Dirt Smart brings bold conversations with the farmers, technologists, entrepreneurs, and change makers who are rethinking how food is grown, how land is cared for, and how technology is shaping the future of our food systems. No fluff. No jargon. Just bold ideas, hard-earned insights, and real-world stories from real people doing the work.From soil health to ag tech, climate resilience to farm entrepreneurship, we dig into the challenges and breakthroughs shaping the future of food and the planet.If you're a grower, a builder, or just someone who gives a damn — you're in the right place.
In this special episode the host of Dirt Smart sits in the interview chair and is interviewed by Dirt Smart Producer, Ty Paxton. Ben’s story begins on his family’s 130-year-old tree fruit farm in Kent, southeast of London. It’s where he learned the rhythm of farming — the grit, the rewards, and the relentless work — from his father and grandfather. After university, he served as a decorated veteran in Afghanistan, where his life changed forever after being ambushed and shot through the torso ...
21 Oct 2025
Ep. #15 Retail Titan - Jason Tarry
Jason Tarry spent more than three decades inside Tesco, UK's largest retailer. He rose from graduate trainee to the CEO and he's shaped how Britain shops, eats, and thinks about value. Few leaders understand the full chain from field to fork like Jason. He knows farming, he knows food, and he knows how the smallest supply chain can ripple across an entire nation. Jason is now the Chairman of UK's most principled institution - the John Lewis Partnership - which own the UK's largest premi...
14 Oct 2025TRANSCRIPT
Ep. #14 AI Vision Queen - Jenny Lemieux
Imagine scanning every tree in your orchard - blossom to harvest - and knowing with confidence what you will grow, harvest, the amount to sell, and where to send labor. In this episode we meet the founder making this crystal ball a reality for farmers across four continents. Jenny Lemieux is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vivid Machines - a Toronto-based Ag Tech company turning orchards and vineyards into living data sets. Their Vivid X Vision System mounts onto farm equipment to scan trees ...
7 Oct 2025TRANSCRIPT
Ep. #13 Packaging Giant - Kailan Dunn
In this episode we dive into the post-harvest world with Kailan Dunn, President & CEO of H.R. Spinner - one of the largest fruit packaging companies in the United States selling over 100 million boxes every year. Since 1916 H.R. Spinner has been an industry-leading company enabling tree fruit growers to protect, sell, and deliver their crop with smarter boxes, pads, and in-house automation with box makers, tray formers, and pad inserters. Their work is integral to keeping apples, po...
30 Sept 2025TRANSCRIPT
Ep. #12 From Apple to Apples - Tyler Price
Tyler Price is a Stanford educated CEO leading one of the largest fruit growing and packing companies in Washington State, Price Cold Storage and Packing Company. A fourth generation family business that's been in operation for nearly a century, Tyler is leading the company into the future with a state of the art facility, bold partnerships, and a relentless focus on quality. He's not just running a company, he's an industry leader, shaping the conversation around technology, food safety, and...
24 Sept 2025
Ep. #11 Kiwi King - Steve Saunders
Steve Saunders has built businesses in almost every link in the horticulture chain - pre harvest, post harvest, branded produce, and innovative robotics. He's helped entrepreneurs, growers, scientists, and investors connect long before agricultural robotics even entered the picture. Now, Steve is most famed for his business, Robotics Plus, a company at the forefront in developing innovative robotics within the agriculture industry. He's helped to scale the business globally and has recently m...
16 Sept 2025
Ep. #10 Vineyard Visionary - Caine Thompson
Caine Thompson is Head of Sustainability at O'Neill Vintners and Distillers. A regenerative wine pioneer who is rewriting what sustainability looks like in viticulture, Caine is helping O'Neill steward their grapes toward a future where wine is not only world class, but also climate positive. He has become one of the most influential voices in regenerative wine. A New Zealand born viticulturist, he has also co-founded the global One Block Challenge, a program aimed at de-risking the transitio...
9 Sept 2025
Ep. #9 Billion Dollar Founder - Paul Mikesell
Paul Mikesell is a visionary technologist and a serial founder who has set up multiple billion dollar businesses. He is now proving that robotics, AI and farming can co-evolve and at scale. As the founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics he has built a company that is zapping billions of weeds without the need of herbicides, retrofitting tractors to be self-driving and redefining what productivity and sustainability mean on a farm. In this episode, we dig deep from pushcart prototype to a fle...
2 Sept 2025
Ep. #8 Hop Giant - Mike Roy
Michael (Mike) Roy is a farmer who leads a century-old hop farming business in Yakima, Washington and is one of the largest independent hop growers in the world. What started as a ten acre farm in 1907, Roy Farms is trusted among the smallest craft outfits to the largest brewery giants. This episode dives into Mike's journey in agriculture, the evolution of the hop industry, and the importance of sustainability and innovation in farming. Mike shares insights on navigating family business dyna...
26 Aug 2025
Ep. #7 Regen Cowboy - Austin Allred
Austin Allred runs Royal Family Farms in Washington State, a 20,000 acre operation and home to the largest worm farm in the world. His 7.5 acre bio-filtration worm system processes nearly 400,000 gallons of wastewater every day, recycling into clean irrigation water. and producing valuable worm castings that go straight back into their soils. Royal dairy produces 90,000 gallons of milk and 70,000 pounds of meat every single day. They grow hundreds of thousands of tons of apples, peas, cherrie...
19 Aug 2025
Ep. #6 Hops, Beer & Cannabis Pioneer - Kevin Smith
Kevin "Smitty" Smith co-founded Bale Breaker, one of the largest independent craft breweries in North America—and the only commercial brewery in the world located in the middle of his family’s hop farm, Loftus Ranches. A true product innovator, Kevin works at the intersection of farming, brewing, cannabis, and product development. Rooted in his farming heritage, his ventures span from soil to sip, including co-founding Sun Gaze, a cannabis-infused seltzer. In this episode, we dive into the ev...
12 Aug 2025
Ep. #5 Rockstar Farmer - Cody Beebe
Cody Beebe is a multifaceted individual who has transitioned from a career in music to founding a video marketing company to becoming a regenerative farmer. The conversation explores Cody's unique journey, the challenges faced by independent musicians, the impact of AI in the music industry, and the importance of storytelling in connecting farmers with consumers. His journey weaves together music, land, content, entrepreneurship, health, and identity. He has become a passionate advocate for ...
5 Aug 2025
Ep. #4 UK Wine Expert - Ed Mansel Lewis
Recognized as one of the most influential figures in UK wine, Ed Mansel Lewis leads the viticulture team at Knight Frank. With a rare blend of expertise across finance, wine, land, and farming, Ed advises on some of the UK’s most dynamic vineyard ventures. In this episode, we explore the economics behind vineyards, emerging terroir trends, the role of regenerative agriculture, and how climate, culture, and capital are collectively redrawing the map of UK viticulture. Learn more about Knight...
29 Jul 2025
Ep. #3 Global Cherry King - Matt Hancock
Known across the industry as the Cherry King, Matt Hancock founded and led Norton Folgate, one of the UK's most influential produce businesses. From cherries to citrus, grapes to rhubarb, Matt spent decades mastering the brutal beauty of the fresh supply chain - where taste, timing, and trust is everything. Matt continues to advise the next generation of operators, helping them understand what it really takes to get fresh produce from farm to shelf. In this episode we dive into cherries, fr...
22 Jul 2025
Ep. #2 World Class Fruit Grower - Sean Gilbert
Sean Gilbert is the CEO of Gilbert Fruit, one of the largest cherry and apple producers in North America. His team is managing thousands of acres, huge labor forces, and a global supply chain. Learn more about Gilbert Fruit: https://www.gilbertfruit.com/ This episode is brought to you by BX, a farming intelligence platform helping farming enterprises turn their data into actionable insights. https://bx.tech/
15 Jul 2025
Ep. #1 Global Agtech Entrepreneur - Matty Blomfield
Matty Blomfield is the CEO of Hectre, a world-leading orchard management and fruit sizing platform helping growers around the world improve productivity, fruit quality, and profitability. Learn more about Hectre https://hectre.com/ This episode is brought to you by BX, a farming intelligence platform helping farming enterprises turn their data into actionable insights. https://bx.tech/
Inside a recent episode
Ep. #16 Bullets to BX - Ben Bardsley
Published 30 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] But we did think different again. So kind of like we set up our tent. So you can imagine we're in like the front line. We're surrounded by these big sandbags. We're in this kind of patrol base, if you like, which had to be kept on guard by our forces. It was a very unsafe error in. But I sort of thought differently about how do I create really cool command center? I realized that there's this big map printing location and campus in which was the huge base where everyone was stationed. So I hustled my way in there to get into the right people. And I got like a thousand dollars worth of maps printed about the area we're operating in. […]
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