Episode:

Alison Sunstrum

Transcript

Episode 15 – Alison Sunstrum

Tue, Apr 15, 2025 11:21AM • 1:10:21

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Canadian agriculture, competitive strategy, venture capital, AI in agriculture, unit economics, diversity and inclusion, mentorship, agricultural innovation, farmer compensation, global trade, data acquisition, technological advancement, consumer demand, agricultural associations, entrepreneurial challenges.

SPEAKERS

Jay Whetter, Toban Dyck, Alison Sunstrum

Toban Dyck  00:03

This is the extensionist conversations with great thinkers in agriculture. I’m Toban Dyck and I’m Jay wetter.

Jay Whetter  00:14

Hey, Toban, AJ, we were both at a conference recently. We were Canadian crops convention in Edmonton, and we had

Toban Dyck  00:21

this really fun is it called Canadian crops convention, or this crops convention? I sure hope

Jay Whetter  00:31

so. It was in Edmonton, and we had this fun party kind of night at this place called the banquet, which was right near the Edmonton Oilers arena. We had the banquet, at the banquet, yeah. And, and you were doing your own thing, and I was doing my own thing. We weren’t, like, at the hip or anything, which is good. That’s the way we like to work a room. It’s very, very strategic. So I was bowling, and boy did I suck. But you were doing some punching, yeah,

Toban Dyck  00:55

yeah. So there’s like, this thing, like, this speed bag thing, you pay a buck, and this speed bag, like, thing comes out and you have to, you punch it, and it gives you a numeric value on, I don’t know if it’s like a weight or whatever, but like you, you punch it and you try to get beat person you’re playing with, or, or the game’s high score, which was nine, nine, something, right? Nine? Yeah, 60, I don’t know, whatever. So a whole bunch of us, a whole bunch of us are, are punching this thing, and I don’t want to name we’re not going to name names, okay. No, no, not going to name my name. Well, yeah, your name, yes. But the people I was with,

Jay Whetter  01:31

no, okay, and why did what were you? Was it your idea to do this punching thing?

Toban Dyck  01:37

No, no, no, it wasn’t my idea. Was someone else in the canola industry. We’ll see who was, who was very who wanted to do it, and she was giving us advice on how to do it. So, like, hip rotation, like, leading into this thing, you know, we’re, it’s, you know, yeah, whatever. It’s kind of getting on in the evening. So, yeah, we’re having some fun, hip rotation, follow through and stuff. So a lot of us were really overthinking this, this thing, and then if you, if you whiff on it, if you, if you don’t get it, I think a solid punch, then, you know, you got one shot, and it kind of sucks. And it’s like, really, you know, but you’re also, what’s also interesting is like, you’re with all these colleagues, right? So it’s like, there’s a bit of like, you want to show off a little bit like, you want to have a high number, and you’re like, it’s hard, you know, there’s a lot of pressure on it. You feel like there’s be, like, a power struggle. And how did you do? I did, I did okay. So I got, I got the highest of that of that bunch, which is, you came and found me at the end of this. So then where this story is going. And I don’t want to take the spotlight away from Jay, because, you know, so end of the evening, Jay and I come together, we talk about how our social strategy played out of us, of us working the room. No, just kidding. We didn’t talk about that video

Jay Whetter  02:58

of me dancing. This is true. Abby, do not put that anywhere on the air. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  03:02

she might anyway. So stay tuned. Tell Jay about this fun activity and talk about some you hear some laughter in the background. It’s Abby. I talked to Jay about this game, and he’s interested, because he’s, you know, he’s up for, up for for anything. And so he walks up to this punching bag. I got my high score was in the six hundreds. No,

Jay Whetter  03:27

oh yeah, but then you got much better initially.

Toban Dyck  03:30

Oh, yeah, okay, so, so 600 so I’m like, I’m like, Yeah, I sure confidently go to jail, like Jay’s not going to beat my score. Blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever, he walks out to it. No, really, no visible, at least no pronounced hip rotation, like, like, like I had right walks up to the thing and punches 840 and I’m like, That’s not no bueno, is what I thought in my head. Yeah. No good. Those of you who need that translation. So I like, I gotta give this another go. Yeah, with, you know, all lots of pressure, I punch again, 816, yeah, I didn’t. So

Jay Whetter  04:14

I elevated your game. I mean, you have to give me that at least, because you were 600

Toban Dyck  04:18

you did before that you did. You? Did? I really wanted, I really want to travel to Edmonton again with you. Yeah,

Jay Whetter  04:25

and do that. Just do that. Well, I think that I mean the competitive juices. If we could use that word, sure, it’s like the moist of competitiveness.

04:39

But also, no bueno.

Jay Whetter  04:41

Do not say that word ever again, Jay. But I think this sets up our conversation with Alison Sundstrom, who is our guest today, because we’re going to be talking about how to make Canadian agriculture more competitive, at least that’s part of the sub theme. I. So can we get onto that or,

Toban Dyck  05:03

yeah, punching above our weights, punching above our weight, reaching for the cliche of cliche. That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, no, I think that’s a great segue. Anyways, it was a fun conference. Yeah, it was

Jay Whetter  05:15

fun. Yeah, absolutely. On to Allison.

Toban Dyck  05:22

I so we’re doing extension because we we value

Jay Whetter  05:27

it. Farmers are still looking for information, even while governments have pulled away from the job of extension so that. So, like you said, you have the needs there, and there’s fewer people actually doing extension. And so we thought we’d jump into that, and we hope that sponsors recognize that the service that we’re offering and give us some

Toban Dyck  05:46

support. As much as we are doing that because because we see a need and we have a passion for it, we’re also doing it because we see a need among some of the groups that could be sponsors, and we see that they are also looking for new ways to extend if

Jay Whetter  05:59

anybody else wants to step forward, we’d welcome their support as well. Welcome to the extensionists. We have Alison Sundstrom here, who’s a managing partner for nya ventures, Allison, you’ve got a lot of titles, so I’m going to let you introduce yourself with whatever you want to tell us. But first you have to tell me what nya ventures, okay,

Alison Sunstrum  06:29

well, I typically don’t want to say what it is, but it’s a title that came out of it. Came out of thinking about my entire team are a bunch of nerds, and although we provide capital, we really love data. And when we first put our thesis together, we were thinking, what kind of founders do we want? And we decided that the kinds we want were diverse. They were just setting up a class of their own. And we we said, these are the outliers, and in data, and see now it’s going to get nerdy, but in data, not being average is three standard deviations away from the mean. And so we said, hey, let’s not be average. And so out of that came Nia. But however, I will tell you, that’s just kind of a glib and flip statement. It also means I spent a great deal of time in Africa, and in one of the tongues, it means purpose. And I would say that that’s what our fund is about.

Toban Dyck  07:36

I love that. So you got multiple meanings. I also love the Not, not, not your average, yeah, but

Jay Whetter  07:42

so we’re 30 seconds, not even 30 seconds in, and we’ve we’re really nerding out at a deep level. But you need to explain something to me. I wasn’t expecting to go this, this deep into nerd role right away, but you said something about three,

Alison Sunstrum  07:56

three standard, three degrees away from the me. And what you have is an outline data point, and some people will remove that point. But what I’m really interested in is, what does that mean? What is that point

Jay Whetter  08:10

represent? So what is what do? Three standard deviations.

Alison Sunstrum  08:14

Okay, we just got way too deep. Let’s go to sailing. Yeah, I

Jay Whetter  08:21

then I want the one second, one minute.

Toban Dyck  08:23

You’re soon going to discover you’re talking to a couple of idiots. But until that point, let’s continue on. Let’s go. You’re

Jay Whetter  08:32

not going to answer my question, no, because then so people can figure that out for themselves, yes. So the key point is that you’re interested in those way out here, like, here’s the bell curve Absolutely, and there’s some sort of three, three standard deviations, and then you’ve got these outliers way out here as a fringe Jay is not letting it go. I’m not, but so we’re but you’re interested in those. You’re interested in these, these outliers, which I think is really cool. So we’ll get it’s very much like we can leave we

Alison Sunstrum  09:01

can but it’s very much like society. We tend to discard those that think amazingly differently and those that are so far out. And in reality, our problems are so challenging that we need to look for those people that are thinking so differently that we might be able to accomplish our end goals and keep society together using different thoughts.

Jay Whetter  09:30

Well, I am so glad I asked. That’s

Toban Dyck  09:32

not uninteresting. That’s fantastic. Yeah, I think I think so on that note, and again, none of this is in my notes here to talk about, but which is great. So you’re chatting with someone at a conference, I think we can all picture ourselves in this, in this context, and you’re talking to somebody, and they have an interesting idea, and it kind of stands out as a bit, kind of a bit out there. So there’s, there’s, there’s that. Bank of ideas that fits into a category of like, you registered as an interesting idea within a certain scope. But then there’s ideas that your gut reaction is that’s crazy, or like that’s so outside of what you’re familiar with that you kind of write it off. You pigeon hole it right aways. And so I’m curious about that, right? So when you think of think of ideas that are kind of outside the norm. You think of ideas that are edgy, kind of within a certain scope. But then there’s also, like that whole, you know, out there bit. And is it, are those the ideas we need to be paying attention to? Or that’s

Alison Sunstrum  10:38

absolutely it? I can give you two really good examples, one I invested in, and one I didn’t. And the first one was a spin out from the University of Calgary that had been, let’s say they were creating microbes, or growing microbes that were scraping the air to turn into natural gas. And you know when you first let me tell you that scientific terms would have been much better, but basically, taking nothing and turning it into some value product. Well, the natural gas they produced was too expensive, but lo and behold, one of the products are the byproducts, and it’s cyanobacteria. One of the byproducts of that process are growing those microbes. Was actually a product called phycocyanin that is a natural replacement for the color blue. So any pigment for the color blue. So if you’re sitting at a conference and a scientist is trying to tell you how they’re scrubbing the air with microbes that can then you can then grow a product out of it’s a bit out there. The second one you might understand more, and that’s one I did invest in. The second one is a product that a fellow from Hong Kong brought into the creative destruction lab and said, I have developed a method of packaging that will allow you to keep fresh meat products on the shelf for more than for more than two years. So when you come to my house, Jay and I would absolutely love to have you and Toban eat one of those steaks, and it’s been sitting on my shelves for years.

Jay Whetter  12:34

Would you eat? Well, I try to are we your are we your guinea pigs?

12:39

No, I tried it all my kids first, but

Jay Whetter  12:43

those okay, but that’s, that’s a big deal. Yeah, it’s big deal. Yeah. And does that, that you said on the shelf? Do you mean in the fridge, in the or, like, the cupboard? That is incredible, yeah.

Alison Sunstrum  12:56

And what it can do, I will say that that was a very, very early stage. He did get his products to a point that that was, if you want to know how the process works, think advanced sous vide and, yeah, basically that enables, if you don’t have to have a cold chain. Think of the savings. Think is, think of the different things. Yeah, those are the kind of things we’re interested

Toban Dyck  13:24

in. Because, yeah, it’s very interesting. Like, there’s so many of those ideas out there. So, like, right? And how do you, yeah, yeah, ruminating on that a little bit. Because how do you sift through that? And how do you,

Alison Sunstrum  13:41

how do you sit through that? And then more, perhaps more importantly, is, how do you bring it to market? And that is, that is one of the most challenging factors.

Jay Whetter  13:53

Well, just before we get to that, also, because I do, we want to talk about that, because that’s you’ve got some good insight there that will be useful for people. But you want to just, no, I want to. I want to go back to what you’re I had a picture in my mind of a party, yeah, and there’s this person, kind of sitting in the corner by themselves. No one’s talking to them. And I also, yeah, I have to throw this out there so I don’t forget that’s right. I want a t shirt that says three standard deviations from the mean. And I’m going to wander around see if anybody anyway. But so this person standing, it’s like a note to

14:27

self marketing note,

Jay Whetter  14:31

Allison, in your, in your, in your life. Do you go around finding those people standing in the corner by themselves, metaphorically or or in or an actual fact, and because, knowing that they probably have something to share that if nobody else has asked them, I’m gonna ask them. So

Alison Sunstrum  14:51

first off, I’m married to one, but I think, I think, actually, I. We’ve created a capital market. We’ve created a accelerator, sort of system that doesn’t look necessarily for those people. We tend to want to look for people that look exactly like us, behave exactly like us. And so what we’ve ended up with a society that looks exactly like us, but there’s all these brilliant people running around. I think if you looked at Einstein, he was very much one of these quirky oddballs, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, never liked to wear shoes, so maybe Jay go seek out those folks not wearing shoes at a party. I think that’s what I’m interested in. Is all the diversity of thought and perspective is, is where we’re going to find some solutions to some of the things that we really messed up.

Jay Whetter  15:53

How do we then, as an industry? Let’s, let’s talk about agriculture. But I know that you you want to take agriculture out of it, shake it out of it, silo and bring the world to agriculture, or bring agriculture to the to the world. But, but how do within agriculture, then? Do you have suggestions on how we as an industry can seek out some of these new ideas, completely different, oddball ideas, because I’d love to think, in 25 years, we’re doing something that is completely different. Can I,

Toban Dyck  16:27

Allison, I want you to answer that question. So please, please. Can I, can I take a stab at that too? Yeah, you want to answer, well, well, just, just like, just gonna observationally, right? You think of, you think of that, that person at a party and with their kind of whack a doodle ideas, right? And like, especially if they become labeled that way, or if the industry knows this person as that, you think of the challenges in engaging people like that. They’re and they’re they’re they’re nuanced, like, that’d be my take, in the sense like you, you as a person who’s going to engage you have to be comfortable with with everybody else in the room, seeing you engage with this person, right? So it becomes almost like a philosophical, it becomes a social, you know, confidence levels, all these things going to have to, have to be a part of it, right? Like you had, and it’s very, I,

Jay Whetter  17:24

you’ve got to be brave enough to seek that person. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  17:27

you got to be, you got to be brave. And you got to, like, there’s lots that’s going on. You got to be really comfortable in your own skin. You have, you kind of, there’s lots of factors in that. So that’d be my take on it, because you, we’ve all been there, right? There’s somebody in the room that you has kind of wild ideas, and you maybe don’t sometimes, and you feel a little bit bad, but you don’t For these reasons, of these social reasons, these all these dynamics that are at play, that that are that are factoring that. And if you think of that, and so this is getting really excited about this, you think of that over, over, over an industry wide right? And you think of like, that’s what we’re leaving at the table. That’s what we’re leaving behind for those reasons. That’s, that’s, that’s quite why,

Jay Whetter  18:11

Listen, why are we not engaging these people? Okay,

Alison Sunstrum  18:17

so why don’t we break this back a little bit and take it into agriculture. And if we will take it into agriculture first, we have this vision of agriculture in that it is my grandfather driving a tractor. So if you’re not on the farm, that’s what everyone thinks. And in reality, the average farmer is pretty sophisticated CEO that needs to manage their cash flow, and I think I even just fell into the trap and we assume they’re men. And so we have this male based industry, which is at one time maybe needed to be male driven, because you needed the physicality, but not anymore. And so we have full on automation happening on farms. We have we have science at extraordinary levels. And so I think that we have to understand what kind of people our farmers are, and then we also have to understand that there’s a lot happening. There’s a lot of protein being produced outside our traditional boundaries. So if we could get beyond that, that would be excellent. We also have a series of agricultural schools in Canada, and we think that’s the only place that AG lives. But ag lives in the lab. It lives in engineering deeply, and so the science and technical aspect of agriculture is one we have to endorse and adopt. We also have to make sure that our farmers are the most technological. Advanced. Now, if we were speaking on the innovation side, we also have to look at the way we look at venture capital today is it’s only been around since about the 1990s and what we developed was a bro culture that is so extraordinary, women get 2% of VC funds and always have as an improved and the average women led company, retort returns more on $1 basis than a male founded company, the bias is very real. I have pounds and pounds and pounds of research data. Bias is real. Yeah. So are we, by creating these capital environments, are we creating restrictive thought as well as restrictive access? The other part of that that is really concerning to me is that if you’re an entrepreneur of color, you get less. If you are in agriculture, you also get less. So women with women led companies in agriculture get about point 7% of so less than 1% of funding. What do we do about it’s a good question, because if you take a look at enrollment at the U of C vet school, it’s predominantly women.

Jay Whetter  21:38

Vet School, veterans, yeah, okay, predominantly,

21:43

so interesting culture we have,

Toban Dyck  21:47

yeah? I mean, yeah, I’m interested. So, so how to change that, right? How to change that?

21:53

So you two middle

21:55

eight white guys in a podcast, right? Okay,

Alison Sunstrum  21:57

well, let’s look at what we’re doing right now. We’re we’ve started a war against consonants. We’ve decided that dei should go those are amazing words, diversity, equity, inclusion. We’ve decided that they can’t be funded anymore. We’ve also got a T word, and I had great amusement at listening to a discussion about transgender mice, and in reality, it’s transgenic mice. But hey, when ignorance comes from the top, I’d be very scared, and the second T word that I’m also just so frustrated by is tariffs. May have made us all, as Canadians, stand up, but oh my goodness, this is counterproductive. We’re taxing ourselves. How smart we are. Yeah, yeah.

Jay Whetter  22:58

So underlying what you’re saying just now is that the bad scenario, the 0.7% might not get better anytime soon, given that we seem to be going backwards. Well,

Alison Sunstrum  23:11

I think it’s going to get better. I’m very optimistic. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s diversity and equity, diversity, equity and inclusion policies may not been rolled out. Well, I’m really looking for merit. I want to see if you’ve got a great idea. I think we have to be able to source through the really crazy ones, but let’s not reject the really crazy ones, because we’re so insecure, we can’t look at them

Jay Whetter  23:44

right, right on them. On the merit front, it reminded me of something I was gonna ask you. So you said 2% of the venture capital is you can have to funds go to women. That’s right. Women run businesses and but yet, yet the women run businesses have a higher

24:00

return. That’s correct. Yeah, that’s correct. Do you think that’s because

Jay Whetter  24:05

women have to hit a much higher bar? Oh, so that their idea is is probably okay. So their idea to be taken seriously. They come to the market with a better idea that’s more likely to succeed. So what I’m trying to parse here is whether it’s a it’s the nature of women that actually run companies more successfully, or whether it’s the because of the high bar, they’re coming into the market with an idea that’s more likely to succeed. High

Alison Sunstrum  24:33

bar is one component, but the other parts of it, it’s not if you dig deep into this, as I do, it’s not all it’s not all easy to puzzle through, but you’re a high performer. If you actually you’re you tend to be a high performer if you’ve made it to the top. And so there’s a little bit of that mirror crawling. And. But there’s also, there’s also systemic obstacles that we don’t have to have. We have to understand in Canada that there’s a broad spectrum of capital. So we often on innovation shows talk about venture capital, but there’s private equity, there are pension funds, there are, there is one of the best way is reverting back to business fundamentals and growing your business, having your customers be your success point, not venture capitalists. That throws in money. So I’m really interested in strengthening the entire capital ecosystem in Canada. Huh?

Jay Whetter  25:41

Yeah, no, you are a successful business woman. You’re also into venture capital. So you, but before you got into venture capital, you yourself had had some success, yeah, no, and I you, so what? What was it about you or your scenario that like, Do you have any advice for other other women coming up with with a good idea? How would you help them or mentor them? Because I know mentorship is important for you. Yeah.

Alison Sunstrum  26:13

So I just had the great pleasure of being in San Francisco at World agro tech and, yeah, fabulous, but it was pretty male dominated. I heard that the women’s breakfast had been canceled and sponsored withdrawn for whatever reason, and I decided this is not right. And so a weekend, we sponsored the conference, small emerging fund in Canada. We sponsored the women’s breakfast and went down and quite frankly, I had no idea what to expect, but it turned into, I think, the most exciting part of the conference, standing room only, maybe about 150 women who just wanted to have a frank conversation. We made it under Chatham House rules, and we looked at the challenges that women had, and then we also gave up some really good solutions and and we leaned into the room to provide solutions, and I’ve got them for you today, and we can knit them in through this conversation, but essentially is, you gotta be resilient, and you have to build defensible moats create differentiated products. You gotta work on your business fundamentals like work definitely be unconquerable, and how males say. This is Paul Graham of Y Combinator. What he says to two founders a very male stand. He says, Be a cockroach. Don’t die and be hard to kill. But really, for women, I’m kind of trying to turn that a bit differently, just don’t run out of money, is great advice. But how do you optimize revenue? How do you get your your customers keep a laser focus on your core market and customers operate lean. There’s a whole series of Agile processes that can can help a company move on, be data driven, leverage AI. AI is what AI can do, is simply blowing my mind. So what I would like to do, and it’s not just for women, it’s for all founders, I’d like to see them really drive back to the fundamentals and focus on unit economics, because on farm, There’s nothing more important than unit economics. On farm, the margins are slim. If you’re developing technology that they can’t afford, then you don’t have a business.

Jay Whetter  28:59

Okay, there’s so many things, yeah, but that’s, let’s, let’s go with the last one that I noted down, which, which was unit economics. What, what exactly do you mean by that? So

Alison Sunstrum  29:11

if I drove by a ranch, because most of my, most of my thoughts are, are deeply in ranching and livestock. If I drive by a ranch, I can pretty much tell you how much money you have in the bank. If I can survey How much land you have, how many cows you have, those unit economics are pretty well known from standard basis. If I know how well you do certain things, I might be able to help you improve those margins. But that’s how simple it is. You better know what the standard operating margins are in an industry. Then you have to see what kind of land and and or asset base you operate from, and then techno. Technology has to make whatever a farmer is doing or a rancher is doing, it has to be better simple stuff.

Jay Whetter  30:10

I think that’s one of, one of the points that you said was deeply know your customer, and you’re more likely to succeed if you’re if you’re the problem is worth solving exactly if you’re doing something that the industry needs, or, like you said, tech that makes the farm profitability, that’s right. And

Toban Dyck  30:31

you also talked about leveraging AI, which is something we definitely want to talk about. But this, this whole thing about, you know, business fundamentals, operating lean, all the stuff that we’ve just been talking about is, like, uniquely, I mean, interesting to me. We run a business. I mean, this podcast is a business, and birth forest group, the company that produces it, is my business. So I’m very interested in this. So you’ve also talked about mentorship. So my question either on air or up. Will you be my mentor? Use into this relationship. This all sounds this all sounds really, really, really great. But did you want Allison to answer? No, no, I don’t, because I don’t want to hear a no. So I’m gonna, I’m just gonna skirt or just gonna keep on going. But the the AI component of it, and we hear a lot about AI in Ag, and we, you know, kind of every conference now has to have some talk on it. Love to hear your your perspective and your thoughts on on its its use in

Alison Sunstrum  31:44

Okay, so if you don’t mind, I’ll tell a little of my background, and then lead into AI so perfect. When I was 25 I met a mentor, and boy, what that was the luckiest thing that I ever had a gentleman who was the chairman of the port of Halifax and or at that time, called HAL term, the container port. And he was entrusted by the Alberta government to do something really incredible. I’ll call it break the crow rate. But essentially it was to reduce the cost of containerized traffic moving from Alberta. And this gentleman thought differently. And what he did for me is he, he showed me, first off, he had gone through GM, diesel locomotive division, GM, in the day, had an incredible employee management and advancement system, and so he thought differently than men that were bringing that were bringing young management, young female management, onto their staff. He felt that you he gave me one, one piece of advice that is always stuck in my head. There are no bad employees, only bad managers. And whenever I would complain about an employee or something, I got that and and that twist that shifted, and there was many, many things I learned from him, but essentially, I through that process I was in, I was able to develop one of the first electronic data interchange projects with a Canadian railroad, and in two years, I was able to convert that into a little bit of capital. I thought I was invincible, and so I started investing in small startups that were in agriculture and how to focus on the supply chain. I met an engineer in Alberta, and he and two other engineers had been looking at data very, very differently, and this is just about the time that internet was coming about. My skills were mainly financial, and I shifted very deeply into tech, and over the next 20 some years, we developed a data acquisition and analytics program process platform that identified animals that were efficient, could identify disease before symptom expression. We took that technology around the world, we scaled it into most major agricultural universities, on farm, on ranch, and in 2019 we divested our company to a UK private wealth firm. And part of the reason I never had time to think that I couldn’t get capital. We grew our business from cash flow from operations. And the reason we had some very early on Angel investors that were phenomenal. We gave them a very good return. And the. When I divested my company, I started looking at, what are the things that I wish I could have done better, only 90% of your company and and divesting is pretty good, but what we really did learn through all of this was the challenges on data and when you’re chasing a company, when you’re chasing revenue, when you’re chasing customers, you don’t have time to think about the fact that maybe you’re not getting venture capital because you’re a woman. You don’t think about it. You just think, and I’m not sure if you bleep vernacular, but I just thought, well, if those bastards won’t fund me, I’ll go find a way to I’ll go. Find a way to fill in through customers. Really strong way to build your business, but it takes a long time. And one thing about venture capital that can help you accelerate and scale fast, yeah. So, yeah, go ahead. Sorry,

Toban Dyck  35:59

no, you. It’s in, it’s in our notes here that you, you and Ashley had talked about, talked about that, and that’s really interesting. You, how do you think your business growth would have changed if you had venture capital, if you went that? I don’t

Alison Sunstrum  36:14

know. Maybe at the time, I don’t know that it might, it might not, have changed, but the advent of AI, so we were doing very early stage machine learning, regressions, functions, things. We were doing some very cool things, running multiple computers to do computation, but we didn’t have this. We didn’t have the tools. And one of the things that I saw was really important for me was I had to go back and learn deeply about AI. And much of the AI research was done in Canada. And what I did for a year was I just immersed myself in newer technologies like blockchain, newer technologies like AI, I really had to fundamentally understand what it was. I don’t think, I don’t think I fully grasp that, but the speed at which AI has evolved is something that if you’re not if you don’t understand it, you better find out about it and at least know how to use it. But it is, it is absolutely transformational.

Jay Whetter  37:29

Have you seen good ideas on how a farm, whether a livestock operation or a grain operation, can use a Oh,

37:35

absolutely

Jay Whetter  37:38

what so what would be? Yeah, what would be one thing that you would suggest a farmer do in the next year? Well,

Alison Sunstrum  37:43

first off, if you haven’t played around with chat, GPT get into it. If you haven’t used perplexity, AI, a very deep research tool, do use it and perplexity AI, all of these tools are very inexpensive, and so if you have any problem on your farm, be querying and perplexity is a bit more research deep. And you can even upload your spreadsheets. You can upload your financial statements. There’s AI plug ins. And so you you can become a superstar. Your unit economics are drifting. Plug it in.

Jay Whetter  38:28

I’m so glad you came back to that. So good. So one of the things that your your company or your invention, helped with was identifying animals that were inefficient or or efficient. So you could select specific cows based on their efficiency or their their their likelihood of producing a nice profit. Do you think, on the grain side of things? I don’t know whether the unit would be acres or whether the unit would be tons of production, but I’m thinking, even in acres, if you, if you consider an acre as your cow,

Alison Sunstrum  39:07

for me, do you think really, for me, it would never be acres okay, because it’s not a finite enough measurement, it’s going to be tons of production, Perhaps, and they also have quality overlay on it. So it’s not just always quantity, it’s sometimes quality, but we’re not often paid for quality. And so those are the kind of things that we should also shift.

Jay Whetter  39:34

So that’s interesting. You say acres, it’s not finite, and I think of the land as the most finite, the most defined. So, so interesting. So, so it’s my mind. I’m stuck in this mindset. You’re and you’re Yes, okay, so tell me.

Alison Sunstrum  39:50

Okay, so what’s the most important? Tell me why you it’s a chicken and egg question. So tell me, is it is it the soil? Is it the micro? In the soil that we really want to measure

Jay Whetter  40:03

we I think, I think that’s the way our conversation is going. You know, we’re soil health is is such a big part of you. Hope so. I

Alison Sunstrum  40:10

hope so. But it’s not, it’s not the only thing to focus on. It’s water. It’s water quality, water access, it’s air. I mean, just think of all the things that affect afar, okay, so it’s

Jay Whetter  40:24

not just, it’s not the acre, but it’s the things that drive that productivity within that you always

Alison Sunstrum  40:30

have to, yeah, you always have to everything but acre, yeah, you have to roll it up to the economic payback, right? So, yeah. So it’s probably not acres. It could be Bucha. I mean, what is it? But? But definitely, you have to make sense of it. And then let’s take this back to fundamentals. I can nerd out and talk about microbes and soil, but what is a farmer paid for? And that in itself, is another financial restriction. Are we? Are we rewarding the wrong things and the wrong people? And I would say across probably every industry, we are

Jay Whetter  41:10

okay, well, that’s a big, bold statement. Are we talking? Are you talking more so we’re paying for bushels of wheat, when, in fact, we should be paying for Bush tons of protein or tons of gluten, or

Alison Sunstrum  41:23

who gets the most money in the supply chain? Is that where it should sit? I’d I’d say unlikely. So. Is it the farmer who actually creates the entire product? Is it the person that owns the land, because the person that owns the land and the farmer could be different. Is a very philosophical conversation. This is when most people leave you at a party, just so, you know,

Jay Whetter  41:52

so we’re gonna, we’re gonna stick with you because we know that you’re that three. No,

41:56

I’m not, but

Jay Whetter  42:00

okay, well, we’re sticking with you anyway. So keep, keep rolling.

Alison Sunstrum  42:04

It’s just really, I think that our supply chain, there’s people that are makers and takers across the supply chain, and that actually shifts with supply and demand. And so it’s a it’s an economic quandary on, how can we compensate farmers better? How can we compensate those that grow nutrient dense foods? How can we compensate people who create blue pigment out of nothing

42:39

we don’t? Yeah, it says

Jay Whetter  42:40

the pain. Obviously, I really like the nutrient dense foods comment, because there’s that’s not part of, not usually part of the quality equation. But maybe that’s one of these shifts that we need to think about. Nutrient density per per ton. Well, I’m also

Toban Dyck  42:56

curious, it was said per acre. How these shifts even happen in the in the value chain. How do we start valuing

Jay Whetter  43:04

these we need to find those people who have those good ideas. Okay,

Alison Sunstrum  43:08

you need, as a consumer, to ask for it, demand it, and pay for it,

Toban Dyck  43:16

pay for so that’s where that that’s where the shift takes place, and that’s a consumer level. I hate to say

Alison Sunstrum  43:21

it, but it comes back to capital, and it comes back to pricing mechanisms. And so it’s it’s not an easy conversation, but this might come back to where women play, because women purchase about 81% of our food and our products. They’re usually the purchase decision maker in a household. Maybe we as women need to be asking for better food and paying for it, yeah,

Jay Whetter  43:55

if we twist that around to the farmers side of things, because so if farmers want to be more proactive in getting a bigger bitter I mean, this has been an ongoing conversation since farming began. Probably, how do farmers get compensated more for the what they bring to the table? How do they be proactive? Like, are there ways that they can rather than just being passive, passively accepting the current scenario. How do farmers be more proactive in getting more, getting more a bigger percentage? Oh, yeah, of the Yeah.

Alison Sunstrum  44:32

Well, first off, they got, they got to control the narrative, and so they have to talk more. And farming is a, is a pretty lonely activity, and so by joining forces with associations, telling the story more clearly that that’s part of that’s part of how that message can be sent out there. Let’s. A little reality check on that. Though, that sounds really good. And all this, all the associations across Canada will be saying, Great. See, this is a reason for us for being but if you take a look at every province and across the country, everyone has their own associations for many different reasons and thoughts. We need a strong Canadian agricultural association that drives not just for one limited lobby group, but it, it. It lobbies for agriculture across the country. I think as we’ve been talking about trade barriers and other things, maybe we’re starting to see that this provincialism that we’ve created might not be as smart as good nationalistic. And I don’t want that to be nationalistic. I’d rather have this as a global thought process. I think de globalization is one of our greatest risks, right? Yeah,

Toban Dyck  46:03

I don’t want to let AI go. There was there was Yeah. So, you know, when we, like I said earlier the building, this context of hearing about AI often at these conferences and stuff, and it’s come it’s becoming a lot like, yeah, try chat GPT. And I use chat GPT a lot. And you’d mentioned perplexity, which I definitely want to check out after this. I’m curious about, if I say, on a really granular level. And I’ve been curious about this plugging in some spreadsheets and kind of anecdotal kind of business information for my business into chat, GPT or business modeling, and you know, that kind of stuff. How confident can I be as in what it in, what it in, what it spits out and what it gives me? So

Alison Sunstrum  46:56

you have to know whether or not your data is being used to create models. And if you have an enterprise version of either chat, GPT or or perplexity, AI, your data is not stored or used for model development. Make an assumption that anything you submit be be smart enough when you’re on the public forum to never to never submit things that you would not want taken around. Assume that your data is used to build a model, and then also be pragmatic. How valuable is your data? Because once you’ve been in data, you start realizing that, sure, there are certain parts of your data you want to be to remain private, but there’s a lot of what you do other way. Smarter people can be doing it better. So I don’t get too I don’t get too concerned about it. I never put my customers private data into a source unless I have their permission, but data is out there and it’s there to be used and but be cautious.

Toban Dyck  48:13

And how confident Can I be in the results that something like a chat GPT not at all gives me, yeah,

Alison Sunstrum  48:20

don’t be confident research, but what it does is it gives you a starting point. It gives you it gives you ways your knowledge is what’s translated through AI, what you think you know is either evidenced by someone else, but even the one reason that I like either if you get a result in chat, GPT ask for the source. If you haven’t got a source there, where did they come up with a source? Then go check out that source. And is it something you want? You want to use that data and also sources, sources from peer reviewed research. I like a little better sometimes, yeah, sometimes, not always. And it’s just really be smart when you use the tools, but the tools make you so much better than what you are. So

Jay Whetter  49:18

just on that note, because I this unit economics, which is the theme of one of the themes. But do you think AI or and these, these tools can help an individual farm analyze their unit economics, and I identify ways to improve Yes.

Alison Sunstrum  49:35

And there’s, there’s tools that reside within chat, GPT, and there’s agents that you can use to query some of these agents have been built to explore your unit economics. But even if you don’t have access to those tools, don’t want to pay for them, just try to find. Find out what tools exist to do whatever job you want to do. So you can ask that in farms

Jay Whetter  50:06

will hire consultants. Yeah? Allison consultants? Exactly. Yeah. So I, I can I finish one? Okay, okay, okay, just, just on that, because we have a lot of agronomists who help with agronomists. We don’t have a lot of good tech advisors that a farm could phone and say, How do I use AI to help with my unit economics? So you mentioned Consultants is this? Is this a growing field or an empty field that really is in desperate need of some people? Okay,

Alison Sunstrum  50:39

so agronomists, there’s, if I’m correct, there’s about 2800 of them across North America. There’s probably lots of small ones, and things I haven’t included in that number, they can’t cover every acre, but things like image processing can or images, and then how they’re processed, can, satellites can. So there’s a number of technologies that can contribute farms, like agronomists, and I, I’m sure there’s good ones and bad ones, just like there’s good doctors and bad doctors. So I have no comment there, but if they’re not keeping up on the tools and technologies, then they will be outstripped pretty quickly, and that’s what we’re going to see in many industries. So I’m not specifically hitting agronomists. I’m just saying that if you’re if the knowledge you’re not bringing to your farm is valuable and actionable, then tools and technologies may outstrip you. So

Toban Dyck  51:50

it is my turn, Jay. It’s all you say. You can interrupt anytime. So I think what I only think this because it’s in my mind, and I’m assuming it’s in others too. There’s a sense of when I use chat GPT for things, and I use it a lot, and I should use it more. I still use it, I’m sure, on a daily basis. But there’s an element that I think I’m cheating, like I feel like I’m doing I’m getting a technology to do something that I should really be doing myself. And I’m ambivalent about it, because I realize that I am doing it myself, because I it only gives me if I give it quality, it gives me quality. So, you know, you know. So there is a bit of that. So I want to, I want to talk. I want your comment on that, but then I also want to tie it into something a little bit lighter, and I want to talk a little bit about food and how I use AI in menu development. So don’t

Jay Whetter  52:52

those are two really good questions, so don’t lose the first one with the second one. Okay, so let’s make sure, Allison, oh yeah for sure.

Alison Sunstrum  52:59

Okay, so you have a little bit of tech imposter syndrome, and from my perspective, I would just call you a dumbass if you’re not using all the tools you can in your box. Okay, yeah, definitely. It’s your initial thought that asks the question to chat GBT, right? Or any AI provider, you’re asking the question because you’ve got a fundamental desire to know the answer. The answer is going to take your question and make it better. If you don’t, if you stop there and say, I’m I’m fantastic, don’t make sure that the answer you’ve got back is right. It is what you want to inform and forget about feeling like an imposter, because basically your initial question or query created the created the output. Does that make you feel better? It does. It does I mean,

Toban Dyck  53:56

but I think, I think I’m asking the question because I believe others think this too, because they think, Okay, well, I, you know, I can’t take this technology seriously. It is like, you know, cheating on an exam or or something like that. So I wonder, I’m trying to get in the heads of more than just me. Well,

Jay Whetter  54:15

that’s my son, who’s 19. He used chat GPT to write a letter to a prospective employer, and he said, I can’t take full credit for it. I use chat GPT. And I said to him, absolutely, you should have done exactly that. Don’t apologize for that. That’s what’s going to kind of that’s the tools there you should be using it absolutely. And I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t feeling like he was cheating because you’re like, What did you say? A dumbass? Sorry if you’re not using them. You know, I like it. No,

54:47

no, don’t, don’t. Yeah, so

Alison Sunstrum  54:49

I think you have to go into it, and there’s a lot of money being spent on you. We have to see whether or not this is chat. GPT responding. Well, I. It makes it as an employer if, if one of my employees did not use chat, GPT, did not scrape databases ethically, did not provide me all the data, I would not be happy that would not be an employee I would hire Now, if that, if your son doesn’t know who the employer is, though, Jay, I would say to him, make sure that everything he has put in his application letter is is truthful. He really believes in it, and then he doesn’t have to declare much further than that, because, does I know? Did you ever say I got this from Encyclopedia Britannica? No, I mean, you might, so you might cite it in a you might cite it in a publication, but your knowledge comes from books. Your knowledge comes from others. Why can your knowledge not come from something like chatgpt,

Toban Dyck  56:03

yeah, what are the most? What are the the use case scenario that gets the most traction with me when I talk about it with others, because I because I said, I use it quite a bit. But is, is how the odd time, you know, my wife and I are like, what do we eat? You know, for dinner, she’s a school teacher, so she’s at work all day, and I like cooking. So we’re like, I look in the fridge, open the fridge, and I here’s the ingredients we have in the fridge. So I go to chat GPT, and I’m like, we have this, we have this, we have this. You know, create a few possible menus or recipes for me. So, yeah, I have never been disappointed. It’s actually created some really great stuff. People really, yeah, people really like that. I mean, it isn’t, it isn’t so advanced that I feel like we should be using it for more advanced things, like we’ve talked about in this conversation. But that’s a real great entry point. I think for some people to get really excited about that, use absolutely

Alison Sunstrum  56:57

it. It brings up a whole sphere of other issues. But it is, it’s an advancement.

57:09

Yeah,

Jay Whetter  57:12

Allison, in the notes that Ashley provided for us, our colleague, Ashley, it has you saying that agriculture is often siloed. Yeah, I don’t know whether, but, but shouldn’t be No. How do we get out of that silo? How do we draw in ideas from the world to make agriculture better?

Alison Sunstrum  57:36

Let’s go back to the narrative about agriculture, and how I talked about having multiple, multiple associations. Everyone eats. It’s an antiquated industry, because it’s been around forever, and so we’ve tended to kind of ignore it. It’s also a consumer. It’s a consumer of 30% of the world’s energy. It is. It is a fundamental industry, and so I think we have to get and today is is just the right time to have this discussion. We have to be way more global. We have to know who we’re interacting and trading with. The Netherlands is such a good example of a place it’s really the size of Nova Scotia. Well, you can sit it inside Nova Scotia. And Nova Scotia is our second smallest province. So the Netherlands outs us in an export basis. We say that we’re at an export basis of about 150 billion right now. And actually I think we’re more like 99 on exports that compare to Holland. And Holland is 150 billion euros annually. And so they have 17 million people. We have 40 million people. I for just a back of a napkin, I say from certain aspects, they’re about four times more productive than we are. They do not have the land to produce. We are the world’s fifth largest, though I do think we’re drifting from that in production capacity. We could be bigger. So we need to know how to trade. We need to know our narrative. We are somewhat politically stable. We are sustainably focused. We should be trading everywhere. And so if someone wants to stand up and cut off our trade, give us 50% tariffs. We should have been positioned in a place that we could have responded better. So that’s how I think about it. We have to be global. We have to control our narrative.

59:56

What when

Jay Whetter  59:57

we need to wrap up Allison and I. I do want to ask a question, one more question, but quickly. This is not a quick question, though, but What? What? Why is Canada just struggling? Is there? Is there something that immediately comes to mind when you think of Canada and our and our drifting downward in terms of productivity? We’ve

Alison Sunstrum  1:00:18

been very comfortable for very long time we need to be competitive. I think that our productivity comes out of our comfort. There’s a lot of other reasons we have not adopted the technology we could we have not deployed technology widely. We need to start adopting those technologies that we created

Toban Dyck  1:00:45

this, yeah, there’s, there’s a whole nother podcast there. Yeah, exactly. Want to talk about the regulatory environment and some of these other things that you know, might you know, kind of stall that that that progress or get your opinion on, but I won’t. So what I I’ll ask the question like I promised I was gonna ask sailing, how to do it? No, no, no. I’m from

Alison Sunstrum  1:01:09

Saskatchewan, and I grew up wanting the ocean. And so what I did is I went and I took the American sailing Association courses, and I’ve, I’m abs, I’m certified to sail a boat under 60 meters. I’m not a great sailor, but I love it. So that’s how you started. Oh, it’s,

Toban Dyck  1:01:33

that’s so awesome. So when you, when you took the coursework, was it did you? Did you go somewhere to take the course? It

Alison Sunstrum  1:01:40

was my first holiday after 15 years, and I went to British Virgin Islands to learn how to sail.

Toban Dyck  1:01:48

I’ve looked at these courses before, so I know what she’s talking about. Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. So no regrets for taking the course.

Alison Sunstrum  1:01:55

Bought an old boat and left it in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.

Toban Dyck  1:02:01

Oh, I love it. This is a this is a dream. It’s my wife and I. There’s this narrative in my house that there’s a, there’s gonna be a water portion to our lives, like, this is the land portion. Now where I am, I am a farmer, so this is a land portion. There will be a water portion. Okay. When are you gonna do that? No, no. It’s always kind of looming. We don’t want to question. I want to say it’s fluid.

Alison Sunstrum  1:02:24

I think that’s the vision of a lot of farmers, because many of the people that I’ve met sailing are Saskatchewan farmers.

Toban Dyck  1:02:30

So, Oh, that’s funny. That’s funny. Yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. JJ, you. Thank you. I

Jay Whetter  1:02:37

was just going to say, Allison, when you agreed to join these two goofs here for a podcast, was there something that you really wanted to say? Yeah,

Alison Sunstrum  1:02:49

there is. I just would like everyone to know what an opportunity agriculture is for Canada. I think it is perhaps our, our largest opportunity. And if you haven’t thanked a farmer today, kiss a farmer and say thank you, because that’s where your food comes from.

Toban Dyck  1:03:11

Please try Jay, yeah, I was gonna kiss you, yeah. Well, I thought boy, do it, do it, yeah. Do

Jay Whetter  1:03:20

it? Do it, yeah. Well, that’s a great closing message, Allison. And like, there’s so many more things we would like to do, yeah, like mentorship, so here we’ll do part two, but maybe not even Thank you. Thank you so much, Allison, yeah, this was

1:03:35

a fantastic conversation, delicious

1:03:37

conversation. Yeah, it.

Toban Dyck  1:03:53

That was, that was like, I didn’t get to, like, 50% of my list, not now. I’m all in numbers and data now 50% of my list I didn’t get to the unit economics of that are terrible. Yeah,

Jay Whetter  1:04:05

my brain is so full I can barely talk. But that was such a rewarding conversation. I mean, I guess in a lot of cases, I could talk with people for a long time just thinking about the people in the corner of the room who we don’t engage with. I think that that’s my takeaway.

Toban Dyck  1:04:23

It’s a pointy Tableau, isn’t it? Yeah, these ideas people

Jay Whetter  1:04:28

who don’t maybe because they’re, well, I mean, wrong gender, they’re like all these things where there’s some reason why they’re just not charismatic enough. But that’s where the ideas live. We need to get out into those, I know, into those parts of our society, and do what we can to draw out all those great ideas

Toban Dyck  1:04:51

like, find, find the weird people in the room, you know, people, yeah, I like that. Like, they kind of like a the Yeah, I like that as, like, a challenge, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and to Yeah, yeah. I agree that was, that was a that was a poignant part of it. And I think,

Jay Whetter  1:05:07

I think for all, like agriculture organizations, I mean people who rock the boat aren’t always the most popular people on a board, but maybe we, how do we relish those people and give them a voice. Yeah? Because they’re probably they in the backs of their minds. Maybe, maybe they don’t approach it in the best way possible, but that we need to be talking to all those

Toban Dyck  1:05:36

Yeah, like and without like, without homogenizing them, right? Like, so you don’t want to like, you don’t want to like, you know, hey, hey buddy. You know, your ideas will get so much more traction if you just be more normal, right? Like, you don’t want that either, right? So you need to find a mechanism to which, like, you keep them being, you know, unapologetically themselves, while, while being able to kind of learn, you know, learn, and, you know, yeah, well,

Jay Whetter  1:06:05

even, like at the universities, or like the students who are, you know, aloof, maybe not, you know, buying the status quo. I mean, they’re gonna get an F and they’re gonna quit, but maybe those are the people who we really need in this industry,

Toban Dyck  1:06:29

or, yeah, or, like, find a way to at least hear them right. Like, that’s, that’s that, you know, you may as well take advantage.

Jay Whetter  1:06:37

So inspiring for me. I kind of like having those conversations, so I’m kind of,

Toban Dyck  1:06:42

yeah, but so, but Okay, I agree with you. So my comment was, was addressing that. So, like, I like having those conversations, but there are lines for me where it gets a bit too weird, right? So like, I like

Jay Whetter  1:06:59

or a little less fun. So

Toban Dyck  1:07:00

I’m, I’m interested in my own thresholds on what my own boundaries that I’ve drawn in terms of what I what I think is fun conversation. I think is a broader, probably than than a lot of people, but there are still lines where it’s like, okay, this is just, I don’t, I don’t see this like, I don’t, right? So that’s what I’m interested in, and I think that, do you think that’s useful for you to push back? Or, like, what would that person benefit from that conversation? Like, I think maybe, yeah, yeah. I think yeah, as if you’re the first person they’ve presented

Jay Whetter  1:07:33

this pitch this idea to, yeah. And you could say, You know what, I’m I’m really not seeing it this way. Yeah. Have you thought about this? And it might just be that little, tiny nudge that this idea needed to flourish. Yeah,

Toban Dyck  1:07:46

yeah. I would like to think that, you know, I would like to work on myself to be able to better engage with like that, that that those people, those people that I’ve maybe in the past kind of written off, or like, find ways to do it where I still feel it’s, it’s interesting, right? Because, like, why, why do we as people feel so challenged? Like, can feel so challenged by those Wilder ideas. And I think, like, what is that? Right? That nugget is, is important, right? Because, if I think at the root of it, and a broad level, like, how much better could industries be if they would find ways to engage, embrace that diversity? Yeah, engage more, not shy away from it. And it is like, it’s, I think it’s we don’t, I think we don’t do it for really kind of ridiculous reasons, like insecurity and I mean, that’s not ridiculous, but for these reasons that exist outside of the industry itself. They’re broader commentaries, and we can wrap but that was even, yeah, even this wrap up is like, I still don’t talk about so much sailing and food and whatever, mentorship. Hopefully she’s our mentor, my mentor. Yeah, you gotta send her a little note. I saw her like she wrote shoes. He was making notes. There was a big X or forest Group X out. I think

Jay Whetter  1:09:10

it’s worth asking that again, though, no, wouldn’t that be a great mentor? I agree. I agree. We are the extensionists. I’m Jay and I’m Toban, and we are having conversations with great thinkers in agriculture like Alison sunster, thanks for listening. Until next

Toban Dyck  1:09:33

time are you curious about what Jay and I get up to behind the scenes at the extensionist, the

Jay Whetter  1:09:37

extension is has a newsletter. We’d love you to subscribe. We give you exclusive content, some behind the scenes and important updates. You’re never going to miss an episode again. Please sign up at the extensionist.com this has been a burr forest group. Production. We also want to thank the people you don’t see

Toban Dyck  1:10:02

we’re here. We’re chatting away with our guests, but there’s tons of people who work behind the scenes to make this podcast happen. Brian Sanchez, our director, Ashley Robinson, is the coordinator, and Abby wall is our producer and editor. You.