Venture aimed at converting analog to digital in agriculture

Allan Gray:  There are digital tools that are becoming more and more available. And I think, over time becoming more effective at what they do to help us and in agriculture and in agribusiness broadly. In some ways, we're unique. I always hate to always hate to say it that way, Paul, look, we're a business just like any other business. And people say, Well, you have an agriculture is different. Well, it is. Why because it's personal, because everybody has to eat, because it's uncertain on the supply side. And it's uncertain on the demand side, okay, there's a number of reasons why we might be a little bit different than other industries. But by and large, we're the same as other industries. With our specific nuances. What's happened is that the digital space, particularly this bringing the tools and technologies to help us be better at managing the business, are just now sort of getting to the point where they begin to understand our nuances, so that we can apply those tools and techniques to make us better at decision making. At least that's my perspective,

Paul Yeager: I kind of lead you into what dial is before saying what is dial. It has a name, but give us a background on it.

Allan Gray: Yeah, so we're known as Dial Ventures now, but Dial itself was originally digital innovation, Agri- Food Systems Lab. That's a mouthful. And we're famous at Purdue for sort of taking mouthfuls of titles and then and then stretching them down to four letters that probably don't mean anything at all. But that's how we got to dial digital innovation, agri food systems lab, shortened a dial. But then as we continue to develop our concept around what we're going to do in digital innovation, we've moved to this sort of startup studio concept now and added to the name venture. So we're Dial Ventures, and we're a startup studio here at Purdue.

Paul Yeager: Do you have a specific customer in mind of who you're serving?

Allan Gray: For Dial? That's a good question. So, Dial serves the industry. So our job in our it's our job and dollars, a startup studio, is to create startup companies that will help digitize the ag and food system. Okay. Our primary customer for us is the industry itself. So lots of people will say, well, so startups are about disrupting the current industry that's there. And that's true, they do that, what we do is kind of flip it on its head a little bit and say, let's have the industry be involved from the start. And the development of the startup companies, recognizing that most of our colleagues in the industry struggle, frankly, to do much that's disruptive innovation. So we're trying to be the partner of the industry and says, Let us do the disruptive work for you. And instead of you being disrupted in that process, you're learning right along beside us as we create these disruptive engines. And you're an investor. So you're invested in these startup companies. And as they grow and mature, you're, you're going along with them, you understand what's happening, and if they become the right business for you. You can acquire them. Right, and they're now you're not disrupting you're not being disrupted anymore. You're part of that disruption, which, you know, Paul, we need I mean, I think McKinsey is the one who did the study of 22 industries, food and agriculture is number 22. out of 22, with respect to digitization of its industry, and this is the problem we want to solve. And our partners aren't well suited to do that the agri-food and agribusiness industry is very good at what it does. It's also by and large analog. So how do you turn it into a digital system and make it more efficient, more effective, more transparent, more traceable, all of the pieces of the puzzle that we hear the buzz around, that we want to try to solve where digital has an opportunity to solve that, but that's what we're trying to do. So who is our customer? Our primary customer is the end?

Paul Yeager: Well, I think at the farmer who does so much with a cell phone, are they a help to you when they've already adapted more of that digital sense of I can control things remotely, or I can control? I have spreadsheets? I mean, that's how I think of digital. I think a lot of people think of digital Am I accurate in my thinking of what digital means? Or am I missing the lesson?

Allan Gray: Ah, yeah, so So I think those are the starts to digital. Those are some tools that are available to help us write spreadsheets or spreadsheets or our digital but they're not connected. Right. So the problem is that lots of people have spreadsheets, which means they have data So that's orphaned in different categories of the world. And they're not connected to each other in ways that actually create efficiency, effectiveness, traceability, transparency, those sorts of things, right? So, so we have some enabling tools there. But then our ability to connect that system is still pretty poor, frankly. And so. And if you talk with farmers like we did, we spend all day every day talking with farmers and others across the industry, they'll tell you, their number one challenge is the inter-operability of data. And it's two ways it's the data that was within my operation, that I can't even get those connected well, to learn from it and utilize that to help me get better. And then that data connection across partners is almost non- existent. And so when you can't get all that data and information connected, you can't now really employ effectively things like where I think digitization is artificial intelligence.

Paul: The full discussion will be available Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts and at our YouTube channel.

Contact: Paul.Yeager@iowapbs.org