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Cornell University

Cornell Agtech Innovation Intermediaries and Sustainability Workshop

Dewayne Dill

DeWayne Dill

Facticity Technologies, Inc.

I have been at the intersection of technology and dairy my entire career. I have a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in dairy management. My graduate research projects were working with the early prototype versions of milk meters, estrous detection technology, mastitis detection and artificial intelligence. As a student I also developed a herd management program used by the university dairy herd for several decades as well as the first ration formulation program used in the field by dairy nutrition consultants. From these early beginnings my career stepped briefly through dairy extension before working at a feed company and consulting company before settling down as president of a software company providing ration formulation to most of the feed industry. I left that position intending to devote time to mission work to establish the heart of a dairy industry in Haiti. When the Haiti opportunity was cut short, I decided to use my 30+ years of experience and knowledge in dairy records, dairy technology and ration formulation to build an automated system that would calculate dairy operation greenhouse gas emissions on a daily, individual animal basis.

Briefly describe your work with agtech and explain what motivates you to invest your time in this work.

Much of my work and motivation was described in my bio.  Why I invest time results from strongly held core beliefs about global food production.  And admittedly, these beliefs were shaped by my time in Haiti. These include:

  • dairy protein and fat are essential for health of young children
  • net zero requirements cannot be so capital intensive as to preclude small operations
  • models for calculating GHG footprint must be factual, science supported and not political
  • continued improvements in ruminant efficiency will arise from improved understanding of integrated data sources on farm

Briefly explain any commitments to sustainability that you or your organization bring to your work on agtech innovation. Be as specific as possible regarding what kinds of social and environmental impacts you aim to produce, and the relevant strategies you are pursuing.

Perhaps this question is best explained by thinking of a continuum with a 100,000 cow dairy business at one end and a Haitian peasant farmer with 3-5 cows at the other.  The Haitian model has milk for the family and neighbors and any excess is transported by bicycle to the nearest collection point for sale in the nearest village.  The large scale model includes milk from several thousand cows produced in the desert with irrigated water and trucked and/or dried and shipped to anywhere in the world.  Our strategy is to focus on a platform that supports accurate estimates of sustainability metrics regardless of size and sophistication.

Briefly describe the way(s) in which you assess/measure social and environmental impact in your work on agtech innovation.

How environmental impact gets assessed is at the heart of our business.  We have chosen to depart from the pack and focus on individual drivers of sustainability measured on a continual basis opposed to practice based assessments and/or LCA based models.

Our research and this workshop aim to investigate tensions between the demands/imperatives of the tech-finance industry and the demands/imperatives of social-environmental problem solving. Please comment on this problem frame in general, and in relation to specific examples from your own experience.

The big question that still hangs unresolved is “who pays”?  A closely related question is what are you actually paying for?  This gets at how the environmental benefit is calculated.  Green washing is real.  I participated in the CoLab accelerator hoping for three outcomes:

1) Understand who pays or how sustainability initiatives can generate new revenue for a farm.
2) Determine the favored model or specifications of a model for calculating impact.
3) DFA’s industry position to validate the approach we would take coming from participation.

None of those outcomes are yet to be realized.

To investigate the tensions suggested above, we rely on the concept of “mission drift”. We understand mission drift as a tendency for social and environmental impact commitments of individuals and organizations to leak out over time due to pressures and opportunities to expand revenue, valuation and capital gains. Our project aims to investigate mission drift applied to entrepreneurial ventures as well as to organizations dedicated to supporting innovation. Please comment on this thesis in general, and in relation to specific things you have experienced where possible. To the extent you find this thesis useful, what strategies can you identify to defend against mission drift?

You’re going to need to help me with the concept and how that differs from startup best practice outlined in Lean Startup by Eric Ries.  You must pivot based on market realities.  However, staying true to your core isn’t hard.  Remaining economically viable is the continual challenge.  Ultimately, it comes down to having nerves of steel and believing in a righteous cause.

I’ve referred to our venture as a spiritual calling.  A respected mentor replied he believes it is also a divine appointment.

Please share something you would like to take away from the workshop.

Whether a free-market capitalism based sustainability company has a place and can survive/thrive in food production or if environmental impact will ultimately be government mandated, measured and controlled.  Said another way, is our exit to sell technology to the government or to build a company?