Tag: Agriculture

Protein Obsession

Fascinating report here on the dairy industry and how protein is making such a big market impact at the producer level… hadn’t considered the role of GLP-1’s like Ozempic before…

America’s Whey Protein Obsession Is Transforming the Dairy Industry – The New York Times (Gift Article) 

More recently, the demand for whey has been turbocharged by the growing use of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. Patients taking those drugs are advised to increase their protein intake to avoid muscle loss.

Whey protein powders, and the increasing number of whey-protein-enhanced products on grocery store shelves, are an expedient way of consuming a lot of protein. Estimates of the size of the whey protein market vary from around $5 billion to $10 billion, but nearly all analysts say the market will double over the next decade. A pound of the highest-protein whey powder that cost about $3 in 2020 costs almost $10 today, according to Ever.Ag insights, an agriculture data company.
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The demand has trickled down and completely altered the economics of the dairy industry.

John Deere Acquires AI Startup

Blue River’s key technology is called “see and spray.” It’s a set of cameras that fix onto crop sprayers and use deep learning to identify plants. If it sees a weed, it’ll hit it with pesticide; if it sees a crop, it’ll drop some fertilizer. All these parameters can be customized by the farmer, and Blue River claims it can save “up to 90 percent” of the volume of chemicals being sprayed, while also reducing labor costs.

via John Deere is buying an AI startup to help teach its tractors how to farm – The Verge