Joey Thurman: Food technology and ingredient company Benson Hill is committed to empowering innovators in the plant-based sector to create healthier, better tasting foods that are both accessible and sustainable. Today, we're talking to their president of ingredients, Bruce Bennett. Bruce, thanks for being here.
Bruce Bennett: Hey, appreciate it, Joey. Thanks so much for having me on today.
Joey Thurman: Now, Benson Hill, you guys do a lot, but give me a little overview of what the company is.
Bruce Bennett: Yeah, so I think the best way to kind of position it, Joey, is that at Benson Hill we're an ESG pure play company that focuses on bringing high quality, nutritious, affordable, sustainable ingredients to market. And the way we do that is that we leverage what we call our proprietary Crop OS or Crop Operating System platform to develop great value propositions that we can then bring into the food industry.
Joey Thurman: And Crop OS, which is fun to say, I mean, say that without smiling.
Bruce Bennett: It is fun to say, and it's also incredibly powerful. And I think just a few seconds on what Crop OS is. Obviously it's an operating system, but what it does is that it's kind of a fusion of plant science, data science and food science that is enabled by AI or artificial intelligence so that it can efficiently and effectively sort through billions of data points across 27 species and 130,000 genomes so that we can develop great tasting ingredients at the genomic level. So I'm not a data scientist myself, but in certainly spending time with our team, I've gotten a quick education on the power of AI and Crop OS.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. So would you say that's what differentiates your plant protein ingredients from others on the market?
Bruce Bennett: I would say it's what differentiates us, but what I think it really does is it underpins how we then, as a company, define where we're going. And what I think differentiates us is our closed loop model. And Crop OS is really the kickoff of that closed loop because when you think about a vertically integrated system, we're starting with the tech, then it's flowing through our seed development, then it moves into our farmer partner network, who then scale and grow our crops, to then feed our manufacturing facilities so that we can bring great tasting, affordable, nutritious ingredients to a broad array of food companies. And that ranges from startups all the way to the big CPGs. And so that's really the closed loop model. And historically, Joey, it's been a bit of a challenge and there's been a disconnect between food to the seed. And the reason why is because it's a very siloed and elongated supply chain. So the fact that at Benson Hill we've kind of pulled that together, it allows us to properly incentivize all along those inflection points to assure adoption and the ability to bring that tech forward quickly.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. So you're feeding people, you're feeding plants, you're feeding farmers. I mean, I like that. I see the closed loop here, man. Now Benson Hill, your motto is Plants to Plate, and your vertical integration allowed you to scale more efficiently, how is that possible?
Bruce Bennett: Well, I think historically when you've looked at output traits, it's been a challenge to be able to work with farmers to then say, Hey, we've got these output traits that food companies want to utilize, whether that's around taste or whether that's around texture. And so generally where agronomics has focused has been on yield and output. And that's been, I think, beneficial for industry, but there's been a bit of a drawback that's happened and you've started to see a deterioration in protein quality. So what we've done with our closed loop is we've incentivized farmers to grow our ultra high protein beans as an example. They plant, they grow, they scale. And then what happens is out of the ground, we are able to produce proteins with 20% more protein that then when we work with food companies, with our ingredients, can bring a lot more protein to market or a lot more quality protein to market or specific functional benefits to enable better food to be built.
Joey Thurman: Yeah. I mean, and people, whether you're a plant based or you're a carnivore, we want more protein and we want more bio availability. And how important is the integration for these companies to bring the proteins to market?
Bruce Bennett: Well, I think it's important for a number of reasons, but I think a big one is that right now there's a bit of a perfect storm going on with high quality nutritious protein in the marketplace. And what that really means is that on the demand side, we've seen a couple of strong decades of growth driven by many macro trends, whether that's ESG, or rise of the flexitarian, or alternative meat, or global population growth, portability and convenience, all of those have been touching the plant based sector. So the demand side's been strong. And then on the supply side, it takes about five years to build plants. So whenever you're feeling a pinch around availability, there's not a lot you can do, unless for instance, you're feeding those plants with higher protein ingredients. And as a result, you'll be able to get more output so that you can supply more nutritious ingredients.
And secondly, because we're coming out of the ground with higher protein, we're coming out of the plants with higher protein. So when historically your initial proteins might come out at 50%, we're actually achieving levels of 60 to 65%. And that enables us to avoid downstream expensive separation processing. As a result, we're able to reduce costs and by disintermediating those downstream processing steps, we're also bringing more sustainable solutions to market. And that's important because we're using 70% less water, and we're also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50%. So we're impacting the consumer, we're impacting the planet, and we're also impacting our customer, and companies like Kelloggs view sustainability as incredibly important. For instance, in their Better Days platform recently announced that they're working with Benson Hill because they're able to leverage the benefits of our sustainability platform.
Joey Thurman: Well, that's nice to see such a massive company thinking more about impacts of the environment and working with a company such as yourself. Now, you yourself got a chance to see the current innovations at the Future Food Tech Summit in New York. What are you hoping to see happening in the plant-based sector in the future to fulfill this consumer demand?
Bruce Bennett: Well, I think there's a few things that are certainly emerging and reemerging here in discussions at Future Food Tech. Of course, taste is king and the industry needs to continue to be stewards of taste as they're launching products. Certainly price parity and the cost equation needs to continue to get focused so that it's more accessible to consumers. I think the capital markets need to continue to be supportive of emerging technologies. And I think finally, food companies need to keep their innovation doors open to the ingredients industry so that we can pull these great solutions forward.
Joey Thurman: I love hearing that. I mean, I like food that tastes good too. I don't know about you, but I think most people want the food to taste good. Thank you so much for joining us today, Bruce. And Benson Hill and other thought leaders in the plant protein industry just finished gathering at the Future Food Tech Alternative Protein Summit in New York. There's still time to get access to the online summit platform and rewatch all of the great panels and be sure to keep an eye out for the next Future Food Tech Summit.
