ASH CLOUD

48:58

Profitable climate solutions for small holder farmers...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/09/28

Rice feeds more people than any other crop, and it is grown in a way that is quietly expensive. Globally, a third of all groundwater extraction goes to rice farming. And because those fields sit flooded for weeks at a time, the resulting anaerobic conditions produce methane. Rice accounts for around 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, comparable to the aviation industry, and about 12% of all methane. In India, rice covers some 40 million hectares, a quarter of the country's agricultural la...

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45:10

Government policy to address today's food system...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/09/20

Managing and mitigating risk runs through my whole conversation with Robert Bonnie. Since the Dust Bowl, USDA policy, the Farm Bill and especially crop insurance have given US farmers a safety net that shares the risk of growing the nation's food. But farming keeps getting riskier. Climate change, volatile input costs and commodity prices, access to labour, access to markets and geopolitical instability are all shifting more than they used to. Too often farmers and ranchers are left to carry ...

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48:26

Beef sustainability, methane, and efficiency with Tom...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/09/01

Beef sustainability frequently gets framed as something imposed on the ranchers and the industry from outside—regulatory requirements, consumer pressure, climate obligations driven by environmental groups and activists, leaving the industry industry to respond or resist. But this frame misses something fundamental. My guest today, Tom McDonald, is chair of the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef and sustainability lead at Five Rivers Cattle. His reframing is powerful because it turns sustain...

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40:43

Feed efficiency on pasture: The next frontier with...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/08/29

The beef industry has spent decades optimizing feed efficiency in one place: the feedlot. Genetics have been selected for finishing performance, cattle are placed on feed at lighter weights and fed to heavier carcasses, and the result is measurable improvement in how much feed converts to pounds of beef. Al Rotz's 50-year life cycle assessment comparing 1972 to 2022 documents this clearly—the industry has made tremendous progress. But this optimization has created a dangerous misalignment: th...

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55:38

Why telling people to eat less meat will never work -...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/08/18

Meat consumption has risen every single year that the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has been measuring. Despite warnings about climate impacts spanning over a century, from carbon and methane's effects to James Hansen's congressional testimony in 1986, to a book called "Diet for a Small Planet" published 52 years ago, global meat production continues its upward trajectory. All available analysis indicates the world will eat at least 50% more meat by 2050. But here's ...

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49:53

Regenerative agriculture with Anastasia Volkova,...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/08/12

Forty leading global food and agriculture companies recently declared their commitment to regenerative agriculture. This unprecedented industry alignment signals that the sector has moved beyond looking at sustainable farming an aspirational ideal and into investment and scale. Yet challenges remain as adoption of regenerative practices is sliding backward in North America. Satellite imagery processed with AI and biogeochemical modeling reveals that cover cropping and conservation tillage ado...

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43:13

Feed efficiency and methane emissions with Ermias...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/06/16

The poultry and swine industries have transformed feed efficiency over the past two decades. Through systematic improvement in nutrition, enzyme utilization, and animal genetics, they now produce vastly more protein from fewer resources. The challenge is not simply reducing methane emissions from cows, but reducing methane per unit of milk produced while maintaining farmer profitability and food security. But here's the complexity: feed intake in dairy cattle is difficult to measu...

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54:55

Artificial Intelligence, the need for reliable data,...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/05/27

Artificial intelligence is advancing at an astonishing pace—improvements measured in five-thousand-fold increases from week to week according to AI researchers at Singularity University. Yet in agriculture, most farmers remain largely disconnected from these advances, using AI only at the most basic level for administrative tasks like finance, report writing, and form filling. This widening gap threatens to leave the agricultural sector further and further behind as the world accelerates into...

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43:20

Building a company that leverages biological...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/05/04

“I’m yet to meet a grazier that doesn’t want a 5-15% feed conversation ratio improvement.” says Tom Williams, CEO of Number 8 Bio. Producers motivated by not losing 10% of their feed to the atmosphere. Enteric methane from livestock represents one of the rare climate challenges where environmental impact aligns with economic opportunity. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and it also represents wasted nutrition. Approximately 10% of feed energy consumed by ruminants escapes as met...

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59:09

Building resilient agrifood systems across conflict...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/04/06

The green revolution resulted in unprecedented improvements in the efficiency and productivity of food production. Recent decades of increasingly globalized free trade has further imporved efficiecies across the supply chain. These improvements that have benefited millions have done so largely at the expense of resiliance and the shock waves of this vulnerability are starting to be felt as fertilizer and energy prices rise. Today I am joined by Bram Govaerts, Director General of the In...

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61:00

Leading US beef sustainability with Steve Wooten,...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/03/17

The journey toward sustainable beef production in the United States began before the term "sustainability" entered common usage. Today we are joined by Steve Wooten, a rancher in southeastern Colorado's shortgrass prairie and a founding member of the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. Wooten manages Beatty Canyon Ranch in a region receiving 11-14 inches of annual rainfall, where the same perennial grass species documented in Native American archaeological sites continue thriving toda...

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48:56

Data driven livestock production for feed efficiency...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/03/10

Feed efficiency remains one of the biggest gray areas and least understood aspects of livestock production. Yet understanding how much grass a cow consumes to produce a calf or a ewe to produce a lamb is critical not only to farmer and ranch profitability, but also to the sustainability of the industry. At 19 cents per kilogram to grow dry matter, inefficiency compounds rapidly. The difference between efficient and inefficient animals can determine whether operations generate profit or strugg...

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53:54

Cow feed efficiency, the greatest area of untapped...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/03/03

Feed efficiency, despite its importance from both an environmental sustainability and farm profitability perspective, remains one of the biggest gray areas and least understood aspects of livestock production. Today we are joined by Matt Wilson from West Virginia University, who has spent his career studying how efficiently cattle convert grass into food. In 2003, Wilson installed the first individual feed intake system at a central U.S. performance test facility. Since 2019, his team has col...

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51:59

Investing in regenerative agriculture, the food...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/02/06

There is a huge amount we can learn from understanding the connections between soil health, food production, and human metabolic health. Over the last 50-60 years, modern agricultural systems have become increasingly reliant on synthetic inputs that boost yields but degrade soil microbiomes and reduce micronutrient density in our food. This degradation contributes to the chronic disease epidemic costing the United States trillions of dollars annually. The impact of regenerative agriculture on...

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47:09

Breeding for profitable, efficient, locally adapted...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/01/30

Currently beef cattle production faces a profitability challenge driven by rising feed costs and efficiency gaps. For cow-calf operations, particularly where producers operate on forage-based systems, the biggest variable cost is cow feed, yet geneticists lack precise selection tools for measuring and improving forage intake and conversion efficiency. Today we are joined by Troy Rowan from the University of Tennessee, where he investigates economically important traits in beef cattle wi...

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36:01

Low cost, locally produced zero emissions nitrogen...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/01/22

Over the last century our food systems have become increasingly reliant on synthetic nitrogen. This nitrogen fertilizer is mostly made through the energy intensive haber-bosch process in centralized production plants, often located in politically sensitive location, that have a carbon footprint multiple times greater than the aviation industry. Today we are joined by Frere Byrne of PlasmaLeap Technologies who is developing low cost mobile technology to systhesis zero emissions ammonia f...

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49:31

Addressing the Climate, Agriculture, Landscape and...

ASH CLOUD ·

2026/01/08

Denmark made headlines in 2024 as the first country to implement a carbon tax on livestock emissions. The country's ambitious 70% emissions reduction target by 2030 includes agricultural reductions of 55-65%. What makes Denmark's policy truly remarkable isn't the tax itself—it's the 60% tax deduction corresponding to mitigation potential. This signals that Denmark's approach isn't anti-livestock, but rather pro-innovation, explicitly avoiding targets on livestock numbers while incentivizing f...

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52:17

Animal health as a climate solution with Nick...

ASH CLOUD ·

2025/12/10

Animal Health as a Climate and Food Security Solution In this episode of the Ash Cloud podcast, we explore an often-overlooked opportunity in the fight against climate change with Dr. Nick Wheelhouse, Professor of Comparative Infectious Disease at Edinburgh Napier University and co-lead of the Global Research Alliance Animal Health and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Intensity Network. Dr. Wheelhouse brings unique expertise spanning both veterinary research and animal science. After completing his B...

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63:20

Global food security, innovation, and the investment...

ASH CLOUD ·

2025/11/25

The cost living is an increasing global challenge. Food inflation in 2023 was 13.6%, however food prices increased by up to 30% in many low income countries. Currently 60-80% of voters consider food price as a decisive factor in their choice of candidate and across 60% of countries food costs represent more than 25% of the CPI basket. Right now, 670 million people—8.2% of our global population—are going hungry. By 2030, projections show that 300 million people in Africa alone could face...

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55:30

Creating a carbon neutral beef operation with Robert...

ASH CLOUD ·

2025/10/22

"Sustainability means leaving the land in a better place, preparing the next generation for a turbulent future in agriculture... and it's probably also a license to produce." Robert MacKenzie and his farms on the mid north coast of NSW was the first Australian beef operation to become net zero through pasture carbon sequestration. Roberts journey began with a dedication to understand the numbers around all metrics on the farm and then adjusting his management to improve these metrics. The ini...

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