Future of Agriculture

Stock Cropper website: https://thestockcropper.com/
The StockCropper YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheStockCropper
Follow Zack on X: https://x.com/zebulousprime
Connect with Zack on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zack-smith-5681911b7
Today’s episode features a repeat guest: Zack Smith of Stock Cropper. Zack is an ideal guest because he’s both an independent thinker and a doer. Someone who is putting his own skin in the game to make his vision for the future of agriculture a reality.
Today we talk about his company’s recent pivot to focus on what they call the drive. No, not a computer drive, and self contained motor that can be mounted on any moveable poultry or livestock pen to make it autonomous, solar powered, and still secure from predators or the potential for escapees. Think of it like a trolling motor for rotational grazing.
I loved the idea of stockcropping and the first product which was called the clustercluck. And I have to say I’m even more bullish now with how he has adapted his technology to this more consumer-friendly product. It seems like a real gamechanger and inflection point for Zack’s young company.
This story hits on a few really interesting trends: first of course is regenerative agriculture, which talks a lot about livestock integration but there are very few options out there to do this at scale. Another is this trend of food sovereignty - the homesteaders and others that want to play an active role in producing some of their own food. Brining tech to these trends is super interesting and I think you’ll be really compelled by Zack’s story.
Zack Smith is a farmer and agricultural entrepreneur who's been focused on coloring outside of the lines of conventional agriculture since 2020 with the creation of his company Stock Cropper Inc. Stock Cropper over the past 6 years has created a regenerative farming system called Stock Cropping that intersects row crops and livestock made possible by an multispecies grazing barn solution called the ClusterCluck 5000. The system and invention was featured in the 2024 film documentary, "Food Inc 2 Back for Seconds." as well as at Precision Plantings PTI farm in Pontiac Illinois where the Stock Cropper system in 2024 and 2025 have shattered the all-time site production corn records at 426.7 bu/A and 434.9 bu/A as well as the highest profitability compared to all other innovations at the PTI farm. However, because of the limitations of independent meat processing options for farmers, in 2023 Stock Cropper began to pivot away from the top down approach of feeding the world , to the bottom up approach of helping people feed their families by developing devices to reduce the pain points of growing their own protein. Since then they've developed the ClusterCluck Pico and most recently ClusterCluck Drive and have launched a venture capital campaign in March to bring these products to market in the coming year.

Follow Quentin Connealy on X
Connect with Q on LinkedIn
"Between 2 Farms" Podcast
I’ve known Quentin Connealy just from following him online for several years now. Not only is he an entrepreneurial, forward-thinking farmer, but he’s also one of the nicest people in ag that you’ll find online. I’ve been meaning to get him on the podcast for a while, and I’m making more of an effort this year to talk to farmers like him about farm-level innovation this year, so it was the perfect time. We’ll get right into it here, but first just some helpful background on Q:
Quentin Connealy is a fifth-generation farmer from eastern Nebraska, where he raises irrigated corn and soybeans along the Missouri River with his family at QJ Connealy Family Farms. Deeply rooted in production agriculture, Quentin focuses on bridging the gap between traditional farming and emerging technology—bringing real-world perspective to how innovation is adopted on working farms.
With a background in interactive media and business, Quentin has become a vocal advocate for precision agriculture, data ownership, automation, and practical ag-tech solutions that deliver value at the farm gate. He regularly works with technology companies, researchers, and policymakers to test, validate, and communicate what actually works in the field.
He gained international fame in May 2017 after a video of him wakeboarding in a flooded ditch on the edge of his cornfield went viral, amassing millions of views within days. Since that time, Quentin has become an active speaker and content creator, sharing honest conversations about grower adoption, sustainability, and the future of food and farming. Just this year he launched a new podcast of his own called “Between 2 Farms” with co-host Nathan Faleide.

Jonathan Coppess Research Page: https://ace.illinois.edu/directory/jwcoppes
"The Fault Lines of Farm Policy" book
"Between Soil and Society" book
Today’s episode explores an important area of agriculture that I probably don’t talk enough about on this show: ag policy. I wanted to bring Dr. Jonathan Coppess on the program to ask fundamental questions like:
Is ag policy working?
Is the Farm Bill still relevant?
What has changed in ag policy and what needs to change?

As you’ll hear we dive into this and a whole lot more. For some quick background:
Jonathan Coppess is the Gardner Associate Professor of Agricultural Policy in the Department of Agricultural & Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The author of two books on the legislative history and political development of farm policy (THE FAULT LINES OF FARM POLICY, and BETWEEN SOIL AND SOCIETY), he is a member of the farmdoc project and a frequent contributor to farmdoc daily.
Jonathan previously served as Chief Counsel for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, as well as on a temporary, part-time basis as a special counsel. Prior to his service on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, Jonathan served as the Administrator of the Farm Service Agency at USDA and Legislative Assistant to Senator Ben Nelson. Jonathan grew up on his family’s farm in Western Ohio.

Pairwise: https://www.pairwise.com/
FoA 412: 'Biological' Is Not A Category (it's the future of agriculture)
I’m excited to share today’s episode with you. I’ve wanted to get Tom Adams back on the show ever since I had the chance to interview him at World Agritech a couple of years ago. That interview was included on episode 412 of this podcast titled “Biological is not a Category”.
The work Pairwise is doing is mind boggling to me. Using CRISPR and the latest in gene editing tools, they have built a platform to enable plant breeders to make very precise changes to the genome of a plant to give farmers and consumers more of what they want.
Now this is different from genetic modification or GMOs because they are not inserting foreign genes into the plant. In fact, they are doing the exact same thing that plant breeders have done for over a century, they are just able to do it in an extremely precise way.
On another podcast that I host, Agriscience Explained, Corteva’s Reza Rasoulpour explained natural breeding as wanting to change one word in a book by just combining all of the pages of two different books and hoping that word changes. Versus gene editing just going in and changing that one word in the book. I thought that was a good comparison.
So Tom and his team are bringing this technology to agriculture by working with seed companies and other partners in a variety of use cases, many of which we’ll discuss today. A little background on Tom:
Dr. Tom Adams co-founded Pairwise and serves as Chief Executive Officer. Tom has over 25 years of leadership experience heading up biotechnology for global companies, serving most recently as Vice President of Global Biotechnology at Monsanto where he led the team developing a broad range of innovative products. Tom wanted to realize the possibilities of CRISPR and gene editing in plants, and co-founded Pairwise to realize this potential in a mission-based environment. Formerly a faculty member at Texas A&M University, Tom holds a PhD in microbiology and plant science from Michigan State University and a BS in botany and plant pathology from Oregon State University.
Tom and I talk about Pairwise’s continued work in this area, some of the cool developments that are under way, some of their strategic decisions like going the partnership route rather than being the seed company themselves, a little bit more about how the technology works, how this changes the game and who captures the value.

Rodale Institute: https://rodaleinstitute.org/
"History of the Rodale Institute" on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nxSYYUMJ6F8
Today we’re talking to Dr. Andrew Smith of the Rodale Institute. I originally wanted to bring Andrew onto the show to talk about the history of the Rodale Institute and it’s contribution to agricultural research. Rodale Institute is a nonprofit growing the organic movement through rigorous, solutions-based research, farmer training, and consumer education. But I ended up focusing more on questions related to tillage, organic claims and realities, and what they’re learning from their long term farming systems trials.