U of M Agronomy Alum Update: Matt Pfarr

In episode #30 David Nicolai and Seth Naeve chat with Matt Pfarr.  Matt is a Field Solutions Manager for Lallemand Plant Care and a graduate of the Applied Plant Sciences graduate degree at the University of Minnesota.  We invited Matt into the studio to talk about his own history, his time at the University of Minnesota and Lallemand, and the biologicals business.  We had a great time.Matt talked about his family’s strong ties to the University of Minnesota.  Not only did his father attend the U, but so did he and his three siblings (and their spouses).  All four have CFANS based degrees and his sister continues to work as a postdoctoral research geneticist with the Cereal Disease Laboratory. Matt worked on a soybean physiology project with Seth from 2014-2016.  His experiments were focused on environmental effects on secondary constituents of soybean seed. Today, his work forms the cornerstone of our understanding of the tradeoffs between protein quantity and quality in soybean that is important for Northern produced soybeans.  Matt grew up on a farm in Sibley County Minnesota, in a family where hogs, crops, and wrestling ran deep.  Matt wrestled at St John’s University (MN) during his undergraduate years while his brothers were both well known Gopher wrestlers. Although Matt is fully employed by Lallemand, he continues to farm alongside his family making him a seventh-generation farmer on both his mother’s and father’s side. His mother’s investment on the farm is extraordinary including hauling grain, tillage and animal care.The Lallemand company is one of the largest producers of yeast and bacterial cultures for the baking, brewing, enology, dairy and industrial ethanol industries. The company entered the plant care business only about twenty years ago through acquisitions of French, Finnish, Brazilian, Uruguayan, and Canadian companies. Today Lallemand is a key player in the plant biologicals space.  Dave and Seth chatted with Matt about the industry’s explosive expansion and the future of biologicals for crop farmers. Join us for another fascinating and far-ranging conversation on Minnesota CropCast.