Carl Casale is a senior agricultural partner at Ospraie AG Science, a company that invests in agricultural innovation. His responsibilities at the company include identifying investment opportunities that highlight sustainability. Carl Casale has previous experience in the food industry and was the former CEO at CHS, Inc., a leading energy, grains, and foods company.
Bees are responsible for pollinating and growing several wild and crop plants worldwide. However, bees are rapidly dying off in different parts of the world, and the agricultural community has had to invent other ways to pollinate crops, hence using drones.
The drones used in pollination usually have a programmed flight path that they follow. Many farmers gather pollen by shaking loose flowers from trees, then extracting the pollen from the flower. The planter then places it in a special device attached to the drone before sending it in the air to spread the pollen over a specific area. The farmer can also control the drones remotely.
A longtime resident of West St. Paul, Minnesota, with decades of experience working in the agricultural industry, Carl Casale serves as a senior agricultural partner at Ospraie AG Science. In this role, Carl Casale identifies potential investment opportunities in agricultural technologies (AgTech).
AgTech is becoming increasingly important in the modern world as it promises to solve some of the most critical sustainability issues in the present and foreseeable future. Sometimes called sustainable agriculture, AgTech leverages technological advancement to minimize agricultural input, maximize livestock and crop yield, reduce degradation of the environment from agricultural pollution, and promote food security.
Technologies like moisture sensors can help farmers minimize inputs like water. When input use is optimized, excess costs from wastage of resources are avoided, and the pricing of farm produce is reduced accordingly.
Precision farming, a type of farming that uses satellite imagery and data processing technology to guide fertilizer application and holistic crop cultivation, is a subset of AgTech. With precision farming tools, farmers can make informed decisions on the quantity and type of fertilizer to use by leveraging data like plant greenness, height, moisture level, and stem strength. This can help increase the amount and bolster farm produce’s quality.
According to data from the United Nations, the world population is poised to reach 9.8 billion by 2050. With the existing natural resources-to-food conversion rate, only one-quarter of the population can be sustained with the planet’s resources. AgTech is poised to solve this problem by optimizing input-to-yield rates.
An accomplished agribusiness executive with extensive leadership experience in the industry, Carl Casale served as president and CEO of CHS, Inc., a prominent Fortune 500 cooperative owned by farmers, ranchers, and agricultural cooperatives. Leveraging over three decades of agricultural experience, Carl Casale serves as a senior agricultural partner at Ospraie AG Science.
In July 2022, Ospraie Ag Science, on its website, announced its partnership with Phospholutions, a US-based agritech business with substantial R&D efforts in technologies that can improve the effects of fertilizers. Ospraie Ag Science, along with the crop protection company UPL Ltd. and the global investment arm of the American agribusiness company Bunge, injected convertible notes to facilitate the commercialization of Phospholutions’ trailblazing fertilizer additive RhizoSorb in its Series B round.
RhizoSorb optimizes and bolsters the effect of phosphorus fertilizers by increasing the rate at which the nutrient is assimilated by crops when applied on farmland. The creation of Rhizoburb is motivated by the past challenge of inadequate phosphorus assimilation by plants. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient that helps crops grow.
Only 10 to 30 percent of phosphorus fertilizers used to be absorbed by plants. The remaining phosphorus is partly converted into unavailable forms (phosphorus compounds that plants cannot assimilate) or washed away by water. Besides increasing the required fertilizer quantity (and associated cost), the wasted phosphorus can also pollute water and promote global warming.
Phosphorus fertilizer manufacturers can outrightly incorporate RhizoSorb during the fertilizer-making process to triple phosphorus fertilizer efficiency. Farmers can also mix the additive with phosphorus fertilizers when applying them on farms. RhizoSorb roughly cuts the required nitrogen fertilizer quantity by half. In 2021, the additive was tested on diverse cash crops, including maize, wheat, rice, barley, and sunflower, in 14 states and demonstrated positive effects.
A former CEO of one of the largest member-owned cooperatives in the United States, Carl Casale is one of the leading voices for food security through Agronomy. Carl Casale is an agricultural industry veteran, having spent several decades driving significant growth for his organizations.
The number of people around the world who are hungry is staggering. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, over 800 million people face hunger as of 2020. The biggest factor contributing to hunger is a lack of access to food, and as technology improves, it is becoming easier for people to grow their crops.
Through agronomy, people can learn how to grow crops using less land and water, and they can also learn how to identify pests and diseases that could harm their crops. This knowledge will make it easier for them to keep their crop yields high and ensure that they have enough food for everyone in the community.
The agricultural sector is invaluable to the survival of humans and the planet. Innovation is improving this sector, and research provides farmers with the appropriate equipment, technology, and information. Effective practices, optimal resource utilization, and management enable modern farmers to cater to the rising food demand.
Agriculture is facing significant challenges threatening the sustainability of this sector. Climate change is changing weather patterns and affecting productivity. Farmers are harvesting fewer yields than before and incurring seed losses due to unpredictable droughts. Additionally, climate change is causing heavy rains, affecting crop survival, and eroding the soil.
Supply chain disruptions are affecting the sector’s profitability. Logistics issues emanating from COVID-19 affect the movement of inputs to farmers and the transportation of products to the market. Products are spoiling on farms, while delays in receiving fertilizers and equipment affect planting patterns.
The rising urbanization rates threaten the size of arable land. Land buyers in suburban areas are investing in buildings and office complexes. Expectedly, the popularity of farming is declining, and the industry’s total productivity will fall in the future if this pattern continues.
The labor shortage is another challenge facing farmers. The supply of nontechnical workers, such as farm laborers and harvesters, is declining considerably since most people favor jobs in formal sectors. Declining farm profits hinder farmers from paying these employees favorably, demoralizing job seekers from considering this sector.
The farming sector needs support to hurdle through these obstacles. This sector is essential to the functioning of the economy and for society’s well-being. Agriculture has several specific benefits that warrant effective policy formulation, incentivization, and mass sensitization.
First, farming is a significant source of national income. Through exportation, countries can earn foreign money and use it to boost this sector and other struggling industries. In the United States, this sector contributes over 5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), which is more than $1 trillion yearly. In developing countries, the world bank claims agriculture accounts for over 25 percent of their GDP. The sector also contributes around 4 percent to the global economy and is a crucial factor in economic development.
Second, agriculture is a significant source of raw materials for local and global industries. Cotton, hides, sugar, coffee, paper, wood, and pharmaceuticals come from farms and are necessary for creating utilities. Farming empowers these industries to contribute to creating cash flow in the economy and inject it into related sectors.
Third, agriculture creates employment for skilled and non-skilled labor. It provides direct employment to farmers, technicians, researchers, scientists, managers, machinery operators, and farm laborers. Indirect work is also available for drivers, marketers, salespersons, union staff, factory workers, and maintenance personnel. In the US, agriculture contributes over 19.7 million jobs, accounting for over 1.4 percent of the economy’s total number of jobs.
Agriculture employs over 800 million workers globally, accounting for over 27 percent of global employment. This sector is an invaluable household income source and a promising option for eradicating poverty.
Besides, agriculture conserves the environment. Modern farming practices minimize soil, water, and air damage. These include no-till, installing greenhouses to reuse water, planting cover crops, hydroponic farming to save water, and trapping runoffs from buildings. Agroforestry, which incorporates trees in crop farming, also mitigates soil erosion and helps to increase the volume of atmospheric oxygen.
Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Carl Casale identifies investment ventures in the agricultural science industry. Since 2018, Carl Casale has been a senior agricultural partner with Ospraie AG Science, a company supporting sustainable food production with low environmental impact.
According to David Farquhar, CEO of Intelligent Growth Solutions, the agrifood industry and transport are the top pollution-producing industries in modern times. Farquhar believes one solution is growing more food locally, to reduce the need for lengthy transportation. He states that 72 percent of people’s food is shipped from a different region or continent.
One solution is vertical farming, where crops are grown indoors and the beds are stacked in layers. Many acres of crops can be grown on these farms in a relatively small area compared to a traditional outdoor farm. Vertical farms often employ controlled environments ideal for the growth of specific plants. Some farms may also use hydroponics, which uses mineral-rich water instead of soil to grow crops.
Vertical farms are found in many uncommon areas and can be portable. This especially benefits urban areas, where food must be transported from miles away due to the lack of available land for traditional farms. This could significantly reduce emissions in cities and provide more healthy food in urban areas.
Carl Casale is an agricultural science entrepreneur based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Carl Casale’s company, Ospraie AG Science, is committed to helping companies grow sustainable food and reduce the agriculture industry’s adverse environmental impact.
One way to improve agricultural efficiency is through controlled environment agriculture (CEA) automation. One company, Koidra, specializes in intelligent automation services used in CEA greenhouses. The company began as a product of a Microsoft Research team that won the 2018 Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge in Holland.
Koidra combines physics, crop growth modeling, and machine learning to monitor plants during each stage of the growing process. The software uses this intelligent monitoring system to alert growers to changes and employ machine processes. One specific area of improvement is greenhouse climate. Koidra’s sensitive software monitors growing environments and makes automated changes in the climate to improve growing conditions.
This real-time system management and action allows the greenhouse to respond much faster than humans with traditional machinery, saving energy and significantly increasing product yield. One of Koidra’s end goals is to create fully autonomous greenhouses and farms.
Carl Casale served as the top executive of CHS, Inc. in Inner Grove Heights, Minnesota. As a senior agricultural partner at Ospraie AG Science, Carl Casale helped raise $45 million, $4 million, and $3 million for Terramera, AgroSpheres, Inc., and BeeFlow, respectively. One of the farming techniques he promoted to his clients is sustainable farming.
In sustainable farming, farmers use farming methods that are environmentally friendly and don’t do any significant damage to animals and humans. Sustainable farming aims to protect the environment and improve the ecology. Sustainable farming can benefit farms, the environment, and society.
One of the important benefits of sustainable farming for a farmer is a reduction in production costs. Farming improves and saves the environment with the introduction of technology. Sensors plugged into different equipment, such as drones, sprayers, and satellite imaging, sends data to farmers. The use of technology in GPS-enabled tractors, moisture sensors, and smart irrigation helps farmers grow food sustainably. Terrain contour mapping allows farmers to plant crops perpendicular to slopes, which helps stop soil erosion.
Analyzing data from drones’ multispectral sensors helps the farmer decide when to water the crops. If the same sensors are put on a tractor for fertilizing the soil, the sensors can indicate which crops need nitrogen and what quantity.
Carl Casal is a distinguished agribusiness executive with extensive experience leading some of the world’s most prestigious agricultural companies. Carl Casal currently serves as a senior agricultural partner at Ospraie AG Science. In this role he oversaw the multimillion-dollar recapitalization of a California-based biopesticide company.
Biopesticides present a lower risk of adverse effects on the environment and humans compared to synthetic pesticides. By definition, a biopesticide is a product that relies on a protein that is synthesized naturally by a living organism (plant, animal, or microorganism) to destroy certain pests or hinder their growth. In the United States, biopesticides are regulated by the Biopesticides and Pollution Division of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA recognizes three categories of biopesticides, among which include microbials.
Microbials are pesticides that use microorganisms like bacteria as active ingredients. These pesticides harness the natural defense mechanisms of certain microorganisms. For example, the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis is commonly used as an active ingredient in some microbials. The bacteria naturally synthesize proteins that destroy the digestive systems of caterpillars. When a caterpillar gets exposed to these proteins, its digestive system becomes paralyzed, and the insect consequently loses its ability to feed and dies.
Large biotechnological companies such as Marrone Bio Innovations are driving cutting-edge microbial product pipelines. Marrone Bio has successfully developed effective microbials for diverse crop producers, including greenhouse operators.
Carl Casale was the CEO of CHS, Inc. in Inner Grove Heights, Minnesota. As a senior agricultural partner at Ospraie AG Science, Carl Casale helped raise $45 million for Terramera. He advocated and promoted the benefits of sustainable farming to several businesses and clients.
The term “sustainable farming” refers to methods of farming that are friendly to the environment, animals, and humans themselves. The objective is to protect and improve the ecology. As a result, there are several benefits to sustainable farming for farms, the environment, and society.
Sustainable farming contributes to replenishing the soil and other natural resources such as water and air. Farmers may minimize their reliance on non-renewable resources, use fewer pesticides, and save rare resources by using sustainable techniques. This restoration certifies that these natural resources will support future generations’ lives in light of the increased population and the rising need for food.
Sustainable farming reduces the cost of farming in general. People who adapt to this kind of farming may benefit and see more efficient food production. Technology helped improve agriculture and save the environment. As a result, data from sensors embedded in different equipment ranging from sprayers to drones to satellite imaging, has greatly simplified farming.
Carl Casale 
You must be logged in to post a comment.