Greg Jaffe’s career is a prime example of how blending science, technology, and policy can lead to major advances in agriculture. With 35 years of experience in national and international policy, Greg has collaborated with agencies such as the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), and FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration). His work has also helped shape projects in developing countries, equipping local leaders with the tools to create smart, sustainable policies.
Greg Jaffe’s Journey Through Innovation and Regulation
Greg joined host Maureen Ballatori on this episode of Spilled Salt to share how his background in biology and government guided him to explore the intersection of science and law. This unique blend of expertise has allowed him to push forward ideas that improve how food is produced and regulated.
Understanding the Bioeconomy
The bioeconomy is all about using biological resources—such as crops and plant waste—to create everyday products. For example, corn can feed people, serve as a source for bioplastics, and even be transformed into fuel. By using crops more efficiently, waste is reduced and a greener economy is supported.
Transforming Waste into Value
The conversation highlighted how food loss and waste can be converted into valuable resources. Leftover food or crop residues can be processed into biogas, biofuels, or even fertilizers. This approach not only benefits the environment but also opens up new opportunities for startups in the agtech space.
Supporting Farmers and Innovation
Greg emphasized that while farmers are knowledgeable, change takes time. New practices like regenerative agriculture or the use of cover crops may require a few seasons before benefits are realized. Programs such as the Climate Smart Commodities Grant help bridge this gap by offering incentives for farmers to adopt new methods. This serves as a strong example of how government support can foster innovation in agriculture.
Greg worked on the Climate Smart Commodities Grant while at the USDA. If you’re interested in learning more on this topic, you may enjoy Season 5, episode 5 of the Spilled Salt podcast, How Dylan Vaca and the DeLong Company’s Grown Climate Smart Initiative are Leading the Way in Sustainable Agriculture
Founders and leaders in the agtech sector are continuously searching for ways to push boundaries and introduce innovative solutions. The discussion with Greg offers several valuable lessons:
- Continuous Learning:
Innovation often comes from combining different fields. Just as Greg blended technology with hands-on agricultural knowledge, agtech startups can benefit from interdisciplinary approaches.
- Addressing Real-World Problems:
Whether it’s converting crop waste into energy or establishing a supply chain that benefits both farmers and consumers, solving practical problems is essential. Greg’s work demonstrates that addressing issues like waste and inefficiency can lead to lasting change.
- Navigating the Regulatory Landscape:
While regulations can be complex, they are designed to create safe and efficient markets. A solid understanding of these rules can give startups a significant advantage in launching products that are market-ready.
- Thinking Globally:
Agriculture is a global issue, and innovations are happening around the world. Countries like Brazil and Denmark are leading the way in bioeconomy innovations. Keeping an eye on international trends can help businesses spot new opportunities.
Innovation in agriculture is not just about technology but also about creating an environment where new ideas can thrive. As challenges like climate change and food security continue to grow, this episode reminds us that sustainable solutions are within reach. Every small innovation contributes to a larger impact on the global food and agriculture system.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited from its original form to support readability.
Maureen Ballatori: I’m Maureen Ballatori and this is Spilled Salt, a podcast on the thrills and spills from the food, beverage and agriculture industries.
I’m so excited to be in season six of the podcast! It’s been such a fun adventure to go through these discussions with you and bring in new guests to share.
Today’s guest is Greg Jaffe. He’s a former senior advisor for regulatory fairs and chief regulatory officer at the USDA.
He was responsible for managing the department’s regulatory agenda and the interdepartmental review of significant regulations. In today’s discussion, we talk about his work in that role at the USDA as it relates to food and agriculture, a topic that we are all very passionate about.
In total, Greg has 35 years of experience in national and international policy. He left the USDA in January of 2025 with the administration change, and he’s now a policy consultant on agriculture, food, environment, and sustainability.
You can tell from our discussion that Greg is really motivated by doing what’s right for the environment, not just on a national stage, but around the world. Greg and I also talked a lot about the bioeconomy, another topic he is very passionate about.
Greg explains the bioeconomy as well. It’s the idea of using above-ground carbon instead of below-ground carbon. So you’ll learn a lot about that today. I certainly learned a lot.
We also touch on the Climate Smart Commodities Grant, which is something Greg worked on at the USDA.
Two of our former guests are connected to that Climate Smart Commodities Grant. Season five, episode five with Dylan Vaca of the DeLong Company and season five, episode six with Anytime Spritz. For today, enjoy this discussion with Greg.
Maureen: Thanks so much for joining me today. I’m delighted to have you on the podcast.
Greg Jaffe: I’m excited to be here.
Maureen: Great. So you have a varied background as an attorney, professor, director, founder, and that’s only naming a few of the things in your background. Take me back to the beginning and talk a little bit about your career.
Greg: It’s funny–as you go through your career, you never know where it’s going to be. When you look back on it, you’re sort of like, wow, this all makes sense. It all fits together.
When I was in college, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to do government and policy or science. So I did both. I majored in biology and government and I wrote a thesis in both departments.
Then I came to Washington, DC and I worked in the Office of Technology Assessment which was a congressional research arm at that time, which doesn’t exist today, in the Biologic Applications Program, a perfect place for that.
I worked there for a year and then went back to law school. Still, what I was always most interested in was this interaction between science and technology and how that forces changes to law and policy. And so while I was in law school, I took a number of courses in science policy and environmental law and health law, and wrote some papers.
I spent all my summers working in Washington and law firms, but I really was interested in that intersection. So when I graduated from law school, I went to work for a judge on the New Jersey Supreme Court because they were one of the foremost courts doing this interaction. They had written at that time the Karen Ann Quinlan case about right-to-die and life-sustaining technologies and that was something that interested me.
I worked on that court for a year and then I applied and got a job at the Department of Justice in the Environmental Enforcement section. So I became an environmental lawyer.
Everybody had told me, if you go to law school, you should use your legal knowledge and become a lawyer. Don’t go straight into policy. And so I did that for seven years.
On one level, I loved it. I was going after polluters and getting them to clean up and pay for cleanup. And that was great. And I enjoyed it when I got involved in the science.
But a lot of the time it was fighting lawyers over procedure. And that didn’t sort of excite me so much.
One of the senior attorneys that I worked for, he went over to the EPA as the head of Clean Air Act Enforcement and brought me over as his senior counsel. So I spent four years at EPA, which was sort of moving a little bit from just doing litigation to doing a combination of litigation and policy. And I ran the coal-fired power plant initiative.
This was under the Clinton administration trying to get coal fired power plants to clean up, to put on pollution control equipment in the South and Midwest was a very big initiative. And I led a team of 35 scientists, lawyers and engineers who were putting those cases together and litigating those cases. That was a lot of fun. It took me away from just working with lawyers and fighting with lawyers over procedure.
Maureen: Right, fighting other attorneys.
Greg: It got me more into the policy, more into the science. And then an opportunity arose.
I had written my college thesis on biotechnology and genetic engineering and possible regulation and policies around that. And the Center for Science and Public Interest (CSPI), an NGO (non-government organization), was looking for a director of their biotechnology project. And so I applied.
In those days, it was an advertisement in the Washington Post, a physical advertisement, and you sent in a resume by mail and I got the job.
I spent over 20 years working at CSPI, running their biotechnology project, but doing a lot more. I dealt with a lot of all kinds of new and innovative technologies, whether it was nanotechnology and food, whether it was cloning and food or cell cultured meat and food. It was a host of innovative technologies and mapping out how we could bring those into the marketplace in a way that ensures safety and also ensures consumer acceptance and that the society reduces the risks but achieves the benefits from those technologies.
As opposed to most NGOs that were pretty anti-Genetically Modified Organism (GMO), the CSPI really took a science-based focus. And so we supported those technologies. We did want some oversight of them and some transparency around them.
Our stance was loud and clear that genetically modified crops were safe, the ones that were currently on the market, and provided some benefits. So that was sort of an interesting middle position.
Maureen: Yes, and it sounds like it was before its time a bit. Especially when you talk about cultured meats and things like that. I mean, that’s a little bit more in the norm, something you hear about now. What years were you there?
Greg: I worked there from 2001 to really a couple years ago. So it was more recent.
And the other thing I did when I was there–I spent about a third of my time in developing countries. So I worked on a couple of projects, one out of Cornell, one out of the International Food Policy Research Institute looking at how we could help developing countries set up regulatory systems and give them the technical expertise and legal expertise to be able to make their own decisions about innovative new agricultural technologies such as biotechnology.
I spent a lot of time in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia working with regulators and government officials there. That was very interesting. It was a big learning curve when I started but eventually made valuable contributions–to give those countries the policy environment so that they could make their own decisions, not hoist our decisions on them, but give them the expertise and the enabling environment so they could make their decisions that are right for them.
Maureen: Teach a man to fish, that kind of idea, right?
Greg: That brought me up to the USDA which was a great opportunity to work in the Biden-Harris administration. I have the utmost respect for Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, and have known him for a number of years. I always felt that he was a very rational practical advocate and a very smart person
The period where I was able to work in the Secretary’s office as a Senior Advisor for him, to be the Chief Regulatory Officer overseeing the department’s regulations, but also to work on a number of other topics on his behalf and on behalf of the President for a couple of years was really a special part of my career.
Maureen: I’m sure. And tell me a little bit more about where your interest started. You said when you were exploring what you wanted to go to school for, even though you always had this interest in biology and government. Where did that interest come from?
Greg: I guess it came from two things. One, and I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but if I had to pick an innate talent, I was very good at math and science. So that came very easy to me. In high school, what were the classes I excelled in? It was AP Biology. It was chemistry. I really enjoyed the sciences.
At the same time, my father was a lawyer and he had a lot of influence on me. He still does. He’s 93 and still alive. And he had always been involved in public life. He had worked in Washington, DC, in the Department of Justice for a number of years under Robert Kennedy when Kennedy was Attorney General. He had done a number of things in his career.
Our dinner table conversation all the time was around policy and I grew up with my father knowing a lot of lawyers and in that environment. So part of me had that interest in policy, law, politics. Part of me had this interest in science and so I searched for a way to sort of bring the two of them together.
Maureen: It sounds like you’ve melded them together well. And this is exactly why I ask about the background, too, because it really does go all the way back to the beginning in terms of how we’re influenced.
When you say dinner table conversation, I grew up on a dairy farm, which influenced my interest and knowledge on agriculture. It led me to where I am today. Our dinner table conversations were about what was happening on the farm. So it’s fascinating.
So it sounds like you’re really motivated by doing what’s right for the environment and kind of using your political and regulatory acumen to do what’s good for the world’s food system and agricultural system, not only here in the US, but on a global scale.
Greg: Yes, I mean again interestingly as opposed to you I did not grow up on a farm and in fact I grew up in northern New Jersey. Although New Jersey is the garden state. I have to say I had never been to the midwest until I started working at the CSPI but with my interest in science and technology it ended up becoming a move to agriculture and food.
My one bit of advice when young people ask me, what should they do in their careers, I always say two things. One, be open to new opportunities You never know but always take some chances. If you take some chances, you can have some really good opportunities.
And two, pick a career where you’re constantly learning. For me, I never took a course in agriculture. I never took a course in food. All of what I’ve learned has been self-taught on the job. And to me, that’s what’s exciting about my job. And even at USDA, I learned I came to USDA because they had, I had certain expertise that they wanted to take advantage of and that would fit in.
But I also learned about a whole many different areas that I knew nothing about at USDA. And so to me, my career and this involvement, especially in food and ag, has really been all sort of learned as you go.
Maureen: Little nuggets all along the way. And so now, so you left USDA in January at the end of the Biden-Harris administration and now you’re consulting, correct? So people can engage you in this line of work related to policy, regulatory and food and agriculture.
Greg: Yes, I mean as a political appointee in the Secretary’s office, when you serve, it is at the pleasure of the President. You get a letter, you get an email saying please submit your letter of resignation and you actually type out a Letter of Resignation which you submit, in my case, to Secretary Vilsack.
I ended [my work there] on January 20th. And so I’ve decided to open my own consulting firm, Jaffe Policy Consulting because I think I have 35 years of experience in policy, mostly in the United States.
As I also mentioned, around the world, I have that expertise in regulation and administrative law. I’ve worked with USDA, EPA, and FDA for decades now. I’m very familiar with all of their both regulatory programs, but also some of their grant and funding proposals, their research and so forth.
I think I have knowledge that I can impart upon, whether it’s companies, associations, philanthropic organizations, universities, or others who are trying to make the world better. So I might not personally make the world better. I’m one person, but I hopefully can influence organizations, institutions, and companies that can make the world better.
Maureen: I’d argue you are making the world better. Everyone’s doing their own small part and that’s really what contributes to the bigger picture.
Tell me about some of your favorite projects from your time at USDA.
Greg: As the Chief Regulatory Officer, my job was to make sure our regulations get out. And that was a very important role to play, both within the department, making sure they are properly going through the proper clearances, and making sure there aren’t problems.
More importantly, every major regulation has to go through all the inter-agency review process with the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and all the other agencies and making sure they get out is no small feat.
I’m very proud of the fact that we issued a lot of regulations, though I wasn’t the one drafting those regulations and doing the long hard work. I came in at the end to make sure nothing went wrong.
That was an important role but I think one of my favorite roles at USDA was when I led our work on bioeconomy.
I was the lead for the Secretary and for the Department of Bioeconomy which meant that I both managed that work that was going on all across the department and also gave some strategic direction to that work. Then I also interacted with the other departments through the White House that were also doing work to coordinate and collaborate where we could.
I liked that work because there was so much opportunity there. Bioeconomy is, I don’t want to say it’s in its infancy, and it’s clearly not in its infancy at USDA, but there’s so much opportunity there. You can be creative. You can sort of figure out and ask questions like, how do we help spark and move things along and make the world a better place.
Maureen: For anybody who’s unfamiliar with that term, can you define bioeconomy? What do you mean by that?
Greg: There’s not a set definition in US regulations or anything. There’s not a set definition internationally. But I think of the bioeconomy as using biological organisms and biology to create products, goods, and services.
The techniques–we use biotechnology, we use bio manufacturing, and most importantly, as our feedstock, we use biomass.
If I think of some examples that the average person might not think of as bioeconomy, there’s the health area. If you’re somebody who’s diabetic and uses human insulin, well, that’s produced from an E. coli that’s been engineered and grown in a bio fermentation vessel to produce that molecule, which then is purified and given to you as insulin.
The COVID vaccines were a biologic that’s used from a biologic, so it would be considered bioeconomy and biotechnology. Those would be in the health space.
If we looked at the energy space, all of us go to fill their cars with fuel and you might see 10 % ethanol on the fuel pump. Well, that ethanol is made from corn that uses enzymes in a big fermentation vat.
So we produce ethanol and that’s a biofuel. That would be a product of bioeconomy.
Then, even more similar is, I might be wearing a cotton shirt. Well, making clothing from cotton would be using that biomass. That’s sort of a more traditional, less modern, bioeconomy.
All of those are how we use biological organisms, and how we use the biomass that exists to produce products that we can all use.
Maureen: When we were chatting in preparation for this call, one of the things that we were talking about in that sector as well is food loss and waste. Can you talk about how that relates to the bioeconomy?
Greg: As I said, the feedstock for bioeconomy is biomass. How do we get biomass? Well, one way I’ve described bioeconomy to some people is using above ground carbon instead of using below ground carbon.
Maureen: That’s a great way to explain it.
Greg: A lot of our products today are synthetic. Our synthetic clothing comes from petrochemicals. Our fuel comes from petrochemicals.
So how do we use above ground carbon? That’s plants that we grow and we use those to produce products.
We’ve always used corn, for example, as a feedstock. We eat products made from corn. We eat corn on the cob. We also feed that to animals in animal feed. Well, can we use the corn stover? Can we use the other green portions of the plant and put that into a bio-based product?
When we talk about food loss and waste, we think about two things: food loss is food that doesn’t make it to the marketplace. And so that could be products that don’t meet the specs that we need, whether that’s cabbages that have dents, produce that’s dented or produce that has some pest infestation in it or something like that. So how can we take that and do something with it?
Well, if we put that into a digester, we can put that in with other things and turn that into biogas. We can turn that into an energy source. That would be an example.
And then we have food waste. That would be food that isn’t eaten, but somehow goes to waste.
So you or I don’t eat that yogurt and its past its sell date. And we throw that out, and that makes it to a landfill. All of those fruits and vegetables and food deteriorates and releases a lot of methane gas, for example. It’s a very high greenhouse gas well.
If we can again take all that waste and put it into a digester or into a process that turns it into bio fertilizer or bio energy or some bio based product. Then we’ve turned that into a useful product from something that otherwise we would consider a waste stream or a lost product and so that’s part of the bioeconomy.
It’s not just, do we develop crops that are made specifically for a bio-based product? We might talk about camelina, which is an oilseed crop that we could use to make biofuels or sustainable aviation fuel. But also how can we take an existing crop and better utilize other portions of that crop, the non-edible portions of that crop, to turn that into a biochemical or into bioenergy or into something else?
You could think of it as, how do we become more efficient on the farm? How do we use all of the green, all the carbon that we produce on that farm? How do we make sure we use all of it in a useful way?
I met a company that was turning banana leaves into sneakers, portions of sneakers. So, we eat the bananas now. We can do something useful with the leaves. And so that’s the concept of bioeconomy, to some extent.
Maureen: I love it. I have a great interest in outer space. I just think how much of it is unexplored and what we have to learn there and everything is wildly fascinating to me. And so last year I attended a Space Ag conference.
I can see this having a lot of applications there. Where it’s so expensive to send everything out there and you need to be able to have the utmost efficiency in everything that’s packed and used up there. I can see this being wildly important there, that if you can have the output of what you’re growing in space, use its primary use case and then have the rest of what came off of the stock of something for another use case as well. I can see the immense value there.
Greg: Right, I mean just think about it we all eat the corn off the cob. Now what do we do with the cob? We usually throw it out. Well, if we can collect all those cobs and turn that biomass into a useful product or into energy, then we’ve gotten something that otherwise would go unused, now can be used.
A good example, one of the things we’ve heard all about, are these wildfires in the West Coast. It’s been a horrible last 12 months with wildfires. One of the things that fuel those wildfires, we call hazardous fuel, is low value wood. Small twigs and other kinds of things. If you can take those and turn those into either energy or turn them into biochar, which is a kind of fertilizer and a carbon storage vessel.
When the fire occurs, what does it do? It releases not just carbon for greenhouse gases, but all kinds of toxins. We’ve all read to be careful about when the fire comes, be very careful what you’re breathing, all kinds of not very good things.
Instead, we can take that, put it into a controlled environment, and turn that energy into a useful product.
We’ve taken, again, something that otherwise would go unused and actually is potentially harmful or potentially dangerous and turn that into a useful product.
And so my work at the department is how do you begin building those supply chains? How do you set up the systems to support the research and support the farmers who are going to grow these and support the processing that’s going to happen all the way to building a market for consumers for some of these products. And that’s a wicked problem or a complex problem. How do you do that and do that?
My goal always was to think about it. You can think about each of those areas as a hill to cross over or a roadblock to address. And if you do those one by one, it takes a long time. But if you can somehow do them simultaneously instead of serially, you can then bring products to market much more quickly.
So the question was, how do you set up the policies? How do you set up the enabling environment? How do you set up the commercial structures and the market and other things to be able to do that so that we can bring these products to market in three years instead of 10 years and that we can get a product that will really help everybody both reduce waste but also potentially reduce increased sustainability, reduce use of petrochemicals, a host of things.
Maureen: You’re blowing my mind right now. It’s reeling because I’m thinking about the idea of how you move the needle at that 10,000 foot perspective.
Where you’re not starting the factory that is necessary to be able to process the corn cobs, but you are at that regulatory perspective thinking about how can I make it friendly? To create an environment where these kinds of things can be successful.
And I’ll give you an example that comes to mind too, as you’re talking. So we do some work in the cannabis industry, which just became recreationally legal in New York State a couple of years ago.
Prior to that, there was a large discussion about industrial hemp and that there were no industrial hemp processing facilities that were able to take the biomass from the hemp and do something with it. In New York State, they didn’t exist.
Then when cannabis became recreationally legal, all of these manufacturing facilities started to pop up because there was a different motivation there. But that’s an example of sort of what you’re talking about with the hills, each of the hills that needs to be summited in order to be able to get to the next one.
Greg: Right, and hemp’s a great example because hemp is a biomass crop and hemp can produce a huge amount of biomass for the energy that goes into it.
We’ve been trying to think about ways to build a market for hemp. You can have hemp concrete, you can use hemp in clothing. There’s a host of things, lots of building materials with hemp.
But how do you build the processing plants? How do you get the farmers to grow it? And it is a problem because a farmer’s not going to grow something until they know that they have a market for that.
Well, the processor’s not going to build the plant for that until they know they have a certain number of farmers who are going to grow it. So it’s like a chicken and egg.
You need government or other incentives, and farmers aren’t going to grow until they have crop insurance. Well, how do we get crop insurance for it? Well, you need a certain number of farmers to grow it before the insurers can figure out what’s the risk associated with that.
And so you do need the government, I think, plays an important role in setting those enabling policies, but also incentivizing some of these things because some of these things are competing in the petrochemical area.
I mean, biofuels and sustainable aviation fuel are competing with petroleum based fuels that have been in operation for decades and centuries who have physical plants that were paid off decades ago. And so their cost of production, relatively speaking, is smaller.
If you now build a sustainable aviation fuel plant, it costs you $400 or $500 million, you have to get a return on that capital. You have to pay off that capital at the same time as producing a product that competes with a product that doesn’t have to pay off that capital.
Without, whether that’s tax incentives that were done under the Inflation Reduction Act, whether that’s loan guarantees or grants or guaranteed markets for the product in the sustainable aviation field…
We have an interesting situation where Delta and United and others, there’s a pull. They want the stuff. They want it. They want to meet sustainability criteria. They want to move forward. They also want it at a certain price.
If you can produce it at a certain price, they will buy it. So in some ways, the market part, the final part of the supply chain, is solved if you can get it at the price point that makes it viable.
Right now, they can’t do that so much. So that’s why you have to look at it across the whole supply chain and think about that. I think we’re moving forward. have lots of investment in bioplastics in the United States. We’re doing very well there. We are moving forward in biofuels and biobased chemicals. I see positives.
Maureen: We’re seeing this, yes, and we’re seeing this in food too, right?
The Climate Smart Commodities Grant is a perfect example of something where the government stepped in to help incentivize climate smart growing practices, regenerative agriculture and other climate smart, sustainable, friendly growing practices to help bolster that whole supply chain.
Greg: The Climate Smart Commodities Program is a great example. I mean, I think the practices, once a farmer starts doing them, wants to do them, but you need an incentive to do that initially for all of us.
Farmers are businessmen and women and they’re not going to do something that doesn’t have a return on their investment. It needs to give them a living, give them security.
We’re all hesitant to try something new. What the Biden Administration did with the climates and orange commodities is set up a system that would incentivize those things initially.
The subsidies provide incentives for farmers to try those things. Then they try them, they produce a product, and then bring that product to market and again incentivize consumers to purchase those with the hope that eventually those incentives, those subsidies go away and the market supports itself because people want to buy a rice that’s low methane that has been produced a certain way, that they want to buy beef that has a low methane footprint or less is more sustainable.
And so that we can then monetize that and you don’t need that but you do need I do believe in and in the bioeconomy bioelectric in all these spaces you do need a sort of a little push or you know an initial right and and partially that’s because the existing products that are out there and the existing things have been operated for such a long time.
Maureen: I think of it as priming the pump.
Greg: They have gone to the lowest cost of production, which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But they’ve also been subsidized in lots of different ways. And so we know that anything new breaking into the market is always going to need some help.
Maureen: It’s great that you’re making the point about the cost of production and that especially with traditional petroleum and aviation fuel compared to a new sustainable solution is that one of the main issues is the cost differential there and that these petroleum plants have been around for a long time.
They’ve already amortized their costs and they’re quite different. And when I think about that, from the farmer perspective, guess my thought many times in terms of a farmer’s hesitation to switch to, for example, any sort of sustainable agriculture practice, whether that’s regenerative or otherwise, has been more so on the hesitancy from, we’ve always done it this way and I’m safe and secure in production in this method because I know what I’ve done for the last four generations and I’m going to keep doing that because that’s what’s safe and secure, but that also from that cost perspective, that there’s factors there in terms of what that final cost can be because of the efficiencies that are created through time.
Greg: Right. I agree with everything you said about farmers and how they might act. But I would also say that some of these practices do have a cost associated with them.
If you do put on cover crops, it does cost money to put on cover crops. There is some evidence out there that that might impact your water resources for the next growing season or affect your yields. It takes time to sort of figure those things out.
I know the return on a new investment may take more than a year. I mean, I think about it with integrated pest management. If you start doing integrated pest management and you do no-till and a certain number of things to help reduce your pest pressures or your integrated weed management… A lot of times you don’t see the return that first year.
You spent more money doing certain mechanical things on your farm, you spent certain energy, you had labor costs and so forth. You may not see that [return on investment until] the second or third year.
You have to have that willingness to look at the long term. Some of our farmers lease land from year to year so it’s harder to justify those in long-term investments. Some of these sustainability practices or these other things like trying a biomass crop in the offseason, or an intermediate oilseed crop or something like that do cost and it may take more than one year to see a return on that investment.
You have to have that willingness or that safety net that if you do do that for those interim years until you reach there you’re going to get that return on investment.
Maureen: And can weather the storm in the meantime, right? Yes.
So, Greg, in my final questions here as we sort of wind down, what do you think is next for the agriculture industry and the bioeconomy in terms of the next, say, 10 years?
Greg: I think that the genie’s out of the bottle. I think we’re in a world where becoming sustainable or moving towards sustainability is a sort of continuum, and we’re going to continue to move on that. We want to do things with a little less impact on the environment, with a little more sustainability tomorrow better than we did yesterday.
And I think consumers want that. We need that for the environment. We need that to address climate change and a host of other reasons.
We’re not going to move backwards at this stage, no matter who’s in the White House, whatever’s going on. The incentives may change. We may slow down. We may speed up. It may be more private sector focused than public sector focus and so forth.
But I think the reality is that agriculture, farming is not easy. It is hard work to produce the food, fiber, fuel, and other products that we all need. But it’s going to continue and we’re going to continue to use the technologies that we have, the innovation we have to become, to do that in a more sustainable way.
Whether that’s increases in production, whether that’s increases in the use of, and when I talk about increases in production, I think about increased production of the food portion of the crop, but also better utilization of the non-food portions of the crop, better production, producing different crops that for different purposes, for biomass, for things like that
This is going to continue. The only question is how fast it continues and whether it’s something that the US continues to lead on or whether there are other countries who become leaders in this.
Brazil is moving very fast to do things with biofuels and sustainable aviation fuel. Parts of Europe and others are moving very fast with bio-based products, biofermentation. Countries like Denmark are leaders in producing food ingredients using biofermentation.
And so the question in my mind isn’t whether this is all going to happen, but where is it going to happen and are we going to take advantage of it so that our farmers, I think, can have the best life possible utilizing, using their resources and their labor and others to produce a lifestyle that they want to live.
Maureen: I’m glad that you mentioned the global landscape here, too, because when we think about agriculture, it’s something that happens all over the world and someday in space as well.
Innovation is going to continue to happen. Regardless, I think it’s hopeful to think of it in a sense that regardless of where and how that innovation is happening, it’s going to continue whether that push and pull is happening from the consumer, from the farmer, from the regulatory bodies that are helping to amplify those things that we will continue to innovate for the betterment of efficiency and global food supply and all of that stuff. And that’s exciting.
Greg: I worked on a lot of things at USDA, but that’s one of the things I really liked. I see it as a funnel that’s only at the beginning of being open. And so there’s just so much opportunity out there in this space. It’s how do we set up the proper enabling environment? I’m not a venture capital person. How do we make sure we have the proper commercial structures in place for it? And then how do we get consumers excited about this?
I went to a facility in Omaha and outside of Nebraska that produces nature works, that produces bio plastics made from corn and I came back all excited.
My wife’s like, I go to the store and buy plastic silverware. Nothing tells me whether this is bioplastic or not. And so even if it was bio plastic, how do we get consumers excited about a bioplastic, that it’s a plastic that’s made with corn as opposed to petroleum and how do we want them to start looking and purchasing that.
We haven’t talked that much about the consumer end, but we do need to build that education around that and that interest in that.
Based on my three children who are now out of college, I think that the next generation is more in tune to these issues about sustainability, about environmental impacts, and there’s more of a willingness to pay for those things.
So now the issue is how do we make sure that people are aware of what’s out there and aware of what could be.
Maureen: That’s an area I am most interested in is that the whole chain of it, right, of what is produced and how it was produced, and then how is that story told about the production that was different and intentionally different?
How is that story told to the consumer, especially in their purchase environment? Is the brand selling direct to consumers and they have their whole website to tell the story, but they have to attract that customer to them to discover that alignment versus in the retailer.
Where the shopper is walking through the center aisle of the grocery store and has only the front of the package to be able to tell the difference between what was created sustainably and what was not.
That’s something I’m wildly fascinated with and we do that work here. And, as you mentioned, the up-and-coming generation is more interested in that than any generation before them.
However, I think that from the price tolerance standpoint, yes, that audience will spend a little bit more, but there’s still a balance I think that needs to happen so that it’s not wildly more expensive than the alternative products that are out there.
Because then the brand can’t reach the scale that they need in order to get their prices down to a place where they can reach the economies of scale to survive in the environment because the retailers still have velocity requirements and things like that.
Just as we said through a lot of this, it’s all complex. They’re all little bunny hills to hop over in each of these sectors.
The regulatory side is not something that I frequently have an opportunity to talk to somebody about in the food and ag industry. So I thank you so much for taking the time for our discussion today and sharing some of your insights on that work.
Greg: Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed the conversation.
Maureen: Great. And how can we get in touch with you?
Greg: You can either look me up on LinkedIn or my email is greg.jaffe[at]Verizon[dot]net. That’s the best way to contact me.