iSelect, The VanTrump Report and The Yield Lab Institute sponsor a series of weekly webinars featuring the best in food and agriculture innovation. Agrifood Conversations is all about driving innovation and each month will highlight a specific theme, from biologicals to vertical farms, featuring new and exciting companies at the forefront of the industry. Learn about new trends in ag, connect with industry leaders and discover new solutions.

All webinar registrants receive a free short-term subscription to The Van Trump Report and an emailed recording for the webinar.

UPCOMING WEBINARS

Beef That’s Better for Birds, Consumers and the Planet

February 20, 2020 | 3 PM CT

All of Blue Nest Beef’s 100% grass fed beef is bird-friendly, meaning it complies with Audubon Conservation Ranching Protocols for habitat management, forage & feeding, animal health & welfare and environmental sustainability. It also comes from animals whose diet was derived solely from forage and a limited list of approved supplements, meaning it can never be fed any grain or grain by-products and must always have continuous access to pasture. Its business model was designed to mimic the symbiotic relationship between grass and soil in healthy pastures, including a producer pool that splits a percentage of revenues among calf producers, a finisher premium for those farmers who finish animals to Blue Nest’s high standards and support for the Audubon Society’s programs and a growing community of affiliate partners.

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WATCH PAST WEBINARS

Agrifood Conversations: Beef That’s Better for Birds, Consumers and the Planet

Agrifood Conversations: Bringing Regenerative Agriculture to Market: Connecting Farmers, Food Producers and the CPG Supply Chain

Grounded Growth is a business-enhancing membership network providing the tools to bring regenerative agriculture to market. It is one of the few resources that provides strategy, facilitates relationships and tells the stories of farmers, ingredient-makers, food service …

Agrifood Conversations: Preserving and Nourishing Soils to Make Regenerative Agriculture Even More Effective

Holganix develops microbial technology that is used by lawn care operators, sports turf managers, golf courses and farmers to improve soil health and reduce the need for fertilizers and pesticides. American row crop farmers are Holganix’s fastest-growing …

Agrifood Conversations: Resource Negative — Beyond the Circular Economy

Ambrosia is working to provide a solution to our massive food waste problem while simultaneously creating more sustainable versions of common products and commodities. For example its first product, Veles, is a multi-purpose cleaner made with ingredients …

Combining Waste Management with Closed-Loop Manufacturing

AgriFood Conversations: Solving Food Waste with a ‘Fresh-First’ Supply Chain

Afresh is using artificial intelligence combined with massive amounts of data to assist human operators in better managing our fresh food supply. It’s using the same kinds of algorithms that power Google’s data centers and AlphaGo to …

Agrifood Conversations: A Special Deep Dive on Food Waste

Traditionally, agtech and foodtech innovations have focused on increasing yield in food production at a lower cost or lower input value, in order to feed a rapidly growing population. However, it is well documented that every year, …

Phood: Artificial Intelligence to Prevent Food Waste

Phood provides a solution to commercial food waste via its straightforward, inexpensive waste calculation system, which can measure the exact food items that are being wasted on a day-to-day basis. These metrics provide the power to alter …

CoverCress: The Cover Crop That Pays

CoverCress is a new oilseed crop grown over winter between normal full season corn and soybeans. It acts like a cover crop while also producing oil and high protein feed that can fit markets similar to canola. …

Propagate Ventures: Building Healthy Soils Just Like Our Ancestors Did

Propagate Ventures works with farmers and land managers to design and install tree-crop systems that work in tandem with existing farm operations. Its fruit, nut, and timber tree-systems complement both row crop and grazing operations, generating new …

Stony Creek Colors: Coloring the World: Bio-Based Dyes That are Vibrant, Consistent and Scalable

Stony Creek Colors sells sustainable, plant-based dyes to textile manufacturers, allowing fashion brands to offer consumers more environmentally friendly clothing. The company’s products are of consistent, industrial quality, but without the toxic wastewater of synthetic, petroleum-based dyes.

AgriFood Conversations: Meet the Scientists Who Are Creating the Cleanest, Most Sustainable Meat on the Planet

Wild Type is developing a platform to allow any meat to be cultured in the lab, multiplying basic animal cells and using well-defined procedures to effectively culture meat. Rather than focus on any one type of protein, …

AgriFood Conversations: Meat That’s Better for Us, the Animals and the Planet

Using state-of-the-art cell culture techniques, Higher Steaks is growing high-quality meats using just small samples of animal cells, feeding them a rich and animal-free growth media. The meats created using this technology do not require the use …

How Manure Might Just Save the Planet

Waste, fertilizer, feces. Manure is one substance that is available all over the world in mass quantities. But it’s also one that, to-date, has not yet been fully leveraged. A number of different innovators are working to …

AgriFood Conversations: From Waste to Water: Creating Clean Water and Bioenergy from Wastewater and More

Digested Organics is working to reduce the cost and environmental impact of waste disposal through onsite waste treatment and bio-energy production. It is focused on the conversion of organic wastes such as manure, digestate, food & beverage …

Biomass Controls: Innovation for Global Sanitation

Biomass Controls was founded in 2015 as part of the BMGF Re-Invented Toilet Challenge, and its patents are based on protecting the environment and returning nutrients to the soil. The company has employees in India, Spain, Switzerland, …

CHONEX: Nutrient Recycling for More Efficient, More Sustainable Farming

CHONEX is a nutrient recycling company founded to help make agriculture and animal production more sustainable. The egg and poultry industry produces byproducts rich in nutrients for recycling. Using a process built and refined in nature, Chonex …

CowPots: A Better, More Sustainable Pot for Gardeners and Growers

CowPots uses composted cow manure to create 100% biodegradable, renewable and recycled plant pots for both home and commercial use. As an alternative to plastic pots, CowPots quickly decompose once planted, enriching the soil and breaking down …

SoMax: Turning Organic Waste into Energy, Clean Water and More

SoMax BioEnergy uses organic waste as a resource for sustainable development and resilient waste management in agriculture, manufacturing and sanitation. The company diverts agricultural, food, septic, green and other organic wastes from landfills and wastewater treatment plants, …

Afineur: Creating the Next Generation of Food Ingredients from Fermentation By-Products

Afineur is designing microbiomes, selecting and team-up microbes for their ability to naturally improve food nutritional value, taste, and texture through fermentation. Its technology platform uses the latest advances in biotechnology and food science to transform fermentation …

Induction Food Systems: Scalable Electric Heating Systems to Solve Industrial-Scale Problems

Induction Food Systems helps food and beverage manufacturers improve efficiency and expand production with on-demand precision heating equipment. The company’s technology uses electromagnetic energy to create the first scalable, precise, and efficient in-line heating solution for a …

Plasma Nutrition: Optimizing Ingredients for Enhanced Bioavailability

Plasma Nutrition’s ioProtein® is a high quality, bioavailability enhanced protein powered by the company’s patent-pending technology. Designed to deliver optimal nutrition and maximum physical results with great taste, Plasma Nutrition call it the next generation of protein. …

Vestaron: Crop Protection, Without Synthetic Pesticides

Vestaron is dedicated to improving the safety, efficacy and sustainability of crop protection by ending our reliance on conventional synthetic pesticides with biological peptides that are safer for humans, birds, fish, pollinators and the environment. The company …

Plastomics: Designing Better Crops to Help Farmers Feed the World

The products created during the first phase of the biotech revolution helped growers produce more food than ever before with less environmental impact. However, those engineering technologies were developed more than 20 years ago and can no …

Agrynex: Enzyme Immobilization for Sustainable Crop Protection

Agrynex is developing enzyme-based crop protection products that deploy a naturally occurring antimicrobial enzyme system to protect seeds where and when it counts. They are currently applying their patent protected technology to seed disinfection solutions and seed …

AgroSpheres: Crop Protection That’s Greener, Cleaner and More Effective

AgroSphere is revolutionizing crop protection through a new, environmentally-friendly delivery platform called AgriCell. The system is designed to provide better protection of active ingredients, more finely tuned controlled release and superior pest targeting. It shields active ingredients …

RootWave: Using Electricity to Control Weeds

The RootWave solution uses electricity to boil weeds from the inside out, from the root upwards, effectively killing the plant in a clean, organic manner without the use of any chemicals. It’s a sustainable, no-till and effective …

Edete: Improving Pollination by Doing it Better Than Bees

Edete Precision Agriculture Technologies is solving the world’s ever-growing pollination challenge by developing and manufacturing an efficient, automated fruit orchard pollination system and providing optimized pollination services to companies and growers. By reducing the dependency on haphazard, …

HiveGenie: A Complete Beehive Monitoring System for Beekeepers

HiveGenie is bringing the power of technology to help address the worldwide challenges of bee death and colony collapse. Its monitoring system includes real-time census data, vital signs collection (including temperature, humidity, luminosity and weight changes), GPS …

The Bee Corp: Empowering Growers and Beekeepers with Big Data Insights into Beehive Health

The Bee Corp. applies data analytics to beehives to help growers with pollination. It developed a baseline statistical model of a healthy hive in 2017 and has since expanded to new models to determine hive strength for …

PlantResponse: Bringing Science to the Service of Agriculture

PlantResponse Biotech is a plant biotechnology company specializing in plant-innate immunity, drought and stress tolerance, and nutrient use efficiency. The company utilizes its expertise in the science of plants to understand key crop challenges and develop sustainable …

Kula Bio: An Innovative Approach to Nitrogen Fertilizers

Kula Bio is developing sustainable, biological solutions for modern agriculture. It supercharges natural nitrogen-fixing microbes with renewable energy in order to deliver reliable, low-cost organic biofertilizers. By rewiring the energy flow from sun to soil, the company …

Biovante: Proven Formulas for Better Seed, Soil and Plant Health

No two farms are alike. Climates are different, soil compositions are different, even production goals are different. That’s why, for farmers looking to augment the biological and nutritional needs of their crops, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. …

Holganix: Plant Probiotics That Grow Strong Crops, from the Ground Up

Food demand is on track to double by 2050, demand for organic food is growing significantly faster than the acreage to produce it, and yet the world has lost a third of all arable land in the …

De-commoditization of Agriculture

De-commoditization of Agriculture Featuring:Travis Potter, Tractor Soda; Kellee James, CEO, Mercaris; Shari Rogge-Fidler, CEO, Family Farms Group Moderator: Rob Trice, Founder & Partner, Better Food Ventures How do I differentiate myself? Contract farming to a CPG? Growing …

The Future of Food and Health

The Future of Food and Health This week’s AgriFood Conversations, The Future of Food and Health, is from the Davos on the Delta conference. Davos on the Delta sits at the crossroads of dramatic change in agriculture, …

Food Fight!

Is Congress to blame for our health problems? For most Americans, the likely answer is yes, but not for the reasons you may think. In the late ‘70s, Congress began exploring the links between diet and health, …

AgTech Disruption

Wang, Polaroid, Kodak. AOL, Yahoo, GE. So many brands that dominated in previous generations are no longer here, and the consolidation isn’t over yet. The legacy, monolithic industry structure begs for disruption. Are the ag giants next? …

The History and Future of GMOs & Consumers Acceptance: A Conversation with Dr. Jerry Feitelson

Tillable: Airbnb for Farmland is Here

There are two sides to the farmland equation: landowners and those that lease from them. But, for both parties, speed is of the essence. Tenant farmers need to secure land well in advance to prepare for the …

FarmTogether: Crowdfunding Come to Farmland Investing

FarmTogether is an online marketplace for farmland investing – connecting interested investors with institutional-quality, U.S. farmland investments. Through its platform, investors can invest in opportunities directly online through a private, secure website. There, users can browse investments, …

FarmlandFinder: The Easiest Way to Find Land for Sale

At any given moment, there are more than 8,000 pieces of income producing land up for auction across the U.S. Midwest, creating a maze of listings, brokers and sales channels for investors looking to bid on or …

AgriFood Conversations: The Future of AgTech According to Women

According to some estimates, women make up roughly 30% of U.S. farmers and ag industry professionals, and yet they remain a little-known voice in the national conversation about the future of ag and the food systems. That’s …

Inari: Creating Personalized Seeds for Farmers

Inari is building what it calls the world’s first “Seed Foundry,” a technique that starts by inputting every detail about a grower’s local environment and determining the genetic traits that would best help a crop succeed there. Then, …

ImpactVision: Preventing Food Supply Chain Waste With Consistent, Premium Products

Every year in the United States as much as 30-40% of the food supply is thrown out, accounting for some 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food. Often this is due to spoilage or damage …

Trace Genomics: Leveraging DNA to Unlock the Power of Soil

Each tablespoon of soil contains millions of organisms that tell a story about the environment it’s providing for crops. For this reason, soil is the foundation that supports every farm on the planet. Everything else — from …

Agree Market: Creating a Global Marketplace for Agriculture Trading

Agriculture is, by its very nature, a local industry. Crops are grown in the field, sold to nearby wholesalers, and then progress through a supply chain of middlemen and other vendors. What farmers need, then is direct …

FarmLead: Buy & Sell Grains with Ease

What farmers think of as “marketing” is often completely different from marketing in any other industry. Without the proper tools to engage the grain market directly, from a marketing standpoint, there isn’t any marketing going on at …

Mercaris: Bringing Market Intelligence to Sustainable Agriculture

Agriculture, food and their related industries are, simply put, a massive market. They contributed a combined $1.05 trillion to U.S. GDP in 2016, a 5.7% share, with farms alone accounting for 1% of total GDP. Within the …

New West Genetics: Genetics, Breeding and Production Solutions for High-Quality Hemp

Building on its experience breeding plants like rice and canola, New West Genetics is now using its proprietary methods and knowledge base to improve the genetics and growing processes of Cannabis sativa, initially starting with hemp and …

Tiger Fiber Hemp: American Hemp from American Farmers

The United States is at the dawn of one of the largest agricultural revolutions our country has ever experienced. The legalization of industrial hemp presents an opportunity to radically transform the landscape of agriculture, manufacturing, and retail …

Sana Packaging: Hemp-Based Packaging Solutions for the Cannabis Industry

Sana Packaging is creating hemp-based packaging for the cannabis industry because it views hemp as the ideal industrial crop. It is both sustainable and regenerative, requiring less water than other industrial crops and none of the pesticides. …

enEvolv: Hacking Evolution for Speed, Diversity and Savings

Biology has solutions for all the world’s problems. From carbon emissions, to food shortages, to pandemic diseases, researchers are working to harness the power of the natural world to make human lives better. Learn how one company …

Performance Livestock Analytics: Big Data Comes to the Livestock Industry

Performance Livestock Analytics aims to help livestock producers become more sustainable and profitable, with precision ag applications that combine today’s cloud-based technologies with on-farm information, bringing big data solutions to the livestock industry. Its Performance Beef platform …

Agrivida: What’s Really in Your Feed? Enzymes for Healthier, Greener Livestock

Agrivida’s platform produces enzymes inside kernels of corn, offering a natural, convenient, and profitable way to introduce beneficial enzymes such as phytase and glucanase into livestock feed by simply replacing a small amount of corn with Agrivida’s …

Beta Hatch: Creating Better Food for Our Food From Insects

Beta Hatch’s insect-rearing technology converts mealworms and their waste into high-value proteins, oils, and nutrients for agriculture. As of right now, 30% of all crop production goes to feed livestock and feed makes up 50% of the …

Osmo Systems: Water Quality Sensors That Are Made for the Pond

The aquaculture industry is far bigger than most people realize, already supplying over half of the world’s seafood. And that’s on track to increase, as demand continues to rise despite the fact that supply is falling. More …

VakSea: Proven Immune-Boosting Proteins for Aquaculture

VakSea seeks to protect high-value fish and shrimp species from disease. Its first product is an immune-boosting protein to protect Whiteleg Shrimp against White Spot Disease caused by White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV). VakSea’s products are the first immunoprotective …

Nanopore Diagnostics: Microbe Testing That’s Cheap, Easy and Portable

Nanopore Diagnostics is developing the iNDxer, a testing platform that will put microbiology testing into the pocket of the end user, saving time and money. Testing that once took days and highly trained professionals will instead be produced …

P&P Optica: A New ‘Eye in the Sky’ to Prevent Food Contamination

Traditional food processing systems have a major flaw: scale. What works with human workers and on limited order sizes falls apart when you’re dealing with massive amounts of food and millions of pieces of food per shift. …

Equinom: Breeding the Plant Proteins of Tomorrow

According to the United Nations, the global population is on track to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, up nearly 50% from 2000. That’s a lot of new mouths to feed, and in addition to this increased demand …

Victory Hemp Foods: Will Hemp be America’s Next Commodity Row Crop?

Hemp used to be everywhere. George Washington famously grew it on his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, as did fellow founding father Thomas Jefferson, and the plant’s fibers were widely celebrated for their exceptional strength and durability. …

Arvegenix: A Productive Winter Cover Crop That Pays

A cover crop is a crop that’s planted primarily in the offseason to manage soil erosion, soil fertility, soil quality, water, weeds, pests, diseases and other long-term farm concerns. Once that work is done, though, these crops …

TerViva: Transforming Distressed Farmland for New Uses Through Pongamia

The world’s arable land base continues to shrink every year at an alarming rate, falling by 40 million acres in the past 40 years in the U.S. alone. At the same time, the global population is growing …

Nutrivert: Postbiotics and the Promise of Non-Antibiotic Growth Promotion

According to some predictions, antibiotic-resistant bacteria will kill 10 million people and cause tremendous economic loss by 2050. A primary driver of selection for antibiotic-resistant bacteria is overuse of antibiotics in livestock, where the consumption of antibiotics …