Future of Agriculture

LandTrust: https://landtrust.com/
LandTrust is an online platform that connects landowners to people looking for outdoor recreation like hunting, fishing or camping. Think AirBNB for hunters. For most of you, that is probably not a novel concept in 2026, but the concept isn’t the story here - at least not to me. The story is how Nic and his team are pulling it off. How they are building trust with farmers, ranchers and other landowners. And how they are using technology to create real value and solve real problems on both sides of this two-sided marketplace.
Some background on Nic before we dive in: Nic De Castro is the founder and CEO of LandTrust, a marketplace that connects landowners with sportsmen seeking outdoor recreation opportunities like hunting, fishing, and camping on private land. Since founding LandTrust in 2019, Nic has focused on helping farmers and ranchers unlock new income streams while expanding access to the outdoors. Prior to starting LandTrust, Nic worked in technology and entrepreneurship, and he now writes and speaks about the intersection of agriculture, land stewardship, and the growing outdoor recreation economy. He lives in the Southeast and spends as much time as possible hunting, fishing, and exploring rural America.
Don’t let the name fool you here, this has nothing to do with land trusts like people putting land into trusts. It really is just the simple concept of needing to build trust between landowners and people enjoying that land. Nic will explain a lot more about that.

Ag View Solutions: https://www.agviewsolutions.com/
Farm Profit Manager: https://www.farmprofitmanager.com/
Today’s guest is Shay Foulk of Ag View Solutions and the Farm Profit Manager app. I’ve known of Shay for years as a podcaster and farm management consultant, and his presence on social media. Shay and I both have been a part of webinars for Fractal Ag in the past, and shout out to Ben at Fractal for helping to make today’s episode happen.
Some background on Shay:
Shay Foulk is a farm business consultant with Ag View Solutions who works with operations to improve profitability and efficiency, manage risk, and grow. They offer this to farmers in the form of consulting, coaching, Peer Group facilitation and the Profit Manager app that we’ll talk a lot about today.
He grew up in NE Iowa working on a row crop and livestock operation with his father, uncles, and grandfathers. He attended Iowa State University where he majored in Agronomy. After graduating, Shay enlisted in the United States Army, and served 5 years with the 75th Ranger Regiment. He continues to serve with the Illinois National Guard out of Peoria. He also farms and runs Monier Seed with his father-in-law and wife, Hannah, near Sparland, IL.
Shay’s step dad, Chris Barron, started Ag View Solutions clear back in the mid 90s. He developed the foundation of what became what they called Profit Manager. He noticed that he knew his numbers a lot better on the hog production side of his farm, and wanted to apply the same business analysis to the crops side. So with his college roommate he developed the first version of Profit Manager on DOS. After years of consulting with farmers he turned it into an Excel-based tool. For years they have sold the tool and offered consulting services. Shay joined the business in 2019, and just this year they converted the Excel-based Profit Manager into this new app called Farm Profit Manager, and offered it for free.

CattleMax: https://www.cattlemax.com/
CattleTags.com
CattleScales.com
CattleDNA.com
Ranching.com
Terrell Miller is the Founder and CEO of CattleMax, the most widely used cow-calf management software in North America, trusted by producers in more than 70 countries. A cattle rancher himself, Terrell has spent over 25 years focused on practical, producer-first record keeping that supports better decisions and usable data. He also leads the team that publishes the Ranching.com weekly newsletter, reaching more than 95,000 producers, and brings the cow-calf producer’s perspective to collaborative efforts across the cattle industry.

Rancho Gordo: https://www.ranchogordo.com/
Today’s episode is a real treat for me. Some of you know that I grew up on a small farm in Northern California that sold livestock, poultry and pumpkins directly to consumers. Then most of my career has been spent in large scale commodity agriculture. Which is why I’ve always been interested in how e-commerce can be used to scale direct to consumer business models.

Admittedly there aren’t a ton of great examples of this. But we definitely have one for you today in Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo. Twenty five years ago Steve started growing heirloom beans and selling them at a local farmers market. That led to conversations and the realization that he could build a business by as he says “imposing his taste” for heirloom beans on other people. That has grown by leaps and bounds and I think you’re going to be blown away by the success of his company, Rancho Gordo. This episode also offers a ton of lessons about finding and creating true fans, beanfreaks as Steve calls them, and building a thriving business by surprising and delighting them time and time again.

Subscribe to Upstream Ag Insights: https://upstream.ag/
"33 Mental Models For The Modern Agribusiness Leader"
Upstream Ag Insights YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@upstreamaginsights2821
This is probably long overdue to host Shane Thomas on the show. Shane, as many of you already know, writes the very popular newsletter Upstream Ag Insights. He has been providing extremely detailed analysis to subscribers for several years now, and I have been lucky to know Shane since I believe before he started the newsletter. We met at a seed conference in Chicago I think back in maybe 2019.
For the past couple of years Shane has been able to go full time on writing his newsletter, and I highly suggest you subscribe if you haven’t already and take it a step further to become a paid subscriber to support the incredible work Shane does every single week.
In addition to Upstream, Shane has a background in agronomy, ag retail, sales, marketing, strategy and precision agriculture. This allows him to bring together all the latest news in agricultural technology and business to articulate how it impacts the industry. He’s based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
This episode came about around the first of the year when I revisited his 2025 post titled “33 Mental Models for the Modern Agribusiness Leader”. I think all 33 of these are important for every listener of this show to be aware of. I didn’t think listing all 33 would make for a very good podcast episode, so I choose a handful of them. I think we get to six or seven today.
Most of these ideas, Shane dug up in his extensive research that he does, and found really clear ways to apply them to agribusiness contexts. Some are combinations of ideas, and there are probably a few Shane originals in there as well.