Big Data in Agriculture: Land O’Lakes’ Teddy Bekele

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:02)
You may have used the phrase bet the farm, but if you don't work in agriculture, you might not fully appreciate what that means. On today's episode, find out how technology can support successful farm production.

**Teddy Bekele** (0:15)
I'm Teddy Bekele from Land O'Lakes, and you're listening to Me, Myself, and AI.

**Sam Ransbotham** (0:21)
Welcome to Me, Myself, and AI, a podcast on artificial intelligence and business. Each episode, we introduce you to someone innovating with AI.
I'm Sam Ransbotham, professor of analytics at Boston College. I'm also the AI and Business Strategy guest editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (0:39)
And I'm Shervin Khodabandeh, senior partner with BCG, and I co-lead BCG's AI practice in North America. Together, MIT SMR and BCG have been researching and publishing on AI for six years, interviewing hundreds of practitioners and surveying thousands of companies on what it takes to build and to deploy and scale AI capabilities and really transform the way organizations operate.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:05)
Shervin, I are talking today with Teddy Bekele, chief technology officer at Land O'Lakes. Teddy, thanks for joining us. Welcome.

**Teddy Bekele** (1:12)
Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.

**Sam Ransbotham** (1:15)
I think we first met back in 2018 when you were at WinField United and we did a webinar together about data and analytics.
Now you're at the parent company, Land O'Lakes. Can you tell us about your current role?

**Teddy Bekele** (1:26)
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the chief technology officer here at Land O'Lakes and it's a farmer-owned cooperative, farm-to-fork cooperative, I would say, as well. We cover the whole gamut all the way from the time the seed goes into the ground, crops come out of the ground, they turn into grain, right? The grain then is used for animal feed. And Purina is also a Land O'Lakes brand.
And so that grain is then used to create feed formulations for animals. And then those dairy producers are part of the cooperative. We buy the milk from those producers and turn it into value-added products such as butter and cheese, which you find at the store.
So when we talk farm-to-fork, you truly cover the whole spectrum here in a very large way. And my responsibility as a Chief Technology Officer is obviously anything that runs the internal systems for our organization, enterprises for planning ERP websites, CRM, things like that. But another exciting area is the area of data and analytics, as well as a lot of software that's used actually in our business working with our customers, whether it's supporting an existing business model or helping develop a new business model that then runs on the technology and really working with those business leaders to be able to define what that is and then working either with the internal resources or with external third parties to be able to develop some really neat solutions.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (2:49)
And the composition of the co-op is what?

**Teddy Bekele** (2:53)
It's really interesting. So the co-op is made up of two sides of the membership. One I mentioned a second ago, they're dairy producers. And that is how the company got started. Exactly 101 years ago, dairy producers here in Minnesota got together and said, we want to get our product out east.
And so they created this cooperative to be able to handle more of an aggregation of all their products.
The other side of the membership are ag retailers. And so these are independently and operated businesses in rural communities. And they serve row crop farmers, predominantly row crop farmers in those communities. So corn, soybeans, wheat, canola.
And what we do for them is as a supply cooperative, we buy the large seed crop protection products from large manufacturers and we sell it to them and then they sell it to the farmers that they serve. And in a lot of cases, these ag retailers are also cooperatives themselves. So their boards are made up of the farmers they serve. So our board is made up of half of these dairy producers and the other half is these ag retailers. And that combination is the Land O'Lakes cooperative.

**Shervin Khodabandeh** (3:57)
And as the CTO, what's your mandate for the co-op?

**Teddy Bekele** (4:01)
We are here to serve the members all the way down to that row crop farmer and making sure that we make them competitive at the farm gate, whatever they need to do on a day-to-day basis to stay competitive. And particularly as a chief technology officer, how do we keep up with the latest trends? How do we make sure we apply those technology trends to the solutions we give them? How do we make our supply chain more efficient?