Episode Summary

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show, co-founder at Fazenda Urbana, Thomas Oberlin. Fazenda Urbana is the producer of the MightyGreens brand of vegan microgreens and mushrooms. Today, Harry and Thomas talk about the origin story of Fazenda Urbana and how Thomas became involved in controlled environment agriculture. Thomas provides his thoughts on the evolution of entrepreneurship and why that spirit is so prominent in Brazillian culture. Finally, Thomas speaks to what excites him about the future of micro greens, the Mighty Greens brand and the AgTech industry as a whole.

Episode Sponsor

CULTIVATD

Key Takeaways

• 
  
• 02:37 – Harry welcomes to the show Thomas Oberlin, who shares the story of how he
• ended up living in Brazil and how he got involved in controlled-environment agriculture
• 
  
• 11:33 – Thomas speaks to how shocked he was to learn about food deserts in many wealthy countries
• 
  
• 
  
• 13:49 – Thomas reflects on the origin story of Fazenda Urbana
• 
  
• 
  
• 18:00 – The initial response Thomas and his team received after launching their micro greens
• 
  
• 
  
• 24:43 – Thomas explains why he approached chefs and restaurants first and foremost
• 
  
• 
  
• 28:28 – Thomas speaks to the evolution of the entrepreneur movement
• 
  
• 
  
• 34:27 – The relationship between Fazenda Urbana and the Mighty Greens brand and how Thomas and his company got involved in mushrooms
• 
  
• 
  
• 53:31 – Thomas explains the difference between fogponics, hydroponics and aeroponics
• 
  
• 
  
• 56:19 – What excites Thomas the most about the future of micro greens and the vertical farming industry
• 
  
• 
  
• 1:01:21 – Harry thanks Thomas for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can learn more about Fazenda Urbana and connect with Thomas
• 
  

Tweetable Quotes

“The reality is I grew up on a farm. Rodrigo’s a vegetarian. But beyond that, we didn’t have any touch with agriculture.” (15:32)

“And so, our restaurant business grew literally by going door-to door in the start. And then combined with word of mouth from one well-known chef and then another well- known chef.” (26:09)

“I think entrepreneurship is very strong here. Brazilians always have this spirit of figuring out a way to do something.” (28:44)

“The best thing that happened to us when we started is that we didn’t raise a whole lot of money. It forced us to be extraordinarily disciplined in what we’re doing. We just learned so much. In two and a half years we cut our labor cost per unit by seventy-five percent through mechanization and processes. And I’m not sure if that would have happened much faster with a lot of money in our pocket.” (31:51)

“I believe that we can create micro greens as the gateway vegetable for kids.” (46:52)

Links Mentioned

Thomas’ LinkedIn

Fazenda Urbana Website

Mighty Greens Instagram

Sponsor Info:

Cultivatd Website

Cultivatd Instagram

Cultivatd’s Twitter

Cultivatd’s Facebook

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Mentioned in this episode:

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or click the link in the show notes. Said the best thing that happened to

us when we started is that we didn't raise a whole bunch of money. It

forced us to be extraordinarily disciplined in what we're doing. We

would have made so many mistakes, and I don't even think that were mistakes. We

just learned so much, right? In 2 and a half years' time, we cut our

labor costs per unit by 75%. through

mechanization and processes. And I'm not sure that that would have

happened much faster, right, with a lot of money in our pocket.

Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations with

fascinating CEOs, Founders, and agtech visionaries.

Join us every week as we dive deep into the world of vertical

farming with your host, Harry Duran.

Vertical Farming Podcast, Season 3. Welcome back. If this is your first time listening,

you're in the right place. It's the show where we interview fascinating CEOs and

founders of the leading vertical farming companies from around the world.

I'm your host, Harry Duran. In case you missed last week's

episode, Great conversation with David Cohen, CEO at Fluence.

If you haven't listened to it, please check it out. Very engaging conversation,

and David is incredibly smart, and I learned a lot about the history

of LEDs and the important role David and his company

played at the time. This week we have the pleasure of speaking with Thomas

Oberlin. He's the co-founder of Fazenda Urbana based out of Brazil.

Fazenda Urbana is the producer of the Mighty Greens brand of vegan

microgreens and mushrooms, and in this episode we discuss the

origin story of of Fazenda and how Thomas became involved in

the controlled environment agriculture scene. And in case you're wondering,

we learn how Thomas ended up in Brazil in the first place. He provides his

thoughts on the evolution of entrepreneurship there and why that spirit is so

prominent in Brazilian culture. And he shares some surprising origin

stories, which I know for a fact, because I listened to them and

thought they were great, that you'll find them educational and entertaining.

Finally, Thomas speaks about what excites him, in the future

of Fazenda Urbana, the Mighty Greens brand, and the agtech

industry as a whole, especially the opportunities in Central and South

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VFPOD2021. And we'll make sure that's in the show notes as well. Don't forget to

sign up for our Vertical Farming Weekly newsletter at verticalfarmingweekly.com.

If you enjoyed this episode or past episodes, leave a rating and a review at

ratethispodcast.com/vfp. I'd love

to read yours out next. Okay, let's head down south to beautiful

Rio de Janeiro and learn more about Thomas and Fazenda Urbana.

Thomas Oberlin, co-founder at Fazenda Urbana, thank you for

joining me on the Vertical Farming Podcast. It's my pleasure, Harry.

I've enjoyed your work for some time, and it's, uh, it's great to be a

guest. How did you first hear about the show?

I was looking, I think it was something from the agriculture guys,

from Henry. Henry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was guest 2 or

3 on the show, yeah, early. Yeah. And so I believe

that's how I found out about you. I met

him once. He came to Brazil and we met

for dinner and had a chat a couple years ago. And

Do you listen to other shows or is that how you consume the content? Do

you normally read audiobooks or— I'm just curious about that. I

used to listen to a lot of audiobooks.

And then during the pandemic, I started

listening to more and more podcasts. I really

hadn't done that much attention before,

but life changed and I had some

Gaps in my schedule, I started listening and now it's

become a part of my regular routine. And are

you at the point where you're listening at a higher speed now or you're still

at 1x for your podcasts? No, I haven't tried

that. That's a good— man, I didn't even know that was

possible. So I can crank up the speed on the

podcast and burn through them faster. It's interesting because the

technology they use changes the speed but not the pitch. So

it's not like normally when you play something fast, like I think about

an old-school tape recorder. The pitch is high, it sounds like chipmunks. But

this increases the speed of the podcast so you can listen to the

podcast faster, but it's still me at the same pitch. So it's easier to

comprehend and you can do 1.2x, 1.5x,

and slowly make your way to higher speeds. And I've done it in the

past with audiobooks and that's when I saw it, that option as podcasts.

And depending on the content, if it's entertainment or light listening,

you can usually get by with starting at one of those 1.1, 1.2x's,

but it lets you just consume content faster. I'm at the point now where I'm

at 2x, so I can get a 30-minute podcast in 15 minutes.

No, that's great. I had no idea. It sounds a little bit like Auto-Tune

technology a long time ago. Something like that. As a musician, right?

And so— And so for the benefit of the listener, where's home for you

now? Brazil. Rio de Janeiro is, uh, is

where, where we're based. So— I've been 3 times.

Really? Yeah. Cool. Well, how did that happen?

I know you're supposed to be interviewing me, but tell me a little bit. No,

it's okay. It's a conversation, not an interview, so it's fine. Uh, yeah,

I ended up there with friends, uh, in late '90s.

Went to Rio, went there once with a group of friends, then we went back,

I think it was a year or two later, and then went there for another

trip when I was in São Paulo. But yeah, I really love it. I actually

got to go to Sambódromo, which again,

for the benefit of listener, is, uh, Actually, maybe if you want to describe it,

that'd be interesting. No, it's sort of— it's a long,

narrow type of football stadium in a sense, right, through

which the Carnival parade

occurs in Rio. So it's an amazing experience. And in

fact, my co-founder Rodrigo Maia used to— when we

first met, his part-time job was helping a

company that arranged for tourists to have that experience during

Carnival. It's an amazing sensory experience there.

Yeah, it's almost— the only thing I can think of as an equivalent is sort

of like the Rose Bowl Parade, but

it was almost like a strip that you would see one of the speed car

races in as well. So it's a weird

combination. Yeah, and it's one after another. Floats and

schools. Yeah, that's right. They're called the schools

of marchers or participants. And from my

understanding, I mean, they— and when I've seen it, they spend like a year on

the costumes, the floats, and it's, it's a real— that's your point— a

sensory experience. It's really, really interesting to, to have seen that. Yeah,

they go through a whole fundraising process, right? And then they build these

incredible and elaborate floats.

Sometimes the floats make it all the way through the Summerdrome.

Sometimes they're a little too large to turn a

corner, and there's funny— and then sometimes people fall off. So you have all

this sort of NASCAR crash-like

aspect to it in addition to the sound, the

drumming and the music and the dancing and the costumes.

Yeah, it's intense. And that was me there

for Carnival as well. So experiencing that

in Rio is an experience in and of itself as well. When did

you end up in Rio? So my first experience in

Brazil started in the year 2000. I was an

executive in a company that built large

data centers, carrier-neutral data centers here in

Brazil and in Argentina. And so

the first time I did any sort of work in South America in general was

during that timeframe from 2000 to 2003. And

we had a big data center in São Paulo and another one in Rio.

And I started out running business development and then sales in all

the countries. And so I had to spend 2 weeks a month in Brazil.

And so what I would do is I would go to São Paulo, the largest

city in the Southern Hemisphere, for anybody who doesn't know, over 20

million people in the metropolitan area. And I would go Monday

through Thursday in São Paulo, and then I would fly Thursday

night to Rio, and I would stay Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in

Rio, and then I'd go back to São Paulo and then on to Buenos Aires.

So that— and then, so I really fell in love with the country

and the people. And then in

2009, I launched a

modular data center company, put together a team of engineers.

We got a patent on this highly energy-efficient

modular data center system, ultimately went on and got—

and were approved and selected by Amazon as

the only Latin American company that they certified to

provide modular data centers to them. And decided to launch

that production of that business in Brazil and

specifically in Rio at that time. So from that point on,

you know, my life's been really focused on Brazil.

And then when did controlled environment agriculture, vertical farming, when

did that appear on your radar? When did you start noticing that? You know, I

started really paying attention to it in

2015. At the modular data center

company, which is called SmartCube, we happened to win and deliver

2 huge projects, award-winning projects for

2 different banks in Venezuela, of all places.

Very challenging environment to work in.

But the banks were 2

government-owned banks. And the first project with the Bank of

Venezuela, we became very close friends with

the VP of IT. Eventually, he left the bank

and started working with us. Because he left the

bank, he no longer had access to some preferential treatment that

government employees got with respect to access to food. And

they were going through a really difficult time.

People were standing in food lines, people standing in lines for

medicine. And so he was— and his former boss

had become the minister of groceries, in effect, Alimentos.

Oh, wow. So, you know, we kept thinking, boy, what can

we do? You know, what can we do to help these guys?

And I started looking around and, you know, that's

really where I started seeing the controlled environment. First, I saw

the modular container guys, right? Like Freight Farms and

GroTainer, right? I saw what the Agricool

guys were doing over in France. As well as some of the

larger scale. But our idea that

motivated us to even really start looking at that was we had a friend

who couldn't get food. And so that's what drove

us down this path. Once we started studying it,

my co-founder Rodrigo was the right-hand guy. And in

fact, we worked closely together at SmartCube and said, well,

Let's— we think there's something interesting here. And so we, we

left SmartCube and started, uh, spent a

year studying the market and deciding what we wanted to do in the controlled environment

space. That's an interesting story. Thanks for sharing that background.

And I'm sure anyone who follows the news understands the situation

that's happening in Venezuela, but also just across South

America. There's a lot of inability to have access to

fresh produce, and we see it here obviously in the United States with our food

deserts. But I think people assume that in South America that access to

fresh produce is common. And I think you

being there and seeing it firsthand, you've probably been able to

experience how that's usually not the case. And was that

really a surprising find for you, or is it something you became more aware

of as you did more research? No, it was in the sense that a country

that, in the case of Venezuela, a country that was, you know,

not that long ago had been extraordinarily wealthy, right? And

had a robust agricultural system, had

completely collapsed. I mean, I have pictures that— pictures

sent up, literally the guys stand in line for 5 hours

and almost nothing on the shelves. But even within Brazil, as

we started to look at it, Brazil's the

220-some million people, the longest from north to

south country in the world. Yet its

federal highway system, when we started looking at this, was only about— had only about

55-56% paved roads. And

so what you have in Brazil, these centers where there's

a lot of food production, of course there's massive amounts of soybean

production and beef and big drivers for the export economy, but

green leafy vegetables and fruits, there are centers at which that

product is produced. And not always, not always

close to all the population centers. And so

transportation expenses are high. Transportation

quality leaves some things to be

desired. And so you can

have a product that costs 4 reais per

kilo in one part of the country at the

supermarket and will sell for 30 or 40

reais a kilo in another part of the country. Simply because—

so it's in effect a food desert simply because

of these transportation logistics issues and costs.

So you said you did the— spent about a year doing research. What was it

that you were finding that was coloring, like, you know, your

decision into what type of company

Fazenda was going to be? Yeah, we went and looked at several different things,

right? Coming from SmartCube, that was a custom design

manufacturing company. We would build these modular data

centers with intelligent cooling

systems. We were one of 3 companies in the

world at the time to get a patent on technology in that area.

And so we're used to this manufacturing

world and we didn't really like it because you spend a lot of

money doing custom development. Somebody may decide to buy

or not. It was very— we at one point

had people inquiring from over 120 different countries around the world

about our modular data centers. We knew we'd already

looked fairly early on and said, yeah, I don't think we want to be in

the manufacturing, the container farm business as well.

Freight Farms was out there with some guys doing some interesting work in that sector,

but a container farm that would sell for $80,000

or $100,000, well, we were selling modular data centers that

are The cheap unit was

$500,000 to a million. Oh,

wow. So you got to sell a lot of container farms and/or

services associated with it to make up for that. So we fairly

early on decided, okay, we don't want to be in that. There was a lot

of interest in franchise businesses here in Brazil in

particular. And we looked at that and said, look, we don't know whether

this is going to work, how it's going to work, what's going to work. We

don't want to start offering some franchise of a solution.

And the reality is, Rodrigo, I grew up on a farm, right? Rodrigo's a

vegetarian, but beyond that, we didn't have any touch with agriculture.

Yeah, yeah. So we went and got teamed up with a

PhD agronomer who was a professor at a local university.

We started, and then we spent a lot of time in supermarkets

and looking at the things that we knew could be

grown in controlled environments at the time and figuring out Okay.

In the major cities in Brazil— Brazil's, uh, over 80% of the

population lives in urban areas despite the immense size of the country.

In these cities, what is there an excess of supply of, right? And what

is in fault and what are the price points? And

over time we found is that, you know,

small, you know, specialty vegetables, specifically

microgreens, right? baby leaf and microgreens in particular,

had the highest value per unit. And there was nobody

producing those products on any sort of scalable way and nobody

doing it in a controlled environment at all. And so

despite the fact that we won and that we were selected

to provide some container farms to a project in the Ilha da Madeira

in Portugal, before we'd even started the business,

we submitted a design and were selected. We said, you

know what, we want to be producers, right? We want to produce

pesticide-free products. We want to produce them close to the consumer,

eliminating this transportation, food loss issues.

And so we decided to launch and do our MVP

focused on microgreens. One other thing stimulated that.

You know, Rodrigo and I both at that time had stepsons that were about 7

years of age. Neither one of them like to eat

vegetables. And what we found

testing growing microgreens at home is that in both

cases, you could put, you know, 200 grams of

regular broccoli on the plate, or you could put a small

amount of microgreens who have substantially higher

nutritional density per kilo, and they would eat

the, the microgreens when they would fight In some

cases for hours against eating the regular plant. Interesting.

And so that reinforced, and we thought, okay, there's

an interesting opportunity here, and, and there's some

other benefits to the microgreen approach. And

what was the initial response as you started rolling out, and

how did you decide that this pilot or this experiment was

enough for you to justify moving forward? Good, great question. There

were a couple interesting things. We had gotten some

data, you know, suggesting that, you know,

reasonable expectation at that time to produce microgreens was

to do it within a 14-day period, and that we should be able to

produce about 1.5 kilos of

microgreens per square meter of grow space. And

I'll tell you, at that point in time, We spent months

trying to find a seed company that would provide us with

seeds that didn't have any sort of treatment on them, any

defensivos, as they said here, right? We didn't know what to do for it. We

had to test all sorts of different grow media options.

We didn't want to use soil inside of a controlled environment, right?

Test different media options. And we had to find lighting

solutions. So we said, well, we're going to do this in the lowest

risk way possible. We leased 2 small

Like, you know, half of a 20-foot container. One, in

fact, to start out. We bought racks at the equivalent of a Home

Depot and trays at a home

improvement place, bought pumps at a pet fish

supply store. And then we

went and looked at LED lights. And at that time, you know, they were going

to cost us like 4,000 reais, which was a couple

thousand dollars here by the time they were imported grow lights

per unit. So, well, that, that doesn't make any sense.

So we selected, uh, you know, fluorescent lights on the

blue end of the spectrum, and we built this real simple

system out and then started growing. And the first

time we got the, you know, the, the production time was, it

was 12 days instead of 14. Depending on the

plant that we had planted, we're able to produce between— we're supposed to do

what— have produced about 1.5 kilos per square meter. We

went— we were between 2.5 and 3.4

kilos per square meter. And, uh, so, well, okay,

that probably was a mistake, right? We went back and did it again. We were

able to cut the time further. Then we started breaking the production

process into 2 sectors, germination, right? And then,

and then growth. And obviously reduced our energy costs by doing that.

And then started applying some other techniques used in

marijuana production and so forth until we reached a

point where almost all of our microgreens products were able to

produce consistently within a 7-day timeframe.

Then we started taking products out to restaurants and visiting them,

and we would cut the product, we'd weigh it, put it in, you know, 50

grams per box, which was which was a pretty standard

configuration that I'd seen. And one of the

chefs who's one of the top, top 50 chefs in Latin

America said, hey, Tom, you know, my—

I worked in the US and I worked in Europe and I could get live

microgreens there. If you bring me live microgreens, they'll

last in the kitchen a lot longer. And,

you know, so it's a far better value proposition for me than buying

these organic grown-in-the-dirt microgreens that I have to wash. They already

are turning into a green juice by the time they're, they're in the kitchen for

a day. And just a point of clarification there, when you say live,

is there a distinction there? Yeah, so all— what we do, we sell our

products, we don't cut our microgreens, right? So we sell

living my— and we sell living microgreens. We planted— so over

time, we standardized on coconut fiber initially as a grow

medium. But we had to go to the coconut fiber

provider and get them to give us a consistent thickness of carpet. That didn't

exist. So when we were getting seeds, we were getting developed a

consistent thickness of carpet. Then we

went through a whole process of cutting the carpet into certain sizes that would

fit into our boxes, sterilizing the carpet, planting it. We

developed the machinery to plant it to cut our labor costs down.

And then we developed a germination system. A

fogponics-based germination system with controls that allowed it to

adjust it per plant. And so we plant the plants,

germinate them in one environment, migrate to another environment for

3.5 days of growth under the lights, put that

coconut fiber with the microgreens on them in a box and

sell them. And we developed packaging that allowed— that

maintained those plants in a live state.

Whether they were on a supermarket shelf. And so, so when I say

live, yeah, so as opposed to, as opposed, so

anybody else that you would, organic farmers would, cuz they're growing

in soil, right, would cut the plant and, and

microgreens are very sensitive. So they, they have a very short shelf life if you

do that. So by developing packaging

that maintained this plant in a little, like a little terrarium almost.

We were able to keep the product on the— we had restaurants that would put

it in Tupperware and keep it in their refrigerated section, and it would be good

for 3 weeks to 4 weeks. Wow. And what was the response from the chef?

Oh, he loved it. He told everybody. And so we started out

with the idea that we're going to sell to supermarkets. We wanted something

that was scalable, right? And we could replicate in multiple

cities and it was scalable. But the Working with the chefs

allowed us to test all these processes so that when

the supermarket business came along, we were ready to go for it.

I don't know if you've had a chance to listen to the previous interviews with

Rob Lang of Farm.One. He had a similar story of how he

started with reaching out to

Michelin-star chefs in New York City and because

he was working with like edible flowers and then obviously There's a proliferation

of high-end restaurants in New York City, so he made a lot of headway there.

And the recent one with Hiroki Kogi from Oishi about

taking this crazy story about flying over with

strawberries in his suitcase and then these

omakase, like, high-end strawberries and then walking them to

restaurants in New York City as well. So, I thought it's fascinating because if

anyone has a refined palate enough to be able to appreciate the

nuances and the flavors that are inherent with, you

know, edibles grown like this, I think it's definitely, uh,

chefs to start. So that's what we did, also a

similar thing, right? We produced our product. So going back to

this chef, you know, we produced the product and we took it to him

on a Friday. It was the Friday of the start of Carnival. He said, ah,

Tom, we're going to be closed for another week. I said, well, fantastic,

right? At that time with restaurants, we were taking—

we'd deliver. We decided we're going to deliver and do a full reverse

logistics So we would deliver a Tupperware box

with the product in it. They could put it directly in their

refrigerated area. That's what he did. And then when they

came back, in fact, it was like 10 days later, they called and said, hey,

you know, we just pulled your product out of the camera fria, right, of the

cold storage. It looks just like when you delivered here, and we're using it

today. Wow. And so, yeah, and then

he spread the word. But Rodrigo and I would walk around

on the streets in Rio in the areas where the restaurants were concentrated. And I

would walk with microgreens in a box to the

restaurants we wanted to go to. And I would walk in speaking my bad

Portuguese, right? And the Brazilian people are very

friendly, and particularly with foreigners,

very welcoming people. And so people would talk to me,

and then the chefs would come out and talk. And then when the chef would

come out, then Rodrigo was there to explain in greater detail, right, what

it was we're doing and how we're doing it. And so we— our

restaurant business, you know, grew literally

by going door to door in the start, and then combined with

word of mouth from one well-known chef and then another well-known chef,

actually. So— That's a fascinating origin story, and I

always like asking because sometimes some of the best stories come out of

you doing what is required in those early days. That door-to-door

stuff is really important. I'm always reminded of the— an

interview I heard with the Airbnb founders about doing the things that don't scale

and how they would fly to New York and knock on people's doors and say,

hey, we've shown that apartments with photos get better

results, so would you mind if we took some photos of your apartment? And they

were doing this. This is the founders of Airbnb. But it's interesting, you know,

that entrepreneurial spirit is really strong when you've got to really

do what you can to really make your idea work. I just remembered one other

thing we did before we even grew any microgreens, and we didn't have a

production system. Somehow I got a meeting with a

mid-level restaurant chain. I forget— oh no, I know how I did it because I,

I remember I thought, well, this company could be an interesting client. And I walked

in, Rodrigo and I went, walked into their corporate

offices, and it was the same thing. Here's some gringo

speaking strange Portuguese, and then the guy who was

responsible for food decisions decisions came out. And he said, oh, you know, this sounds

interesting. Can you bring me some samples and I'll set up a meeting with our

head chef? We didn't have anything. So, but I found there was a,

you know, at farmers market, right, there's an organic producer

selling cut microgreens. And so I went and bought some, you know, I

just repackaged and put them in another clamshell.

I took it, we took, like, took it to the meeting with the chef. That's

funny. And so they said, yeah, I want this. I'm gonna figure out what

dishes. Can you bring me some more different kinds?

And I was stimulated to do that because I remember that the founder

of Netshoes talked about when he was just getting going, he didn't have any

product at all. He would go to shoe stores,

athletic shoe stores, offer to— they'd let him take

photos of the shoes that he— when he sold the shoes, he would buy the

shoes there that he was selling online at a discount. Wow.

Yeah, it's that hustle mentality. Do you find that the entrepreneurial

spirit is, or the movement is growing, or awareness of entrepreneurs?

I know obviously it's super strong here and in the States.

I'm always curious, you know, how or what the environment is like for

entrepreneurs in places like Brazil. I think it's very strong here.

I think Brazilians always have this spirit of

you know, figuring out a way to do something. A jeitinho, they call it.

And so they will sell anything, right, to anybody.

And they're pretty innovative. And they're in a market that's big, right?

200-some million people. So you, if you do something and do it well,

and so we see a lot of that. We are,

I literally, a week hasn't gone by since we started

promoting what we're doing that we're not contacted by somebody here in Brazil.

who wants to learn how to start a microgreens business every week.

If it's one a week, it's a slow week. And so, but you see

this, and the other thing you see here is increasing support

for early-stage businesses. So where 15 years

ago, 10 years ago, there weren't angel investment groups,

right? Or there, and there wasn't the, there weren't venture

capitalists focused on agrotech or tech or

any Any business. There have

been local entrepreneurs that have had successful exit

events that understand the venture capital world

that are now helping to build that ecosystem here. And so I

would say in Brazil in particular, there is a strong

culture of entrepreneurship. Is the

interest and the influx of money that you see in the US

Bowery raising $300 million just most recently. Do you see

that having an impact on what you're planning there in

Brazil, and is some of that making its way there as well? Yeah, I do

see it having an impact here in that it gives—

Brazilians are generally cautious investors. They are—

the country had a history of hyperinflation and,

you know, another— a number of other challenges, and so they're— they tend to be

cautious investors, but they're also followers of

things that happen in the US and Europe. And I would say even more so

the US than in Europe. And so when they see

multiple controlled environment agricultural companies in the

US receiving substantial investor support,

those people who are looking for new investment opportunities view that as a

positive sign. In terms of money from the US

coming here, I think we'll start to see some

of that. And I think I'll give you my observation on the

data center side, in that companies in the

US tend to look towards Europe first and then

Asia second. And then after that, when they're looking

for growth opportunities, they'll look at South America. I think

you'll see more and more attention paid,

and particularly as more controlled environment agriculture

companies come online here and start expanding.

So yeah, I think it's a positive. At the same time, you have to build

a business to last, right? And so— Yeah. And that's the

conservative part of the Brazil side, I think is good. We, you know, I think

too, we, we, my co-founder and I, Rodrigo, uh, and I always

said the best thing that happened to us when we started is that we didn't

raise a whole bunch of money. It forced us to be

extraordinarily disciplined in what we're doing. We would have made so

many mistakes. And I don't even think that were mistakes, we just learned so

much, right? In 2.5 years' time, we cut our

labor cost per unit by 75% through

mechanization and processes. And I'm not sure that

that would have happened much faster, right, with a lot of money in our pocket.

So, you know, I've seen— I think that we'll

see US investors come here. I think we'll see international

companies looking to grow that will look to pick up,

you know, somebody that's established in Brazil and add them to their portfolio as

well. You mentioned this idea of looking at franchises as well. I'm wondering,

with the interest in microgreens, if the thought ever crossed your mind of taking

all the learnings you had and you discovered and creating a

model around that where people, rather than start their own microgreens company, could leverage

the work that you've done so far. You ask great questions, Harry. Now, we

considered The answer is yes. We look at Brazil

and you sort of stratify the country based on the size of the

urban population and the GDP per capita within

the cities. And there are some cities where it makes

sense for us to own and be owners and operators, and others

where there's a potential market there,

but it may not be sufficiently large to be of great

interest to us. And so one of the things that we've

considered is, and we've in fact had some discussions

including one recently with the group about a sort of, I would

say, a co-ownership model, right? Where we provide the

technology and know-how and processes and all of

that with a local operator who's got skin in the

game as well. And so that's an approach

that we're studying. Studying actively with some

entrepreneurs who are interested in that kind of partnership. Will it go

anywhere? I don't know. It's been interesting to see in companies

like Henry's Agriculture, you know, they provide that

consulting, the feedback, guidance. Our title

sponsor this season is Cultivated, which is doing something similar here in the States.

And they actually figure out like what your needs are and then figure out what

the appropriate solution is for you and then marry the two.

as the farmer. They don't charge the farmer, they just, they work with their partners

and that's how they get compensated. So it's, it's actually free to work with them,

which I think is a great model. Yeah, that's an interesting model. Yeah, it's an

interesting model. So fast forward to present day, and

is the company— because I noticed you're also using the Mighty

Greens brand. So are— what's the relationship between both the—

between Fazenda and Mighty Greens? So Fazenda Urbana is the corporate name,

right? And Mighty Greens is our— the brand that we use. Right, that's the brand

we established here in Brazil. And so what's the mix look

like? Because you did mention you did start with microgreens, and

I'm just curious now for present day and for the benefit of listener, what's the

model look like and the offerings? So today we are best

known for microgreens, but we also are offering mushrooms.

And so we're growing mushrooms, and we've got a couple other products on our roadmap.

But those 2 products we started We started offering mushrooms in

2000 and in April of 2019. In

fact, we started— mushrooms were always on our product roadmap.

Look at the Lean Startup Canvas that we wrote in 2016.

We're basically still following 90% of what's on there.

And we had developed a strong relationship with a large supermarket chain

in Rio called Zona Sul, and they were

launching a new Megastore with an

on-site— with chickens on-site producing eggs, banana

trees in the parking lot, you know, a cheese-making—

small cheese-making factory inside the store,

pizzeria, you know, a French pastry chef producing

pastries and gelato. And like a live market

experience. Yeah, a coffee roaster right in the store

for Central Ground. Must smell amazing when you walk in there. Yeah.

Well, one— but yeah, but aside, at one point the administrative person responsible

said, why you— did you guys know how much money you're spending on coffee

at that store? You know, 2 or 3

espressos every day. But anyhow, we started selling that store

because the directors— the president's wife met us

at a farmer's market early on, loved what we were doing. And

the next time she saw that we were at the farmer's market She told her

husband to go there and check this out. And the day after, he had his

head of buying fruits and vegetables calling us to put the

product in the store. And so we had already forged a good

relationship with him. We started selling microgreens when nobody knew what they were.

We did tastings in the store, and then we turned microgreens into a product that

you could put on the shelf and they would go out the door even without

tasting. Wow. So he called us in and said, look, we're launching this new store

in Barra da Tijuca, in the kind of the Miami Beach

suburbs of Rio. And we'd like you guys to grow that

grass that you grow here at the store.

And then we explained to him, look, look, this really requires

precision and controlled environment, and there's space you need to plant and

harvest and all this. And Rodrigo said to him, what about mushrooms?

Ah, even better, he says. And, uh— When Rodrigo suggested

mushrooms, had he consulted with you prior to that?

No, I walked in, I was meeting in the same building

with a distributor, and I walked in, he said, hey, I got some great news.

These guys want us to grow at the store. And I'm like, he said, he

said, the bad news is we've agreed to grow mushrooms there. I

said, we hadn't grown a mushroom in our life, at least not intentionally,

right? But interestingly enough, through

one of our investors, an attorney, 6 months earlier, he put me

in touch with a fellow who was the largest producer of

mushroom grow media, blocks of mushrooms for

exotic mushrooms, shiitake and shimeji, in Brazil

based out of São Paulo. He's a Japanese guy, grew up in South

Carolina, went to University of Columbia, and then

his family had big cotton mills and

cotton mills that produced— they had big factories that produced a lot of cloth.

So he was called to Brazil to take over the family

cotton production business. He said, well, at least I'm going to do something I

like, which is also produce mushrooms. And so I'd become

friends with him. We got to know him. And so when we were

asked to do this, they basically said— the supermarket zone said, there's going to

be the space in front of the store, between the store and this and

the main road in Barra da Tijuca. We're going to build a concrete

base and we want you to put a container there, 20-foot container.

And so we had a contact with the supplier, a

guy who produced inoculated blocks. And so I

talked to him about it. We had an idea. We'd already been thinking about

producing mushrooms in the following year. And so we set

about, in about 6 weeks' time, we had to

do this. We had to find a container. We had to

build out the grow space. And it was not only supposed to be a

grow room, but a space that could Yeah, I was thinking

about that. It has to be something that's customer-facing and looks good too.

Yeah. So, and the first problem was

finding a 20-foot refrigerated container. And at the

time, the 20-foot reefer containers were,

are generally more scarce. And we were looking everywhere. We couldn't, the

ones we found were way out of our budget. And our farm was set

up. And at that point, the phase we were in, we were set

up in a place co-located with a guy who did container

reformation in another part of the space. And one evening,

as the sun was going down, I was walking around in a back area that

he had, just stressed, thinking, how are we going to get this

thing done? The only thing we could find was 3 or 4 times the budget

we had for it. I look and there's this

box covered with vines. I mean, literally, like the jungle was

growing over this. And I looked at it again. I looked at the size of

it and I went and knocked on it. And then I said,

Rodrigo, I think this is a reefer container, 20-foot. He said, no, man. Where was

this? This was in a rural area. There's— in Rio, right?

But in the area called Ilha da Guaratiba. And then— and so

this was like a place, it was like a graveyard of old containers this guy

had. I mean, literally, the Cadillac graveyard, this is like a

container graveyard. And then I grabbed the door and pulled it open, ripped

the vines off of it, pulled the door open, and it was In perfect

condition on the inside, and it had been abandoned there. And

so we were able to buy that container for a third the price that

other people were asking. It was a 40-year-old container made in Japan.

It was solid as a rock. And it was refrigerated, or you had to— And

it was— and it was— and it had insulation. It was a

reefer container. So, okay, the refrigeration units don't work well

for what we wanted, but the thermal insulation for Rio,

where it gets 40 degrees centigrade, right, it gets over 100 degrees sometimes

when you have to to grow mushrooms at 17 degrees centigrade

is an important attribute. So we bought that

container, we reformed it, and then in a matter of a couple

weeks' time, painted it, put in something that looks like an aquarium,

right, with sliding doors, and built racks that we

put inside of it. Took the fogging type systems we used for

germination and put it inside to hydrate the mushrooms. Put

lighting inside of it, put glass doors on it, and dropped

it— finished it and dropped it in place right in front of that supermarket. A

day later, put mushroom blocks in there, and a week later,

we were selling oyster mushrooms in the supermarket by taking

the fruited blocks from that container into the

supermarket and placing them on a table and letting people harvest their own mushrooms.

Wow, that's a great story. What was the response?

Oh, was it— well, a lot of crazy things about different things.

One, if you put the yellow or the citrino and the

salmon-colored oyster mushrooms out there, they attract people

like crazy. They're beautiful. Yeah. We have people that wanted to buy the whole block

and take it home like a bunch of flowers, right? So we had to teach

people how to harvest the mushroom off the block. And

Brazil's home to a— has a fairly sizable vegetarian

population. It's approaching 30 million people. There's a

rapidly growing vegan population as well. Those

lifestyles and dietary approaches are largely

concentrated in, I would say, 35 and younger, 40 and

younger in particular. And so what you have

often is multi-generation homes here. And so you'd have parents come in

and say, hey, you know, my kid's vegan or vegetarian,

me to buy mushrooms and I don't know what the heck to do with it.

And so we learned that we had to educate the consumer on how to

cook the mushrooms, how to prepare the mushrooms, different dishes they could

prepare. Yeah. And we did that. We started working closely with the

store. In fact, today, you know, Rodrigo is, you know, just being

interviewed. I would say he also, he was being filmed in a video

by that supermarket chain that they run inside the store. One more video

they run inside the store to talk about about what we do there. A big

media day for Fazenda today. Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah, 2

continents, in fact, right? And the other thing is

that we started getting school groups coming in. In the microgreen

side of the business, we had very early on, because of our

experience with children, been working with a nutritionist who was famous for

teaching parents how to deal with kids who didn't eat properly.

And so we would conduct events with her. Gabrielle Capin.

And we would teach kids how to plant microgreens. We would take the

seeds from arugula, which then treat it with hydrogen

peroxide and then wash with water, take a little coconut fiber. The

kids would smear the seeds on the coconut fiber. They'd put it in one of

our packages, they'd take it home, and 7 days later they'd have microgreens.

Kids love the experience. They love that stuff. Yeah. Experimenting. And

then they would eat it, right? Yet there was the other thing, a group

of kids, 20 or 30 kids, and the parents would be standing around and say,

oh, she doesn't eat the green stuff. He doesn't like

that. And the parents would leave and then you put the plants out, the microgreens

out, the plants out for the kids, and they'd all start eating. One would start

eating and then they all start eating. They all start eating, right?

And so, and we'd tell them this is salada de crayones, the kids sell

it. Well, when we put the mushroom container in place, we started

having school groups coming in and doing tours and explaining to them. And we'd do

the same thing. we prepared mushrooms for those kids in the

school groups to eat. And every school

group had at least one kid, and you ask them, what do you know about

mushrooms? And the one kid would— they're probably somebody like me when I was that

age, shout out— they're poisonous! They're poisonous!

Yeah. But then they'd start eating it, and then

everybody would eat it. So we learned a lot by doing that, right?

And for the store, you know, this supermarket chain is

full, you know, their parking lot The shade in the parking lot are

solar panels, right? So you park under the massive solar panel

array, right? They have heavily focused on sustainable

food and sustainable products. So having a zero-mile, you know,

from the standpoint of the distance from the farmer to the store product

was something that was appealing to them. Once we started doing that, they asked us

to supply other mushrooms in our mushroom business.

And then we started doing these events in stores, teaching people how to cook mushrooms,

how to use them, training them about nutritional value. We were able to

increase the mushroom business in terms of bulk

mushrooms, harvested mushrooms, or ready-to-harvest mushrooms by 10

times over the course of about a 6-month period. Wow.

So we found a whole lot of— Is that why Mighty Mushrooms now? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, another interesting thing from the start, we had said we're going to have

Mighty Greens, Mighty Mushrooms, Mighty Berries, right?

But we've just stuck with the— I think at some point that will happen. We'll

just go with Mighty and then it'll have mushrooms, berries, and greens. But

today we just, we still use one unique logo. But that— What was the

take from the, uh, the Japanese farmer? I'm wondering what his

reaction was to see how, you know, input from him turned into something

like this. No, he always told me, the guy's name's Seiji, and

we talk regularly. He kept telling me, Tom, he said, you're going to start growing

mushrooms and that's going to dwarf your microgreens. green business. And we—

and I said, you know, look, I believe we can create microgreens as

the gateway vegetable, right, for kids.

And in fact, we've seen that start to happen. But

we then turned around after he saw the activities that were going on with the

container, we turned around and helped him build a 40-foot

container that he was producing shiitake mushrooms in

with the idea that he was thinking about doing franchising of that sort of business.

I think that's, that's on hold now, but it's been a very good

relationship. I would say that we, we sort of help each other out in that

way. But, uh, you know, the mushroom business also led

us, uh, down another path that reached a point during the

pandemic when there was a

breakdown for a while in the supply chain, right, in terms of getting

mushrooms grow media, and we weren't producing our own.

And we couldn't produce mushrooms. That was a problem. And so

I went into that store that I described with its

coffee roasting business and coffee bar.

We took the cardboard, excess cardboard that they have in the

store. We took coffee grounds from the used coffee grounds from the

store, and we took ashes from the pizza oven. Used

the ashes to sterilize the— put the cardboard in water,

sterilize it basically with ashes, raise the pH high

enough in the water that it killed anything that was on the cardboard. We

then mixed the cardboard with coffee grounds, and then we

planted— put mushroom seeds in this

mixture, put it all inside of buckets that had been

used to deliver olives in bulk or butter

to the bakery downstairs. And then we started producing

mushrooms at the store made of items that were thrown away.

from in the store. Wow. Who came up with that idea?

You know, I think I had— there were several different factors that

stimulated it. I remember watching some YouTube videos,

the better, your best university, right? Between podcasts

and YouTube, I'm not sure you need to go to school much for anything.

Uh, some guys, I want to think it was in Amsterdam,

pedaling around Amsterdam gathering up coffee

grounds from coffee bars And started to grow mushrooms on

them. And I remember that from a couple years ago. And

then there was a, you know, an agronomer that worked

with us that had mentioned, hey, you know, you can

fruit mushrooms on cardboard and do these different things. And so the people, you know,

I'd done some research about it, but at that point I was desperate. I needed

to grow mushrooms, right? And so I said, well, I, you know,

like everything else in life, I've never done this before, but I'll, you know, I

think we can figure it out. And so necessity is the mother of

invention. Yeah. So, and so we started doing that, testing it, then it

worked. Then our supplier came back online. Right now,

you know, Harry, we're in conversations with that supermarket chain

about actually scaling that idea up and

seeing if we can provide that as a service to them. They have

over 40 stores in Rio and they

have a central deposit. And so the idea, if it

makes sense, I mean, beyond the emotional part of it, right? And

the sustainable benefits, if it makes sense, and I think it will,

the idea we provide this as a service to the supermarket chain

where they deliver these discarded materials to us and

we turn them into mushrooms that they then sell at their stores. All from

that visit of his wife to the farmer's market. Yeah.

Yes. All from that. Yeah, those are some

fascinating stories. And I think what I love about this format is that

I just follow my own interest and my train of thought.

And as I'm hearing you talk about this, I feel like, you know, some of

these stories are really great because it really tells you, you do what you need

to do in those early days to figure out what works. And because

you are in a place where, you know, controlled environment

agriculture, all these, you know, microgreens, mushrooms, this is early

days, still new stuff, and people are discovering it at the same time

you're deciding how you can manufacture and scale it.

I think, uh, it's, it's like anything goes. And it's almost

like the early days of the Gold Rush here, or the Wild West, where, you

know, that innovator spirit, that entrepreneurial spirit— I think, you know, you do what

you need to do to get things done. And as a result, if you're in

the right place, right time, good things can happen. You know, yeah.

We, as I mentioned, we have people contacting us all the time, and

particularly on microgreens. And eventually

they get down to, you know, try to ask, you know, where did you buy

your seeds and where did you get your grow media? And those are 2 things

that we share with everybody because we figure that more people growing

microgreens means more people and more consumers aware of

microgreens. And when we arrive in their city with a super

efficient and high-quality product, efficient producing, high-quality

product, there's going to be a prepared market for microgreens when there

wasn't. There wasn't when we started. And so the, um,

but we keep explaining to people that, look, just,

I mean, we selected this grow media, we selected

these whole things because we, it fit into a

complex process that we developed over time.

Um, and so just buying those 2 things and think you're going to do

it In one way. In your basement. Yeah, without thinking it might

work, right? It might work. But what you really need to do is go

test all this stuff because you might find a better way to do it than

we've thought of. Just imitating what we're doing, okay, you can do

some things. And in fact, we've reached the point where we

abandoned— we stopped using the coconut fiber

grow media and migrated to an algae-based grow media because

it cut so many steps in the process and increased our shelf life.

And we eliminated all the hydroponics in the

part of the production of microgreens that use light.

Interesting. So we plant the seeds on this gel that's

99.7% water, right?

But that's— and the only other time it comes in and encounters water

is in the germination process where our fogponic system,

you know, helps hydrate the seeds. Once the roots

start to grow and they move into the— under the lighting, we had

built this complex, intelligent, you know,

automated ebb and flow type of hydroponic

system, and we ripped it all out because we don't

need to use it anymore. Wow. And so when you— and when you say fogponics,

that's similar to what we would consider aeroponics? Similar.

Yeah, similar. Is there a difference? You know, yeah, the way that we

use it is slightly different, right? So if you think of AeroFarms and some of

the people using aeroponics, high-pressure aeroponic systems,

they're spraying very fine droplets at the roots.

Right, a mist at the plants. One of the things we do a lot

is read as much of the published research that we can find, right?

And there's a lot of great information out there that people aren't applying,

right? And so one of the things that we've discovered is that if the droplet

of water is below a certain size, then it penetrates the

seed much more efficiently, hydrates the

endosperm of the seed faster, and you get faster germination and

higher germination rates. And so our fogponics is

designed for that purpose. What— now, once

that seed germinates, the roots are growing in this gel. There's no

more aeroponics, fogponics, any other type of ponics.

But Ours is focused on the seed, hydrating the seed as opposed to the

roots, as opposed to delivering water in for baby leaf and so

forth, you know, fertilizer into the roots.

Lots of innovation happening there. And I

think it's just experimenting, trying new ways. And I think, I think coming from your

background, I think you're open to trying new ways of doing things. And I'm wondering

if you're seeing opportunities to grow not just within Brazil, but also in

South America. I'm wondering if you're tracking what's happening in other countries when it comes

to vertical farming. Yeah, I think a couple things we're doing can work almost anywhere,

including in the US. And looking around South

America, prior to setting

up here in Brazil, I spent 2 years where I would stay

6 months a year in Buenos Aires. So I know

Argentina well. One of my friends from there is

the CFO of a large supermarket chain there. So

I talk to him regularly about the potential in that market.

2 other, 3 other people that I've worked closely with are from Chile. 2

of them live in Chile. I think Chile's an interesting market.

I think Colombia is an interesting market as well.

Argentina is suffering a bit. And so—

Yeah. And while I think they have the, you know, the

appetite for this sort of thing, I'm not sure that economically it's

something that makes sense to enter today. But I think there are several other

countries where there's potential here. Peru, Peru has a

robust gastronomic culture

there. So I think there's some other places that make sense. Yes. But I

think some of the stuff we're doing could be done in the US as well

and be competitive. So now, as you think about the future

of Mighty Greens, what's that look like for you, you know, based on everything we've

talked about and, and where you're seeing success? Yeah, so

we're— in fact, uh, Harry, right now we're raising money for

expansion. We have now the letter of

intent from a supermarket chain to purchase a

minimum amount of mushrooms from us every month.

So that was a breakthrough here. That's not a common type of

relationship that exists between suppliers and buyers

in Brazil. And we look to leverage

this mushroom showroom approach into those sorts of

relationships with other supermarket chains in major cities

around Brazil. So we see setting up with mushrooms being our

entry product and microgreens coming along with them and

expanding to, over the next 4 years, expanding

into 5 other cities around Brazil. That's

our focus right now. And adding a

3rd product line as we get into the 3rd year.

So we're not in— That would be the berries? Yeah. So now

we are going back and forth between a micro leaf and/or

strawberries. Strawberries are interesting, as I described

early on, that product that's $4 in one place

and nearly $40 in another, strawberries, right? In the

northeast of the country where those prices are

dramatically different, much higher. Make sure you check out,

if you haven't already listened to that interview with Hiroki, it's fast. Just had a

newfound appreciation for strawberries and the care and the

difference in varieties. It's almost like the way champagne is in

France is how they grow strawberries by region.

Very, very interesting. Yeah, I saw, I watched, I

haven't yet, and I will right after this listen to your interview with him

because I've I've watched some of the YouTube videos of

them. And I said once, you know, he was showing somebody around and they were

doing a Brix test on the strawberries and the number came up lower than he

wanted it to be. And he looked a little agitated. And then they tested it

again. But they have a— they pay attention to the

very detailed attention to the size and the

flavor, right? Yeah. And the appearance of the product. And so what happens here

is the strawberries are growing in the cooler climates. Right. In the states

of Rio Grande do Sul and Minas

Gerais. And so you can, and then they're trucked

to thousands or thousands of kilometers away.

And I'll tell you another thing we learned, right? Before people

started putting temperature sensors inside of these trucks, truckers would leave the

farming area, right? The harvest area or the deposit,

the warehouse in the area that product was produced in.

with the refrigerated truck to save on fuel. They'd turn off the

refrigeration unit about an hour outside.

They'd drive for however many more hours, and then they'd turn the

refrigeration unit on again in the last hour before they'd get to the

delivery point. I used to wonder why head of

lettuce that I bought in Rio went bad so

quickly compared to when I lived in, in the Washington, DC area.

Right. Buy lettuce and you better eat it while you're walking

home. Right? Yeah.

And then the stuff we did in the first year we were studying, we went

out into the areas where they were growing lettuce and we'd be like stalkers

outside the lettuce farm and we would take pictures of them

loading lettuce in the bags that was sold in the supermarket

into wooden boxes on the back of a pickup truck. drive

down a dirt road, dirt with dust flying over, going, going

to a distribution center. Then they'd put that lettuce on an open

truck. The exhaust from this diesel truck came

out right in front of the cab, so it would blow over the lettuce while

they drove down the mountainside. You know, this is

outside of Rio. To give it that smoky flavor. Yes, defumado,

as they say, to the made food distribution center.

And it was already in the bag because I know this was from a high-end

store that I would frequently buy my fresh produce, known for fresh

fruits and vegetables. It was already in the bag, so they weren't taking it out

of the bag and putting it back in again. It was going into that store,

right? So our plan, right, is

to grow in these key markets where there's a

sizable urban population and lead with mushrooms and

microgreens. Another interesting side note, right? We can pump the

CO2 the mushrooms produce into the microgreens chamber

and it serves as fertilizer for the microgreens. Oh, interesting.

And move the fresh air with the excess oxygen from the microgreen sector into the

mushroom business. So they, they sort of feed each other. But to

do that, and then, and then layer on, I said, if in

certain areas of the country we'll do micro leaf, uh, the,

in other areas we'll do the, the strawberry business.

Well, yeah, it's really interesting to hear what's been happening

in other parts of the world with regards to vertical farming, and I'm glad you

reached out. And, um, chock-full of interesting stories, so I

appreciate you taking the time to join me. And, uh, time flew by here, Thomas,

but, uh, for people who want to learn more about Mighty Greens or Fazenda

Urbana, what's the best place, or where's the best place for them to go? Yeah,

I think the Instagram, Mighty Greens do Brazil, is one place

to go. And then our company website is

www.fazenda-urbana.com.

And we'll have all of those links in the show notes as well. But, uh,

are you gonna try to make it out to any of the upcoming conferences soon

as well? You know, it's a— I don't know. I don't know, Harry. I would

like to, but I'm not sure I'm going to. Yeah, maybe not. I think people

are still 50/50 this year. They'll probably wait until next year and then ramp those

back up again. Yeah, we're— I've just got a— we've got a lot going on

right now. expansion front. And so I think it's mostly

a time issue. I would, I, you know, sadly to say, I think I'll still

be here. Okay. Okay. Well, thanks for the conversation. I really

enjoyed it and learning a lot about what's happening again with Fazenda.

So I appreciate you sharing your story. Thank you, Harry. It's a

pleasure. Thanks again to Thomas for coming on the show and sharing his story.

Grateful that he reached out via LinkedIn and we were able to learn more

and make the interview happen. I never know where these conversations are going to go,

and it took a couple of turns for the better that I really appreciated. As

always, all the resources mentioned are in our show notes at

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. Thanks to our title sponsor, Cultivated. If

you're looking for a vertical farm and don't know where to start or which technology

would suit your needs, reach out to them today. Best of all, their service is

free because they work on behalf of their partners. Learn more at

cultivated.com, and that's spelled C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-E-D.

tivadd.com, just leave out that last E. Learn more and take advantage of early

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VFP0D2021. Podcast production and marketing provided by Fullcast. Sign

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as a reminder, leave us that rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp,

and we'll be sure to read those out on future episodes. Tune in next

week for another conversation with a fascinating leader from the world of vertical

farming. Until we meet again, here's to your health.

Thanks for listening. To read the full show notes for this episode, which

includes any links mentioned in the episode, as well as a full show transcript,

description, visit verticalfarmingpodcast.com.

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