Update on Controlled Environment Agriculture - Chris Higgins

Hi everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech podcast by Collabora. Now, controlled environment agriculture, what does it mean? It means you could grow stuff in a greenhouse, you could grow stuff in an indoor vertical farm in a completely closed controlled environment. And these are new methods that have been used to cultivate crops, especially around large metropolitan areas, and seem to garner a lot of attention, a lot of capital, and a lot of dreams of people of how they were going to make their millions selling fruits and vegetables, or at least vegetables. But as time has gone on, maybe it hasn't panned out to expectations. And so today we'd like to drill into that a little bit to talk about how things have changed and where the industry is going. And today I'm joined by Donald Kuhn. How's it going, Donald?

It's going good. How about you?

Yeah, good. You may remember Donald from a couple previous episodes. And so tell, tell us again what you do in real life, Donald.

Yeah. So right now I'm currently a PhD candidate at the University of Florida in the Agriculture and Biological Engineering Department, focusing on controlled environment agriculture.

He suggested Chris Higgins, and I said, I know Chris. He's the president and co-founder of Hort Americas. So welcome to the podcast, Chris.

Hey guys, thanks for having me today.

Yeah, it's nice to see you. It's been a while. Like it was probably a couple years, but I used to speak at a lot of conferences where Chris and I would get to hang out for a bit. But, you know, let's start with the obvious question, Christian. You heard the intro.

Yeah.

You know, is controlled environment agriculture really just an expensive solution looking for a problem?

I guess it all depends on the definition of controlled environment agriculture. Um, that, that's for me, probably the— I've been in the, let's call it the CEA industry for since 2004, specifically only looking at food production. And then I've been in the greenhouse industry, added another 6, 7, 8 years to that. So depending on how we define CEA really determines whether or not there is a need for it. I would say consumers' demand for low— for fresh produce year-round are driving needs for different ways to grow fresh produce depending on what produce we're talking about. From that perspective, I would say yeah, there's a need. I'm having an ongoing conversation on LinkedIn right now, talking to a wide variety of people about the flavor and taste of strawberries. And the overwhelming reasoning from the experts are, well, if you want strawberries that taste the best, eat them when they're in season. But the reality is that consumers want to go to the grocery store and be able to buy fresh strawberries 7 days a week, 12 months a year. And if that's the case, then we have a need for some form of CEA to make that product available, especially when they add the caveat they want it locally grown. If they're okay with imports coming from anywhere around the world, then yeah, we probably don't need CEA. And then we're just trading off conversations on sustainability. Do we want to electrify a— electrified heat and cooler facility? Or do we want to put oil on it and ship the product around either by air or by boat? And if those are, if those are what we want to do, then yeah. It's just a conversation of what is neat.

What, what is Word Americas and how do they play into this world of CEA?

Yeah, so it's a good question because I think it gets confused by what is Word Americas and is it different than Chris Higgins? So I have a tendency to be very outspoken. That's probably that, if I remember right, that's how Kevin and I originally met is we were both being very outspoken and I thought, man, I'm going to meet this guy. And, and so from a Chris Ingham standpoint, this is an industry that I kind of fell in love with about 20 years ago. I started falling in love with the floriculture side of the business. I have family that's on the floriculture side of the business. And I really never, you know, I had grandparents that were in traditional ag and traditional ag never interested me. As I got more, if I, as I got more introduced to what a greenhouse could be, I became more and more interested in agriculture. Until that, I thought I was going to do law. I thought I was going to do something as far away from agriculture as it could possibly be. And so the next question is then, well, what about Hortimeritas? So after working for other people for the first almost decade of my career, I decided that I was done working in the corporate world and I wanted to start my own business. Hortimeritas is the result of that desire. And Board of America is most easily described as a wholesale supply company that works directly with growers. But in all honesty, we're not a great wholesale supply company because the industry doesn't really allow us to be. We're more of like a specialized technical marketing company that works directly with the growers to understand the problems they have. We go out and find the solutions and hopefully find a way to make those solutions viable for a lot of different growers. Rather than trying to troubleshoot each individual farm as a separate problem, try to find the similarities and then productize that solution.

What does it take for a CA facility to be defined as state-of-the-art these days?

So it depends on what nationality you're talking to. And I really mean by that, like, if you talk to an American who may or may not have a lot of experience in traditional ag, then they're going to define it as a vertical farm. Like, that's going to be seen as the most state-of-the-art. If you talk to a Dutchman, they're going to say the Venlo greenhouse with heating, cooling, and supplemental lighting as the most state-of-the-art. And then there's going to be universities that try to back up each one of those arguments. And then if you talk to the farm, at least if you talk to a good farmer, in my opinion, they're going to say, well, it's whatever allows me to solve the problem I have. And the way I summarize that is I say you're using CEA based on your geographical location, what you're trying to overcome geographically, whether that's temperature, humidity, rain, light, cold, whatever it might be. And then you're also using it to try to modify, modify other things that you might have locally, like problems with human resources. Do you have availability of enough labor? And it If you don't have enough labor, then you start to look at CEA and potential automation, which is not robotics at this point in time, but labor-assist automation to make the labor you have that might be aging more efficient than what they are without it.

You touched on the automation, but I know a lot of, uh, CEAs were looking into sort of, uh, AI-driven crop monitoring and sort of controls and the advanced lighting systems, which are often touted as like the main selling points for CA. But what about biotechnology? Is there anything in genetics or microbiology that is being utilized or?

I'm going to say yes. And then I'm going to also add to it, probably not enough. I'm going to say a lot of stuff we're doing in breeding, right? There's a lot of things going on in breeding. There's a lot of push towards micropropagation, different stages, different types of micropropagation. And from that, there is a lot of good things happening. But when I say where would, you know, any sort of advanced biotech come in play, one of the things that I'm noticing, and it's really happening as we speak today, is an increase of viruses in these production facilities.

Okay.

Some of these viruses are also wreaking havoc on field producers. I think brown rugose in tomatoes is something we've seen in field and we've seen in greenhouses. Sanitation is something that is really important. Once you get brown rugose, it's a virus that's very hard to get rid of. For those that are in the ICAM world, we know we really don't have anything that's such as a viruside. So once that happens, you're kind of stuck with it. And that means that If you have no way of sanitizing your facility and getting it clean, then you're forced to switch to another crop. But then the question happens: What if that virus jumps from one crop to the next? What if groundworm goes from tomatoes to cucumbers to peppers? And then what do we do? Because we only have a handful of crops that make financial sense in CEA. Let's face it: tomatoes are the majority of what we produce in CEA around the world. Followed by peppers, cucumbers, no particular order, peppers, cucumbers, strawberries, leafy greens, culinary herbs. And in some high-value areas, things like melons and other things that are very specialized to certain cultures. So that's, that's it. Like once we move outside of those, it's financially difficult. Assuming we're not talking about cannabis, it's financially very, very difficult to make the math work on some of these other crops. And so what happens if a virus sets in? Okay. How do we protect against that? Now, granted, the breeding companies go to work right away, but I would say that either you or Kevin could really more educate me on how fast it takes to breed against viruses and what is the best way to do that. We know that from a chemical standpoint, treating these, you know, one of the desires of going into CA facilities is a reduction of pesticides. So the idea that we can just go start spraying these facilities, that's probably unlikely. If the facility is a warehouse with no sunlight, and why I use the term warehouse, kind of the divide is, am I using electric light as supplemental light, or am I using it as sole source lighting, right? That's kind of my divide. Once we go into a warehouse, best I can tell, I don't know any agricultural pesticides labeled for warehouse applications. And so now we have a problem with how, which labels do we use and how do we get special permits to be able to use those labels? So I think it goes back to biotech and how are we preparing a situation where we, when we're most successful, we are monocropping. And I'm not nearly as educated as you guys are in the history of some of these things, but every time we've gone too much of a monocrop, we seem to have biological issues arise. And these greenhouses are getting larger and larger. And the only way to be successful, the only way to use AI, the only way to use robotics, the only way to use other forms of automation is to monocrop.

So yeah, it's just another one of the paradoxes of the system. And that's really interesting. But genetic engineering has been defeating viruses since the 1990s. And you can imagine this would be an excellent application that I never thought of because breeding for virus resistance in tomato is not terribly simple because there's too many viruses. And so if you breed for brown rugose resistance, now you got TYLCV showing up and there's 4 or 5 loci that work against TYLCV. There's so many different viruses that you, in order to take them all out, you have to have these more tailored biotech approaches. Okay. So breeding is an issue. And you know, there's a funny part is people used to give me hell for saying that you had to breed for controlled environments. And I think it's why you invited me to Panama or someone invited me to Panama.

It was me. I invited you to Panama because You know, because those of us who have been in the space, we know this, right?

Yeah.

And unfortunately, I think when we're talking about things that are fun to talk about in our space, it's— we're looking at drawings that are not ever going to be financially viable to grow food, right? The fact of the matter is, let's end up talking about just the cost of producing food in a controlled environment, right? Still wholesale, if you're going to be successful, you have to figure out how to do a pound of tomatoes as somewhere between $1 and $1.50 a pound. The larger you get, the lower the prices, right? So now, now add electricity, add heat, add cooling, add sanitation, add whatever you want to add— automation, AI— and grow the plant, grow the price, grow the tomato for less than $1 a pound. Because I am very aware of food inflation at the grocery level, but the farms are not the ones that are getting more money. And the fresh produce aisle, while there are price increases, they're not normal. They're not going up nearly as fast as what's happening inside of the grocery store. And I've had people argue with me that, and I'm happy for people to argue with me that. I'm just speaking about my local area and what I see at my produce, at my local Kroger, Albertsons, um, H-E-B.

We're talking about breeding, poor controlled environments. Is there any, uh, Is there any use of genetic engineering or genetic editing to accelerate?

Um, not to my knowledge. Um, but here's the other part about the CEA industry. There's not a lot of sharing. So the largest companies don't necessarily share a ton of information until the product is already on the market.

Yeah.

I, I would be interested in Kevin's take on this as well, but it's kind of my experience in fresh produce in general. It's such a highly competitive market for premium products that a lot of times we don't get to see what they're working on behind the scenes. I know the number one thing people are looking for right now are more varieties that do well in hot, humid conditions, because if we look at the greenhouse industry, It's heavily concentrated to the north, which makes total sense. There's not a lot of sun, there's a lot of snow. If you want to extend your growing season, you have to have CEA facilities. But where none of the technology works really well is in the south to southeast because we don't have a really good way of managing humidity. Donald, I know me and you experienced this firsthand when we first met.

Yeah.

So you start to look at what the breeders are really focused on, and they're focused on finding varieties And I consider it more than going through their catalogs to see which varieties are going to stand up the best in these environments. Because the other problem we have in breeding is that breeders have a tendency to want to breed for larger markets. And when you look at— I'm just going to use the US as an example. When you look at the size of the CEA facility, and when I'm— when I say this, I'm going to define everything in a controlled environment. In which they're using some sort of heating to control the environment. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna include like California and high tunnel production where you've got a lot of passive ventilation, even though you might have advanced irrigation. I'm not including that because it's passively controlled. But if I'm excluding those high tunnel producers, then we have somewhere south of 3,000 acres total of controlled environment production in the United States. In that 3,000 acres, we have tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, strawberries, leafy greens, and pomegranates. It costs a lot of money to breed. You need acres to then sell those genetics and those varieties to. That for me is the primary math problem with this part of our industry. And I know you guys are probably not as much of a business topic, but for me, that is a very basic business problem there. How do we breed for an area that has a very small accessible marketplace.

A really good point. And an area that really may be changing with time too, because as you have improved facilities and improved lighting strategies, and now you're going to breed for a different controlled environment. So that, that, that target's always shifting. But the, the one that I always think about, or the one that I've been thinking about in the last few years, is the low energy footprint and the idea of can we breed something or identify germplasm that already exists and we know makes a quality product that can grow just fine in a low light environment, or low light environment, or some other kind of strategy— shorter day length, better DLI overall, maybe even pulses of light. We've had a lot of success with that. And, and so what's the idea with energy, and is anybody really looking at other ways to mitigate that other than potential genetics?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there is definitely a lot of conversation going on Fortunately, unfortunately, a lot of this is driven by European, by the European market and by their results because their industry is much larger. They have more engineers working on these problems than what we have here in North America. So a lot of those conversations are really ultimately being based in Europe. And it creates an interesting political dynamic here in the United States because in Europe, you You have countries that are very much focused on sustainability. In the U.S., we're kind of going the opposite direction. Speaking as someone who's in Texas, it's not really even acceptable to talk about sustainability in the business environment in Texas right now. So we have a challenge there. And we also have a challenge with the way they look at these Sustainable Development Goals based on the United Nations, based on the U.N. and their SDGs. There's different ways in which they look at it. There's different uses of different resources. I know that I personally am working with groups that are looking at positioning agricultural parks close to utility plants so that we can find a way to make 2 things work more sustainably in terms of reducing the load at the greenhouse, also reducing the cost of that energy at the greenhouse while off-taking some waste energy from the utility plant or level setting their, their, their production volumes during the course of 24 hours or seasonally. So I think We've seen that happen a little bit in the United States over the last 20, 30 years. We saw also greenhouse horticulture facilities built next to power plants to take wastewater, which was hot, take hot water and then use it to heat up the greenhouse. I do think there's innovative ways to do these things and reduce the— I'm going to just say carbon footprint, reduce the consumption of power. The kicker is going to be how do we get large Organizations to play well together? Okay, how do we get large organizations to understand realistic returns on investment by market segments, especially when agriculture, regardless if it's CEA or field, has a fairly low return on capital?

I'm sitting here today with Donald Kuhn. He's a graduate student at the University of Florida, and Chris Higgins, who is the president and co-founder of Hoard Americas. And we're talking about the recent innovations in Controlled environment agriculture. Where are we now? This is the Talking Biotech Podcast by Collabora, and we'll be back in just a moment. And now we're back on the Talking Biotech Podcast. We're speaking with Chris Higgins. He's the CEO and— or president. You're better than a CEO. You're the president.

I'm whatever you want me to be right now.

In Hort Americas. And, and he's looking awfully furry with the, with the big beard. You could go as Lemmy from Motorhead for Halloween.

My mother-in-law saw me in driveway as they pull up for the first time in 6 months, and she's like, he really looks like a mountain man.

Well, you know, and for those who don't follow on YouTube who are listening, 2 of us have hats on today. So, okay, there you go. All right. So anyway, we're also speaking with Donald Kuhn. He's been a co-host here before and co-host here today. There has been a lot of private funding that's gone into this, huge amount of private equity. And how is that Stream working? Is that still something you see a lot of, or has that kind of cooled off a little bit?

It's definitely cooled off over the last 12 months. I would say as we speak today in late August 2024, you would say that the investors are very skeptical right now of CEA. They're trying to figure out what their path forward is. There is a lot of capital already deployed. People are trying to figure out what is the future of that capital that's been deployed. And obviously there's been a lot of highly publicized bankruptcies. So much of the investment hasn't worked out too well. Depending on what we're talking about, right, whether there was a failed business that was a greenhouse or a failed business that was a vertical farm, I think the outcome is very different. Failed greenhouses end up going to other greenhouse operators and continuing to operate after the publicity of that bankruptcy goes away. Like, I don't know any— I've only named one or two greenhouses that are still vacant. Every other one has got a new operator. Fail of vertical farms have been different. And this is where I think the investors are pumping the brakes a bit because there has been no status quo for a vertical farm because every vertical farm's been a unique and individual novel approach, novel design. The investors, when those businesses fail, nobody really wants them. So they end up deconstructing the whole thing and it gets sold for parts. And so there is a big difference between that But there's been equal capital employed for both greenhouse production as well as indoor vertical farming. Where it's going, I really wish I knew. If I knew where I was going, I'd sleep better at night.

I think I could have done revolutionary things with 1/10 of 1% of the budget that was coming into some of these places. So anybody who's out there who wants to reinvest in maybe some unique breeding strategies, send me a note. I mean, we got ideas and I've been sending proposals to USDA for years and they all come back with great reviews and no money. It just drives me nuts. We've really found some fun stuff, but I won't tip the hat too much here. So Donald, you've got more questions.

Yeah. So going back to some of the results I noticed when I was doing a literature review recently, I saw that there was a trend for people to think of the controlled environments as very unnatural systems and has actually sort of negative impact on the consumers. And so I was curious if you've encountered that and sort of how you approach those conversations since you are very outspoken, as you say.

So the unnatural part, you know, is very interesting. I started hearing that comment in 2012, right? I won't name the large corporation, but The CEO and I were having a conversation, and this is a brand that you would see on a grocery store shelf in every grocery store throughout the United States. And his wife said, nobody's ever gonna buy that. It looks like it's grown in space. And the reality is, I don't think the consumer really cares too much. I think there's some very outspoken people that are louder than the every average negative, every average. Consumer, and I don't think they really care. You know, it's kind of like you go to the grocery store. Nobody really cares what tractor was used, right? They care. Does it have stable shelf life? Does it have adequate flavor? And I say adequate because that's an ongoing battle of most to least is what is good and what is not. But is the flavor and the value good? And oftentimes I hear, what's the shelf life like? You know, how long is it going to stay viable in my refrigerator? I don't hear too much comments about the natural aspect of it. I just don't think people care as long as it's healthy and as long as they perceive it to be a good value.

Well, let's take that one further. There's a nice halo around the word organic, right? And so here you have a system that really meets many of the organic values and criteria in terms of the perceived values of organic, but it can't be organic because there's so much emphasis on the soil, right? And that whole thing. And you can't use synthetic anything, right? Can't use synthetic fertilizers when really good, good CA really benefits from the use of precision fertilizers. So what's the story there? Is there any buzz on organic certification for controlled environment agriculture?

So I think we have to get back into that. Defining is it a greenhouse or is it an indoor farm?

Yeah.

So we— I have clients that are both vertical farmers and certified organics, as well as I have clients that are greenhouses and certified organic. The only people— this is— I don't even want to step in this mess. I don't think there— this is kind of like arguing religion. There's no winners in these arguments. Right. And there's a, there's a strong belief in philosophy And that belief does not really include a lot of science. And there's been battles all the way up at the USDA level to say what should be and what shouldn't be. Uh, that's not my place to judge. What I can tell you is that from a production standpoint, most of the farms that we're— when we talk CEA, the overwhelming majority of the farms, I think 99.5%, are using hydroponic growing methods, meaning that they have a closed-loop irrigation system in which they're constantly recycling the water and nutrients. When you add organics to that, it makes your job that much harder because now you have a living— now your irrigation solution becomes a living body, right? And now you have to keep that living body happy. And keeping that living body happy as your temperatures, your humidity, um, change throughout the course of the year and you have these fluctuations, the beneficial organisms with inside that solution are going to shift and change, and that's going to impact your, your Right? So you have a challenge in keeping those things all happy and keeping your production at top level. Using traditional salt-based fertilizers makes that job a lot easier. Is it impossible in organics? No. Is it more costly? Yes. Is it easy? Definitely not. And so if you have a, if you have a client base that's willing to give you the premium required to grow organics, Then it worked for the CEA facilities. But the question I think a lot of people are struggling with now as operators is CEA already requires a premium to be successful. Now I have another premium on top of that. What is the appetite for those price points with how big a consumer base? And what is the real benefit? What is the consumer looking for? We don't have a label that encompasses this. But I believe that a lot of the operators in my space feel that it If they had a label that said pesticide-free, then most of the consumers would be happy because their interaction with the consumer tells them what consumers really see organics as is a product that's free of pesticides. And then done correctly, CEATM offers that free of pesticides, assuming we're not including the very broad definition of pesticides and we're only talking about chemical pesticides. So we're still going to have to use some, some things to control certain pests, whether that's as we enter the facility, or in a greenhouse using beneficial insects to control predatory insects and figure out how we, how we label that. But based on the general consumer's definition of what they want organics to be, many farms can approach this from a pesticide-free standpoint. I don't believe the average consumer cares what a tag doesn't tell them.

Yeah, I have a suggestion for you. This is what I do at farmers markets. We sell fruits and vegetables at the farmers market and people ask if you're organic, and we're not. I say we are more organic because, because what we do is we analyze the soil, we find out what's missing, and we add back a precision synthetic blend of nutrients that match the deficiency and supplement the crop precisely. And this is much better than using fish emulsion or compost or something where we just put on N, P, and K in some ratio we don't know. And that's That seems to satisfy the consumer a little bit because, I mean, they are principally asking about pesticides. But when you explain to them that even organic cultivation uses pesticides, just use naturally occurring poisons rather than synthetic ones, you have those conversations. Those are interesting conversations. But I think the idea of more organic has a good resonance because it just says that you're taking this beyond pesticides and into fertilizer. And I think that It makes— it fits the CEA concept really well where you can talk about reclaiming water and limiting the amount of nutrition that seeps into groundwater. And there's a sustainability angle there, sustainability rhetoric that I think that if it was my job to play it up and come up with a solution, I bet we could.

Yeah.

But yeah, so anyway, I'll stop there.

Chris was talking about, you know, the premiums that you can secure Through being controlled environments in the greenhouse that I worked at was aquaponic. We were growing lettuce using the waste from fish, but we couldn't get the organic certification and justify adding another premium to it. So we relied on the fact that we had an all-natural fertilizer source and a very high food safety rating to secure and make everybody feel comfortable with it. The surveys said they didn't care it wasn't organic. They're very happy to know it came locally in a good way.

I really feel like the consumers that care today, what they ultimately care about is the relationship they have with their food, right? They care about feeling that their food is safe. They care about feeling that they know where their food comes from. And when you talk about going to a farmer's market, like, you know, Kevin, like you spoke to, or Donald, like you talk about servicing a local market in Florida. What you're really saying is we have a relationship with our client. Our client knows who we are. They know where we're at. And, and it's not a brown bag with product that has no identifying marks of who farmed it. And I think that's what I hear most times is what do we know about the farm? What do we know about where it came from? One of the things that drew me to CEA was the idea of being local, was the idea that smaller farms had a chance to compete. Now, I think things have changed throughout the course of the years, and my definition of small farm has definitely changed in what I consider a small farm. But that, that's for me. I think what the reality is, is like, there's still people, and I'll throw myself in there, right? I'm kind of a pescatarian. I don't eat a lot of meat. I, you know, I eat quite a bit of fish and mostly vegetables. I will buy from farms that I know, and I will pay a premium to buy from farms that I know. But I'll also buy Standard everyday off-the-shelf produce when it's priced correctly and in season. So, you know, but I do feel obviously I'm different that I have a relationship with a lot of those big companies, but I do feel like I know a lot about where my food comes from and that's the comfort that I'm looking for. I'm not having traveled the world and been on farms in a lot of different countries. There's certain imports that I'm not necessarily too excited about on whether they say organic or not.

Along the different kinds of foods you consume, is there any crops that you're hoping that CA will crack and produce a bunch of next?

You know, the, the one that's the most fun to talk about is strawberries. And being that you guys are based in Florida, is it, you know, a traditional strawberry state? To me, it's the most interesting crop because of everything we grow. It's the one where people are like, not only the growers, but writers, journalists, authors, everyday people are very passionate about strawberries. Like, they get very opinionated when it comes to strawberries. And it is a crop that we're struggling to get the yields at out of CEA, right? Historically, it's hard to do a lot of this in metric for the audience, but historically, crops that perform well in CEA perform at about somewhere between 60 and 100 kilos per square meter per year. The problem that we have with strawberries is that we're performing really sub-15 kilos, but we're using a lot of that. We're using the same amount of resources and sometimes we're using more labor. So we're still trying to figure out how to do it successfully. But it does get interesting because those of us that know about breeding, back to the genetics talk, breeding about strawberries know that the industry, rightfully so, because this is what the consumers have wanted, has bred for berries that have a long shelf life. They're fairly large. They're beautiful in color, but they don't have very high sugar content, right? Their Brix levels are lower. And why? I think, I think you guys would agree with me. If you want a product to have a long shelf life, you got to reduce the amount of sugar, right? And so they bred for this, this, this situation where a lot of people now feel they bred out, they grew out too much of the flavor and they don't feel like the product tastes good anymore. My experience in having product grown locally in season, especially in, uh, in HyperPies, we're using new varieties that we've never used before. Some of these are smaller, but they're flavor bombs. I mean, they taste amazing. The only, the only challenge is they don't ship really well and they've got to be consumed really quickly. You definitely don't want to leave them in your refrigerator for 7 days.

Right.

Um, and, and, and that's where the more traditional, the Albions and some of the berries that you find more commonly at your grocery store do really well. Is they're going to hold up in your in your refrigerator for five to seven days. You shop on Sunday; it's pretty good through Friday. Speaking for personal personal use, that as you can tell, I'm very excited about that. I'm also very excited about the trend that I see happening. Spent some time with USDA, spent some time with some others. Generally, the trend towards more consumption of fresh produce. Generally, the trend of people more being concerned. I like when people are concerned about what we eat. I like it when people. Want to take care of their health, right? I like the fact that some people want to like consume less in season. I like those things. So generally speaking, I think we can do a lot to add to the palate, provide people with other food experiences, and then also make opportunities for mid-sized farmers and potentially small farmers in local markets to be able to deliver to that very particular consumer who wants things locally year-round. And the only way we're going to do it in the United States with our climate, with the challenges and unique climates in such a large country, the only way we're going to be able to do that, in my opinion, is modifying climates.

It's a really good point. And I really appreciate what you say about strawberry because, you know, my lab worked for years in diversity of strawberry and we were the lab that sequenced the first strawberry genome back in, I don't know, 14 years ago now. But the, but the ones that are the alpine strawberries, the smaller ones that are loaded with stuff, the diploids. Those are fantastic. And there's another level of ploidy, the hexaploids, one called Fragaria moschata, very popular in Europe. They call it the musk strawberry, just not because Elon invented it.

Yeah.

Because it's got a musky flavor and it's, it's really amazing. You love it or you hate it, but it's got a flavor profile that's completely complex. And I think revisiting some of the ancient cultivars is really warranted just because you will find some that do have better post-harvest quality. But anyway, I'm getting off into strawberries. With all the lessons learned, everything that we've learned in terms of how to do the business end and not do the business end and what we know won't work from application, do you see anything that really looks like a game changer on the horizon in the next 10 years or so that really will enable these kinds of technologies to be in every metropolitan area and employing people and making profits for the farmers that use them? And more vertical farms than greenhouses. Do you just think this can be viable.

So vertical farms, I happen to have clients that are viable, but they're not the ones that get a lot of publicity. You know, my clients are sized correctly for specific markets, meaning they're really trying not to sell outside of a city or a metroplex, right? They're really focused on an area that wants a high-end product year-round. They're focused on a chef that is going to change the menu multiple times per year and is going to put different demands on the local food system. Do I think there's a space for vertical farms to exist that can help the salad industry for that high, that high-priced, that high-value consumer? Yes, I firmly believe that. And I see it being successful in cities like Washington, DC, Nashville, Seattle. Those are areas where you have a consumer base that wants this product. And when you have a consumer base that wants it, and there's a problem to solve, the United States is an amazing place because there's entrepreneurs that will go out and solve those problems. Right? The one thing that they all have in common is that they're fairly small. The farms have been right-sized to the size of the market they're trying to service. And they're not trying to get super big. So they haven't taken a lot of capital. A lot of these guys are young people with horticulture degrees, landscaping degrees, irrigation, you know, experience in irrigation and other things where they took all these things they've learned, and they They applied it in a situation where they probably couldn't afford to buy a farm. Let's face it. Where in Seattle can a person, a 25-year-old, go out and buy land and a farm? They can't. But depending on the market, they might be able to get somebody to lease them a warehouse for 3 years.

Yeah.

And they might be able to cover the expense of rent because they're not having to put out a ton of capital. And if they design their own system, they might be able to have a market that services and provides them the lifestyle they're looking for. Do I think that there's a huge play in the next 5 years for super large, massive vertical farms? I think a couple of them are going to make it because they raise a lot of capital and they have large war chests that will allow them to continue to compete for years to come. I'm not going to say that I think that it's a guarantee that they'll be around after that. But I think the next generation will come depending on what the consumer decides and wants. When I look at living in Dallas, Texas, and I see some of the climate studies being produced by Texas A&M, if I want local produce, we are going to have to have CEA here because we're not going to be able to grow outside in the summer. It's too hot. We don't have enough water. And so there's going to be a part of my market that wants this. Do I think we've learned all the hard lessons? Not yet. I think there's still some, still some examples that will be shown. I think that's going to happen in the next 6 months to 2 years. Yeah, we're going to see still some very publicized failures. And then I think it's going to be interesting to see how this changes around the world and globally. I know each one of you studied what happens globally in agriculture. And we're seeing retailers play different roles in different countries. So what happens if the retailer's willing to help that farmer be successful? That changes the game 100%. Is the US there? No, we're not there yet. Right. But there's other countries that are. What happens if government steps in and says, hey, you have to, you have to limit these emissions by this much? What if people really start to focus in on nitrogen runoff? Right. Then again, depending on how we use the term CEA, The way we capture that is going to use advanced irrigation solutions, which are being developed in the CA industry today. Right. And so there are not play and play, there is going to be a play for these. I think certain technologies will bleed out into general agriculture. I will tell you the things I'm watching the most because these are most interesting for me from a tech standpoint. I'm watching the interaction with the environment. What emissions are we putting out? How we better use our resources. And the number one thing I'm watching is labor. I know in working in a hydroponic— working with hydroponic strawberry producers in California, I know that the access they have to ag labor is reducing. The age of the ag labor they have access to is increasing. And when you build a hydroponic strawberry system that brings the work up to an ergonomic position where they're standing up and working rather than bending over working. I watched women, a lot of agricultural women line up to do those— that work because it was easier on their body. So do I think those are things we can learn? And did that necessarily happen in a high-tech facility? No, those— that was done in high tunnels. And right now the market's not quite ready for it. But the labor is ready for it. Right? And the only thing we need to see is we need to see— I don't think we need to see the price of product go up too much at the grocery store level. I think we need to look at the supply chain and look at where the value's at and figure out if there is a way to solve the problem without having a huge impact on the consumer. And if we can do that, then I think it could be way up in the skies of London.

If listeners wanted to follow you or your company on social media, where could they find you?

I'm most active on LinkedIn. If they want to follow me, just look me up. Christopher Higgins is what I'm listed at on LinkedIn. Obviously, as you were, Americas, we were pretty active on LinkedIn and Instagram. We do have locations in Canada and Mexico as well. So we are approaching this from, you know, the perspective of 3 different, very different cultures and countries. And so that's, that's us. Otherwise, you can find a lot more information about the products we sell and the information we provide on a daily basis. At our website, which is hoardamericas.com.

All right. hoardamericas.com. Okay. So, uh, Donald, thanks for joining again. Chris, nice to see you. And, uh, you know, thank you for joining. And, you know, as things go forward, if, um, and when something really interesting that you'd like to talk about comes up, please let me know. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and let's get together at another conference sometime.

For sure.

It's always, always fun to stir the pot in controlled environment conferences.

Excellent.

So thank you for listening to another episode of the Talking Biotech Podcast. Write a review on iTunes. Make sure you check out the YouTube channel where we're having more and more of these end up in video form. You can see how the sausage is made. And, uh, I guess that's where I'll stop. Thank you for listening to the Talking Biotech Podcast, and we'll talk to you again next week.

All right.

Hi everybody, and welcome to this week's Talking Biotech Podcast by Collabora. Now, controlled environment agriculture, what does it mean? It means you could grow stuff in a greenhouse, you could grow stuff in an indoor vertical farm in a completely closed controlled environment. And these are new methods that have been used to cultivate crops, especially around larger metropolitan areas, and seem to garner a lot of attention, a lot of capital, and a lot of dreams of people of how they were going to make their millions selling fruits and vegetables, or at least vegetables. But as time has gone on, maybe it hasn't panned out to expectations. And so today we'd like to drill into that a little bit to talk about how things have changed and where the industry is going. And today I'm joined by Donald Kuhn. How's it going, Donald?

It's going good. How about you?

Yeah, good. You may remember Donald from— you may remember Donald from a couple previous episodes. And so tell us again what you do in real life, Donald.

Yeah, so right now I'm currently a PhD candidate at the University of Florida in the Agriculture and Biological Engineering Department, focusing on controlled environment agriculture.

Yeah, so, so we've had a couple controlled environment talks and, uh, another one's the same. He suggested Chris Higgins and I said, I know Chris.

So Chris too.

Yeah, so, uh, Chris Higgins, he's the president and co-founder of Hort Americas. And welcome to the podcast, Chris.

Hey, thanks for having me, guys.

And then that's where I'll do the splice.

All right.

Good stuff. Uh, all right. Um, thanks, Chris.

Nice to talk to you. Did it go well? Like how, how you guys wanted it to go?

Oh yeah, it went great.

Yeah, it goes fine. It, it's, um, yeah, for 3 people on is, is good. It's, it's never as smooth as when it's just one person. So Donald's gotta start doing these by himself.

Okay. Yeah, that's next.

Hey Kevin, you can do it. I was thinking about it. I remember when we first met now and why we were at that wedding symposium. I remember recommending you to Michigan State because of the idea of growing with less light intensity.

Yeah.

And I'm still like, I was working with MIT before that thing fell apart. And I said, guys, there's a mathematical equation that I'm not smart enough to figure out how to write down, but it's plant, it's plant density times light intensity divided by production cycle. And then there's a certain value that will come out of that and it'll be yes or no, it works inside of a vertical farm.

Yeah.

And I remember it because some of your work that I was reading at that time, that is where I was like, if we can drive down light intensity, it's going to work. And the damnedest thing happened. Now all the researchers have taken the light intensity, which I started off recommending at about 200 to 240 micromoles. Some of the guys at the vertical farm now are recommending 600 micromoles and I'm like, It's half an hour. Yeah, your electrical will be too high.

Now this is, this is an interesting point because we— I used to always talk about, um, the variation in spectrum through development, how different times in life different plants would want different stuff, and everybody said, no, that's stupid. And then we talked about low light intensity and trying to find Energy Star plants, and people said, ah, that's stupid. And then you talk about pulses and that kind of saving energy with pulse light, and, you know, And then breeding for controlled environments. You know, there's so many good ideas that the industry or people in the industry or academics, they really dig in their heels and they don't want to get excited about these ideas that could pan out.

Yeah, I agree.

And it's because the first thing they teach is, you know, more light means more yield.

1%. The golden rule of light: 1% light is 1% yield. If I hear that from another fucking Dutch guy, I'm gonna shoot him.

Well, the interesting thing, I don't know if you followed any of the stuff I've been doing with pulses, but we've been doing these protracted dark periods between pulses and cutting light by 30 to 80% and getting equivalent crop. But it's all small format stuff. But we're trying to see how that'll work with larger crops. But the other thing on that is I think through those studies using Arabidopsis, If you can imagine a seedling developmentally having a gas pedal and a brake pedal and pushing the gas to drive development forward and then kind of feathering it with the brake just to make sure it's perfect like you would do in a field.

Yeah.

But when you can control the environment, that brake becomes irrelevant because your optimum is dictated by the input energy that you decide is optimal, not because you don't need to constantly change because the cloud goes in front of the sun. And so we think we know what the brake pedal is.

Interesting.

Genetically. And so, um, I'm in the process now of taking out the brakes and see if we can just make a crop that goes faster, at least out of the chute. So we'll, so we'll see what happens. Well, I'll keep you posted.

Excellent.

Yeah.

Donald, thank you very much for reaching out. Kevin, great to reconnect. And, uh, if you guys ever need me again, just let me know.

All right.

Yeah.

Take care. Nice to see you.

Bye-bye.

Oh, I gotta stop this.