Paws, Planes and Precision Farming with Paws & Pints, Lee Brooke and Joe McClure

July 7, 2026

What do a dog park in Des Moines, a conference room in Colombia and a strip trial in Greene County all have in common? Soy innovation.

Katie Dunlap of Paws & Pints opens the episode with a tour of Des Moines' beloved canine social retreat, where SYNLawn synthetic turf with a soy-based backing has survived hundreds of dogs a day and is still going strong after four years. Then, Aaron Putze checks in from downtown Bogotá, where Iowa Soybean Association President-Elect Lee Brooke joined an AGP trade mission to meet with the three largest feed producers in Colombia.

We close with Joe McClure, chief officer of ISA's Research Center for Farming Innovation, whose team is running an AI-driven field trial across Iowa—pitting a decade of agronomic data against farmer intuition, and asking whether a machine can out-farm a farmer. (Spoiler: it can help one!) We'll also explore the Farm to River Partnership—an innovative program helping farmers and landowners install conservation practices at no cost in western Iowa. 

This episode of The Bean Scene is brought to you by the Iowa Soybean Association and the soybean checkoff.

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