably a lot of manual labor.
It's still like that organic way to work the things actually going back to organic nowadays and maybe hopefully less industrial. But the amount of technology that there is in farming, it's probably one of the top industry that sector and field that use technology more than others. Am I correct?
[00:05:36] Vonnie Estes: Yeah, I think, um, a lot, labor is the issue that you hit on labor is one of our biggest issues.
And especially, you know, I work now primarily in the produce industry and we still have to have people picking strawberries and people picking broccoli and all those crops are handpicked. Um, we're starting to look more on automation, but as you can imagine, the, just the, The tensile strength of trying to figure out how do you pick a strawberry and not squish it is, you know, one of the big challenges, but yeah, labor is a big issue and it's not just the difficulty of handpicking, but it's also just the availability.
Um, we don't have, especially in the U S we just don't have the labor that we need. And so a lot of crops stay in the field. So there is a lot of attention paid on. You know, how can we do things that used to take people, um, how do we automate that, um, and, and use technology for that? And so there's also, you know, there's the, the weeding.
Weeding is now being done a lot using computer vision. So, um, uh, a tractor can move through the field and with, uh, cameras can actually see the weeds before the eye can see them. And it, we're using lasers. Which is very cool to see this because it just kind of little sparks, you know, and it burns these tiny little weeds that aren't visible.
[00:06:56] Marco Ciappelli: I saw that on a video. Yeah, isn't that cool? Like Star Trek, but on the farm.
[00:07:00] Vonnie Estes: Yeah. So, so that's very, so weeding, um, as far as kind of. That kind of automation that's coming along faster than some of the picking and harvesting type of technology, because it's just a little easier, but that's using all sorts of different technology of being able to see.
Is that a weed or is that a little carrot plant? And they also, so there's the laser, but they're also, they can put a very small amount of pesticide on there to, uh, to kill it too, if they're not using the laser also with planting, how, you know, you drive along and you put the seeds in, um, that's getting better and better with computer vision and kind of knowing what the, what's going on in the soil and how many seeds you need.
And also fertilizer, how much fertilizer do you need? Uh, it used to be, you just put the same amount of fertilizer everywhere. And now. With, um, the data that you're picking up through the sensors and the satellites, and is it going to rain and everything, all the other information you're getting, you only put down the fertilizer that you need at that particular time.
[00:08:02] Sean Martin: Super cool use cases. And I, I want to go to another panel at CES. It touches on, uh, or spend a lot of time anyway on waste. And I think one of the most obvious areas of Described earlier, which is there's crops in the field, can't pick them fast enough, they go to waste or the markets flooded, we don't need them, so they don't get sold, so they go to waste.
Can you kind of categorize the different areas of waste and how technology can help to reduce those areas?
[00:08:40] Vonnie Estes: Yeah, there's there's all different parts of how the supply chain talks back to what's going on in the field And so there's there's one area that you talk about where there isn't a market for it And so it's gonna cost more to pick it than it is to just if you can't sell it So a lot of what's happening is just the communication All the way through the supply chain to the retailer and many companies are vertically integrated.
And so having that communication and kind of knowing what's going to happen over the season and how much is going to be produced and where that's going to go in the value chain. And do you need to find other places to move it to? So that, you know, Using machine learning and AI and just having everything connected, the value chain is going to go better.
There's going to be less waste. There's also a lot of technology being used to just grow better so that, you know, you don't have the disease and pathogen destruction, um, in the field like you used to, because you know that. If it's going to rain and the wind's going to blow, you're going to bring this insect in, or you're going to bring this disease in.
And so you better put on some kind of crop protection product to protect the, the crop. Whereas before you didn't have all that information. Um, so you're protecting the crop so that you're having less waste that you're losing, you know, from death and destruction in the field. And then, um, a number of ways that people are.
Using technology to, to pick up crops that are left in the field, um, because they just don't pick it all at the same time, or maybe it's imperfect. So there's a lot of companies that are coming up that are, uh, coming and picking up the produce and selling it through, um, secondary markets to, to get food to people that need food.
You know, the food's fine. It's just, it didn't get harvested at the same time. So that's a lot of what is happening on the field, which, um, I don't have all the exact numbers, but a small percentage of food waste over the whole supply chain actually happens in the field. It happens less in the field. It happens secondarily in the, um, the whole supply chain, getting it from the field to the retailer.
But the biggest amount of food waste, as you can imagine, is your refrigerator as a consumer. So we don't have a lot of control on, uh, what we can do there, but. throughout the chain. Um, and in food service, there's some amazing different kinds of technologies of helping restaurants and food service operators, um, look what's left on the plate that people aren't eating and using that information to affect portion size, look at what they didn't sell at the end of the day, using that information to produce less potato salad if they don't sell that on Sunday.
So it's throughout the chain, people are using different technologies to. To reduce waste because it's a huge problem. And when we were looking at just not having enough water, not having enough labor to pick, and then to get that product all the way to the consumer and, and have it go in the garbage can is just disheartening.
So there's lots of people looking at that.
[00:11:42] Marco Ciappelli: So that makes me think a lot of things. I could go to the weather that we can control yet. Maybe we will to do farming, um, inside. So like, you know, I get tomato that I know they are farming inside and so that they are not affected by the season, but I'm sure you can just turn everything into a big gallery or a big tent and cultivate that way.
But the other, the other thing I'm thinking is this kind of web that you're describing of connecting Everything from all the way to the consumer, the restaurants, back to decide what you should cultivate and in what quantity. And that sounds like you need to really Connect everything and everybody.
And I'm wondering how difficult it is. And if it is actually part of what the Fresh Product Association it's trying to do. And do we have that technology now? We have data with AI. Can we connect everyone? The small farmer to The big company,
[00:12:53] Vonnie Estes: it's happening in pockets because it, as you know, it's new technology, but I'll give you one case study example.
You know, the berry company Driscoll's, I'm sure you've seen their brand on berries. So they, they're a very large global company. They grow in South America, they grow in Canada, they grow in the U S they grow in Europe, they grow everywhere. And they have, and they have a huge network of farms that they grow strawberries, blueberries, raspberries.
All different kinds of products. And so what, what they're doing because they're vertically integrated, you know, from the, from everything that happens on the farm, the producer, all the way through, uh, the packing house, all the way through to the retailer, they, they they're so big and they grow so much that they're developing this AI web just within their growing network.
And so companies like that are really have big initiatives to looking at how do we do this, you know, all the way through the chain and, and have all the information so that we don't have waste and everything gets to where it needs to be and taste the best that it possibly can. Companies like Walmart, you know, they have very tight relationships with, um, their producers and who they buy products from.
And, and because of their size, they can make demands of. What they want, how they want people to grow, how they want people to bring things to them. And so they're doing a lot of, you know, kind of retail push of saying, you know, you have to use blockchain and you have to give us this information and, and this has to be all tied together or we're not going to buy from you.
And because of their size and power, they're able to do that. So you're seeing it pop up. You know, on the, in the bigger companies, because that makes sense, you know, they, they have the resources to put against it. But I think as other, as that is, that works through the whole supply chain web, other companies will be able to use, you know, these networks that are getting set up.
So I would say we're very early stages of that kind of large communication system, but, um, but it is being built and, and people are taking advantage of the technology.
[00:15:00] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, I mean that you kind of answered my follow up question, which is what about the small, you know, the small one or even if not the small, the one that are, I mean, I've been seeing that there's a lot of return to the kind of the way they used to be like the The DOCG, they're always being protected.
There are like all different community and area, you know, I can mention the champagne for producing certain kind of grapes. I can mention, uh, again, olive oil and other things, but, maybe that's the role of local community that brings those tools to the small farmers, but as a, as a co op in a sense, I mean, the kind of envision that because otherwise it's going to be the, the market of.
The giants,
[00:15:46] Vonnie Estes: the big gets bigger. Well, I I've seen a lot of technologies, especially outside of the U S where it's smartphone based. And so there's a lot of different apps that you can, you know, if you, if you're a specialty crop grower. In an African country and you're growing or, you know, someplace growing a special coffee being that, that there are now, you know, because of social media and because of apps and the way that we're able to just connect to everything, there's a lot of markets for those types of specialty growers.
And there's also a lot of app. That, that really help them grow. You know, if they don't, if they don't have an agronomist that is close by, that can come and diagnose a plant disease or look at the leaf and say, you have some kind of nutritional issue that you need to solve. There's a lot of apps now of, of, you know, and we're talking a lot now, like in every industry about having copilots, you know, like you have a copilot in your phone, um, that goes out with you and you take a picture of the leaf and it's like, oh, you need to put more, you know.
Potassium on there. So I think it's actually going to be good for small farmers and that it's going to give them the resources that bigger farmers have. They're going to be able to have the marketing and, and social media presence, because that stuff is cheap, you know, put it into some, um, AI thing and they make a.
Beautiful video for you. And so I think it, this is going to give more and more power to, to smaller growers. And, um, they still have to be economic and be able to compete. But I think if you have a, a specialty product that consumers are interested in, then, you know, it can get pulled through the chain. So I think it's a positive for them as well.
[00:17:28] Sean Martin: So I'm going to, I'm going to go to the waste again. I like waste evidently for this conversation, . Um, but there, there's a couple thing, couple things I'm thinking of here. So making it fresh, reducing waste in terms of the, the product itself, the produce itself is one thing, but then there's, there's the waste that comes from.
The production and the, and the farming. And I know it's a, it's a big deal, chemicals finding, finding their way into waterways and, and fields being over, overworked and, uh, therefore not as, not as able to produce as much perhaps as they. Could have, if they weren't overtaxed. So it kind of, there's a sustainability end of this.
And then I remember not, not in great detail because I was 15, but this idea that, that you could, I remember the order there was, you fed the cows and the cow waste was fed to chickens and the chicken waste was used to water some plant and then some other plants, wastewater was used to, to fertilize another plant.
So that kind of this change of. Chain of waste being reused kind of to my other point than if you connect the two for a more sustainable ecosystem and a longer sustainable environment. I don't know if all that makes sense or not, but
[00:18:54] Vonnie Estes: well, I think that's, um, there are different movements and regenerative ag of, of.
Doing that sort of thing of trying to use the animal waste and trying to make a real circular on farm system. I'll tell you from a larger producer, bigger ecosystem point of view that, and there may be people that disagree with me on this, but You can get a lot of human, um, pathogens and pathogens that make people very sick when you put animal waste on fruit.
Um, so that's something that we really want to pay attention to, you know, you can get E as, as you know, you've heard of different recalls of spinach and leafy greens and that's happened over the years. And, and that's another way that technology now, like it used to be. Uh, years ago, when we had a, uh, a big outbreak in spinach, we just stopped selling spinach, everything, you know, all the spinach came off the shelf.
Now we'd be able to tell you exactly what field that came from, and you wouldn't have to take all the spinach off the shelf. You would just not sell from that very specific field. But, um, so technology is really helping a lot around food safety. It's been a huge, uh, issue, you know, using, um, Barcodes and stuff.
We can really tell where the prominence of everything, but going back to the food waste. So, so you just, I think for smaller farms that, that can really pay attention that maybe it works, but I think in an industrial way of growing food to really feed large groups of people, animal waste and produce don't mix particularly well.
[00:20:31] Marco Ciappelli: And we lost Sean and we're going to keep going. Okay. You went to waste, I guess. No. So let's get on to the panel that you are leading. And guess what? It is about waste. So what do you expect from this panel? I mean, I see it's not a small panel. You got We got four people there, including, uh, the Deputy Undersecretary of USDA and a few, few other people from cattle and, and other fields.
There's always a lot of excitement about CES. We talked to the Director of Thematic Choices for CES and, uh, I kind of wanted to dig into his, um, magic crystal ball and how he foresees the future, but I also made the joke that you go to CES, Nowadays, not for the new gadget like it used to be or the new TV, but you really go to look into the future.
And so, and so, I mean, you have space, you have cars, you have health care, you have everything and you have this. So what do you think people will get from that particular? Area of CES, which is the food related technology and in particular maybe from your panel.
[00:21:50] Vonnie Estes: Well, we've got uh, You mentioned the undersecretary of USDA and a company that's doing really interesting blockchain things around.
Um, Cattle and then we have two equipment manufacturer companies on the panel as well. And so We plan to talk. Um a lot about What technology some things that we've talked about here what technology is? It's in the industry now that people might not think is an industry. People have this idea that, you know, it's small farms and, you know, women with flowing dresses are out there picking tomatoes in the field or something.
But, um, we, you know, really talking about how much technology is already there and how much has been adopted, um, like some of the things that we've talked about. And then the other thing that we, we really hope. People will take away from this panel is we need talent. We, we, you know, I'm hoping that people come and listen to this panel and think, Oh, I want to be, I want, that's what I want to work on.
I care about feeding the planet in a sustainable way. And I would love to take my knowledge of technology into the agriculture industry. So we, we need lots of talent because it, I think most of the people who are in computer science or, or engineering. probably aren't thinking agriculture is a career path choice.
You know, that's not really coming up on the list. And so we really want to communicate that it's a place that, that people can make a huge difference and you can come into the industry and really make a huge difference with the knowledge that you know, because it's not, it's not crowded as. As far as having really good technology people in it, we're just, we need to bring more and more to do the work and solve the problem.
So, so that's another thing that we really want to talk about is just the, the need for talent or some companies, I run an accelerator in my role. And one of the things that I do is I try to find technologies in other industries and pull them into the produce industry and immerse them into the industry and give them contacts and give them an on ramp onto the.
I'm hoping that people think about what technology they offer and think, well, that might fit in produce. I should look at that as a potential, uh, or farming in general. I should look at that as a potential market. The other thing we want to talk about is, um, just some of the public private collaborations.
And one of the things that we're. Learning, you know, in, in the world period is that, um, every, there is so much going on and so many different pieces, especially around technology that no one can develop everything themselves. And so instead of having, this is, you mentioned vertical farming and, and greenhouses at the beginning of.
When that industry first started like 10 years ago, everybody was building everything themselves because there wasn't an industry and they just, they had to do all the led lights and figured out how they were and they had to build towers and they had to build all this stuff. And now that that industry is a little more mature.
We're starting to have companies that are bringing technology from other fields, other technical fields into that industry so that those companies aren't developing it themselves. And so, um, looking at those types of business collaborations, and then also, you know, with the panel with the USDA, the USDA is really funding a lot of different initiatives.
to try to get technology, um, onto the field. And they're trying, as I mentioned, take the risk off the grower so that they're subsidizing, you know, please try this. And if, you know, we'll, we'll help offset your risks. So I think, um, those are kind of the areas that we're most interested in is letting people know.
There's a lot of technology here. We need talent. And there's a lot of collaboration that can happen between different industries and different companies.
[00:25:33] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. And you made a lot of points that in different conversation on my show, Redefine Society, which is all about technology and society. It comes in into the conversation, but you kind of wrap it around and you did show that.
We live in an interconnected world where you can, again, just reinvent the wheel, right? Just, just make it better eventually, or create that environment where there is a convergence of technology that may come from a different industry and be useful and use everywhere LiDAR could be one of those examples that you use everywhere.
And so, anything related to AI, the way that it reads. I think it's going to be great. I would love to have you back for a longer conversation eventually, if you're up for that. Sure. But the objective of this one was to promote, your panel, which again is going to be the Connected Farm, New Tools for Farmers to Reduce Waste is going to be on Tuesday, January the 9th.
3 to 340 at the Venetian and all this information, you don't have to remember it because we'll have it in the notes and you can find the links to even get in touch with Bonnie and learn more about, um, everything she does and, uh, and the association with this ad, I want to thank you very much, invite everybody to subscribe and for sure, Bye.
Bye. To stay tuned for more coverage coming from CS 2024 where we really look into the future. Bye everybody. Great. Bye. Thank Morning. Thank you so much.
[00:27:13] Vonnie Estes: Thank you.
[00:27:14] Sean Martin: Thank
[00:27:14] Vonnie Estes: you.