Guest: Bret Sitzmann, Head of Ecosystem & Grain at Solinftec, is an experienced business manager and marketing director in agriculture with a demonstrated history of working with technology and digital tools across the globe. Bret grew up on a farm in a small town in Northwest Iowa and has been surrounded by agriculture his whole life. Bret started down his ag journey once he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Agronomy and Crop Science from Iowa State University. After college, he went on to work for Farmers Cooperative Co as a sales agronomist as well as Floyd Valley Grain as a grain merchant. Soon after that, he moved on to working with Monsanto Company, The Climate Corporation, and Bayer Crop Science. In addition, before Bret recently joined Solinftec, he worked with IBM on The Weather Channel team. It’s also worth mentioning, Bret farmed for over 15 years in Le Mars, IA on his own after he graduated college and sold DeKalb seed as well.

Jordan Van Trump sits down with Bret Sitzmann, Head of Ecosystem & Grain at Solinftec, to talk about growing up in the world’s ice cream capital, what it’s like being an Iowa State fan, his experience working with Farmers Cooperative Co & Floyd Valley Grain, how seed technology started hitting the market place in the early 2000s, the difficulty of farming on his own right out of school, his decision to walk away from farming, working with your family on the farm, how drones could potentially affect the custom spraying space, the future of autonomous machinery, sustainability, carbon markets, what it was like working with IBM, how important leadership is within a company, the story behind Solinftec and how it got started in the sugar cane space, being one of the biggest ag tech companies in South America, trying to gain market share in the US market, and some of the biggest disruptors to watch out for in agriculture moving forward.