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This weekly podcast dives into agbioscience, where agriculture, life sciences and cutting-edge technology converge. Agbioscience is an in-depth conversation with leaders and entrepreneurs across food, animal health, plant science and agtech. This one-of-a-kind podcast offers updates on the latest advancements and future trends from those at the forefront of agbioscience innovation.
It's a waste until you do something with it, and then it becomes a byproduct. It becomes a feedstock. It becomes a a raw material for some better usage. But I agree. The word waste gives such a misnomer because it's only a waste if we don't do something with it.
Speaker 1:And so, so, yeah, we try to get that out of our vernacular, but it's hard. Because to us, you're right, it's not a waste. It is something we can take and utilize in some format, again, a raw material, as a feedstock, upcycling that to some valuable product.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Ag Bioscience, the number one podcast in the world for innovation in food, animal health, plant science, ag tech, and agriculture.
Speaker 3:Welcome to Ag Bioscience. I'm Christy Wright, CEO of AgriNovus Indiana, and I'm here today with Eric Pfeiffer from Hoosier Ag Today. Eric, great to see you.
Speaker 4:Good to see you, Christy.
Speaker 3:And you just got done talking with Rick Shipley, the CEO of Nutrition one zero one. Correct?
Speaker 4:Absolutely. It was a great conversation. He explained how Nutrition one zero one kinda lives in this middle space between farmers and manufacturers, and it it was just a really engaging conversation of how they provide solutions for both sides of this, for the the manufacturers that have this waste. And we also talk about trying to come up with a better word than than waste. But you'll you'll hear that in a little while.
Speaker 4:But also coming up with good solutions for farmers and how they can provide feed for their livestock. So living in this middle space and being that that processor, that solution provider. That's where Nutrition one zero one is living, and they they really enjoy it there being a solution provider for both sides.
Speaker 3:Interesting business model, it sounds like. And, and also, I'm already intrigued by this idea of waste and it being repurposed. And even the company name Nutrition one hundred one gives me a clue that there is a lot of value in something that's been considered kind of a byproduct or, you know, not of value in the past.
Speaker 4:You know, it it seems like everyone wants to be sustainable, and it it's not just a buzzword anymore. Everyone wants the sustainability piece as part of their company, but they don't necessarily know how to do it. Nutrition one zero one is helping those manufacturers do that. Something has to be done with that waste, that byproduct. They're filling that void, and then they're able to turn it into something that is very worthwhile to to take back to the farm.
Speaker 4:And that's what Rick explains in in this podcast, and it was it was just a really engaging conversation that he, he just has a way of explaining it that's that's really great. I don't host many podcasts where the guest has a better voice than I do. I mean, man, I'm in radio, and and the the the guy's got an incredible voice.
Speaker 3:Wow. He's on par with you?
Speaker 4:Above. Oh. Above. Or I guess below par for talking golf terms. I mean, he's he's good.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, lots of reasons to listen to today's episode, and I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for joining us, and please enjoy today's episode.
Speaker 4:Rick, thanks for joining us on ag bioscience. We've got a ton to get into today. Nutrition one zero one, it's been around for nearly thirty years right here in Indiana working in sustainability, food life cycling, livestock nutrition, and food waste management. I need you to dive a bit deeper. Tell us the story of Nutrition one zero one.
Speaker 1:Well, the story has its roots in ag. Started in Quincy, Illinois. A a farmer said, hey. There's an opportunity here to solve two problems at once. I can help local food manufacturers take their excess byproducts out of their plants and solve that waste problem for them.
Speaker 1:And I can help farmers, including myself, feed their animals with nutritious feed that's coming from that previously considered waste. So over the years, one hundred one has just taken that concept, that very simple concept and really grown it. And what we do today is really solution providing for manufacturers, solution providing for farmers. And we sit in the middle of that equation, and we're really the linchpin. We go to a food manufacturer, solve unique and difficult problems for them of how they manage their waste.
Speaker 1:Anytime you encounter a food processor that's making any kind of food at scale, byproducts are unavoidable. And management of those byproducts is unique plant to plant to plant, even if it's the same company plant to plant to plant. So what we do is we go in, we develop solutions to help them manage that, move that product, then we become a logistics company. We then truck that material from their plant to one of our processing centers. Then we become a processor.
Speaker 1:We process that waste into a high nutrient, high valued animal feed. Then we become a feed supplier, and we provide that feed into the farming and agricultural space. So we really touch every element of the food chain from cradle to grave, and we're really vertically integrated. We own a lot of those assets in between. So it's a unique position we sit in, and we solve problems on many fronts.
Speaker 4:Production agriculture is in an interesting place right now. It's kind of riddled with some unique challenges. What do conversations look like with producers, with nutrition one zero one as you're trying to prepare to meet the moment agriculture is in to help drive that in that on farm impact? Because that's kinda what it's all about.
Speaker 1:Right? We have to be very pragmatic. We can't offer solutions, options, any kind of changes that are unrealistic. So we have to be very realistic and pragmatic when we have conversations. We understand farmers are in a tough position financially.
Speaker 1:They're being pinched on multiple sides. Regulations continue to be strict within the space. So solutions to help them overcome those issues, as well as solutions to help them increase the bottom line, to stay in business, to make some money because that's what we're all here for. And and what we try to do is bring the expertise we have and be a partner. We're not here to tell anyone how to run their business.
Speaker 1:We're here to support them and help them improve operations. Maybe it's flow of material. Maybe sometimes we co invest in situations to make situation make our programs work more easily and flow more easily. But at end of day, we're really a partner. And so what we hear is here is a problem we're encountering, and then we go back and have a conversation and say, how can we help them solve that problem?
Speaker 1:Because all problems are unique.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Especially on the farm. Yeah. So, Rick, kinda you mentioned you live in the middle of this space. You live in the middle of, you know, the manufacturers and the farmers and and kinda going all the way through that.
Speaker 4:Walk me through the relationships with the other side, the the manufacturing side, how Nutrition one zero one is equipped to create opportunities for their growth, their their sustainability goals, and beyond.
Speaker 1:Again, problems just different than the other end of the spectrum. And so the the problems are, as mentioned, anytime you produce anything at volume, you're gonna have waste, specifically food, and that can be overruns. It can be, for some reason, mislabeling, all all kinds of things. And so, again, when we walk into a plant, every situation is unique. Every problem is unique.
Speaker 1:Fortunately, we have a deep team, a team that's seen a lot, and we continue to grow that team with new experiences, new relationships. And so we're problem solvers. And so the conversations are, we know you have a problem. Tell us your problem. We may not have the exact solution for you that fits hand in glove today, but we're able to create a solution that ultimately makes it easy for your teams to fit into that solution, allows us to get that material out of your plant as rapidly as we can because the last thing they want is waste building up and preventing them from continuing to produce material.
Speaker 1:They're in the business of food production, not in the business of waste management. That's where we come in. And so we have to be very thoughtful about our solutions, making them simple, making them ultimately sustainable. In many situations, the producer of the waste, the generator of the waste is somewhat agnostic on what happens to the waste. They just don't want it in a landfill and they want it handled professionally under all compliance solidly.
Speaker 1:And so that's where we come in. And and I think our experiences across the country, we play in more than half the states in this country at some facet. We've got seven plants that we process out of. And so we're able to really tailor our programs to the needs. And two facilities next door to each other may have two totally unique programs because of what they need and what they're producing.
Speaker 4:You know, we we talk a lot about waste on this ag bioscience podcast. It seems like now we should probably come up with a different word for it because this waste is actually being put to use by a lot of different companies, and it sounds like in many different ways, and your company is one of those doing it in a in a different way. It's it's not waste anymore, Rick. We've gotta come up with a different name for it.
Speaker 1:When you do, let me know because we've been battling that word for decades. We keep and we keep falling back to it. And so what we try to say is it's a waste until you do something with it, and then it becomes a byproduct. It becomes a feed stock. It becomes a a raw material for some better usage.
Speaker 1:But I agree. The word waste gives such a misnomer because it's only a waste if we don't do something with it. And so so, yeah, we try to get that out of our vernacular, but it's hard because to us, you're right, it's not a waste. It is something we can take and utilize in some format, again, as a raw material, as a feedstock, upcycling that to some valuable product. I'm looking at the AgriNovus team back here.
Speaker 4:Do we have a team on terminology? Can we can we get on that, guys? Okay. They're they're putting that in their in their skull here. We're we're gonna
Speaker 1:make that happen. Years. I would be thrilled if somebody in this room could figure that out.
Speaker 4:Chief terminology officer, we need to get on that. Rick, you have more than twenty years of experience leading companies in the environmental services and transportation industries, most recently serving as the chief strategy officer for Denali and then becoming CEO of Nutrition one zero one in the middle of last year. So nearly eight months into the job, what is the company's competitive diff differentiation from your seat? How is your team uniquely positioned in this space?
Speaker 1:Well, I wanna start at a very high level simple comment. When I walked in the door first of all, nothing is broken has been broken at one zero one. So I walked into a very good situation with a rock solid foundation. But the first thing I noticed within just a few hours or certainly the first few days is the level of care that our employees have about what we do. They care that we're solving a problem on the food processor side.
Speaker 1:They care that we're doing good work in between logistics team and the process team. They care how we treat the animals with the product that we we deliver to them. So one, you can't buy care. You can't teach care. Care has to be there because you're doing the right things and you have the right people.
Speaker 1:So number one, when you start with people that care and that it matters to them what we do, you have a lot of latitude in how you do things. But I think one of our differentiators, again, is the depth of our team, the experience of our team, and and the things we've seen. We haven't seen it all, but we've seen a lot. And as we continue to grow our team, we we bring in more expertise, we bring in more breadth of knowledge. And so when we walk into that plant, when we talk to that farmer, we've got experts that have lived it.
Speaker 1:Frankly, we have people that still are in the agriculture space, that still own land, that still farm land, that work on our teams, that raise animals, that are still on our teams. They really know this space. Even though they don't know what your exact problem is, they know the general problems, and they can really talk to folks at the level they need to talk to them about. So it's you know, we're solution providers. We have a lot of experience in that space, but it really matters to us that we do the right thing on both sides of that equation.
Speaker 4:I would imagine that that I mean, obviously, the the company you mentioned at the beginning that the the company originated, you know, from a farm, and you you just mentioned you've still got folks that farm. I imagine that that really does farmers like to hear from other farmers. Right? They they like to hear what works, what doesn't work. I imagine that really does help in that problem solving process.
Speaker 1:It does because and without denigrating my comment here, they don't wanna hear from somebody that works on the 30th Floor in Downtown Chicago about the problems they're having raising their animals and making money on the farm. They want to hear from somebody that's lived through it that that knows the space, and I think that does matter. So we have people that can speak to a sustainability officer at some of the Fortune 500 companies that we work with. We have folks that live in the trenches and can speak to the farmer about the problems he's encountering because they're encountering the same problems. And I think that, again, that's part of what gives us credibility.
Speaker 1:It gives us legitimacy, and it gives us the ability to be flexible to problems and situations and solve those across a broad spectrum, of the industries we play in.
Speaker 4:Rick, how do you how does your team define success for its solutions? What benchmarks do you use? What data points do you have to help share those success stories or even perhaps refine what's being done to become even more effective?
Speaker 1:Well, we start with safety. We we have trucks running the road, millions of miles a year running the road. So so we start with safety. We have plants that have heavy machinery and forklifts. And and and so we think about safety first and foremost.
Speaker 1:We want people to go home to their families every single night. And and so once we get past that, now we think about our front end customer base, the generators of of the waste that we we take away. Are we continuously solving their problem? Are we continuously innovating for them? And there's metrics that go around that.
Speaker 1:When you think about tonnages and you think about numbers of hauls and you think about the different materials we're taking out of there, easy to define success on that side of the equation. When we get it on our trucks and in our plants, again, we use metrics. Hey. It's it's very simple. How effectively are we managing the transportation and the processing?
Speaker 1:On the other side is, are we satisfying the need of the farmer? Are we delivering consistent, high nutrient feeds? And are they seeing the results from those feeds? So at every point along this chain, it's very, very easy for us to quantify our successes, even though each position in that chain has totally different KPIs that we look at. When you marry them together, that's how we judge it.
Speaker 1:And then we also judge it as retention of customers. We don't have customers on the generator side leaving us. We don't have farmers leaving us. We have people calling us, asking us to help them and provide materials for them. Nothing speaks louder than when calls are coming to you asking for your assistance, I think.
Speaker 4:Getting farmers to integrate technology, integrate process processes. How do you do it? We're gonna find out when we come back here on Ag Bioscience. It's presented by Indiana Farm Bureau.
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Speaker 4:Welcome back to Ag Bioscience. I'm Eric Pfeiffer with Rick Shipley here from Nutrition one zero one. And, Rick, I talk to farmers a lot. It's kinda what it's what I do. It's my thing.
Speaker 4:And I know, and I'm sure you know that if farmers are gonna integrate anything on the farm, it needs to be easy. It needs to be profitable. So from where you sit, how do you go about doing that? How do you go about creating these solutions and making sure that they're practical, they're effective, and they're easy?
Speaker 1:Yes. We do all of those things, and it's not easy. First of all, everyone has to win. When we when we pick up this byproduct from a generator, there has to be a win for them. It could be financial, could be operational, could be from a sustainability standpoint.
Speaker 1:Obviously, Nutrition one hundred one is a for profit business. We have to be successful in the middle of that. When you come to the to the final phase of our cycle, look, the farmer has a hard job and farmers, you know, have this stereotype of just being a guy out in overalls, work in a field. Farmers are are savvy business people, and they have to be savvy business people. These these are very intelligent people.
Speaker 1:They're running big business. And so you can't pull the wool over their eyes. So when we present a proposal, when we present a solution opportunity, again, sometimes we'll co invest with them to prove how confident we are in the solution. But you do have to prove it to them. And I think technology is playing a role in everything we do.
Speaker 1:You know, I've got I've got young adults and obviously I'm an old man to them. And so I play to try to play keep up with them. But we do the same thing. We've got young folks in our in our offices that can really tell us what's the next option, how we help our customers stay in the forefront as far as we can. We do things to help the farmer get some return on their investment.
Speaker 1:We'll put tank monitors on the tanks that we'll install at their farms from time to time. We'll take that burden off of them. And so now they can just focus on what they do well and let us focus on what we do well. So in this whole system, we try to make things simple. We try to make them pragmatic and we try to make them operationally efficient so that everyone in that whole chain can see some return on their investment.
Speaker 1:However, they qualify and quantify that return.
Speaker 4:I I think that that gets lost so much, among just the the general public that farmers aren't just farmers. They are they're small businesses. Yes. That's that's
Speaker 1:precisely so small all the time.
Speaker 4:Exactly. Some of them are are in big business. Rick, a few months into your leadership tenure, the acquisition of Value Feeds that was announced in November. What has that acquisition done for you and the Nutrition one zero one in terms of expansion, addition to your innovation portfolio, and beyond?
Speaker 1:Well, the first and most obvious thing is it brought us into a new geography. It brought us into the Dallas Fort Worth market directly in the Greater Texas and Southwest market, more generally. A market we wanted to be in, obviously, a rapidly growing market. So from a food production side, there's a lot of food production going on there. Hey, we have opportunities to go help people.
Speaker 1:Agriculturally, obviously, it's Texas. When you get out of the big cities, it's Texas. And so we have an opportunity there to solve problems on that side. So I think geographically, it made a lot of sense to us. Value feeds has been around for forty plus years, doing some things similar to what Nutrition one hundred one has done in the dairy recycling space, the milk recycling space.
Speaker 1:They do it differently. So I think we looked at two options. We can move in and compete or we can work out a situation where we acquire them. And that seemed to be the most favorable aspect for both of them. But what we're learning is we're learning they manage their products and their waste and their processes slightly different than us.
Speaker 1:There's things for us to learn and vice versa. We can take knowledge to them and improve their process. We're also reinforcing customer relationships because we have some crossover customers, some national customers. So we're reinforcing those. And we're being introduced to new customers along the way.
Speaker 1:So I think anytime you make an acquisition, again, it has to work for both sides. It also has to be additive to your company. And we found that this deal on all of those fronts made sense for us to do the acquisition versus any other type of movements into that marketplace. And so far, it's been fantastic. And the folks that we're working with there love what they do.
Speaker 1:They love being a part of one on one as we've brought them into the family. In fact, the, the former owner of Value Feeds is staying on as a member of the one zero one team even though he didn't have to. So we're very proud that I think that speaks volumes of him being proud of what he's built and being proud of being part of the Nutrition one zero one team.
Speaker 4:The stars at night are big and bright. In Texas. Okay. That was that was a test. Was back
Speaker 1:in the street. Okay.
Speaker 4:When you look at the company's growth and evolution over thirty years, where do you believe that your biggest untapped potential is? Where is that?
Speaker 1:I think it's two things. I think scalability on what we have. We have seven operating plants now. They still have some open capacity in them. So I think we have the ability to go scale those plants with additional capacities.
Speaker 1:I think simultaneous to that, the second opportunity is to scale more breadth. So historically, Nutrition one hundred one has been somewhat narrowly focused in the dairy sector, milks, yogurts, cottage cheeses, cheeses, etcetera. Certainly myself and some other folks that have come into the team have broader knowledges in the food waste space. And so all of these plants we go into have more food byproducts than just dairy, whether it's in that plant or other plants. So I think we have an opportunity to take, again, the relationships we have, the experience and the legitimacy that we have, and then the knowledge we have with some of the new folks coming in and the folks we're bringing in to really broaden our food waste recycling capabilities.
Speaker 1:And so I think it's exciting. And again, I won't name names of our customers, but some of the largest producers in the world are customers of ours. You can only imagine the number of plants and the amount of byproducts they're creating. And so I think we're going be very imaginative on how we address additional problems people have separate from just dairy. Now, with that, I think a lot of that processing of those byproducts will still end up back in the ag space and they can still be feedable materials, Maybe it becomes fertilizer materials.
Speaker 1:But a lot of that will still end up back in that same space. It may just start in a different space.
Speaker 4:Now my typical audience, Rick, the the farmers and everyone that I talk to typically, when we talk about labor, we we often think about labor on the farm. Mhmm. And that's an issue. But quite frankly, ag labor is across the entire sector here. We're talking about the workforce, the talent in companies like yours and companies, ag bioscience companies across the sector.
Speaker 4:Sometimes can be hard to find, but, how do you see some tech options, automation options helping in this quite difficult time to find, I guess, good help. We're we're seeing some of those things happen and and maybe, you know, some some folks coming out of college thinking, you know what? This this is more than just food or ag. This this is something bigger.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You don't have to be a hardcore farmer to be involved in the ag space. Right? You mentioned it. Technology, I think, predictability with AI, all of these things play into every industry.
Speaker 1:And maybe ag is one of the slower adoption industries out there, but it's coming fast. And so you mentioned labor's hard. It's hard to find truck drivers. It's hard to find processing plant employees. No different than on farm.
Speaker 1:So I think all industries face some similar labor issues. As you think about the more white collar and the younger labor force that's coming out. Again, I have young adult kids. I think they would love to be involved in spaces like this, but they don't want to own the tractor and they don't want to drive the tractor. What they want to do is just stand behind a computer and and create models on how to do things better and then take that and say, hey, mister owner, mister livestock raiser, let me help you with with some of these metrics and analytics.
Speaker 1:So I think as we become more technologically savvy as a population, I think it will be more attractive to the younger gen set to be involved even if it's an arm's length versus just saying, no, that's not something for me at all because I didn't grow up in it. I don't know it. What do I know about raising animals, raising crops?
Speaker 4:I I think that there's this this thing about wanting to be part of this food thing. Like, we're we're feeding the world. Mhmm. And we talk about farmers feeding the world. I think there's something with this younger generation.
Speaker 4:They they wanna be part of that too, but like like you said, not on the farm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, again, so there's opportunities all along this value chain to be involved in doing better. I I I tell people that I'm so proud of my previous companies and Nutrition one zero one that, yes, we make some money. Fine. We do good every single day.
Speaker 1:What we do when we move that that byproduct out of this plant and we do our processing, we move it to this farm. That's good. And you think about how proud you are to say, I do good things every day. And when you tell people this story that don't have any idea that those kind of wastes come out and this happens and animals eat it, they say, well, that makes a lot of sense. Never thought of that.
Speaker 1:And and and so just introducing that whole concept and the doing good and and allowing these young people, yes, to be imaginative. I mean, they're so creative in ways that old people like me can't think of. And so introducing them and involving them in these solutions and in the next wave of thinking is important to continue maturing. Like, the agri industry has been around longer than probably any other industry in the world. Right?
Speaker 1:And it's always found a way to survive because it's a need that can't be replaced other than having people actually go out and do that work.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Let's go back to the farm here, Rick. How do you see the role of the farmer changing over the next decade? What opportunities does that create for your team to grow its impact?
Speaker 1:I I I think we've touched on a lot of those in general. It's I I think technology continues to become more important. I think the the awareness of the value of of feeds, of how they're housing animals, how they're containing animals, moving animals. I think all of these things are just becoming more conscious to folks and are becoming more part of the way they think about how they run their business. Again, it's a business.
Speaker 1:And so I think the farmer continues to become more knowledgeable, becomes more business savvy all the time, especially when hopefully people like us were collaborating or not dictating either way. And we all learn. Look, I knew nothing, but I didn't come I wasn't raised on a farm. I've learned what I know about farming and livestock raising by being around it at even if it's arm's length. And so as we continue to learn from each other, think I there are takeaways.
Speaker 1:I learn things every time I talk to somebody that I can take back and put into my business or maybe my personal life. We shouldn't be so narrowly focused in our mindset to say, if I'm not talking about something I know, then I don't have to listen. Because there's always a takeaway if you listen close enough.
Speaker 4:Rick, last thing. What has you excited about the future of Nutrition one zero one?
Speaker 1:I think the future is brighter than the past because we continue to see more opportunities. We continue to add logos that have unique needs, that have more needs. We continue to bring folks into the business that have seen things, have new experiences, have new relationships. The foundation is is rock solid. There's nothing wrong with the company, and we could keep doing what we're doing forever the way it is.
Speaker 1:But there's so many opportunities for us that we don't want to just stand still. We want to keep moving forward. And so I think if we can continue to grow the business, continue to have somewhat of a family oriented workforce that cares about each other and cares about our our clients and our partners externally. You know, it's easy to say that the sky's the limit, but it's kind of ridiculous. The sky's the limit because what we do has no endgame.
Speaker 1:As long as we're producing food in factories, there are gonna be byproducts that need to be managed. As long as we're raising animals and raising crops, there's going to be a need for feed, fertilizers, etcetera on that side. Somebody has to solve that problem. And I think we're positioned well, again, to be the linchpin between those two needs, marrying those together, and causing and creating solutions for each side.
Speaker 4:Rick, thank you so much for joining us on Ag Bioscience. We really appreciate the time. This was a fun conversation.
Speaker 1:My pleasure. I'll come back anytime.
Speaker 4:And once I come up with that alternative term for waste, I'll let you know, and I'll send the invoice. Thank you for joining us on Ag Bioscience. We hope you join us again next week. Until then, be safe. Be well.
Speaker 2:Ag Bioscience is a podcast by Agrinovus Indiana brought to you by Indiana Farm Bureau. Produced by Kayla Chittister and Fabian Rodriguez. Photography and design by Kaylee Burstey. Video by Darren Cooper and eighteen ninety eight Creative. If you like today's episode, subscribe, rate, listen, and review.
Speaker 2:Get all episodes of Ag Bioscience online at agranovusindiana.com.