For the Sept. 24 installment of the Ram Talks lecture series, Colorado State University welcomed Jordan Kraft Lambert, director of the CSU Spur Ag Innovation Center under the College of Agricultural Sciences. The conversation was a tech-forward tour of how farmers use tools — from robots to biologics — to feed people while protecting wildlife and water.

Lambert made the point that agriculture includes all of us.

“How many people ate in the last 24 hours?” Lambert said. “When you guys are making choices at the grocery store, you are involved in agriculture. You’re actually sending a market signal all the way back up that supply chain.”

That connection, she added, comes from her belief that “everyone deserves to be well nourished … (with) a full, balanced meal of all of the proteins, fats and carbohydrates and micronutrients that make it possible for us to live a full, joyful life.”

Throughout the evening, Lambert revisited the tension between food production and environmental care. 

“Farmers care very much about balancing those things,” Lambert said. “I have never met a farmer in all of my life who actually wanted to damage the environment. … Sometimes it happens … because they don’t have good enough technologies to do both — to feed us and preserve the environment.”

That challenge, she said, is exactly what agricultural technology, or “ag tech,” is meant to solve. She broadly defined ag tech as any technology that helps farmers and ranchers bring safe food to consumers.

She broke it down into three categories: Hardware, like machines and robotics; data, such as software to optimize decisions; and biological work, including genetics, fertilizers and emerging biologics such as bacteria and fungi that improve plant efficiency.

To show how ag tech can transform an industry, Lambert told the story of artificial insemination in dairy.

“Artificial insemination … allows scientists to separate the genetics of the bull from the body of the bull,” Lambert said. “You can put it in a straw and freeze it in liquid nitrogen.”

Though, adoption of genetic material requires creative business models.

“The great business model innovation got solved in two ways: with magazines and motorcycles,” Lambert said.

Farmers could browse “proven daughters” in catalogues and then order genetics delivered by motorcycle riders trained in the technique.

“Now you can pay pennies for the best bulls — plural — in the world,” Lambert said.

While answering questions, one audience member asked, “You keep talking about all the daughters — what happens to the sons?”

Lambert explained that modern sorting technology can now separate sperm carrying X or Y chromosomes, making it possible for dairies to have 70% to 80% females. The remaining males, she added, are often raised as part of the beef supply chain through “beef on dairy” crosses.

“Bringing any technology to market is for sure a team sport. …You need the inventor, the finance guy, the marketing people, and ag is harder.” –Jordan Kraft Lambert, CSU Spur Ag Innovation Center director 

Lambert also highlighted the role of software and sensors.

“We have more data on every cow in this herd than UC Health has on you,” Lambert said. “We know every dose of medicine she’s ever taken, … (and) who her daddy’s daddy’s daddy was.”

Several technologies that have made these advancements possible were born at CSU. This includes animal welfare design, from Temple Grandin’s handling systems to slip-resistant flooring.

“That length of groove and that depth of groove has been scientifically determined to be the optimal grooving to prevent a cow from slipping and falling,” Lambert said.

Lambert pointed out that fewer than two million farmers remain in the U.S., and most see only pennies of every retail dollar. Producers, she said, are “price takers, not price makers.”

Water rights add more strain, as Lambert noted. As a headwaters state, “We have no rivers that come in. They only come out.” She described the “buy and dry” trend, in which cities purchase farmland for the water rights and leave fields idle.

Lambert emphasized that solutions require teamwork. 

“Bringing any technology to market is for sure a team sport,” Lambert said. “You need the inventor, the finance guy, the marketing people, and ag is harder.”

She closed with a reminder of how far agriculture has come.

“In 1801, it took 220 hours of labor. … In 2021, it took two to harvest that same hectare of grain, … (and) less than one second to make enough wheat for one loaf of bread,” Lambert said.

Emily Seems, CSU’s associate vice president for university and community engagement, said the series began last fall to bring campus research into the community. Speakers are selected through nominations and requests, with an eye toward dynamic presenters — qualities that were exhibited in Lambert’s talk.

“(It was) eye-opening to be able to see what I’m putting in my body (and) what I’m choosing to buy,” Seems said. “There’s this whole supply chain, down to how they’re fed and the impact they have on the climate.”

Reach Maci Lesh at  science@collegian.com or on social media @rmcollegian.