AgCulture Podcast

A freestall may look like a fairly simple piece of bent steel. But behind its modern design lies decades of observation, experimentation, failure and research into how cows naturally move, rest and behave.
John de Jonge grew up on a dairy farm in British Columbia before entering agricultural manufacturing and dairy barn equipment. In the 1990s, he became part of a small group that began using time-lapse video and early sensor technology to study cows in pasture and inside freestall barns.
What they discovered challenged many of the industry’s assumptions.
Freestalls were often too short, too narrow and too restrictive. Neck rails were positioned incorrectly. Pipes were placed in the cow’s natural movement path. The industry had focused heavily on the strength and durability of the steel—but not enough on how the cow actually used the space.
In this episode, John shares how that research helped reshape freestall design around the world. He and Paul also examine why the “best” housing system depends on climate, bedding, manure handling, labor and management—and why copying a successful neighboring dairy can still end badly.
The technology inside dairy barns continues to change, but one principle has not: the entire system is only as strong as the environment it creates for the individual cow. Listen now!
MEET THE GUEST
John de Jonge grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, where he developed an early interest in machinery, manufacturing and dairy housing.
After studying agricultural mechanics and engineering at Olds College, John worked in several manufacturing environments before purchasing a small agricultural fabrication business at age 25. He went on to help develop and expand dairy housing equipment across North America and international markets.
During the 1990s, John worked alongside researchers, veterinarians and other industry specialists to study cow behavior using time-lapse video and early sensor technology. That work helped challenge conventional assumptions about freestall dimensions, neck-rail placement and the space cows require to rise, rest and move naturally.
John is now focused on InBarn, where he continues to help dairy producers and their advisors design facilities around cow comfort, management realities and long-term operational performance.

ABOUT THE PODCAST
Discover the world of agriculture with the "Ag Culture Podcast".This podcast will be a gateway for those passionate about agriculture to explore its global perspectives and innovative practices.Join Paul as he shares his experiences in the agricultural industry, his travels, and encounters with important figures around the world.Available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.Subscribe at http://www.agculturepodcast.com and keep an eye out for future episodes, bringing insights and stories from the vibrant world of agriculture.

Agriculture runs on more than data.
It runs on judgment.
The experienced operator who knows when the weather forecast doesn’t quite feel right. The manager who can recognize a problem before it shows up clearly in the numbers. The farmer who has spent 20 years learning which constraints matter most when there is no perfect answer.
But much of that knowledge has never been written down—and as experienced farmers and operators leave the industry, it can disappear with them.
In this episode of the AgCulture Podcast, Paul sits down with Shail Khiyara, CEO of SWARM Engineering and co-author of Agentic Artificial Intelligence, to explore how AI could change that.
Shail argues that the biggest opportunity isn’t replacing the operator. It’s giving operators the ability to combine decades of human experience with real-time data, optimization, and AI-supported decision-making.
They explore the “decision gap” between when information becomes available and when a good decision actually gets made, why operators lose enormous amounts of time gathering and reconciling information, and how decision fatigue causes valuable opportunities to simply go unaddressed.
The conversation also digs into the difference between general-purpose AI tools and vertical AI designed specifically for agriculture, why context may matter more than raw intelligence, and how farmers should identify their first AI use cases.
From forage harvest decisions on a dairy farm to fruit allocation and global seafood supply chains, this episode moves AI away from hype and toward a much more practical question:
Can AI help the people who actually run agriculture make better decisions, faster, without losing the human judgment that made them good operators in the first place?

MEET THE GUEST
Shail Khiyara is the CEO of SWARM, a decision intelligence company for the operators who feed the world, and the co-author of "Agentic Artificial Intelligence" a Forbes Top 10 tech book. He has co-authored earlier books on intelligent automation, and his work has appeared in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and CIO.SWARM recently raised a $10M Series A. A recent example of Shail's writing is his AgFunder News piece, "Farming knowledge is dying but AI can save it," which argues that when farmers retire without a successor, the operational wisdom they've built over decades disappears with them, and makes the case for AI as a way to capture that knowledge before it's gone.
ABOUT THE PODCAST
Discover the world of agriculture with the "Ag Culture Podcast".
This podcast will be a gateway for those passionate about agriculture to explore its global perspectives and innovative practices. Join Paul as he shares his experiences in the agricultural industry, his travels and encounters with important figures around the world.
Available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Subscribe at http://www.agculturepodcast.com and keep an eye out for future episodes, bringing insights and stories from the vibrant world of agriculture.

Most Americans know George Washington Carver as “the Peanut Man.” But peanuts are actually one of the least interesting parts of his story.
In this solo episode of the AgCulture Podcast, Paul goes beyond the familiar version of Carver’s life to explore how he approached one of the biggest agricultural challenges facing the American South: How do you build resilient farms and rural communities when the entire system has become dependent on a single cash crop?
Carver saw agriculture as an interconnected system of healthy soil, diverse crops, household nutrition, local resources, farmer education, and viable markets. Working with farmers who often had little money to invest, he developed practical ways to restore depleted soils, diversify away from continuous cotton production, improve family food security, and create economic opportunities around new crops.
Paul explores Carver’s early fascination with plants, his scientific training at Iowa State, his move to Tuskegee, the famous Jesup agricultural wagon, the arrival of the boll weevil, and how Carver worked to solve not only the biological problem of crop diversification—but the economic problem of convincing farmers to actually adopt it.
More than a century later, his story raises surprisingly modern questions about monocultures, markets, technology adoption, extension, soil health, and what it really takes to make agriculture more resilient.
MEET THE HOST
Paul Windemuller is a dairy farmer, entrepreneur, Nuffield International Farming Scholar, and host of the AgCulture Podcast. His work explores the intersection of agriculture, technology, business strategy, and the ideas that shape resilient farms and rural communities.
In this historical solo series, Paul steps away from conversations about what agriculture might look like tomorrow to examine the farmers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and innovators who helped shape it in the first place.
Through Carver’s story, Paul explores a recurring theme of the AgCulture Podcast: lasting agricultural innovation happens when science, economics, practical farming, and the needs of the people actually doing the work come together.
ABOUT THE PODCAST
Discover the world of agriculture with the "Ag Culture Podcast". This podcast will be a gateway for those passionate about agriculture to explore its global perspectives and innovative practices.
Join Paul as he shares his experiences in the agricultural industry, his travels and encounters with important figures around the world.
Available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.Subscribe at http://www.agculturepodcast.com and keep an eye out for future episodes, bringing insights and stories from the vibrant world of agriculture.

Farmers around the world are being asked to become more sustainable—but who pays for it, and how do we decide what "sustainable" actually means?
In this episode of the AgCulture Podcast, Paul sits down with fellow dairy farmer and Nuffield Scholar Wilco Brouwer de Koning to explore what he's learned studying biodiversity across dairy systems around the world. From the Netherlands' intense regulatory environment to New Zealand, Japan, Brazil, Canada, and the United States, Wilco has discovered that sustainability priorities can look dramatically different depending on where you farm.
The conversation digs into the tradeoffs between climate, biodiversity, water quality, food production, animal welfare, and farm profitability—and why improving one metric can sometimes make another worse. Wilco also explains how the Netherlands is using standardized farm data and KPIs to reward farmers through milk premiums and lower interest rates, offering a glimpse of what a market for biodiversity and sustainability could eventually look like globally.
If farmers are going to be asked to produce more than food, Wilco argues they also need a system that recognizes—and rewards—the additional value they create.

MEET THE GUEST
Wilco Brouwer de Koning is a third-generation dairy farmer from Heiloo in the western Netherlands, where he operates Farm Ter Coulster with his family. The farm milks approximately 180 cows across 125 hectares in one of the most densely populated areas of the country, creating a unique intersection between commercial dairy farming, nature, and the surrounding community.
Wilco's approach to farming centers around three pillars: grazing, working alongside nature, and connecting agriculture with society. The farm includes 35 hectares dedicated to nature, while Wilco and his family actively engage their local community through direct sales, social media, farm events, and their well-known spring "dancing cows" celebration.
Beyond the farm, Wilco is active with LTO Netherlands and represents dairy farmers within the International Dairy Federation. He has been particularly involved in developing Key Performance Indicators that can measure—and ultimately reward—farmers for improvements in biodiversity and sustainability.
As a Nuffield Scholar, Wilco is traveling globally to study how different dairy industries measure and reward biodiversity. His goal is to help develop systems where farmers aren't only recognized for the milk they produce, but also for the environmental and societal value their farms provide.ABOUT THE PODCASTDiscover the world of agriculture with the "Ag Culture Podcast".This podcast will be a gateway for those passionate about agriculture to explore its global perspectives and innovative practices.Join Paul as he shares his experiences in the agricultural industry, his travels, and encounters with important figures around the world.Available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.Subscribe at http://www.agculturepodcast.com and keep an eye out for future episodes, bringing insights and stories from the vibrant world of agriculture.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. New software, sensors, robots, and dashboards promise to revolutionize dairy farming. Yet for many producers, the day-to-day reality hasn't changed nearly as much as the headlines suggest.
Recorded live at the MilkPro Summit 2026 in Brazil, Paul shares one of his most requested keynote presentations, drawing on his experience as a dairy farmer and his research visiting hundreds of farms around the world. He explains why AI isn't fundamentally a technology story—it's a management story.
Through practical farm examples and real-world frameworks, Paul introduces the concepts of the AI Profit Gap and the Four Levels of Farm Data Value, showing why many farms have invested heavily in technology but still struggle to make better decisions. More importantly, he lays out a practical roadmap for how producers can move from collecting data to creating measurable improvements in profitability, leadership, and farm performance.
Whether you're just beginning your AI journey or already have robots, sensors, and software across your operation, this keynote offers a practical way to think about what comes next.

MEET THE HOST
Paul Windemuller is a dairy farmer, entrepreneur, Nuffield International Farming Scholar, and host of the AgCulture Podcast. Over the past three years, he has traveled across five continents researching how artificial intelligence is transforming livestock agriculture, visiting hundreds of farms and interviewing producers, researchers, and technology leaders.
His work focuses on helping farmers move beyond simply collecting more data to building management systems that improve decision-making, profitability, and long-term resilience. Through his speaking, consulting, and research, Paul challenges agriculture to rethink the relationship between AI, data, leadership, and farm management.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

Discover the world of agriculture with the "Ag Culture Podcast".This podcast will be a gateway for those passionate about agriculture to explore its global perspectives and innovative practices.Join Paul as he shares his experiences in the agricultural industry, his travels, and encounters with important figures around the world.
Available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Subscribe at http://www.agculturepodcast.com and keep an eye out for future episodes, bringing insights and stories from the vibrant world of agriculture.