Shownotes
Tristan Fischer has been involved in sustainable energy and sustainable food for over twenty years. He has been the Chairman or CEO of numerous companies, including Fischer Farms, a vertical farming/hydroponics business. Today, Tristan joins the show to discuss the benefits of vertical farm crops over field-grown crops, the looming food security crisis, and the importance of being a kind and empathetic leader
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Key Takeaways
07:13 – Tristan Fischer joins the show to share his background in finance, the evolution of renewables, and his passion for sustainability
17:15 – Vertical farming crops vs. field-grown crops
21:54 – Feeding the world: Tristan’s vertical farming origin story
31:16 – The inspiration to launch Fischer Farms and how Tristan has grown as a CEO
42:12 – The importance of being kind and empathetic
45:08 – Fischer Farms’ offerings and ideal clients
48:56 – A tough question Tristan has had to ask himself recently
51:43 – A specific ask Tristan has for his colleagues in the vertical farming industry
52:37 – Harry thanks Tristan for joining the show and lets listeners know where they can go to connect with him and learn more about Fischer Farms
Tweetable Quotes
“If you want to do good in the world, you also need to actually be profitable and develop businesses that are intrinsically capitalistic. Using capital to grow and having a business which is purely based on charitable activity isn’t good enough if you want to make a difference.” (10:52) (Tristan)
“When I was first doing solar projects, solar really wasn’t a great technology. Wind wasn’t really a great technology. It was expensive. It was intermittent. And, if you move on to twenty years after I started and you look in the UK now, the new wind energy systems that are coming onstream are the lowest cost electricity in the market, with the exception of solar.” (14:35) (Tristan)
“The quality that you get from vertical farming is just better than the quality that you get from a field-grown crop. It’s tastier, has a longer shelf life, is more nutritious, it has a lower environmental footprint. There’s just a whole long list of reasons why vertical farm products are better than field-grown crops.” (18:35) (Tristan)
“About twenty-five percent of all the world’s food production comes from land which uses aquifer water for irrigation. And, in about twenty years time, in most of the world where they have that type of system, that water will be gone or unusable.” (24:53) (Tristan)
“I think that ultimately what you’re trying to do as a CEO is get the best out of your team because, ultimately, you need them. They are the specialists. They are the ones who understand the lighting, the water systems, the technology, and the growing.” (36:10) (Tristan)
“I think that, as a CEO, creating that culture is very important. A culture of trust, of openness,and dare I say, of kindness, and love, and affection. We want people to be nice to each other, tobe good to each other, because if they are nice and good to each other, the more likely they areto cooperate and help each other out. And that’s what it’s all about really.” (41:48) (Tristan)
Resources Mentioned
Tristan’s LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristanfischer/? originalSubdomain=uk
Fischer Farms – https://www.fischerfarms.co.uk/
Fischer Farms LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/fischer-farms-ltd/
Natural Capitalism – https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Capitalism-Creating-Industrial-Revolution/dp/0316353000
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Transcripts
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Speaker:Welcome
Speaker:to the Vertical Farming Podcast.
Speaker:Weekly conversations with fascinating CEOs, founders,
Speaker:and agtech visionaries. Join us every week as we dive
Speaker:deep into the world of vertical farming with your host, Harry
Speaker:Duran. Vertical Farming Podcast,
Speaker:wrapping up season 9 with a bonus episode. Thanks for being
Speaker:patient. There's been a bit of a gap in the
Speaker:past couple of weeks as we've gotten everything ready. A lot's
Speaker:been happening on our end. In case you missed the news, we have
Speaker:merged with iGrow News. I've always been a big fan
Speaker:of what Herb and Sepper and the team has
Speaker:developed with the iGrow News site and the incredibly
Speaker:informative newsletters that they provide on a daily and weekly basis.
Speaker:Sepper and I have been connecting several times over the past few
Speaker:events, and as we continue to have those conversations it
Speaker:just seemed to make more and more sense to put our collective efforts
Speaker:to a greater use and do our part to help broaden the awareness and reach
Speaker:of all the things happening in the agtech space. So the website is
Speaker:agtechmediagroup.com. We've got a bunch of new projects in the
Speaker:works. You'll see some consolidation in some of the
Speaker:branding. You'll see some references to the other
Speaker:properties at the bottom of the iGrow News publications.
Speaker:We've got several things in the works. We're working on a directory for the agtech
Speaker:space. a revamped job board, and also looking to partner with
Speaker:like-minded media companies in the space as well. So if there's something you're
Speaker:working on and you'd like to have a conversation with us, please reach out,
Speaker: Speaker:[email protected]. It's been a heck of a year, a lot of
Speaker:incredible news in the space, and lots to be excited for as well.
Speaker:This week, as we get ready for Season 10, I've decided to replay one of
Speaker:the more popular episodes from Season 7. It's with Tristan Fisher
Speaker:of Fisher Farms. Tristan shared his background in finance, the
Speaker:evolution of renewables, and his passion for sustainability. And we talked a lot
Speaker:about his origin story, the inspiration to launch Fisher
Speaker:Farms, and his unique take on what's been happening in the
Speaker:space and where we're headed. And I think a lot of this information is still
Speaker:relevant and timely as we look forward towards
Speaker:2024. So I wanted to give you a chance to listen to one of our
Speaker:more popular episodes and let you know that I'm extremely grateful
Speaker:for all the support I've received on the podcast over the years.
Speaker:It's been crazy to think that we're closing in on the 4th
Speaker:year of the show. So excited for season 10. If you have a
Speaker:CEO or a founder in mind that we have not spoken to or haven't spoken
Speaker:to in a while, please send their information to me,
Speaker:[email protected]. We still have some room
Speaker:in our season 10 roster and we're excited to kick things off in the new
Speaker:year. If you're interested in sponsorship, opportunities are still available.
Speaker:And because of our new partnership with iGrow News, there's a lot more we can
Speaker:be creative with. So if you're interested, reach out to us for more
Speaker:details and we'd be happy to have a chat. Okay, one last
Speaker:big thank you from the bottom of my heart for all our supporters and all
Speaker:our sponsors and all our partners that we've worked with, not just this year
Speaker:but past years as well. And so before we jump into this uninterrupted conversation with
Speaker:Tristan, a few more words from the amazing folks that support this show.
Speaker:Whether you're starting up or scaling up, Indoor AgCon is the key to cultivating your
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Speaker:VFP. Learn more at indoor.ag. So Tristan
Speaker:Fisher, CEO of Fisher Farms, thank you so much for joining me on the Vertical
Speaker:Farming Podcast. Thank you very much for having me. So for the
Speaker:benefit of the listener, where are you calling in from? So I
Speaker:am— Fisher Farms is based in the UK, and we have
Speaker:2 vertical farm buildings, one which is
Speaker:near Lichfield, which is just north of Birmingham, and
Speaker:which is northwest of London. And then we have a
Speaker:second vertical farm, which is currently under
Speaker:construction, is actually being installed and fitted out at the moment, And that
Speaker:is just east of Cambridge in a place called Norwich
Speaker:in Norfolk. So we have 2 vertical farms and then we have a
Speaker:number of people, number of team members who are scattered around
Speaker:the UK for those who aren't specifically
Speaker:involved in farm operations. So we've got a bit of a
Speaker:wider footprint for the various people within the organization. So we'll
Speaker:get into the specifics of Fisher Farms. And what I'd like
Speaker:to usually do first was wind the clock back a little bit to get a
Speaker:feel for how you ended up here. But I thought I'd ask,
Speaker:since we are recording this in December 2022, if you could
Speaker:describe in one or two words what the year has been like for you and
Speaker:what, if the holidays or this time of the year means a little bit
Speaker:of relaxing or if you have a chance to catch your breath. So
Speaker:2022 has been a big year for us. And the reason for that is
Speaker:that we've spent a big chunk of it under construction. So
Speaker:we were currently building know, have been building our second vertical
Speaker:farm. It's a, which is a really big building. It's a
Speaker:4-acre footprint building. It has about 25,000
Speaker:square meters of growing space inside it, which makes it probably one
Speaker:of the biggest vertical farms in the world. And so
Speaker:there's been a lot of work on the actual construction, the external
Speaker:construction side, but there's also been a huge amount of testing, which we've been doing
Speaker:at various different locations. So we've been testing of equipment at Farm 1. the
Speaker:original site near Litchfield. But we've also been doing a lot of testing with all
Speaker:of our different suppliers and so forth like that to really make sure that when
Speaker:the equipment is installed, it actually works first time
Speaker:round because it's a big building, big farm, and
Speaker:testing, testing, testing is absolutely critical. So it's been a very busy year
Speaker:and we've been hiring people to work in Farm
Speaker:2. So the team is getting bigger. And actually later on this
Speaker:evening, I'm going to be joining Christmas party with the Farm 2 guys.
Speaker:So to sort of celebrate all the hard work that everybody's been doing
Speaker:throughout the year. So it's been a busy year, very exciting year, a lot of
Speaker:growth behind us. And then really, you know, when we hit
Speaker:the new year, all the equipment will be finally installed and
Speaker:we'll start operating, generating food in the
Speaker:first quarter of next year out of the Farm 2 building. So that's exciting
Speaker:stuff. So it's been a busy year. Sounds like, yeah, definitely want to get into
Speaker:the details of that. I was curious in doing a little bit of research, obviously
Speaker:in a bit of your background, you got your start in finance and then your
Speaker:first foray into renewables was the time you
Speaker:spent at Shell. So can you, I know we're winding the
Speaker:clock a bit back here, but I just want to provide some context for the
Speaker:listener. Can you give a little bit of insight into, if you can
Speaker:remember what things were like back then and where your interest started in
Speaker:renewables and So I think I should probably
Speaker:start even before then at university. I was at Cambridge University and I did some
Speaker:research for Paul Hawken, who wrote a book called Natural Capitalism.
Speaker:And Natural Capitalism was a fascinating book for me because it really sort of
Speaker:highlighted how if you want to do good in the world,
Speaker:you also need to actually be profitable and develop businesses
Speaker:which are intrinsically capitalistic. So using
Speaker:no capital to grow and having a
Speaker:business which is just purely a sort of charitable activity
Speaker:isn't good enough if you want to make a big difference. And so that got
Speaker:me thinking about, well, what could I do with my life which was meaningful
Speaker:and actually sort of develop in a way which
Speaker:could put my services to the best use for sort of humanity as
Speaker:a whole? So renewables was a big thing. know, in the
Speaker:mid-1990s when I really sort of started off career and I was
Speaker:involved in some of the very early wind projects and then solar projects and so
Speaker:forth. And it was an era where climate change was always
Speaker:deemed as something which was going to happen in the future. It was a future
Speaker:problem and we were trying to do things which we would help
Speaker:solve that issue. And really over the last
Speaker:20-odd years or so, climate change has shifted from being a future
Speaker:problem to a problem which we are actually experiencing today.
Speaker:And there's a lot of evidence to show that it is happening. And there's a
Speaker:lot of evidence which suggests that it will continue to get
Speaker:worse over time. And so as a result of that, a
Speaker:lot of my activities sort of started to shift over the last few years away
Speaker:from just how can you deal with climate change in terms of trying to
Speaker:prevent it into how do you live with climate change? So if climate
Speaker:change is actually happening, You know, what do you do in a world
Speaker:where it's— the temperatures are rising, where you have very
Speaker:irregular weather patterns? So you can have a year where you'll have droughts
Speaker:and then you can have floods and then you can have cold patches and you
Speaker:can have warm patches all within a sort of, you know, 6-month,
Speaker:12-month period of time. And that's very difficult from an agricultural
Speaker:perspective. And so I was involved in a project a number of
Speaker:years ago with a big food group in the UK called Bernard
Speaker:Matthews, which was, which is a large turkey producer and a large
Speaker:chicken producer. And they are grown in
Speaker:large controlled environment agricultural buildings.
Speaker:And we installed biomass heating systems into about
Speaker:249 poultry sheds. And that was very interesting from a sort of
Speaker:climate change perspective, but also really got me thinking about food and
Speaker:how do we actually feed the world in a way where we can actually
Speaker:control all the environmental parameters. And so for me, the
Speaker:renewable side has been very much a link to what I'm doing
Speaker:in vertical farming. And, and actually, all of our
Speaker:vertical farms have strong renewable emphasis as well. So
Speaker:solar attached to them, batteries attached to them, you know, getting
Speaker:wind attached to them as well. So I'm using the
Speaker:old access for the renewables sort of supply chain
Speaker:in the vertical farming sector as well. So it's a combination of food and
Speaker:energy production. Yeah, I thought it was really interesting, especially
Speaker:given how much experience you've had in renewables. You've also had some experience
Speaker:with wave energy as well in your time at Aquamine Power, if I read that
Speaker:correctly. Yeah, I mean, so I've now been involved in a lot
Speaker:of renewable energies. Um, so I've been involved in wind energy,
Speaker:solar energy, wave energy, tidal energy,
Speaker:smart grid, battery technology, energy efficiency
Speaker:for steel mills, for cement facilities,
Speaker:coal mine methane recovery. So a very, very large gamut
Speaker:of renewable energy technologies. And so I've seen
Speaker:cost curves change and seeing how you can have a
Speaker:technology which starts off being very, very expensive and the
Speaker:technology which people go, well, this is never going to amount to anything. So when
Speaker:I was first doing solar projects, solar really wasn't a great technology.
Speaker:Wind wasn't really a great technology. It was expensive, it
Speaker:was intermittent. And if you move
Speaker:on sort of 20, 25 years after from when I started, if you look at
Speaker:the UK now, wind energy is the lowest— the new
Speaker:wind energy systems which are coming on stream are the lowest cost
Speaker:electricity in the market with the exception of solar. And if you look
Speaker:at solar, you know, it's predicted that by
Speaker:2027, there will be more solar installed
Speaker:globally than coal. And so you've seen
Speaker:a huge transition in the energy market. And
Speaker:the reason why I mentioned this is because vertical farming today
Speaker:is a bit like solar and a bit like wind energy 20 years ago. It's
Speaker:an embryonic technology. It's really not good enough, but
Speaker:there are lots of hints about why it could be really fantastic.
Speaker:And so when I look at what I'm doing,
Speaker:I'm sort of focusing on the here and now in terms of growing short leafy
Speaker:green things like most people in the market are, so salads and
Speaker:herbs and so forth. But ultimately, where we need to be going
Speaker:as an industry, moving to crops which actually make a big
Speaker:difference. And so For us, we have a phase 1 crops,
Speaker:which are short leafy green things, salads and herbs. We have a phase 2
Speaker:crops, which are fruiters. So things like strawberries and tomatoes,
Speaker:which yet again, a lot of people are doing. But then finally, it's the phase
Speaker:3 crops. And for phase 3 crops for us are rice
Speaker:and wheat in terms of carbohydrates, and then peas
Speaker:and soybeans in terms of protein. And so we've done
Speaker:trials with wheat, we've done trials with soya, we've done trials with
Speaker:peas. So we know we can grow it, we know we can do it. Grow
Speaker:it at good volumes. But really the question is, how do we get the
Speaker:price point of those products so that they are also competitive with field-grown crops?
Speaker:And if we can do that, then you can feed the world. And
Speaker:that is extraordinarily exciting to be part of an
Speaker:industry which is transforming itself so rapidly.
Speaker:I have the faith that it can happen based on the practical
Speaker:experience that I've had with renewables, where I have seen renewables technology
Speaker:go from not very good, very expensive technologies
Speaker:to massive, huge industries which
Speaker:are cheaper than natural gas, cheaper than coal, cheaper than
Speaker:nuclear. And so it can be done. Yeah, it's really interesting,
Speaker:all the experience you've had, some experience in aquaculture as well. So
Speaker:it seems like you've had your hands— smart batteries, I think was a little
Speaker:bit— I saw some time there as well. And all those pieces really are
Speaker:important in painting the picture for folks that are just getting
Speaker:acquainted with vertical farming and seeing— you know, a lot of people
Speaker:say it's a hype or it's a fad or it's something that's not sustainable. And
Speaker:I think a lot of the arguments against vertical farming are probably
Speaker:ones that you experienced in the early days when people were talking about
Speaker:the viability of wind, the viability of solar, even things like wave.
Speaker:And are you seeing like those same sort of parallels in terms of
Speaker:the adoption curve, the hype curve, businesses
Speaker:getting a lot of funding and failing, you know, which is something we've now seen
Speaker:recently in the world of vertical farming as well. And it's interesting because
Speaker:of your perspective and your background and your experience with these technologies
Speaker:that I'm wondering if you are seeing parallels in terms of people's
Speaker:response to it and also, you know, gauging where we are in that
Speaker:life cycle. Compared to what you've worked on in the past? I think
Speaker:that at Fisher Farms, the real focus which we have
Speaker:is actually on producing products which are cost competitive with field-grown crops.
Speaker:So our view is that if we can compete head-to-head at the same price
Speaker:point with field-grown crops, then we should be able
Speaker:to sell our products into the market. Because as all of your
Speaker:listeners and all the various speakers that you've had on your
Speaker:podcast will be aware of, the quality that you get from
Speaker:vertical farming is just better than the quality you get from a field-grown
Speaker:crop. You know, it's tastier, has longer shelf life,
Speaker:it's more nutritious, it has a lower environmental footprint.
Speaker:There's just a whole long list of reasons why vertical farm
Speaker:products are better than field-grown crops. But the problem is that if your
Speaker:product is more expensive than field-grown crops, then essentially
Speaker:you go back down to the charitable act, which
Speaker:I was talking about very, very early on, you know, with the Paul Hawken
Speaker:analogy that you need to have product which actually is
Speaker:commercially viable so you can actually use the profit incentive to
Speaker:do well, do more of the same, reinvest the profits,
Speaker:do more of the same, reinvest those profits again and again and again.
Speaker:So for us, focusing on cost parity is
Speaker:really, really important. And, and I think that if you're a
Speaker:business which is focused on premium and
Speaker:focused on, no, wow, we have the most amazing quality, but we're much more
Speaker:expensive, then your market will always be
Speaker:smaller than it would be if you have a product which people just buy because
Speaker:it's cheap. And you could do a little bit of a premium
Speaker:product, but ultimately people are worried about their pocketbooks.
Speaker:You know, they're worried about how much money they're spending on food. on everything
Speaker:they know on spending in general. And so if you have a product which is
Speaker:the same price point, you'll do well. And so our
Speaker:focus as a business is always about price competitiveness.
Speaker:And so although, for example, we know that we can grow Phase
Speaker:2 crops, you know, the strawberries and the tomatoes, etc., at the moment we
Speaker:know we can't sell those products at a price point which is
Speaker:competitive with field-grown crops. And there are certain things which have to change
Speaker:in our business and externally that
Speaker:until those changes happen, we will be too expensive. Same thing for
Speaker:our Phase 3 crops. So we know we can grow rice, we know we grow
Speaker:wheat, we know we can grow, you know, soybeans and peas. That's a
Speaker:fact. But we're too expensive. And we think that we will remain too
Speaker:expensive in those products for a good 10 to 15 years period
Speaker:of time. But 10 to 15 years, Sounds like a lot, but
Speaker:it's not. It really is actually a very short period of time.
Speaker:And yet again, if you've got the experience that I have in
Speaker:renewables and I've seen the world change over the last 20, 25 years or
Speaker:so, I have real confidence that something which is too expensive
Speaker:now can be the right price point in 10 to 15 years'
Speaker:time. And we have a pretty good
Speaker:plan at Fisher Farms to actually get ourselves down that cost
Speaker:curve from where we are now, which is too expensive, to where we need to
Speaker:be, which is it's going to take 10 to 15 years to get there. Yeah,
Speaker:it's a very helpful perspective for the listener, especially for folks that are looking for
Speaker:quick results or are trying to turn things
Speaker:around in a timeframe that's not reasonable. And obviously
Speaker:using the context of renewables and the experience you've had in the
Speaker:adoption curve for them earlier on, I think people need to have a little bit
Speaker:more patience. And I think sometimes in this It's hard, especially when you're talking
Speaker:about investors investing tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars in
Speaker:some of these projects and are looking for profitability on a timeframe
Speaker:that's not realistic. And I think it's helpful to have that perspective. I'm
Speaker:curious, for yourself, when you became aware of
Speaker:indoor farming, when it came on your radar and it's something you started to pay
Speaker:attention to. So, it very much came on my radar
Speaker:around 2015, 2016 or so.
Speaker:So, you know, this was the point where I sort of kind of came to
Speaker:the conclusion that there were a lot of people doing renewables
Speaker:and that the market shifted from being a very open market to a
Speaker:market which was getting increasingly crowded. And it was getting crowded in
Speaker:the sense that, you know, first of all, a lot of people were doing it,
Speaker:but it was also the sense that it was never going to be
Speaker:quite enough to actually solve the sort of climate sort of crisis.
Speaker:And as I started to think about what responses you could have for that, I
Speaker:started to investigate the food sector in more detail.
Speaker:And so one of the things which always struck me was how
Speaker:the population has expanded over the last few decades. So my
Speaker:father was born in 1930. He's 92 years old now. And
Speaker:there were 2 billion people alive when he was born. And there are now 8
Speaker:billion people. So 4 times increase in the population. But if you
Speaker:look deeper and do, say, look at the year
Speaker:2000, there were a billion middle-class people in the year
Speaker:2000. And in 2020, there were 4 billion middle-class
Speaker:people. Now, that's an amazing accomplishment. It's
Speaker:amazing to think that we've gone from 1 billion in
Speaker:2000 to 4 billion middle-class people just 20 years later. And
Speaker:that's something which we as a human species should be immensely
Speaker:proud of, that we've taken so many people out of poverty. But there is an
Speaker:issue associated with that as well. And the issue is that
Speaker:those 4 billion people want the kind of lifestyles which
Speaker:we take for granted in the West. So they want to have the salads and
Speaker:the herbs and the salmon and the steaks, and they want to go on
Speaker:holiday and they want to go skiing and they want to do all the sort
Speaker:of the nice things which people get to do in the middle class.
Speaker:And that imposes a huge burden on the planet
Speaker:in terms of what it can sustain. And in the meantime,
Speaker:if you look at the agricultural sector directly, and you look at the
Speaker:2 key things which you need for farming, one is land, and one which is
Speaker:water. If you look on the land side, there is less
Speaker:good quality soil every single year. And that's partly
Speaker:because farming techniques are very damaging to the soil. But
Speaker:it's also because a lot of places where they have good farming.
Speaker:As the urban population increases, a lot of those
Speaker:locations which were once farmland have now become
Speaker:cities. And so, you know, if you look in China, you had a village of
Speaker:10,000 people, then 20 years later, you've got 20 million
Speaker:people living in fantastic agricultural
Speaker:land. So that great farmland has been turned into
Speaker:shopping malls and roads and apartment buildings and stuff like that. So
Speaker:the land It's becoming a problem. And the second issue you have is
Speaker:water. So about 25% of all the world's food
Speaker:production comes from land which uses
Speaker:aquifer water for irrigation. And in about 20 years'
Speaker:time, in most of the world where they have that type of
Speaker:system, that water will be gone or will be
Speaker:unusable. 25% of the world's food comes from land where in
Speaker:20 years' time, there won't be any water. And so you've
Speaker:got, on the one hand, a massive population increase. And the second, you've
Speaker:got a decrease in the world's ability to actually
Speaker:provide food for that increasing population and that increasing
Speaker:middle class. And so there's a larger and larger gap
Speaker:which is starting to emerge. And climate change is really
Speaker:sort of putting fuel on that fire. So the fire
Speaker:already exists, but climate change just makes all of those issues worse. It
Speaker:makes it much more irregular in terms of creating harvests and stuff like that.
Speaker:So food security becomes a real problem. And so for me, as I
Speaker:was sort of thinking about, you know, what to do, figuring out how to
Speaker:actually feed the world became increasingly a strong
Speaker:motivating factor for me. So I started off looking at things like
Speaker:aquaculture. So looking at how we could grow fish
Speaker:onshore so we could reduce the impact we have on the oceans. And then
Speaker:also looking at vertical farming. And the vertical farming side, I think,
Speaker:was most exciting for me, or more exciting for me, because
Speaker:of the realization that everybody fundamentally needs to have
Speaker:carbohydrates. And so if you can grow rice, you can
Speaker:grow wheat, that's a major step forward. And ultimately,
Speaker:if you can grow proteins like peas and soy, that also
Speaker:allows most people to have a healthy vegetarian diet, and
Speaker:you could feed a lot of people in those kinds of systems. And to give
Speaker:you an idea, if you were to take Fisher Farms
Speaker:building and make it 3 quarters of the size of
Speaker:London— so in London, there's the capital, there's a ring
Speaker:road which goes all the way around it, it's a motorway called the M25. And
Speaker:if you were to fill that area, about 3 quarters of that area, with one
Speaker:just ridiculously large building, that building is enough
Speaker:space to feed 8 billion people out of it.
Speaker:So this is why vertical farming is just astounding. You know, the productivity
Speaker:that you can get out of vertical farming without needing access to
Speaker:lots of soil. And because vertical farming uses
Speaker:a fraction of the water of conventional farming, you can actually
Speaker:grow a lot of food in areas where they've got lousy soil,
Speaker:where they don't have a lot of water, and actually have a very productive
Speaker:system. So we think that ultimately, you know, we would
Speaker:want to be able to grow and develop vertical farms in
Speaker:places like North Africa, where you can have bad soil but
Speaker:have very, very good access to solar energy. So you
Speaker:build ridiculously large solar farms with ridiculously large vertical
Speaker:farms. And instead of having those countries import
Speaker:food from the Ukraine, and from Russia, you could
Speaker:actually have them produce their own food and eventually start to be able
Speaker:to export their food to other parts of the world as well.
Speaker:And so that's enormously exciting. And if you look at a world where
Speaker:the alternative, a lot of people with not enough land and not
Speaker:enough water, that is a world of conflict. That's a world
Speaker:where people need to migrate on epic
Speaker:scales because if they don't, they will die because there's just not enough
Speaker:food available for them in their local areas. And so vertical
Speaker:farming has a very active role to play
Speaker:in this and a very hopeful and exciting role to
Speaker:play in solving this problem. It's really fascinating when you paint that
Speaker:picture and you talk about the historical context and the impact
Speaker:of events that have affected us worldwide, like COVID,
Speaker:like the war in the Ukraine. And I think it's things that people take
Speaker:for granted, that we were going to be able to continue our current
Speaker:trajectory without any impacts. And I think a large
Speaker:portion of the world is having that realization. I was recently in Dubai,
Speaker:and I think the number is 85 to 90% of the food gets imported there.
Speaker:And it's just different parts of the world have different challenges. We obviously
Speaker:saw an impact in terms of wheat production because of what's happening in the Ukraine.
Speaker:Supply chain issues with what's happening. It's almost been like it's a big wake-up call
Speaker:for folks in terms of really thinking through, like where
Speaker:we source our food from and why it's important to have that as
Speaker:close to where we consume it as possible to avoid
Speaker:some of these issues. Because I think some people don't put the pieces together. I
Speaker:think when they think about food consumption, access to food, the need for
Speaker:food, and when that's taken away, you do see things.
Speaker:escalate to the point where countries go to war and there's
Speaker:conflicts arising. And when you look at the core issues related to that,
Speaker:which you've just highlighted, a lot of it is related to just
Speaker:maintaining day-to-day life. And that's when people— when that need,
Speaker:when that is threatened at a country level, it's a direct
Speaker:correlation to some of the conflicts arising. So it's interesting that you point that out.
Speaker:It's absolutely true. And if you look back at the 2010
Speaker:sort of Arab Spring in North Africa and going all the
Speaker:way around into— from West North Africa, heading east
Speaker:to Egypt, heading northeast again into Syria. Those
Speaker:were fundamentally caused by food issues where
Speaker:people were running out of food. In Egypt, they were crying out,
Speaker:we want bread, bread, bread, bread, because they just— everything was just too
Speaker:expensive. And if you look at what's going on now in
Speaker:as a result of the Ukraine crisis and the Russian crisis, a
Speaker:very large percentage of North African food comes from
Speaker:Russia and Ukraine. And there's a shortage of food,
Speaker:but the food that they do get is very, very expensive in a
Speaker:world which is also extraordinarily expensive in terms of getting
Speaker:access to fossil fuels and stuff like that as well. And
Speaker:so people are seeing a significant drop in income. And a
Speaker:massive increase in the cost of living, and
Speaker:that creates strife. And so if we can use vertical
Speaker:farming to actually help alleviate those issues, yet again, it
Speaker:helps create stability in places which historically
Speaker:have been unstable. Yeah, so true. So for the benefit of the
Speaker:listener who may not know the origin story of Fisher Farms, can you
Speaker:give a brief recap of how it started? So I
Speaker:set up the business in late
Speaker:2016, early 2017. And
Speaker:I basically just wanted to see what I could do. So I
Speaker:made myself a hydroponics kit and put it at
Speaker:home. And actually, I tied the lights
Speaker:underneath my wife's vanity table in our bedroom
Speaker:and had a sort of a card, you know, a plastic box
Speaker:with some grow plugs and some nets and a little Aqua
Speaker:sort of fish tank system, and just to see what could
Speaker:grow. And I was amazed that I actually was able to grow anything.
Speaker:And so I thought, well, this is kind of interesting. It's actually possible
Speaker:to do this. And then I sort of reached out
Speaker:to some people I knew to see whether they could help me actually
Speaker:turn that into reality. And so started off with a
Speaker:shipping container and filled the shipping container, designed a
Speaker:racking system, with yet again, the sort of vertigation system to actually
Speaker:produce, you know, the hydroponic system you needed for a vertical farm.
Speaker:It was a reefer, so we could have fantastic control of the
Speaker:air in terms of humidity and in terms of temperature. And
Speaker:then I just grew a whole range of different crops,
Speaker:mainly short leafy green things, you know, your salads and herbs, but also,
Speaker:you know, grew things like stevia to see whether we could do
Speaker:something like that as well. And yet again, got really good results.
Speaker:And so I then reached out to some
Speaker:friends and some former colleagues of mine and sort of said, no, sort of
Speaker:do a friends and family round in terms of investment. And they could see
Speaker:that it was an exciting venture. And they worked with me in the past. And
Speaker:so they thought, okay, we'll put a little bit extra money in, help Tristan out.
Speaker:We got some great results. And then we got the attention of a
Speaker:fantastic investment house in the UK called Gresham
Speaker:House, who focused on ESG-related
Speaker:investments. And they, you know, they've done a lot of stuff in the renewable
Speaker:space, social housing, forestry, and things like
Speaker:that. And so they could see the potential of vertical farming. And then they
Speaker:provided us the funding to build our first vertical farm, which was
Speaker:completed in 2019. And then also the funding
Speaker:to build our second vertical farm, which is
Speaker:currently, you know, it's built. And we're just fitting in
Speaker:all the final bits of equipment at the moment before we start seeding
Speaker:in February next year. Is this the first time you have the CEO role?
Speaker:No, I, my first CEO role was a long time
Speaker:ago. It was something like 2000. I think 2000 was
Speaker:probably my first CEO role. I had an internet startup then. I
Speaker:also was the CEO of a company called Camco,
Speaker:which was developing projects in China and Russia using
Speaker:the Clean Development Mechanism, the CDM, as part of the Kyoto Protocol. So a lot
Speaker:of energy efficiency projects there. And then I had another company
Speaker:called Lumicity, which I also set up, which was focused
Speaker:on solar projects and biomass projects in the UK
Speaker:market. So I've been a CEO, been an entrepreneur for quite
Speaker:some time. But I also like working for big companies. You know, there's, I worked
Speaker:for Citigroup, I worked, which was a great company. I worked for
Speaker:Shell and Shell Renewables and Shell was also a fantastic company to
Speaker:work for, you know, great people, very well run, sort of a lot
Speaker:of excitement, a lot of potential while I was there. So, no, I've
Speaker:worked in various different guises over the years, but
Speaker:I've been a CEO for quite some time now. I can definitely relate to the
Speaker:benefits of working for a big company. I was in corporate for over 20 years.
Speaker:I worked at JP Morgan Chase and then E-Trade as well. So it's nice to
Speaker:have the backing of a big company like that. And in 2015, I
Speaker:ventured off into becoming an entrepreneur. And once you start down the
Speaker:entrepreneur path, it feels like you can never go back to working the
Speaker:regimented time. And once you have that bug bites, it seems like it's
Speaker:something that's going to be forever part of your DNA. How have you
Speaker:grown as a CEO, you know, with the previous experience you have and now
Speaker:in the time you've spent at Fisher Farms? It's a great question.
Speaker:I think that clearly I've got more experience in terms of
Speaker:what to do, and I feel more comfortable and confident about how to run
Speaker:a business, how to manage people. People is sort of such an
Speaker:important component of running any kind of business, and sort of how do you
Speaker:manage that effectively. I've clearly got a lot more experience in terms of
Speaker:working with investors and understanding why they want
Speaker:things. And I think having, you know, my own personal investment
Speaker:experience, you know, many, many years ago, it also helps me
Speaker:to understand what it's like to be on the other side of the table in
Speaker:terms of those kinds of relationships. But I think that ultimately what
Speaker:you're trying to do as a CEO is get the best out of your team
Speaker:because ultimately you need them because, you know,
Speaker:they are the guys who are the specialists. They are the ones who understand lighting.
Speaker:They understand water systems. They are the ones who stand the technology. They are the
Speaker:ones who stand the growing. So those are the guys who, the sort of the
Speaker:sector experts. And I think that as a CEO,
Speaker:you're trying to make sure that people know where you're going, why
Speaker:you're going in a particular direction. Now, the why is a super important
Speaker:component of people's motivating factors. Now, why are we doing something?
Speaker:What's the point? So showing to people, you know, why we're doing
Speaker:something, showing where we're going, I think is important. Trying
Speaker:to get people to cooperate and actually just get stuff done.
Speaker:Trying not to have silos in organizations. It's quite easy to
Speaker:develop a silo and have a, have your own team. And, but
Speaker:you've got to get people continuously communicating with each other
Speaker:across the various different parts of the businesses. So they feel that they're part of
Speaker:one company rather than one subset of, uh, of
Speaker:the company. So yeah, lots of lessons learned along the way.
Speaker:I think what's interesting is when you start a company and you're the CEO,
Speaker:you have direct contact with the team that you're building,
Speaker:with the folks that you've hired. Naturally, I imagine you work with
Speaker:people that you know, that you've worked with in the past, that you trust and
Speaker:whose work you know. But as you start to grow, you start to have a
Speaker:need to develop more trust and faith in your team and your
Speaker:ability and your managers to manage that growing staff to the
Speaker:point where, you know, you can't— there comes a moment, I imagine, in every CEO's
Speaker:life when you start to not know who's being hired and
Speaker:have trust that the team is being developed in a way that, you know,
Speaker:fits what your vision of what you would like it to be. I think that's
Speaker:so very, very true. And when you start off in the business,
Speaker:when you speak to somebody, that person has the
Speaker:single brain and has the single body to actually make that whatever
Speaker:happen. So you speak to one person, they say, yes, I'll go off and do
Speaker:it. But as an organization gets bigger, there is what I refer to as
Speaker:a distributed brain. So there's lots of people who are
Speaker:involved in that decision. And so each part of that
Speaker:brain needs to be able to communicate with each other effectively. But it's not
Speaker:just a distributed brain. You also have a distributed body because
Speaker:there won't be just one person who's doing that action. There will be multiple people.
Speaker:who are involved in actually making that happen. And all of those people
Speaker:also need to coordinate with each other and understand why they're doing
Speaker:something and, uh, and how they actually need to cooperate with each other.
Speaker:And so I think early-stage businesses can get
Speaker:away with very, very few processes, and you can just get
Speaker:stuff done. But as an organization gets larger, you actually
Speaker:need to bring in process And the trick is
Speaker:to ensure that you have the right amount of process and not too
Speaker:little and not too much. And so the sort of looking for the
Speaker:Goldilocks level of process with an organization, I
Speaker:think is very difficult. And it's a challenge, which I think all
Speaker:companies go through as they scale. And you also have situations
Speaker:where, you know, people who started the organization
Speaker:develop and have different roles. To what they originally had
Speaker:at the beginning. And so ensuring that they develop in the
Speaker:right way for themselves as individuals, but also as
Speaker:for the company is always a challenge as well. I think that
Speaker:ultimately one of the things which you're looking for in a business like ours
Speaker:is ideas and the creation of ideas.
Speaker:And I mentioned this because there is no real manual that
Speaker:you can just pick off the shelf, which says, this is how to be a
Speaker:vertical farmer. There's no— this doesn't exist. There are very few people who
Speaker:actually have vertical farming experience. So when we're hiring
Speaker:people, you know, we're generally hiring people who have very good
Speaker:sector experience in terms of what— I should say domain experience in
Speaker:terms of they're very good engineer or they're very good water
Speaker:specialists, but very few of them have actually worked in a vertical
Speaker:farm. And so you're— so as an organization,
Speaker:you need to ensure that people always putting ideas on
Speaker:the table and how to have and to learn and to
Speaker:cooperate and not to be frightened of putting their
Speaker:ideas on the table. So I always talk about bad ideas.
Speaker:So I say to people, look, my terrible idea,
Speaker:plus Harry, your really awful
Speaker:idea, plus Eric's appalling
Speaker:idea and Christian's dreadful idea, and they're generally bad ideas.
Speaker:They're not like we're pretending that they're actually good ideas, but they're just really bad
Speaker:ideas. But if you put all those terrible ideas together, they can
Speaker:create a genius idea at the
Speaker:end of that process, something which nobody was expecting to happen.
Speaker:And if people are frightened about putting ideas on the
Speaker:table, then they won't. So if there's any sense
Speaker:in an organization that people get slapped down for putting their terrible
Speaker:idea, they go, ooh, I'm not really sure I want to put this idea because
Speaker:it's an embarrassing idea, or what will people think of me? Then those
Speaker:ideas don't happen, and that idea, that bad idea,
Speaker:doesn't combine with the other bad idea to create a beautiful,
Speaker:brilliant, genius breakthrough idea at the end of that process.
Speaker:So encouraging people to work together and
Speaker:actually put all their ideas together, I think, is a really important part of yet
Speaker:again, creating a culture within an organization. And I think that
Speaker:as a CEO, creating that culture is very, very important. Culture of
Speaker:trust, of openness, and dare I say it, you know, of
Speaker:kindness and of love and affection. You know, we want
Speaker:people to be nice to each other, to be good to each other, because
Speaker:if they are nice to each other and they are good to each other, they're
Speaker:more likely to be able to cooperate and help each other out. And
Speaker:that's what it's all about, really. I love the fact that you brought that all
Speaker:together. And then just this idea of being kindness, of being
Speaker:kind, which I think is something that not a lot of leaders talk about.
Speaker:Is this something that you just learned over the years, Tristan, or is this
Speaker:something that you've seen in other leaders that have inspired you? That's a good
Speaker:question. You know, how different am I now from 20
Speaker:years ago? I mean, I think I've clearly grown. I've clearly developed. know, I
Speaker:have, you know, kids of my own, so I have 4 kids. So
Speaker:I'm— I think you sort of become more aware of others and
Speaker:you become more aware of sharing and not being
Speaker:quite as selfish as, you know, you're kind of forced not to be selfish
Speaker:when you've got lots of other people to look after and stuff like that. So
Speaker:I think that being a parent probably really helps in that process. But I
Speaker:think that ultimately nobody really wants to work in a company where
Speaker:they've got horrible people. No, like, why would you choose? So the
Speaker:way I think about it is that anybody who comes to work for me
Speaker:has to be good, otherwise they shouldn't be working for me. But if they're
Speaker:good, it essentially means that they can go and work anywhere else.
Speaker:And so effectively, they are volunteering
Speaker:their time to work for me and to work with me. And I
Speaker:don't mean volunteering their time as in they're not getting paid, because they're all getting
Speaker:paid know, wealth. It's not a money thing. It's they're
Speaker:choosing to spend the most valuable resource that they
Speaker:have in their lives, which is their time, involved in a
Speaker:project with me and with all the other people who are
Speaker:working alongside them. And so you want people to be happy
Speaker:doing that. And, you know, I think that if you're happy,
Speaker:you're probably going to be doing a better job. And if you're doing a better
Speaker:job, you're probably going to be happy, and therefore you're going to do a better
Speaker:job. And so it's a virtuous circle where the happier
Speaker:you are, the better you are, and therefore the happier you are.
Speaker:So that's the kind of culture which I think is really, really important to try
Speaker:and encourage within an organization. So, you know, some businesses are just
Speaker:horrible places to work, and they're backstabbing,
Speaker:they're mean to each other. And, you know, life is too short.
Speaker:Why would you want to— why would you choose to work in that kind of
Speaker:place if you're really good. If you're not really good, then you may have no
Speaker:choice, and that's unfortunate. But if you are good, you should
Speaker:be choosing to work with good people. Very, very important. And it's something I
Speaker:think a lot of leaders don't talk about. But I think in this environment, especially
Speaker:with what's happened with COVID and people's realization,
Speaker:workers' realization that they have opportunities now to work anywhere
Speaker:they want and sometimes anywhere in the world, and, you know, remote work
Speaker:is not going away anytime soon. So now it seems like some of the,
Speaker:the power dynamic has shifted, and I think people are aligning more with
Speaker:companies that fit their values and where they feel like they can
Speaker:contribute, but also that their time and their effort is respected and
Speaker:appreciated. And I think that's something you're alluding to, which I think is great.
Speaker:So I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk a little bit about the
Speaker:current product offering for Fisher Farms, how that's changed from from when you started to
Speaker:present day, who you currently serve, what the current offerings are, and
Speaker:who the ideal clients are now? So in the UK market,
Speaker:there's a heavy focus on own brands. So I think that's
Speaker:something which is quite different from the US market, where I think, you know, brands
Speaker:are very, very powerful. Whereas in the UK, you have a lot of
Speaker:supermarkets who have got very strong brands of their own, sort of the
Speaker:Sainsbury's and Marks& Spencer's and and Waitrose and people like that of the world
Speaker:who will have their own branded products. And so for us, it's really trying to
Speaker:make sure that we have, you know, we give our customers, you
Speaker:know, access to products which, you know, work for them and
Speaker:having some kind of branding side on top of that. So, you know,
Speaker:Fisher Farms at the moment has spent, you know, most of its
Speaker:activity, um, in Farm 1 is now on research and development.
Speaker:So we've been retrofitting a lot of the equipment that
Speaker:we have in Farm 2 into Farm 1 to actually
Speaker:allow us to develop that technology to make sure that it
Speaker:works. And the reason for that is that Farm 1
Speaker:has about 3,200 square meters of growing space and
Speaker:Farm 2 has 25,000 square meters of growing space. So it's a
Speaker:significant increase in terms of the size of the,
Speaker:what we're doing. In order to keep our costs down, we spend a
Speaker:lot of time on automation. So, you know, I
Speaker:think there's a big difference potentially in the American market where
Speaker:labor is, I think, cheaper than it is in the
Speaker:UK market. So for us, you know, it's all about
Speaker:robots who are able to take products off the shelves,
Speaker:down off the racks, harvest it, do cleaning on an
Speaker:automated basis. Putting in the new growing material
Speaker:and then seeding it and putting it all back into the overall system and stuff
Speaker:like that. So for us, if I look at, you know, what we've been
Speaker:doing over the last 12, 24 months or so, it's a
Speaker:lot of ensuring that Farm 2 goes
Speaker:live with the best possible technology behind it, which has
Speaker:been tested and tested and tested and tested and tested because
Speaker:it's very hard to scale. You know, when we, when I originally started the business,
Speaker:I thought I was just going to be able to buy things off the shelf.
Speaker:I thought I was going to just go and buy some lights and buy some
Speaker:racking systems and buy some shelves. And that really didn't
Speaker:happen. And that's part of where we are in
Speaker:sort of the growth cycle of vertical farming. And I think that's why you see
Speaker:a lot of different business models, but you also see quite radically different
Speaker:ways of doing vertical farming. So fundamentally, Vertical farming is
Speaker:a variation on hydroponics on some kind of shelf
Speaker:with lights. That's what it is at the basic level. But the
Speaker:detail is actually really varied in
Speaker:terms of how people have chosen to do their
Speaker:irrigation, how they've chosen to do their lights, how they've chosen to do their seeding
Speaker:or do their harvesting and stuff like that as well. So I think it's a
Speaker:bit like looking at early 1900s and the
Speaker:development of the automobile. There were a whole range of different types of
Speaker:car shapes, sizes, how, where the wheels, where the steering
Speaker:wheel was, if you even had a steering wheel. You had electric
Speaker:cars, you had hydrogen vehicles, you had a whole
Speaker:range of technologies until they eventually
Speaker:coalesced a Henry Ford Model T
Speaker:variation or so. And then you had the scale which you
Speaker:resulted and came out of that. So I think that, you know, as a business,
Speaker:a lot of focus is on getting our technology right and sort of
Speaker:basically prepping ourselves for going to market in sort of
Speaker:February, March next year. What's a tough question you've had to ask yourself
Speaker:recently? I look at every single day we have
Speaker:issues and problems pop up. And it's always a question of, is
Speaker:this problem a today-only problem? Is it a
Speaker:week-only problem? Is it a month-only problem? Or is this
Speaker:an existential problem? And you don't
Speaker:necessarily know at the beginning of the day what type of problem it's going to
Speaker:be. And so there's a level of— there's a huge amount of
Speaker:planning which we do in the business. So we're sort of predicting,
Speaker:figuring out what we're going to do, how we're going to get there. But there's
Speaker:also a lot of unknowns. And fortunately,
Speaker:the more we do, the fewer unknowns there are, and the sort of the
Speaker:more repeat, uh, businesses sort of types of questions there are. So yeah,
Speaker:for me, it's really just doing triage of what kind
Speaker:of issues we have during the course of the day. I think the good news
Speaker:is that I've been entrepreneur for long enough
Speaker:and have encountered enough really bad issues
Speaker:to realize that actually nearly all bad issues can be fixed. There's very few
Speaker:things that can't be fixed. And I think my
Speaker:sort of recommendation and sort of advice for sort of other entrepreneurs and other people
Speaker:out there is that you just got to break your problems down into
Speaker:little tiny component parts and solve each one of those tiny little
Speaker:component parts. And before you realize it, you actually would have
Speaker:solved the really big problem by just dealing with all the little piece, the little
Speaker:problems bit by bit. And I think just have confidence in yourself. That you
Speaker:actually can solve problems. And it goes back to the idea generation.
Speaker:Sometimes when we're faced with our hardest problems, we end up
Speaker:with answers which are significantly better
Speaker:than what would've happened had we not had those bad problems in the
Speaker:first place. And that's quite a great
Speaker:feeling that you actually end up with a better place as a
Speaker:result of having a problem than had you not had the problem in the
Speaker:first Yeah, there's something about— I think it's called eustress, positive
Speaker:stress, and then it has this effect of forcing us
Speaker:into a mindset where we have to think more deeply about
Speaker:the problem and to your point, come up with a solution that at the end
Speaker:of the day is something we would never even thought of had we not been
Speaker:applied that pressure to ourselves. And I think sometimes we surprise ourselves
Speaker:with what's possible. It is. It's very surprising what we can come
Speaker:up with. And, uh, but that's yet again back down to having a
Speaker:good team and having a good team who are happy to share and
Speaker:put their terrible ideas out there and to recombine those
Speaker:terrible ideas into really good ideas. So, and that's
Speaker:culture really as much as anything. Now, how do you create that positive culture within
Speaker:a business? Coming up at the top of the hour, and I wanted to leave
Speaker:a couple of minutes, uh, as I've been doing now for these past
Speaker:conversations, given this audience, given that there's a lot of your peers that
Speaker:listen to this podcast, is there a message that you have
Speaker:for the vertical farming industry, for your colleagues in this space?
Speaker:Anything that comes to mind? I think that some of the vertical farming businesses have
Speaker:gone into trouble recently. And I think that my sort of
Speaker:just recommendation is that just keep going
Speaker:and work your way out through these issues. And,
Speaker:you know, And ultimately, I think you're going to get through it. Certainly the whole
Speaker:sector is going to get through this. You know, vertical farming is here to
Speaker:stay. It just makes so much sense. And
Speaker:any kind of short-term issues that people may have, I think, are
Speaker:ultimately going to be temporary. So I think just have faith in
Speaker:yourselves and in the knowledge that this is a great
Speaker:sector to be in and you will figure out a way.
Speaker:We always figure out a way. Well, I want to thank you for making the
Speaker:time to come on this podcast and for sharing your story. I think
Speaker:the breadth and width of experience that you bring is really fascinating
Speaker:because you have had experience in so many
Speaker:areas around sustainability, around renewable energy, around
Speaker:creating and tackling these issues of food
Speaker:shortages that we're having. And it feels like you're well-poised to be in the
Speaker:position you are now. It's almost like all roads in your career led to this
Speaker:moment. And I think what you're doing at Fisher Farms is really
Speaker:inspiring. And I think it's helpful to hear those words from someone who's been doing
Speaker:this for a while for others in the space. So I just want to really
Speaker:applaud all the progress you've made so far and, you know, wish you the best
Speaker:on this journey. Well, Harry, that's very kind of you. I greatly appreciate it.
Speaker:And, uh, you know, keep up the great work which you're doing in
Speaker:Vertical Farming Podcast and And I'm sure you're going to continue to get great
Speaker:guests on board. So well done. And it's, you know, it's very
Speaker:interesting to hear other people's stories as well. So thank you, Harry.
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