Episodes

About the Guest Jim Huang has 24 years of experience in the commodity futures industry. Starting as a data analyst with Thomson Reuters in St. Louis in 1998, then moved to Chicago in 2001. During his 11 years at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, he worked closely with the Agricultural Commodities team, coordinating market maker programs for options contracts including Corn, Soybean, Wheat, Lean Hog, Live Cattle, Butter and Milk. Ten years ago, he started his own business, China-America Commodity...

Quotes “Getting started was so fast that it was like I blinked and we were running PigFlow. It was remarkable because there were no issues between blinking.” “I have not looked at my notebooks since the moment that I logged into PigFlow. This is changing the industry!” “PigFlow immediately changed the caretaker’s behaviors throughout the day.” “Everything is entered as people are doing the work. No one sits in the office and enters data on a phone. There is not a single person including myse...

About the Guest I’m a Texas gentleman who believes in hard work with a little fun thrown in. My day job is makin’ bacon at Pederson’s Farms as the Vice President. But, my most important job is lovin’ on my wife & three young daughters… and throwing in some cowboy stuff when I can. As if that doesn’t keep me busy enough, I’ve picked up podcasting. You may know me from my Instagram account, The Cowboy Perspective. Most of the things I am confident in today stem from the things I learned and cont...

About the Guest Robert van Barneveld is Group CEO and Managing Director of the Sunpork Group of Companies which includes SunPork Farms (farming approximately 51,000 sows across Australia and 3,000 sows in New Zealand), PIC Australia, Swickers Kingaroy Bacon Factory and SunPork Fresh Foods. Collectively the Group produces approximately 18% of Australia’s pork. In addition to his work with SunPork, Dr van Barneveld is also a Director of the Australasian Pig Research Institute Ltd, Chairman of th...

About the Guest A seasoned AgTech Entrepreneur Terry grew up on a dairy farm. After studying engineering he spent 9 years working for blue chip companies worldwide on cloud computing projects. In 2004 he applied this knowledge to the livestock industry founding FarmWizard.com the world’s first SaaS for managing livestock. He grew that business over 10 years selling it in 2015 to Wheatsheaf. Terry believes that recent advances in Machine Vision powered by Deep Learning Artificial Intelligence no...

About the Guest Dr. Márcio Gonçalves graduated in Veterinary Medicine from a leading university in Brazil. After working in commercial swine production, he pursued his Ph.D. from Kansas State University in Applied Swine Nutrition. Upon graduation, he worked as a global swine nutritionist for a major swine genetic company, working with producers from over 20 countries, and has conducted 120 swine-related experiments to date. Currently, Márcio is the founder and CEO at Swine it, with a mission to...

About the Guest Steve Lerch is a former Google executive, a consultant, and an award-winning international public speaker. He spent nearly a decade at Google designing the digital strategies and marketing campaigns of well known brands like GoPro, federal government agencies like the US Census, and national checkoff programs like the National Pork Board and Avocados From Mexico. Steve also served as a strategic thought leader at Google’s headquarters, where he taught thousands of Googler’s abou...

About SwineTech provides pork producers with workforce and swine management solutions that increase the quality of care for pigs everywhere. We are committed to helping pork producers navigate labor and survivability challenges within their operations. We accomplish this by providing production employees with a workforce and swine management platform that immediately improves workplace organization and communication. This ensures that people are less stressed and more aware of where they need t...

About the Guest Jeff Kayser has 40 years of swine operations experience working with independent and integrated pork producers. Including business development through facility acquisitions, new construction, renovation and expansion of swine facilities and contract grower procurement. Coordinating transportation and truck wash operations, animal movements and marketing activities. Directing information services activities in reproduction and grow-finish record keeping and biological versus fina...

About the Guest John Paul Engel is the Founder of Knowledge Capital Consulting and Secure Bin Labs. John has worked in a dozen countries advising the senior management of some of the largest companies in the world. He has helped dozens of companies go from idea to a high growth company. John’s advice has appeared in INC, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, and over 250 publications. He has been invited to guest lecture at University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon, The University of Iowa, and Oxford Uni...

About the Guest Aidan is President of AgriTech Capital, a resource for new and established companies working at the interface of agriculture and technology. Prior to this Aidan was CEO at Cainthus and CIO at Alltech among other senior roles in a 25 year plus career at that company. He is also a non-executive director at Origin Enterprises, the leading crop inputs company in Northern Europe. AgriTech Capital has aided governments, fortune 500 food companies and large agri-businesses on their AgT...

About the Guest Joseph Kerns, President of Partners for Production Agriculture, has thirty years’ experience working with producers, suppliers, and mills to support agricultural operations. He leads a team of professionals with the purpose of understanding the financial parameters around agricultural markets so that those that he works with can thrive and prosper. Joseph Kerns What can you expect to learn from this episode of Popular Pig? Why the future of animal agriculture in the midwest l...

About the Guest Levi C. Maaia is the director of “Pathways to Invention” a documentary on Lemelson-MIT award-winning inventors. He was in Iowa City recently filming at SwineTech for the film. Levi began his media career in FM radio, cable television and broadband where he became fascinated by the potential for technology to educate, and open a window on the world. He earned a Ph.D. studying Maker culture and STEM education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He later started Maaia M...

About the Guest Dr. Yanbin Shen is currently the Global Technical Services Director at APC, Inc. APC, Inc. is one of seven independent companies under The Lauridsen Group, Inc. and is headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa. APC was founded in 1981 and is dedicated to the research and application of blood products in animal nutrition. The company has grown into a global manufacturer and supplier of porcine, bovine plasma and hemoglobin. APC has approximately 500 employees in 9 countries and 17 manufactur...

About the Guest A lifelong “car guy” Brad Zimmerman began his career in event marketing which naturally gravitated towards professional motorsports. A move from California to North Carolina in the early 2000’s to be closer to the epicenter of stock car racing, Brad quickly merged his passion of cars with the growing experiential marketing industry which then dovetailed into social and digital marketing. Having worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, Brad is constantly looking ahead...

About the Guest Ron Ketchem graduated from the University of Missouri in 1973 with a BS in Animal Science and master studies in Reproductive Physiology and Animal Breeding. He worked 12 years for a genetic company in production, sales, and marketing and developed their AI program. He then spent 15 years in Indiana with a major feed company as a Swine Consultant providing technical support and training. Ron later purchased Swine Management Services, LLC in August 2002 with Mark Rix. SMS was sold...

About the Guest Chris Westfall is one of the most sought-after business coaches and keynote speakers in the world. He has helped launch over five dozen businesses, and has appeared on ABC NEWS, NBC TV and CNN. A regular contributor to Forbes, he has worked with thousands of leaders at Fortune 500 companies, non-profit organizations and high-tech startups. A coach to entrepreneurs and executives around the globe, his clients have appeared on Shark Tank, Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank-Australia. He ...

About the Guest Dr. Kiah Berg grew up on a small show pig farm in Oregon where she found her passion for raising and feeding pigs. She earned her BS in animal science in K-State, and continued on to pursue a MS and PhD in Applied Swine Nutrition with the K-State team. During her graduate career, she had the opportunity to conduct many large scale sow nutrition trials on commercial sow farms including Hord Livestock, New Fashion Pork, Christensen Farms and Pillen Family Farms. In May of 2020 she...

About the Guest Casey L. Bradley was born and raised on a swine and mixed crop operation in SW Michigan. She received a B.S. in Animal Science from Michigan State University. After graduation, Casey worked for New Fashion Pork on farms in Wyoming, Minnesota, and Illinois. In 2002, Casey accepted a position at The University of Arkansas as Swine Research Manager. In addition, Casey completed her M.S. and Ph.D. in Animal Science while working for the University. Her Masters focused on passive im...

About the Guest Brady grew up on a mixed livestock and row crop farm where he found his passion for the swine industry. That led him to earn his B.S. in Animal Science and M.S. in Animal Breeding and Genetics from Iowa State University focusing on sow longevity. Brady started with DNA Genetics in 2015 and currently is the Multiplication Business Lead, where he works with multiplier partners to ensure their long-term success while providing a quality product to the commercial producer. Prior to ...

About the Guest Brett L. Kaysen, Ph.D., is the senior vice president of sustainability for the National Pork Board. He leads the organization-wide effort to establish pork as the responsible protein of choice. He works to strengthen food chain and consumer understanding of pork production practices by developing research-based communication strategies that engage and influence key decision makers. Dr. Kaysen earned his degrees from Colorado State University. He holds a B.A. in Animal Science, ...

About the Guest Dr. Patrick Moore has been a leader in the international environmental field for more than 45 years. He is a co-founder of Greenpeace and served for nine years as President of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a Director of Greenpeace International. As the leader of many campaigns Dr. Moore was a driving force shaping policy and direction for 15 years while Greenpeace became the world’s largest environmental activist organization. Dr. Patrick Moore What can you learn from t...

About the Guest Jimmy Tosh is the owner and CEO of Tosh Pork and Tosh Farms. Tosh Farms is a crop and swine production operation with 19,000 acres of row crops producing both white and yellow corn, soybeans, canola, wheat and barley. Tosh Pork currently has 36,000 sows. Sows are primarily company owned with about 70% of the wean to finish contracted. Trucking is done by Bacon By Gosh, a Tosh owned company. Read more about Jimmy Tosh below! Jimmy Tosh What can you learn from this episode of P...

About the Guest Jim Eadie is the founder of Swineweb.com and is pioneering in the modern technology of how Pork Producers access information timely and concisely starting in 2005. After growing the brand and business, the group expanded with a Marketing Consulting Service (www.agricultureadvertising.com) and spin-off sites for Dairy (www.dairyproducer.com), Poultry (www.poultryproducer.com), Crops (www.cropproducer.com), and Beef (www.beefproducer.ca). Passionate about storytelling, brand build...