Episode 018: Driving the Grain Economy Forward

The agricultural supply chain, including the grain industry, is an incredibly complex system that - as COVID-19 exposed to many individuals for the first time - is also incredibly fragile. Many of the information systems in place for this supply chain and industry are archaic, requiring physical transfers of information that limit the efficiency of the system by wasting time and money. Ryan Raguse, President and Co-Founder of Bushel, joins the FarmBits podcast for this episode to explain the challenges faced by the ag supply chain and how Bushel is addressing those challenges from a digital perspective to push the industry into a digitized, value-added future. As Ryan will explain, digitization of the agricultural supply chain - starting with the grain industry - is critical to unlocking the potential of consumer-driven value-added opportunities for farmers including carbon credits, sustainability bonuses, health-based marketing, and more. These opportunities may be the next great frontier in the agricultural supply chain, akin to the first time that railroads and grain elevators offered the opportunity for international grain markets. This episode is a great opportunity to learn more about the agricultural supply chain and is a great example of how technology isn't just a way of doing things more efficiently, but it's a way of opening doors to new possibilities yet to be realized. "The more important question is how can we set the system up . . . I don't know what consumers are going to ask for in 10 years, nobody really does. And how do you set up a future proof system so that no matter what the whims of a consumer might be in 10 years from now we can react to that without having to retool the whole system?. . .The way you do that is through a scalable digital infrastructure." - Ryan Raguse, President and Co-Founder of Bushel "As a farmer, I have to do proof of yield reports. And that might involve me calling the elevator and getting an assembly sheet or I literally drop off a shoebox of scale tickets . . . and now we're moving data with gasoline by driving paper from one place to another, it makes no sense. . . .We are wasting the farmer's time, the elevator's time, the insurance company's time so why don't we just connect these pipes up on the internet and permission them appropriately and then pass them off, and we'll save everybody in the supply chain time." - Ryan Raguse, President and Co-Founder of Bushel Bushel Contact Information: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvLo1W-1fgxW-OxlbV8X8qg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bushel-ag/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bushelpowered Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/getbushel/ Ryan's Contact Information: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanraguse/ FarmBits Team Contact Info: E-Mail: farmbits@unl.edu Twitter: @NEDigitalAg Samantha's Twitter: @SamanthaTeten Jackson's Twitter: @jstansell87 Opinions expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast are solely their own, and do not reflect the views of Nebraska Extension or the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.