AgTech: Brian Yockel Of Avolta On The New Technologies That Are Revolutionizing Agriculture
An Interview With Martita Mestey
Appreciate working collectively with a team: Working with a team as a whole involves leveraging everyone’s industry knowledge and expertise while ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities. It’s important for each team member to provide feedback, contribute their input, and recognize their strengths and weaknesses. This clarity allows us to work together effectively, maximizing our collective expertise.
The agriculture industry is undergoing rapid transformation as innovative technologies are being developed and implemented, from precision agriculture to vertical farming, and beyond. In this series, we are speaking to leaders, innovators, and experts in the AgTech space who are playing a pivotal role in shaping the future of agriculture. We aim to explore the latest developments, discuss the challenges and opportunities that these technologies present, and showcase the impact of AgTech on the industry as a whole. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Brian Yockel.
Brian Yockel joined forces with Avolta in October 2021, where he put his knowledge and passion to work by bringing what he knows about how dairies operate and what he has learned about renewable natural gas (RNG) into focus for both Avolta and the dairies they work with. Yockel has an undergrad degree in Dairy Science and interned for a grazing dairy in New Zealand for a full year before returning to the U.S. to manage a farm in Georgia. Yockel has experience managing facilities and herds and all the other facets of the dairy industry.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
The roots of the dairy industry run deep for me. My mother grew up on a family dairy farm in upstate New York. Her sister (my aunt) also married a dairyman, and they started farming in the same area, where I spent many summers and grew my passion for agriculture. After these experiences and multiple opportunities to ride with some large animal veterinarians, I decided to go to Virginia Tech, where I studied Dairy Science.
While completing my degree and taking all my prerequisites for vet school, I filled the summers with internships on different dairy farms. These experiences sparked an interest in production management, and I ultimately decided to press pause on my application to the school of veterinary medicine. That pause, and good connections within the Virginia Tech ag department, set the course for my career that continues to help dairy farmers today in a much different capacity than veterinary medicine.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
Nearing graduation, I connected with a Virginia Tech alumna who had recently spent a season on a grazing dairy in New Zealand. She had worked with an amazing family, so I reached out to the farm and landed an opportunity to head across seas, where I spent the next year learning rotational grazing systems. That was one of my life’s best decisions and experiences, and I recommend that more young people take that leap. While overseas, I learned that one of the farms I had interned with while doing my undergrad was trying to expand its operations and lease a dairy in Georgia. The opportunity was perfect timing for me, and I moved from New Zealand to Georgia, where we started with 120 cows and eventually grew the herd for the next eight years to 1,000 milking. The goal was to max out a double 12 herringbone and expand the site further.
Working on the Georgia farm was a steep learning curve but, overall, a great experience. I learned to manage not only the facilities and herd but the employees, state agencies, and other facets of the dairy industry. The experience also became the paradigm that has driven my career ambition to continually pursue growth, expansion, and new opportunity.
I was very fortunate to work under great leadership at both dairies. The families in New Zealand, Tennessee, and Georgia I worked with were great dairymen, businessmen, and support systems. They took the time and effort to show me how they structured their business and their thought process for evaluating and executing growth and development.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Put in the hard work and be willing to jump in and learn new skills from the ground up. From the manual labor in the farming industry, milking cows and scraping manure, to booking feeds and managing people. All jobs in any field are vital to understanding every piece of your industry effectively. When I was fresh out of college, I started from the bottom and gained experience in all jobs. I always tell people that milking in the parlor, whether just starting out or having been around the farm for years, is a great way to learn about the cows, milk quality, managing people, and working with a team. Even though I was a college graduate, I never let the time and money spent on that degree dictate what I felt I should or shouldn’t be doing; I never felt entitled to be in a certain role because of my education. I put my head down, showed a willingness to learn, and put ideas into practice.
The second would be patience. Some people can hurt their reputation or limit their potential by trying to advance their careers too quickly and taking shortcuts. Those learning experiences, although sometimes painful, help you add more tools to your bag and build knowledge. It’s crucial to have clear visions and goals in whatever you do, but also the patience to see all your hard work and effort pay off. From my experience, I was very patient in my twenties; I knew I wanted to progress my career in the dairy industry, hoping to have my operation one day. That was my big goal on the board. At times, it was challenging, trying, and frustrating all at once. However, I had a good support system that lent a hand when those times got tough. There was a steep learning curve of managing employees and implementing changes; taking the time to train and develop a team — that took patience. There will be hires that don’t work out like you hoped or decisions you wish you would have made differently. Ultimately, if you spend the time and effort developing and working with those around you, it pays off in the long run.
Being supportive. I learned this from my parents; I’ve been blessed to have their support with everything I pursued, whether it was sports, a career, or anything in between. I’ve always been interested in the dairy industry, which can be unusual for someone who wasn’t raised on their family’s farm. Regardless, my mom and dad supported me wholly because I enjoyed doing it. I was also fortunate to have supportive mentors during my work experiences. The women and men I worked with helped me develop my skills and understand that the success of any individual or organization is primarily dictated by those surrounding you. I was able to see that play out in my twenties while managing the farm, appreciating the people surrounding you, and understanding that your success is an outcome of everyone working as a collective unit towards the same goal. I learned effective communication is key, from top to bottom, and do your best to provide all the tools and support to those around you. In my role with Avolta, I support the team by understanding why dairies operate how they do, which helps us integrate our systems on each farm and address areas of concern before they become problems. I’m also fortunate to be surrounded by a talented and experienced team that will collaborate effectively and understand those same support measures from everyone around us to get these projects the best successful outcomes.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
At Avolta, we are working on several projects nationwide. Our RNG team works with dairy farms and landfills, but my focus is primarily on the dairies, and we currently have a lot of farms in varying stages of development. Some projects include partnering with farms that already have a digester, and we are brought in to help them convert electrical generation to RNG production. Some of these digesters were built ten years ago but were shut down because their power purchase agreement expired. When the RNG market became attractive, it provided an opportunity to help these farms update equipment and convert their facilities from power generation to RNG production. Currently, we are building new digesters and RNG facilities with most of our partners, some on existing dairies and some on green sites.
Each dairy has different wants and needs from these projects. Most are looking to improve their manure systems by incorporating new technologies and equipment that allow them to store and apply nutrients more efficiently. As a developer, we can assist in some of these upgrades because they also improve the consistency of manure feed into the digester while helping the dairy better manage manure solids, nutrients, cow bedding, and improve flush water quality or other manure collection systems. At the same time, these projects also provide another revenue stream that allows these farms to weather the volatile feed and milk prices they experience. There are multiple benefits, and each project’s needs are tailored to the dairy.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. How did you become involved in AgTech, and why does it matter to you?
As a dairyman, I’ve had conversations with energy development groups over the years, trying to make a pitch about how much value they would bring you. Yet, they didn’t understand our day-to-day operations and how their ideas and projects could affect our management practices– they weren’t in tune with how the dairy operated. It was always something you just shake your head at and then keep going about your business. One day, I met with Gov Graney, Gov Siegel, and Patrick Graney, the owners of Avolta, as they were looking for project opportunities in the Southeast. They explained how their family business started in the oil and gas industry, identifying problems by listening to their customers, providing more efficient systems, and then applying that same logic with dairy farmers on these RNG projects. Their recognition and understanding of the challenges in getting a project from an idea to day-to-day operations was one reason I gravitated toward them. At the time, I loved the dairy and everyone I worked with, but I saw an opportunity to try something new where I could bring my experiences and knowledge into an emerging industry and help as many farms as possible. The rest, as they say, is history, and I quickly joined forces with the Avolta team.
What are the most transformative technologies currently in use in AgTech, and how are they revolutionizing the industry?
Significant improvements in technology have been occurring for some time in agriculture. Lately, we have seen an emergence of new and existing technologies related to manure and nutrient management in conjunction with the development of RNG projects. The value of RNG derived from dairy manure has led many companies to enter this space and bring their technologies from other related industries, especially in municipal solid and liquid waste treatment. We have seen various applications and designs on the front or back end of manure processing. The technology around anaerobic digesters have allowed farms to improve their water and nutrient management by providing them with more tools. With the correct technology, some farms will have the ability to produce commercial fertilizers from the digested manure by separating and concentrating nitrogen and phosphorus. Additionally, technologies using vapor compression can extract clean water as well as nitrogen concentrates, reducing the total volume to be transported and land applied. These technologies will have a lot of benefits in not only creating fertilizer but providing these farms with additional revenue sources.
How do these technologies contribute to sustainable agriculture practices and the fight against climate change?
These innovative technologies that are evolving are great for the dairy and agriculture industry as a whole. They are great examples of the entire agricultural community being at the forefront of reducing their environmental footprint. There’s a lot of misconception about how the agricultural and dairy communities have historically operated. However, farms are effective and efficient producers by doing more with less. It’s important for us as a country and society to recognize that every industry, not just the agriculture industry, must do its part by being better stewards of the land and more efficient with their resources. The agricultural industry has always been highly regulated with very strict permits and policies from the state and federal levels. The agricultural industry doesn’t get recognized enough for its continuing efforts over the last 50–70 years of improving its operations with technology. If people walked on a farm today, any farm, they would be absolutely shocked at the amount of AgTech that a lot of these farms are using and have been using just to be more progressive and do more with less resources.
What are the challenges in integrating these technologies with existing farming practices?
With the integration of RNG facilities on dairy farms, the most important thing to understand is that every farm is designed differently and has different challenges, depending on where you’re in the country.
Dairies can be designed to a specific management style but are largely dictated by environmental challenges, like temperature, humidity, rainfall and wind. They’re designed to provide the best environment for the cow because a cool, comfortable cow makes a healthier cow, and a healthier cow makes a more profitable one, and that’s what pays the bills. As developers, we recognize these decisions from the dairies and understand how and why they use certain bedding types, different designs in their barns, and the technologies used in and around the digester. Ultimately these factors affect everything you use downstream. Our solutions are not a cookie-cutter approach. You can’t just use a certain technology that you’re comfortable with on one dairy and use that same technology in a different part of the country because there are completely different aspects to what’s coming at you through the manure, whether it’s sand from the bedding or different amounts of fresh water that farmers have to use to keep cows cool or to operate things downstream. From our perspective, it’s critical to have good, effective communication on the front end with these dairies in the design phase to ensure the appropriate equipment is selected and provided so we can maintain or improve their current operations. Understanding the why around all these aspects is really the key to successfully integrating these systems into their current operations and preventing unintended consequences to the dairies operation down the road.
What emerging technologies do you see as having the potential to disrupt the AgTech industry in the next 5–10 years?
The technologies we’re using are evolving very quickly and more equipment vendors are entering the United States market every year. My hope, specific to digester technologies, is that we can produce more gas with the same amount of manure by effectively breaking down more volatile solids within the manure, not by adding things to the digester or changing what the cows eat but by being more effective and breaking down volatile solids in the manure per pound in the digester itself. That will open the doors and provide opportunities for dairies of smaller sizes because it will help us reduce the cost of capital on these projects. Continuing to learn and improve the designs from a developer standpoint is also critical. We’re continually learning something on every project. The more we can improve upon the design and build of these facilities, coupled with improvements in the digester technology itself to produce more gas and increase revenue will allow smaller farms to participate in these projects.
What kind of policy changes would be beneficial for the growth of the AgTech industry?
It’s tough to predict what state and federal programs will do, but today, there are two major legal frameworks that drive RNG markets at the state and federal levels. State programs like the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and EPA-regulated federal programs like the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) are dictating these markets. Many discussions are occurring with these agencies and other emerging programs within other states that will affect these carbon markets and the generation of renewable fuels. If these policies continue to reward those who capture methane emissions from organic waste and can create a renewable energy source, there will be continued effort and focus for developers, vendors, and technology providers to stay in this space and provide opportunities for dairy farms and all agricultural producers alike. Farmers are leading the way in turning their waste into energy and helping other industries reach their sustainability goals.
What advice would you give to someone looking to start a career in AgTech?
Just dive right in. Gaining real-world experience in the AgTech space is valuable. This could involve working in production management, consulting, extension work, policymaking, or even on the hill in Washington, D.C. Find a group or organization that aligns with your interests and has a strong understanding of the industry and begin working with them. While there, make the most of the opportunities by connecting and networking with experienced individuals. Keep an open mind and a strong work ethic. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn and the valuable experience you can gain simply by taking action. The more hands-on experience you gain, the more valuable you become to those in your field, and unforeseen doors will start to open.
Ten years ago, while I was milking cows in a parlor, I never imagined that I would be working in renewable energy development today. I attribute this transformation to my open-mindedness and practical experiences, propelling me forward. The more you comprehend the business side of things, the more valuable you become in your industry. There are abundant opportunities to work in the agricultural technology space. We are witnessing a convergence of existing technologies from other industries into agriculture. However, applying them effectively helps tremendously if you have a fundamental understanding of concepts like manure management or dairy operations.
Ok, thank you. Here is the main question of our interview. What are the “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started ” and why?
1. As I was going through my career, I had an open mind, so I don’t have “I wish someone told me ‘’ rather, I can share some things that I’ve learned to appreciate during my career. First, I wish I had started in the RNG space much sooner when it emerged in 2015. There are many farms I know within the industry that had already signed contracts or started projects with other developers when I started working with Avolta, so I just wish I had an earlier start. There are still a lot of opportunities to help new and existing projects on these farms, and that’s what’s most important to me.
2. Learn the ins and outs of your industry: As I advanced in my career, it was surprising and valuable for me to be exposed to the ins and outs of the dairy industry early on. Understanding operations, development processes, and management techniques gave me an in-depth understanding of how dairy farms run their businesses. I also learned to collaborate on projects and long-term contracts, which allowed me to establish strong partnerships and gain insights into farms’ entire business structure. This experience was beneficial, and I apply it now when integrating Avolta products into dairy farm systems. The knowledge gained from the entire experience with the dairy industry has been enlightening and will continue to be valuable, regardless of the direction I choose for my career.
3. Value your network and learn from their expertise: I learned this early in my career, but it was always a pleasant surprise when I first got into the dairy farms and realized the number of talented people from many different industries I’d be working with on a daily basis. We have a tremendous amount of talent on our team, and being able to pick their brains and work alongside them has always been a neat experience. There is always an opportunity to learn from someone regardless of your background or experience.
4. Appreciate working collectively with a team: Working with a team as a whole involves leveraging everyone’s industry knowledge and expertise while ensuring everyone understands their roles and responsibilities. It’s important for each team member to provide feedback, contribute their input, and recognize their strengths and weaknesses. This clarity allows us to work together effectively, maximizing our collective expertise.
5. It’s a long game, build great relationships: One eye-opener for me was the length of the sales cycle in launching these projects. From the first visit with a dairy to signing the contract and ultimately commissioning the site, getting to that point takes a lot of time, work, and effort from multiple parties. That process can take anywhere from 10 months to 2 years, as our projects are long-term agreements with huge revenue implications to the farms. I’ve been blessed working with Avolta because this isn’t just a numbers game; they want to find the right dairies that will be good partners. It’s very important to us that we build good, lasting relationships with farmers because we integrate all this technology into their operations and on their land for many years. We need everyone working together to make sure we get the best possible outcome.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
This may sound cliché, but it’s a mindset and a general principle that I’m always mindful of. It’s simply: to be kind to others, including oneself. It’s important not to be too harsh on our shortcomings or failures because everyone goes through ups and downs. I firmly believe that we are all more capable than we give ourselves credit for. Balancing self-discipline with kindness towards others, be it in a professional or emotional context, is crucial. I strongly believe in doing what is right and treating others with fairness, as I believe that, in the long run, karma, or any other term you prefer to use, will bring you both fulfillment and favor.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Connect with me on my LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-yockel-143093a1/.
This was very inspiring and informative. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this interview!
