Podcast: Leveraging biologicals on the farm

Eric: We are very fortunate to have Keri Carstens with us today. She’s the CEO of Jord Bioscience. So, Keri, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s great to have you. Thank you for carving out a bit of time for you to give an overview of your role in the organization.

Keri: Thanks, Eric. Really excited to be here today and appreciate the opportunity to talk about Jord and to talk about biologicals. So, I have the privilege of serving as the CEO of Jord Bioscience. What that means is, of course, leading the organization as we grow and scale up.

We’re a startup company, but in growth mode at this point in time. We have our first revenue in and are serving clients actively today and are really excited about what the future holds for what we can do for the industry.

Eric: Well, you have had an interesting career, one of which has positioned you as an expert in the field. And if you don’t mind we have some listeners today that may be part of the private equity world and have an interest in the biological space and the crop-protection industry.

Can you give our listeners that may not be familiar an overview of the biologicals and their role and maybe a bit about where people may have some misunderstandings with biologicals?

Keri: A lot to unpack there, so hopefully we don’t use the whole time for that, but I think we can definitely get some things out there and help raise the overall understanding. So, if you think about this sort of history of agriculture, what’s really important to realize is that humans have been using biological-based products for millennia.

When you look backwards and think about using manure or other amendments to add to soil to be able to enhance crop growth, you know that would be one of the earliest examples likely. But other things that we’ve done over time as humans is to isolate microbes that have distinct characteristics that can help to protect against insect pests. You know, other things that can be predators of plants, certainly disease protection as well.

So, through human history, there’s been a recognition that you can use nature-inspired tools to help with crop growth, and science tells us plants have always needed microbes. The fact that plants could be on Earth is because microbes have enabled that.

Listen to the full episode here.