Trade and Business Dialogue Replay

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2021 U.S. - China Agriculture Roundtable

Trade & Business Dialogue

Together, how can the U.S. and China transform agriculture?

Event Agenda

SEGMENT 1: Expand Protein Trade

SEGMENT 2: ADOPTION OF NEW TECHNOLOGY

Participant Bios: Segment 1
Krysta Harden

Krysta Harden

USDEC President and CEO

Krysta Harden

Harden was named USDEC COO in May 2020. During that time, she continued her role as executive vice-president of global environmental strategy for DMI, which manages the national dairy checkoff for 34,000 dairy farmers. Harden succeeds former USDEC President and CEO Tom Vilsack, who has been confirmed as secretary of agriculture in the Biden administration. 

Harden becomes only the third president and CEO to lead USDEC since its founding by DMI in 1995 and is its first female chief executive. In her new role, Harden will leverage a strong background within agriculture, sustainability, and food policy in fulfilling USDEC’s mission to promote dairy exports, and enrich the well-being of people, communities, and the planet.

Before joining DMI, Harden served as Chief Sustainability Officer with Corteva and DuPont. Harden also spent seven years working with Vilsack at USDA, nearly three of those years as deputy secretary, following posts as Vilsack’s USDA chief of staff and assistant secretary for Congressional relations. At USDA, Harden helped shape agriculture policy and led the implementation of the 2014 Farm Bill. Prior to joining USDA, Harden was CEO of the National Association of Conservation Districts, providing national leadership for thousands of conservation districts across the nation.

About Krysta Harden
Polly Ruhland

Polly Ruhland

Chief Executive Offer, United Soybean Board

Polly Ruhland

As the Chief Executive Officer of United Soybean Board, Polly Ruhland works on behalf of U.S. farmer investors to advance agriculture’s sustainability through research, education and promotion programs.

Prior to joining USB, Ruhland served as Chief Executive Officer at the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board. She served as a senior vice president at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, and early in her career, she was an agriculture journalist and editor.

She holds a master’s degree from Colorado State University, where her research focused on agricultural education reform and strategic decision-making at farming cooperatives.

Polly is an Eisenhower Fellow and a Nuffield Scholar. She is a certified mediator and holds professional credentials in the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts.

About Polly Ruhland
Bill Even

Bill Even

CEO for the National Pork Board

Bill Even

Bill Even is the Chief Executive Officer for the National Pork Board based in Des Moines, IA where he has responsibility for leading Checkoff-funded research, promotion and education projects on behalf of the nation’s 60,000 pork producers.

Prior to his employment with the National Pork Board, Bill served as the Global Industry Relations Lead and Commercial Unit Lead for DuPont Pioneer.

Bill also served as South Dakota Secretary of Agriculture from 2007 to 2010 where he managed six department divisions: Agriculture Regulatory Services, Agriculture Development, State Fair, Wildland Fire, Resource Conservation and Forestry, and Agricultural Policy.

Bill also served as Deputy Secretary of Tourism and State Development, Director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, State Energy Policy Director, and Policy Advisor for Governor Mike Rounds. 

Bill holds a degree in Agricultural Production from Lake Area Technical Institute, a B.S. in Agricultural Business from South Dakota State University; and a Juris Doctorate from Drake University Law School.

While in law school, Bill served as executive editor of the Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, clerked for the law firm of Hefner and Bergkamp, P.C., and interned with the Soil and Water Conservation Society and the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee in Washington, D.C.

Bill and his family own and operate a diversified crop and livestock farm near Humboldt, South Dakota. The farm was homesteaded in 1883 by his great-grandfather and Bill began farming in 1983.  Bill and his wife, Janell, have three children and live in Adel, Iowa.

About Bill Even
Richeng Luan LF

Richeng LUAN, 栾日成

President of COFCO Corporation

Richeng LUAN, 栾日成

Richeng Luan is currently the Board Member and President of COFCO Corporation.

Before this position, he used to be Assistant General Manager and Deputy General Manager of China National Textiles Import & Export Corporation, and Vice President and President of Chinatex Corporation. He joined COFCO as the Vice President in July 2016, and then as the Board Member and President of COFCO in November 2020.

He graduated with a Master’s degree of Chinese literature from Shandong University and an EMBA degree from China Europe International Business School. He was born in Shandong Province in 1964.

About Richeng Luan

Xinlei Liu, 刘馨磊

President, CCIC Chicago, Inc.

Xinlei Liu, 刘馨磊

CCIC is the most influential and comprehensive inspection and certification organization in China. With “Inspection, Certification, and Testing” as its core business, CCIC has nearly 300 business hubs in more than twenty countries or regions, spreading major international harbors, cities, and commodities inbound and outbound warehouses all around the world.

CCIC Chicago Inc has been successfully operating in the United States for nearly two decades.  Its business scope includes inspection of staple agricultural products, medical appliances, food products, petroleum & mineral products and recycled raw materials, projects supervision and development, and etc.  With high international service standards, CCIC Chicago Inc. has been offering bi-lingual services to the Chinese and American import & export enterprises for their various needs in new market search and new business development.

Ms. Liu has a master’s degree in food science and completed courses in an MBA program. She has extensive knowledge and experience in the field of food safety management system certification and organic products certification. Prior to being named President of CCIC Chicago, she was the manager of CCIC’s Eco-evaluation Department of Greater China, supervising the establishment and operation of CCIC’s Environmental Testing Product Line.

About Xinlei Liu
Jun Wan

Wan Jun, 万 军

General Manager and member of the Board of Directors for China National Agricultural Development Group (CNADC)

Wan Jun, 万 军

Wan Jun is General Manager and member of the Board of Directors for China National Agricultural Development Group (CNADC), which is a leading agribusiness in pelagic fisheries, animal husbandry and health, crop seed and farming, agricultural machinery and engineering, assets operation and trade.

Before joining in CNADC, Wan Jun held executive level management positions in CCRC , which is one of the largest supplier of rail transit equipment with complete product lines and leading technologies. Previous to that, Wan Jun was Vice Secretary in Sinomach, which is a comprehensive industrial equipment company committed to providing quality services globally. In career prior to business, he served as an officer in different government organizations. He graduated with a Bachelor degree in Qinghai Normal University.

About Wan Jun
Participant Bios: Segment 2
Erik_Fyrwald,_Syngenta web

Erik Fyrwald

Chief Executive Officer Syngenta Group

Erik Fyrwald

J. Erik Fyrwald joined the Syngenta Group, one of the world’s leading agriculture companies, in June 2016 as Chief Executive Officer.

Erik Fyrwald served as chief executive officer of Univar, a leading distributor of chemistry and related services, from May 2012 until May 2016. In 2008, following a 27-year career at DuPont, he joined the Nalco Company, a leading water treatment products and services company, serving as chairman and chief executive officer until December 2011, when Nalco merged with Ecolab Inc. Following the merger, Erik Fyrwald served as president of Ecolab, a global provider of water, hygiene and energy technologies.

From 2003 to 2008, Erik Fyrwald served as group vice president of the agriculture and nutrition division at the DuPont Company. From 2000 until 2003, he was vice president and general manager of DuPont’s nutrition and health business.

Erik Fyrwald attended the University of Delaware, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering in 1981. He also completed the advanced management program at Harvard Business School.

Erik Fyrwald serves on the boards of directors of Syngenta Group, Bunge, CropLife International, Eli Lilly, the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce and the UN World Food Program Farm to Market Initiative. He is also Chairman of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture.

About Erik Fyrwald
Daniel Koppel

Daniel Koppel

Co-Founder and CEO, Prospera Technologies

Daniel Koppel

Daniel Koppel is co-founder and CEO of Prospera, which is helping to define the future of agriculture through data science, computer vision, and AI. Since founding the company in 2014, Daniel has raised $22 million from strategic investors including Cisco and Qualcomm and top venture capital firms such as Bessemer Venture Partners. He holds a B.Sc. in computer science from The Hebrew University.

About Daniel Koppel
Qiuzi Han Wen

Qiuzi Wenhan 温晗秋子

Associate research professor in the National Engineering Laboratory of Big Data Analysis and Application at Peking University

Qiuzi Wenhan 温晗秋子

Dr. Qiuzi Han Wen is an associate research professor in the National Engineering Laboratory of Big Data Analysis and Application at Peking University, Beijing. Her current research interests include mathematical statistics and machine learning, agricultural big data and climate change studies.

She got her B.A. in Math from Peking University and Ph.D. in Statistics from York University, Canada. She was a Research Scientist at Environment Canada, studying detection, attribution and prediction of climate extremes. She has published several high-impact papers with a total citation over 1000 and was/is principle investigator for many national research projects and industrial projects. One piece of her research work was selected as Research Spotlight by the American Geophysical Union.

She returned China in 2014 and founded a S&T company, HuaNongTianShi, providing agricultural data services and products to Chinese farmers. Since then, she has been devoted in promoting concepts of data science in Chinese agriculture community and developing data-driven technologies and products for farmers and agriculture industry in China. The digital farming and management systems developed by her group has served various types of crops including rice, vegetable, apple, citrus etc., with a total coverage over a million acres across China.

About Qiuzi Wenhan
Lu Weiguo

Weiguo Lu, 卢为国

Research fellow, Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (HAAS)

Weiguo Lu, 卢为国

Mainly focusing on soybean breeding and genetics from 1996 to now，he had developed more than 10 soybean varieties which had been approved to be released on national or provincial level.  As a chief scientist of soybean research group in HAAS, he also had made great progress on soybean cyst nematode and seed protein content. The first chromosome-level genome sequence had been finished by the soybean group. He also published the first paper on Theoretical and applied genetics which related to QTL mapping of water-soluble protein in soybean.

Mr. Lu is member of the editor board, soybean science; Vice chairman of the board of directors of Soybean Professional Committee, Crop Sciences society of China; Chairman of the board of directors of Soybean breeding Society in Huanghuai Valleys, China; Vice chairman of the board of directors of Soybean Professional Committee, the provincial committee of crop variety validation of Henan province; Vice chairman of the board of directors of the Genetics Society of Henan province

Mr. Lu graduated with a doctor’s degree in Crop Genetic Breeding from Nanjing Agricultural University, a Master’s degree in Botany from Henan Agricultural University and a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture from Henan Agricultural University.

About Weiguo Lu
Robert Fraley

Robert Fraley

Former Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto

Dr. Robert Fraley

Dr. Robert (Robb) Fraley is the former Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Monsanto Company. Also a World Food Prize Laureate, he is widely recognized as a key contributor to the worldwide science and agriculture communities – most notably, for developing the first genetically modified crops (often referred to as GMOs) as a solution for farmers battling pests and weeds that threatened their yields. Throughout his career, Dr. Fraley has authored more than 100 publications and patent applications relating to technical advances in agricultural sciences.

In his newest role, Dr. Fraley has become a leading voice for agriculture, passionately working to reset the public conversation about science. As he often says, “We can develop the greatest scientific innovations the world has ever seen, but if we can’t find ways to communicate and engage more effectively, nothing else will matter.”

About Robert Fraley

Lianzeng Wang, 王连增

President of Huayu Agricultural Science and Technology Co. Ltd.

Lianzeng Wang, 王连增

Wang Lianzeng, the president of Huayu Agricultural Science and Technology Co. Ltd., graduated as a senior livestock engineer and postgraduate from Peking University majored in economics and management.    

Wang Lianzeng has engaged in marketing of layer breeding and hatching fields for many years and of rich professional knowledge and practical experience. He focuses on the use of domestic advanced technology and advanced equipment and employs first-class talents. Through his excellent cost control, scale advantages and technical advantages, the company has reached a higher level, higher starting point and higher grade. He has been entitled as the outstanding entrepreneurs at the county, city and provincial level and deputy to the municipal People's Congress, China, Vice President of Animal Husbandry Association, poultry branch. He has been elected as one of the Ten major accomplished farmers in the Ministry of agriculture in 2008. He was elected as a deputy to the 12th NPC in Hebei Province in Jan., 2013.

In recent years, as a result of the outstanding work, Mr. Wang Lianzeng has been appraised as: “Advanced workers in Animal Husbandry And Fishery”, “Advanced Individuals in Science And Technology”, “Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs”, “The 3rd China Animal Husbandry Industry Advanced Worker”, “The Ten Best Skilled Farmers in Hebei Province”, “Model Workers in Handan city”, “Pacesetter in Agriculture in Handan City” and many other honorable title.

About Lianzeng Wang
Moderator
Jim Schultz headshot web

Jim Schultz

Founder of Open Prairie

Jim Schultz

im Schultz is the founder of Open Prairie and is responsible for the management of four private equity funds with investments in innovative technologies spanning agriculture, medical devices, and information systems.  Funds invested by Open Prairie have resulted in two successful IPO’s and created over 4,500 jobs across 25 portfolio investments.  His current fund strategy is focused on agri-business investments in rural America under a USDA licensed rural business investment program (RBIP).

Jim is a fifth-generation Illinoisan, agribusiness entrepreneur, and private equity executive.  He has owned three proprietary soybean seed companies and three ag-chemical companies along with farmland in the Midwest and Brazil, representing over 17,000 acres. 

Jim is a recognized leader throughout the State of Illinois. From 2015-2017, Jim served in State of Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner’s cabinet as the Director of the Illinois Department of Commerce.  He has also served as Chairman of the Board for Prime Banc Corporation – a multi-branch rural banking group serving southern and central Illinois – which grew from $40 million in assets to over $1 billion in assets…all in rural communities in Illinois.  He also has served as Chairman of the Board for the following organizations:  Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Southeast Illinois Community Foundation, The Cross Foundation, and Effingham County Community Foundation.  Jim also served on the Advisory Board for the Chicago Federal Reserve.

Jim earned his MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Northwestern University, a Juris Doctor Degree in Corporate Finance from DePaul University, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Southern Methodist University.  Jim was born in Teutopolis, Illinois - adjacent to the building which housed his great-great-grandfathers trading post which supplied wagons heading west on the Cumberland Road…his Open Prairie office is located on the same road today. 

About Jim Schultz

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