FoA 231: Fixing Nitrogen with Karsten Temme of Pivot Bio

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Today’s episode is a great example of true agricultural innovation. Most of you know our food system is heavily dependent on chemical fertilizers to efficiently get nutrients, especially nitrogen to most of our crops. However, some of those crops, think legumes like soybeans, pulses, and peanuts, have a symbiotic relationship with fungi that enable nitrogen fixation from the air and make it available for the plant. 

Today’s guest asked the question, what if we could make this happen on all crops? Especially on corn, wheat, and rice, which together make up a significant chunk of the chemical nitrogen consumption. We have on the show Karsten Temme, CEO and co-founder of Pivot Bio. Pivot’s first product, Proven, is a microbe that when applied to corn can allow the plant to have a similar symbiotic relationship to, in a way, fix it’s own nitrogen from the air. If this is sounding familiar, it’s probably because we had Pivot Bio’s Director of Agronomy on episode 215, talking about the gap between farmers and agtech.

Almost a decade ago, he started Pivot Bio with co-founder Alvin Tamsir. In this conversation we dig into how their technology works, why it’s significant, and how synthetic biology in general could impact the future of agriculture. I’ll drop you into the conversation where Karsten is describing the why behind Pivot Bio. 

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