“As a society, we have a lot of issues we’re facing that don’t have solutions, like heavy metals in food crops. Our talented team at Talam has discovered an incredible amount of information about what microbes in our soil do, so we’re using nature to develop viable, useful tools that will help solve those challenges.”
John has a deep passion for agriculture because of the critical role it plays in providing safe and nutritious food in a way that can be sustained for generations to come. He notes, “It all starts with the soil. Healthy soil leads to healthy plants, healthy people and a healthy planet.”
As president and CEO of Talam, John leads a team of dedicated scientists and professionals working to find solutions to some of the biggest challenges society faces, like reducing heavy metals in our food, reducing fertilizer use, improving crop yield and restoring soil health. He taps into his past leadership experience as chief strategy officer at Corteva, president of DuPont Sustainable Solutions, CEO of the startup Invaio, and board chair positions at CropLife America and United Fresh Produce among others, to help Talam bring these solutions to the market.
John sees the tremendous role Talam can play in helping improve the health of people and our planet. He pushes his team to always ask “What if?” What if we could eliminate heavy metals from our food? What if we could help farmers improve their yields without applying fertilizer? And then they dig in and they find ways to unlock nature — specifically key microbes — to achieve it.