Bringing It Home on Ryan Jespersen’s RealTalk

But in my latest podcast appearance I want to convince you that the future of food lives on the Canadian prairies.

Unless you’re secretly Canadian too, you may not know that I was born in Saskatoon and raised in Edmonton – I’m a Prairies person through and through.

That’s where I got the gumption, on the latest episode of Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen, to say things like “Albertans are spoiled” or that, regarding investing in cellular agriculture: “we need to get a grip and just do it”.

It’s not a coincidence that I’ve been advocating for cellular agriculture for the past 11+ years and I’m from a province that has been transitioning its energy sector since before I was born and has incredible pride in its animal agriculture industry. I’m a product of my environment.

That’s why it was such a treat to have a seat on the hottest talk show on the Prairies, Real Talk with Ryan Jespersen alongside future of dairy investor Sean Yam from GERBER-RAUTH.

Check out the Youtube Live video here:

Don’t have time to watch an hour of chit chat? Well here are two key takeaways for all of us:

1) “Food and Ag is the same as Energy. It’s all about value-adding” and
2) The food transition will be bigger than the global energy transition.

While the whole hour was a ton of fun, the most important part for me was 34:30 – 37:41, which I describe as the whole point of the show: Edmonton is a diamond in the rough. We’ve been trying to diversify our oil and gas economy for a long, long time, and that turned out to make us leaders in de-risking large scale (15,000L) bioprocess via a fee-for-service, publicly-owned facility since 1983!!!

For the other Prairie-based locals on this newsletter, let’s heed Ryan Jespersen’s point: If we have this gem of a facility, it has a three-year wait time, and it’s helping businesses scale, *where is the second facility*?

For the international cellular agriculture community: get in on this! This facility could help your cell ag business scale up. And your voice can help us at New Harvest advocate to expand capabilities to support more cell ag scale up.

Here on the Prairies we hold all the cards to lead and inspire in cellular agriculture. Most importantly: the supply chain begins here on this land, the primary agricultural inputs are right here. It only makes sense to scale close to the resources. With a few key moves, we can capture a lot of value-adding economic growth here, too.

Have a listen and let me know what you think!