Saluna
What is Saluna?
Saluna unites a group of experienced agricultural researchers and entrepreneurs who passionately believe that Midwestern growers need more planting choices than they currently have. We are applying modern technology to a legacy crop; Industrial Hemp from Saluna delivers innovation and reliability. Saluna works with farmers for a better ROI for oil seed crops, an improved nutritional profile for the end user, and better soil health.
Company Leadership
Matt Plummer
Chief Executive Officer
Matt began his career in agriculture in 2014 working for agriculture technology startup, CoverCress, helping them breed plants, tending to greenhouses and harvesting genetic nurseries. Matt spent 9+ years in the agriculture technology venture capital industry identifying investable opportunities from seed stage to series C. From 2014-2020, Matt served as Principal at The Yield Lab and Cultivation Capital helping deploy capital into early stage AgTech businesses and leading the launch of The Yield Lab Ireland, an agriculture technology venture fund based out of Ireland. He most recently served as a Vice President at Lewis & Clark AgriFood in St. Louis after joining in 2020 as an Associate.
Matt graduated in 2018 with a Master of Business Administration from Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Economics from the University of Utah. He is currently the Chair of the Young Friends of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center.
Mike Gerau
Chief Technology Officer
Michael has more than a decade of experience in plant breeding, genomics, information technology and data science. After completing his PhD in Plant Genetic and Breeding from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2010, he went to work for Monsanto as Scientific Business Analyst overseeing the design, development and implementation of scientific discovery software. He then transitioned to R&D as a Data Scientist, and later an Analytics Product Manager and Team Lead to deliver complex data analysis, predictive analytics and simulation models to deliver business value. After nearly seven and a half years at Monsanto, Mike set his sights on a more ambitious endeavor and moved to Syngenta to lead a team of 20 data scientists as a Group Product Manager – Genetics, where he was a digital program lead setting vision, strategy and implementation with a focus on sequence-based haplotype technologies.
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