Todd's Profile on Farm Progress: https://www.farmprogress.com/author/todd-fitchette

Todd's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddfitchette/

Todd Fitchette is the editor of Western Farm Press which is part of the Farm Progress Group. Todd has been there covering relevant agricultural issues for farmers in the West since 2013. His journalism career began in 1990 with community newspapers in California, where he earned First Place honors from the National Newspaper Association for his photography.

His career progressed to agriculture journalism where he reported on livestock and specialty crop issues in the West. This work includes covering subjects relevant to large herd dairy operations, specialty crops including fruits, nuts, vegetables and niche operations. He also covers public policy and water issues affecting western farmers. He has repeatedly been honored for his agricultural journalism by the Fresno County Farm Bureau in California. He currently lives in Yuma, Arizona.

I’ve been reading articles from Todd for several years now. I have always appreciated his ability to stay on top of the issues affecting agriculture in the west and to distill information down into a format that is accessible and digestible. I’ve run into him at events like the Almond Conference and FIRA USA and he always seems to be on-site wherever things are happening with the crops that matter most to the western United States.

I wanted to invite Todd onto the show to get his perspective as a journalist and someone who is covering these issues. I also wanted to learn more about storytelling and sharing information in agriculture. He shares openly about how he thinks about his work and how he goes about covering so many issues for his readers.

I’m really fascinated by today’s topic of looking into pest and disease outbreaks in animal agriculture from an economist's point of view. Our guest, Jada Thompson, is going to discuss the economics behind prevention of these biosecurity issues,the economic impact when outbreaks do occur, some of the tradeoffs in the difficult decisions that need to be made, what that means for producers and consumers, and a whole lot more.

To give you a little bit of background on Jada: Dr. Jada Thompson is an associate professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Arkansas. She worked in private industry for a few years managing customer insights and pricing analytics before earning her Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Colorado State University in 2016. Dr. Thompson’s research primarily focuses on animal health and livestock economics with emphasis on the poultry industry.

She also came very highly recommended from Dr. Trey Malone who was on this show last year on episode 434. So thank you Trey for the referral to Jada.

Lumo: https://lumo.ag/

Great episode for you today with Devon Wright of Lumo. The Lumo story is really interesting for a number of reasons. One of which is that they have managed to take on venture capital, but still remain very focused on serving a very specific market within agriculture. As you’ll hear they have resisted the temptation that has led to the demise of so many agtech companies to try to be for everyone and rapidly expand to as many acres as possible. But Lumo is focused exclusively on wine grapes, and for a long time only wine grapes in the areas of Sonoma and Napa Counties in California.

Also, Devon is just an interesting dude. I’ll read his bio here to give you a sense of what I’m talking about:

Devon Wright is an entrepreneur, investor, and the co-founder and CEO of Lumo, where he and his team are on a mission to massively improve food and freshwater security by giving farmers the best irrigation system in the world. He sold his first startup, a local marketing platform for restaurants, to Yelp in 2017. When he’s not helping growers dial in their irrigation precision or providing advice to other early-stage startups, he’s spending time with his wife and three young daughters on their little farm, or writing cheesy sci-fi romance.