Jim Lenz:
Welcome back grain enthusiasts. Get ready to explore the world of grain handling and processing with today’s special guest, dr Kurt Rosentrader. From ethanol production to sustainability practices, dr Kurt Rosentrader has been at the forefront of innovation in the grain industry. Stay tuned as we discuss the fascinating evolution of ethanol and explore the future of grain processing. You won’t want to miss this insightful episode of the Whole Grain Podcast. Hello and welcome to the show. Welcome to the Whole Grain Podcast. My name is Jim Lenz, our host and producer of the show and the Director of Global Education at Jeeps, where the mission of the Grain Elevator and Processing Society is to champion, connect and serve the global grain industry and our members At Jeeps. We work to be the global community and thought leader for the grain industry, which feeds and fuels the world. Thanks for listening today and for joining the network of thousands of other grain handling and processing professionals across the globe taking strategic steps to grow professionally. The Whole Grain Show will give you the competitive advantage to win at work so you can make more of an impact. Our guest for today’s episode is none other than Dr Kurt Rosentrader, a distinguished figure within the grain industry with a wealth of experience and expertise From his early days in ethanol production to his groundbreaking research in sustainability practices, dr Rosen Trader has been at the forefront of innovation in the field. Join us as we uncover the evolution of ethanol production. Join us as we uncover the evolution of ethanol production, explore the latest advancements in grain processing technology and peer into the future of the industry. Get ready for an insightful conversation that’s sure to leave you with a deeper understanding of the grain industry’s past, present and future. Stay tuned for an engaging episode of this Whole Grain Podcast episode. Whole grain podcast episode.
Jim Lenz:
All right, our guest for today is a very well connected individual within the grain industry. He grew up on his large farm in the state of Iowa. One of his early roles as a young adult was in design and development, working for one of the premier providers of custom design, engineering, construction solutions to feed, specialty and dry bulk industrial sectors. Additionally, dr Kurt Rosenträder served as the lead scientist and the bioprocess engineer for the US Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house research agency, ars, also known as the Agricultural Research Service Agency ARS, also known as the Agricultural Research Service. And on top of that, kurt also served as the Executive Director and CEO of the Distillers Grain Technology Council.
Jim Lenz:
Dr Kurt Rosentrader currently is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering and the Department of Food Science and the Human Nutrition at Iowa State University in Ames, iowa Exciting place. He’s also a visiting professor at Israel, lyon and Polytech Montpellier in France. We haven’t even started the conversation and we already want him back on the show again. So that’s how excited we are to have him as a guest on the show today. Thanks for spending some time with Old Grain Podcast listeners Welcome.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Thank you very much. It is truly a pleasure to be here and share a bit of my journey and my story. But you know, if you work in the grain industry, it is never a dull moment. So that, I think, is our MO.
Jim Lenz:
Wonderful To allow our listeners to get to know you and to start off the show with a bit of positive spirit. Could you share with our listeners a mantra or success quote that you live by professionally?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
That is a really interesting question. So I have had many in my life and this year I have decided that my mantra for this year is Je n’ai qu’une vie, which is French, for I have only one life. So that’s my mantra for this year.
Jim Lenz:
I like it.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
I didn’t make this up. This was a friend of mine shared this with me. We were talking about work and family and work-life balance, and she said to me in French I have only one life. So it really resonated with me and I think it’s important. As we think about what we do every day, how can we make a difference and how can we do something positive to impact the world? And so I have only one life. Let’s see what we can do with it.
Jim Lenz:
I couldn’t agree more. Great commentary to support that as well. Yeah, that work-life balance is key and all the interactions we have, everybody we meet, is a new chance to learn from someone and to be open and develop some positive relationships. Great, all right.
Jim Lenz:
Now I am so impressed, first of all, with the diversity of experience and the skills that you offer to others. You work on a daily basis and the breadth and the scope of your work is really just remarkable. I enjoy following you and your work on LinkedIn. As a former science teacher, I love seeing and reading about the incredible experiences you create for your students. But your work really spans the globe, even devoting efforts to support small-scale farmers in Africa. I mean, you’re a problem solver, a researcher, a great communicator. You have a long history of having conversations with agribusinesses and a variety of grain facilities. Of course, you work to understand their problems and the challenges and then you partner with individuals and organizations to make the grain handling and processing industry more efficient, more sustainable.
Jim Lenz:
I know you spent hundreds of hours during COVID writing a book. I had a brother who was a physician who did that as well to best support his industry. You’ve done that to support your industry. You’re an author many times over. Before we conclude the show, I’d love for you to speak on your work with a forum you’ve created called the Cereal Grain Cafe. It’s a terrific podcast. If you’ve not listened to that, listeners and I know our listeners would be very interested in the books you’ve published, so let’s be sure we touch on that before we conclude and how listeners can best connect with you. Sound good.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Super, that sounds fantastic.
Jim Lenz:
All right Now. Kurt. There are so many whole grain podcast episode topics I wanted to have with you. It was really challenging to choose just one topic, given your background, your experience, to have this first one episode. Your background is so special and unique. But we have to have you as a guest discuss other relevant topics of future episodes in the Whole Grain Podcast as well. But we’re using today’s episode to communicate with our listeners the evolution of the ethanol industry. So let’s take people back to the early days. You’re a young fellow, but to your earlier days in this sector, kurt. You have been highly participatory in the evolution of the ethanol industry, among many other things. Can you share with the listeners your journey into the ethanol production industry?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Absolutely. It was by chance, like many things in my life. It was by chance that years ago I applied for a job with USDA Ag Research Service and the focus of the position was to work on co-products from ethanol processing. And at the time, in the early 2000s, the USDA had the foresight to understand hey, there is this new industry growing exponentially. We need to see what, as an agency, we can do to help support that industry and conduct basic as well as applied research towards that to help solve problems. And so at the time when I was brought in there were a lot of research labs around the US working on different fermentation and distillation and those types of processing questions. But my position was unique in that it was the only one in the agency that was focused on the distiller’s grains, on the non-fermentable materials.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
And I remember at the FEW, when I first started I was a week into the job. I’m at the FEW started I was a week into the job. I met the FEW. I meet with my national program leader who I knew because he was a former professor at Iowa State. But he sat down with me and he said, because I was a week into the job I had no idea really what I was supposed to do in terms of DDG work, but he said you know what. You need to meet the people that are making these products. You need to meet the industry, learn what their problems are and figure out how to solve those problems.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
And I walked on a journey to meet and get to know many ethanol processing companies equipment suppliers, ingredient suppliers you know the whole nine yards and it became readily apparent that, as the industry was really starting to grow, it wasn’t just about how do we bring more corn into an ethanol plant and how do we build more ethanol plants, but what are we going to do with the protein and the lipids and the fiber and all the stuff that’s left over? And how do we move it, how do we transport it, how do we store it, how do we use it? And at the time there were less than 10 million tons being produced. I think when I started with the industry, it was maybe four or five million metric tons, so it was a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what we have today. And I do remember, back in 2005 and 2006, the 10 million ton question what are we going to do with 10 million tons of distiller’s grains. Are we going to start sending it to landfills? Are we going to be burning it, composting it? What are we going to do with 10 million tons of distiller’s grains? Are we going to start sending it to landfills? Are we going to be burning it, composting it? What are we going to do with all this stuff? Well, it’s really interesting because distiller’s grains, wet or dry, they are used very extensively as animal feed, both in the US as well as outside of the US, and it’s a great feed product. And, of course, the industry evolves. Processing technologies evolve, distillers grains continue to evolve. But I would say it’s really a testament to people that work in the processing industries, but also agriculture in general. How do you best use proteins and lipids and fibers post-fermentation? And I think we as an industry have done a really good job in that regard. So that’s how I got into the distiller’s grains work and I know that you mentioned.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
It’s going to be difficult to narrow down the conversation today, but I do have to point out humans have been brewing beer for probably 10,000 or more years and you know the question about the agricultural revolution. Was it to produce more food? Or, as about half of the historians and archaeologists are contending of. The historians and archaeologists are contending maybe it was to produce more beer. So you know, we’ve had byproducts from the brewing industry for thousands of years. It really was just in the last few hundred years where we have distillation technology and so we’ve got distillers grains to work with. It’s also interesting if you look at the chemical engineering literature from the 1940s and 50s. Distillers have discovered a value-added use for the non-fermentable components, very valuable as beef and swine feed. And this is, you know, this is what we do now, but this is what they were doing back at the turn of the 20th century too. So we just know how to produce more consistent, higher quality and use these materials to a better degree than we did 100 years ago.
Jim Lenz:
You make a good point. Let’s talk a little bit about the technology and market dynamics and how that has evolved.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Oh, that is such an interesting question, because the markets really push and pull a lot of what we do in the grain industry, and especially when we think about the ethanol processing industry. Well, we also have to think about the whiskey processing industry too, because whiskey production, vodka production, the beverage industry, is very tightly linked with the fuel ethanol industry. There are differences, but that’s where the ethanol industry really originated was from whiskey and vodka production. Now the value of the alcohol is much different, and so the fuel industry has really been pushing for the last two decades to improve efficiency, to lower costs, to maximize the use of that starch. And the whiskey industry is now starting to pay attention to those things too, because, as the whiskey industry continues to grow exponentially, there’s a lot more of the byproducts from whiskey industry than there used to be. And so, hey, what are those folks in the fuel ethanol industry doing? They’re really maximizing their yield. They’re maximizing their starch utilization. They’re also producing their products more consistently than we are. What technologies are they using? Oh, they’re getting money for the oil from the grain. Well, maybe we need to start thinking about pulling oil out of our stillage and selling that also. So I think it’s really an interesting dynamic when you look at the whiskey industry, the fuel industry and then now technologies filtering back into the whiskey industry.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
And then now technology is filtering back into the whiskey industry and I think it really has become apparent that you know the true value of the kernel of corn or the kernel of sorghum. Really it’s not just the starch, but it’s the protein and it’s the lipids. And lipids were relatively easy to start extracting and separating and then selling either into the biodiesel or the industrial products or the livestock feed sector. But now protein is exciting. How can we maximize the value of the protein that is in that kernel of corn or sorghum that’s coming into the ethanol plant? Is the best value just to let it go into DDG? Or maybe we do some type of a concentration, like several technology companies are promoting?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
And I don’t think there’s one size fits all. Every company is going to be different and the market dynamics for each of those companies really has to play a role in company decisions. And it’s also interesting too, because if you talk to livestock producers beef, dairy swine and poultry they will tell you hey, you know, we’ve been using your DDG products for many years and we like what we use and we buy it because we know how to use it effectively. And hey, you’re going to be changing our DDG, either by producing products with higher protein or lower protein, or what are you doing to change the products that you make? Hey, wait a minute, there’s a market for your traditional DDG.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Don’t just discount that and think that’s not important. So I think there’s a question that every ethanol company has to ask, which is do we install protein separation technology or not? What is the potential market versus our current market? And I think those are conversations that many ethanol plants are having and need to have, because, it’s true, you can get more money for the protein, but what about your existing markets? Don’t forget about those.
Jim Lenz:
It’s really interesting. I know that you look at a stack of different industries Agricultural industry is one of the most efficient industries on the planet and this goes to show all that you can use and not much goes to waste right, and looking at the different protein factors, how that goes into feed and there’s just a supply chain of how one thing can impact the other, and so these conversations are really important. So if you had pinpoint the greatest area of focus right now in the ethanol industry, where do you see is the biggest curve, the biggest change that’s occurring now or it will about to? Where is the major focus right now?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
So this is a great question what is the ethanol industry focusing on at the moment? So let’s leave the whiskey industry behind for a few minutes, because that industry continues to grow, but it’s primarily driven by the sale of whiskey. So the ethanol industry at the moment. You know, every year the focus changes to some degree. A couple of years ago, the focus was really strongly focused on protein separations. Last year and the year before there was a strong focus on carbon capture and there have been issues with the permitting of the pipelines that have been proposed.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Government policies played a role in this idea of capturing CO2 emissions and then pumping them and injecting them underground for long-term storage. So this year, what I see on the radar is the sustainable aviation fuel as a big question. And how do we develop technologies and factories to produce these aviation fuels, which aren’t ethanol and they’re not biodiesel, but both of those biofuels could play a role in developing jet fuels from biological sources. So sustainable, there’s an interesting word. How do you define sustainable? And the federal government is implementing policy for specific levels of your carbon score or the net CO2 emissions from farm to plane, however you want to define that. So that is going to be how an aviation fuel is defined as sustainable or not sustainable.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
So I would say those are sort of the big three stories in the last five years protein separations, carbon capture and sustainable aviation fuel. Now, next year, will there be something new? I’m not sure, and the reason I say that is because, even though this year there’s a lot of talk about sustainable aviation fuels, the truth is there have been companies working in this space for over a decade and it’s federal policies that really drive a lot of choices and investments. So the carbon capture, the same thing. The protein separations, you know that’s not being driven by government policy, that’s really being driven by technology companies that have shown that they can separate, cost effectively and concentrate not necessarily separate, but concentrate grain proteins from the post fermentation streams, from the post-fermentation streams.
Jim Lenz:
Very interesting Recently, chiefs Exchange 2024, you’re on stage speaking and you talked about sustainability practices. One of the things I took away is you need to account for all sectors of the supply chain. Can you discuss that a little bit more?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Oh sure, absolutely. So it’s really quite interesting. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been working on the rule so that publicly traded companies in the United States would know what is expected of them. And specifically this ruling is related to scope one and scope two emissions, and those are different than scope three emissions, and I’ll kind of explain briefly Scope one emissions are your direct emissions. So from the fuel that you use in your forklift, in your fleet of vehicles, from your fermenters, if you’re talking about ethanol or whiskey production, so the CO2, the nitrous oxide, the methane, that’s being emitted directly from what you do in your operations. So scope one emissions If you are a publicly traded company, you have to account for those and not only do you have to catalog them every year, you have to publicly report them and there are multiple online platforms where you can report this. Scope two emissions are emissions that come from the power plant where you purchase your electricity. So scope one and scope two really account for what you’re doing directly because of your operations, whether it’s a factory, whether it’s an office, building your fleet of vehicles, what your activities are.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Scope three emissions, which the SEC did not mandate at this point in time. Perhaps they will later, but at this point in time they’re not mandated. That is your entire supply chain, from cradle to grave. So if we think about what happens in grain operations, that starts on the farm. It starts from the fertilizer, the herbicide, the pesticide, manufacturing, all the way to the end of life of whatever food product. If you’re making corn products that go into beef rations, then you have to account for what happens in the feedlot, what happens with the meat processing company, what happens at the landfill where you send your packaging waste and all of those things. So scope three emissions are really comprehensive. They’re trying to understand cradle to grave and they are really quite extensive. But scope three emissions are a true measure of a true viewpoint of what is our environmental impact for our products.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Now, the talk that I was giving at Jeep’s exchange was really related to OK, what are companies doing to halogens or sodium vapor using VFDs and soft starts for your motor control systems, things like that. Also insulation if you’re doing heat treatment, like you’re doing some type of conditioning at a feed mill, for example, things like that that are ultimately going to reduce your processing and your operating costs. So those all feed into this idea of scope one, scope two, scope three, because ultimately, if you’re a publicly traded company, you have to account for your scope one and scope two. Now, if you’re a private company, you don’t necessarily need to, but if you’re selling products to a large, whether it’s a national or multinational that’s publicly traded, they might ask you for this information. And this is happening throughout the food and feed supply chain. I’ve talked to several companies just this week who are asking well, how do we calculate scope one and scope two? We’re being told by one of the companies that we sell our products to that they want our emission information.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
So you know, these are things that government policy does impact what we do, whether we like it or not. So how can we be responsive to that? So that’s sort of the gist of the presentation that I gave at the Jeebs Exchange. I think this is really the beginning of the story. Now, as you mentioned and as we’ve talked about a few minutes ago, you know really, agriculture in general and ag processing in specific. We have done a fantastic job over the decades in improving our process efficiencies and our conversion efficiencies Because, for example, if you’re sending starch out of your ethanol plant into your DDG, that’s lost revenue for you that processing inefficiency is lost revenue. If you can reduce your electricity consumption, that’s just going to be more revenue for you.
Jim Lenz:
So all of these things play together in terms of making your operations more efficient and more profitable to me and a whole lot of education that needs to take place to support what is being asked, you know, for those public traded companies or for those companies that do business with public traded companies that are not public traded companies. Wow, a lot to continue to learn and impact for organizations for sure. Now, what do you envision for the future of the ethanol industry in the next decade or so?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
You know it’s not surprising, but I think it did take a lot of people off guard the idea of can we corn ethanol industry. Not only is it really efficient, but you can do a lot of things with corn, and I’m not talking about high fructose corn syrup or corn gluten meal. We can do a lot of things with corn. But we can do a lot of things with bioprocessing and the biochemicals industry is really starting to. I think in the next couple of decades it’s going to start to ramp up production and there are so many bio-based chemicals that we could make, and corn is relatively inexpensive, which is why it’s used to make ethanol for fuel.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
But I think we’re going to see biochemicals really start to take off and it’s going to be different than what we do in terms of fermenting corn with yeast because of a variety of different organisms that will be required, different distillations that will be required, but we’ve got a really strong base to build the biochemical industry from. So that’s what my crystal ball says. I think we’re going to see biobased chemicals and biobased products really continue to grow. Now we’re going to need government support for these, of course, because many industrial chemicals that are based on petroleum are quite inexpensive because of the base price of the petroleum itself. But I think, just like the ethanol industry grew and has really become cost effective, I think we’re going to see that in the bio-based chemicals and bio-based products industries as well in the bio-based chemicals and bio-based products industries as well.
Jim Lenz:
And so what has been happening? You have academia, industry, policymakers driving that continued progress and innovation. We expect to see the same thing. What are those collaboration pieces that you’re seeing right now?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
You know it’s so interesting because I would say for the last at least 50 to 80 years there’s been so much work done by research scientists at universities, at federal agencies, at research institutions around the world. How can you make bio-based products? And we’ve got a lot of science already done. The challenge, I really think, is how do we take basic science and scale it up and make it commercially viable? And economies of scale are going to be critically important for that, and we’ve proven we can do that with the processing of corn into ethanol and we are seeing that happen also with various bio-based chemicals. But I think we need even more of that and it’s definitely going to be a collaboration between investors, between farmers, between research scientists, university professors. I think it’s going to take a whole ecosystem, just like it did, for the ethanol industry, to really grow. But we’ve proven that once we focus, we can really accomplish some pretty amazing things.
Jim Lenz:
Very nice, kurt. You continue opening doors for others to grow within the grain industry. I appreciate all the channels you use to try and maximize the reach for others to become aware of where their food comes from quite simply, where their fuel comes from and thousands of other products that are comprised of grain products to support our daily lives. In a world where people seem to be more and more disconnected with the importance of agriculture and the grain in our lives, you are consciously making efforts to bridge that gap. That’s why I’d like you to tell our Whole Grain listeners about the great resource and channel out there called the Cereal Grain Cafe.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
You know, I have to say it sounded like a good idea at the time, and I think it still does. I think it does. As you know, it takes effort to make a podcast, it takes time to make a podcast, but my idea was how can you share what’s happening in academics, in industry, with students, with professionals? There’s a lot of really interesting things that are going on that have gone on, and there’s a lot of aspects, a lot of facets of grain that most people nowadays, unless you’re really heavily involved in the industry, really don’t understand. You know, most consumers will either. Actually, most consumers will buy their bread at least in the US at a supermarket, as opposed to making their own bread.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
But 10,000 years ago, that was what everybody did. Their job was to help grow food and make food, and you knew exactly where your food was coming from, and you expended about as many calories every day making food as you were able to eat, and so it was a much different dietary regime than we have now. Oh, speaking of which, I do need to go to the supermarket before I go home tonight too. But my idea was hey, you know, there are some really interesting stories, and I’ve had the opportunity to interview some really fascinating researchers that have written about archaeological excavations in Jordan. The oldest known grain storage site that historians have found so far 11,000 years ago in Jordan, where grain was stored in clay pots and the walls of the storage building. Not only were they mud clay construction, but they also contained various hulls from the early form of wheat that they were using. So even then they were using the hulls as a reinforcement for the mortar.
Jim Lenz:
Wow, it was everything, yeah, as much as the mortar.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Wow, it’s everything.
Jim Lenz:
Yeah, as much as it could Exactly. I encourage authors to check that out. Additionally, kirk, you’re the author of three published books available for grain professionals and grain enthusiasts. One of the books is called Storage of Cereal Grains and their Products. Another book is called Kent’s Distillers Grains Production, properties and Utilization. Please share some brief insights. What are all those books here? I understand you’re also writing one now.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Oh my yes, there’s so much work that needs to be done, so much information that needs to be put out into the world. The reason I started writing these books was because the people that I’ve worked with over the years know a lot of information, but an actual compilation of information for people who might be doing design or operations. The information is really pretty diverse and pretty scattered, and so that was the impetus why I have a book about distiller’s grains, a book about grain processing and then a book about grain storage. So I don’t want to do shameless self-promotion, but I think we’ve covered the grain industry pretty well with those three publications.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Now there’s definitely more work that needs to be done, and I think you brought up an interesting point earlier in our conversation about work overseas. What we think about in terms of grain storage, preservation and processing in the USA or Canada is not exactly the way it is all around the world. There are still communities around the world that struggle to eat every day, and simple basic techniques are generally more appropriate than what we think about in terms of large-scale, massive processing. So there’s still so much work to be done.
Jim Lenz:
Yeah, good point. Thank you for your support. I’m a member of Jeeps. I recently spoke at the Jeeps Exchange 2024. I was in that audience. You were a big hit. It really was an enlightening presentation. That audience, you were a big hit. It really was an enlightening presentation. I will leave the link in the show notes on how listeners can watch and listen to your interactive presentation called Facility Design Considerations for Maximizing Efficiencies and Throughputs. But real briefly, can you give a description of what that’s about?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Sure, so I will harken back to a few minutes ago in our conversation. You know what are grain facilities doing, whether they’re storage or processing facilities. What are some things that they are doing to make their processing operations more efficient, to reduce their operating costs and ultimately to reduce their energy consumption, which ultimately will reduce their scope one and scope two emissions. So all of the things that companies are doing related to lights and motors and insulation and energy audits, all of those things lots of companies are doing, instrumentation and sensors and control systems. It’s not just about preserving the quality of the grain, although that’s important. It’s also about making sure that you can reduce your operating costs so that your margin is more favorable.
Jim Lenz:
I encourage listeners to check that out. Make sure you share that with your colleagues. It really will bring up some great discussions. And finally, Kurt, if listeners want to connect with you, what are the best ways for them to do so?
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
So I am always available through my university website. My contact information is on my university website, but there’s also CerealGrainCafecom. They have my contact information there as well. I’m quite active on LinkedIn, so feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn as well.
Jim Lenz:
Dr Kurt Rosentraitor, thank you for serving as guests on Whole Grain. On behalf of the entire JEEPS team, we thank you for your commitment to the greater grain handling and processing industry. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to spend some time with you and thank you for spending your time and talents with Whole Grain podcast listeners. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to spend some time with you and thank you for spending your time and talents with Whole Grain Podcast listeners.
Dr. Kurt Rosentrater:
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Look forward to talking again.
Jim Lenz:
Thank you. Our episodes of Whole Grain are super easy to share with others. The Whole Grain Podcast can be found in your favorite podcast apps, such as Apple Podcasts, pandora, spotify, amazon Music, google Podcasts and more. Just do a search for Whole Grain. Remember to hit the subscribe button. That way, every episode will be downloaded to your device as soon as it is released. You can quickly catch up on past episodes as well. Additionally, you can connect with the Whole Grain show on the Jeeps website through jeepscom G-E-A-P-Scom forward slash whole grain. You’ll be able to access the audio player, the show notes links and the transcript of the show. This young podcast already has listeners from 69 countries at the time of this recording. If you find value in the show, please give us a rating and leave a comment from your favorite podcast app. That really supports what we do and helps people discover the show more easily. We currently have a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. We thank you for that.
Jim Lenz:
The Whole Grain Show is a production of Jeeps, the Grain Elevator and Processing Society. The Grain Elevator and Processing Society is the largest organization dedicated to advancing the grain handling and processing industry. Be sure to check out the website jeepscom Again G-E-A-P-S dot com If you and your organization want to sponsor an episode and be featured on the show and be heard as a global thought leader on the grain handling and processing industry, or if you are interested in us producing audio ads to support your product or service, we can help you with that. Please reach out to me. Jim Lenz, director of Global Education at Jeeps and host and producer of the show.
Jim Lenz:
We have an in-house audio production studio that can serve all your needs, all from the comfort of a virtual environment. My email to connect with me is james at jeepscom. J-a-m-e-s at G-E-A-P-Scom. We look forward to connecting with you. You can also reach out with any questions or comments you have. Let us know what you think about the show. Perhaps we can feature your audio commentary in a future Whole Grain Podcast episode. Continue listening, share the news of the show with your friends and colleagues. Have yourself a great day and thanks for listening to Whole Grain.
