>>The cube presents Koon and cloud native con Europe, 2022, brought to you by red hat, the cloud native computing foundation and its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome to Valencia Spain and CubeCon cloud native con Europe, 2022 I'm cube Townsend, along with Paul Gill, senior editor, enterprise architecture at Silicon angle. We are talking to some incredible folks this week, continuing the conversation around enabling developers to do their work. Paul you've said that this conference is about developers. What are you finding key as a theme running throughout the show >>That that developers really need a whole set of special tools. You know, it's not the end user, the end user tools, the end user access controls the authentication it's developers need a need their own to live their in their own environment. They need their own workflow tools, their own collaboration and their own security. And that's where teleport comes in. >>So speaking of teleport, we have Michael fork, chief marking our officer at teleport new world role for you. First, tell me about how long have you been at teleport now >>Going on seven or eight months now, >>Seven or eight months in this fast moving market. I'm I'm going to tell you a painful experience I've had in this new world. We've built applications. We've moved fast audits come in. The auditors have come in and they said, you know what, who authorized this change to the cluster? And we'll go into the change ticket and say, this person authorized the changes and the change ticket. And then they'll ask for trace back. Okay. Show me the change. What do it mean? Show you the changes. It just happened. >>Yeah. Check, check GitHub. >>Yeah, check GI, get, see, we, we, we, we said we were gonna make the changes, the change happen. That's not enough. What are CU, how are you helping customers solve this access control and audit problem? >>Yeah, that's a great question. There're kind of, there're kind of two, two sides to the puzzle. And actually I think that the intro hits it. Well, you you've talked about kind of developer experience needing needing tools to more efficiently do the job as a practitioner. And you're coming at it from kind of a security and compliance angle. And there's a tension between both of those teams. It's like, you know, there's, there's a tension between dev and ops before we created DevOps. There's also a tension between kind of security teams and developers. So we've created dev SecOps. What that means is you need an easy way for developers to get access, access to the resources they needed through their jobs. That's, you know, Linux hosts and databases and Kubernetes clusters and, you know, monitoring dashboards and managing all of those credentials is quite cumbersome. If I need to access a dozen systems, then you know, I'm using SSH keys to access this. >>I have admin credentials for my database. I I'm going through a VPN to access an internal dashboard, teleport, consolidates, all of that access into a single login via your identity provider, Okta active directory, but then on the security and compliance side, we make it really easy for that compliance officer. When they say, show me that change, we have all of the audit logs. That's that show exactly what changes Keith made when he logged into, into that system. And in fact, one of the booths behind here is talking about E B P F a modern way to get that kind of kernel level grade granularity. We build all of that observability into teleport to make the security and compliance teams happy. And the engineering teams a lot more productive. >>Where do the, the access control tools like Okta, you mentioned fall short. I mean, why, why is there a need for your level of, of control at the control plane? >>Yeah. When you, when you start to talk about authorization, authentication, audit at the infrastructure level, each of these technologies has its own way of managing what kind of in, in the jargon often and Ze, right? Authentication authorization. So you have SSH for, for Linux. Kubernetes has its own way of doing authorization. All of the database providers have their own way and it's quite complicated, right? It's, it's much different. So, you know, if I'm gonna access office 365 or I'm gonna a access Salesforce, right. I'm really talking about the HTTP protocol. It's relatively trivial to implement single sign on for web-based applications. But when we start talking about things that are happening at the Linux kernel level, or with Kubernetes, it's quite complicated to build those integrations. And that's where teleport extends what you have with your IDP. So for instance, Okta, lots of our customers use Okta as their identity provider, but then teleport takes those roles and applies them and enforces them at the actual infrastructure level. >>So if I'm a lay developer, I'm looking at this thinking, you know, I, I have service mesh, I've implemented link D SEO or something to that level. And I also have Ansible and Ansible has security, etcetera. What, what role, or how does that integrate to all together from a big picture perspective? >>Yeah. So >>What, one of the, kind of the meta themes at teleport is we, we like to, we like to say that we are fighting complexity cuz as we build new technologies, we tend to run the new tech on top of the old tech. Whereas for instance, when you buy a new car, you typically don't, you know, hook the old car to the back and then pull it around with you. Right? We, we replace old technology with new technology, but in infrastructure that doesn't happen as often. And so you end up with kind of layers of complexity with one protocol sitting on top of another protocol on top of another protocol. And what teleport does is for the access control plane, we, we kind of replace the legacy ways of doing authentication authorization and audit with a new modern experience. But we allow you to continue to use the existing tools. >>So we don't replace, for instance, you know, your configuration management system, you can keep using Ansible or, or salt or Jenkins, but teleport now is gonna give those, those scripts or those pipelines in identity that you can define. What, what should Ansible be able to do? Right? If, cuz people are worried about supply chain attacks, if a, if a vulnerable dependency gets introduced into your supply chain pipeline and your kind of Ansible playbook goes crazy and starts deploying that vulnerability everywhere, that's probably something you wanna limit with teleport. You can limit that with an identity, but you can still use the tools that you're, that you're used to. >>So how do I guarantee something like an ex-employee doesn't come in and, and initiate Ansible script that was sitting in the background just waiting to happen until, you know, they left. >>Yeah. Great question. It's there's kind of the, the, the great resignation that's happening. We did a survey where actually we asked the question kind of, you know, can you guarantee that X employees can no longer access your infrastructure? And shockingly like 89% of companies could not guarantee that it's like, wow, that's like that should, that should be a headline somewhere. And we actually just learned that there are on the dark web, there are people that are targeting current employees of Netflix and Uber and trying to buy credentials of those employees to the infrastructure. So it's a big problem with teleport. We solve this in a really easy, transparent way for developers. Everything that we do is based on short lift certificates. So unlike a SSH key, which exists until you decommission it, shortlist certificates by, by default expire. And if you don't reissue them based on a new login based on the identity, then, then you can't do anything. So even a stolen credential kind of the it's value decreases dramatically over time. >>So that statistic or four out of five companies can't guarantee X employees can't access infrastructure. Why is simply removing the employee from the, you know, from the L app or directory decommissioning their login credentials. Why is that not sufficient? >>Well, it, it depends on if everything is integrated into your identity provider and because of the complexities of accessing infrastructure, we know that developers are creative people. And by, by kind of by definition, they're able to create systems to make their lives easier. So one thing that we see developers doing is kind of copying an SSH key to a local notepad on, on their computer. So they essentially can take that credential out of a vault. They can put it somewhere that's easier for them to access. And if you're not rotating that credential, then I can also, you know, copy it to a, to a personal device as well. Same thing for shared admin credentials. So the, the, the issue is that those credentials are not completely managed in a unified way that enables the developer to not go around the system in order to make their lives easier. >>But rather to actually use the system, there's a, there's a market called privilege access management that a lot of enterprises are using to kind of manage credentials for their developers, but it's notoriously disruptive to developer workflows. And so developers kind of go around the system in order to make their jobs easier. What teleport does is we obviate the need to go around the system, cuz the simplest thing is just to come in in the morning, log in one time to my identity provider. And now I have access to all of my servers, all of my databases, all of my Kubernetes clusters with a short lift certificate, that's completely transparent. And does >>This apply to, to your, both your local and your cloud accounts? >>Yes. Yes, exactly. >>So as a security company, what's driving the increase in security breaches. Is it the lack of developer hygiene? Is it this ex-employee great resignation bill. Is it external intruders? What's driving security breaches today. >>Yes. >>It's you know, it's, it's all of those things. I think if I had to put, give you a one word answer, I would say complexity. The systems that we are building are just massively complex, right? Look at how many vendors there are at this show in order to make Kubernetes easy to use, to do what its promises. It's just, we're building very complex systems. When you build complex systems, there's a lot of back doors, we call it kind of a tax surface. And that's why for every new thing that we introduce, we also need to think about how do we remove old layers of the stack so that we can simplify so that we can consolidate and take advantage of the power of something like Kubernetes without introducing security vulnerabilities. >>One of the problems or challenges with security solutions is, you know, you there's this complexity versus flexibility knob that you, you need to be careful of. What's the deployment experience in integration experience for deploying teleport. >>Yeah, it's it, we built it to be cloud native to feel like any other kind of cloud native or Kubernetes like solution. So you basically, you deploy it using helm chart, you deploy it using containers and we take care of all of the auto configuration and auto update. So that it's just, it's, it's part of your stack and you manage it using the same automation that you use to manage everything else. That's a, that's a big kind of installation and developer experience. Part of it. If it's complex to use, then not only are developers not gonna use it. Operations teams are not gonna want to have to deal with it. And then you're left with doing things the old way, which is very unsatisfactory for everybody. >>How does Kubernetes change the security equation? Are there vulnerabilities? It introduces to the, to the stack that maybe companies aren't aware of >>Almost by definition. Yes. Kind of any new technology is gonna introduce new security vulnerabilities. That's the that's that is the result of the complexity, which is, there are things that you just don't know when you introduce new components. I think kind of all of the supply chain vulnerabilities are our way of looking at that, which is we have, you know, Kubernetes is itself built on a lot of dependencies. Those dependencies themselves could have security vulnerabilities. You might have a package that's maintained by one kind of hobbyist developer, but that's actually deployed across hundreds of thousands of applications across, across the internet. So again, it's about one understanding that that complexity exists and then saying, is there a way that we can kind of layer on a solution that provides a common layer to let us kind of avoid that complexity and say, okay, every critical action needs to be authorized with an identity that way if it's automated or if it's human, I have that level of assurance that a hacked Ansible pipeline is not going to be able to introduce vulnerabilities across my entire infrastructure. >>So one of the challenges for CIOs and CTOs, it's the lack of developer resources and another resulting pain point that compounds that issue is rework due to security audits is teleport a source of truth that when a auditor comes in to audit a, a, a, a C I C D pipeline that the developer or, or operations team can just say, Hey, here's, self-service get what you need. And come back to us with any questions or is there a second set of tools we have to use to get that audit and compliance reporting? >>Yeah, it's teleport can be that single source of truth. We can also integrate with your other systems so you can export all of the, what we call access logs. So every, every behavior that took place, every query that was run on a database, every, you know, curl command that was run on a Lennox, host, teleport is creating a log of that. And so you can go in and you can filter and you can view those, those actions within teleport. But we also integrate with other systems that, that people are using, you have its Splunk or Datadog or whatever other tool chain it's really important that we integrate, but you can also use teleport as that single source. So >>You can work with the observability suites that are now being >>Installed. Yeah, there, the, the wonderful thing about kind of an ecosystem like Kubernetes is there's a lot of standardization. You can pick your preferred tool, but under the hood, the protocols for taking a log and putting it in another system are standardized. And so we can integrate with any of the tools that developers are already using. >>So how big is teleport when I'm thinking about a, from a couple of things big as in what's the footprint and then from a developer operations team overhead, is this kind of a set and forget it, how much care feed and maintenance does it >>Need? So it's very lightweight. We basically have kind of two components. There's the, the access proxy that sits in front of your infrastructure. And that's what enables us to, you know, regardless of the complexity that sits across your multi data center footprint, your traditional applications, running on windows, your, your, your modern applications running on, you know, Linux and Kubernetes, we provide seamless access to all of that. And then there's an agent that runs on all of your hosts. And this is the part that can be deployed using yo helm or any other kind of cloud native deployment methodology that enables us to do the, the granular application level audit. For instance, what queries are actually being run on CockroachDB or on, on Postgres, you know, what, what CIS calls are running on Linnux kernel, very lightweight automation can be used to install, manage, upgrade all of it. And so from an operations perspective, kind of bringing in teleport shouldn't be any more complicated than running any application on a container. That's, that's the design goal and what we built for our customers. >>If I'm in a hybrid environment, I'm transitioning, I'm making the migration to teleport. Is this a team? Is this a solution that sits only on the Kubernetes cloud native side? Or is this something that I can trans transition to initially, and then migrate all of my applications to, as I transition to cloud native? >>Yeah. We, there are kind of, no, there are no cloud native dependencies for teleport. Meaning if you are, you're a hundred percent windows shop, then we support for instance, RDP. That's the way in which windows handles room access. If you have some applications that are running on Linux, we can support that as well. If you've got kind of the, you know, the complete opposite in the spectrum, you're doing everything, cloud native containers, Kubernetes, everything. We also support that. >>Well, Michael, I really appreciate you stopping by and sharing the teleport story. Security is becoming an obvious pain point for cloud native and container management. And teleport has a really good story around ensuring compliance and security from Licia Spain. I'm Keith towns, along with Paul Gillon and you're watching the cue, the, the leader, not the, the leader two, the high take tech coverage.

>>from Menlo Park, California In the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube covering cloud now. Awards 2020 Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. Now here's Sonia category. >>Hi, and welcome to the Cube. I'm your host Sonia category, and we're on the ground at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California covering Cloud now's top women entrepreneurs in Cloud Innovation Awards. >>Joining us today is Get the Schmidt CEO of Human. Get that. Welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you. Thanks for having me. >>So just give us a brief overview of your background and more about Humira. All right, A brief >>overview. Let's see. Um, I'll start off that I've been in the industry for some time now. Um, since ah, 97 which I used to actually work at this campus that we're here today at when it used to be Sun Microsystems. So I started out in technology in product management and marketing. Mainly, um, when java was coming out so early days and really learned a lot about what it takes to take a product or a concept out to market very exciting in those early days and sort of, you know, move towards looking at Industries and Sister focused on financial services into the lot around financial services marketing. Also it son. >>And then I moved >>to Denmark, which is sort of a surprise, But I'm married to a day and we decided we would try something different. So I moved to Denmark, working at a consulting company software consulting company based in Denmark, fairly small and Ah, and was part of sort of building out of the conference and business development business they had over there. And ah, and that was a way for us, for me to understand a completely other side of the business consulting aspects where you really build software for a customer and really understand, you know, sort of the customer solution needs that are required versus when you're working at a large enterprise company kind of are separated away from the customers. And that was there where I met the two founding team members of Humi Oh, Christian and Trust in at Tri Fork into you. Essentially, we've been working together for 10 years, and, uh, we sort of all felt like we could really come out with the world's best logging solution and, ah, this was out of some of the pain we were running into by running other solutions in the market. And so we took a leap into building our own product business. And so we did that in 2016. And so that's really what brought me here into the CEO role. So we have a three person leisure leadership or executive team, our founding team, which is to verily technical folks. So the guys that really built the product and and, uh, and keep it running and take it to the next level every single day. But what was missing was really that commercial kind of leader that was ready to take that role, and that's where I came in. So they were very supportive and and bringing me on board. So that was into 2016 where I started that >>that's awesome. So how do you think having like a business and marketing background versus a technical background has helped you become a successful CEO? Um, I >>think it's really, really hard if you don't have different profiles on your founding team to be able to run a successful tech business. So there's technology that you could have the world's greatest technology like an example would be my you know, my co founders were building an amazing product, but until they came into the room, they hadn't thought about going out and trying to get a customer to use it. And essentially, that is one of the issues there is that you can sit and build something and build the best product out there. But if you're not getting feedback really, really early in the design and the concepts of product development, then customers our search of it's not built in. And so a lot of the thought process around him. EOS We like to say customers are in our DNA. We build >>our product >>for people to use 6 to 8 hours a day, and they're in it every day. And so it keeps this feeling of a customer feedback loop. And even if you're technical, it's really exciting. You know that you build something that somebody uses every day. It looks at every day, and so that's the kind of energy that we've tried to, you know, instill. Or maybe I've tried to instill in Humi Oh, that you know, our customers really matter, and I think that's one of the ways that we've been able to move, Let's say really, really fast in building the right features the right functionality, um, and the right things for people are using it on the on the on, the on the other and essentially >>so okay. And, um so you're here to receive an award for being one of the top female entrepreneurs in cloud innovation. So congratulations and And how does it feel to win this award? Super >>exciting. I mean, I'm glad that there are organizations like Cloud now that are doing amazing things for women and and also, you know, making examples of folks that are doing interesting roles in our industry, especially around B two B software. I think that's a real area where there's not many CIOs or leaders in our space where there should be. And, uh, and I think part of it is actually kind of highlighting that. But, you know, the other side is sort of an event like this today is bringing together a lot of other profiles that are women or diverse profiles together to sort of, you know, talk about this problem and acknowledge and also take, let's say, more of an active stance around, you know, making this place not so scary. I mean, I think I remember one of my early events and I was raising our series A when I walked into a VC event where there were no other female CIOs out there. There's 100 CIOs and I was the only one. And I think one of the hard parts is I walked in there and, you know, it felt a bit uncomfortable, But there were some. There were two amazing VC partners at the company that I first started talking to, and that just really used the sort of like, you know, I guess. Uncomfortable, itty. So I think the main focus at things like today or, you know, the people that are here today. So I think we can help each other. And I think that's something that you know. That's something that I'd like to see more of, that we actively sort of create environments and communities for that to happen, and cloud now is one of them. >>So I think a lot of women have had that experience where they're the only woman in the room, you know, and it's just really hard to like. Figure out your path from there. So as the company as Julio, how do you What's your strategy for inclusion? >>Um, so, like I like to call it active inclusion. I think part of this is like having a diverse workforce, which is, you know, obviously including women and different backgrounds. Other things. But >>one of >>the big things we think about at Hume Eo is we really like to, let's say, celebrate people's differences so like that you're able to be yourself and almost eccentric is a good thing. And be able to feel safe in that environment to feel safe, that you can express your opinions, feel comfortable and safe when you're, you know, coming with a opposite viewpoint. Because the diversity of thought is really what we're trying to include in our company. So it means bringing together folks that don't look like each other where exactly, the same clothes and do the exact same hobbies and come from the same countries like we have. Ah, very, you know, global workforce. So we have folks, you know in Denmark of an office in Denmark. We have an office in the UK, and we have folks all over the U. S. We have a lot of backgrounds that have come from different cultures, and I think there's a beauty to that. There's a beauty to actually combining a lot of ways to solve problems. Everyone from a different culture has different ways of solving those. And so I think part of this is all around making that. Okay, right. So, you know, active inclusion is a way to to sort of put it into terms. So So we're definitely looking for people, Actively, that would like to join something like >>this. So I love that. Um, So if you were personally, if you were to have your own board of directors, like, who would they be? Um, it's not really >>the who. It's almost like the profiles or the people. I mean, we already have a personal board like I call it. I mean, it's something that I actively started doing. Um, once I once I started with a company board, I realized, you know, I probably need my own personal board, my own sort of support infrastructure That includes folks like my family, my sisters and my mom. It also includes you know, some younger junior folks that are actually much younger >>than me. >>But I learned so much from so um, to one of my good friend Cindy, who's who is brilliant at describing technology concepts. And and I think just some of the conversations I've had with her just opened my eyes to something that I hadn't seen before. And I think that's the area where I like to say the personal board isn't exactly you know people. It's it's profile. So along the way, as you grow, you're looking for new types of profiles. Let's say you want to learn about a new concept or a new technology or, you know, get better at running or something. So it's part of bringing those profiles in tow, learn about it and then back to this board concept. It's It's not as though it's a linked in network or it's actually sort of a group of people that you sort of rely on. And then it's a It's a two way street. So essentially, you know, there could be things that the other person could gain from knowing me, and ideally, that those were the best relationships in a personal board. So so I encourage alive women to do this because it builds a support infrastructure that is not related to your job. It's not your manager. It's not your co worker. You kind of feel some level of freedom having those discussions because those people aren't looking at your company. They're looking at helping you. So So that's That's sort of the concepts around >>the personal board idea and anything as women like having a sport system is so necessary, especially in this, like male dominated industry. Well, I think it's back >>to that whole feeling like you're the one person in the room, right? Right, so you're not the one person in the room, and I think we need to change that. And I think that's like some you know, all of our kind of roles that for all the women intact. I mean, it's sort of like something that we could help each other with right, and and if we don't do it actively, I mean, you know the numbers and we know you know the percentages of these things. If we want to change that, it does require some active interest on on our part to make that happen. And I think those are the areas where I see, like, the support infrastructures, the events like this really kind of engaging, um, us to be aware and doing something about the >>problem. Thank you so much for being on the key of love having you here. Thanks for >>having me. I really appreciate it. >>I'm Sonia to Garry. Thanks for watching the Cube. Stay tuned for more. >>Yeah, yeah.

>>from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering quality security conference 2019. You >>bike, Wallace. Hey, Welcome back. You're ready. Geoffrey here with the Cube were in Las >>Vegas at the Kuala Security Conference here at the Bellagio. 19 years they've been doing this conference star first time here, But we've got a real veteran. Has been here for 16 years who can really add some depth and perspective for happy to welcome submit to car. He's a president and chief product officer for cause like >>to see you. Thank you, >>Jeff. Thanks for having me. >>Pleasure. So just, uh, don't lorry before getting ready for this. Um, this day, listening to the earnings call. And you got a really nice shout out in the nights in the Last Rings call and your promotion just to let everybody know what submits got underneath his plate. R and D. Q A ops, product marketing and customer support and adding worldwide field sales ops. You're busy, guy. >>Yeah, you know. But the good thing is, >>no matter who you are, you only have 24 hours in the >>day. That's true. Just as Leo. But I am curious because you've been here for a >>while, you've seen a lot of technology, you know, kind of waves. And yet here you guys still are. You've got an architecture that's built to take advantage of things like open source to take advantage of things. My cloud is you kind of take a breath between customer meetings and running from panel the panel and you think about kind of the journey. You know what? What kind of strikes you that you know, that you guys are still here, Still successful, Still have a founding CEO. It's >>your position. Yeah, It's actually very interesting >>being here for 16 years. Started a software engineer. And, you know, I've been doing a lot of stuff doing a product management now, engineering and all of that. And I think one thing that's really part of the DNA for us and which is really helped us keep growing, is being innovative continuously, right, because five years ago, nobody would have said container technology docker eso, as new security knew in for sexual pattern times have come about. We've just been on our toes and making sure that we are addressing all these different newer areas. And so the key is not so much about what new technology is going to come, because two years from now there was something that we don't even know about right now. What's key is that we build a platform that we keep adding additional capabilities that continue to quickly and nimbly be able to address customer's needs. From that perspective. >>Yeah, we just had Laureano. She talked quite a bit about your kind of customer engagement model being different than the traditional ones, really trying to build a long lasting relationship and to collect that data from the customers to know what their prairies are all about. >>Yeah, >>and, you know, it's because we've been subscription based since day one. You know, this is the not we're not incentivized to go and try to sell our customers big fact, multimillion dollar deals. Then we don't disappear like enterprise sales usually does on perpetual licenses. So we have to earn our keep, and we want to make sure customers are we understand their needs so that they actually buy and purchase only what they are going to use so we can go back and they can grow more. We show the value. Uh, so that's a very different model on, you know, at the end of the day, that is a model of the cloud. So everybody who was in this consumption based model has to ensure that they are every year, going back and showing the value and earning their subscription back. So in that sense, security. Not a lot of vendors have done that for a long time. We've been the ones since the beginning to kind of follow this model, and it's worked very well for us. It's a great model. Customers were happy as we had more solutions. We showed the value, and it's very easy for them to upgrade and get additional value of quality at a very reasonable of you. No cost to them. >>It's interesting. Feli talked about an early conversation that he had with Marc Benioff details Horse and and I would argue that it was really sales force. That kind of cracked the code in terms of enterprising, being comfortable with a cloud based system and, you know, kind of past the security and the trust in this in that, so to make that gamble on the cloud so early, very, very fortunate and for two days. Thea Other thing I think that does not get enough play which you just touched on is a subscription business model forces you to deliver every month they're paying every month you gotta deliver Your mother is a very different relationship than a once a year. You know, not even once year to go get that big lump sum to get the renewal cause you're in bed with them. Every single say absolutely. Yeah, >>so that's really a very interesting model. >>So as you look forward, I know you're just given Ah, talk on, you know, kind of starting to look at the next big wave of trends. How do you get out ahead of it? What are you thinking about? What keeps you up at night would be excited about. >>So the very cool part about that about my job is that I also heard engineering and product Fork Wallace and Security. So we're living that digital transformation that our customers are going through as well. So we have a massive black farm. We have, like, three trillion data points. Every index, we have one million rights per second on Cassandra Clusters. So we are dealing with the same infrastructure innovation that our customers are doing and so died is helping us also learn how the secular own platform what our customers are thinking. Because as they are moving into Dev ops, we have already moved into that. We have learned our lessons, so we relate to what they're going through. And that's really the next big thing is hard to be enabled. Security tools to really be built into the develops stool chain so that we eliminate a lot of the issues upfront before they ever even become an issue. And, you know, my talk this morning was about started with the notion of t t R, which is the time to remediate, and the best time to the mediator is the time of zero, right? If you don't ever let the issue get into your production environment, you never have to worry about fixing it. And that's really the next big thing for us is how do we create a platform that helps customer not the look at security in multiple silos, but to have a single platform where they can go all the way from develops to production to remediation to response all orchestrated to the same platform, >>right? It's pretty interesting, because that was, uh, Richard Clarke. Keynote the author. You know, we used to always break cos down into two buckets. You know, either those that had that have been breached and those that have been breached just don't know about it yet. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, he introduced his third concept, which is those that got breached but actually got on it. Remediated it. Maybe not the time, zero, but in a way that it did not become a big issue. Because, let's face it, you're going to get breached at some level. It's How do you keep it from becoming a big, big nightmare? >>Exactly. And that is really the only measure off effectiveness off your security, right? It's not about how many people you have, how many dollars you spend on security, how big your security team is. Harmony renders you have How quickly can you get in there, find and fix any issue that comes up? That's that. That's the living matter. If you can't do that with no people and no, uh, you know, re sources that are being put to it with automation, then that's great. If you do that with 50 people, that's great. We just need to be able to get to that point. And today, off course with hybrid infrastructure, we are realizing quickly, throwing more people that the problem is not really solving the problem. We just cannot keep going. We need to leverage that seem scalable technology that has been used in the digital transformation to provide that similar stuff from a security perspective through the customers as well, >>right? And even if you even if you wanted to hire the people, there aren't enough people, >>and that's another just our people, right? So the other >>thing that you must be really excited about is on the artificial intelligence of machine learning site and a lot of buzz in the press. Talk about robots and machines and this type of stuff. But, as you know, is we know where that robber really hits. The road is applied a I and bring in the power of that technology to specific problems. Complete game changer, I would assume for which you guys could do looking forward. >>Yeah. I mean, uh, you can really only >>have good machine learning and gold. Aye aye, if you really have a massive historic data that you can really mind to find out trends and understand how patterns have evolved, right, so only cloud based solutions can actually do that because they have a large amount of customer telemetry that they can understand and do that. So from that sense, Wallace Black form is absolutely suited for that. But having said that again, all of these have there specific application. So there's vendors were coming out and claiming that machine learning's going to solve world hunger and everything's gonna be great just because your machine learning but no machine learning and the prediction that comes with that on the privatization is one element off your tool kit. You still have to do your devil options still have to fix things. You still have to do a lot of things. But then how do you predict out of all the chaos, how can you try to focus on some things that may become a real problem, which are not now? So that's really the exciting part is to be able to bring that as an additional tool kit for the customer in their arsenal to be ableto respond to threats much faster and better than they have in the past, >>right? It is a cloud based platform. You guys are sitting in the catbird seat for that. What about on the other side? The on the ed side, Another kind of new thing that's coming rapidly. Edges are are messy. They don't have nice, pristine data. Center your environments. There's connectivity, problems, power problems, all types of issues as you look at kind of edge and an I A. T more generally, you know, increasing the threat surface dramatically. How do you How do you kind of think about that? How do you approach it to make it not necessarily a problem, but really an opportunity for follows? >>I mean, that's Ah, that's a great question because there is no magic pill for that, right? It's like you just have to be able to leverage continuous telemetry collection and the collection to be able to see these devices CDs, patterns on. So that's works really well for us because that to be able to do that right in a global organization to almost every organization is global. Global organization has multiple infrastructure, multiple people in different locations, multiple offices. And, uh, if you look at the eye ot architecture, it is about sensors that are pushing down the one common platform which controls them and which updates them and all of that. That's the platform that Wallace's build since the beginning is multiple of these different sensors that are continuously collecting later, pushing it back into our platform. And that's the only way you can get the visibility across your global infrastructure. So in many ways, we are well suited to do that. And which is the big reason why we gave out of a global ideas and then 20 product for free for customers, because we truly believe that that's the first step for them to start to get secure. And because we have the architecture and the platform and become significantly easier for us to be able to give them that gave every day, which is truly wide and not just say I have visibly in my cloudy here. But then container visibly, somewhere there and I ot visibly somewhere else, we bring all of that together in one place. >>All right, Spencer, I know you've got Thio run off >>to your next commitment. We >>could we could keep going, but I think we have to leave it there again. Congrats on your promotion >>and thank you. All right. He submit. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cuba Think >>Wallace Security conference in Las Vegas. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Thanks.

>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering Food IT, Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin, with Jeff Frick, and we have just spent a really interesting educational day at the Fork to Farm event, Food IT. Jeff we've spoken with investors, ag-tech experts, folks in academia who are training the next generation of farmers, to Campbell Soup, who's been around since the late 1800s, are really focused on helping the agriculture and food industry combat the challenges of environmental sustainability, of climate change, of labor shortages, it's been a really, really intriguing day, where tech meets food and agriculture. >> Yeah and just a huge opportunity. One of the themes that kept coming up over and over again, is the average age of the farmers today. Heard 70 something, 60 something, whatever, they're getting old, so there's going to be a huge turnover in this industry, so both a challenge as well as an opportunity for the next generation of ag-people to make some of these changes, and change the way the industry works. The other thing that's really interesting that I found Lisa, is that there's really big social issues that are at play here. We talked about water, we talked about labor, that play into this whole thing, sustainability. And again, tying it back to their theme of its fork to farm, how much of that's now driven by the consumer and the industry, it's kind of a reaction to the consumer, which we see over and over and over in all the other shows that we go. The consumerization IT, driven by younger people's interactions with their phones, is setting an expectation of the way they want everything to work. And so, it sounds like the food industry is really at the cutting edge of this, still really early on, but as we saw in some of those market maps, and the innovation is rich, feels like we're really at the start of this thing. So even though this show has been around for a few years, they have the big show in Salinas next week, the Forbes show, that's still really early days of leveraging tech, innovation, to change the food industry. >> It is, and you brought up that the labor shortages, and that was echoed quite a bit today, for a number of reasons. One, the aging population of farmers as you mentioned. Two, also in California, the minimum wage going up, and that's not only going to be a problem Jeff for farmers, but it's actually now pervading into the retail space, where they're going to have to start depending on robotics to be able to create, or to reduce their cost, to provide even fast food. That was something that was quite interesting to me, I hadn't really quite thought about, from that channel perspective. >> Right, right. >> And then as you mentioned, on the tech enabled consumer side, I was talking with Jeff earlier, I kept thinking farm to fork, 'cause farm to table is so trendy now, right? There's a lot of apps. And you gave me this a-ha grasshopper look, and it was really because as consumers we've really demanded so much. We want transparency, we want to know exactly what's in things, and we want organic, and hormone-free, and we also want things delivered whenever, and wherever we want them. We think of the distribution model, has really become very decentralized, and a lot of that being driven by the consumer. On the farm side too, regarding the attrition, there's also a lot of antiquated, especially in the post-harvest supply chain, things that are still written down on paper, traceability is a huge challenge for them. And I think from some of the things we heard today, a lot of the farming, especially in California, they can't really quite see all the data that they have, but they are sitting on a lot of information, that not only could make their farms more efficient, but could also facilitate you think, even knowledge transfer to the next generation of farmers. Right, right. Yeah a lot of talk about kind of there wasn't a lot of data, now it's a data flood. So how do you use those data sources to be more intelligent in what you do? And I specifically asked some of the guests, you know, are kind of the classic big data players participating in this space, and she said, "Not really." They're all kind of holding off on the side waiting to get in. But these are big numbers, this is a big impact. The professor from St. Louis Episcopal talked about a billion dollars worth of strawberries that you got to get off the field, and if you don't have the labor to get it off, and the data to get the labor and to time it right, it's a billion dollars worth of strawberries, and these are big numbers. And the other thing that just fascinated me, is again, this power of the consumer. The Google guy who took basically what was a service just to feed employees and keep them around so they write more code, but using that as a platform to drive much more thoughtfulness and intelligence. And supply chain changes around food, and even called it food shot in reference to the moon shot. >> The moon shot, yes. >> Enabled better diets, shift diets, food transparency, reduced loss and waste, accelerate transformation to a circular food economy. So, and they said, I think he's been at it for 15 years or thereabout. So really an interesting kind of a twist, on what you would not expect from the food service people, you think of them just supplying food. >> Exactly. >> Not trying to drive cultural change. >> Exactly, and trying to scale, but they're using data from their own googlers, to help determine and evaluate what people are doing, what they want, preferences, making it more personal, and using data in that way to also then facilitate some of the upstream, you know from the supply perspective, making things, meeting those challenges that the consumers are demanding, but you said he's been at Google for five years, and when he first got the call being in hospitality for so long, he just thought, "Google, what do they want to talk to me for?" And how revolutionary they've been, and you can think of how much education can happen from Google Food alone. I was quite blown away by that. >> Yeah, the other kind of theme is unused resources. So, one of the food trucks that they had seaweed. Why seaweed? Because it takes no fresh water, it takes no fertilizer, and it's carbon negative. So not really about how does it taste, but some specific reasons to try to make seaweed a better food, a more satisfying food. Talked about kale, and really again what a great example of a, can't say it, Fork to Farm tradition, 'cause before kale was a throwaway, nobody grew kale, now suddenly everybody wants kale smoothies, and so there's nothing, plant became something of importance, driven by the consumer, not necessarily by the producers. So, very dynamic times. I think again, the trend we see over and over and over, finding the hollowing out of the middle. You know, you don't want to be just a generic provider in the middle, you better have massive scale, or you better be a real specialty provider. And then finally the ramifications of the Amazon purchase of Whole Foods, really validating, yes you want digital, yes you want data, yes you want to provide better customer service. But at the same time, you still need a physical presence, kind of validating the physical presence of the store like Whole Foods. So really a very dynamic activity going on in this space. >> And it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next five to 10 years, as farming generationally changes hands. And there is technology that's available today, right? We talked about big data, there's many, many sources of public data, whether it's satellite imagery, water data that can be utilized and then paired with private data that a farm has. Or using GPS devices on tractors and combines, robotics. You talked to the inventor of the Sally Salad machine, there's a lot of technology that might be, I don't know if I'd say ahead of its time, but I think from a farming perspective, there's a little bit of a gap there right now. So it'll be very interesting to see how farms evolve from a technology perspective. I love how the Forbes AgTech Summit, I think it's tomorrow and Thursday in Salinas Valley, what a great juxtaposition of Silicon Valley and a world hub of technology innovation, to Salinas, which is the salad bowl of the world. I think that is quite interesting, and some of the dynamics that they've seen, I think this was their fourth event tomorrow. >> Jeff: Fourth event, right, right. >> Really starting to get more farmers interested in understanding the potential that ag-tech can have on profitability, efficiencies, reducing waste, even things like discovering and preventing foodborne pathogens. >> Right, and robots, we need robots, we don't have enough labor. Michael Rose said there's going to be a shortage of hundreds of thousands of line cooks. Just regular, ordinary line cooks at restaurants, and that's really kind of one of the applications of the salad machine, because as you hit the button below that cook, you can hit the button to load that salad, while you run off and pull the rest of the entree meals together. So, again, it's really fun to see the consistent themes that we see over and over, that's computing cloud and data-driven decision making, applied to what's arguably one of the most important things going on, which is feeding us a lot of conversation about the world's population getting to 10 billion in the not too distant future, that have to be fed. And again, with the aging of the population, the traditional farmers, a real opportunity to do kind of a refresh with a bunch of people that have grown up with these things. So, really cool show, a great day, hope you had fun, I had fun. >> Oh, I had a great time, it was really educational. I think that you hit the nail on the head, there's a tremendous amount of opportunity. I think what the Mixing Bowl is doing, along with Better Foods, is really bringing the people that are creating food, and producing it together, and connecting them with the people that are creating technology. So, I think this is the tip of the iceberg head of lettuce, maybe? So, I am excited to see what happens over time, but not only was it a great event, but I'm now very hungry. >> Now you're very hungry, there's more food trucks outside. Alright Lisa, well thank you again for hosting. >> Thank you. >> Again, another great show. I think last time we were together was at the NAB. >> NAB. >> Talking about media entertainment, so the digitization, transformation continues, driven by all these huge macro-factors of cloud, big data, so the beat rolls on. >> It does. >> Alright, she's Lisa Martin, and I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCube. Thanks for watching, we've got a busy spring coming to an end. Had a little bit of a lull in the summer then we'll hit it hard again in the fall, so thanks for watching siliconangle.tv, youtube.com/siliconangle, and siliconangle.com for complete coverage of a lot of stories beyond just theCUBE. I'm Jeff Frick, signing off with Lisa Martin from Food IT, from Fork to Food, thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: From the computer history museum, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's The Cube. Covering food IT, Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back to The Cube. From the food IT event, From Fork to Farm, yep, you heard that right, Fork to Farm. I'm Lisa Martin. Really excited to be joined by my next guests who are influencing the food chain with Big Data, Cloud, IoT and Blockchain in some very, very interesting ways. We have Rob O'Reilly, senior member and technical staff of Analog Devices. Welcome. >> Thank you. >> And we have Raja Ramachandran, the founder and CEO of Ripe.io. Welcome. >> Thank you Lisa. >> So I made that joke about the Fork to Farm because we think so often how trendy it is, farm to table, farm to mouth. And this has been a really interesting event for us to talk with so many different people and companies across the food chain that we often, I think, take for granted. So Rob, wanted to kind of start with you. Analog Devices has been around for 50 years. You serve a lot of markets. So how is, and maybe kind of tell me sort of the genesis, and I know you were involved in this, of Analog Devices evolving to start using Cloud, Big Data, IoT in the food and agriculture space. What was the opportunity that you saw light bulb moment? >> Yup. It's an interesting story. We started with a piece of technology, a sensor that we can connect. I was looking of an app to apply, 'cause it was a full sensor to the Cloud strategy I was working on. And through some conference attendees that I had met and from a fellow who's now our partner, we kind of put together a strategy of "Well we've got the sensor to the Cloud, "where would we apply this?" And we decided though a little bit of banter, tomatoes. And most of it was because, in New England specifically, there's a lot of, there's 7,000 farms in Massachusetts. >> Lisa: Wow. >> Not all of them produce tomatoes, but a lot of them do. So it was like having a test bed right in our backyard. And from that point it's grown to what it is now. >> And I hear that you don't like tomatoes. >> I really don't like tomatoes. >> Lisa: What about heirloom tomatoes? >> I don't like any tomatoes. >> Lisa: Mozzarella, little basil, no? >> No, no. (laughs) I don't mind pasta sauce so much, but that's just because it's all salt. >> Lisa: That's true. >> And sugar. But no, and I've managed to get through this entire project without anybody forcing me to eat a tomato, so. >> That's good, they're respectful. >> I'm proud of that. >> So I was joking earlier, we cover a lot of events across enterprise innovation, and we were at a Hadoop Dataworks events a couple weeks ago and one of the guests was talking about Big Data and how it's influencing shipping, and how shipping companies are leveraging Big Data to determine how often they should clean the ships to remove barnacles 'cause it slows them down. So the funny thing that popped into my mind from that show is, barnacles and Big Data? Never thought that. Today, the wow factor for me, the internet of tomatoes. What is the internet of tomatoes? >> The problem statement when we started was "Why do tomatoes taste like cardboard?" >> Lisa: He really doesn't like tomatoes! (laughs) >> And, you know, in order to go dig into that was let's collect data. So there's a variety of methods that we use to collect the data. We had to create all of this on our own, so we created our own apps for the phones, our own matchups for the web, our own gateways. We built our hardware, we 3-D printed all the housings, and two of us just went off and started to deploy so we could collect data. The second half of it was, "well, what is in the tomato? "and why does it taste the way it does?" So we started doing some chemistry analysis. So a bunch of refractometers and other instruments so we can see what the sugar levels were, what the acid levels were. We infused ourselves into the Boston Tomato Contest, which they have annually. So we showed up, we looked like the Rolling Stones. We showed up with cases of, trap cases of equipment. It took us about 11 and a half hours to test 113, I think it was, tomatoes, and then we compared those to the chefs' scorecards. And in the chef's scorecard, there wasn't just a taste profile, there was the looks and everything else. Well I found a few markers between what the chef's profile said was a good tasting tomato and what the chemistry said. So a year later we showed up with our optical solution and we managed to test 450 tomatoes. >> Wow. >> About 100 of those go to the slicing table, so we had information on 100 of them and we did the same thing. So it got to the point to where we at least had that reconciliation of "what's the farmer doing "and how does it taste?" And by bringing Raja and his group in, we're bringing a lot more of other Big Data, if you will. Other weather data, aerial drone data, you know, anything we could find in a telematic range that would affect the processing or whatever of the tomato. So that in a nutshell is the internet of tomatoes. >> And is this something that, you know, being able to aggregate Big Data from a variety of sources, something that you're planning to then take to, I heard you earlier in the talk, talking about kind of at the relationship building stage. Is this a dialogue that you're having yet with farms? You mentioned 7,000 farms in Massachusets. What's that kind of conversation like? >> Well that's a very interesting dynamic and I think, you know, that data point for the industry is you better go talk to the farmer. It's really been interesting, the hesitation from a farmer to talk to a semiconductor company was odd. But I wasn't John Deer, I wasn't Monsanto, so they were a little more open. And they understand, a lot of these farmers that I'm dealing with now are generational, you know they're fifth, sixth generation. They really haven't made significant change on their farm in 100 years. >> Probably nor do they have a lot of data that's automated, right? There's probably a lot of things that are in Excel. >> And a lot of it is, I mean beyond their first level of contact, say with a seed or a pesticide manufacturer, They have no idea what's going on in the rest of the world. Unlike, you know, a lot of the big, large farms that we see. But at the smaller region, they're regional. And we've still have Hatfield-McCoy type things going on in New England, where families don't talk to each other, they don't share information. So through one of our work groups, we actually invited two of them, and I felt like match maker. We were trying to just get these two to talk. And they did, and they both realized that they were spending way too much money on fertilizer, and they were both over watering. So, it's still Hatfield and McCoys but at least I think they wink at each other every once in a while. >> Right, I love that you bought that up. That was something that was talked about a number of times today is the lack of collaboration maybe that's still in the sort of competitive stage. So Raja, talk to us about Ripe.io. First of all, I think the name is fantastic, but Blockchain and food. What's the synergy? And what opportunity did you see coming from the financial services industry? >> So, you know one of the key points about what we felt brings all this together is creating a web of trust. And so in financial markets, insurance markets, healthcare markets, you know big institutional regulated markets, there's a lot of regulations that really bind together that notion of trust, because you have a way in which you could effectively call out foul. Now, so there's a center of gravity in each of those industries, whether it's a central bank, you know or a state regulator insurance, so the government in healthcare. Here, there's not. It's disparate. It's completely fragmented, yet somehow magically we all get food everyday, ane we're not dead you know. So from that perspective we just marvel at the fact that you're there. So, bringing Blockchain was a way to basically talk to the farmer, talk to the distributor, talk to the buyer, the producer, and all these different constituents, including certifiers, USDA, whomever it might be. And then also even health to health companies, right, so that you can relate it. So the idea is to basically take all of these desperate sets of data, because they don't necessarily collaborate in full, capture it in the way that we're working with ADI so that you can create a real story about where that food came from, how is it curated, how did it get transported, what's in it, you know, do I get it on time, is it ripe, is it tasty and so on, right? And so we looked at Blockchain as a technology, an enabling technology that quickly captures the data, allows each to preserve its own security about it, and then combine it so that you can achieve real outcomes. So you can automate things like, were you sustainable? Were you of quality? Did you meet these taste factors? Was it certified? That's what excited us. We though, this is a perfect place because you've got to feed 9,000,000,000 people and no one trusts their food, you know? >> Lisa: Right. >> So we felt this would be an excellent opportunity to deploy Blockchain. >> And it's interesting that you know, the transparency is one of the things that we hear from the consumers, you know. We want all these things. We want hormone free, cage free, et cetera. We want organic, we want to make sure it is organic, but we also want that transparency. I'm curious since you are talking to the farmers, the distributors and the consumers, what were some of the different requirements coming from each, and how do you blend that to really have that visibility or that traceability from seed to consumption? >> And it's a good point right, because there's all these competing factors where farmers want certain information done, they don't want the price to go to zero because it's so commoditized. The distributor, not entirely sure if they want anybody to know what they do is if they deliver it, they've done their job. The aggregator, a grocery store, a restaurant or whomever, are really feeling the pinch of demographic changes. Not only in America, but globally, you know about this notion that "I need to know more about my food". Millennials are doing it, look at Amazon and Whole Foods. >> Lisa: Yup. >> That is a tipping point of like where this is all going to go. So for us, what Blockchain does allows for each of those drivers to remain clean. And so in essence, what you can do is you take something called smart contracts, not a great word but basically these are codes in which you've got a checklist or if-then statements that you can say, "What does the farmer want?" "What is the distributor doing to get something there?" And of course the buyer. And so in that sense, we've talked a lot about a scorecard or this notion that you can basically highlight and show all of these different values, so that if the consumer is looking for, you know, I definitely want this in my lettuce, in my beets, in whatever it is, and I need to make this type of salad, how acidic should my tomatoes be? Well that's hard to count, like combine all that information. Since we're capturing that data set and validating it to make sure that they're true, then you actually enable that trust for that consumer. So the consumer may want a lot of information, the issue is will they pay for it? There's some evidence that they will. The second part is, you know, does the grocer have the ability to manage wide varietals in their shelf space, and so on. All the techniques that a grocer would go through, yet they want a clean supply chain. >> Lisa: Right. >> So you know, so like what're we're saying is that this is definitely not easy. And so we're taking it where the influencer of the entire chain is able to help drive it, in the meanwhile we're trying to help create a farmer community that creates a level of trust. Bind those together, we believe Blockchain and a lot of the technology that ADI is deploying helps achieve that. >> And it sounds like from a technology perspective, you're leveraging Blockchain, Big Data, aggregating that to help farmers, even consumers, grocers, retailers, become more data-driven businesses. >> Oh absolutely. I mean in one instance we've got, you know a customer that they're learning how Blockchain can be used to open up their markets and improve their existing customer service. So what they have are like data sets, you know Rob would definitely understand this, but basically you have data set on like what's best for apples, pears, avocados to ripen, you know. Now, they know it in their heads, right? But the issue is, they don't know when there's conditions that change. The grocery store says I want Braeburn apples to be 20% more crisper, well they actually have the answer but they don't know how to tie all that together. >> Lisa: Right. >> So this data-driven capability exposes automation, so that you can fulfill on that. Create new markets, 'cause if your growers don't have it you can go find it from elsewhere. And for the consumer, you're going to deliver that component on time. And so in that sense, you know these things are revealed as ways to, not only like lower cost you know, because in the end Blockchain has this sort of notion that it lowers costs. Like any technology, if you insert it, it typically adds costs. And I'm not saying that our Blockchain does, but the greater value is branding, preserving it, you know. A better economic consequence about it, a better customer satisfaction because I now have knowledge in transparency. >> Lisa: Right. >> So you can't value these things right, because I'm a millennial like all of a sudden I got all my information, well how did you value it? I just paid $60 at Whole Foods, or is it something else? >> Lisa: Right. >> So we think that there's whole new economic revitalization about the entire farming system and the food nag system, because if you show the transparency, you've got something. >> That's so interesting. Last question, and we're almost out of time, Rob you mentioned a lot of small farms in Massachusets. Where are those small farms in terms of readiness to look at technologies and the influence of Big Data? Is it still fairly early in those discussions, or is your market more the larger farms that ... >> I said it earlier, we're at the beginning of the beginning. I was actually shocked, excuse me, when I went out and started talking to them. I was under some assumption that a lot of this was already going on. And it turns out it's not, certainly at that level. So we were like new to these guys, and the fact that we had a technology that would help them was unique to them. The issue was, well how do you communicate with them? How would you sell that? What's the distribution channel? So through a lot of the workshops that we do with the farmers we ask the question, "If their is new technology and you want to go get it, "what do you do?" They google it. I said, "Okay, that's probably not the answer "I was looking for." (laughs) But no, the supporting infrastructure, the rest of the ecosystem they need to take advantage just isn't there yet. So a lot of that I think is slow for the adoption, but it's also kind of helped us because we're working on technologies. You know, timing is everything. So the fact that we've had time to catch up to what we thought was really needed, and then learned more from the farmer, well no, no this is really what they want. So we've been able to iterate. You know, we're a very small team. We've been able to fail miserably many, many times. But the good news is, when we're successful that's all people see. And the farmers are starting to see that, that hey, we're getting actionable data. You're telling me things that I kind of knew, 'cause they fly by the seat of their pants a lot. >> They want it validated, verified. >> Oh yeah, they're very frugal. >> Trustworthy, as you said Raja. >> There's a big push back to spend any money on anything at a farm. That's just the way it is, it's not anything unique. So when you show up now with some technology that could help them, they just want to make sure that you're spot on, you can predict what it is, and when they hand me the money they can start planning on the return on their investment. >> Well gentlemen, we want to thank you so much for sharing your insights, Blockchain of food, what ADI is doing in their 50th year. Sounds like the beginning is very exciting and we wish you the best of luck. I'm not going to hold my breath that you're going to like tomatoes but, you know. (laughs) We wish you the best of luck and enjoy the rest of today. We want to thank you for watching The Cube at the Food IT event, From Fork to Farm. I'm Lisa Martin, thanks for watching. (upbeat pop music)

>> Narrator: From the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley it's the Cube, covering Food IT: Fork to Farm brought to you by Western digital. >> Hi welcome back to the Cube. We are at the fourth annual Food IT: Fork to Farm event at the Computer History Museum. I'm Lisa Martin with my cohost Jeff Frick Very excited to to welcome our next guest, Paul Noglows, who is the executive producer of the Forbes AgTech Summit. Paul, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you >> So we're in the heart of Silicon Valley right now, but you are the creator of the Forbes AgTech Summit, which happens tomorrow, June 28th and 29th in Salinas, the salad bowl of America. Talk to us about this event that you've created. What was the genesis of this, and why Salinas? >> We were doing a series at Forbes in 2014 called reinventing America, and we were going around cities mostly in the midwest, but we were mostly looking at industries that were really reinventing themselves and remaking themselves, so we focused on advanced manufacturing in Chicago, we focused on healthcare in Indianapolis, then we went up to Detroit and we focused on reinventing the workforce. So we did a series of five shows over 15 months. And the last one, we thought we were going to reinvent the farm, and we thought we were going to do it somewhere in the Midwest. But we got a proposal from the city of Salinas and they said, why don't you come out and see what we got here, and it's the salad bowl of the world, and I knew Monterey pretty well from having lived out here, and we used to take our kids down to the Monterey Aquarium, but I never really knew Salinas or the Salinas valley. So I got a tour from the former mayor, Dennis Donohue, and it was just we were blown away by how much was going on, and really, it's become the epicenter of AgTech innovation. We're just thrilled at Forbes that we were able to be part of that and to support it. And the summit has grown dramatically over the three years, and so we're really looking forward to a terrific show. >> Tell us about the growth that you've achieved in this summit. The opportunities, the types of people that are there, and what they are going to be able to see and discuss. >> Yeah, We started out with about 400 participants in the summer of 2015, we had 20 startups, but it's really mushroomed from there. This year, we're have 650 participants, we'll have 50 companies in the innovation showcase, we've expanded the field demos and the plant tours to a full day. About a good third of our audience are farmers, and that's really been the secret sauce for us. Is that we've priced the summit right. There's a lot of summits out there, and people are starting to get big numbers for an afternoon at the Marriot Marquee. Ours is really different, we've kept the rate low enough so that farmers can participate, and we love to have everyone outside. We do it all under giant white tent right out in front of the Taylor building on main street in Salinas, and we also have people out at the local processing plants and the local fields. We go out to Hartnell's Alisal campus and we use the USDA test field. >> Its interesting because Salinas has been at the forefront of Ag Innovation a long time ago. It was one of the first refrigerated rail cars to try to get fresh lettuce for salad to Chicago. I remember reading about that numerous times, and the first couple didn't work that well. >> Well it's really amazing. It's been such a privilege to deal with folks Bruce Taylor. It was Bruce's father and grandfather who really were the pioneers of iceburg lettuce. The more you get into it, you know, I've gotten really passionate about it and the history and everything else. You see the continuation today, and with the developments. And, even if it's a Taylor farm putting a startup's robotics, putting them in their processing plants. This is really the cutting edge of AgTech innovation. >> So I'm curious, we cover a lot of big tech events, usually more on the infrastructure side, this is really on the application side. So as you look at cloud, and edge computing, and big data, and mobile, and some of these big trends. What if you can just highlight some of the ones that really jump out to you that have enabled some of these innovations, autonomous vehicles obviously drones, we're seeing so much of it, but now they're putting it to work. >> Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, there's so much going on. We look in field robotics, we look at precision automation, precision agriculture, and the use of big data, and the ability to harness that and to really apply it, it's changed a lot of things. It's changed the way we can grow. It's also changing consumer's tastes in what consumers want. And that's a lot of what we're talking about here today. So it really has been revolutionary. I think we need the industry, we need to industry to really agriculture itself to get really get together. I think sometimes there still this is looked at as competitive advantage, so what I, we, find interesting is are we going to move beyond competitive advantage and what's good for your plant or your farm. Is there going a collective effort to really start applying this across the agricultural system. >> What are the interesting things that they talked about this morning in the general session was and the theme of the event. We're so used to farm to table, farm to fork, and I looked at that and fork to farm? The consumer is so empowered, very demanding. Right, we want cage free, we want organic, we want hormone free, we want, we've changed the distribution model. How are, but also there's this paradox of the consumer not wanting factory farms. How are farmers, you said quite a bit of the attendees are farmers, how are they embracing this consumer demand with technologies like big data, cloud computing, block chain? >> Well I think it's really the key. It's that you have different farmers and different processors. There's a wide spectrum in terms of adoption and in terms of innovation. But they are putting it to work, and that's why there's so much interest in the startups, and there's so much interest in how can we do this more efficiently, how can we do this better. I think it used to be that you basically needed to have a crisis, like the ecoli crisis, for things to really change in the industry. But hopefully, we've moved beyond that. In that it's not going to take a crisis for folks to really start embracing these new technologies. >> So then in the other trend that has come up in a number of times in doing some background in this show is that there's not only kind of the very organic, cage free specialty demands in the customer. On the other hand, the population is growing, and we got to feed 10 billion people, I think number is projected by 2050. There's no new dirt being created last time I checked, except in Hawaii. How are the farmers embracing that challenge specifically cause, it's kind of this bipolar thing, one you want to increase specialization, on the other hand you got to get yields way way up at massive scale. >> Well, and that's it, and it's really looking at how do you increase yield. This is a lot of the interest. This is a lot of the interest in genetics and everything else and looking at the real science of growing. But it's also interesting in this is a little bit more further afield, but I was talking to Bruce Taylor even about kale. You know 10 years ago kale was considered a throwaway crop. >> Right >> Paul: It wasn't even harvested. And now you look at the impact kale is having on the American diet and you know you have a crop that represented really nothing probably as recently as five years ago. >> Jeff: Right >> Now it's an important crop. So there's all sorts of innovation, all sorts of different ways of looking at things, but I do think for the most part that's the reason we have those things. We've always been adamant that we don't want to get people together to talk about 2050, we're not futurist. We're looking at near term solutions to current problems. So what we're really interested in, you know, what is the farm of 2020 look, not the farm of 2050. >> Jeff: Right, right >> As we look at California that's just come out of this severe drought, the event being hosted in the salad bowl of the, really, the world, what are some of the challenges that are really common across farms, across the heartland of America? Water, planting inefficiencies, harvesting or supply chains, are you seeing a lot of commonalities? >> There are a lot of commonalities. I think there's a mistake. We actually have a conversation tomorrow. I kind of feel like the assumption is all the water problems are over, and the water problems are not over. They maybe over for a short period of time, but I am fully convinced that this is going to be. Two years ago this was the topic du jour at our conference. I'd say this year probably the major topic is labor. And labor, you see, having tremendous impact. You have, across the country. And so, you have the issues of immigration, you've got issues of minimum wage, that certain farms are saying we don't know how we are going to do this. >> Lisa: Right >> We don't know how to make this work. But the major pressures, things like that water, labor, those haven't gone away, and those haven't been solved. But that's why we're all getting together. That's why we're here today, and that's why we're going to be down in Salinas Wednesday and Thursday. >> And on the labor front, it's that you've talked about the Californian minimum wage is going up quite considerably. But it's also things like an aging farming population, and there's, you can see the value there from a big data perspective to be able to capture, to facilitate some automation and drive the next generation of >> Paul: Well >> Lisa: the farmers. >> And one of the ways we're going to close our conference on Thursday afternoon is I'm going to moderate a discussion on farmers of the future. Because we've all heard it, we've all heard it time and time again. The average of the American farmer, I think it's pushing 70 years old, and there's no succession planning and that no body gets into this business unless they're basically born into it or forced into it in some way, and what we're finding is that it's not really true. We're putting up four young farmers, who are really making a difference, and who are applying innovation to be able to build their farms. And so, we think that it's actually more hopeful, and more interesting than may at first blush. So yeah, we do think there is a future for farming, and we're determined to explore it to its fullest. >> That's fantastic. Aught to be a fly on the wall on that conversation. Well Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the Cube, and we wish you the best of luck in your third annual Forbes AgTech Summit in the salad bowl. If you haven't been to Salinas, as Paul said, it's worth a drive down there, it's incredible. Roll down the window, take a nice breath in, and it's a beautiful place. And again, we wish you the best of luck at that summit, and we look forward to hearing about some of the great things that come out of that. >> Paul: Thank you >> And we want to thank you at the Cube at the Food IT: Fork to Farm event, I'm Lisa Martin with my cohost Jeff Frick. Stick around, we're going to be right back.

>> Announcer: From the Computer History Museum, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Covering Food IT: Fork to Farm, brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey welcome back everybody Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Food IT show at the Computer History Museum here in Mountain View, California. Really an amazing show, 350 people, all kind of pieces of the spectrum from academia to technology, to start-ups to Yamaha. Who thought Yamaha was into food tech, I didn't think that. To start-ups and we're really excited to have two of the partners form the Mixing Bowl and the Better Food Ventures, Brita Rosenheim and Seana Day welcome. >> Thank you. >> Thanks Jeff. >> So first off, congratulations on the event, what are your impressions? you guys been doing this for a couple years now I think. Bigger, badder, better? >> No I think this is great. We've has a fantastic turn out and the content's always very interesting and the interaction between the audience and the speakers is fantastic. >> Yeah, we just finished up a panel, IoT, Internet of Tomatoes, so there's always some great conversations really going. >> I think we're talking about that later this afternoon. >> Oh fantastic. >> It is interesting right, because all the big megatrends of cloud and we cover these in tech infrastructure all the time and big data and sensors and IoT and drones and these things. Really, all being brought to bare in agriculture from everything from producing the food to eating the food to the scraps that we don't eat I guess. >> No, you're spot on, some of the big macro challenges are what's driving a lot of the innovation. As you said food scraps, but waste is a major challenge. Labor, certainly here in California is something that we've seen a lot of innovation around solving some of those labor pain points. Certainly sort of environmental sustainability and resource management, you know, how are we using water, how are we using our inputs. Those are a lot of big themes that are driving interest in this sector and driving investment. >> Right so you guys are talking about some of the investments, like you guys put on a show, but you also have an investment arm, so you're looking for new technologies that play in this space correct? >> Yeah, Better Food Ventures makes early stage, seed investments so really kind of, not ideation stage, but pretty close after that. So working with entrepreneurs and really helping them, nurture them, and grow into hopefully successful companies. We've made 12 investments so far, I think seven of them have stepped up to priced equity so. >> Excellent, and you guys have brought this architecture landscape of the innovation. We won't share this on camera because it's way too many names for you to see, but obviously you can go online. >> Seana: It's available for download on our website MixingBowlHub.com. >> It's fascinating, there are literally what, a dozen categories and many firms within each category per side, so I wonder if you can give us a little bit more color on this landscape. I had no idea, the level of innovation that's happening in the food tech space, you just don't think about it probably if you're not in the industry. >> I'll let Seana kick off, between Seana and I, we cover Fork to Farm, so Seana covers from the farm, all the way through distribution and the area that I focus on, distribution all the way to consumer consumption. So we have a nice harmony there. We'll start at the beginning with Seana. >> Looking at over 3,000 companies. >> Jeff: 3,000? >> 3,000 between the two of our sort of database's. My coverage area is really infield technologies, hardware, software, applications. So anything from sensors, drones, soil moisture, weather, crop management, farm management software, all the way through as Brita said, distribution. So looking at supply chain management, logistics, trading platforms, collaboration platforms, so there's a lot going on. Every time, I roll out one of these technology landscapes. I'm always adding categories, which is sort of representative of the way that the market is evolving. I think that there is a lot of interesting stuff happening now in the post-harvest part of this market that more investors are starting to pay attention to. We've heard of that more today's even as well. Technologies that are focused on minimizing waste in the supply chain, making things more efficient helping shorten that supply chain so that we've got fresher food. More local options for consumers. >> I've been tracking the space for the last six or seven years, and to echo Seana's point on every time you put a new map out, you know we're thinking about different categories I mean every single year you've looked at it, the ecosystem has changed so much in terms of even how you categorize or even think of the different innovations that are shaping the space. I focus on, the way I look at my map is from in-home media consumption, discovery, so media, marketing, advertising, all the way through eCommerce, so both the B2B and B2C eCommerce platforms, all the way through restaurant and retail. So grocery, delivery, hyper-local marketing and the like. >> So can you explain the crazy success of these little, event handling, short food videos that are just taking the internet by storm? It's fascinating right? >> Yeah, BuzzFeed's tasty. >> Media consumption is really something to see. >> Yeah, I think BuzzFeed really took the traditional food media category by surprise. They really created the new, literally, video content for consumption that is extremely addicting, short, it makes everything seem approachable. It's kind of the bite-size version of the Food Network and I find myself. >> Off the chart right? >> You can't stop. Whether I'll make it or not you know, like the twirling potato and. (Brita chuckling) >> So the other, the sub-theme for this years conference is Fork to Farm and I'm just curious right. Because we've seen consumerization of IT impact all the different industries that we cover. It is really the end user at the end point that's driving the innovation back upstream. I wonder if you could speak to kind of the acceleration of that trend over time. Or is it relatively recent or you know there's some specific catalyst that you've seen as you've studied the market that has really driven an acceleration of that? >> Seana: Do you want to start with consumer and then we'll get back into the grower side of that? >> Yeah, I mean, I think you've seen kind of the long evolution since my web grocer cosmos of 10, 15 years ago and you know, people thinking, I'm never going to buy food online really don't have that trust level and you know kind of eCommerce in general, mobile technology in general has changed the consumers expectation and purchase and consumption patterns, period, for all other goods, so we've gotten to a point where there is a level of trust of if something is going to come to you in the mail there's just an expected level of trust or you can send it back. So that's kind of lent itself to this food category. I think in one way, that's been an overall industry shift in terms of the changing expectations of the consumer. You want to push a button, you've got your shoes, your lipstick you know your dog toys at the push of a button, why not your food. So the problem with that is food is very different it's has to be hot or cold, you have the cold chain speed, the manual labor involved. Just kind of the cost infrastructure is totally different than sending a box of lipstick and makeup to a consumer so I think you've seen a tremendous amount of funding in this on-demand delivery category a ton of different Uber for this, Uber for that, around the food space. Meal kits, but I think the reality of running those businesses have proven to be very difficult in terms of making the costs work out in terms of a business model so. >> Don't they all know why Van failed? They all probably too young to miss the Webvan and AT&T. >> Yeah, that being said, there's some opportunity there it's just about getting to the right scale. So obviously Amazon just bought Whole Foods last week I think there is room for a brick and mortar approach here but there, I think on-demand delivery's not going away in the food category, so who can actually deliver that because the consumer's not going to say, oh the business model doesn't make sense, I don't want this anymore. They just don't want to pay for it. Somebody has to figure out a way to. >> Oh that other pesky little detail About. And Seana it used to be if we make it they will eat right? I guess that doesn't hold true anymore. >> Well, you know it's a different adoption dynamic in the grower part of the technology adoption curve the consumers tend to pick things up more quickly than the traditional Ag player, Ag stake holder, the growers have been a little bit more tentative in terms of trying to figure out what kinds of technologies actually work. They're all of a sudden confronted with this idea of data overload. All of a sudden, you go from having no data to more data than you know what to do with. That's driving some of these adoption dynamics. People really trying to figure out what works, what business models are sustainable in agriculture and I know unsustainable from a resource standpoint. But just, will that business be around in six to nine to 12 months to support the technology that's in the field. So it's been a little slower I would say, on the production agriculture and grower side in terms of that uptake, but you know the other challenge that I think we face in terms of those models is really the flow of data. The flow of information is still very silo'd and in order to get the kind of decision support tools and the supply chain efficiencies that we're looking for in the food system, we really need to figure out how to integrate those data sources better. What's coming out of the field, what's happening in the mid-stream processing, and then what's happening on the supply chain and logistics side before you get to that consumer who's demanding it. But there's a lot of stages of information that need to harmonize before we can really have a more optimized system. >> Right, and are you seeing within the data side specifically some of the traditional players, like Tableau and clearly there's been a lot of activity in big data for awhile we've been going to Hadoop Summit and Hadoop World for ever and ever, are those people building Ag specific solutions or are there new players that really see the specific opportunity and better position to build you know the analytics to enable the use of that data? >> I think the big IT incumbents are looking at this very, very carefully. But there's are a lot of nuances to agriculture that are different from some of the other vertical industries and there's been a lot of observing from the sidelines down there, less from the deployment of actual technologies. Until people really understand how this market is starting to shake out. I think IBM and some of those big tech players are definitely on the fringes here, but I think again, we've got this challenge of how do you actually deliver value to growers. So, you've got all this data and you can crunch all this data how do you present that in a way that a grower can make a better decision about their operation. And oh, by the way, does the grower trust that data. That sort of is the challenge that I think we're still in the early innings in terms of of how that. It will come, but we're still in the early innings. >> Which is always the case right, to go from kind of an intuition, we've always done it this way, you know, like three generations of grandfathers that have worked this land too, you know here's the data, you can micro-optimize for this, that and the other and really take a different approach. >> I's say one of the challenges both on the Ag side, but also even on the food side, that there's a lot of start-ups that you meet with that are all about big data, big data, but big data really needs to be big data. So the incumbents are really the only ones that are in the position to crunch that amount of data. You can't actually get the insights when you don't have scale so there's a tremendous amount of companies that have a really interesting, innovative, approach to collecting data, to how you can use it and all they need is scale. That's virtually impossible unless they're acquired by or have a partnership with, which isn't going to happen a larger incumbent so big data, you really need a tremendous amount of data points to actually get to something that's useful. >> Alright, well, Seana and Brita thanks for taking a few min utes again, where can people go to get the pretty download it's a lot of data on this thing. >> It's MixingBowlHub.com so that's available both the AdTech landscape and the Food Tech landscape. >> Alright great, well again thanks, for inviting us to the show, really great show and congrats to you both for pulling it off. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks very much. >> Alright, Brita, Seana, I'm Jeff you're watching theCUBE we're at FoodIT in the Computer Science Museum in Mountain View, California. We'll be back after the short break. Thanks for watching.

>> Intro Man: From the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering Food IT: Fork to Farm, brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin here at the FOOD IT: Fork to Farm event at the Computer History Museum talking with amazing guests, from farmers to technologists, helping to increase the sustainability and the food chain. Next, we are joined by Michiel Bakker, the Director of Google Food. Michiel, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. It's great to be here. >> Well, so we're in Google's backyard here at the Computer History Museum, and I've always heard of Google Food as fantastic. You're going to hear it here first, Michiel did invite me, I have his card. I've never been able to eat at one of the restaurants, but now I have it on film. >> Michiel: Check! (Lisa Laughs) >> So, but tell me about ... You come from a hospitality background. Google Food, what was your segue into hospitality to being the Director of Food for Google? >> So, I worked for many many great years for Starwood Hotels and Resorts. For fifteen years over in the U.S. and my last two years with them, I was responsible for Food and Beverage operation in Europe, Middle East and Africa. So ... amazing times in Europe. At the time we were building out our hotel portfolio in the Middle East, and while I was there I got this call from that company out of Mountain View, Google, and said, "Would you be interested in having a conversation "with us about our food program?" That peaked my interest. I had never heard of their food program and how they were thinking and running food, so that led to a very fascinating interview journey, and, a year after the initial call, I started over here March of 2012, and I have loved every minute of it since. >> Well, your passion I was telling you I've seen some videos of you online, and your passion for it is really clear. What was it that Google was looking for you to help facilitate five years ago? >> So, prior to my arrival, we had three great regional teams that were responsible for everything that they were doing with food in their respective regions. My bosses at the time were very aware of how we would continue to grow, and they were aware of both the challenges and the opportunities of growing our program with the same rate of the growth of Google. So they were looking for an individual who could bring structure as well as capability options for our program. So, my role was, in the beginning, to really think through "How can you get Google Food ready "for ongoing growth for a great number of years?" >> So, one of the things that's interesting about this event, and I kept thinking I was misreading the title "Fork to Farm," and we're so used to, in the trend of Farm to Table and Fork to Farm, the consumer, the tech-savvy consumer, being very influential, organic, cage-free, hormone-free. Of course, you're now at the hub of technology. Everyone in the world knows Google. Everyone's got a million devices. Talk to us about how you're using technology at Google to improve the relationships with suppliers, the type of supply of food that you get. >> Yeah. So, it starts really with the user. So, we believe that our role is to enable individuals to make personal, informed food choices. So, personalization truly has to do with how we live and work these days. It's about me. I want it now. I want it whenever I want it and whatever I want, and I think that technology can play a great role in that. So, we've developed, internally, an app that will help, actually, users to find whatever they are looking for. So that will be one. But, if you then go further back into the food chain, then you get the question, "Is there data, "technology or platforms out there that might help us "with what do we call that food transparency "or food insight." Where we can really think through: "How might we help a consumer "to determine where food is coming from?" "What is in my food?" "What are the nutrients?" and I think, just as importantly, we don't speak about this much: "Where does my food waste go to?," because we're very focused on what I get but less interested today where it is actually going to. So we're thinking through: "What can we develop internally?" "What is already available "in the broader Google or Alphabet portfolio?" If you think about Google Search, if you think about Youtube, there are a lot of platforms or tools out there that can help individuals to make those informed food choices. And then, I think, what is harder, if you go further up the food chain, in really determining how can you trace a product from the farm or from the boat all the way back up to the consumer, and I think that is a journey that many partners, many stakeholders in the food system continue to work on. >> That's a big challenge because there's a tremendous amount of money that can be lost. I was reading that California supplies 90% of the world's almonds, and in the last three years there's been over 35 truckloads of almonds that have disappeared. >> Michiel: Yeah. >> And the trace-ability being a massive challenge, and that's tantamount to 10 million dollars. But you touched on something really interesting, and that's the personalization. We want it with everything, right? We are so tech-enabled and tech-savvy and ... we want it. You mentioned transparency. That's essential. So, talk to us about what is it that you're learning from, so I presume it's an app that Googlers have access to. How are you using that big data and analytics to influence the next generation of Google Food? >> So we'll think to the beginning of that. So, with the Eat app, that's the app we have internally, you have a profile as well, and you can set up your profile in such a way about the foods you like and the foods you like to avoid. So, you can apply the filters. So, what we now get the more people within our organization that would use the app the better insight we're going to get off. What ultimately, what percentage, is vegetarian, or what percentage is actually vegan or flexitarian? So, we get a better insight of where do you have what percentage of your population sit, so you can ultimately develop offerings that resonate with your population. >> And, so, you also talked about food waste. I was reading a McKinsey & Company report that reports that about one third of all food produced in the world is lost or wasted, which accounts for about 940 billion dollars world wide. And we kind of think, oh, we get a little, me, overzealous at the grocery store. We have these plans. So, how are you using the data that you're gathering from your Eat app to reduce food waste across Google? >> We don't really use that app for that yet, but we're working with the great company called LeanPath. So, LeanPath is a technology platform company that enables you to track food waste in a kitchen environment. So, every time when a chef throws something out, we wait, we take a picture of it, and we tag it, and as a result of having done that now for a couple of years, we have a very large global database with these food waste moments, and then what you can do in an individual kitchen you can analyze of actually what is driving food waste in your kitchen. And I think what we've learned, Two things happened: so the first one is, because you're paying attention to food waste, you get the Hawthorne Effect. People pay more attention to it, and, as a result of that, you will reduce food waste with that, but, secondly, you have ultimately learned of what is driving food waste in a specific kitchen. And then, I think, with that we've learned, as well, that it becomes complex. For example, we really would like our users, the rest of the world, to eat more vegetables and more fruit. So, we've learned that in our kitchens a big part of our food waste is driven by vegetables. So, now you get these two interesting conflicts, because you can say that on the one hand, if I want to reduce food waste, I should actually be scrappier with the vegetables, but, at the same time, we would like our users to eat more vegetables, so, ultimately, what is more important? And I think with that we've learned it's about the value of the product and then to think through we're probably better off focusing on reducing the waste of meat, versus ultimately reducing the waste of a carrot. The environmental impact of meat is significantly larger and, therefore, you need to, ultimately, focus your efforts on where can you make the biggest impact within the available capacity that you have. >> Now, have you, this is so interesting. Have you gone on, like, the speaking circuit to educate other, not just tech companies or businesses that want to scale, but there could be so much from the learning that you've done with big data and analytics to educate other businesses, even down to the farms. Is that something that's part of your ... >> So, our team and I would actually attend, will attend, various conferences around the world, but I think we're very focused on learning more and making a bigger impact and then sharing at the right opportune moment, because you can spend your whole life chatting about what you have done or are thinking of doing. Ultimately, we're an organization that is feeding a lot of individuals on a daily basis in a very responsible way, and we're going to learn more. We're only at the beginning of figuring out where we can make a bigger impact. >> And ... How have you been able to facilitate this scale? You were mentioning, before we went live, when you started, five years ago, the number of people you fed then that you feed now. How has cloud computing, big data, analytics, machine learning helped drive that scale that Google wanted to see? >> So, I think we are very focused on collaboration. So, it's actually finding partners who are either just as excited about the opportunities, are better at what you do, and are willing to do stuff together. Because, I think, by working more with others, you increased your overall reach, you'll learn more together, and, therefore, you become better at what you do. So, I think an interesting opportunity for us is we're feeding a wide variety of teams at Google and Alphabet on a daily basis, and they are engaged with food. So, sometimes you find a team or an individual that might not necessarily be as focused on food, but they're looking actually in an real world challenge that they can use for their emerging technologies. So, you can find different starting points to ultimately bring people together to address a common challenge. Food waste is an interesting one. So, we now have the database, and now the question is; how might you deploy machine learning to learn stuff you've never thought about? We're at the beginning of that, so, we have a long way to go. >> Beside food waste, what's, maybe, kind of the next thing on your horizon for the rest of 2017 to influence? >> How can you move your population to move to more balanced, planned, forward diet but do it in such a way where people actually are willingly and excitingly joining you on the journey, versus it getting stuck in the conversation as you're telling me what I cannot do, or you're taking something away from me. So, it really becomes: how can you make the alternative, which might be a cuisine type, or a concept where meat is not necessarily the center of the plate, just as exciting, or if not more exciting, than what we're doing as of today. >> Wow, so interesting. Well, I'm looking forward to my lunch with you at one of the Google restaurants. Michiel, thank you so much for joining us here and sharing what you're doing at Google. >> It's been a pleasure. >> And we want to thank you for watching as well. Again, Lisa Martin live at the FOOD IT: Fork to Farm event in Silicon Valley. Stick around. We'll be right back. [futuristic music]

(Exciting Techno Music) >> Live from the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE covering food IT: Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE. We are live at the fourth annual food IT Fork to Farm Event. I am Lisa Martin with my Co-Host Jeff Frick. Jeff, this is a really interesting event. The first time we've been here with The Cube, and one of the first things I said to you this morning was "Fork to Farm - we always kind of think of it as "farm to fork, right, farm to table." But it's really interesting mix of investors here, people that are very educated in food and agriculture and one of the things they're focused on is connecting people who are feeding the world, billions and billions of people, with the people who are changing the world through technologies. And nowadays we're all this tech enabled food consumer which has really flipped farm to fork from fork to farm which I found really interesting. >> It's pretty interesting, our first kickoff call with Michael Rose from The Mixing Bowl and we were talking about the Conference. I'm like, "Michael didn't you get that mixed up? "Isn't it supposed to be Farm to Fork?" But as you said it's really now the tech enabled consumer and what they want to eat, like everything else, is being so consumer driven that we see in our other shows is driving now what the food producers have to create. And what's interesting is they don't necessarily think of all the ramifications of those decisions upstream and downstream. And so that's a big topic of the theme here. The other thing that struck me is some of the sponsors: Yamaha is here >> Yes. >> And one of the main sponsors. Google is here as one of the main sponsors. And we just had one of the opening keynotes from one of the guys from Google talking about how they've taken really just the task of feeding the employees to a much greater responsibility in both what people eat, how it gets produced, and really more sustainable longterm food kind of as a circle he called it. So it's pretty interesting, I'm excited. We've got Deans from a lot of big schools, we've got, of course, like I said, Yamaha. I'm really curious to find out what they're doing in this space. And it's fun to get, you know, out of the tech infrastructure space to see what's really happening on the front lines. I really want to get into edge computing, I really want to get into cloud, data, you know, all of the themes that we follow over and over and over again, but now a real specific application. And doing some of the research, you know, we have to feed 10 billion people in just a couple years and we're not growing any more land. So how are those challenges being addressed with technology? How are cloud, mobile, data helping solve those problems? And then how are the consumer driven prioritization impacting all of this? So it should be a great day. >> Absolutely, like you said, a great spectrum of guests on the show today. And we think of food and agriculture as one of the largest industries globally and as you said, there's a daunting responsibility feeding billions of people in a very short period of time. Having to deal with environmental sustainability, we're going to be talking about that on the program today, climate change, and also the consumer. But there's tremendous potential for big data and IOT and analytics to improve farming efficiencies from planting to weeding to fertilizing to the post-harvest supply chain logistics, traceability. There's, you know, opportunities for GPS sensors on tractors and columbines, as well as robotics and automation. We're going to be talking to a guy, the CEO Chell Botics, who invented Sally, a robot that makes salads. So there's a tremendous amount of opportunity and I'm really curious to see how these, from the University Folks, the Deans, to the investors, how Venture Capital is really seeing big data as revolutionary, the potential to be revolutionary, for the entire food supply, the food chain. >> Right, right. And another topic that's come up is really transparency and enabling consumers to see kind of where their food comes from, how it was raised, but as come up again in one of the earlier Keynotes, there's no perfect solution, right? There's always trade offs. So how are people creating values, making trade offs based on those values, and how are the food producers now being able to deliver to those values? So it should be, like I said, a fantastic day. We're going to go wall to wall. We'll be here till 5 o'clock today, full slate of guests, a lot of two guests, so we're going to pack them in. And it should be fantastic. >> Absolutely, I'm excited. >> Alright. >> A lot of great topics. >> So she's Lisa Martin, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from Food IT: from Fork to Farm. We'll be right back with our first guest after this short break. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering Food IT: Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hi, welcome back, I'm Lisa Martin with theCUBE, we are at the Farm IT event. This is an incredible opportunity to talk with folks that are experts in agriculture, food and agriculture, academia, farmers, producers, those all across the food chain. The theme of this event is Fork to Farm, and I'm excited to be joined by my next two guests, we have Dan Sonke, the Director of Sustainable Agriculture from Campbell's Soup, welcome. >> Thank you. >> And you can't say this, but Dan has Campbell Soup tennis shoes on and they're awesome. And David Sypnieski, the Founder and CEO of Athena Intelligence, welcome gentlemen. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, good to be here. >> So this has been, before we went on we were kind of talking about kind of my thoughts on Ag-Tech, and this is a really interesting and unique opportunity for theCUBE, to really look at the influences of Big Data and Analytics, Cloud Computing, Open-source Software, Blockchain, and how this all can be very influential across the food chain and you know, from the event's theme perspective, it's really been a lot this morning, talking about the tech-enabled food consumer really driving a lot of this change, expectation-wise. But Dan, first question to you, knowing, growing up on Campbell's Soup as a kid, founded in 1869, how is Campbell's Soup taking action to implement not only support-sustainable agriculture, but also, what were the drivers? >> Well, we definitely see consumers driving interest in where the food comes from, where ingredients that go into Campbell's Soup come from. We, a few years ago, decided that we wanted to be a company that makes real food that matters for life's moments, so that's our mission, that's our purpose, and so we want to connect to consumers with the information that supports that claim, that the food is trustworthy, that it's authentic, and that it resonates with the emotional side of how it's consumed in families, and the moments that matter. >> And also probably from a branch perspective, this is a historic brand in the United States, and that's probably quite important to meet those needs. >> Absolutely, we want to we the most transparent food company, we want to be open and honest with our consumers, and satisfy their desire for real food. >> So talk to us about kind of the genesis of the sustainability in agriculture at Campbell, when did that start? And really, besides the consumers, maybe some on the customer side, who was really driving this initiative? >> Well, we drive it internally, so six years ago, we decided to venture into sustainable agriculture in a formal way. We did a stakeholder assessment, so we talked to customers, we talked to investors, we talked to farmers, suppliers, folks inside the company, outside the company, North America, Europe, Australia, and asked them a series of questions, and said where should we focus, what are the crops, what are the subject areas we should focus on in agriculture sustainability? And we came up with a focus on tomatoes and other vegetables that people think of when they think of Campbell's Soup, we're largely a vegetable nutrition, and whole-grain nutrition company, so we wanted to focus there. And we focused on water, fertilizer, greenhouse gases, soil and pesticides, so that was our focus area, and we really took a measure-to-manage approach, so intentionally going to farmers, starting with tomatoes, with a limited set of questions that capture a lot of information and would be information growers would have, so we asked them how much water did you apply to make the crop, how much fertilizer do you use, what was the irrigation system, what are some of the decision tools that you used to make informed decisions? And so we started collecting that data. We also started capturing the geographic locations of the fields, believing that the technology would come to enable us to put that together, and lo and behold, fast-forward five years, now we have five years of data. We've tracked some really great stuff that our farmers have done. For example, last year water use per pound of tomato grown, was down by 20% over our first year of tracking that data. >> Wow. >> Huge gains, and efficiency and, you know, especially since it's a California crop, that was in the period of a five-year drought, so very encouraging to see that growers can do that kind of thing, and very proud of our growers for doing that. >> Absolutely, and on the technology side, so we've got David here. Athena Intelligence, talk to us a little bit about the genesis of Athena Intelligence, and how your working in partnership with Campbell's Soup. >> Sure, so I've got a storied background in agricultural tech work with production, growers, ag-tech companies, processors like Campbell's and others. And several years ago I kind of realized the fact that while all of this technology is from Silicon Valley and around the world, it's starting to, kind of make it's way into agriculture. An assumption that everyone makes is that the data is ready to be used in some sort of technology. >> Right. >> Alright, so kind of the the running joke in the field is that, you know, that a lot of technology has built a lot of solutions that are desperately looking for a problem to solve. And the problem, while it sounds simple, it not so easy to put together. But the problem is that, as Campbell's Soup for example, was collecting all of that data, you know, the entire industry has never really been familiar with the structure of how do you actually use data in any kind of meaningful kind of data science or analytical way and so, just being able to compile it all from various different formats and sources was a burden, so while you had all this data, it actually couldn't be used at all. And so Athena Intelligence was about basically, me coming to the realization, and collaborating with Dan, and Campbell's has been a great partner of saying, you know, we're going to solve that one problem, the unglamourous, the unsexy, problem of building a piece of technology which can efficiently and automatically begin to clean up, and normalize, and standardized data sets from multiple different sources and-- >> And we're talking about like data from weather sources, sensors, satellite imagery-- >> Right, so it's a fusion of public and private data, so the public data, everything from satellite imagery to soil, to weather stations, river flows, 98 different attributes of the weather, and water-related data. And then of course all of the private data, both Campbell's internal processing data, and then all the data that they're collaborating with their suppliers so, it's a pretty broad assortment which comes from, I mean the formats are everything from a hand-written notebook, to a PDF, to Excel to-- >> Wow. >> It's all over the board. >> So this is really Big Data and Analytics, being able to bring and aggregate data from different sources, facilitate data discovery. >> We're making data efficient right now, because the problem is that it's so, it's such a laborious effort. You know, 90% of the time people are putting in, just trying to clean and organize it. >> Right. >> Leaving very little time to be able to analyze it, let alone make any decisions or collaborate on it. So we're addressing that 90% of the time that people spend on trying to put the stuff together in the first place. >> Okay so Dan, walk us through kind of a use-case example of how your implementing, or have implemented, Athena Intelligence software, and what some of the outcomes have been so far. >> Right, so the goal has been to take the quality data that comes in to our systems, and that is one area where we do use data historically quite a bit, we have tons of data on every load of tomatoes that comes into our processing plants. But then we're marrying that data to the publicly available weather, soil, water data, and the data that the growers report on sustainability practices. And the goal is to find the win, win, win, the win for the environment, the win for the farm profitability, and the win for Campbell's Soup quality, and sustainability drivers as well. And the example that we're currently pursuing is tomato solids, so that's an obscure term for most people, but it's a industry measurement of how much sugar is in the tomatoes basically. >> Okay. >> The solids of the tomatoes coming in, affect how they process into our ingredients, the higher solids, the easier they are for us to process, and the less energy it requires for us to do that. So it's a sustainability win as well. We already pay growers for higher solids. We know a few things that can generate higher solids on the farm, but we think there are more pieces of information that have been hiding in that Big Data set. So can we tease out what soils produce higher solids, or what irrigation practices drive higher solids, or whatever it is, so we're in the process right now. We've got a project going between our research innovation fund, Athena, and that's the target that we're going after this summer is to dig into five years of data, and find that win. >> Wow. So it sounds like Athena Intelligence has really enabled Campbell's Soup to become a data-driven company? >> Well, we certainly are a data-driven company, but this is extending the reach of the data outside the four walls of our factory-- >> And also into the farmer, so you're really enabling the farmers to embrace data, evaluate what they have. Have you seen any...? So one of the things we were talking about earlier today, or was being talked about was the labor shortages, as well as attrition. So you mentioned you know, things in ledgers and hard copy. Are you also seeing an influence maybe, that Campbell's having to your farmers, becoming much more, less paper-driven, and maybe more modern in terms of the way that they're collecting and storing data? >> Well, I can't say that we can take credit for that, but we certainly want to be one of the many voices at events such as this one, to be a beacon, calling the industry to solve this problem. David really mentioned it. The challenge is, growers don't have the resources to capture data easily. If they were you know, if that was their mindset, they'd probably be accountants and not farmers right? Farm they have, you know, they're in farming for all the attributes of a farm lifestyle, not a data-capture lifestyle. >> Right. >> So capturing that farm data, and making it easy for them to get the data into systems that they can then use, is one of my passions right? A lot of companies are out there saying, "Oh, we can create a platform that will help Campbell's "get information out of the farms." And I keep telling them, "No, if you create the system "that makes it easier for farmers to use their own data, "to get more efficient and more profitable, "they'll put the data in." >> Okay. >> That's not-- >> So you think that's really where the sweet spot is, and the next step is really-- >> And that's how we drive sustainability. >> Because if they, if the tools can help them with the data to make more informed decisions that's, that's what we want to get out of our sustainability programs, it's not just data for reports say, for Campbell's, it's how do we drive progress on the farm, and we do that by creating the systems that everybody can use more easily. >> Well, it's so neat to hear that a company that so many of us know and have grown up with, has evolved so much to be very focused, and have sustainability really, as a core, and it's also great to know that there are technologists out there that have that Ag-Tech experience, that are enabling companies to leverage the power of Big Data, so gentlemen, I want to thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights with us, we wish you the best of luck, and look forward to seeing what happens in the next few years. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> My pleasure. And we want to thank you for watching theCUBE again, I'm Lisa Martin, and we are at the Farm IT event From Fork to Farm, or Food IT event. We will be back with some more great guests, so stick around. (techno music)

>> Announcer: From the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube, covering Food It, Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here at the Cube. We're in Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum which celebrates history but we're talking about tech in the food and agricultural space. Here at the Food IT Convention, about 350 people, somebody came all the way from New Zealand, got food manufacturers. We've got tech people, we've got big companies, start-ups and we have a lot of represents from academe which is always excited to have them on, so our next guest is Dr. Andy Thulin, he's the Dean of the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, or SLO as we like to call them. Welcome. >> That's right. >> And all the way from Iowa, we have Dr. Wendy Wintersteen. She's the Dean of College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at Iowa State. Welcome. >> Thank you, it's great to be here. >> Absolutely, so first off, just kind of your impressions of this event? Small, intimate affair, one actually introduced everyone this morning, which I thought was a pretty interesting thing. Kind of your first impressions. >> It's a great environment. We have this mix of technology and a few production people here, but people thinking about the future. That's always an exciting place to be. >> Really, the environment, having the little set of exhibits, where people can go around, visit with entrepreneurs. It really, a great setting, I think for the discussion. >> So, Wendy, when you introduced your portion on the panel, you talked about the scale on which Iowa produces a lot of things. Pigs, and corns, and eggs, and chickens, and, so, you've been watchin' this space for a while. How do you see, from your perspective, kind of this technology wave, as it hits. Is it new, have we just not been payin' attention? Or is there something different now? >> Well, I think the speed of adoption, the speed of innovation is increasing, clearly. But, it's been a long time now that we've had power drive tractors so the farmers can sit and work on the technology in the cab related to their soil mapping, or yield monitors and the tractor's driving itself. So, we've had that sort of thing in Iowa for a long time and that continues to be improved upon, but that'd be just one example of what we're seeing. And, obviously, California has a huge agricultural presence, again, some people know, some people don't, the valley from top to bottom is something on the order of 500 miles of a whole lot of agriculture, so again, does this, do you see things changing? Is this more of the same? >> No, absolutely changing. I mean California produces some, a little over 400 different products. A lot of 'em, about a 100 of 'em, lead the country, in terms of marketplace. So, there's a lot of technology with the issues of water, lack thereof, or cleaning it up, or the labor challenges that we have for harvesting products. It's really turned into quite a challenge, so challenge drives innovation, you know, when you have your back against the wall, For example, in the strawberry fields I think, a year ago they had $800 million worth of labor to produce $2.4 million, billion dollars worth of strawberries. When you think about that, that's a lot of labor. When you can't get that labor in, you're drivin' by it, you got $300 million, wherever, they just weren't able to harvest it all 'cuz there was nobody to pick 'em. So, when you think about that, it's a billion dollars. It's a billion dollars that they couldn't get to. That drives innovation, so there's a lot of innovation goin' in these products. >> Pretty interesting, 'cuz, obviously, the water one jumps out, especially here in California, you know we had a really wet winter. The reservoirs are full. In fact, they're lettin' water out of the things. I would say we don't have a water problem, we have a water storage problem. This came up earlier today. The points of emphasis change, the points of pain change, and labor came up earlier. The number of people, the minimum wage laws, and the immigration stuff that's going on. Again, that's a real concern if you've got a billion dollars worth of strawberries sittin' in a field that you can't get to. >> Yeah, it's a real challenge. California faces a couple of shortages. We've got a water shortage, we've got a labor shortage, but we also have a talent shortage. We were talking this morning about the number of young people going to Ag colleges. It's up dramatically and we need all that talent and more. Everyone needs, all the grain industry, if you will, across the country, all the people that run these farms and ranches, and all, they're getting older. Who's coming back behind them? It's a technology driven industry today. It's not something that you can just go out and pick it up and start doing. It takes talent and science and technology to manage these operations. >> So, it's interesting. There's been science on kind of the genetic engineering if you will, genetically modified foods for a long time. Monsanto is always in the newspaper. But I asked something that's kind of funny, right, 'cuz we've been genetically modifying our food for a long time. Again, drive up and down I-5 and you'll see the funny looking walnut trees, that clearly didn't grow that way with a solid base on the bottom and a high-yield top. So, talk about attitudes, about this and people want it all. They want organic, but they also want it to look beautiful and perfect, be priced right and delivered from a local farmer. There's no simple solution to these problems. There's a lot of trade-offs that people have to make based on value so I wonder if you could talk about how that's evolving, Wendy, from your point of view. >> Well, certainly as we think about the products we produce in Iowa, we know that producers are willing to produce whatever the consumer would like. But they really want to be assured they have a market, so, right now in Iowa, we have cage-free eggs being produced, and those are being produced because there's a contract with a buyer, and, so I think producers are willing to adapt and address different opportunities in the big markets, different segments of that market, if they can see that profit opportunity that will allow them to continue in their business. From the producer's point of view, the subtheme of this show is Fork to Farm, as opposed to Farm to Fork which you think is the logical way, but it's come up and it's been discussed here quite a bit. It's the consumer, again, like they're doing in every business, is demanding what they want, they're willing to pay, and they're very specific in what they want. Was this like a sudden wave that hit from the producer point of view, or is this an opportunity? Is this a challenge? How is that kind of shifting market dynamics, impacting the producers? >> Well, I think it's all being driven by technology. We're talkin' this morning, years ago, it was the expert, you know, Wendy's of the world they had all the knowledge and then you had all the consumers listening to 'em and trusting 'em. Today, you have, as I call it, the mama tribe, or the soccer tribe, or that sort of thing, where they're listening to other parents, other mothers in that group, they're listening to the blogs, they're listening to their friends, that's driving the conversation and there's less science and technology behind it. They don't trust and the transparency thing comes up constantly. Technology has allowed this just wide open space where now they got so much information, how do they process that. What's real, what's not real, in terms of biotech, or is it this, or is it that? Is it wholesome, you know, all these factors. >> It's funny 'cuz you brought up the transparency earlier today as well, so people know what they're getting, they want to know, they really care. They just don't want to just get whatever generic ABC, like they used to. >> Right, and I think, again, there's a certain segment of the market that is very interested in that and companies are responding. I give the example of Nestles, and so, you get on their web page and you can see the ability to scan the code on a particular product and go and get a lot of information about that product back on the web page of that company. I think that for certain groups of consumers that's going to become even more important, and we have to be prepared to meet that demand. >> So, in terms of what's going on at your academic institutions, how is the environment changing because of technology, we've got these huge macro trends happening, right, cloud is a big thing, Edge Computing, which is obviously important, got to get the cloud to the edge (laughs) of the farm, sensors, big data, being able to collect all this data, I think somebody earlier said it went from no data to now a flood of data, how are you managing that? Better analytics and then, of course, there's fun stuff like drones and some of these other things that can now be applied. How's that workin' it's way into what you're doing in terms of training the next generation of entrepreneurs as well as the kind of traditional farmers in this space? >> Well, I think, first of all, we're seeing a lot more integration between what we do in engineering, and what we do in computer science, and what we do in agriculture and business. The overlap and the connection across those disciplines is occurring not just with our faculty but also with our students. We had a group of students at Iowa State before they graduated from the college, able to start a company called ScoutPro that was based on using technology to help farmers identify pests in the field, and that became a company using the technology to do that. Of course, that relied on software development, as well as clear understanding of agronomic and pest management strategy. I think those integrated approaches are occurring more and more. >> I think at Cal Poly it's, our motto has been for over a hundred years Learn by Doing, hands-on learning. That's key to us, as you have a lecture class, you have a lab that goes along with it so they're forced to. We have over 45 to 50 classes, enterprise classes, where you can come in and you can raise, let's say marigolds and then you can provide that whole value train, chain and sell it. You can raise broiler chicks every quarter, for 35 days you can raise 'em up, 7,000 birds and there's teams of students in these classes, they can do it, then they manage the whole process. A winery, for example, it's a bonded winery. They do the whole process. They know how to change the pumps and all that, so it's hands-on but you take that from there up to where those students go out into the industry. Our university just signed an agreement with Amazon for the cloud, so we're moving the whole complex, our IT, to the cloud through that organization. Is that right or wrong, I don't know, but we've got to do things faster, quicker, and just our infrastructure, would a cost us millions to do that, but that allowed the students, what is it, Apple is only, the iPhone is 10 years old tomorrow. Tomorrow. These kids, that's all they grew up with. So, we're constantly having to change our faculty, our leadership teams, constantly have to change to keep up and stay side-by-side with the technology, so it's changed our Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Cal Poly has a partnership with the community, with the university, it started in College of Business and we have a whole floor of a building in downtown San Luis Obispo and across the street we've got 60 apartments for students that are involved in these start-ups to live there so they can walk across the street, get right engaged. So, we're trying to do everything we can, every university is trying to do everything they can to kind of keep this space flowing, and this enthusiasm with these young people. That's where the change is going to occur. >> Right, right. Exciting times. >> It is exciting. >> It is. >> Alright, well, unfortunately, we are out of time. So, we're going to have to leave it there, but I really want to thank you for stopping by and wish you both safe travels home. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Dr. Thulin, Dr. Winterston, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching the Cube. It's Food IT in Mountain View, California. Thanks for watching. We'll be right back after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: From the computer history museum in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's The Cube, covering Food IT: Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hi, welcome to The Cube, I am Lisa Martin. We are at the fourth annual Food IT: Fork to Farm event in Silicon Valley at the computer history museum. An incredible event talking with ag-tech experts, technologists, and really understanding how people that the produce the food can get together with those that are innovating technology and really improve the supply chain or the food chain. My next two guests are George Kellerman, COO and general partner of Yamaha Motor Ventures and laboratory here in Silicon Valley. Welcome George! >> Welcome, thank you. >> Great to have you, and we have Nathan Dorn, COO of Food-Origins and you're also an advisor to the mixing bowl. >> Thank you Lisa. >> Absolutely. So this is a really interesting event for us. We cover a lot of tech innovation events and looking at now even the title kind of threw me when I saw Fork to Farm. We're so used to the trend of farm to table, farm to fork, and I kept reading, is that right? One of the things is that everyone's tech-enabled, right? We've got computers in our pockets. I'd love to understand Nathan from your perspective, how are you seeing the consumer, this tech-enabled food consumer really drive the food and agriculture industry which is not only contending with demanding consumers, but environmental sustainability, climate change. How is that consumer being that influential? >> They're getting vocal with their dollar, with their pocket book, and they're able to say, "I'm buying based upon values and the values just aren't cost." So they're paying up for the opportunity to know more data behind the product and contribute to the farmer. A lot of people talk about their experience at farmer's markets. It's because of their direct relationship and the feel that they have control in their engagement, that they're really becoming more empowered. The agricultural industry is taking notice and they're starting to buy into that. >> Tell us about Food-Origins, the genesis of that in context with what you just mentioned. >> So I'm a technologist in agriculture. I've been involved in agriculture since I was a child, and recently worked in a major winery and vineyard team and then later with a berry company, and realized that most of the innovations that we brought, they lacked context of economics because we just couldn't see deep enough, more granular, and measure things that mattered from people movement to where the product actually came from, the impact on whether it was quality or not, and whether the economic-- There was economic differences. We accepted that as natural variation because a farmer's job is to grow something and make it successful. If you buy a seed and you put it in the ground and you do well and make money at it, you're going to do it again. You do more of it. Their job is if I can do this well, I'll do more, rather then reinvent it. Somebody had to take on that job of reinvention and we thought Food-Origins was a big part of that. >> So from a technology perspective, if we look at the food chain from planting to evaluating soil health and fertilizer requirements, and then the post-harvest, where are you seeing the biggest opportunities for farmers to use big data analytics, connected devices, GPS devices' sensors, to glean this information, learn from these machines, to improve from we'll say farm to fork? >> The amazing thing is there's so many great companies out there that are bringing pieces of the data, whether it's soil moisture or weather, or they're imaging, flying over my fields and telling me how healthy my plants are. But the gap is in connecting that data, going from pretty pictures that are standalone or great inventions that are standalone to this is the cause and these three attributes are the effect. You know, these three attributes lead to this effect. If I can do that, if I can make that connection, we've closed the big gap. We can create that continuous learning cycle that happens automatically within a farm, We can take this art to farming, leave it as an art, but take pieces of it and make it science and allow people to connect what soil moisture does to this product that was sold weeks later. How it affected the roots, then the plant, then the fruit, and then we can make all those connections. It's in that linkage, that's where the biggest opportunities are. >> So facilitating machine leaning-- >> Yeah, absolutely. >> For the next generation farm. >> And then once you've got that machine learning, you've got the knowledge base to make those improvements, like buying the right robot for the right task, buying and having assets available at the moment they're needed, because a lot of these businesses-- Picking a berry is much different than picking a watermelon or picking an apple or a tree nut, or a piece of corn in a field. So by doing it, by having so much differences, knowing all the data ahead of time allows an innovator, a robotics company to do amazing work and make the most of their dollar asset. >> Speaking of robotics, George, Yamaha. My first thought was motorcycles. >> Absolutely. >> So tell us about Yamaha Motor Ventures. You're based here in Silicon Valley. What was the opportunity that Yamaha saw to get into the robotics space, specifically in the food and agriculture industry? >> Well when we launched Yamaha Motor Ventures two years ago, our mandate was autonomous vehicles, robotics, and industrial automation. We actually weren't looking at agriculture per se, but after meeting people like Nathan and others in the industry, it was obvious that there were opportunities for all of those, autonomous vehicles, automation, and robotics. It was just the application was a little different. Yamaha has actually a robotics division, so we have vehicles, we have robotics. Now we're looking at those platforms and technologies and looking at how we can marry them in the agricultural space. Maybe also how we can innovate new products and services. >> So in terms of adoption, what are you seeing from whether it's a generational small farm or a larger farm, where is the biggest opportunity that you see for adoption in the food chain? Is it planting, harvesting? Is it looking at drones or aerial vehicles to evaluate the health of crops? >> So I have a two part answer to that. One is people have to understand that agriculture is not just complicated. Complicated means with enough time, we could figure it out. It's complex. It's a complex system, meaning there's lots of different elements to it. We can't just assume that we can do a series of steps and it'll work, because there's going to be downstream consequences and you then have to think of those as well. It really is going to take a lot of people and a lot of different approaches, and there isn't going to be one solution or one area. You mentioned a lot of different things: drones, data collection, sensors, network connectivity, IoT. It's going to be all of those in a complex system. The system we're dealing with is complex, so the solution is also going to be complex and we have to figure out how to integrate that. It's not just enough to say here's a robot and we'll put it in the field. It's going to be well, what is the data that it's basing its decisions on and how is collecting, when? As Nathan said, knowing when to put it in the field. That's also a lot of data collection up till that point. I think actually what Nathan's focusing on is we have to start with data. We need to build that historical data where we can apply machine learning to it. We have to start somewhere, and that data is going to come from drones, from sensors, from a lot of different networks. It might just be putting sensors on the vehicles that are in the field now. >> Right. But they're connecting different kinds of data, not just GPS, but they might be collecting hyper spectral imagery to detect disease and insect infestation, the health, the vitality of the plants and the fruit. So there's a lot of opportunities, but this is not a five year solution. This is a generational, multi-generational solution that we have to come up with. >> And is it also a multi-educational step process with farms across the US to really understand how to maybe deconstruct this complexity so they can understand the value that can be gleaned? >> A lot of the farmers I talk with, they'll tell me point blank, they're not farmers. They're people who foster and help the biological system of plants growing and creating produce. They're there to facilitate that. They're not there to do that, but think about innovation as a whole. A farmer has a super multi-skilled, multi-disciplinary skill set. Whatever innovations we bring have to fit in an entire skill set of a farmer, whether it's human resources manager, chemist, biological expert, soil scientist, mechanic. It has to fit an economist. They have to be able to match all those things, so it's going to take people that want to be engaged and have a passion for changing that system and being involved in that system to help carry it to that next step I think. It's going to take people like Yamaha Ventures. >> Well I think fortunate for them that they have people like you who are leading them on the way. George and Nathan, we want to thank you so much for sharing your insights on The Cube with us today. We wish you the best of luck in ventures. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, appreciate it. >> We want to thank you for watching The Cube. Again, we are at the Food IT: Fork to Farm event at the computer history museum in Silicon Valley. I am Lisa Martin, stick around. We have great guests coming up next. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's The Cube, covering Food IT: Fork to Farm. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hi, welcome back to The Cube. I'm Lisa Martin, we are at the fourth annual Food IT: Fork to Farm Event at the Computer History Museum in the heart of Silicon Valley. I'm very excited to be joined by my next two guests, we have Curtis Garner, Senior Farm Analyst from Bowles Farming Company, welcome. >> Thank you. >> Great to have you, and we have Megan Nunes, CEO of Vinsight. Welcome! >> Thank you! >> Great to have you guys here. So this event is so interesting for us. We cover a lot of technology innovation, a lot on the infrastructure side, this is more on the application side, but Curtis, I wanted to start with you being a farmer, your farm has been, a six-generation farm, Bowles Farming Company based in Los Banos, California. One of the things I found really interesting, when I was doing some research on Bowles Farm, is that you have a big solar project, and one of the things that's really interesting, it's been reported that the US food system uses 15% of the total energy of the US, to produce food. Tell us about the solar project, that Bowles Farms has done, and what you've been saving on energy. >> So, with Bowles Farming and agriculture in general, there's been kind of a stagnation of innovation, and through technology with drip irrigation, we've seen a difference in technology from doing gravity-fed irrigation, which is basically free energy, right, gravity doesn't cost anything, to pressurized drip irrigation systems, and so we've used pressurized pumps that use diesel energy, and we've been switching them over to electricity, and that's been an efficiency for Bowles Farming, but we've, we've offset our costs by two solar plants and so we have two solar plants, two 500-kilowatt energy to generate one megawatt of energy, we've displaced about 80% of our energy use on the farm. >> 80%, that's dramatic. And was that a multi-year project that you initiated? >> It was supposed to happen about a year, but through regulation and difficulties with permitting and PG&E, it took about a year and a half to complete. We'll see the benefits of it this year. >> And your primary crops are cotton, tomatoes, nuts, almonds ... >> So, yeah. We're diverse, diversified row crops, so we have 12 different crops, but our primary crops are Pima cotton, and processing tomatoes. >> So, question for you from a technology perspective, this event is so interesting because, when I first read the title like I thought, fork-to-farm, we're so used to the trendiness of farm-to-table, right, farm-to-fork. But, the fact that the tech-enabled consumer has really influenced, or wants to influence, organic, must be cage-free if it's eggs, you know, it must be, non-genetic, et cetera. What are some of the influences that you're seeing on the farming side that the consumer is driving, and how has Bowles Farm made some changes to accommodate that? >> So our crop choice, so the consumer is actually voting with their fork, is actually a real thing. So like, the most posted food picture on Instagram and Pinterest is actually a purple vegetable. So a thought on the farm is, should we be growing a bunch of purple vegetables? And so, it's actually very real that the consumers are driving production. >> Yeah, interesting! So Megan, as the CEO of Vinsight, talk to us about the genesis of Vinsight. You yourself come from a farming background. What was the origination of your company? >> Yeah, so, I grew up in the Central Valley of California, I'm originally from a small town called Gustine, and I left Gustine, went to college in San Louis Obispo at Cal Poly, and then after that I worked for an aerospace company in the remote sensing space for about seven years. And while I was there, one of the things that we were looking at doing was providing satellite imagery to farmers, and different growers, and quickly I realized that the traditional imagery that the satellite imagery business was providing through um, it's called NBDI, which basically is a health map of red, green, and yellow. Wasn't necessarily helpful or terribly actionable, and that really bothered me, and so through lots of conversations and investigation that I took on my own, I decided, you know what, it's time to start something on my own, through utilizing different data techniques to better understand food production. And so Vinsight was basically initially born out of the idea of utilizing satellite imagery, in a more meaningful way to benefit growers and then the entire supply chain as a whole. And that later turned into crop forecasting for grapes and almonds here in California. >> And, and, especially, you know, grapes being huge, I mean, Napa, Edna Valley, Pasa Robles, we're very fortunate to have a, a tremendous amount of grapes and wine opportunities, but you mentioned almonds. 90% of the world's almonds come from California. Talk to us about how maybe an example of how a farm is using your technologies, like, are you putting sensors in their farms or is it really they're utilizing satellite imagery and data acquisition through your product and API, to improve their yields? >> So it's more of the latter. At Vinsight, our objective is to be data agnostic, and so what that means is we take in data from any source that allows us to better understand production as a whole. And so what happens is we collect data from four major categories, which include remote sensing data or satellite imagery, climate and weather, historical yield, and then geographical information, so primarily that'll be like soil type, elevation angling, and so on. And what we do, is we built out this 20-year historical archive, and we've utilized machine learning techniques to train on that data and understand what matters to the plant at this specific point in time, and how does that correlate and trend against what we've seen in the past. And so in real time, during the growing season, we pull in like the top ten features that matter, to that plant at that specific time, and then we give you a crop forecast of, hey, you're going to produce so many pounds or tons, depending on the industry, of x product, and we're assuming a 10% or better error rate typically on understanding your total production. And so our goal is, through starting with understanding your total supply, how can that also start to relate into how we handle pricing and how that ultimately will benefit both the grower and consumer at the end of the day. >> Interesting, so, about the production yields, I wanted to kind of talk, Curtis, to you about, if you look at the food chain from planting, through monitoring soil conditions, fertilizers, water, we've just gotten out of a massive drought here in California, one other thing that it's, that I find interesting is the post-harvest arena, and you know, supply chain logistics traceability. Talking about almonds, I was reading, and this is very surprising, to me, that in the last three years, over 35 truckloads of almonds have vanished, and that's tantamount to ten million dollars. So on the traceability side, I know that's going to be one of the themes at the event today, how are you using technology, Curtis, at Bowles Farms, on the traceability? Can you give us some examples there? >> Yeah, so traceability is a very big deal for the farm and the consumer and the producer. Bowles Farming has actually a pretty unique story about this in that, our cotton that we grow is a Pima cotton. Costco sold bedsheets that were Pima cotton, and they had the olive oil scandal, the same guy that did that, did a market sweep of all the Pima cotton sheets that represented that they were 100% Pima, found that over half the supply was actually adulterated, is actually not Pima cotton, is Upland or primarily a blend. And so with that, he applied the same technology that he did with olive oil to the cotton industry, and we are the first farm and the first gin to sign up with him, to do traceability, from basically from farm all the way to sheets. Yeah, and so ... >> Wow, farm to sheets. >> Farm to sheets, yeah >> Didn't expect to hear that today. >> Yeah, I guess so. They're now, it's, the brand is Wamsutta, the Pima cotton brand, and they're available at the Bed Bath & Beyond. >> Wow, so, looking at what Megan has done with Vinsight, being a six-generational, six-generation farm, what's the, um, what are your thoughts, as a senior farm analyst, on the adoption of technology? Was it something that was slow to be adopted, or do you really feel, we've been so successful for six generations, we want to understand how we can look at data types that are aggregated as Megan, you said over 20 years of historical information, what's been that adoption at your farm? >> So Bowles has a legacy of innovation, and we're an innovative farm, we have a lot of innovative people and so, for us, it's a matter of survival. So with the regulatory pressures, with the increasing costs of California, farming in California, innovation's going to be key, and that's going to come in the role of technology, and so, we're pretty quick to adopt. If you look at farmers as a whole, people think that they're overall-wearing, individuals that aren't very intelligent, but it's actually quite the opposite, and if a new technology comes that has a great ROI, just like the drip irrigation, they'll implement that, though, pretty quickly. >> Oh, fantastic. Well, Curtis, we wish you the best of luck at Bowles Farms, Megan, same, congratulations on Vinsight, we wish you the very best of luck and we thank you both for joining us on The Cube. >> Thank you! >> Thank you! >> We want to thank you for watching again. We are at the Food IT: Fork to Farm Summit in the heart of Silicon Valley. I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching The Cube. Stick around, we'll be right back. (techno music sting)