FoA 309: Farm Business Analytics with Patrick Smith and Dan Maycock of Loftus Labs

Thank you to our presenting sponsor Merck Animal Health Ventures! https://www.merck-animal-health.com/animal-health-ventures/ Loftus Labs: https://www.loftuslabs.com/ FoA Community: www.Patreon.com/agriculture.  Today’s episode is all about farm business data and analytics. The story is different from others you’ve probably heard about though, in that Loftus Labs is not selling a product. They offer a service to help farmers to build customized processes to gain deeper insights into their unique business. Long time listeners might recall my interest in there being a “Geek Squad for agriculture”, this is like what I had in mind, but actually a lot better.  Patrick Smith and Dan Maycock are two of the co-founders of Loftus Labs. Pat is a fourth generation farmer and the CEO of Loftus Ranches in the Yakima Valley in Washington state. They grow primarily hops and apples, and they are vertically integrated: selling hops to breweries around the world, and packing and marketing apples both in partnership with other growers in the area. You probably know that Washington and apples go hand in hand, but you may not know that the Yakima Valley is the most important hops growing region in the world. The 50-mile stretch of the valley where Loftus is located grows 75% of the nation’s hops and about 25-30% of the world’s production annually depending on the year.  Our conversation today is about the data and business analytics journey that Pat has gone down and what led him to form Loftus Labs with a cofounding team that includes our other guest today, Dan Maycock. Dan’s background is in data engineering with companies you will have heard of like Boeing and Amazon. Their business is really interesting, and I think directly addresses the some aspects of agtech that often get overlooked. Such as the fact that every farm is different and needs customized solutions, and that the many of the tools already exist and what are lacking are implementation partners and support.