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Audio Transcript

 

Chad Fiechter: This is the Commercial AgCast part of the Center for Commercial Agriculture at Purdue University, and this is a series of conversations that we’re having with people who are gonna help us try to understand the ag economy.

Todd Kuethe: Hopefully this is not your first time listening to the podcast. You’ve heard some of our other previous episodes. If you haven’t, uh, go back and check ’em out. We’ve got some great,

Chad Fiechter: Two specifically.

Todd Kuethe: We’ve got two great previous episodes. If you’re listening to this sequentially, I mean you could have, we don’t know where you’re dropping in.

Chad Fiechter: That’s true.

Todd Kuethe: This might be a binge listener.

Chad Fiechter: This might be 2027.

Todd Kuethe: We are prone to just go off on weird tangents.

Uh, but today we’re talking to, Chad, tell us who we’re meeting with.

Chad Fiechter: We’re talking about good friend Brant Caley.

Todd Kuethe: Brant Caley and I think that’s critical that you said good friend. ‘Cause I wanna warn the listener. This is part of an ongoing conversation you and Brant have had for decades.

Chad Fiechter: That, that is true.

Todd Kuethe: He works in ag tech. He also explains the ag tech world. I’ll just be honest, I don’t really understand what the heck ag tech is. Brant’s gonna talk about the, the, the firm he works for now and some of the products that they’re doing. Hopefully won’t be sales pitch. Um, but help us to sort of, again, as we say, we’re trying to understand the ag economy.

So we’ve really enjoyed this conversation. We learned a ton. We hope you do too.

Chad Fiechter: I am Chad Fiechter. Some of you may know me for my work in the department, but more importantly on the 2004 Norwell High School co-ed FFA basketball team.

Brant Caley: That’s right.

Chad Fiechter: I was the starting power forward. That’s what I’m gonna call that I was. And I’m joined here by my co-host.

Todd Kuethe: Todd Kuethe. I was not on this team, but

Chad Fiechter: Oh, you weren’t?

Todd Kuethe: No.

Chad Fiechter: We’re also joined by a good friend and an expert in many things.

Brant Caley: Oh gosh.

Chad Fiechter: Brant, would you like to introduce yourself?

Brant Caley: Uh, yeah. Yeah. I’m Brant Caley. I I was the best player on this 2004 co-ed FFA team. Um,

Chad Fiechter: What was your position, because that’s a

Brant Caley: Just gimme the ball. Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: He was all positions.

Chad Fiechter: He

Brant Caley: Just gimme the ball. For the record, we did not win a game. I like,

Chad Fiechter: I thought we won one.

Brant Caley: Oh man. You,

Chad Fiechter: It was a Thursday afternoon tournament.

Todd Kuethe: No.

Chad Fiechter: At Belmont High School, I think.

Brant Caley: There’s no way we beat Belmont High School.

Chad Fiechter: No, no, no. We definitely didn’t beat them.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: They’re FFA team.

Chad Fiechter: They f, yeah. Co-ed FFA team.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Okay, so I have a question here. Clarifying question. Are there micro rules about the co-ed nature? Like do you have to have a certain number of women on the on, on the court at a time, or do you,

Brant Caley: I mean, Todd. Todd, I hadn’t thought about this team until and seriously, 21 years. Until Chad brought it up a few minutes ago.

Chad Fiechter: You just gave away our age.

Brant Caley: Yeah. We’re,

Chad Fiechter: I guess we didn’t tell him about what year.

Brant Caley: That’s right. Yeah. Okay.

Todd Kuethe: You did say 2004. We could all do the math.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, but we could have been freshman.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: It, it doesn’t matter. I mean, if we were a freshman or if you’re a senior, like the,

Chad Fiechter: It’s true.

Brant Caley: Regardless. I don’t, I don’t know the rules. I do know that, like if you looked at, and by the way, I’m not good at basketball, but if you look at like our FFA crew, yeah. Chad and I were, we were the ring leaders.

Chad Fiechter: Definitely.

Brant Caley: At least in our memory.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: In our memory. We,

Chad Fiechter: Uh, if you remember a differently call in.

Todd Kuethe: Well, ’cause there was a, so I, I played ultimate Frisbee in college and we were on a co-ed team for a while and then we had a men’s team. Uh, but the co-ed team, the rule is like whoever goes onto the field first sets how many women play. And women have to match up with women.

Chad Fiechter: Oh, okay.

Brant Caley: I just, I’ll be honest, I don’t, I don’t remember there being women on our, there.

Chad Fiechter: There was, I feel very confident there was. I don’t think there was rules about who could guard who or who had to be on the court.

Brant Caley: Okay.

Chad Fiechter: I don’t, I don’t think.

Brant Caley: There probably should have been. If there weren’t, there should have been.

Todd Kuethe: I know. I know the other team, whoever they would be, would be like on that four position we’re gonna match up with our best guy probably.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were scouting for me, I think. Um, I’ve always been known a little more for my defensive prowess than anything else.

Todd Kuethe: Getting the boards?

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Fouling.

Todd Kuethe: A junk man. Like Dennis Rodman.

Brant Caley: He’s good at fouling.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, okay.

Brant Caley: You’ve got five to give.

Chad Fiechter: I actually do think I fouled out in one game.

Brant Caley: You probably did.

Chad Fiechter: I think I did.

Brant Caley: You probably did.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: That’s consistent. Anyway, should, should we do work on this podcast?

Brant Caley: No, let’s talk about, let’s talk more about, about FFA basketball.

Chad Fiechter: Well, I think, Brant, so you’re clearly here because of your basketball skills.

Brant Caley: That’s right.

Chad Fiechter: And other things. So you, you kind of hold a couple jobs that are interesting to us. Can you talk about what other things you do?

Brant Caley: Yeah, yeah. Chad and I have been friends for a long time, if you can’t tell. And I currently am on a farm and Markle, Indiana. So our family farms there. I help when I can. Not sure, surely not as much as my dad would like for me to help. Um, surely not as much as I’d like to help, to be honest. So I do have that responsibility.

I have also worked for Gradable, which is a joint venture between FBN and ADM. I’ve been with FBN for nine years.

Todd Kuethe: So our listeners, we now, we now know we have multiple, multiple listeners. ‘Cause Chad’s mom, listen. And Brant said that he listened to the podcast on the way over.

Chad Fiechter: We’re at two.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah, so we got two for sure. So in case Chad’s mom does not know, what does FBN stand for?

Chad Fiechter: Oh yeah, good call.

Brant Caley: Yeah. FBN is Farmer’s Business Network. We’re a ag technology company founded in 2014. The goal of FBN is to use data and technology to help farmers be more profitable.

Chad Fiechter: Well, one I like, I like you. Uh, but two is we wanted to talk about ag tech because it would, it would be honest for me as, in my current role as a professor and Todd in your role, that we hear a lot about ag tech. So you’re kind of here to help open the hood a little bit and help us understand what’s happening, what you’ve seen. ‘Cause you’ve done this for quite a while.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: You were what number employee at Farmer’s Business Network?

Brant Caley: Yeah, so I, I think I was originally employee 65, but fast forward nine years, and I think I’m now like the 11th or 12th most tenured person at FBN.

Chad Fiechter: But prior, prior to FBN, you were also in ag tech, right?

Brant Caley: Yeah, so I was, I was at Trimble. So Trimble does GPS on tractors was there for eight years. Not the whole time in in ag, I spent a couple years doing some construction and learning that that side of the world. But for the most part, ag technology for,

Chad Fiechter: Do you think, is there anyone, this is gonna sound like a really stupid, is there anyone that has as much tenure as you in the ag tech industry? Like do you meet people that have the same amount of time?

Brant Caley: Oh, definitely. I mean, some of my mentors like at Trimble that have been in the space for

Chad Fiechter: Okay

Brant Caley: for that that long. I would say most of the people that have been in the industry that long are like Trimble folks. Trimble, early John Deere folks.

Chad Fiechter: Because, okay. So that in that era, the long era of ag tech would’ve been hardware around precision ag technologies, correct?

Brant Caley: Yeah, definitely.

Chad Fiechter: And anything else that would’ve gone beyond sort of like we’re looking outside of a 15 year prior to today? Is there any, I mean, clearly digital, right? Like you’re, it’s meant to be,

Brant Caley: There were probably some ag software, like accounting software type type companies, but, but no, I would say really right to start the digital ag software space, you had to have digital ag or ag data to work with, which requires hardware. So I’d say hardware first and then, you know, that had its run and then the internet kind of unlocked

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: everything else that’s come from that.

Todd Kuethe: So tell us a little bit about sort of like maybe your kind of career training, education prior to that, or alternatively, like if a student told us like, I’d love to work in ag tech, then what should we tell them they should do now to be able to enter that space?

Brant Caley: Yeah, so I, I definitely had a weird path to get here. So, you know, grew up on a farm, love technology and but, but did not go to school for this, right? So I came to school to be a personal finance advisor, like a financial advisor.

Todd Kuethe: So what should we do with our 401K? No, I’m just kidding.

Brant Caley: Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. But I, you know, went to school for that. Graduated in 2008. May of 2008. Not a great,

Todd Kuethe: Tough, tough, tough time to find a job.

Brant Caley: Not a great time to be a financial advisor. So,

Todd Kuethe: or an easy one. The best time or an easy one. ’cause you’re like, do whatever you want at this point.

Brant Caley: Honestly, I just feel like who am I to like go in and help anybody here?

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Like the market was in just absolute free fall.

Todd Kuethe: And, and you did start in doing like derivative products on submarket housing probably, which is not advisable. That’s, that’s an inside the weeds joke. Alright, sorry.

Brant Caley: I’d say I had no idea what that was

Todd Kuethe: Oh.

Brant Caley: when I graduated.

Todd Kuethe: Which nobody did in 2008.

Brant Caley: Yeah. Yeah. So graduated in 2008 with that degree, didn’t really want to get in into that space. And then just kind of through like some awesome circumstances with some friends, fell into this job at Trimble. Originally doing training for precision ag technology, how to install the stuff onto tractors, was my first job.

Got that job through like my aunt’s friend, just like, how on earth did that happen? I, I just very blessed in that, that sort to get into this space.

Todd Kuethe: Well, I wonder, maybe this is, I’m, I’m wrong in this, but I, I sort of have this prior belief or bias that there’s a lot of people in, in tech world that are just, they’re smart and coachable, and then they sort of like, oh, you could, like, I, I have several friends that like, sort of write software for things. And they’re often just like, oh, I already did this ’cause like, I like computers or whatever. And like, they kind of sort of fall into it more than like being like 19 and being like, I’m gonna

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: do this or whatever.

Brant Caley: Yeah. And I’d be curious what it’s like now. Right. But I, I would say in 2008, ag technology wasn’t a thing, at least that I don’t think it was talked about here. I’m sure Purdue didn’t have a program for it back in the, maybe they did.

Chad Fiechter: We had, we had one professor, ’cause I took one ag one as ag systems management class.

Brant Caley: Okay.

Chad Fiechter: And we literally walked around the, the Ag Mall with stationary Raven systems.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Taking coordinate points.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: And that was our homework.

Brant Caley: Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Well, I, well, I, when I was a graduate student here, my, I worked for a semester and the guy told me that one of his, one of his graduate students was the first person agricultural economics that used a spreadsheet.

Chad Fiechter: Wow.

Todd Kuethe: So like, that’s, that’s like,

Chad Fiechter: Like crazy.

Todd Kuethe: Like we went from like nothing to all of this faster than,

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: than you’d think. Right.

Brant Caley: Crazy.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. So if you were given advice to students, ’cause I have, I have many more questions. We gotta get Brant

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: two x speed. I’m just kidding.

Brant Caley: Yeah. You know, I don’t, I would say advice for students is, for me, it was just, I think I found kind of my passion, what I enjoyed to do. Um. I, you know, I didn’t really know it existed, but I knew a lot about farming. Enjoyed, uh, a lot of aspects of the farm and then loved, knew, I knew I enjoyed technology and comes to find out there’s jobs in this space, right? And I think some of my advice is always just to like, find what you’re passionate about and what you’re good at. What, like you think about when you can’t fall asleep at night, that sort of thing. And then, and then if you, if you like, find that passion, I do think that you can have success ’cause you enjoy working in that space.

Todd Kuethe: So again, it’s kind of maybe related here, but for the other folks that you interact with in the ag tech space, what share would you say are sort of like ag folks from maybe from a farm background that kind of find a passion and kind of technology or software or whatever, versus people that are sort of tech focused, that they’re like, oh, ag has interesting problems, i’ll work there.

Brant Caley: Yeah, I think probably more, way more of the latter. At least. At least in my, my current role.

You know, FBN is has offices in, in California, so I think it’s just a little bit more tech focused. I think there’s a lot of people that have passions for kind of the, the food system. Passion for farmers. And they, they’re very like attracted to the mission of FBN. So I would say they’re more tech people that we’re attracted to the mission and want to help farmers and help help the food system.

Where I would say Trimble was probably more the opposite. It was a lot of like people with more ag backgrounds that then kind of found their way into that space. So I’d say it probably depends on where the, where you’re at is kinda my, my guess.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. I would imagine like Silicon Valley, California would be sort of tech first, right?

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: But if you’re in Indiana or Nebraska or something, right, maybe

Brant Caley: That’s, that’s kind of what my guess would be. But, but I also think there’s, there’s, there’s just fewer and fewer people I think that like grew up or have a similar background to, like Chad and I, where like grew up kind of on a row crop farm where it was our dad’s, uh, livelihoods to run, run the farm. We kinda got firsthand experience. We grew up, uh, driving tractors at a young age and, and like that.

Todd Kuethe: Playing FFA basketball.

Brant Caley: Playing FFA basketball.

Chad Fiechter: That’s a good point.

Brant Caley: That’s right.

Chad Fiechter: Good callback time.

Brant Caley: But you know, that like started, started like that, ingrained in it. I don’t feel like there’s a ton of people that grew up in that environment and then like go out and don’t, you know, they don’t just go back to the farm. So I’d say I, I don’t know that there’s a ton of people that have the same background is me.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Brant Caley: So probably, probably more people that are like tech focused that found an interest in ag is what

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Okay, perfect.

Brant Caley: I’d answer.

Chad Fiechter: So, okay, so this is, I’m just thinking of this right now. I listened to a presentation by someone in Microsoft and yeah, so they’re, they’re really trying to, I guess they’re trying to get into sort of ag technology and digital technology and agriculture. And they had like this promo video and on the promo video it was like this farmer in the in Washington state who also happened to be like, had gotten an undergraduate in master’s degree in computer science and he had developed all of these things for his farm.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: And they were kind of like co-opting ’em into the Microsoft system. How often do you find people like that?

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Where they’re like, they were, right, like they were heavy sort of tech, very technical, in the weeds coding. And then they were like, oh yeah, but then I also on the side operate a large farm.

Brant Caley: Those seem like unicorns, don’t they? Like

Chad Fiechter: Well, I think that’s what I thought when I was watching the promo videos. I’m like, that might be the one, or yeah, again, call me

Brant Caley: Yeah, we both, we both have brothers that, that did computer science.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Work or computer engineering. Um, so maybe they’re not totally unicorns. But like the true, I, one thing that I do think that farmers are true tinkerers, right? There’s a lot of farmers that like to build things. So I guess it’s probably not surprising that our generation of them, like lean towards technology.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: And they choose to take technology.

Chad Fiechter: Do you think be more of that? Because like, I think that if you, if you were to think about the people that we know that are farmers, they do do this, right? They build up stuff. They, they change machines. They, if they would understand. If, if digital was one of the first places they were thinking through that, would they be doing the same stuff?

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Like do you think we’ll see more of that?

Brant Caley: I hope so. ‘Cause I think, I think it would definitely help to get more folks that, like, this was like their, their livelihood and their,

Todd Kuethe: Well, I, I did, I I do know of at least one student since I’ve been back here on faculty that was telling me that like, he’s in one of the ag fraternities, and they had a bunch of dudes that would sit around and build stuff with Raspberry Pi, which is like a little computer chip thing that you can like write your own code. Did like

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: turn light switch or do little like, sort of silly mundane things, but like, like, but they like, and I was like, oh, that’s no different than like when, like when I was in college and dudes would’ve been like replacing their own oil on their trucks, you know, in the, in the parking lot.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Like it’s a similar kind of idea. I think.

Brant Caley: I do, I do think some of the new, I don’t know if you guys have tinkered with any of the new like LLM tools and the ability to like create programs. Just using prompts.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, yeah.

Brant Caley: I, I do think that that will probably unlock some farmers, like people that like to tinker, like technology but don’t know how to code, which I would fall in that category for the record. But like I do know how to like play around with ChatGPT and put together prompts. And there it is not, there’s all these tools that are out there. So I, I do bet you’ll see some like kind of cool apps that come from farmers to solve like their niche problem on the farm because it’s so accessible now.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: That, that wasn’t available before.

Chad Fiechter: Okay. So where else are people located? Working for FBN?

Brant Caley: Yeah, so COVID kind of made FBN, change the dynamics of FBN quite a bit. So we used, we used to have kind of a couple offices and one in Sioux Falls, one in San Francisco area, San Carlos. And with COVID we went remote. We do still have an office in San Mateo, which is close to the San Carlos area. So I technically that’s our headquarters, but everybody else is pretty distributed.

Todd Kuethe: This is, um, my poor understanding of the tech world and, and maybe my skeptic of sort of going to extension meetings and people come in and talk about ag tech, how much do you think that there’s sort of a limit to the growth of ag tech based on the appetite or knowledge for technology?

Like, like I, so I run the Purdue Farmland Value Survey and we switched from doing paper surveys to doing a, a online version five, six years ago.

Brant Caley: Yep.

Todd Kuethe: And there was a lot of concern of like, are we going to lose some of our respondents because they are just like, they’re not doing computers. Right. Do you think that there like, or is it just because I’m going to extension meetings which cater more towards sort of older crowd maybe? Or does that make sense?

Brant Caley: Yeah, I, I think, I think that most of the folks that farming is their, like primary source of income. I think they’re pretty ingrained in technology. I, I think. I mean, I, I, and, and most everybody has smartphones now, so at least, at least they’re like cap capable of that.

Todd Kuethe: If, if you can build it simple enough, then they could interact, right?

Brant Caley: Yeah. So in my experience working with farmers, I think that the computer phase, like I think they, for most farmers just skip that, right? So like, I, I grew up, I went like computer and now smartphone. I think most of ’em were just like, I don’t wanna mess the computers

Chad Fiechter: Just smartphone.

Brant Caley: right? They went straight to smartphone and I don’t know that like companies have totally caught up to that. I mean, I would say FBN has tried. Mm, yeah. But I think figuring out how to monetize that and make like a really good business off of that, I think has been, has been difficult. But I think my opinion is that the, the like people are there, the technology, like the technology is ready to be used. I just, I think we solve, have some work to do to bring solutions to ’em.

Todd Kuethe: And then sort of looking at the landscape of ag tech companies, the other thing that I’m always curious about is are people like sort of looking at problems and thinking about technology as solutions to problems versus sort of having technology and looking for problems where they could apply that?

Brant Caley: Oh, good question. I would say that it’s probably been a little bit too much of, of the ladder, right? Where like, I have this technology, where do I put it? And I hope that over the next few years it will go the other way. Right, because that’s, that’s how it should be, right. It should be where’s your problems? How can use technology to fix it?

Todd Kuethe: Although I didn’t realize that waiting in line to grab coffee was a problem for me until I had a smartphone and then I realized like, oh, I can look at pictures of cats or whatever while I’m doing this.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: So sometimes, sometimes not, you know, having the technology first before you realize some, some of our problems we don’t necessarily recognize as problems right now. Right. So.

Brant Caley: I, and I think that’s, I mean, I hope, this is what I try to do in my job is to kind of, first of all, to the involvement that I am on the farm is like what problems do I feel on the farm? And then talking to other farmers, what are the problems you feel? But still starting with the problem, right? And then, okay, what do I know about different technologies that are out there? How could we build some software to help solve that problem?

So I still hope that we can, we can accomplish that and start with the problem. And build a solution off of that rather than like trying to force people to use an app that they don’t want to use.

Todd Kuethe: So we’ll jump into the heart of this podcast, the thing that makes Chad and I very excited, which is tasks.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: So like walk us through what you do like in a day or typical week. Like what are the sort of tasks that someone who’s in the ag tech space does?

Brant Caley: Yeah, so for me it’s very seasonal. Depends on what’s going on that time of year. I, my role right now is, is I work for a joint venture called Gradable. We are trying to digitize the grain marketing decision and how grain gets purchased or sold by farmers and purchased by grain buyers. And our focus for the last few years has been very focused in sustainability programs. Because that is the kind of the best path to, to digitizing that transaction is you, you have to have a reason to do it.

Todd Kuethe: Does it come from like the customer’s demand to know about the sustainability of the products they’re purchasing?

Brant Caley: So far, our demand has come from the grain buyers wanting to access markets, sustainability markets.

Todd Kuethe: Yep. And so you’re gonna give some sort of measure that these things are, are compliant with what you’re wanting out of this product. Right. They’re, they may be harder to measure in just sort of traditional

Brant Caley: Yeah, I, I can get the, the simplest way to explain it would be, you know, one of our partners, grain buyers that sells into the biofuel market. There’s a lot of demand mostly overseas for ISCC certified fuel.

Todd Kuethe: Which is, which? Which, what’s IC? What’s ISCC??

Brant Caley: It’s international sustainability carbon certification. Right? It’s like the most cliche name you could come up, you can come up with.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Brant Caley: But, but the idea is like this fuel is made in a more sustainable way. This fuel is made in, in a more equitable way. There’s demand for that over overseas. So our biofuel partners can get a premium if they sell it overseas, if it gets this stamp of of ISCC on it. Well, to get that stamp, they have to go all the way down to the farm level to check with farmers to make sure that they’re doing certain steps. And also to check the carbon intensity score of that grain.

The only way that they can access that market is if they partner with somebody like gradable to go and work with the farmers to collect the information to make sure that they qualify.

Todd Kuethe: Some little validation of,

Brant Caley: Yeah. Yeah. So we, we go through this whole process.

So you asked for my day to day. For part of the year, for like three months out of the year, I’m leading a team that’s just trying to collect that information from farmers. So we have a, a small window after harvest to collect. You know, we do surveys with 4,000, 5,000 farmers to collect this information, to get them qualified for premium payments so that they can be a part of these programs.

So part of the year is just like very focused on talking to farmers, getting ’em through this process. And then the rest of the year we’re really kind of just focused on gearing up for the next. So building technology to make sure that we can intake that data, trying to make it as optimized as possible.

And then over the last few months, roles have been a little bit more involved on the grain marketing side of things. So how do we create a product for farmers to help them better market their grain is kind of the next phase goal for Gradable.

Todd Kuethe: Okay. And so then again, that kind of tasks would be developing these surveys or information collection?

Brant Caley: Yeah, I can

Todd Kuethe: Processing it when it comes in?

Brant Caley: Right. So that’s, that’s part of the season is when we’re doing sustainability work, when we’re trying to develop like a new piece of software, a new technology for farmers to help them with grain marketing, which has been the goal for the last few months. It really starts with my own pain points of, of trying to help our family market our grain, and then going out and talking to a group of farmers. We probably talked to 30, 40 farmers and just ask them to like walk us through how they, how they market their grain.

Todd Kuethe: Similar to this podcast. Just explain to us what’s going on. Okay.

Brant Caley: So a lot of like kind of information gathering. You’re just trying to figure out where the pain points are.

Chad Fiechter: And this is you personally having the conversation. Like you sitting

Brant Caley: For this, for this project, this is me.

Chad Fiechter: You’re sitting down, you’re talking to some people probably that I know too.

Brant Caley: Yeah, yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Brant Caley: Handful of them. Yep. Some of ’em happened at Commodity Classic. ‘Cause I go to

Chad Fiechter: There you go.

Brant Caley: Commodity Classic. So yeah, we’re going through trying to figure out the pain points. Then once we get the pain points, it’s okay, we’ve done our research. Now we’re gonna go work with our, our product development team. So working closely with the designer. Okay, here’s some ideas. The goal of the designer is to kind of take these ideas and refine them and make them come to life, I guess, and, and even better than what we originally planned.

And then once we get past the design phase, we go back to farmers like, okay, here’s what we come up with. They make some tweaks, make some adjustments. And then once we get past that design phase, then it’s, then we’re in build phase. So that’s where we’ve been for the last few weeks is, and the build phase, which is, you know, we have engineers that we’re meeting with on a daily basis. What have you worked on? We’re getting new builds.

Chad Fiechter: Mm-hmm.

Brant Caley: Right. So they send us out new beta versions and we’re testing it, we’re reporting bugs, and we’re prioritizing bugs. And then they have to fix those bugs and you can’t fix all the bugs. So it’s like, how do you, what do you do to make it, to get as close to perfect as as possible?

And then ultimately, we’ll, you know, we’ll launch this app here and probably after this podcast comes out and then the cycle repeats, right? Okay. What, what’s the next feature we wanna release? Where are the pain points? What is feedback? What do we

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Or people will tell you like, oh, I, it’d be nice if I could do this.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: And I can’t figure out how to do that now. And they’re like, oh, we gotta figure out, either make that easier or make it do that, right, or whatever.

Brant Caley: Exactly. Exactly.

Chad Fiechter: Okay, so I, I have a question. This is a big, this is a big question.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: So it seems like a lot of the technology that, like I hold up as my favorites in my personal life. I’m, I’m a consumer consuming a thing that I don’t really need. Right, like, so like going on to Duolingo and paying 120 bucks a year so that I can have full hearts every day is very different than a farmer saying I’m going to

Todd Kuethe: Es muy diferente.

Chad Fiechter: Wow.

Brant Caley: Nice.

Chad Fiechter: Big Duolingo fans here. Like and subscribe.

But like they farmers are running a business as opposed to just being purely sort of a consumer. So has, has that been part of the challenge? Right? Like, because it seems like sometimes some of these applications that I see developed are assuming that the farmer’s gonna treat ’em kind of like a consumer product where there is no real bound to how much money, right, they’ll spend. Versus like when you’re in a business it, it’s gonna end up in your bushel of corn or soybeans or cotton or whatever else. Like, is there part, is part of that the problem that we’ve seen?

Brant Caley: First of all, there has been been some like really successful apps created for farmers. Like I think the John Deere Op Center app is awesome. I think farmers use that a lot. So I do think that if you find a problem and then you, here’s an idea, like solve that problem for the farmer. Then they will, they will use it. But I think if you like, try to force them to use an app,

Chad Fiechter: They have, they, they haven’t have, they really monetized app op center. Like that’s the part that is confusing to me is I’m like, people use it, but are they u are they using it? Like, what, what are they using it for?

Brant Caley: Yeah, so I, and I, I do think, I think you have to be kind of creative with monetizing these apps. ‘Cause I, I don’t think that like, I mean, FBN had a subscription model for a while and it did have some success. We had thousands of users sign up at 600 bucks a year to

Chad Fiechter: Mm-hmm.

Brant Caley: to, to be a member of FBN. Some of them were to use the app. I think a lot of ’em were to get access to the chemicals that we were, we were selling at a lower cost.

But ultimately we, we scrapped that because the, the way to monetize it was by getting more farmers onto the app so that you could get more farmers buying or using FBN Finance, buying from FBN Direct. So that’s kind of the path that FBN took. And I think John Deere’s path is probably more, I mean, I won’t wanna speak for them, but I would guess that theirs is, let’s get people using the app so they buy more tractors.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: And, Bayer, Bayer, Climate, same,

Chad Fiechter: But it’s all like these indirect, right? Like it’s all kind of like, it feels like ag tech is indirect. Like it’s like we’re, this is a service that we’re gonna provide, so you’ll have deeper engagement with our core set of products.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: It’s a complimentary product in a lot of cases, right?

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Where like Duolingo is clearly just, I’m using them ’cause I’m, but like it’s clearly just like they’ve integrated into my life.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: Right? And I spent that money because like I’m a consumer and I,

Todd Kuethe: So I think what Chad’s saying is we need to figure out a way for farmers to get streaks. That they keep.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: That seems to be,

Chad Fiechter: Well, I mean, that might change it. I don’t know. I just think there’s, like, there just, uh, there’s a part where I observe it, where the ag tech industry, where it seems like there’s like, I think we, we treat farmers like they are consumers as opposed to like, this is a business.

Brant Caley: Yeah. No, I think, I think that’s an interesting perspective and you know, I do think that if you just think about apps, I don’t know that that many apps are super focused on the business user. I think the apps you mentioned are like more consumer facing apps anyways. So I think you just have to be wise about the problems you try to, you’re trying to help them solve.

When we look at like comparisons for the, for Gradable and trying to help farmers do grain marketing, we’re looking at apps like Robinhood, right? Those type of apps that are focused on the Fidelity app. That are helping consumers like manage their portfolio of, of stocks or whatever. I like those have gotten a lot of traction.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, sure.

Brant Caley: In banking, same thing. I think a lot of people have moved to like online banking through the app, so there have been a lot of financial aspects that have went down the technology path.

Chad Fiechter: Mm-hmm.

Brant Caley: So that’s, I think kind of the more model that we’re trying to follow. And then I would say, you know, outside of that, I, I’d say there’s probably some merit to what you’re saying, which is, which is like, okay, we’re, we’re trying to like bring consumer ideas to this business. And I, I would say that’s probably part of the reason why there’s been a lot of struggle there.

Chad Fiechter: Well, we, we don’t have like, I mean, we are a business. Purdue University is a business. It’s a not-for-profit, but like all of our software solutions, hope this doesn’t get me in trouble. Like they’re, they’re not tailored to our needs, right? Like we, it seems like we’re just like jamming, right? These big sort of overarching systems that we have are like kind of clunky and big. It’s interesting because I think that when I see ag tech solutions, it’s like we’re gonna solve these specific problems. And I’m like, these big institutions seem to buy technology solutions that aren’t necessarily tailored to their specific tasks, so to speak. Right? And then they kind of make ’em work. Like it seems like business software isn’t necessarily friendly.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: And, and all the ag tech I see is.

Brant Caley: Yeah, probably depends on what you’re trying to solve, right? I think there’s some, we use a lot of business tech at FBN and there are like, I would say that a lot of the software we use is pretty user friendly.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Brant Caley: Yeah. Not great though. I mean they’re not perfect, but I also think they’re trying to solve like these big

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: problems, right? And trying to kind of do everything for everybody. Where like at one thing that we do have, especially at Gradable, is like we have a pretty clear mission, right? It’s like, okay, we work a lot with grain buyers, we work a lot with farmers.

Chad Fiechter: Mm-hmm.

Brant Caley: We are trying to help them better transact and sell grains. Right?

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: So it’s kind of a niche problem and we can really focus in on that. Um, and I don’t know that like a “do everything” app

Chad Fiechter: Mm-hmm.

Brant Caley: could like, I think that’d be too hard to bite off, I think.

Todd Kuethe: So, kind of question, maybe not about the firms you’ve worked with specifically, but kind of ag tech in general question. So, this is mostly based on pop culture, right? Which is I my sort of preconceived notion of like the tech world is my goal is to create something like in my basement or in my garage that will either grow to dominate the world, right? It would be like an Amazon or I’ll do this thing relatively on my own and it’ll grow just big enough that Amazon’s gonna buy me. Right?

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: And so like, I’m gonna have this price checking thing that Amazon now is gonna want.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Like in the ag tech, is it are, are there companies that are sort of wanting to start and become like this big, freestanding, long lasting company or want to be acquired by some other either existing ag company or existing technology company? Like what’s the,

Chad Fiechter: That’s a good question.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: What’s sort of the, do you think like would be the successful, like we’ve made it point for a lot of the ag tech companies?

Brant Caley: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, I think you should always, the first strive for success is just like you solved a problem for, for farmers and you start to get customers, which is really, really hard.

Todd Kuethe: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Brant Caley: But once you get past that,

Todd Kuethe: Once you get past the stage one production,

Brant Caley: what’s the long term path? I think, I think, every company probably start out to be to be big. And they want to be like a staple forever at. At least every, every part, every company that I’ve been a part of. I do understand there’s like smalls and like our, our exit plate in here is just to like, sell cash.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. We we’re gonna, we’re gonna get this big enough that then some big guy’s gonna want to buy it for a,

Brant Caley: Yeah. I, I’ve probably ran across a couple of those type of companies in, in my day, but I, I’ve always been more attracted to the long term. FBN, if you remember when they were first launched, like, we’re gonna take over the world. It was kind of their mentality. We’re gonna be like the ag company. Which has been, that’s been a tough battle to, to do that. But still that was the original, that, that was the ambition. I would say that still.

Yeah, I would say there hasn’t been that like breakout ag tech company that is like a staple, right? I think the FBN still has a chance to, to pull that off, but it’s, I think we’ve proven that’s really, really hard to do, right? It’s, it’s, it takes a lot of, it takes a lot of capital, it takes a lot of like understanding your customers and continuing to just like be consistent. And solve problems with them over a really long period of time. You know, just look at like the staple companies in agriculture today. They’ve all been around forever.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Maybe there’s been a couple, like Precision Plant would be like a company that’s popped up recently that was like a staple and is kind of had that exit trajectory, but they ended up getting acquired.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Well, and, and kind of brings to another question we ask a lot on the podcast, which is what’s, what are the constraints limiting achieving those goals, right? Is it, I wish I had more people, or I wish we had more capital, or I wish we didn’t have to live in Indiana? Or what, what, what’s, what’s the limit do you think, that are preventing that?

Brant Caley: Yeah, interesting. I, we should talk about that ’cause I, I don’t know that I have the answer, but we can maybe, we could, yeah, we could ideate on it. Which is, you know, for me, I, I would think capital is probably the, the toughest thing, you know, to be. I think if you want to be that like longstanding company, you wanna get to like a an IPO or be in the public markets. And then I think that’s a really difficult barrier to, to like jump into.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, for sure.

Brant Caley: So then if you stay in the venture capital backed world, and it’s the same in the public markets, whether you’re you’re private markets or public markets, the goal that you have to maintain this growth and you need consistent growth over time. And if you have a really good year of growth. You excited in the moment, but then you’re like, you’re also in the back of your mind. You’re like, man, we gotta figure out how to sustain this.

Todd Kuethe: Well,

Brant Caley: because if you get that little hill

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Then the capital dries up.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Everybody’s no more.

Todd Kuethe: Well, especially it’s about the venture capital world, right? Which is like if you got every farmer on board, that’s like 2 million customers, right. Which is like, that would be amazing, right? But then like, they’re used to thinking of like, Duolingo that’s like,

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: we, we added 3 million people this quarter or something like, like the,

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: like there is sort of a, a kind of natural limit I think when we think about like user experience, like when you’re already dealing with sort of a niche market, right?

Brant Caley: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I would say that’s probably what let FBN down this path where some from afar would be like, why are you in so many different things? Right? Like FBN is trying to sell chemical, sell land loans, they’re doing Gradable, they’re doing all these different things. You’re like, why are you, you’re doing much

Todd Kuethe: Because if you wanna get to 10 million, you gotta have 2 million people buy five things. Right?

Brant Caley: Exactly. Exactly. You, you’ve gotta like be able to bundle and offer them a lot of different services. Value in a lot of different ways. So it’s, it is difficult, right? I think. I think that’s why if you are like a niche type company, you do just run outta steam. Because you just hit, hit a cap.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Especially if you’re in the tech world, right? ‘Cause the percent of farmers that are like techie is not 2 million.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: It’s a much, it’s a much smaller number. So you gotta figure out how to like offer them enough value and enough services that your business continues to grow. You continue to grow capital and you can keep, keep the the flywheel turning.

Chad Fiechter: In your current role, how much of it is like you are the gut check for people writing software to say like, no, that, that’s not gonna work, guys. Like, that’s not, that’s not the problem that these farmers are thinking about. How, how much of it is just that?

Brant Caley: Yeah, I, I think I’m really fortunate in my current role to be able to be like a pulse of the farmer. It’s not always been that way, but I do think that just right now I find myself in a position where my perspective is, is really valued. And I do talk to engineers on a daily basis about, and designers on this is what, this is what farmers want, this is what farmers need. Basically I’ve done like, I’ve done the homework. This is, this is what they want.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: I can have confidence in that. That is one that’s kind of come, the opportunities kind of come and go out and gone over the years. And I also think it just takes a, it takes a long time to feel confident in what the voice on what farmers need. I, I don’t know that I was ever, that I was that confident for that for a long period of time.

Chad Fiechter: So I keep asking vague questions, but is is that part of the, the challenge with ag tech is that it there is, there does need to be some sort of a, a buffer between farmers and sort of software developers. So if we would shorten that up, it, it would be quicker?

Brant Caley: Possibly. I mean, I do think that, like you, I do think that like having a really good perspective on the farmer and like really understanding the farmer’s problems, which I, I think I’ve just been fortunate due to my upbringing. I can do that, but I don’t think that everybody can, and I think it’s really hard for people from outside of agriculture to then ingrain themselves

Chad Fiechter: Sure.

Brant Caley: into that space, and to be able to like confidently answer that. Because you just run into so many biases, right? It’s like, oh, well I’m gonna do a bunch of research. Like that’s how I’m gonna develop my opinion and perspective on what farmers need and I’m gonna go. Talk to farmers. I, I mentioned I talk to farmers, but you still, like, as you do that, you run into a lot of biases because the only people that will like talk to you about technology are like a certain niche group of farmers that are wired this certain way. So I think it’s, it’s hard to like come up with like a solution that works for a lot of folks without having the, feeling those problems. Like I, I love the position I’m in now because. One of my roles on our farm is to help market the grain.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: So it is a pain that I feel, and I think farmers feel it too, right? Your motions swinging with the grain markets. Like that, that’s a real thing that you feel and I think it’s hard to like come up with solutions for that. I think I’m just fortunate to be in the position I am where I feel it and they can come up with solutions.

Todd Kuethe: Well, and you are the somebody that is interested and cares about the marketing part of it, right? ‘Cause the other thing is when I taught farm management, like there’ll be. We, there’s farmers that are just obsessed with like the science of agriculture.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: And they’ll talk to you about weeds.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: But the second we’re like, hey, we’re gonna talk to you about crop insurance right now. They’re like, I’m gonna get a coffee and go stand in the back.

Yep.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Like, I’m out. Right. And so it seems like it’s consistent also with techy kind of space, for lack of a better term, right? Where it’s like, oh, I’m kind of interested in this anyway. Right? Like are there are a lot of the clients that are farmers you interact with? The, the ones that get the new cell phone every year or buy a new TV more frequently ’cause they’ve added some bell and whistle or,

Brant Caley: Yeah, I would, I would say that like those are the farmers that you go after first. Right? Because they are the most likely to adopt, adopt your technology and, and just give feedback. Right. So like, when I’m doing this feedback, these feedback sessions with farmers, they are the more tech forward farmers. I try to, you know, get some, but they’re just harder to get ahold of.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: So you, you definitely want to like pick your market. And that is the attractive market to go after, right? Because you’re like, I’m gonna develop this app that works for, you know, the 500 acre farmer that doesn’t use a, use a smartphone. Well, that’s, you’re not gonna make it.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Right. You’ve gotta be like, all right, I’m gonna go after the like 1500 acre farmer.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: That like loves technology ’cause they’re the most likely to adopt. And then once, if we can solve a problem for them, we’re gonna hope that that same problem will then be able to like help out the longer tail of farmers.

Todd Kuethe: So do you just like go to Commodity Classic and just look for guys wearing those like meta glasses or whatever? Like that’s our guy. Let’s talk to him.

Chad Fiechter: That’s a good idea.

Todd Kuethe: I’m just coming with great ideas.

Chad Fiechter: You are.

Todd Kuethe: I should be, I should take these off of the money.

Chad Fiechter: Okay, so this is a question for both of you because like sometimes I don’t even know what my problem is. Right? Like I think that that’s the thing with, with like smartphones.

I remember distinctly riding to a basketball game with your parents and you had a new, you had the original iPhone. And I was like, dude, we’re never gonna type on screens, right? Like, we’re never gonna use the keyboards on screen. So I’m like, how? Like that’s a daunting task. How do you think through that? Like frequently? I don’t know what,

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: like if you would, if you interviewed me, I am terrified at what you would develop

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: That I probably won’t use in the future.

Brant Caley: Yeah. I, again, I don’t want to act like I have this all figured out, but I do think that you’ve just gotta figure out how to solve a problem. And if you solve that problem really well, like the users, like the people will come to it. You’re right, typing on a screen like it is worse than typing on a Blackberry. It, it just is worse, but it’s like, oh yeah, but also you like can watch movies way better or whatever, right?

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Right.

Brant Caley: So they’re, they’re like, and, and if you look at like farmers and technology adoption, I do think that like great products get used. Precision Planting has a great product that almost every farmer that I talk to, they have a precision planting

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Right.

Brant Caley: unit in it. It’s like, well, they, they like created something great and they figured out how to get farmers to use it, and they solved a problem, and they nailed the price point and, you know, there you go. You have a bus. Like sometimes. Sometimes That’s how easy,

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: how easy it is. So I think that you just have to start with, from my perspective, start with the problem, and then how do you come up with an accessible solution for that? I don’t know. We’ll, we’ll see if we continue to pull that off.

Todd Kuethe: Chad, if you need someone to tell you what your problems are, I’m, I’m always there for it.

Chad Fiechter: Really?

Todd Kuethe: Yeah, I can, I can point out a couple.

Chad Fiechter: Oh, all right.

Todd Kuethe: Like you,

Chad Fiechter: Call it up later.

Todd Kuethe: You look too much like a young Lorenzo Lamas.

Brant Caley: I heard that one.

Chad Fiechter: Oh, we, we need to ask you, Brant, the listeners have been wondering this entire time, do you have a celeb

Todd Kuethe: When they’ve been picturing this. Now this is gonna be jarring for some of our listeners.

Chad Fiechter: It is..

Todd Kuethe: It’d be interesting to, to be able to have them phone in and say, here’s who I’ve been pictured. This is not a call in, this is a podcast.

Chad Fiechter: It’s true.

Todd Kuethe: But yeah. Brant, what celebrity have you been told do you look like?

Brant Caley: So, I have been told a couple times that I look like Ryan Reynolds. But, but they’re always weird. They always are very specific that it’s Ryan Reynolds in the Green Lantern. Which, which I assume that means he was like fatter and balder. I don’t know.

Chad Fiechter: Well, here’s the thing about Ryan Reynolds, though, I feel like this is a compliment in many ways. ‘Cause Ryan Reynolds not only is very talented, he’s also been extremely successful outside of being

Todd Kuethe: In this,

Chad Fiechter: an entertainer.

Todd Kuethe: In the startup space.

Chad Fiechter: Exactly.

Todd Kuethe: With companies he starts.

Brant Caley: It is not a fair comparison to Ryan Reynolds. Say, I feel bad

Chad Fiechter: Would you say you are the Ryan Reynolds of ag tech.

Brant Caley: No, I, Ryan, if you’re listening to this podcast, I don’t look like you and it’s, I’m sorry for the disrespect.

Todd Kuethe: But do you think it’s not because you look like him, but because you like, sort of just capture his persona?

Brant Caley: Definitely not, it’s definitely not.

Chad Fiechter: I would assume that he wears that outfit.

Brant Caley: The only people that have ever told me I look like Ryan Reynolds are like Uber drivers. So they, they dunno me.

Todd Kuethe: I think the problem with Brant is that his Uber profile is a picture of Ryan Reynolds.

Brant Caley: Oh crap.

Todd Kuethe: We have solved.

Brant Caley: We solved it.

We solved it.

Todd Kuethe: That’s where that came from.

Brant Caley: Dang gone it.

Todd Kuethe: Uh,

Brant Caley: We’ll have to change it.

Todd Kuethe: How are we doing on the time? We,

Chad Fiechter: I think we should go to the lightning round.

Todd Kuethe: Okay.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Since you’re in the ag tech space, I’m sure you’re familiar with the stereotypes of tech bros.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Which stereotype of tech bros is the least accurate? And which stereotype is the most accurate?

Chad Fiechter: This is good.

Brant Caley: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately I think they’re all probably pretty accurate. And I, I would say most people in my hometown would classify me as a tech bro. And they’re probably, they’re probably right. Like, who am I to say that they’re wrong?

Todd Kuethe: Like, so how, how many Patagonia vests do you own?

Brant Caley: Yeah. I did wear a vest today, which is really weird. I, I.

Chad Fiechter: It’s not Patagonia though.

Brant Caley: It’s not Patagonia. Yeah. This was a gift from my mom. I don’t wear. My wife was like, why are you dressed up today? And I was like, well, Chad always dresses up.

Chad Fiechter: I do.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Brant Caley: And I, I didn’t wanna be uncomfortable. If I would’ve known Todd, it’s just gonna be wearing a t-shirt today. I would’ve wore a T-shirt.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: So I I,

Chad Fiechter: That’s a really ryan Reynolds move of you.

Todd Kuethe: Matches the room he’s in.

Chad Fiechter: Exactly.

Brant Caley: But no, there definitely is like. I, the, the one thing I will say about tech bros, of which I am one, like I do believe in like typically some of the things that they dive into, like they are like, I do like those things, right?

Like, joggers had a moment. Joggers are right, they were like, those are comfortable.

Chad Fiechter: I, I, I actually agree. Joggers a hundred percent.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. The joggers, except I got big calves.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Todd Kuethe: So I actually do it better in a straight sweatpant. That’s my problem.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, but you, you’re, you have like travel pants. You have specific, He,

Todd Kuethe: I do have, I own travel pants.

Chad Fiechter: He likes to pretend like he’s every man.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: But he owns a specific pair of travel pants.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Um, we’re doing great at keeping this at the lightning pace.

Chad Fiechter: We put it at two x speed. It’s gonna be fast.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: But, but Brant, just did say on the record, he loves everything about tech. He wears Patagonia, he likes ayahuasca tea. All of the, isn’t that, isn’t that one of the,

Brant Caley: Honestly, some of those things I didn’t get into. I, not Patagonia, I’m too cheap and Yeah, not ayahuasca.

Todd Kuethe: To call back to your earlier experience and, and that we’ve talked on about on the podcast, what’s your opinion of a shoot, first point guard versus just bringing the ball up the floor and setting up the play for others?

Brant Caley: Mm. Good question.

Chad Fiechter: Can I answer it too after you’re done?

Brant Caley: Yes. Yeah, that’d be great.

Chad Fiechter: Brant only does one of those two things.

Brant Caley: Well, it depends on your team, right? If you’re on the FFA team, you are the only shooting because you’re like, if I pass it to Chad, he’s gonna shoot, so I’m gonna take my chances of that.

Chad Fiechter: You better believe I’m gonna shoot.

Brant Caley: But I did. I only played basketball this morning. And I think in that setting, you just gotta know your role, right? So in that setting, I was, I’m not the best player on the team. I’m like, you just, you scout the team. You’re like, okay, you’re most days, I’m the fifth best player on the team. So I need to be passing.

Todd Kuethe: So you’re just distributing.

Brant Caley: I gotta pass.

Chad Fiechter: You’re the fifth best player. That’s hard for me to believe.

Brant Caley: I mean, it depends on, it depends on the day.

Chad Fiechter: Who are you trying, who are you trying to butter up here?

Todd Kuethe: This is no longer the FFA. Team is what he’s saying. He’s playing, he’s moved up to the 4H team.

Chad Fiechter: How many people?

Brant Caley: Is it very dependent, uh, for like, for Purdue basketball, I lo I love the pass. I love, like Braden Smith is the perfect point guard to me.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, I should ask you just a Purdue light. I got a Purdue lightning round question.

Chad Fiechter: That’s a good idea.

Todd Kuethe: That’s a good one.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: All time favorite Purdue basketball player?

Brant Caley: Yeah, it’s Carsen Edwards. That’s Carsen.

Chad Fiechter: Oh!

Brant Caley: Yeah, so interesting though because I just said I love Braden Smith as a, as a past first point guard. Carsen Edwards was the opposite. So I guess maybe that’s what I really like.

Todd Kuethe: That’s who you aspire to be.

Brant Caley: Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

Chad Fiechter: See if this was a farmer interview, what you just said

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: was one thing. But what you meant,

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: like you were, maybe you should work for tech companies.

Todd Kuethe: Well, the other, well, the other one pull the other, the other, we’ll just, we’ll just stay on this great lightning round, which, so, which

Brant Caley: I do, sorry, just I, I do wanna say Zach Edey was also great. So Zach, if you listen to this, I think you’re great too.

Todd Kuethe: So, which, this, this is how I tell a Purdue basketball fan from regular basketball fans, which do you like more hard work or natural talent?

Brant Caley: Gosh, I mean, I know what you want me to answer. You want me to say hard work,

Todd Kuethe: But you said Carsen Edwards. That’s natural talent.

Brant Caley: I know. Like really? Yeah. I honestly, you want both, right? Like, I hate to be like cliche to that

Chad Fiechter: Wow.

Brant Caley: answer, but like,

Todd Kuethe: Well, he does hang out with Chad,

Brant Caley: but if you, if you are just hard work, right? If you’re just the hard work guys, then when, when Chad and I were here, you were here too. 2006, you’re gonna say 2006, 2007. Those were a lot of hardworking guys.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Right?

Todd Kuethe: Yes.

Brant Caley: And then who came in in 2007? You had E’Twaun Robbie, JJ, those were some talent guys. Yeah. Yes. And all of a sudden we got a lot better. So I guess I will answer talent as,

Todd Kuethe: Okay. And then this is a, this is a fan favorite from our fan. If you had a time machine that you could use to get better at your job, only use it for work purposes.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: When are you going?

Brant Caley: When am I going?

Todd Kuethe: Mm-hmm.

Brant Caley: To get better for me to get better at my job or to like redo a decision?

Todd Kuethe: No, no, no. It’s just a work issued time machine. You go, you go to work tomorrow, and they’re like, Hey, guess what? We got a time machine. You can’t use it for recreation.

Brant Caley: Okay.

Todd Kuethe: But if you got something that’ll make you better at your job, take the time machine for a spin.

Brant Caley: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I do think that rolling back to let’s, let’s, there was some era of FBN where we were like trying, trying to solve a lot of big problems. And I would say that some of those problems we fell short on and I’d love to like go back and get another shot at ’em. Right. Like specifically like seed.

Seed is like, seed is is, I worked in seed for a while and seed is like this part of agriculture that just drives me crazy. Speaking from a farmer’s perspective, ’cause it’s kind of like, sorry, this is not a lighting round answer.

Todd Kuethe: Alright, I’m ready.

Brant Caley: But, but you, if you think of agriculture in your ability for a farmer to be like long-term profitability, there are these two like huge pillars in the way that always just kind of suck out profitability and it’s seed costs, it’s fertilizer costs. And fertilizer is like this massive problem. It’s really hard to solve. I, I don’t know, but seed I feel like somebody could figure out, at least I thought we had a path to try to solve it and try to help bring some pri price relief to the seed industry. And I don’t think we were as successful as I’d like to be. So I’d love to like go back and take another shot at that.

Chad Fiechter: Could you have influenced it in a different way?

Brant Caley: I mean, I, I was very, I was fortunate to be in a good, in, in like a pretty influential role at that time. And I, looking back at what we would’ve done differently, I think. I think we, first of all, we like brought low cost seed to the market. Right? Right. When there was a nice little swing up in the, the, in the value of corn, which just makes people not want to go cheap on seed.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, sure.

Brant Caley: And then I, I do think that like, there’s just some different steps. I think that if we would’ve stayed on this path a little bit longer, if we execute a little bit better, we could have got some like extra exit trajectory and could have made a little bit of a dent there. And unfortunately we, we fell short.

So yeah, we, we did like, like the core problem One was I think we, our genetics weren’t as good as they should have been, but, but the, the exciting thing, I think we were trying to bring off patent Roundup ready to market.

Chad Fiechter: Oh yeah. Okay.

Brant Caley: And we were just like a couple years short of that. And it’s still hard, right? You gotta bring it into genetics. There’s a lot of things you have to do, but I do think if you could solve for that problem and then you could solve like bugs, I think you can manage in other ways. But if you could solve for that, I do think you could bring a lot of, a lot of pressure relief.

Todd Kuethe: Brant as the tech guy, the resident tech guy in this room.

Chad Fiechter: Tech bro.

Todd Kuethe: Tech bro,

Brant Caley: Tech bro. And my joggers.

Todd Kuethe: to, to take the time machine into the future.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: I figure we finally get to go to the future, but no, everyone goes to the past

Chad Fiechter: because I think, because I think Brant though, he’s hardworking, right? And what’s haunting him is you, you go back and change something.

Brant Caley: Yeah, the future will come like, uh, and that’s, that’s fine.

Chad Fiechter: Okay.

Brant Caley: I I’ll, I do think going back and trying to solve, solve mistakes is probably,

Chad Fiechter: So speaking of the future Brant, what, like what do you see ag tech? What, what’s the cool thing about

Brant Caley: Yeah. I, I mean this, this would be a little bit of a tech bro answer, but I do, I do think that what LLMs and AI can bring to like the ag financial space is really cool and exciting. And I’m excited to see what, what happens there. I think that that’s been the biggest barrier for ag financial tools to take off has been that you, it’s so hard to like get somebody just to change to a new system, right?

Like my mom does all the accounting on our, on our farm and she just is really comfortable with this software that she’s been using for a long time. And to get her to change, it’s like, why would I change? I. Whatcha talking about this works fine. It solves my problems. I don’t need to change.

I think now we finally have like a step forward where you could do ag financials in a totally different way. Right? Like just take a picture of an invoice.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah. Right.

Brant Caley: Or just really personalized advice based off of my information specific to me. And I think that there’ll be, there’ll be some cool technologies that come outta that.

Todd Kuethe: Since we’re in the crystal ball world.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: When you’re closer to like the retirement stage of your career. Do you think there will be fewer ag tech companies or more ag tech companies?

Brant Caley: I sure hope more. I mean, my opinion on where things are heading and with these AI tools, I, I do think that fast forward a couple years, you’ll be able to create these things with way less people. Create technology with way less people than you used to be able to. Right.

So some of the, we talked about barriers that ag companies run into. We, we said it was capital. We need capital so that you can hire more people so that you can build more things. I do think that some of that barrier will be removed where I could just use this AI tool to run a handful of engineers that build the tools that I want.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: And I can do the work that a hundred person company, you know, that would take today I could, I could do that with five people, for example. And if you do that, then you have a lot of smaller companies that are solving niche, niche problems. Because like you could never justify a business to solve a really specific problem. You should be like, well it’s not a big enough business. Like, you’re not gonna be able to get to IP level. You’re not gonna be able to.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Well now it’s like with, with some of these new technologies, like, no, you, I can stay small ’cause my cost to develop, it’s gonna be so much lower.

Chad Fiechter: Sure.

Brant Caley: This could be like my own little one.

Todd Kuethe: So, so it’s almost closer to like tinkering again, right where you can rig up a, a solution to your niche problem and you don’t have to care as much. Am I gonna be able to get x number of people to adopt this thing, right?

Brant Caley: Yeah. At least, at least I hope. I hope that’s the way that it goes. ‘Cause I think, I think a lot of smaller companies that are creating cool technologies is better for the farmer.

Todd Kuethe: This is not an ag tech question. This is a tech bro question.

Brant Caley: Okay.

Chad Fiechter: Oh good.

Todd Kuethe: What do you think is the most underrated app that I should have on my cell phone?

Brant Caley: Oh, wow. Other than gradable?

Todd Kuethe: Well, I already have that one.

Brant Caley: Oh gosh. I don’t want to give too basic of an answer. I’ll give two. You probably already have the ChatGPT app. ChatGPT app is incredible. Okay. I, I asked it on the way here, I sent the link to your guys podcast to it, and I said, Hey, I’m doing this podcast, just like, give me like, help me get in the right mindset and ChatGPT knows you guys better than you know yourselves.

Todd Kuethe: Oh, now, just so I want to do it.

Chad Fiechter: So wait, why don’t you ask? Okay, so let’s go back to the tech thing. Why aren’t you just having ChatGPT talk to the farmers?

Brant Caley: That’s why I was, I was telling you that I do think that LLMs will like be

Chad Fiechter: Ah.

Brant Caley: a key part. But I, I just think that that’s, and FBN does have their own LLM, Norm, that will answer agronomy questions.

Chad Fiechter: Norm.

Brant Caley: Take tank mixes and things like this. After the OG agronomist, Norm.

Todd Kuethe: Borlaug.

Brant Caley: Forget last name.

Todd Kuethe: Borlaug. Borlaug

Brant Caley: Borlaug. Okay.

Todd Kuethe: Norm Borlaug.

Chad Fiechter: Oh really? That’s really what it’s named for.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: I have, I use ChatGPT to make stuff I’m writing to students sound less like a boring professor.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: So I’d lead a study abroad trip. And I will write my email that I’m gonna tell them like, you know, we’re gonna meet at the airport.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: And then I’ll say, can you make this more exciting, exciting for a student going on a study abroad trip? And then it’s always like, get ready for the trip of a lifetime. And I’m like, let’s dial it back a little bit.

Brant Caley: Yeah. It’s way too nice right now.

Chad Fiechter: Down it’s way too excitable.

Brant Caley: Yeah. Way too excitable. And then I do think I, the other app that I would recommend, I think the Robinhood app is incredible. And I think that if, I make this joke quite often, but like I’ve, it’s introduced me to training options. I’ve lost hundreds of dollars. But I’m not mad at Robinhood because they do such a good job of like explaining what you’re doing.

Todd Kuethe: Chad has lost that much money with a Duolingo. We’ve learned, so,

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Brant Caley: Yeah, yeah. And it, it, it’s just like, well, I don’t blame the app. Like they did, they fully informed me on what I was getting myself into. But it, it does help me. It’s helped me learn a lot about,

Todd Kuethe: We should let our listener know that we are not being sponsored by either of those apps.

Brant Caley: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: At this time.

Chad Fiechter: Brant, last thing, housekeeping item here. You’re doing something cool.

Brant Caley: We are launching a Gradable app here in June, so for our partners that we work with, POET and ADM, they’ll both be promoting this app over the summer.

And again, the goal of the app is to try to help farmers better manage their, their grain marketing. So I hope that if any farmers that are listening to this, I hope please try out the Gradable app. It links up with your POET and ADM account. And the goal is to help you better market your grain. If, if you have any questions reach out, to reach out to me and we’ll put it in the show notes.

Todd Kuethe: There we go. Oh, perfect.

Chad Fiechter: Well, I think we’ve covered pretty much everything we thought we were gonna cover. We

Brant Caley: And more.

Todd Kuethe: And, and I think we’ve just run out of things to talk about. We should just go back to our office.

Chad Fiechter: There’s no way we’ve run out things to talk about.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the conversation that we had with Brant. I learned a lot after knowing Brant for decades. So even after decades, uh, I learned a lot. I feel like it was a really helpful conversation.

So we teased in the intro that we know there might be more than one listener.

Todd Kuethe: Yes.

Chad Fiechter: So this is the first time we’re gonna make this plea. The plea being, we, we’ve told you what our objective is to try to understand the ag economy, to have these free flowing conversations. So if you or someone you know, you think would be interested in engaging with this podcast, send us a note. If you’re willing to come to campus. We’re at Purdue University.

Todd Kuethe: In West Lafayette, Indiana.

Chad Fiechter: We’d, we’d love to have a conversation about it. Uh, we’d buy you a mediocre or two pretty good cup of coffee.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah. Depending on your tastes.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: We think it’s good.. You might think it’s mediocre.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah, that’s true. But I don’t think it’s poor.

Todd Kuethe: No, no, it’s not bad.

Chad Fiechter: Yeah.

Todd Kuethe: We’re all in agreement that it’s better than poor.

Chad Fiechter: So tell your friends that this podcast exists. Uh, like and subscribe. And we will see you again the next time.

Todd Kuethe: And feel free to tune into the previous ones we’ve had. If you’re just joining us for the first time. We got some really good ones lined up. We’re gonna keep talking about ag investing space. We’re gonna talk to some people about farm management. And businesses and how they’ve grown over time or changed. So we’ve already learned a lot. We got some in the can for you, but we’re always looking for new ones.

Chad Fiechter: Should we tease that we may be going on location?

Todd Kuethe: Oh yeah. We’re taking this on the road. We’re gonna go visit some farms in a different part of the country, uh, where we know very little. We’re gonna learn a ton, uh, but we think even our Midwest based listeners will enjoy it ’cause they’ll learn something. But we think the southern based listeners, if nothing else, will enjoy laughing at how little we know.

Chad Fiechter: Nice, nice, nice tease.

Todd Kuethe: Yeah.

Chad Fiechter: So where in the south are Todd and Chad going?

Todd Kuethe: Oh, that’s gonna be, that’s a surprise to come.

Chad Fiechter: It is.

Todd Kuethe: But I know. Do you know where we’re going?

Chad Fiechter: I do, yeah.

Todd Kuethe: Okay, good, good. So we know, so that you’ll find out.