What if every plant was a sensor? with Gary Schaefer

0:03Gary Schaefer: Hello and welcome to AgTech So What? Brought to you by Tenacious Ventures. I'm Maddie Mitchell, in for Sarah Nolett. What if crops could tell you they were sick before you could see it? That's AgTech's startup Inner Plant's vision for agriculture. And this isn't some 10 or 15 year away vision. We're looking to bring this to market within the next four to five years so that farmers can even unlock greater value. That's Gary Schaefer. Gary leads the commercial organisation at Innerplant, a company developing plants that can communicate when they're under stress. By engineering crops to emit a fluorescent signal when they detect specific diseases, Innerplant is turning the plant itself into a sensor, potentially giving farmers access to a completely new level of real-time information about what is happening in their fields.

0:52Gary Schaefer: And they've raised over US$50 million to do it. The company's first commercial product, Crop Voice, uses strategically placed sentinel plants to detect fungal disease in soybeans and provide farmers with localised disease risk and alerts. The longer term vision is much bigger, a future where every plant could effectively become a sensor. But developing the technology is only part of the challenge. How do you get farmers to trust something they've never used before? How do you turn a breakthrough in plant science into a product that actually fits into the way farmers work? So let's meet Gary. I'm Gary Schaefer.

1:27I lead our commercial organization here at Interplants. I grew up more in the specialty farming area of the U.S. in a place in Florida where when I grew up a lot of oranges, strawberry production was around me and always had a bit of a connection to agriculture given the communities that I lived in. From school I went into row crop production agriculture in the Midwest. And so primarily have worked most of my career in corn and soybean production agriculture in the U.S., but also have had a number of global roles where I've gotten to see large-scale production agriculture across the world. I've been able to see a lot of different innovations come to the markets, and I have never been so excited as to what we're doing here at Interplant, as this is just revolutionary technology that I was really excited to be a part of.

2:16All right.

2:17Gary Schaefer: Thanks, Gary. So yeah, it sounds like you started off a little bit more on the production side of things. Did you have that interest in ag tech from the beginning? And did you expect to be working in ag tech now? I was, from a production standpoint, not like an actual farmer. I've never actually farmed. I've just had a passion for farming. I've sort of most of my career on the input side of the business. So developing seed technology solutions, as well as new small molecules, chemical inputs that farmers use quite broadly, both bringing those to market and developing future ones. But I've always had a passion for ag tech.

2:53I've always been interested in understanding how we can push the boundaries. But it's a big challenge. Getting farmers to adopt technology over hundreds and hundreds of millions of acres in this world as we look at where all these crops are grown and being able to do that efficiently, effectively, and in a meaningful way for farmers is also quite a challenge and something that appeals to me. So, but yeah, it's always been something I've kind of been passionate about, wanted to be involved in.

3:20Gary Schaefer: So you mentioned before about how excited you were about what's happening at Interplant. Interplant, the company described it as giving crops a voice. And so for people hearing that for the first time, what does that actually mean? And why are you considering it such a fundamentally different source of agricultural data? Yeah. So what we do at Interplant is we build plants and engineer plants to communicate to us within hours of a stress infecting them or affecting them. So in the case of, you know, fungal diseases, we have engineered these plants to identify specific diseases and to be able to emit a fluorescent light to us within hours of their infection and before symptoms will ever be visible.

4:09And so when you have this level of information, real-time data, it is an absolute game changer as to how it can help a farmer better manage their crops.

4:21Gary Schaefer: When I first came across it, I was like, that is a very cool sort of rethink of one of the tools that's really common to use. I used to be a plant scientist. I was using fluorescent proteins in the lab. And I think it's a really neat idea to think about how they can actually be used in an agricultural setting. Yeah. And it's, you know, the concept of what we, how we have used this, it's a concept that's been used across industries, you know, previously, but the application of that, the ability to see this, you know, from as far away as space, from drones, from tractors, being able to design these plants to be able to do this has really been a big breakthrough.

5:00Gary Schaefer: Yeah, I can imagine. One of the big shifts in agriculture that we're seeing at the moment is this moving away from maximizing yield to maximizing efficiency. So how do you see Interplant fitting into this transition? Where I see Interplant going is to continue to utilize single plant sensors and plant level information to just be more precise with everything we do. There is a lot agronomically that is going to change with the technology that we're bringing to market. I believe that technology, along with the convergence of it, along with other technologies and capabilities that those of which we see in the OEM space, we see sea and spray tractors that today are delivering more precision around weed control.

5:46We're seeing a lot of detection with the introduction of drones across a lot of large scale production agriculture and the impact that's having. And so when we're able to fit these inner plant, inner soy, inner corn seeds onto a farmer's field, it's going to give them a level of granularity and vision that they've just never had. And fortunately, I believe that there's a lot of other technologies that are going to allow farmers to take action because of that insight. And I think a lot of that is we see a lot more specificity around not just if we should spray something, but what we should spray.

6:24And oftentimes, I think farmers are left to guess as to what is infecting a plant. They may not need to throw the kitchen sink at it. They may need to just treat an area of a field and kind of a buffer of that infected area. But I think when you have plant level data and every individual plant is a sensor, the amount of information we'll have will truly unlock, I think, what are a lot of other great capabilities that farmers have today that have been a step change to that efficiency maximization versus the yield maximization.

7:00Gary Schaefer: Maybe just step through a bit like the stages, because my understanding is you've got this world-first soybean fungal detection in four states in the US. And then you were sort of talking too about having each plant as a sensor. My understanding is also that like at the moment, it's a bit more about having sentinel plants and then the ultimate goal is to get to every plant. So Maddie, well, our first product is a, we call this Inner Soy Fungal. So the company is Inner plant. Crop voice is the product. Crop voice is powered by inner soy fungal. And so inner soy fungal is a soybean plant that we have engineered to identify specific diseases that affect soybean plants.

7:40And what we do is we go and we place, think of a cell phone tower network. We go and place a cell phone tower network approach, so sentinel plots or blocks of seeds all over an area or region. We'd place these to be very local, hyper-local to farmers' fields. We monitor and collect the data off of those specific fields. We collect other information from the surrounding area, and we provide this information to farmers so that they can better time and better know what is actually happening in their local area. Crop-the-weiss in and of itself is just a big step change for how we can manage disease in soybeans today.

8:27We are in the process of seeking these global regulatory approvals. This technology will be available for farmers in every seed on every acre they plant. And this isn't some 10 or 15 year away vision. we're looking to bring this to market within the next four to five years so that farmers can even unlock greater value.

8:50Gary Schaefer: Yeah I'd like to talk a little bit more about the grower experience now. In particular one thing that stands out is your commercial approach where you've deliberately focused on learning with a relatively small group of growers rather than expanding rapidly to begin with. Could you explain a bit more about the thinking behind that strategy whether you still think it's the right strategy and what surprised you most about those early pharma partnerships? Yeah, I think it's quite contrary, especially when you work in the startup space. There's just always this rush to revenue and the rush to revenue, I think, can create quite a few missteps because our focus is on optimizing for something that maybe in many ways is in conflict with delivering the best product experience.

9:36So what we've really set out to do at Interplant, and we started in very small, I mean, county level within a couple states and had just several key networks. We did that because we wanted to be so close to the product. There's never been a product like this in agriculture, and there's just a lot of learning. So even for someone like myself, who has a lot of experience in working with retail partners and the channels that bring inputs to market and even farmers, the innovation in and of itself is tremendous, but that innovation would flop if we misstep on the go-to-market approach and how we deliver the product.

10:17So we really started out small and our mission has always been, we will grow our network. The Crop Voice Network will continue to grow each year as our ability to service that appropriately is also there. We've had a lot of learn from doing this. And one that in particular probably stands out the most is just delivery. Everybody has an app. Farmers are inundated with apps. I mean, we spent a lot of time just talking to farmers. And what we quickly found is they're apped out and email is is not real timely and they like text messages more so than phone calls. And so we built that capability. Like if this is what they want, let's deliver this via text message.

11:01So we set up our ability to deliver a lot of our insights early on and we've expanded it to other modalities in which we deliver them, but it's really, it was text-based and that was a key learning from just listening and talking to farmers early on. But then what we also found was the text messages, they wanted a more frequently. So they like the product, but they're, Hey, we want that scouting report. We want those scouting reports to come more frequently. Like, can we do this? And we're like, well, yeah, sure. Like we didn't think you'd want them this frequent. And so, you know, that was another change by just being close to the farmer, being close to our resale partners that we're able to implement.

11:40And there's a lot of little things like that, that you just don't think of when you're designing a product, you really just focus on your technology and what it can do. And like, well, everybody should have this everywhere without just being so hyper-focused so that we can actually hear how the product experience was. I feel like we would have missed quite a few things.

12:00Gary Schaefer: That's an interesting example. I remember last time we spoke, actually, you were saying that you were sending out these reports by text bi-weekly, but then you realized you're starting to get phone calls a day or two before the report was meant to come out going, oh, can you just give me a heads up about what's in the report. And like, I mean, it wasn't just this like huge breakthrough, but like, if you think about it, it makes sense. Like these farmers, they don't know what the weather's going to be in three days and they have, you know, should I go spray? Do I need to be spraying? I probably only have two days to do it.

12:29Can you give me a heads up so I can prepare? I got to go buy my chemical or my micronutrients. Yeah. So, I mean, it made really good sense, you know, when you really thought about it, but just little detail like that, that you, you really have to think through and get right.

12:44Gary Schaefer: What did that actually mean for you as a team to adjust to that kind of feedback on the fly or, you know, at relatively short notice? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of stories for people that work at startups and they're always, you know, it's all hands on deck. Everyone does a lot of different jobs. I think what I've kind of learned is you have to believe in the vision of what you're doing and the impact that it can have. And if you have that passion and everyone gets singularly focused on the customer and truly understands the customer, the strategic agility it takes to make these types of changes is something that everybody can rally behind.

13:23And I think it's something that Interplant, we have really strived to focus on, which is just very quick feedback loops and staying focused at the customer level, trusting each other. So our product team, trusting our sales team, our agronomy team and sales team, having that trust, our customer success team being the voice of the farmer and seasoned to our organization, just having a lot of different touch points to understand the customer. I mean, Maddie, as you know, it's a challenge to do that because it's not natural for sometimes for scientists to really think about the commercial product at the farmer level.

14:01And why do some of these things impact me? I'm just building this great technology. And especially in a startup, because startups go through several phases where you're developing technology, you're thinking about the technology. Maybe it's not quite proven. Then you have a breakthrough. We have another breakthrough. Now we're starting to kind of develop it in the field and it looks like we may have something. And there can be this period of time that it takes to really get to when you go commercial. But the crossing that chasm, as I think of it, from development, field development, commercial development to a commercial product, that is a chasm.

14:40Once you flip that, that fundamentally will change an organization. And in our case, I think it changed it probably a lot faster than what most people would anticipate, because for the first time in the history of the world, we've commercialized a biotech trait in less than two years. The value of the data insights from CropVoice gives farmers tangible value today before it has to be planted on every acre. Yeah.

15:07Gary Schaefer: Agriculture is often described as a relationship business. And so when you're asking growers to trust genetically engineered sensor plants and this entirely new stream of data, how important is that trust compared to the technology itself? Yeah, it's so important. And I think that there's several elements to that, which is one, the technology in and of itself, like what is the believability of that? I think there's a second, which is, do I have a relationship with you locally? So there's a commerce side of this, and there's a technology side of this that I think you got to get on both right. And from a technology standpoint, I would say what I have experienced is farmers understand our technology far greater than any other audience that we talk about it with.

15:55And I can't tell you how many times I've shown farmers our plants and they're like, well, yeah, we've always known that the plants have the answers. This is not a surprise to us. And so I think fundamentally the technology, they understand the technology. It's very intuitive to them. They can see it. It's tangible. We have fields. We take people to them. The other part from a commerce perspective is working with the right channels who have relationships with farmers to bring the technology to them. We do not go around and think we're going to create this huge sales force and just go sell this direct to farmers.

16:32What we realize is that there are agronomic experts that are local, that have relationships with farmers and are going to provide farmers with recommendations based on our information that are key to that farmer's operation. And so a lot of those are the local retailers that service a lot of these farmers across many of their inputs. And so we have worked closely with retail partners to bring crop voice to farmers. And so we truly call it as we have a common customer, it's the farmer, we partner to bring this information to them. And I think when the farmer is able to see the technology and have conviction, wow, this is unlike anything I've ever seen.

17:14And oh, by the way, my agronomist at the local retail as a distributor of this is somebody who can bring this to me. And this is something that they can vouch for, they have seen work, it eases the ability for a farmer to onboard it.

17:29Gary Schaefer: Yeah. There's a bit of a curiosity one about just like, so there's the relationships like with the trusted advisors, but I'm also conscious that, you know, growers will often be talking to each other or looking over the fence. Are there any kind of examples of those kinds of connections? I mean, it's an interesting dynamic, right? So I think like the farming community, there's a lot of support locally for each other. But at the end of the day, also, I think there's an element of competitiveness between farmers that is very real. And so we come across a lot of interesting, you know, farmers who are, well, I'm going to get this information.

18:07And when my neighbor sees me out spraying and asked me what I'm doing, because I have that crop voice stuff, I'm going to tell him he's going to pay me a couple bucks an acre and I'll tell them. And so we hear it all. Now, does that really happen? I don't know. But yes, I mean, there's an element of this that's different, right? So I think a lot of times information, scouting is done. People trade notes. It's kind of understood what's happening. I think with Crop Voice, people realize like being a subscriber of Crop Voice, they get access to information that truly can give them a competitive advantage around timing, knowing what to spray, et cetera.

18:42You're right.

18:42Gary Schaefer: We've talked in general about getting that early warning, knowing maybe what to spray. I'm just curious whether there's any sort of example or case study that might be interesting to share about what that does look like on the ground. So what we provide in Crop Voice, farmers receive a weekly scouting report. And in this scouting report, this is communicating to them what the risk level is of a fungal infection happening. And so what's been interesting is to see different farmers' reaction about how they digest that information. This is an example from last year in Nebraska. This is an area that has a history of high white mold.

19:26We had a farmer that received the scouting report. It was about this exact same time last year, and it was a high risk. It was kind of the level, a threat level. So that farmer went out to two different fields, less than a mile apart from each other. Very similar conditions. We didn't know this till later after the season, so we were not part of the trial, but farmer went out to the fields and made an application when there was high risk. About 10 days later, we sent out a disease alert saying, hey guys, this is no longer high risk. We now have plants with a confirmed infection. you're not going to see the visual symptoms of this white mold for probably another three to five weeks.

20:12But here's what we're picking up. That same farmer went out again and sprayed the same field. So he has one field where he did nothing early. He had another field where he sprayed early, came back and sprayed again, you know, somewhere 10 to 14 days after the first application. He saw a 26 bushel yield increase from one field to another. And it's interesting because it really correlates strongly with a lot of data that we have been seeing through CropVoice over the last years, as well as national statistics. So in the U.S. alone, over$7 billion of yield loss to fungal infections in corn and soybeans every year.

20:53More than 70 % of applications are mistimed and misapplied, either not sprayed at all, sprayed too early, sprayed too late, or sprayed when they didn't even need to spray. And this is wild. We sprayed more acres today with fungicide as a percent of planted acres than we ever have. And a lot of these acres are getting applications with three-way products, three active ingredients in a tank, but we're losing more yield than we ever have. And a lot of it's all around mistiming the application. And I think we'll continue to see tremendous results that farmers have had with this technology when they can actually know when, if, what, and where to spray.

21:35Gary Schaefer: And so like that same farmer, I've talked with that farmer since. And he told me, he said, Gary, Cropvois is going to be the most expensive product I buy this year other than my seed and fertilizer. And I said, why? And he says, because it's got me thinking about all kinds of different agronomic remedies for some of the problems we're facing. So if I actually know when that infection is happening, what the infection is, it opens my mind to a number of different things I want to try. And we're going to be doing expansive trials across our farms this season. And they have the tools to measure, right?

22:10The sophistication of the combines and the ability to precisely spray and to measure that application against a recommendation, against what Crop Voice is saying. The farmers have the tools to do it these days. And I think it's a good thing that they are.

22:25Gary Schaefer: Yeah, I agree. So you've spent much of your career commercializing agricultural technologies of various types at companies like Syngenta and now in a plant. What have you learned or what else have you learned? I know we've spoken a bit already about what farmers actually need before they will adopt something completely new. So I think it has to be something that is implemented easily, that is not disruptive and requires a wholesale shift of how they farm. And if it does, I think the value has to be significant. So I think for a lot of products, we have to think about how do we fit into what farmers are already doing without requiring wholesale ecosystem shifts.

23:07I think the second thing is getting the value props right. There's so many products out there that are developed not properly. They're launched because there's so much pride in the technology and we just assume this is going to be phenomenal and farmers are going to be willing to pay. I think this is further heightened given the farm economy we're in today. And so I think we really have to truly understand when we're developing products, how to get the value to the farmer and to channel partners, right. Otherwise, I think we create a lot of conflict. And there can also, you know, there's just a lot of self-pride that I think folks have when they're developing products around how great and how big of a change it's going to have.

23:49And that may not be tangible to a farmer. And if it's not, it's going to be a huge barrier to adoption. Those are two of the big ones that I really see. I think the other one is just not taking for granted how important it is to be local and to have relationships with farmers and to invest in those. Yeah.

24:08Gary Schaefer: You also mentioned before about the kind of the chasm and the gap. What have you seen to be the biggest challenge in taking in a plant from that scientific innovation to a commercial product? I think the biggest challenge that we have had is awareness. How many times do you go on LinkedIn and you see some startup company CEO or VP of sales or salesperson or agronomist posting something great about what they're doing. The truth is, I don't think a lot of farmers are reading LinkedIn. And so getting and generating awareness for something new in agriculture, there's hundreds of thousands of farmers.

24:46And when you get to a local area, we don't have a phone book to just, these are all the farmers in the local area, feel free to go call them. I'm like, that doesn't exist. And so for me, it's awareness and it's the relationships on the ground. And it takes time, Maddie. And I don't believe there are any shortcuts to it. I really don't. I think there's that element probably in and of itself is so much harder to get right than I think many people would even realize. And the scale, right? So it's not like all of this is concentrated in a single valley and these are all the farmers that produce this.

25:22I mean, hundreds and hundreds of millions of acres and understanding all the different people in all of these local areas that are able to be a part of something like this. So for us, look at the U.S. Where do you start? It's extensive. There's no shortcuts. You have to get in the truck. You have to drive hours and hours and hours from community to community and meeting people and really doing your diligence to say, is this where we want to put our roots down? Is this where we want to start? Do I believe that the farmers in this area have a need for this? Do I believe that the retail partners have a willingness to sell this?

25:59And I just do not believe there are shortcuts and the scale of this is massive. Massive.

26:06Gary Schaefer: Yeah, for sure. You've also attracted investors like John Deere and partnership with companies like Syngenta. How important is that strategic investment compared with simply raising venture capital when you are working on building a platform like this? We've raised capital really from two primary groups. So as you mentioned, John Deere, one of those. And then the second one of those is actually farmers. Our last capital raise was led by some large farmers in North America. And that was really special as well. But maybe talk about both of those. So John Deere is just a very key partner for Interplan.

26:41I think what makes that relationship special is there's a shared vision around what this technology can do and that there's the ability for us not to just have a financial relationship, but a true partnership where we think about what is needed to bring this type of technology to market. Because what Interplant's building is not going to be a day where we just deliver these seeds and farmers have to figure out how to see them. We have to provide that to them. We also have to think about what do we provide farmers with agronomically? It's one thing to know you have an infection, but how do we create work plans?

27:18So the sum of the agronomy that comes from our plants and what is happening, the agronomic insight combined with the implement to take action on that agronomic insight, the sum of that is a work plan a farmer takes action on. And I think if you think about where John Deere is at in the space, you know, relative to what we are doing. They're a foundational partner for us to really bring all of this technology to farmers globally. So very, very important partnership from John Deere and much deeper than just a financial commitment from them. I think the second one, and more importantly, is farmers.

27:58The North Star has always remained the North Star for us. From the early days when Shelly founded the company to Amal, the vision has not changed. There has not been a material pivot one way or the other because of, you know, oh, this didn't really turn out how we thought. I attribute a lot of that to the willingness to listen and connect with farmers and spend time to go meet them where they're at and talk to them about the technology. And that led to farmers backing the company for our last raise. I don't know that it gets much more special than that. And when you have that level of support, I think it just shows like, hey, we want this.

28:37Like this is valuable. And going back to what I said earlier is we think about a huge hurdle to bring innovation to market is what is the change we're going to ask farmers to make to utilize this technology? Get that wrong and it will never see the light of day. And there's a lot of examples of it out there. But if you can actually talk to farmers and get farmers to tell you, this is how we see this working. This is how this can help me. I would like to see this and really get into those deep discussions.

29:07Gary Schaefer: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it's certainly something that we've been seeing in other companies too, the importance of the farmer backers. So when you look more broadly at ag tech investment, what are the kinds of characteristics that separate the companies that attract those long-term commercial partners from those that just remain interesting technology demonstrations? There's several ways to think about that. I think interest can be attracted because it's positive or it's negative. It can be because you have a shared vision or it could be a big threat, right? And so I think oftentimes when you look across the landscape, you see companies that attract quite a bit of strategic collaboration.

29:43I think it's oftentimes more of a defensive partnership of, are you going to invent something that we haven't and this is not going to be good for us? Versus finding partners that want you to succeed because what you're doing is complementary to the vision and strategy and how they see the world as well. So I think as a startup, it's very keen and important to really understand the people you're talking to, do they want you to succeed? Is the person that you're working with and thinking about this project and milestone payments, and this is going to be great, and investors down the road are going to want to see this and that we're tracking against it.

30:23But you got to ask yourself, is this the company that's wanting to partner with you? Do they really want that? Is that in their best interest? And I think if you ask yourself that question, I think you would find in this space right now today, there's probably more of that than probably what people would like to admit. And my belief is you got to be able to have a backbone and stand up and answer that question realistically because the long-term strategic success of your company is going to depend on it. Because if you do find the partners that are truly foundational with the shared vision, the complementary strategies, the synergy of both of those efforts of what a startup needs from a partner like that early on is so critical to the long-term success of the company.

31:04because this is not an easy industry, as you know, to break into and to launch just completely new stuff. It's very difficult. So those early strategic partners, I believe, are just absolutely critical.

31:17Gary Schaefer: That's a good point. One more big picture question. So if inner plant reaches its full commercial potential, what does success actually look like? That farmers have the ability to know what is happening in their crops. They have access to this technology. There is an input channel that is there willing and able to support them to realize that potential. And how we manage production agriculture fundamentally shifts based on the insights that this technology can give to farmers. Thanks again Gary for such an interesting chat which makes it so clear that a breakthrough in the lab is really only the beginning.

32:04Gary Schaefer: As a plant scientist who wants to see real world impact I was excited to learn more about inner plants technology. Fluorescent proteins are a common lab tool and I'd not really thought of how they could be used in an agricultural setting. As an investor I was even more interested in the journey from lab to field. There are lots of ways to balance capital raising, scaling and revenue generation and what stood out to me is how deliberate Inner Plant was about scaling slowly while learning fast. Gary's story showed the value of giving farmers a tool and then seeing how they interact with it. Farmers calling up for a sneak preview of the fortnightly report is a clear sign that a weekly report might be a better fit.

32:40Gary Schaefer: Rolling out sentinel plants is also a clever way of testing farmer appetite, demonstrating the technology and generating early revenue while pursuing broader regulatory approval and the bigger goal of wide-scale adoption. Finally, I want to emphasise the scale of the number Gary quoted. Over 7 billion in annual US yield loss to fungal disease in corn and soybeans, with more than 70 % of fungicide applications mistimed or unnecessary. Earlier detection of disease isn't just scientifically interesting. It addresses the very real problem that most spray decisions are based on poor quality information or faulty assumptions.

33:16Gary Schaefer: I look forward to seeing whether Innerplant can close this information gap at scale. so that's it for ag tech so what thank you for listening a reminder to make sure you hit follow so you never miss an episode for more of our writing on the role of ag tech in cropping and plant science visit our website tenacious.ventures there are also resources listed in the show notes