From Farm to Fridge: Inside the Future of Smart Dairy Farming with Dr. John Goeser

Jarrod Sutton

Hey, everybody. I'm Jarrod Sutton at DIAL Ventures. This is our podcast, welcome. We're really pleased today to have the opportunity to talk with Dr. John Goeser. I'm going to let John provide an introduction to himself. But John is really a leader in the dairy industry, but in agriculture and the food industry at large. We're super excited today to have a conversation about John's background, some of the work that he's doing today across a variety of verticals in the agri-food industry.

We'll dig into some conversation specifically about climate smart agri-food systems. But before we do that, John, I'd love to turn the floor over to you and welcome you and ask you to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background and what you're up to these days.

Dr. John Goeser

Thank you for the opportunity to join you and to hopefully engage with new folks I haven't yet had the humbling opportunity to meet in the industry. We're talking about the small world that we operate in, yet it's quite large meeting new people every day.

I'm a product of agriculture. I didn't necessarily grow up on a farm, on a dairy farm, although I've been immersed in agriculture dating back to the time I could walk in on my late grandparents' dairy farm. I'm walking in my late dad's footsteps. My dad was a dairy business owner alongside his two brothers, and then prior to that was a dairy business consultant, a nutritionist. He passed several years ago unexpectedly, but big shoes to fill, looking to improve profitability of ag businesses in any ways that I can, connect good people, and more recently, getting into sustainability work, as I expect we'll talk about.

I carry a few different professional roles. Before I mention that, I just want to comment I'm a dad to a nine and a 11-year-old. That comes first and foremost with my wife and family. But I work with Rock River Laboratory in agricultural testing. I oversee the animal nutrition work there with a team that now has, and I have the opportunity to support 50 plus locations throughout the world that are participating in agricultural analysis, primarily feed stuff analysis, but we're getting into some soil and agronomic analyses across those areas as well, then also getting into some measurement related to sustainability metrics.

Outside of that, I'm an adjunct assistant professor, volunteer a little bit of time in service with the University of Wisconsin in the Animal and Dairy Science Department. I have been contributing to classes, invited lectures, serving as a committee member on graduate student committees, doing a little bit of work there. Then over the last five to 10 years, have started a private consulting business in conjunction with two of my grad school advisors and some other folks, Cows Agree Consulting. I'm the founder of that group and do a fair bit of work consulting and advising different agribusinesses and potentially helping some dairies in an executive level as well.

Jarrod Sutton

Terrific. A lot of good friends at the University of Wisconsin. Great to connect with another one. The way you described nutrients and the feed stuffs, and now you're crossing over further, I guess I would call it upstream with soil health as an example, how did that come to be? Is this a market-driven need? "Hey, let's explore this a little bit further". Is it based on technology and scientific discoveries that have presented more questions and more opportunities, a combination of things? How did you get to this point?

Dr. John Goeser

That's a loaded question. Think about a dam breaking that's got an entire lake of water, and that water needs to find some path or multiple paths to end up flowing downstream, wherever that might be. There is a mammoth demand for, I would say, more climate friendly solutions, including food. At the same time, there's demand to continue improving and seeking efficiencies throughout the agricultural supply chain, ending with, in my world, primarily a gallon of milk, or yogurt, or maybe some butter on that shelf, and the storefront, or in the freezer in the case of ice cream, or beef. I do a little bit of work in the beef sector as well.

I've been blessed to associate with different thought leaders in different areas that are contributing to both climate smart solutions and technologies. But I've really, I think, created a little bit of a foundation for myself and networked with a lot of thought leaders on just day-to-day tools and technologies that have improved the profitability through efficiency gains in the agribusiness world and supply chain.

Jarrod Sutton

It's interesting. You think about how data has led to better information to make strategic decisions and business decisions. The way that in agriculture, agri-food, we typically define sustainability is through efficiency gains. It's really a terrific marriage when the two converge, where we can actually save a bit of money and promote the fact that it is, in fact, a sustainable or responsible production, and we continue to improve. I think that's just wired in our industry's DNA.

As I mentioned in the question, when you have that data and those scientific discoveries that make good research oftentimes prompts opportunities for additional research, additional questions to probe a bit deeper. It feels like the agri-food industry at large is thinking about these things differently and maybe more collaboratively than they ever have before. Is that how you're seeing it? Are you feeling that? Are those the signals you're getting from downstream, especially?

Dr. John Goeser

Yeah. The folks such as yourself and your team have been, I think, doing a great job in bridging gaps between different thought leaders. If I just think of this week as a microcosm of the agribusiness and agri-food world, there are groups and individuals with wide-ranging expertise.

For example, yesterday morning, I talked with a grain farmer, crop producer, a grower. I talked with a start-up organization out of Southern California with expertise in microbiology, bioengineering. I spoke with another organization that has some basis in feed storage, but with the intent on providing a higher quality grain to end users. That was just three of the probably 10 to 15 folks that I engaged with yesterday. All of those folks are interested in working towards efficiencies and improvements in sustainability.

I think efficiencies can be defined as economic, and then sustainability, it can be also defined as economic as well as environmental. Just referencing back to the crop farmer I spoke with before, and really what's at the root of a lot of the forward movement we're seeing in the United States and domestically, and then the draw to the United States from, or that I see with other countries seeking to learn from us and following our footsteps or our wake. The crop farmer told me that as he looked at his books over the last few years, thinking as a businessman, they're operating on around 3% margin. That resonated with me because I know having worked alongside my father, been immersed in the dairy books, especially after his death, and we had to unfortunately work through the dissolution of his shares in that LLC, they're operating on similar margins from a percentile standpoint.

We don't have the margins we did, say, 20 years ago when we could get away maybe with some inefficiency and still have enough money at the end of the month, the end of the year, and pay ourselves a little bit. We're chasing another 10th to a half unit of margin opportunity. At the same time, the way that we get those is through gains in nutrient and use efficiency, whether it's at the soil, when we think about crops being maybe 30 to 40% efficient with every unit of end that is applied earlier in the year, and hopefully that ends up in that crop and subsequently grain, or if we think about nutrient efficiency through dairy or beef cattle, we have the same efficiency as 30 to 40%.

I often talk to producer groups, for example, that we're talking about improvements and ways that we can get a little bit more with each mouthful of feed. The average dairy cow, she turns about 60 to 70% of the nutrients in the diet into some digestible energy or metabolizable protein. A gain of one percentage unit is going to prove very valuable in terms of dollars left at the end of the day.

At the same time, those are carbon and nitrogen units that are not ending up in excretion and would be an environmental concern. There are separate streams. Coming back to my dam analogy, I believe that the water behind the dam, if you will, is the forward movement of agriculture and agribusinesses within the agri-food supply chain. We are working down multiple streams, but toward the end goal of all the water coming back together toward economic and environmental sustainability of our agribusinesses.

Jarrod Sutton

That is fascinating. The dairy cow is an amazing biological being. The production of dairy goods in this country is, I would say, arguably the best in the world. I'd love to hear if we zoom out a bit further for those in our audience that buy their milk at the grocery store and may not have a good understanding of what happens, and all the steps in the process before that. Zoom out and give us an overview of the dairy cow, a life leading up to and its production of milk.

Dr. John Goeser

The question is analogous to, I think, back to graduate school, and I think probably many of our listeners haven't gone through the pain of graduate school, and I don't know that I would recommend it. But in my preliminary examination, and think of this like a root canal, but when you're in an academic setting, Dr. Lou Armentano, who was on my graduate, my PhD committee, he asked a question along the lines of what you just did, "Describe the food moving through a dairy cow".

If I talk about a dairy cow, today's dairy cows are incredible creatures. I think at times there are some questions as to what we are doing within our family-held businesses in terms of animal health, well-being, etc. But in my 30 plus years of working alongside and on dairy farms, the cows are essentially living on beaches. They're comfortable as all get out. They are fed a well-balanced and nutritious meal day in, day out. In fact, I'm a fairly fit guy, Jarrod. You appear to be the same. We haven't met in person, but you seem like you're carrying yourself pretty well, but I don't have a clue necessarily what my caloric intake is.

I know that my basal metabolic rate, and this is getting a little bit into the nutrition geek discussion, but if I think like a dietitian, my basal metabolic rate is around 2,000 calories. But in terms of what my expenditure beyond that is, I don't know. I have no idea what my protein intake is, my carbohydrate intake. It's a completely different case with a dairy cow or beef cattle.

Our producers, our family businesses, in most cases, they know down to, I would say, a one or two percentage unit what the nutrient intake is for those dairy cows. They're fed this nutritious meal day in, day out, provided sometimes two and three meals a day just to keep the cows and cattle as happy as can be.

Then that food is also very different from our food, in that maybe the nutrient profile is similar in terms of protein and carbohydrates, but the carbohydrates are different. The carbohydrates are different because cows are able to turn fibrous material, fibrous food, into protein, into lactose, in the case of milk or yogurt. It's a wonderful bioconversion of nutrients and energy that if you or I would consume, it wouldn't go very well.

I've tasted some of the cow food at times, and one, it doesn't taste good, and two, I'm not able to do anything with it as a human. However, cows are able to turn this otherwise unusable, in a lot of cases, some of this stuff would end up in landfills. They're able to convert that into usable milk and animal protein and a nutritious product.

The supply chain is very diverse. There's a lot of things I don't know about in life, and my wife can certainly echo that, my shortcomings and gaps in terms of knowledge. The supply chain in terms of what happens with milk or when beef cattle are heading into the supply chain for processing. I don't know a whole lot about what takes place there. However, there is an end product that ends up on our shelves in milk, and butter, and meat, and yogurt, that is extremely nutritious, high quality. Also, our consumers, they end up with a very consistent product, which is partly due to the very consistent diets and environment that our cows and cattle are housed and managed in day in, day out. It's just a wonderful, wonderful system to be a part of.

We have, because of what we were talking about before, chasing these efficiencies. We've seen a little bit larger farms today. We work in a little bit larger farms today with maybe more animals on a farm than we did many years ago. However, that has led to gains in efficiencies in many different ways, including with improvements in sustainability. We are more conscious of our environmental footprint. We're doing an excellent job and there are always going to be some nutrients and perhaps some emissions that we can't avoid. However, we're doing a wonderful job in better managing those than we ever have before, to minimize our environmental footprint for each unit or each gallon of milk produced or each pound of butter produced or gallon of ice cream.

Jarrod Sutton

Pretty awesome, man. I love the way you talked about the razor-thin margins at 3% and the need for continued efficiency. As a producer, that's what we do. We focus on that bottom line, and where can we realize those gains? Yet with technology, agriculturalists have always been stewards. Stewards of land, stewards of the livestock or the animals, as you just described. You're compensated or rewarded based on the animal's outputs. Because animals can't talk, you measure its productivity by its outputs. How are they producing milk in particular?

All of the things you just described with technology helping us being able to improve the care of those animals and thus improve the outputs of those animals at the same time, while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact, is just an amazing credit and something to celebrate for our industry that, unfortunately, a lot of folks just don't know about. It's fun to be able to hear you articulate it with such specificity to celebrate that. Then think about in the grocery store, there's a dairy section. There's a big set of goods inside of your normal grocery store today, and dairy has its full entire section all coming, at least the root source, from these cows.

Where do you see innovation heading, I think we'll stick with the dairy industry, as you continue to gather more data as you're working with the farmers, and you have visibility to other players in the value chain? Tremendous advancements in the last three years, in the last five to 10 years, where do you see us heading in the next couple of years? Some of the opportunities that you have some exposure to that you're excited about.

Dr. John Goeser

Or even in the last three months. Just the advancements that I've been exposed to or the opportunities perhaps on the horizon in the last three months. The dairy industry ebbs and flows in terms of profitability. On average, we might average around three to 5% margin, but there are periods of time where we do quite well, and there are periods of time where our dairy producers are not compensated anywhere close to the cost of what it requires to produce a gallon of milk. We're in a period of time where the forecasts, the margin projections out in the next 12 to 18 months look pretty good. I'm sensing an uptick, and I think that's probably justifying some of the advances, or discussion of advancements, that I reference over the last few weeks and few months.

I work in animal nutrition. I work a little bit in management. I've got a background in agronomy and plant breeding, so I tend to cross bridges between agronomists, plant breeders, and then animal science and farms and managers. But then I've also I've grown a bit of a network. I serve on a few advisory boards in the tech space, and I've got a couple or a joint venture that I'm a part of. As we think about different technologies, I need to come back to that 3% margin, but also the gains to be made in using nutrients more efficiently.

The average dairy cow, as I mentioned before, she is able to convert about 65% of the nutrients in her diet into digestible nutrients, and she's able to absorb those. If we can capture a one or two unit gain in digestion or nutrient use, that has big ramifications, again, in economic and environmental sustainability. The paths toward those gains are rooted in feed ingredients and technologies, but also in novel innovations, such as providing a more consistent plan of nutrition day in, day out.

There are different technologies out there, such as diet optimization tools. I referenced earlier that I don't know what my nutrient intake is, but we know on average what a cow's nutrient intake is. There's a new venture that I've helped get off the ground where we are actually analyzing the nutrient supply in all of the feeds that are blended into a cow's diet or a ration, as it's sometimes otherwise called, and then optimizing that diet day in, day out. For those of you out there that maybe have a little bit of experience, we all drive cars, and so electric cars are a little bit more common today than they were, say, five, 10 years ago.

But if we think back 20 years, or 30 years at this point, we used to have carburetor engines in cars. We would convert gasoline into energy, and we would drive our cars around, and the carburetor would mix the air and the fuel. The carburetors would need to be tuned, which was an artistic approach in some cases where you would change some dials until the engine was running well.

Then we converted to electronic fuel injection in the mid to late '80s, and early '90s, and we recognized great gains in fuel conversion efficiency, more horsepower, we're able to go longer on the same amount of fuel. There are some technologies out there where we're making that analogous transition in animal nutrition, for example, where we're analyzing the nutritional profile of feed ingredients and then integrating that information within a daily diet optimization tool to provide a more consistent plan of nutrition.

Dairy cows and beef cattle are creatures of consistency. The more consistent the nutrient and food supply put in front of them each day, the more efficient they can be. A technology such as that is anecdotally helping us gain another one or two units of nutrient use efficiency density, and ultimately helping us both reduce our carbon or nitrogen footprint and improve the profitability of that business.

That would be one technology. Another way that, it's not necessarily a technology per se, but you referenced data before. Dairy farmers are very similar to convenience stores, or perhaps your grocers, or for example, a large retailer in that we have data on many different aspects of our business. However, where the ag industry and our producers stand to be a little bit better, is aggregating that data into what is called a data lake for the data scientists out there, where we pool all sorts of different information together.

Think about this, if you're looking, for me, if I want to know what my net worth is, well, I need to account for what's in my cheque book, what's in my savings account, my investment accounts, and then put that all into one spot, so I can sum up my debts and my assets and see how much money do I have. That's analogous to a lot of different data tables that dairy producers have.

Then to compare and contrast, let's say, a convenience store. Convenience stores and some larger retailers have been able to utilize artificial intelligence to learn about consumer trends. I think about a story that I've heard, for example, a large retailer that I think you would all recognize the name, but they will offer meat at a discounted price because what they've found is that if a consumer comes in to the store, purchases meat, they are likely to buy a lot of other higher margin goods after they get that consumer in the store.

How did they learn that? They were able to look at their sales records, and they needed to pull data from, say, meat sales and look at that alongside, I don't know, I'll make this up, toiletries, and maybe sporting goods, or who knows, whatever else, and then look at what drove higher margins. The way they were able to do that was by pooling all of this data and getting it in one spot and then unleashing software engineers and data scientists and applying machine learning models to determine what solution made sense.

Right now, our dairy producers and beef producers, they've got great data. We've got new sensors coming online, new technologies that are measuring different things, for example, how active a cow is, or how a cow is eating in a given day. But that information needs to be aggregated and pulled into a data lake so that we can unleash some of the incredible power that AI and machine learning or other modeling potential or methods may be able to help us uncover new relationships that we never knew about before.

That's another area that I'm really excited about in the foreseeable future, because there are some groups that are beginning to successfully aggregate the data from the different data tables, different sources on farms, so that we can learn about new relationships and make better decisions into the future, and to come back and gain that little bit of efficiency that I keep hitting on.

Jarrod Sutton

Great analogies. I'm an Indianapolis 500 geek, so we still have carb day, but we haven't had carburetors in those cars since to your point. You have a whole generation that's grown up without a carburetor, and so very similar. Those efficiencies realized in the speed that's come with that, pretty awesome. Similarly, with the dairy cow, and I like how you were talking about category management, so when you've got this 20 or 40 or 80 or 100,000 skews in a retail supermarket or retail super center. You have to be able to look at that holistically in order to discover where you can make those trade-offs to get people in the store as you increase traffic with these prices for those destination items.

Then while you got them there, you have the opportunity to sell some other products that maybe have a higher margin. Really smart strategic planning that's all based on data collection and information. It's early days as it relates to AI and machine learning. When we're pouring a lot into that space at Purdue, I know Wisconsin and other universities are as well, many thought leaders around the world, certainly in our industry.

It's early days, but the potential is super exciting. How do you see this unfolding? In your mind, when you've got AI, I use ChatGPT all the time to help me say what I want to say, and maybe sometimes say it better. That's maybe a fraction of a percent of the potential and horsepower inside of AI engines today. I cannot wait to see how we realize additional efficiencies and the gains that come from harnessing that power for our industry. How do you see that playing out? What have you been exposed to, and how do you see that potentially becoming a real tool for our farmers?

Dr. John Goeser

With my Rock River Laboratory role and the group that I have the opportunity to support there, we have the pleasure of having a pretty robust data table in feed analyses and different nutritional information. We've tried out some new models at Rock River Laboratory, and we've been able to come up with some models to explain things that I never thought we would be able to. I won't get into them in detail because I think that probably the details would be lost. It wouldn't be valuable.

Jarrod Sutton

But AI and machine learning methods and models have been able to uncover new insights just within nutritional analyses. If you think about your nutrition facts on maybe a gallon of milk or butter, and I won't talk about candy or soda. We don't need any of that stuff. But the nutrition and nutrient inputs, my day job at the Rock River Laboratory family, we analyze those nutrients in different feed stuffs. But we also have to understand what kind of nutrient digesting potential there is in dairy cows.

AI and machine learning built models have been able to uncover new insights to predict and understand the nutrient digestion potential in feed stuffs which, when we have a better understanding then of the nutrient digestion potential, which would be analogous to, if I think about just refined flour versus whole wheat flour, what's the difference between those in human nutrition? Whole wheat flour is going to be just a little bit less digestible. It's not going to be as rapidly degraded in our digestive track. We tend to side with whole grains. There's just maybe a little bit less impact on our wasteland with a whole grain source relative to a highly refined flour, if you will.

Dr. John Goeser

Not saying one's good or bad, it's just they're a little bit different. AI and machine learning have been fascinating what they've been able to uncover just within feed stuff and nutrient analyses, making correlations and models for our nutritionists and for our dairy producers to utilize and employ and make better decisions. It's just one example.

Jarrod Sutton

A great one, John. We had Angela Anderson from Starbucks on a podcast, and really great conversation with Angela about Starbucks' commitment to continue to improve their supply chains' carbon footprint, and they put their money where their mouth is. I would encourage our listeners to go back and find that episode to listen to some specific examples of how Starbucks is investing money alongside dairy producers to experiment with some new technologies including digesters and other upstream input production practices to, again, continue to reduce the carbon footprint.

That's one example of, I know a ton of activity in this space, given your unique role in the various pieces and sectors of the value chain that you have exposure to, what are you hearing from downstream? I think about the consumer, and that's a big, broad term, of course. What are you guys hearing from some of the brands? What are they looking to you, whether it's at the university, or at Cows Agree, whoever it may be, what are you all hearing from customers?

Dr. John Goeser

What I'm conclusively hearing, and I'm passing along to dairy producers, I might have some questions. In fact, they all have questions, a lot of questions about what is the momentum, what is the longevity, perhaps, of the sustainability push. My comment to our dairy industry and our producers is that this initiative and desire for more sustainably sourced meat, milk, animal protein products is not going away.

I believe it is being driven by the consumer, and I'm not here to tell a consumer what they want. I'm here to listen and respond, and I think we, as an industry, need to respond and be receptive to what producers are looking for. There are a wealth of different technologies out there that we can employ and utilize to provide the consumer what they're looking for. I believe consumers, whether it be at a pizza shop, Mom and Pop Pizza Shop, or a larger pizza chain, or a Starbucks, or at the grocery store or the convenience store, they're telling us what they want by way of their trends. Then our consumer packaged goods, organizations or milk processors upstream from them are responding to those consumer demands.

In some cases, there are involuntary pressures at play where there are scope one, two, three, emission reporting requirements, or perhaps some other regulatory requirements, not in the United States, but internationally. That's another source of demand, if you want to think about it like that, a drive for some of our decision makers or the clients of our milk and meat produce.

However, it's a fascinating time, and one of my selfish goals is to bring forth and help advance technologies that will meet the needs and demands of the consumer, and at the same time, add another penny or two to the bottom line for the producers of these commodities. There are innovative technologies and nutritional solutions on the horizon that are going to do just that, and everybody wins. Everybody wins.

Jarrod Sutton

That sounds like a pretty great world. You and I, I think that's why we hit it off so well from the beginning, we're kindred spirits, share that same passion, and it's very doable. I love the innovation that we're seeing, and I love the digital transparency shrinking of our value chain, where you have downstream partners that have the ability to talk with farmers, and you have farmers who are, I would say, the original innovators never, ever... How do I say this? Satisfied with status quo. Always looking for ways to do things.

I grew up on a farm and in the industry just as you did, and so that's just ingrained in our DNA from the very beginning. Again, I agree, a super exciting time. When you think about farmer adoption, I've been to a lot of conferences, and I would say the theme for me, a consistent takeaway from 2024, has been a desire to increase farmer adoption for technology. So call it ag-tech, whatever you want to call it. There's a gap there still. Obviously, there's a tremendous amount of technology that is being adopted, and good things are happening as a result of that.

But I've seen a lot of really good ideas and concepts fall in the roadside ditch because they just didn't understand. They don't understand how to talk farm, and they don't understand the business of farming. And that's okay. It's a super sophisticated industry, and less than 2% of our population is involved in it. Listeners, if you have a chance, thank a farmer. But as you think about farmer adoption, John, what's your to a start-up to, I got a solution. I know exactly what the problem is. How should I approach farmers or producers to start to socialize this idea?

Dr. John Goeser

Speaking the producer or the farmer language, that's a big one. There's a tribal language, if you will, in agriculture that we need to not be fluent in necessarily, however, have a connection to or being able to convey so that maybe some new innovations or technologies are a little less scary for the mainstream. But at the same time, there's the same, in my experience, product adoption lifecycle hurdles, where we have innovators and early adopters out there, agriculture producers that are willing to try anything, even an innovator, for example, willing to try anything, even at the expense of their business at times, because they want to be the first, or they want to find that new technology. There are those producers out there.

Then there are the early adopters that are right on the heels of them. Then there's this sizeable gap to the mainstream. In order to cross that bridge into the mainstream, we need to have a bit of a track record of success to demonstrate this isn't going to disrupt your business, because our agricultural producers, our farmers, are spread very thin. One, they don't have a whole lot of time to dedicate to exploration.

It's folks like myself and my consulting business, for example, that help to translate and help to move the knowledge or awareness along a little bit, do some farmer trials, gain some testimonials and some other work to then hopefully connect a little bit further with the mainstream so that we can help that product adoption toward 30 to 50%. There's a lot of groups that would love even one to 2% farmer adoption of a new technology.

But it is very difficult for the reasons that we're talking about here, including just being able to speak that farmer language and help convey what this technology can do. It took me, I'll think back to an experience I had in Australia. This was a couple of years out of graduate school. I flew down to Australia as a consultant. Here I was, I don't know, 26, 28 years old, something like that. It speaks to the question because I saw where these producers were at in Australia, and I was working with one that was milking a thousand cows. They were looked at as an innovator in Australia. They were forward-thinking, a little bit more like US systems.

I looked at what they were doing, and I made some recommendations, and I did a couple trips down. But ultimately, I failed, because my expectations were so far apart from where their expectations were. I had an opportunity to be a lot better in my communication and leading them along the process and figuring out where they were at and then moving them forward, say 10 feet instead of a mile, in adopting the practices that I was looking for them to adopt. That was pivotal for me in my career because we need to understand where producers are at, whether they are innovators or part of the mainstream, and then help them take that next step forward. We can't necessarily go in with a concept that we think in five years, maybe the norm and can get us another unit or two of efficiency. But we need to find the innovators and earlier adopters, win them over so that we can then move toward and demonstrate efficacy safety of different technologies or nutritional strategies that then the mainstream will be more willing to adopt.

Jarrod Sutton

That's brilliant, man. That tribal language, as you described, it's so real, and you really don't understand it if you haven't had the exposure to it. But once you get the exposure to it, you really develop an appreciation for it. Farmer to farmer influence is incredibly impactful. To your point of a pilot project and having those testimonials, have a little bit of patience, get a few of those under your belt, and then you can really move to scale because those farmers become real champions and farmers trust farmers. John, I got-.

Dr. John Goeser

Can I-.

Jarrod Sutton

Yeah, go ahead.

Dr. John Goeser

I need to jump in and emphasize that point, farmers trusting farmers, farmers speaking to farmers, because that's a big one in terms of adopting new technologies. I can speak to that with a story just in the last 24 hours.

There's one of my clients that has been seeking to gain a foothold in the dairy industry with a new technology and approach in connecting higher quality feed to end users. For two years, they've been seeking to gain a little bit of an acceptance, hosting a whole bunch of meetings, burning through capital, and just not with a whole lot in product sales. But we got in the last six months one producer to do a pilot trial. Then after we had that information in hand from a real farm, real dairy in Nevada, and show that to a couple of other dairy farms, the engagement was night and day different.

The dairy producers looked at that real information, and were much more receptive and responsive to talking about and even trying out the technology, than they were over the prior two years. I said to my client, "This is what I've seen we need. We need this information so that we have that added buy-in and trust." Just to emphasize that point.

Jarrod Sutton

Yeah, that's terrific. Farmers are competitive, but they're also quick to share and demonstrate how they did what to improve either efficiencies as we've talked about or potential outputs as well. I think, again, that's what makes it very special. We're just passionate about the industry for good reason, in my opinion. John, how do we get a hold of you? If the listeners got an idea, and they want to talk to somebody that knows the dairy industry and agriculture at large, how do they talk to you? How do they get a hold of you?

Dr. John Goeser

I'd love to help you out. I'm here, and I exist on this planet to make connections between thought leaders, in different areas, different disciplines. If we can carry on this discussion beyond today's podcast or little clips that may be out there, you can reach me at john@cowsagree.com. That's that tribal language, that Cows Agree. You might not understand that, but reach out to me and I can help you understand what that Cows Agree means. But john@cowsagree.com, or it might be a little bit easier to find me on LinkedIn. Go ahead and look me up, J-O-H-N G-O-E-S-E-R, spelled like Goeser, John Goeser on LinkedIn. I've got a small X following @johngoeser, so I would appreciate some engagement there, but I don't think anybody cares what I have to say on X. It seems to be as LinkedIn has been a little bit more popular as far as dialog.

Jarrod Sutton

Good. John, thank you for that. We'll boost and spread the awareness. It's just a pleasure to talk with you, and I know we'll be talking with you again very soon. But thanks for your time today. Thanks for sharing your unique perspective, but a valuable one at that.

Dr. John Goeser

Really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Jarrod, and to the DIAL team and Purdue for affording me this platform and opportunity to connect with more folks.

Jarrod Sutton

All right, everybody. That brings it to a close today. We'll talk to you next time. Thanks for tuning in.

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