Agriculture Policy for a New Era

In this episode of the S2G Podcast, Sanjeev Krishnan, Managing Partner of S2G Investments, sits down with Randy Russell, President of The Russell Group, and Grant Leslie, Operating Partner for Government and Policy at S2G Investments, to unpack the current policy landscape shaping American food and agriculture. They explore how US food and agriculture policy intersects with global trade, public health, and the national debt. Randy describes the shift from a strong agricultural trade surplus to a likely deficit, the rising role of Brazil in supplying China, and the weakening of the traditional Farm Bill coalition that once linked farm and nutrition interests. Grant argues that the rural-urban divide is narrower than it appears, since communities share concerns such as healthcare, energy, and connectivity, and she notes that new stakeholders want farm policy to reflect nutrition and sustainability, not only commodity support.

Together, they frame food security as a national security issue and connect three related pressures: stressed farm economics, diet-related diseases, and the fiscal strain of rising healthcare costs and debt. Randy calls for an Evergreen Revolution based on technology and entrepreneurship, and urges innovators to engage regulators early so that cutting-edge companies stay in the United States. Grant stresses the need to bring the full value chain, from farmers to food and healthcare sectors, into a shared conversation so healthier and more sustainable food systems become profitable and affordable, and they close with cautious optimism that rising interest in food and bipartisan support for innovation can enable a new approach to farm and food policy.

Sanjeev: Alright, welcome to another S2G podcast. I’m joined by my newest colleague, Grant Leslie, and Randy Russell. Thank you, Randy, for doing this, and Grant, welcome to the team.

Grant: Thank you.

Sanjeev: I think before we get started, Grant, I wanted you to share what your mentor told you when you arrived in Washington about Mr. Russell. 

Grant: Okay, so Randy, I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this story, but one of the first things that Bart Chilton, who was a wonderful friend to both of us and a mentor to me for many years, told me when I was getting started was that there were two people in town that I needed to know if I wanted to be successful in food and agriculture policy.

And you were one of them.

Randy: Wow. Wow.

Grant: And I remember meeting you when I was young on the hill, and you treated me just the same as you would’ve treated the Secretary of Agriculture. Thank you for that. You’ve been a friend for a long time now.

Randy: Thanks.

Sanjeev: Actually, she was a little bit more boisterous offline. She called you the Godfather of Food and Agriculture.

Randy: Oh, wow. I don’t know about that, but Grant, thank you. That’s very kind of you to say that. And I am delighted to be with both of you today to talk a little bit about all the things going on in agriculture and the food industry.

Sanjeev: Before we get to agriculture and food, Randy, just tell me a little about yourself, how you got to this work, just where you grew up.

Randy: In January, it’ll be 40 years, which I cannot believe, but it’s true, that I will have been with the Russell Group, which is an agriculture and food advocacy and consulting firm. And prior to that, I was Chief of Staff at the Department of Agriculture.

Some people might think, because of my age, that it was during the Lincoln Administration, but actually, it was during the Reagan Administration that I was Chief of Staff. I also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economics at USDA. Have worked for the Pillsbury company many years ago as Director of Government Relations in Minneapolis and also for the National Council of Farmer Co-Ops, doing trade and farm policy. Worked on the hill for the Senate Agriculture Committee as a very junior staff economist many years ago, and also worked for Senator Rudy Boschwitz from Minnesota when he was on the Ag Committee. I started my career out of college. I went to George Mason University on a baseball scholarship many years ago. I did graduate work in economics and then started at the Department of Agriculture and the Economic Research Service, working in an econometric modeling group. That’s a little bit about my career.

Sanjeev: What position did you play in baseball?

Randy: All you have to do is take a look at my right hand, and you can see from the crooked fingers that I was a catcher.

Sanjeev: Before we get into agriculture and food, one thing that I think bonded me to Grant quite a bit, and I think we both have the same view, is that one of the number one, I think it’s the number one, number two drivers of political polarization globally is this sort of rural-urban divide. Like sort of population density and political polarization.

I’m just curious how you observe that because we think of it as broader than even just agriculture and farming. It’s energy, it’s broadband, it’s how do you get economic activity. I don’t know if you have thoughts around this sort notion of the urban-rural divide and how we can bridge it.

Randy: It’s a great question, and it’s a real thing. And let me give you a couple of statistics that might bear out what you just said. If you look at the House of Representatives and the 435 members that we have. There are about 195 of them that represent what you would consider urban areas, 95% or more of the population being urban. There are only 35 congressional districts that are primarily rural. That means 50% of the population that is rural. So you can just see right there, there is a real divide. And when you need 218 votes, as Grant knows, to pass anything like farm legislation. On the House floor, you have to be able to bridge that divide between rural America and suburban and urban America. And typically, that tie, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it later, is through some of the nutrition programs. So there’s absolutely a rural-urban divide, and that divide’s actually getting bigger as there are fewer and fewer people in the US living in rural America.

Sanjeev: We’ve seen it as a common cause to engage there. It’s a real opportunity that I think very few people actually take advantage of. But it’s a real way to engage and get stuff done. Because when you go and spend time in rural America and you go spend time in urban America , I come away with — we’re not as divided as we think we are. There’s a level of pragmatism that is there and that needs to be brought forward more and more. But I come away very energized by this.

Grant: Yeah, Sanjeev, you and I have talked about this before, but I totally agree, and even though there is a divide, I think sometimes it’s a divide that we’re making ourselves because we often assume that rural America is only farmers. That is a huge driver of our rural economies. But as you were alluding to, it’s not the only one.

It’s energy, it’s healthcare, it’s broadband. Certainly, they are used in different ways or they have to be set up in different ways, but there actually are a lot of similarities and needs, and I think at a fundamental level, the communities care about many of the same things, even though how the communities are set up because of space and other issues are different. And so I do think that if we think about what sort of ties us together, it can bring us together as well.

Sanjeev: Let’s get into your view on the current state of agriculture. Because the way that I look at it as an investor,  and curious how you both look at it, I think about the American agriculture system has been a net exporter, incredibly productive, has really driven on two mega trends that I think, I’m curious, I want to get into sort of where we’re going. One is Chinese pork demand and the soy landscape for that, and obviously, post ⁹⁄₁₁ corn ethanol. That drove a lot of the acreage growth. It drove a lot of the trade flows as well. But we’re in a state right now where those two mega trends are either diminishing or having to be reexamined. At least I’m talking as an investor that invests in ag tech, in farmland, in agribusiness more broadly. How do you view the state of the food system and the agricultural system?

Randy: I think we’re in the midst of some fundamental changes because of some of the changes in the global marketplace. You cited the ag trade situation. I think it was 2012, we had an ag trade surplus of $37 billion, and this year, USDA is forecasting that we will run an ag trade deficit of almost $50 billion. That’s a stunning reversal in 12 or 13 years of time. I’m not the smartest person in the whole world, but that’s a $87 billion delta. So what’s driving that? Part of it is that we’re importing more produce because of people focusing on healthier lifestyles. That’s a good thing. But also some of that is driven by our immigration policy, very frankly, where we don’t have enough workers here in the US that will actually help us produce and harvest produce crops.

So that’s one factor. A second factor, and you alluded to it, is the changing global environment. You go back to when Trump was president the first time around, and we had this phase one deal with China. Since that time, China has changed significantly in terms of its business relationship with Brazil become much more aligned with Brazil that can provide them all the soybeans that they need.

And we’re seeing that play out right now. Meanwhile, China can provide many of the inputs that are critical for crop protection tools. So China is a lot less dependent on the US than it was even the first time Trump was president. So we’ve got a lot of driving factors globally that are impacting US ag.

Sanjeev: Grant, what are your thoughts about the state of play at the moment?

Grant: I totally agree. I think, Randy, what you were saying just a minute ago about China being in a completely different place agriculturally is so important. And we think about China so often on the tech side of things and how they’re evolving on AI and other issues. We’re not remembering that again, 20 years ago, China literally didn’t have the infrastructure to produce at scale, even the type of equipment that you need to do the type of production that we do in the US. And that has completely changed and made them much more competitive.

And so it fundamentally changes the way that the US needs to think about production and what we’re producing and how we’re producing it to continue to stay ahead. And honestly, I mean, to the things that Sanjeev and I think about a lot, think about ways to get our producers here in the US additional advanced technologies that they need to stay ahead in the agricultural race, the same way that we’re trying to do on the tech side of things.

Sanjeev: Randy and Grant are what you describe as some inflection points that are both measurable, Randy, to your statistics, and frankly, real for many, far too real. Are the elected officials in Washington hearing it from their constituents, these issues, Randy and Grant that you guys describe, or is it still not yet urgent to Washington?

Randy: I think they’re hearing about the short-term impacts, for instance, clearly, production agriculture overwhelmingly supported Trump. A couple of stats on that. He got 57% of the rural vote in 2016. He got, I think, 63% in 2020. And he got over 70% in 2024. So clearly, that is a base constituency for him.

I think the other side with the tariff policy, which he views as a means to an end and not an end in and of itself. The question I really have is how long the farmers give the Trump administration, so to speak, to deliver on new trade agreements with these 75 countries that we have reciprocal trade tariffs on. And let’s face it, we need new market access as China becomes a market that will probably have less dependency on or access to, because of Brazil, we need new market access. And that’s both lowering tariffs, but also non-tariff trade barriers for agriculture. So I think the question is, how long is it going to take the administration to get these new deals in place, and how does agriculture benefit? And I think the jury is still out on that. There’s a lot of new agreements being negotiated, but those agreements are going to be critical because our ability right now to produce seems to be outstripping the demand. And we can talk about that further on a domestic front, but we really do need new market access, or we’re gonna face some really heavy price pressures.

Grant: Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that Congress and the administration are hearing from farmers for sure, but I think there are so many challenges in the farm economy in the US right now, just generally, I think they are really focused on the short term, and there’s not that longer-term conversation going on. Like we’re trying to get farmers through the next cycle. We’re not thinking about what the next 10 years look like, especially when compared to the innovation going on in China and them catching up on the way that they’re producing and things like that. I don’t think that conversation is happening.

Sanjeev: Speaking of short-term and long-term, one of the vehicles I’ve always thought of for long-term thinking, although I don’t know if we’re going to ever get that, is the farm bill. Where are you both on the status of that and the opportunity of that to really look at that as a grand strategy opportunity? And that may be very naïve and Pollyannaish, that’s why I’m not in Washington. But what’s your all’s view of, or where we are at the Farm Bill?

Randy: Look, this is my ninth Farm Bill, and every one of them is different. They typically are driven by what the farm economic situation is at the time the Farm Bill is written, and also the political environment that we’re dealing with in terms of the administration and who controls the House and Senate. 

Generally for those that aren’t familiar with a Farm Bill is typically, it is a, what we call an omnibus bill. It has got multiple titles. The most recent had 12 titles in it, and it covers everything from nutrition programs to farm programs to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which has obviously been in the news a lot here over the last month because of the government shutdown. Export programs, farm credit programs, livestock research, rural energy, et cetera. Typically, what has happened is that you have gotten the nutrition programs to get people from urban and suburban areas to vote for a farm bill. And then you have the farm programs and crop insurance to get people in rural America and rural representatives to vote for a Farm Bill. That’s all broken down. That broke down in the 2012 Farm Bill that took us two extra years to do it. Broke down again in 2018 and it’s once again broken down. And that kinda nutrition program, SNAP debate versus farm programs, has become a real sticking point amongst members. So in terms of the farm bill itself, we basically dealt with a lot of the major provisions of the farm bill in what we call the one Big Beautiful Bill that Congress passed on a partisan vote, through reconciliation earlier on, and it dealt with a lot of the farm program benefits for commodity programs. It put more dollars into crop insurance, which now covers over 500 million acres in the United States.

It doubled export promotion program funding, and it also cut SNAP significantly $186 billion over 10 years, which is a bone of contention, particularly with the Democrats. So that’s all done and taken care of. So what remains are all these other titles that are very important but may not have the engine, so to speak, to pull it across the legislative finish line.

So Grant, I know you have some comments, I’m sure as well.

Grant: Yeah. I think that’s exactly right. I think there is a real question of when we’re gonna have another big Farm Bill. The omnibus type of farm bill that Randy’s talking about that sets agricultural policy for the longer term. Sanjeev, as we were just talking about, I think there is a real question of when that will happen again. I don’t think it’s gonna happen any set time soon. As part of the government shutdown deal, we just passed another extension of those, the titles that we needed to get through the end of the fiscal year. And so once again, we’re not going to have a Farm Bill this year. So I think that is a question.

I think what’s really interesting about the question is that. The breakdown of the Farm Bill Coalition that Randy was talking about, the sort of classic farm and rural advocates, and then the nutrition and hunger advocates, which again, historically was that rural-urban divide, although there was a gray area there for sure.

I think what’s really interesting is that one reason this has broken down is that there’s actually a lot of new stakeholders at the table. If you think about just the broader conversation about food and agriculture, it is all over social media. It is in the newspaper every day.

People care at a crazy level right now, that I certainly have never seen, not only what kind of food they eat, but where that food they are eating comes from. MAHA. That is a huge new, loud stakeholder group that actually wants to have conversations about food and agriculture policy and is voting on things like that.

So it fundamentally changes, I think, how we’re thinking about the Farm Bill. And I think policy makers are at this inflection point where they’re gonna have to think about, is it a classic Farm Bill like we’ve done for the nine past farm bills that Randy has seen and many of the ones that I have seen since 2002, or are we going to have to think about it a little differently and think about new coalitions and come up with a different type of bill or bills that can go through to drive some of the long-term policy change?

I think it is a real question that people are grappling with right now. 

Randy: And earlier on, you made a comment about the rural-urban divide, and that kind of plays into this as well, because if you look, for instance, of the House Agriculture Committee, virtually all the Republicans that are on there represent a production agriculture area. The Democrats, because there are so few now House members who represent primarily rural areas that are Democrats they tend to be on the Ag Committee because of the nutrition programs. And that really sets up a divide here. 

I’m a lot older than Grant by many decades. But you know, when I was on the hill, Democrats and Republicans worked together based upon regional similarities or differences, commodity similarities or differences, and this whole idea of putting nutrition together with the farm program pieces, dates back to 1972 when George McGovern was on the Ag Committee with Bob Dole, and they were very different politically but when it came to agriculture, when it came to nutrition, when it came to hunger issues, they found common ground and worked together. And that stayed for decades. But I think because of the changing politics and the makeup of rural America, urban America, unfortunately, that divide is very real now.

Sanjeev: The space for collaboration on this issue is seemingly more difficult. Having said that, I look at market access, a clear issue. Historically, it’s been trade as a main lever for new markets. One of the things that we’ve been investing a lot into, and Grant is aware of this, is how do we make nutrition a pillar of healthcare?

And have clinical data to show for it, and so that it could provide new germ plasm, new specialty that you could grow in even row crop agriculture. Particularly not just human nutrition, but animal nutrition around, better feed opportunities to drive, sort of this yield per acre format to a profit per acre format, and how do you construct that? And I think, Grant, to your point, some of these new stakeholders in the conversation are clearly driving it, but I think both in the language they use and the conversation, I don’t think we fully nailed it.

I still think no one’s linking the entire value chain to say, ​“Actually, you make more money doing this.” It’s better for the overall system. And we’re stuck in these parochial issues. Some of them are very valid by the way, but it doesn’t speak to this broad coalition of the value chain. Do you both agree that this could be a thing, but we haven’t really found the language and the value chains yet, alignment to drive, you know what McGovern and Dole started, Randy, it seems like around nutrition and agriculture.

Grant: Yes. I think there is a huge opportunity, but it’s complicated. Part of the reason why it’s complicated is because our system, at least for a while, is gonna need to continue producing how we’ve been producing because we can’t just stop and switch to a completely new format.

So it’s like we’re going to have to figure out how to do this on dual tracks. And part of that I think is exactly what you said Sanjeev with, we haven’t done a good job linking and talking to the entire supply chain and we need to figure out, I think, how to bring some of those exciting ideas about healthcare, about other products and innovations that can really provide profit for the farmers to the farmers directly so that the farmers can start to think about what they would really need to continue producing, but also pivot to producing in this other way, and for these other innovations that we’re talking about.

Because we’re going to have to do two things at once, and they are going to need other tools that do not exist today in our system to support them to do that. I think oftentimes what companies have done in the past when they’ve tried to innovate the supply chain is just make these changes without talking to producers.

And so then you don’t see producers either wanting to or able to transition to how some of the people further down the supply chain want them to, because they didn’t have a conversation about it. And so I think those conversations need to start early because we’re going to need to collaborate and figure out with farmers how this is going to work for everybody.

Randy: Early on, we talked, and Grant, you alluded to this about MAHA, the Make America Healthy Again movement. Totally agree with what you said. And you know, you think about it from an American’s perspective, we’ve got 70% of Americans that are overweight or obese. We’ve got 50% of Americans who have high blood pressure. We have 15% of Americans who are type two diabetics. And probably more stunning, we have 37% of our kids today that are pre-diabetic, and those are alarming health numbers. So that’s at one end of the spectrum. Meanwhile, we’re having this huge debate about tax credits for healthcare and Obamacare and all that, but we have a, basically, a crisis going on in terms of health in America, and it’s driving up the cost of not only government health insurance, but health insurance generally.

So that’s one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is that we have in production Ag this incredible ability to produce, and it’s a combination of biotech and equipment and new types of fertilizer and ag chemicals, and treated seeds, and we’re doing a tremendous job in our ability to produce. Sometimes, I really do worry that we’re not connecting the two, the health effects and the problem that we have with health of Americans and then our ability to produce vast quantities of product, but where’s the market for it? And right now we’re seeing, because of those ag trade numbers I just talked about for some of our major commodities, we’re seeing that becoming a challenge. And we take something like soybeans. Okay, we’re saying we’re going to ship 12 million metric tons of soybeans this year under the China deal, and then 25 million the next three years. We also have biodiesel, as an example, and on the corn side, we have ethanol and other types of renewable fuels. Where is the soybean meal gonna go? We have the lowest herd size in 75 years here on the cattle side. So we’ve got lots of challenges from a production side that aren’t necessarily matching up with where we’re moving from a health effect, and I think that’s a huge challenge going down the pike.

Sanjeev: And I’ll throw on a third thing that I think we should connect these dots. We need a grand strategy, but you have a farm crisis driven by a few issues. You have a healthcare crisis. The third thing you have, I think, is a debt and deficit crisis. And James Carville said if he died, he wanted to come back as the reinsurance market.

I’ve always wanted to come back as the bond market. And you’ll get a thousand years of history, the bond market tends to win. And the bond market’s only going to fund our entitlement issues for so long, particularly, social security, Medicare, Medicaid. And so there is an interlinkage of these three crises that could be a great outcome for American agriculture, American food, American healthcare, and the American taxpayer. But it takes a system approach. It takes what you guys are talking about, which is what happened in terms of just collaboration among different stakeholders in a vehicle, whether it’s the Farm Bill or something else, to put the puzzle pieces together.

Randy: Yeah, I agree. I think we’re going to have to reimagine some of these things as Grant talked about. And you talk about the debt crisis, we’re 38 trillion and counting. We’ve got five programs in effect. We’ve got defense, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and interest on the debt. Those are 70% of our federal budget. 70%.

We’re going to spend more on interest on the debt this year than we are on defense spending, which is pretty stunning. I’m now eligible for Social Security, so I’m actually gonna sign up as quickly as I can to make sure it’s still there. The Social Security Trust fund is gonna start running a deficit in 2034 and the Medicare Hospital Fund in 2033.

We’ve got a real crisis in terms of these entitlement programs that no one wants to talk about, and it’s a huge challenge for us.

Sanjeev: But there’s like a set of puzzle-piece solutions that interlink, that we’ve been talking about. And I think that’s where the American farmer and American agriculture are really important to these things. And I think when you go around, no one would’ve linked those three but we need to link them.

Grant: Totally. And I also think that is at least my optimistic thought for moving forward. When you think about these new stakeholders that I mentioned, that are interested in this stuff now. Those are some of the people that need to be there to start linking all of this and forcing policy makers to think, oh, when I’m thinking about farm policy, it needs to be a lot broader than just farm policy.

It needs to be thinking about healthcare and prevention and all of these other pieces. And that is not to say that farm policy and our safety net for our farmers isn’t incredibly important and needs to be part of it, but we need to be thinking about that long-term strategy and markets and profit and what we are gonna do to evolve because doing this in silos isn’t working for the long term.

Sanjeev: Randy, I think hopefully, I think you’re aware of it, we do calories, electron energy density, water molecules. Those industries are dominated by very few companies and so we have deep respect for them. We work with 400 corporates. What are both of like your larger clients or even your more emerging clients, talking about? Are they also recognizing these broader issues?

Randy: Absolutely. I think they see a completely different environment than probably what we’re used to. And one of the things we advise our clients, for instance, with this new administration that’s come in, Sanjeev. They want to react to everything that this administration says or does.

And the first thing we try to say is, don’t. Just don’t respond to every little thing that comes out. That’s number one. I think number two, they’re looking at the long-term trends here. And I think what we’re seeing is a food system that’s going to fundamentally change over time over the next 10 to 20 years. I spent a lot of time studying when Dr. Norman Borlaug in the fifties had the green revolution, and his research that he did on wheat and basically took a blade of grass and made all of a sudden two blades of grass. And it was just, it was fundamentally important to feed people around the world. I think we’re on the cusp right now of what I would call the Evergreen Revolution, and that is going to be driven by data and technology. We have an enormous capacity to take that and use it to create a different agriculture and food system. I think people are starting to recognize that. Obviously, S2G is investing in that. I think that’s an exciting future that is going to help shape the agriculture and food system in a very modern way.

Grant: Yeah.

Sanjeev: Grant, what are your thoughts? I know that you now work with us, but before that had many clients. What were they talking about?

Grant: No. It’s funny, when you asked that question, one of the things that popped in my mind is that there were actually a lot of similarities with what farmers are struggling with and what some of the largest companies are struggling with. And I say that meaning that everything is changing, right?

But at the same time, they’re struggling with the changes that are right in front of them. They’re thinking about changing consumer demands, which are forcing reformulation today. It’s hard for them to do that and think about where things are going and what they’re gonna need to be doing in the next 10 years.

Especially because there is uncertainty as well, that’s sort of an umbrella that goes over everything. But I actually think some of the short and long-term struggles are actually very similar for a farmer and for a Fortune 50 company in the supply chain.

Sanjeev: I want to talk about Randy, what you mentioned about technology and data, and this Evergreen Revolution. I love that. Particularly, the role of those entrepreneurial companies and those innovators, inventors, and scientists in Washington. I lived in Washington from 2003 to 2011. My wife’s from Washington. I love Washington. Probably very few people say that. 

But one of the things I learned when I was there is the saying, ​“You’re either at the table or on the menu.” And so talk to us about our community largely, and Grant knows this or small sort of medium-sized companies. And through Grant’s tutelage and tutoring and help and mentorship, hopefully they’re on the table and not on the menu. But how do you mentor these emerging companies, these innovators, the people developing the technologies and the data platforms? How should they think about Washington?

Randy: One of my experiences of working with some startups that we’ve actually represented over time is they’re so focused as they should be on developing whether it’s the technology, the product, the process that they have, they oftentimes don’t think about, okay, but then there’s a role the government may have in terms of regulating it or approving it or labeling it or whatever it may be. And so one thing right out of the shoot is just having a really clear understanding of and access to those people who are making the key decisions, whether it be a regulatory process or some kind of approval process or a labeling process. And I get it from a startup perspective, you’ve gotta focus on moving very quickly on this, but at some point, some of the people we’ve represented in the past, it’s almost like they fell into understanding that the government played a key role in their success or failure, and they didn’t recognize that early on. And so I think having Grant and her capabilities that she has and people like that to help navigate that and to say, have you thought of this upfront, and understand this and have access to those people, is critically important.

Sanjeev: Grant, when you and I first met, I was like, ​“Why should we be in Washington? We’re just an investor in food and ag.” And I’ve learned so much from you and your mentorship of me, and obviously, our companies and our team. How do you think about the same question?

Grant: One thing I think about is it’s very easy, this is like the understatement of the century, to be frustrated with government for a whole host of different reasons. But for innovators and for these companies in incredibly highly regulated sectors, the fact of the matter is they’re going to have to deal with government at some point. Even if it’s not on their path to market, whether it’s food and agriculture or energy, these are sectors where there is going to be some intersection. And so if policymakers and government don’t understand what innovation is happening and how it’s coming down the pike, there is no way that they can make policy or regulations that take that into account.

So you have to tell that story. And if you’re the first of its kind, the fact of the matter is, they’ve never seen this stuff before. It’s never been part of the system. And the system that has been built on old technologies. And so you can be frustrated with government, but if you don’t talk to them, it’s hard to completely blame them because they had no idea probably that this even existed. And so, figuring out ways, as Randy said, to try to get ahead of it is really important. I think it’s also important to be tactical. It doesn’t mean that you need to be in DC all the time doing 9,000 meetings.

Really be specific about goals and what you need to get done and have a tactical approach, but that can be proactive to support what you’re trying to do.

Sanjeev: And I’ve been shocked, actually. You would think only big companies would get openness and receptivity on both sides of the aisle. And maybe it’s this country’s great attachment to entrepreneurship and innovation and pioneering spirit. But it’s been amazing to see the receptivity on both sides of these entrepreneurs and these startups. And I’ve been very surprised and pleasantly so about that openness. Randy, are you getting something similar in your client base as well?

Randy: Absolutely. I don’t think it matters whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican. I think that there is a growing awareness that we need new entrepreneurship and that we need this innovation, particularly in the agriculture and food system. So, I think there’s great receptivity in the administration as well as in Congress to the voice of new entrepreneurs that are in the business of solving problems and not creating problems.

Everybody that comes in there all day long has a problem. Entrepreneurs are coming in saying we have solutions to problems. What we need is some kind of a regulatory system that’s predictable. We need a tax policy that encourages entrepreneurship. And, we need research, basic research to help support this. But other than that, get outta the way government and let us do our thing.

Sanjeev: Grant, what are your thoughts? You’ve done a lot of this with our companies, particularly the last five years. How would you frame?

Grant: I totally agree. I think that members and the administration get excited to hear from different voices. To Randy’s point, it’s something that sticks with them and they get so excited about it and they wouldn’t have heard about it any other way, probably if we didn’t talk to them about it.

Randy: And we’ve heard a lot about America First and doing more of this here in the United States. But that also has to assume that we have a regulatory system that compares to Europe, Latin America, or Asia, which recognizes we need to embrace this new technology and bring it to the marketplace.

Because it’s gonna come, whether it’s here or somewhere else. And I think there are a lot of policymakers here in the United States who recognize we’re in a global environment here. If we want this technology to be developed here, we have to have a regulatory system that is competitive with other countries and other regions of the world.

Sanjeev: And I totally agree with that. And a pragmatic approach to regulatory. Because a large company can survive the five to seven-year regulatory scrutiny, a startup can’t. Very few can. 

One thing I want to come back to, Randy, and it’s us going from a surplus to a deficit, because since COVID, food security and food sovereignty have been a huge topic for us. But we tend to get invited to those conversations, not in the US, because the notion is that it’s a surplus country. Do we need to have that sort of conversation in the US, like food security, food sovereignty, a grand strategy on that in your view, just given some of the economic trend lines you’re seeing?

Randy: Every Farm Bill and Grant knows this very well, has a preamble to it. It talks about protecting and preserving and enhancing the family farm. By the way, I’m taking nothing away from that ​’cause that’s absolutely critically important. But I think the first sentence, and probably the only thing that should be in the preamble of a Farm Bill, is that food security is national security. And I think we’re now seeing a very strong focus in this country, particularly under this administration, on affordability. That’s becoming a huge issue. It used to be that people were worried about egg prices. Now they’re worried about beef prices. As we’ve seen from some of the actions that have been taken to open up our market to imported beef. I really do think the issue of affordability is going to be critical, and obviously, food is a key component of that. And I think for the first time in America, at least in my lifetime, during COVID, you could actually walk into your local grocery store and see a shortage. No one in America has ever experienced that. The Japanese have, the Asians have, clearly the Chinese have, the Europeans have, the Latin Americans have. But that was the first time that the average American had actually gone into a grocery store and couldn’t get what they wanted. And I think that had a fundamental impact on people’s thinking and psyche about it, and the cost of food. Not just the cost, but the availability of it. So we had this new agenda that we talked about, the Make America Healthy Again and having healthier food choices, but then we’ve also had this situation where we’ve had shortages, and that’s a whole new phenomenon here.

Grant: Totally. And I’ll just say, again, to the conversation earlier about the importance of having these conversations with the entire supply chain is critical to this, because in addition to shortages, the affordability piece is so important, Randy, I couldn’t agree more. And in the US, we have, because of the way that our supply chain and agricultural system has worked, we have had an incredibly affordable and abundant food supply chain.

But a lot of that is for processed foods and things like that. And if we are going to think about health outcomes and try to drive some more nutritious and sustainable choices and for everyone in our food supply system, affordability is going to be a major issue because it just needs to be produced and processed in a different way.

Sanjeev: And I think we have to link food affordability also with healthcare affordability. And I think if you link the two, there’s probably some going back to our puzzle pieces. And I think that also leads to like national security issues as well. 

I don’t want to end on a sober note, but what gives you both hope about maybe an oxymoron thing to say, but what gives you hope about Washington, about our moments that we’re in, agriculture and food, and what are the things that our community should be paying attention to and what gives you optimism?

Randy: I’ll let my good friend Grant go first on that one.

Grant: I would say two things come to mind. One is, even though we are in this uncertain landscape, that actually doesn’t mean we’re completely stuck. I see a lot of opportunity. I think all of the stuff that we’ve been talking about, even though it’s complicated, I think people are open to big ideas and big solutions on those issues. And so it’s actually a great time to have some of these conversations.

The other thing that gives me optimism and excitement is what I was talking about with more stakeholders at the table. I am super excited that there is so much enthusiasm about what we eat and where it comes from. I think these are huge issues, and if people are going to start voting on them and really thinking about them more, that also provides a huge opportunity to drive these conversations, and I’m excited about it.

Randy: Just adding to that, I would say number one, the velocity of change now is like no other time I’ve experienced in my career. And I find that really exciting and that’s driven by people who are innovators and you know, have the entrepreneurial spirit. I think number two, there’s a premium for people who can think differently. In other words, the way we did business when I started in this is not going to make us successful doing business that same way the next five or 10 years. And that challenge of thinking about how to do things differently, to solve problems, is just a huge motivator for me.

And finally, I would just say if I had to start all over again. Looking back over my 48 years of working in this industry, I would absolutely double down on agriculture because I think with the revolution that’s going on now with data and new technology, it’s probably the most exciting time that I’ve seen over the last five decades.

Sanjeev: I totally agree. I love this concept of green to evergreen, Randy. Grant, I love the new stakeholders that are coming in. I would add finance, whether it’s FinTech or venture, or traditional financial services. There are stakeholders that are willing to finance this stuff in a unique way, maybe fit-for-purpose way. I’m also really glad we went through an entire podcast and not said the word AI. Which I think is kudos to all three of us, actually. Randy, thank you so much for joining us. Grant, welcome to the team. I’m so excited to continue to work with you and Randy, look forward to working with you hopefully more and more.

Randy: Sanjeev real pleasure. Thanks for having me. And Grant, always a pleasure to be with you.

Grant: Thank you, Randy. Thanks, Sanjeev.