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“This is what I would consider the first paradigm shift in the ability to sustain and grow yields while decreasing inputs in modern agriculture.” — Colin Rush, Chief Operating Officer, Clean Seed Capital

Developing technology to advance global agriculture amid a changing climate is at the heart of Canadian ag tech company Clean Seed Capital’s mission.

The company aims to improve soil health worldwide using its SMART Seeder MAX no-till planter, allowing farmers to feed a growing population far into the future.

In this episode of the Precision Farming Dealer podcast, we bring you the second installment of our two-part series with Colin Rush, Clean Seed Capital’s chief operating officer. Join us as Colin talks about the company’s roots in regenerative agriculture, and strategic focus in 2022 and beyond.

Click here to watch “Earth on the Edge - A Clean Seed Capital Documentary.” 

Click here to listen to part one of this series.

Full Transcript

Michaela Paukner:

I'm Michaela Paukner. Associate Editor, Precision Farming Dealer. Welcome to the latest episode of the Precision Farming Dealer Podcast. New episodes of this series are available wherever you get your podcast. Be sure to subscribe, to get an alert when upcoming episodes are released. Developing technology to advance global agriculture amid a changing climate is at the heart of Canadian AgTech company Clean Seed Capital's mission. The company aims to improve soil health worldwide using its SMART Seeder MAX, no-till planter, allowing farmers to feed a growing population far into the future. In the second installment of our two part series with Colin Rush, Clean Seed Capital's Chief Operating Officer, Colin talks about the company's roots in regenerative agriculture and strategic focus in 2022 and beyond.

Colin Rush:

My name's Colin Rush. I'm the Chief Operating Officer for Clean Seed Agriculture Technology. And we are the makers of the worlds' first smart seeder, and known as the SMART Seeder MAX. It's a very different and revolutionary planting and seeding technology that does a lot of different changes in the way we interact with the ground. We are a true no-till, one pass machine that allows you to put precision seeds down, along with precision metering of dry fertilizer. And we allow you to change where that fertilizer goes in relation to the seed based on your soil conditions, moisture, et cetera. We also have a very different way of accessing that data that make it actionable down to an extremely high resolution. So we have up to five different products in the field and we can meter those out of 300 independent control points on our 60 foot machine, allowing you to basically become a giant printer across the field.

Michaela Paukner:

And speaking of that, I know you guys at the company released a 15 minute documentary about regenerative agriculture and no-till. Could you talk a little bit about the Clean Seed Capital's history and how your beginnings are rooted in no-till and those regenerative agriculture practices?

Colin Rush:

So you're talking about Earth On The Edge. It's a 15 minute documentary that we did. We did put out here before Christmas and the issue was how did we get here into existing agriculture practices? And what has it done to our soil structure? You can't see an article, whether it be in The Wall Street Journal or any of the agronomic that don't talk about soil, our soil health is a key to really feeding our future. And Clean Seed Capital Group actually was started by Dr. Noel Lempriere, and he just turned 100 this year. And he still actually does some engineering for our company. Just a fascinating history of the man. But he was the first to really testify in the 1980s in front of the US Senate to talk about conservation tillage and bringing some of those practices, regenerating some of those grasslands that had been wasted through erosion through the US Midwest.

Colin Rush:

And he came up with really an early version of the current SMART Seeder MAX opener. And we've probably gone through about 17 iterations to get it through the final iteration design. But it was designed to do minimum soil disturbance. But you're doing fracturing of the soil underneath getting through that three to four inch hard plow pan that we almost have to scrape, that we used to have that you can rip and turn over. That allows you to build organic matter, creates pore space so you can access the water table. Rain can penetrate better on here. But that also allows you to do different placements for fertilizer and seed. So Dr. Lempriere started the company, his son Graeme Lempriere decided to complete his vision and really said, "Hey, there's a market to take this technology to build a large scale machine that really does things differently."

Colin Rush:

And we wanted to pursue that vision, add a lot of extra value, which we have in the SMART Seeder MAX. And in 2012, Graeme took the company public here in Canada. We're on the junior venture exchange here in Canada, in order to fund the development of the SMART Seeder. And there was a lot of new technology. There's not one technology on there that hasn't been developed by Clean Seed. So everything from our own electrical circuit boards that we built, to our own software development, to our own air systems, everything on here was developed and built by Clean Seed. So it was a tremendous undertaking, you think in hindsight, maybe a little bit silly and naive of us to say we could do that. But it's taken 10 years of a very small dedicated team, but now we have a unit that just has incredible range in doing agronomic.

Colin Rush:

But the whole point was to disrupt agriculture to say, "Let's use the soil to its best of its ability. Let's build organic matter. Let's make sure that erosion isn't an issue. Let's maximize nitrogen efficiency. And at the end of the day, let's get away from really the planting and feeding technologies, which we've been using for 50 years." And there wasn't really a way out of what they did, we still needed to grow food. So this is what I would consider the first paradigm shift in the ability to sustain and grow yields while decreasing inputs in modern agriculture, using that data as a true actionable sense.

Colin Rush:

And there's a lot of technology developments out there Michaela, in agriculture that, "Hey, I have an app, I'm going to let you look at the data." But in essence, there's very few out there that really create true actions to say, "What did they do to the field that was different than what I was doing before?" So that was one of the key drivers behind the SMART Seeder MAX is, we all wanted to give something back to agriculture that was truly disruptive in a value-add way that gave producers ultimate control over, not only what they grow, but how they grow it in a sustainable manner.

Michaela Paukner:

And people have all of this data, but then what do you do with it? So like you said, it's important that you're giving them a solution that actually allows them to see the impact of what they're doing.

Colin Rush:

Absolutely. There's a lot of... OEM companies are there to talk about the data that comes off a planter, but forgetting that every one of those planters requires a separate fertility pass. So if you're only counting half the issue and maximizing the data on there, are you truly providing a solution? The SMART Seeder MAX allows you to give that same precision as those planters have here, but also now doing it with fertility micromanaged over every row. It also allows you to place the seed and the fertilizer differently.

Colin Rush:

The problem with liquid like you see on most planters is it's active the second you put it on. Based on solar conditions, you may have to either cut back or increase that. But it's coming on even if it's on unvariable rate. It's only a very small part of the fertility growing, then you have to either strip till, broadcast, band and [hydris 00:07:30] that growing needs. Here, we're allowing you to put down everything from soil amendments, fertility, biologicals, herbicides, and precision planting of those seeds all on a single path, in a no-till setting. And there's really nothing on the market that can come close to the advantages of the SMART Seeder MAX.

Michaela Paukner:

Oh, you mentioned that you guys are a publicly traded company. How does being a publicly traded company influence your practices and what you're doing?

Colin Rush:

If you look at startup world in Silicon Valley is, Ag technology has always been a really tough thing to get investors in. So we took the company public in order to access that capital, in order to fund the development. And we know that agriculture has a long lead time for innovation. So if we only plant one crop a year, or even if we do a little bit in the fall, you only have of one or maybe two chances in order to prove that technology for a very bare window. So if you have to make iteration changes here, instead of, "I'm going to give you some money in Silicon Valley and in six months, I want to see a workable prototype." Well, when you're talking in agriculture, you're talking five to 10 year development time for something as significant as this.

Colin Rush:

So we took the company public to gain access to capital. What's interesting is even though we're publicly traded, we kind of call ourselves a privately held publicly traded company because 75% of our investors are farmers, are people in the Ag industry and insiders in the company that want to see this technology developed. The good thing is we have that access to capital. Certainly some of the bad things are, is because of the public, we definitely need to disclose everything from our financials to a lot of what we're doing. So there's certainly upsides and downsides to doing it. But from a bringing the technology to market, it was what we needed to do in order to get us here.

Colin Rush:

As [inaudible 00:09:19], we're probably narrowing in on $25 million of investment in R&D over the last 10 years to get us here, which is a sizeable investment. Maybe not to some of the large OEMs that have multi times that budgets on the R&D side. But for a very small team to develop this technology in house, without having any reliance on anybody else, it was just a tremendous undertaking. And we're very proud of what we've done.

Michaela Paukner:

That's interesting that 75% of your investors are farmer, because that seems like it would be a unique support compared to some of those Silicon Valley companies that are just getting the funding from whatever venture capital firm.

Colin Rush:

Yeah. And the downside with those venture capital is they generally want their money back in a relatively short period of time. They're looking in maybe six months, the two year type of money. We have very patient investors that they see the long game of what we're trying to accomplish with the SMART Seeder MAX. Now the downside of it is, we're not a very liquid company. So even though we have close to 80 million shares out on the exchange here, you might, only see eight to 10 to 15,000 traded, and that just shows how tightly we're held, and because people don't want to sell our shares. They're waiting for the long game on it. So we've funded the company as we [inaudible 00:10:48], haven't promoted the stock like you'd see in a traditional promotion type things. And we've been focused on bringing out the SMART Seeder MAX to the public. So we expect as we fund our future growth through profits and we'll be actually proceeding on a merger and acquisition path here for us to vertically integrate some of our technologies and supply chains as well.

Michaela Paukner:

Okay. And is that Clean Seed Capital would be acquiring companies?

Colin Rush:

That would be correct. Yeah. Certainly looking on that and because we have access to those public markets here, whereas more private companies are more held back by the available cash to purchase companies, et cetera. We have access to financing to [inaudible 00:11:38] the company, which is now we've got the... the R&D cycles are complete and we're heading into commercialization allows us to rapidly expand our sales, our growth to take the company worldwide.

Michaela Paukner:

Before we get back to the conversation, I'd like to invite you to the upcoming Dealership Mind Summit in Iowa city, Iowa, July 26th through 27th. This two day dealers only conference offers knowledge pack general sessions, panels, round table discussions, networking, and more. Mark your calendar for July 26th through 27th and register online at dealershipmindsummit.com. Now let's get back to the conversation as Colin discusses, Clean Seed Capital's focus this year.

Michaela Paukner:

Are there any particular technologies or sectors maybe where you would be looking at an acquisition or merger?

Colin Rush:

Yeah, certainly. Right now the SMART Seeder MAX is the ultimate tool when you tell it what to do. So we think about variable rate. You have a creation of a shape file or a prescription file that might be done anywhere from six months to two weeks in advance, but based on... might be a five year average that happened on your farm. So based on the moisture that we've had, you should put this plant stand down, this amount of fertility down, et cetera. And all of those things are based on what happened in the past. Well, if you look at climate change, drought, we go from drought to flood a lot faster than I think anybody has ever thought in five year models. The ability to integrate realtime sensors is key. We're not there yet where we can do real time reading of fertility needs in the field yet, but there's a lot of things that companies are mapping, measuring through sensors that essentially can enhance the ability of the SMART Seeder MAX.

Colin Rush:

So we're going to be looking a lot at the integration of sensors. We talked about our edge computing system. We built that system to take those type of readings with sensors in real time, do the calculations and the algorithms in AI and machine learning and basically start to really enhance capabilities of the SMART Seeder MAX in real time. So we're essentially real time sensing, realtime applying, and that technology's just going to grow. And if you look at the capabilities, we're not doing it in our traditional planting and the seeding model, we're doing it through essentially this giant [inaudible 00:14:14] that we have control over down to the millisecond in terms of rate changes, in terms of everything from depth to fertilizer and seed placement in the furrow. So every crop on the planet starts with the seed and the fertility to go down. And that's when it really starts to get potential. And the SMART Seeder MAX is really the first [inaudible 00:14:37] out there to push the boundaries on that.

Michaela Paukner:

Sounds like lots of exciting opportunities ahead.

Colin Rush:

Very much so.

Michaela Paukner:

What would you say is the company's focus in 2022?

Colin Rush:

For 2022, our first customers are going to have the SMART Seeder MAX units. We have a big focus on customer experience. We're a new company, we don't have the history on the operation side that a lot of the OEM and even the larger Shortline companies have here. So what we've done that is different is really take a page out of some of the older Shortline books, where we have a lot of boots on the ground. So we have a lot of boots on the ground. We have mobile parts trailers here that are roving around to make sure that we have everything from parts to engineering support, to agronomy and sales specialist support on the ground, as our customers are going through the [inaudible 00:15:39] they see them.

Colin Rush:

It is an investment certainly in our operations, but more importantly, it's an investment in the success of the customer. So our biggest thing right now is we want to make sure that everybody who uses the SMART Seeder MAX has just the best year and just the most tremendous results here out of their experience using the SMART Seeder MAX. We want to turn all of those users into super advocates. They're going to tell everybody they know whether it's on social media or their neighbors or their dealers to say, "Hey, you should become a dealer for SMART Seeder MAX, look at what I can do with it." And that's really our focus for 2022. Operationally, our focus is to grow our assets and integrate our supply chain, so we can even produce more SMART Seeder MAXs for export. And then finally just round out, some of those exciting R&D opportunities we talked about for future integration of sensors and AI and machine learning as well.

Michaela Paukner:

And you mentioned the customer experience being at the heart of what you're doing this year. And one of the things I wanted to ask was how you plan to compete with the major line equipment manufacturers. And it sounds like that is going to play a big part in it.

Colin Rush:

Yeah, certainly. The OEM dealers out there play a big role in making the OEMs look good. The OEMs have backed away from that direct responsibility in the field that they have played in the decades, in the past. I started out with those companies and I certainly knew it as it backed away from that direct contact with the customers. So we're going to maintain that focus, that direct the customers here. And again, this isn't going to be a dollars and cents, "Oh, well, this machine costs this, this machine costs this." This is going to be a demonstration of the fact that the OEMs in the larger Shortline's can't compete with the capabilities of the SMART Seeder MAX because there really is nothing like it on the planet.

Colin Rush:

We've got a very strong intellectual property and patent position worldwide for all the technologies on the SMART Seeder MAX here. And we intend to keep those advantages in there. But more importantly we want to work directly one-on-one with those customers and our distribution partners here, really to have the best success on their farms. And that is fundamentally different than this top down driven OEM type of influence that you see today from a lot of the major companies in North America and abroad.

Michaela Paukner:

Just in general, what do you see as the future of farming?

Colin Rush:

Yeah. Well, that's a crystal ball we keep renewing every year. And if you look at what's coming out, we're going to get to a point that there is no more land. So farmers are going to have to look at every advantage they can to farm every square foot of those fields and produce it. Certainly the seed companies, genetics are going to play an increasing role in the future. Tolerances for pest, tolerances for drought, for different field commissions, that's going to give you a bit of a [inaudible 00:18:56]. But right now we're essentially still using the practices of 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago to plant those seeds. And yes, we have amazing spray technology, seeding spray technology on here, but they're essentially treating pests and conditions in the field after that seed has being planted.

Colin Rush:

And you only get one chance to plant that seed and put the fertility in place. And that begins your 100% of your yield potential. Everything goes downhill after that. So we believe that getting down to allowing farmers to almost get this plant level, plant by plant basis of technology to say not only every seed that goes in, but are we providing the fertility based on the soil commissions foot by foot? We know that the agronomy is just going to get more and more increase as data can be more actionable. And there really hasn't been a lot of action in planting and feeding in terms of changing the way we've been doing things. We know that things like autonomy are going to play a big role. We know that labor is harder and harder to access, which is skilled labor. But that just eliminates one part of it, that doesn't essentially eliminates people.

Colin Rush:

It doesn't change the value proposition to how that seed and the fertility went in the ground. So although autonomy, robotics is very important, it eliminates a variable cost for a producer. The true game is in agronomy and basically pushing the boundaries of planting and feeding and fertility and so on, and into the field on basically in a sustainable manner at the best cost and value for your operation. And I think all those technologies that start utilizing data, but have an actionable quality to it, I believe that's where the true gains in agriculture is going to be in farming for the next decade or two.

Michaela Paukner:

I had spoken with somebody who is an agronomist and a professor at a university here in the US. And he said a similar thing about the real gains going to be in closing that yield gap for those places around the world that the land isn't producing up to its potential. And that's really what's going to make the biggest impact for agriculture moving forward.

Colin Rush:

Would agree with that. You have countries like, if you look at India they do produce a lot of crops, but their cropping practices are very unsustainable. Some of that is a technology divide on the types of things they're using and the ability to get your [inaudible 00:21:43] crop residue. But their use of water, flood irrigation and how they're applying fertilizer is just completely unsustainable. It's practices where we were in North America decades ago that we knew were unsustainable. So when I think about the SMART Seeder MAX is, it's not a 60 foot machine, it's a one roll machine that can be expanded to any size. And that same no-till ability with that saw tooth [inaudible 00:22:14] that cuts and parts the residue, the ability to meter that like a printer over top of every row can go in any market in the world for any crop condition.

Colin Rush:

So we're pretty excited to start working with partners and we're actually sending out some very small units here for evaluation to other global areas this year. So we're pretty excited to start showing some announcements here later this year on some partners with companies around the world to bring the SMART Seeder technology to those areas, just like you've talked about, which is they're not using their soil and their farms to even 20% of their potential right now. That's exciting.

Michaela Paukner:

And was there anything else you wanted to mention that we haven't talked about?

Colin Rush:

It's very exciting to be talking with you. And again, on that education side, we just want to educate people that there are other alternatives out there than the same equipment that you've been purchasing for a long time. And we have tremendous dealer opportunities right now, especially in the United States and Canada. We're narrowing in on closing it out. We are working overseas as well in Australia and a few other places to start setting up those dealer networks. But if want to get on the ground floor, send us a note and we'd be happy to talk to you or any of your customers about what SMART Seeder MAX can do for you.

Michaela Paukner:

That's it for today's episode. If you miss part one of my conversation with Colin, go to precisionfarmingdealer.com/podcast to listen. You'll hear a lot more about the SMART Seeder MAX and Clean Seed Capital's dealership network. Your feedback about every episode is always welcome, so leave me a comment on our website. Send me an email at mpaukner@lessitermedia.com or give me a call at 262 777-2441 to share your thoughts. From all of us here at Precision Farming Dealer, I'm Associate Editor Michaela Paukner. Thanks for listening.

Intro Music: Squire Tuck - Rush to the Head

Interlude Music: Squire Tuck - Expressing One's Emotions in Public