Dr. Sara Crawford, President of Sustainable Environmental Consultants

Filling in for Allan Gray, this episode's host is Jarrod Sutton, Managing Director of DIAL Ventures at Purdue University's digital innovation sector. Join Jarrod for a meaningful discussion with Dr. Sara Crawford, President of Sustainable Environmental Consultants.

Jarrod Sutton:

Hey, it's Jarrod Sutton at DIAL Ventures Purdue. At DIAL Ventures, we're focused on building digital solutions in the agri-food space. DIAL is an acronym. It stands for Digital Innovation and Agri-Food Systems Lab. So, our system, our process is very unique. We recruit tech entrepreneurs from outside of the ag and food space, and we teach them about our business because we want those talents and those skills focused on some of the challenges in our business and industry. How do we discover the opportunities? That's working closely with industry stakeholders and understanding specifically and directly from the people that are experiencing those pains firsthand, where the priority areas should be, and that's when we get to work on putting the resources of our fellows, the talent at the university, and the overall powerhouse and resources that Purdue offers to deliver tangible outcomes that are digital solutions to problems in the business.

Today, I'm excited to talk with. Dr. Sara Crawford. I've known Sara for a long time. We're going to cover a lot of topics in the next 30 minutes or so. Sara, I'm going to turn it over to you and ask you just to give a quick introduction and talk about your path up to where you are today.

Sara Crawford:

Sure. Well, Jarrod, thanks for having me. Thanks to DIAL for having this podcast and having me. I'm excited to join. Yep, Jarrod and I have had the pleasure of working together for quite a few years; and my background on how I got to this position at SEC: Grew up in Central Ohio, and was in agriculture, did 4-H, worked with livestock and agriculture, and then went to Ohio State, did my bachelor's, master's and PhD at Ohio State in animal sciences, meat science and then animal welfare, working with pig farmers on farm, trying to help them similarly find solutions for how they can continuously improve how they work with their pigs.

Along the way, I taught for a few years at Delaware Valley University in Pennsylvania and then also worked within the supply chain for Mars Petcare in quality assurance, and then also the OSI Group, who makes products for food service and retail, and worked a lot with processing plants. During graduate school, I also worked in Ohio State's meat lab processing plant. So really, I've had the benefit of working across the entire supply chain and agriculture from being on farm, whether that's crops or livestock, but then working within the supply chain and then also working for instance, for Kroger when I was in college in their regional office and understanding how things work there.

So, working in the meat merchandising department; What pressures do they see? So from there, after the OSI Group, I went to the National Pork Board and was at National Pork Board for six and a half years, starting in retail, in the retail marketing team, but then moving back over into the science team as the assistant vice president of animal welfare and also looking into social responsibility as well, and really started into more of the journey of the broader look at sustainability as opposed to just animal welfare, which animal welfare is a part of sustainability.

But that was about six or seven years ago, really started venturing into that bigger, broader umbrella of sustainability. Of course, the National Pork Board has the We Care ethical principles that is starting to put the practices with that to show the proof of what the pig farmers are doing in the United States. National Pork Board actually became clients of where I am now, at Sustainable Environmental Consultants, and about a year and a half ago, I stepped over to become the President of Sustainable Environmental Consultants. I live in northwest Indiana, Lake County. Again, Purdue is doing a fantastic job with DIAL, and it's neat to watch how that's grown.

Jarrod Sutton:

We're neighbors. You're just up the road.

Sara Crawford:

That's right.

Jarrod Sutton:

You know what, Sara? My goodness. I go back now, and I think about the first conversation that we had, and I remember it vividly to this day. We were at an industry summit down in Texas, and that's the first time I met you at OSI, and you were describing your background, and I was like, "You got to come work for us. I'm not exactly sure where or what the job is going to be, but there are very few people that have that diverse background. Your training, your education." Shout out to Dr. Zerby at the Ohio State, but also USMEF, you had a stint at MEF, an internship. So, you know the global marketplace.

Bottom line, as I think about Dr. Sara Crawford, you know everything from inputs into ag, the production processes and cycles of agriculture. You've had in-the-trenches engagement in food production, and obviously, how to develop marketing strategies, communications plans, and strategic plans as it relates to the sustainability work, as you mentioned at the National Pork Board and the work that you do today. Again, it's a pleasure to visit with you, and thanks for spending time with us.

Tell us a little bit about the Sustainable Environmental Consultants. I'm an English geek. You know that I pull acronyms out, so people know, but if we say SEC too much, we might get different questions. So, Sustainable Environmental Consultants.

Sara Crawford:

That's right. Yes. Sustainable Environmental Consultants we are part of Wright Service Corporation. So Sustainable Environmental Consultants started around 2008, and John Harsh was our founder. As I say, we come from agriculture, for agriculture. So, John held different roles, and he was a farmer in Kansas, had beef cattle and land. He was visionary, and he could see where we are today coming in 2008. So, he started working with this model to figure out how do we help farmers be able to show what's happening on the front. We know farmers do great things with their crops, with their animals, and then also through the supply chain, how do we show it?

So, as we've grown, what we do at Sustainable Environmental Consultants is really a full service sustainability or carbon accounting for anybody within the supply chain. So, we work with about 46 different crops, 40 to 50 different crops, but also all the livestock species. We are also now working more in processing, whether that's in fruits or vegetables, or also in meat packing and processing and helping them, because as we're going to talk about, the challenges continue to grow. Again, more proof is wanted from all types of audiences. So how do we do that? How do we help the farmers show that, but then also how do we continuously improve as a company and keep moving forward?

All these buzzwords people may have heard floating around like greenhouse gas emissions, we can quantify that. Carbon sequestration, we can quantify that and help the farmers understand that with different models or mathematical equations. So, we go and actually work with the farmers, collect their data, go to the farm, talk to them, gather their information, help them understand what we're doing. Then we bring it back and put it through our eco practices process and our solution that then gives us information to take back to them in a report. Then we have return on investment tools to help them understand what's next, and we connect them to materials that could be... Or to experts. Other experts could be people that are working with DIAL, it could be extension agents, anybody along that chain that can help them make their next step.

Again, we are a team of about 30 that do this work, but as I mentioned, we became part of the Wright Services Corporation around 2015. Wright Services Corporation, we have Wright Tree Service, and some other companies that we have about 7,000 people in our corporation. So, it's great. We've got a nice robust company. We're not just a startup getting our feet under us. We've been around, and we're excited about where we're going.

Jarrod Sutton:

Yeah. That's so great. You're in the business of capturing real data and helping the farmers, the owners of that data, figure out how to represent that and visualize that data in a way that others can quickly see value. Whether it's your lending officer, your insurance partner, maybe a downstream customer, there's a collection of data, and it's synthesized and organized in a way to be able to answer questions, or maybe just to your point, show those proof of practices and the good that those production practices are doing on the farm, on the land, with the animals, whatever it may be. I love it. Tangible outcomes, very similar to what we're thinking about, talking about, working on and building. Let's dig into it. So, innovation is one of the core values at SEC. Love it. Everybody's talking about innovation. I think we probably all define it a little bit differently. How do you guys think about it? How do you define it, especially as it relates to agri-food?

Sara Crawford:

We think about innovation in a couple of different ways. One is what are we doing that's innovative to keep moving our business forward, but also watching the innovation from our clients. Our clients are consumer packaged goods customers, like CPGs. Again, another acronym that's often heard, but consumer packaged goods companies, and it's publicly known that Danone, for instance is a client. Nestle is a client, National Pork Board is a client. So, we also work with trade associations and then sometimes also directly with the farmer.

So, part for us is making sure what is our client looking for and what innovations are they expected to be doing? What are they looking to be doing? So, we have one eye on that and understanding what are they doing, let's say, on their farm? What innovations do we need to understand so that we can capture that data or that information more easily? Again, we can get into what that means, especially as we think about the innovators that DIAL is working with, but part of it is, yes, we need to have an eye on the innovations that are happening on farm, and what does that mean to our continuous improvement in data collection and efficiency for the farmer?

As far as for us internally, when we look at innovation, we're looking a lot at the models that are out there. These environmental models that are doing the greenhouse gas emissions quantification or the soil erosion quantification, and we use models that are publicly available. So, COMET-Farm, for instance, or Farm ES from National Milk Producers Federation. So, we're using those. We're watching and also providing input back to those folks creating the model, saying, "This is what we're seeing. Here's where we think there could be improvements or where we see there might be things that the farmers are looking for improvements and how we can help them."

So, for our innovation, yeah, it's looking to continuously improve those models so that we can get better and better with the quantification and stay up with these. Also, for innovation for us, is making sure we continue to grow and meet those client needs. So even innovation in just what we offer or how we offer that. So, we're getting a lot more questions about a lot of the reporting schemes that are out there, the reporting programs like greenhouse gas protocol, the science-based target initiative, SBTI, SASB. So, innovation for us is even in making sure we can offer that to the client and understand how does this all work together with the quantification and then answering those questions, so the clients can then answer those.

Jarrod Sutton:

Oh, man, that's brilliant. So, innovation, staying ahead of the game, of course, understanding what's emerging and coming down the pike. Where do you think all the questions... I mean, let's call them demands. Where do you think those demands are coming from? The concerns are coming from. We talk about this a lot. We wrestle with this a lot. Do you think it's generally consumers want to know? Is it more about Wall Street and asset managers? What do you think?

Sara Crawford:

I think it's all of the above. There are definitely consumers, and especially as we look, we know as consumers, as they get younger in generation, they're wanting to have that feel of, "Yes, I am getting this product, or I'm buying this item, but also, is it good for the planet? Is it good for the animals? Is it good for the people that are doing the job for those employees?" So, yes, definitely consumers play a part in it. We do know that asset managers of all kinds, or people that are further down the supply chain are wanting to know more information. So, yeah, asset managers, or they want to know the risk. What's the risk of A versus B? So, gosh, if company A can have the data to show, "This is what we're doing, and you know information about us." Well, company B doesn't have that, then what does that mean to an asset manager, insurance broker, somebody that's going to be investing into that company? Then another piece that we work a lot with for people is in carbon accounting. So, in setting... So, carbon credits for that carbon accounting, where they need a tangible item or the real math behind what that is, so they can work with their supply chain like we're seeing with our dairy clients or our meat company clients where they're saying, "Okay, we want to work with the farm to help improve the carbon scores."

To make it better and then working with them and then accounting for that carbon generally, and so doing the insetting, which is working that carbon across the supply chain. Simply put.

Jarrod Sutton:

Simply put, super complex. I love the way you guys are thinking about it. How much can you share? Would you share as much as you're comfortable with, with the ecosystem’s platform? You talked about that earlier. Talk about a visionary. I think we're still in the early days in this space in terms of the reporting and quantification as you described. There's a lot of discussion about a carbon marketplace and prices thrown all over, and what am I signing up for and how much is it really worth? The questions are endless, and that's cool. It's an exciting time. You guys have a platform that's proven. Tell us about it.

Sara Crawford:

Yeah, so our eco practices platform, that's really where the magic happens for us. So that is a great engine for us, where we hold those models and we also work with other tools, for instance, from the USDA that do show soil erosion or the weather. So, we're really looking at all of these variables to come in to get those numbers. So, we're looking at things like how many tillage passes were done in the year? What's the yield of the crop? Did they have cover crops? How long were the cover crops on there?

A lot of different questions that then go into this eco practices platform and altogether help to create the data that comes back out the other side. But for us, it's very important that we do use those models that are publicly available. We are not creating any of our math equations, so to speak. We're not creating the models because we want our clients, whether that's within the food supply chain further down, like the end user or the farmers, we want everybody to be able to stand behind those numbers and know exactly what they are. So, we're happy to explain.

We were with a dairy farmer, and they said, "Gosh, what if we get more sand on our soil? What will that do to this greenhouse gas emissions number?" Well, we can explain that to them and help them understand, because then should they invest in this being able to separate manure from sand? They want to know that because what is it doing my soil health? Because "Gosh, can it improve my soil health as well?" And trying to understand some of those things. So, it's really important for us to use those publicly available models and understand, but also know that one thing I think that's also unique for us compared to some others, is that we're neutral.

We don't sell any inputs, so we don't sell feed, seed, fertilizer, genetics. We also, on the back end, we are not a carbon market. So, we can do the equations for a carbon market, but we don't sell carbon. We don't broker carbon directly. So, if a client wants to set up a carbon market or do carbon accounting, that's fine. We do the math. I say we're like sustainability accounting nerds. We're in this space, and we'll provide the data and help with recommendations, but we want to make sure people understand when we're coming to them with information and data, we're neutral. We're not then going to say, "Oh, by the way, we can sell you this item." Or "Yeah, now you're in our carbon market, and … somebody's going to buy the carbon from your farm."

Jarrod Sutton:

Well, I'm biased, but that is hugely valuable because you're objective, and the data is the data and the data is the science, and it's not to meet this person's goals. It's not to reduce that person's footprint. It's, "Here's where you're at." By the way, we can use that data to inform your decision-making and the sandy soil is an excellent example of what's best. What are the trade-offs? And the data is the data. Right? The science is the science, and it takes as much as possible, the subjectivity out of that debate and or decision-making.

Boy, I just think that's brilliant. One of the things we talk about a lot around here, especially with upstream farmer mindset. So how do we think about an adoption first approach to innovation? Because there's been plenty of new digital tools come to the market that are laying in the roadside ditch because they were either too technically complex or they created more work for the farmer or the user, and clearly none of us, I don't think, have any extra time for those kind of tools. Point is, they just didn't have a pragmatic approach.

You guys seem to have a very pragmatic approach. Can you talk about that? How do you work with farmers in particular to get that early adoption to start building what you're talking about here?

Sara Crawford:

Yeah. It's a really good point. Of course, I've seen this for years. Right? We like to say that we want to meet the farmers where they are, how they are. So, for us, we need the data we need to go into the models, but we're going to go help them with that. Now, I don't want to call out any specific company's names, but if they have it in their system already, and maybe oftentimes there's a third party login where we can go and get that, so it's maybe mounted on their tractor, their combine, whatever it may be, where all of that information is stored. What are the application rates? What's the yield? What are all those things? That's great. If that farmer has that information, perfect. We're going to log in, we're going to gather the data from there. That makes it a lot easier on them. But we go all the way to people that don't have computers, don't have electricity, that's fine. We'll go and meet with them, look at records, work through there. So, for us, that's where we are helping to take out some of the barrier of innovation. If somebody has it and has the tools, fantastic, we'll work with it. But gosh, let's not that be a barrier to adoption for them to work with us to say, "No, sorry, you've got to log in and enter this information." Well, it happens all the time, all over the country.

Well, these folks don't have access to internet. They don't have whatever it may be. So, let's remove that barrier and do whatever they need. Now, for us, what I do see is if people are using innovative tools or trying to be early adopters, something that, again, I think we see all over agriculture or that we hear frequently, but to make sure people do understand from the farmers, "Gosh darn, this system doesn't talk to that system, and now I've got to have separate systems for each thing." Which is the same as implements. "Well, I have this type of tractor and that type of plow doesn't work with this type of tractor."

So, I'd say we're in the stages of that as well. I know Purdue because I've been to some of the meetings, I know they're trying to do the open sourced ag, and really trying to drive that where there's the ability to work across and so that technology can work together, because that's a big investment for people to say, "Yep, I'll buy this, and I'll buy this, and I'll buy this." … Yeah, we have our technology, but we make sure that we can utilize whatever people have for their data storage to do that.

Jarrod Sutton:

Well, it's brilliant because no two are the same.

Sara Crawford:

That's right.

Jarrod Sutton:

I remember a long time ago when talking with some interns, I believe we got to go out, and we got to visit a farm. I would say, "Congratulations, you've been to one farm. No two farms are the same." The fact that you've built a model and a process and tools that can meet folks wherever they are, as you described, I have to believe that not only does that give confidence to the producer, the farmer, whomever it may be, but also to the downstream, some of the world's biggest food companies like you mentioned. This isn't a one size fits all. This isn't going to happen overnight to digitize the industry.

Literally, we have to have many tools in play right now, and then folks out talking to the people who are responsible for land stewardship or animal production practices and finding out where they are, establishing those baselines, and then working on the strategies to continue to improve and meet whatever the goals or the expectations are. So, I think it's brilliant that the C in SEC is really important. You're consultants, you're going to help people wherever they are, get to, I guess, wherever it is they think we need to go, and you have a better vision of what that is or picture of what that is based on your connectivity up and down the agri-food chain too.

Sara Crawford:

That's a good point too because we want to help people improve. Then for them, the adoption, and you mentioned it, what's the return on investment? That's a question since I was at Pork Board. Well, if I should do cover crops, what can I expect back or how much does it cost? So, any technology that's being added, the farmers do want to know that. That's something we have really been working on, is looking at what's the return on investment in dollars per acre over X period of time? 10 years, so that they can start to get an idea of this technology. Because again, it's not always a piece of technology like a phone or an IOT sensor, but a technology of cover crops.

Well, what does that mean for me? Well, what's the temperature? How long can they have the cover crops in the ground? Are they able to get them in and out in time? There's a lot there. So, you're right on the C portion, on the consulting portion. Again, we don't sell cover crop seed. We generally don't go out to the field to say, "Here's how you do it." But helping them understand, "Based on your soil type, based on your results, et cetera, this is what you would expect to see with cover crops for instance, if you adopted this technology." Then they can start to say, "Okay, how can I do that?" Or we also try to connect them to funding opportunities where they can have some offset in that adoption price. Farmers are innovative. They always have been. But again, what's the barrier to adoption? How can we lower those barriers for them and help them so that we can all continuously improve?

Jarrod Sutton:

Yeah. I'm a farm kid, and you know that, but I always have to say that before I make jokes about farmers, because I am one of them, and we'll do a lot of things for a free hat. But also, it comes back to basic economics.

Sara Crawford:

Or a mug.

Jarrod Sutton:

Or a mug, exactly. I don't understand how I can do that when I know that I'm being paid for this. So, help me with that barrier. Help me figure that out. I'm going to tell you a quick anecdote, and I'll probably destroy it in terms of the actual facts, but I want your reaction to this. So, when we bring in our tech entrepreneur Fellows, they don't know really much. They eat, and that's the extent of their knowledge of ag and food, which is by design, because we want them to see and experience everything in our business for the first time with fresh eyes, and as we like to say, ask really smart, dumb questions.

Questions that we wouldn't ask because that's the way we do it, but if you're coming from the outside, it's like, "Huh, why would you do it that way? Didn't you know there was a digital solve in another industry that's comparable?" Our answer, of course, is, "No. Why don't you help us build that for our industry?" So, we went and visited with some farmers when we took our last cohort of Fellows through their residency process, and in the big screen. A big screen inside of the machine shed, which was a big machine shed, the two gentlemen that farmed together showed us some almost like heat maps, and they said, "Here's an interesting anecdote. Of course, most farmers today lease a lot of land, and this particular group had just started leasing this land for the last, call it, two to three years.

What maybe at one time was a 480 acre fields, was now one big field. But this one section, the yields outperformed the rest of the field, and they couldn't quite figure it out until they dug deeper to understand that a few years before they had actually got access to farm that land, that there was wheat that was planted there. So, for some reason they were interested in learning more about it. However, the wheat, during its time in the rotation, replenished the nutrients in that soil. They felt like because they weren't doing anything, everything else was the same. Right? That was constant. The only difference was the wheat.

That was a major aha for me, because in that heat map, you see this really dark color because it's incredibly productive based on the soil health. How do you react to those anecdotes? You're probably discovering them all the time.

Sara Crawford:

Yeah. Well, I love them. Then you go back, all right, yep, these four pieces were pretty much the same. Oh, except, yeah, why is this? Then looking into that, again, on our team, we're agronomists and animal scientists, environmental scientists. So, we're all in also on curiosity and figuring these things out. So, I love hearing that, and also a bit of an aha for people because, yeah, you said it, right? Gosh, the yields are high and, oh, that's great. But why are the yields high? What's the soil health for this? What's the past?

So being able to look at that and then help the farmers also have the aha moments. I had a farmer who we both know, but I won't say who it is, where they've been doing cover crops, and gosh, darn, sometimes... I don't want to keep harping on cover crops. Man, some years it's a little tough because there might be drought or there might be something, but after a number of years, even with some of the harsh conditions that this summer had, they still had really good yields on soybeans and corn.

Jarrod Sutton:

It's proof.

Sara Crawford:

It is, but gosh, that proof takes some faith, but again, it takes measurement. So that's what we say to farmers, especially through programs like the National Pork Board has, for instance, where it's just helping those farmers get a baseline. Just understand what's happening and keep coming back so that they can, and then say, "Oh, yeah. We just did all this math on your property." So, if it were those four fields, yeah, we'll do the math on those, tell you the difference, but then also say, "Okay, now what? Here are some predictions." Yes. So, predictions are you could try these other things to help using the information from your farm, just help dig into. Dig into the anecdote and see the why and help them understand the why. So, then they can replicate that on more fields. Yeah, I think it's super exciting.

Jarrod Sutton:

It is exciting because, again, it's the proof. Then, as a scientist, you want to dig a bit deeper and understand that better. Of course, you're in a position to help others. This is exciting. All right, I have one last question. We'll bring it to a close here. I do have my notes over here that I keep looking at. I do like to zoom out as you know me. I think about things from a macro point of view before I start to drill in and get specifics. So, when you think about the entire broad spectrum of agri-food, where do you see opportunity spaces for digital innovation? Okay, so there's the question. I think about it and mitigate risks, but I also think about it as competitive advantages, maybe some new business models that create new revenue streams. It's a broad question, but where do you see those main opportunity areas that, through your purview, seem to be ripe for digital innovation?

Sara Crawford:

Well, first of all, yeah, I love, like you said when you were bringing in the cohort, and they really don't have a background in agriculture. I think that's fantastic, but we need to do that so that people are making a solution for the problem that's needed, not a solution looking for a problem.

Jarrod Sutton:

Exactly.

Sara Crawford:

So, I think the idea of DIAL bringing in the cohort and figuring that out, but then, yes, going to the farmers and saying, "What solution do you need?" Not just, "Oh, here's what we think farmers need." Finding that blend is what's needed. So, for me, again, from the seat where I sit now, it's continuing to find ways to improve data collection efficiency on farm and then also making sure that that is... Getting the data in, but making sure the data is good and reliable. I know there's a lot of work on that, but to me, yes, continued work in that space in different things because we... talk a lot about water meters, for instance, in any kind of farm. Well, how do we make it a water meter that isn't too expensive or can feed information in? So, knowing it's always one more thing for the farmer. Well, just write down this water measurement every day. Right. But that's also on top of all of these other things. So, yes, the more reliable automation we can have in data, so that also we can get more real time data coming in to do measurements, that would be great. How can there be more almost pass through? These are the variables that are needed. How can we get that so that we can save the farmers time and have the good, reliable data coming in?

I think also, again, not necessarily a new problem, but helping connect the supply chain all the way through, so we can on farm, and where is that... This wheat is going from here to here. That's great. But gosh, when it gets to the elevator, we lose providence. So how do we continue that through? I think that's a continued challenge because when we look at distributing the income or the value across the supply chain, it's harder to get it back, I think all the way to the farmer. Farmers are the ones that are implementing the practices. So how do we make sure that they can fairly be rewarded for the work that they're doing? But, gosh, it's hard when you can't necessarily track it all the way through the system perfectly.

There's a lot of companies that are looking to invest and do want to help farmers. I think, again, connecting those, making sure that the technology is there for farmers to connect through to those companies and vice versa. It's really important.

Jarrod Sutton:

There is a whole lot there, and it's a super exciting time to be in the business. I can't wait to keep exploring it. I got to bring it to a close. Dr. Sara Crawford, President, Sustainable Environmental Consultant. Sara, thanks for hanging out with us today.

Sara Crawford:

Yeah, thanks for having me. People can check us out at sustainableenviro.com. Happy to chat if people need it.

Jarrod Sutton:

Sustainableenviro.com. Awesome. Great to see you, Sara.