Today’s guest is Matt Adler, a US Air Force veteran whose military background isn’t the typical straight line into agriculture—but stick with us, because the connection matters.

Matt spent his time in uniform working in highly technical, high-stakes environments where mistakes weren’t an option. And while we do touch on his experience as a nuclear specialist, the real value of this conversation is how that kind of training reshaped the way he sees agriculture.

As Matt puts it,

“What the military really taught me was systems thinking… When I got into agriculture, I realized it’s the same exact thing.”

In this episode, listen closely for a few key threads: first - how military systems thinking applies directly to soil health and farm management; secondly - why agriculture punishes shortcuts the same way the military does; and finally, how Matt’s transition forced him to slow down, filter noise, and focus on what actually drives outcomes on the land.

This is a wide-ranging conversation, but at its core, it’s about interconnected systems and why veterans often see agriculture differently once they step into it.

Enjoy!

1840 Farm Foundation - https://www.linkedin.com/company/1840-farm-foundation/

Elm Spring Farm - https://elmspringfarmco.com/

Today’s guest is Nate Hankes – US Army drone operator turned soil scientist then sales engineer at a cutting-edge agricultural sensor manufacturer.

Nate spent 14 months in Baghdad during the 2007 troop surge, watching chaos unfold from a screen thousands of feet above, feeling both omniscient, at times, and impotent. He came home carrying a weight of the war he didn't know he had, spent nine years writing a book to process it, and took five months to hike the Appalachian Trail to figure out who he was after the uniform came off.

As Nate says,

“I called it the Bagdad hangover. I lost a decade of my life to it.”

His path into agriculture wasn't some romantic calling—it was practical advice from his dad during the Great Recession and a college program that didn't require calculus.

But somewhere between a Monsanto internship at an Idaho phosphate mine, graduate research on a selenium-accumulating plant that killed livestock, and learning hydroponics in a Bob Marley-playing, barefoot California office, Nate found something he didn't expect:

Purpose through Science.

Now he's at Apogee Instruments in Utah, working with researchers and growers who are trying to do everything from grow plants in space to monitor the distribution of light in their greenhouses. The company was founded by his former graduate advisor, Dr. Bruce Bugbee, who's been manufacturing high-fidelity environmental sensors for nearly 30 years.

In this conversation, we get into:

• The moral weight of remote warfare
• Leadership failures that push good people out, and
• Why the precision of measuring photons matters when you're trying to feed people

Nate doesn't sugarcoat the hard parts, and he's not interested in wrapping his military service in nostalgia. He's just trying to do work that matters.

Enjoy!

Today’s guest is Robin Gentry McGee, founder of Essential Provisions.

Robin’s story is part kitchen, part battlefield – not one of dirt and distant lands, but a battle for her father’s health. Her early years were spent in the family’s garden, followed by a career in food and restaurants, and then a seismic moment when her father’s hospital experience forced her to rethink what we call “hospital food.”

That led her from the kitchen to product development and ultimately to building shelf-stable meals designed with service members and high performers in mind.

As Robin says:

“These guys, especially when they were deployed, they need a taste of home. They need to feel like this just came off their loved one's stove.”

This episode isn’t about miracle cures or grand claims. It’s about how a daughter’s experience with her father—about family meals, advocacy, and seeing what people are actually fed when they’re at their most vulnerable—became the engine for a company trying to reconnect service members to real food.

We dig into product development, sourcing from regenerative farms, the procurement challenges with the military, and the practical reasons why a “taste of home” matters for health, performance, and morale.

Enjoy!