Lost in the Supermarket

Greenhouse Growing with Megan Dickens, The Future of Food is Now

March 02, 2022 SupermarketGuru
Lost in the Supermarket
Greenhouse Growing with Megan Dickens, The Future of Food is Now
Show Notes Transcript

The Future of Food is Now. The Bayer Marana, AZ site is a smart greenhouse facility aimed at driving tailored solutions for the future of agriculture. This site focuses on seed production and agricultural innovation, leveraging the latest in automation to optimize plant density and workflow. Join us as Megan Dickens provides a short virtual tour and dives into sustainability practices and how research taking place now shapes the future of agriculture.

Phil:

Welcome to RDBA's The Morning Fix. Today. Very special. We're gonna head to Tucson, Arizona. We're gonna show you what goes on behind the scenes in probably what's the most state of the art green house facility in the world. Megan Dickens is with us. She leads the production operations team at Bayer crop sciences, new Marana product development center. Now this innovative greenhouse facility supports precision breeding initiatives and the production of new corn varieties for Bayer's breeding division. In this role, she's focused on the delivery of quality product to their breeding partners around the world. So Megan, welcome to The Morning Fix.

Megan:

Thanks Phil. I'm really happy to be here. Appreciate the invite.

Phil:

So everybody should know you're actually live in there. It's a very noisy environment and you're wearing a mask. Uh, so, so Bayer with us and right behind you, we see, you know, all those crops moving. Tell us what's going on.

Megan:

Yeah, so I I'm really excited to have this opportunity today. There there's a lot we can talk about. And I actually, before we talk about what's happening behind me, mine actually jump to sort of the, the front end of our system. The facility that we've built here for breeding in Tucson, Arizona is really about a state of the art greenhouse design that really needs to support, uh, agriculture of the future. Things are changing really quickly in this landscape. So everything that we're doing is driven by data with sustainability at heart, in an effort to get really great products, quality products to our farmer customers, as fast as we can.

Phil:

So, you know, you talk about data, how many data points are there in, in this seven acre, greenhouse

Megan:

Millions I millions and counting by the seconds that we're talking every single piece of equipment we have. Um, and some of you might even see behind me, uh, we've got barcodes. We also have databases that hold onto product identity for us, every single seed. And I'm gonna maybe walk a little closer here. Every single seed that comes in which I'm using these beautifully colored to represent is unique in genetics, in target deliverable, in terms of new traits and new products, quality, we need to make sure that we're identifying each of those seeds from the very beginning and learning everything that we can about them as they move through our process. So not only movements from an O plate like this to a pot, to a bench, but also environment, light data, relative humidity, um, touch points that we make on these beautiful corn plants. Things like pollinating when we're pollinating, how frequently we're pollinating. Those are all data points that we collect on every single plant over the course of its life cycle, through our facility that we use to learn more, to do better in our next cycles.

Phil:

So, um, I've been in a lot of greenhouses and I see people in white lab coats with clipboards writing things down. Uh, but what you're described being really gives me the, the feeling that you're doing this all in real time. And talk to me about those differences.

Megan:

Yeah. So, you know, I, I think that plays right into the conversation about what the future of agriculture really is. I think, you know, when I was growing up, when I thought about agriculture or even farming it's, it's typically people walking through fields with their clipboards sometimes with a camera, um, taking notes, capturing that information, having to translate that, combine it with other information from fields at neighboring farms, or even across the country to learn more, to share knowledge, share experience here in an instant, with a simple click of a scamming tool, we can know exactly what's happening on that bench, load that into our, our corporate databases and share it frankly, around the world. In a matter of moments, some of that data that I talked about collecting earlier too, like our environmental data, we can use that in real time to drive changes to how we're managing climate, how we're moving our plants when we're watering them to make an impact on the plants. Right. In the very moment.

Phil:

So I've gotta ask you, you know, this, this, everything behind you, you know, lots of, lots of money has been spent. You know, I, I can only imagine, uh, the check for that and you know, why is this important? Why is it important as we look towards not only the future of agriculture, but we look at the fact that there's no lanes, obviously in seven acres, um, you've, you've been able to maximize the space, uh, bring it down for us. Why is this important, an important innovation for agriculture?

Megan:

Sure, really great question. So my experience having been in this industry for going on 16, 17 years now, um, I have seen a change not only in how much we can produce on a square foot of land, but how we think about using that. So I think there's a place for a lot of opportunity in this conversation from the startup greenhouse that has dirt floors and a very generic hoop house. It's a structure that provides you protection, which is essentially what this environment is over time that evolves to more sophisticated of irrigation and supporting plants. Like you see here, different kinds of benches in a more, uh, formal structure that was built here. I mentioned the word sustainability, and that's a really important part about what we're doing here, Arizona. And the reason we're here is to take the most advantage of all that beautiful sunshine we get over 300 days a year. The best investment that we can make in this facility is to use all of the growing space with that beautiful prime sunlight for our plants. So instead of leaving aisle waves and there I say wasted space and in an environment like this, we are capitalizing on that for the use of our plant growth and actually moving our plants to our people. So on the very other end of the greenhouse, we have an elevated platform where these benches are being delivered to, for our teams to work with, take those observations, conduct the pollinations. And so with that, we're able to tap into all of the resources available in that growing footprint to put all that energy right into the plants.

Phil:

So Megan, I really get the sense that over these past 16 or, or plus years, um, you're really passionate about agriculture. I know you're a mom. I, I know you're concerned about the environment. Uh, talk to us a little bit about why you're so passionate about agriculture.

Megan:

So maybe I'll start with, with me as a mom. So food food is essential to everyone, not just moms, but after having children, I was much more thoughtful about the types of foods that I was giving to my children, as well as myself and where that food was coming from and the deeper into the, where my food was coming from conversation. I got, I started to have a lot of questions. Um, I originally grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, a very active farming community. You could go to any downtown center and find the most beautiful farmer's markets, meet your farmer, talk to your farmer, buy your CSA. But what about all of those other products that we see on, on the food shelves? Where are those coming from? Where are those ingredients coming from? And I started to ask more questions. Um, Bayer crop science does a lot of really great, amazing when it comes to not only vegetables and produce, but also row crops that feed a lot of the foods, um, that we produce. And I thought the best way for me to really understand the science, which was a really big concept, was to step into the organization and find out for myself. And so very shortly after school, um, I end ended up entering this, this, uh, line of work fell in love, not only with the science after I began to further understand how we were doing what we were doing, but the ever present need to innovate to do it better, to do it faster, to do it more sustainably. Um, we have all of us have a very significant, it can challenge ahead of us when we think about our global population and the demands of feeding those people, we're choosing a very innovative, very highly technical data driven way of managing it. But there is space for that small farmer down the street with those hoop houses and dirt floors in this conversation as well. Um, and I think that even having opportunities like this gives me a great, great chance to not only share my story, but also learn a lot from the other people who are engaging in this conversation with us.

Phil:

So looking in your crystal ball, you know, behind you is, is state of the art technology. What's it gonna look like in five years from now?

Megan:

I hope that we see more facilities that are like this, uh, even more facilities that are at a larger scale. Um, more crops we're very focused on corn here. Um, there are facilities in our area that, that from a design concept are very similar. I think we're really leading the edge on what we can do with that all powerful data, how we capture it, how we share it and how we leverage it. I think drives innovation and advances faster than ever before. I also thinking about, I also think about, um, the roles that we will have coming, as we think about the, the people component here, there's a lot of technology and automation, but at the heart of our operation or any operation like this, it comes down to the people. And so thinking about how education experience and skill development, as well as leadership needs to when we think about not only meeting that goal of feeding a global population that's growing, but also how we develop science at an ever increasing rate and share that experience with everyone.

Phil:

So what would you like the retail dietician community, um, that are in supermarkets across the us to understand about what you're doing and what they should be sharing with their shoppers.

Megan:

This is about developing products on an accelerated scale, on a larger scale and sharing those learnings across the globe. What we do works really well for corn, but thinking about how we can people together to develop this type of system, this type of information, sharing more broadly across crops, regions and the globe, and to never stop asking questions with question comes clarity and understanding. And I think we can build a more well rounded solution to the task that we have ahead of us

Phil:

Again, last question. Um, and this is on a very personal level. When, when I was a kid, my dad was in the cheese business and those days, uh, as it is today, everybody used to work on Saturdays. So he would go into the office on Saturdays. I would go with him. Um, and while he was working, bottom line is I would go into the warehouse and there was the warehouse foreman, Vince, um, who, who would then give me a ride, I'd be on a forklift. And those cheese warehouses would be, you know, about 50 foot high. I think maybe I was a little kid. So it seemed like it was 50 foot high and he would put a pallet on the forklift. I would stand on it, I would hold on. And he would bring me to the top. Now, the reason I'm sharing that, you know, how often have you jumped on one of those platforms behind you and taken a run around the warehouse?

Megan:

Never nor will we ever, we have very strict safety standards here. Um, corn is the only, the only item in this facility that gets a ride in addition to a few other species of beneficial insects. So we do have a really healthy, integrated pest management program here. Um, we leverage source or banker plants to sustain really healthy populations of the good insects to combat any of the insects that we don't want that may be detrimental to our corn. So we do have a few hitchhikers, none of the humanonesn.

Phil:

So I don't get a chance to ride one of those.

Megan:

I apologize, but only in your dreams. Oh, well

Phil:

Well, Megan, thanks for starting off our morning, um, with some very exciting technology, looking at the future of agriculture and appreciate you being on the morning fix.

Megan:

Thanks so much, Phil. It was really great.