FoA 377: Leveraging Data to Advance Cattle Genetics With Lee Leachman

Soy Checkoff: https://www.unitedsoybean.org/

Prime Future Newsletter: https://primefuture.substack.com/

Leachman Cattle of Colorado: https://leachman.com/

URUS: https://www.urus.org/

In agriculture, we have exponentially more examples of people collecting data than we do of people using data to unlock real value supported by real dollars. Cattle genetics company Leachman Cattle is one of those few who demonstrated the ability to do just that.

"You know, we kinda had set our own course to analyze our own data, to gather our own data to store it. And that's just been part of our model. It certainly wouldn't have been the cheapest route to go. But if you go the cheapest route, which is you put your data in a breed association, then we wouldn't have had any proprietary data or indexes. And I think it is that information and the way we use that information that. That led to the opportunity that we had to do business with URUS."

That’s Lee Leachman, and Uris, who he mentioned there at the end, just agreed to acquire a majority stake in Leachman Cattle to take these proven proprietary genetics and build programs around them that optimize the entire value chain.

"We want to build systems that capture value for dairy farmers and beef cattle ranchers that bring more money back to the farm. And to do that, we've gotta optimize these animals from conception to consumption, and we've gotta have enough structure to pass the value back."

Lee Leachman chats with Janette Barnard on today’s Future of Agriculture podcast. Lee’s going to share more about his background and his company during the conversation, but I actually wasn’t a part of this one. This interview was conducted by my good friend and occasional co-host on this show, Janette Barnard. Long time listeners know Janette from previous episodes that she has co-hosted with me, and I hope you all are subscribers to her email newsletter, which is called Prime Future, which you can signup for at primefuture.substack.com.