Episode Summary

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Rosario Iacono. Rosario is the Founder of Kasveista, a concept stage startup aiming to produce open-source seeds and seedlings for vertical farming. Their goal is to help modern vertical farms expand their range of products by providing seeds and seedlings of tomato of varieties specifically selected for vertical farming.

Today, Harry and Rosario talk about the incredible work Rosario is doing at Kasveista and why he chose to focus on the tomatoes as his first crop. Rosario talks about the incredibly vast varieties of tomatoes and shares tips for those who want to grow tomatoes at home. They explain the open source model and why it’s critical to Rosario’s business. Finally, Rosario talks about what’s next for Kasveista, what excites him about the future and how we can educate the masses on vertical farming.

Episode Sponsor

CULTIVATD

Freight Farms

Key Takeaways

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• 05:02 – Harry welcomes to the show Rosario Iacono, who joins the show to discuss his company, Kasveista, and his vertical farming origin story
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• 11:13 – The incredible vast variety of tomatoes
• 
  
• 
  
• 16:18 – Tips for people growing tomatoes at home
• 
  
• 
  
• 17:01 – What Rosario has discovered about tomatoes throughout the years
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• 20:54 – Intensive research and experimentation in vertical farming
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• 28:24 – Rosario’s team at Kasveista
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• 31:59 – The Open Source Model explained and why it is so critical
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• 39:44 – Surprises and challenges from Rosario’s vertical farming journey
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• 44:27 – What’s next for Kasveista
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• 47:54 – Something Rosario has changed his mind about recently
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• 51:52 – Harry thanks Rosario for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can learn more about Kasveista and connect with Rosario
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Tweetable Quotes

“I was getting tomatoes from Sicily in London. But there is no compromise. You either make a tomato that can travel for sixteen hour on a truck, or you make a tasty tomato.” (09:42) (Rosario

“What I learned is you can influence a lot of the taste and you can change a lot by the techniques you use to grow the tomatoes.” (17:47) (Rosario)

“I try to not think about what a tomato is. I try to think in terms of what a tomato should be now and redraw it from scratch.” (19:01) (Rosario)

“Everyone should have access to food. And access to food is access to seeds.” (34:39) (Rosario)

“Assuming we can get the funding, I have many ideas that I would like to see happening. First of all, expanding to more and more crops that can be grown in vertical farming. I see the world asking for it.” (44:42) (Rosario)

“I think where the education could really start is at school. I think children are really the key to make vertical farming cool. Because through children, you educate their parents.” (49:36) (Rosario)

Links Mentioned

Rosario’s LinkedIn

Kasveista Website

Kasveista Instagram

Kasveista Facebook

Sponsor Info:

Cultivatd Website

Cultivatd Instagram

Cultivatd’s Twitter

Cultivatd’s Facebook

Freight Farms Website

Freight Farms Facebook

Freight Farms Twitter

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Mentioned in this episode:

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or click the link in the show notes. The first thing you need to do

agriculture is seeds. The first thing you think is plants.

Agriculture is plants. You cannot think of a farm without plants. But

surprisingly, people were like, yeah, you know, we got this

fantastic new advanced system, it's completely automatic.

And then I was like, okay, what kind of seeds do you use? What varieties?

I know it was just Joe at the corner, he had good seeds. What kind

of good seeds? I don't know, but they grow. That was everything that

was enough.

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 4. Welcome back. If this is your first

time listening, always like to welcome new listeners to the show. You are in the

right place because this is the show where we interview fascinating

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

And I am Harry Duran, your host. In case you missed last week's episode, I

spoke with Samantha Johnson, Director of Aquaponics Programs at

Commonwealth Charter Academy. They're doing some amazing

things, getting folks and kids interested

in the space, and it was really inspiring

to hear some of the things they're working on at CCA. Make sure you check

that out. This week, I speak to Rosario Iacono.

He's the founder of CasVista. It's a concept-stage startup aiming

to produce open-source seeds and seedlings for vertical farming. Their

goal is to help modern vertical farms expand their range of products by providing seeds

and seedlings of tomatoes and varieties specifically

selected for vertical farming. In this episode, we talk about the incredible

work they're doing at Kaz Vista and why Rosario chose to focus on

tomatoes as their first crop. He talks about the incredibly vast

varieties within tomatoes that many people may not know about,

and the fact that he's Italian lends a special

significance to selecting that crop, which I mentioned. And he

shares tips for those who want to grow tomatoes at home as well, which is

helpful. He explains the open source model and why it's critical

to Catavista's business. We learn what's next for

the company and what excites him about the future and how we can educate the

masses on vertical farming. Very, very inspirational stuff.

Thoroughly enjoy speaking to folks from around the globe on this podcast, and

I appreciate Rosario taking the time to educate me on the

importance of open source seeds. This episode is brought to you

also by Freight Farms. Freight Farms manufactures and sells the leading

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food anywhere in the world. Visit

freightfarms.com/verticalfarmingpodcast to learn

more. All right, let's get into this conversation with Rosario.

So Rosario Iacono, founder of Cazveista, thank you so much for joining me on

the Vertical Farming Podcast. Hello, thank you for inviting me.

So have you been on podcast interviews before?

No, not before. Have you done regular

interviews before? Uh, no, not on, on a spoken

basis. No, no. Okay. And so how long have you been

working on Cazveista? I mean, on the idea, I think I

started in 2017, '16.

Okay. The general— I mean, the pieces of the idea

started like when I was in my bachelor, I think

2006. But the idea itself, yeah, or the

structure it is now was last summer. So

was the last year of work here. So when you think

about your time at university, is this something you feel like

you've always been preparing for or something that was always of interest

to you? I think somehow I didn't really fit in the

academic life, and I didn't really fit in the

working for industry. I was always trying to do something different. It

was upsetting everyone. It was upsetting my supervisor

because he wanted to publish paper, and it was always like,

why this? This has not ever been tried. It will never work. I was like,

that's why I want to try it. Employers don't like someone that does

something that doesn't adhere to the procedure. So In the end, I found

myself, I said, yeah, I mean, I want to do something and it's not something

that fits in these 2 categories. So I want to

develop my idea. So somehow, yeah, I was preparing for, for

this maybe. Yeah. So for the benefit of the listener

and for people who have not heard of Kazvasek, how do you usually

explain what the company is and what your mission is? What I

usually say is, uh, people ask if we are an innovative

startup. I would say that yes, we are an innovative startup, but we are

not innovative. We are not a startup. Up because the idea is very old. We

produce seeds. So seed companies

have been around since ever. So we, what we basically do, we

produce seeds. The only difference is we produce seeds for a specific sector of

agriculture that is vertical farming. And we decided that

we release our varieties and our seeds with an open source license.

So these are, these 3 things together make an innovation because there is

no company out there doing these 3 things together.

And that's how I usually present the company to people that ask,

what are you doing? And I'm sure people can guess

based on your accent, but where's home for you right now? My home is

the south of Italy in Sicily. I've been around for a while now.

I think it has been 10 years since I left. But yeah, I

still have the accent. I still go back home when I can. Okay,

but home is, uh, south of Sicily? Yeah, south of

Sicily, in the south of Italy. Yeah. Okay, and where are you now then? At

the moment we are based in Berlin. Okay. Which is where I

opened the company, so we're gonna be here for a while. Yeah, I've

been— I've actually been there. It's a beautiful city. Yeah, it's

fantastic. And so when did the vertical

farming, controlled environment agriculture— when

did that become something that you were aware of, or has it been something, a

trend that you've been following? for many years? No, actually it

was during my PhD, like between, like

around 5 years ago. And I was in the office with one of the

people that now is working with me on CASVEISTA, Laura. She was working

on a project about optimization of light for lettuce in vertical

farming. When I first asked her about her project, she explained to me

what vertical farming was. I was like, it will never work.

This is just a waste of time. There is no, no, no

chance it's going to be, to make sense. And it took a while,

but she convinced me. So I got very, really into that

because I really loved the idea in the end and,

and everything changed. So yeah, that was the time when I started to be interested.

What began to change your mind? I mean, the,

the logic behind it. Like when I start to see papers, I start to see

the numbers. And it really made sense for me, the

difference in the surface that you need to produce the same amount of

food. It really made difference for me, the higher

production of food and the fact that you can have the food locally and close

to the place where you are. As an immigrant from the south of Sicily, I

will always be missing the real vegetables. And people don't realize

how real they are not, the food we export. Yeah.

Because I was getting tomatoes from Sicily in London. But

there is no compromise. You either make a tomato that can travel for

16 hours on a truck or you make a tasty tomato. And I

tried. If you bump a tomato bought in London on the wall and put it

back in the fridge, it stays for 2 weeks and it's still a tomato. So

I was like, yeah, makes sense. I would like to have fresh local food

with taste all year round. And so

obviously there's a lot of decisions which produce to start with.

And maybe it's because of your heritage and your background that you are

focused on tomatoes right now. But is it, what was the

decision or how did you come to that decision? No, I mean, yeah, a bit

on heritage, a bit of nostalgia for home, but

basically it was also looking a bit at the statistics. We are based in Germany

and I look at the, what is the vegetable most consumed in Germany?

And the second most consumed is tomato just after potatoes.

Okay. And which is also the most imported tomato. So for most of

the year, the tomato is imported from other European

countries or extra-European countries. So if I had to

think about moving from the production of

greens and leafy greens to something else, I

see that the first ranking is tomato. What people will ask

is tomato. And then after that, we have in, I think, onion,

cucumber, and I think strawberries kind of high as well.

But yeah, it was more a consideration of considering the market.

Yeah. How much do people need to be educated about

the varieties of tomatoes? I don't want to be critical,

but a lot. Well, this is your opportunity now. Yeah, that's

important because I've been asking people, like, I started to propose my idea, let's

see if people were thinking, considering me crazy,

or at least giving me a chance. So I started to talk around and I,

I started to ask like, what varieties varieties would you like? What

varieties would you like to grow? And the most epic

answer was like, we have a great variety of greens.

I was like, I don't really question the range of greens you

grow, but you know, there are— if you think about basil, there

are thousands of varieties of basil. If you think about tomatoes,

I recently went through a database with 6,000 varieties of

tomato and That's just a little thing. That's just what we

were able to collect, that we were able to find. But I think there is

a lot to explain to people because it's

not people's fault. I mean, I was into a conference recently. I asked people

to raise their hands. I asked who was into vertical farming and there

was huge amount of hands raising. But when I

asked who had a background as a farmer or farming background or growing

plants, just one person rose his hand. So— I was,

okay, that's the point. I'm not talking to farmers. If I was

talking to a farmer and asking about a variety, the answer was straight.

There is a lot to educate and explain. And I think that's

also our job in the next few years. Do you

consider yourself— how would you define yourself? A farmer, scientist?

Oh gosh, I spent the last 38 years thinking

of this. I decided to don't answer this question anymore.

But I'm a bit of everything. I think I'm in the

laboratory and I try to remember how a farmer would

think. Like, when I do an experiment, I think, would this make sense for my

grandfather or my dad? Mm-hmm. Is this something I could apply? Or is it just

I'm tickling my mind because this is exciting? On the other

side, when I'm in the vertical farming or in the

farm, or when I was a student that was working in the farm, I was

always thinking, okay, what's logic and the

mechanism behind that would say, how can I make this simpler and

faster or better for the environment? And yeah, and

I always been mixing things. So I also

like theater. I've been an actor for a bit and I put this

like a presentation can be like a presentation. I look like being on a stage

and sometimes I engage people and I make people engaging

with ideas that are serious, using techniques that I learned in

theater. So I don't think there is a single answer. Me, it's

me. You're a Renaissance

man. How important was

your upbringing and, you know, what memories do you have

of farming in your family? I remember me fighting with my

dad because I think he was the hippie of

the situation. I was the Green

Revolution guy. So chemical fertilizers, finally.

Can we have a monoculture once in a while? Can we

stop having trees mixing with many other— can we kill all the

insects, have a single culture? And it was like, that doesn't really look

natural. And at that time was the way where they were teaching us

what agriculture was, like maximize the production, reduce

the cost. Clean food means food with no pest at all. So you

just use pesticides. But I remember it was like, the question was like,

should we start to use an industrialized system for our cows? He was really against

that. I was like, yeah, but we could produce more milk, sell more

milk for even a lower price. But, uh, and he was like, no, that's, that's

no sense. I mean, you need quality and then everything comes. And

I think it took 20 years for me to understand that that was the new

way and it makes more sense. And that's my memory.

My memory is like, Also, it's mostly about when I

left countryside, the first time I had to go to a supermarket to buy some

vegetables, or I had to buy milk. And I called back home and I was

like, you know, here they don't have cows, they, they buy milk in supermarkets and

there are many bottles of different colors. What is milk and what is not

milk? And yeah, it can be confusing when

you're not in the system before. And do you still

have connections to that family and are they aware of like what you're working on

now? Yeah, I mean, I'm still the official owner of the

lands. My dad passed a few years ago and my mom is still

there. We are not farming anymore. We, in the end, we gave up

on the run to industrialization. The farm was small, but

I go back to the lands every time I can. I still have the little

orchard where I started to plant my first

tomatoes. And yeah, there is a

apricot tree that I planted more than 25 years ago and it's still there.

So yeah, it's full of memories. It's always a nice

place to go back. What are some tips for people growing tomatoes at home?

Wow. I don't know. Just experiment. I mean, I

think people try to find the best way to do things. You find

your way. I mean, I noticed that by changing flat many

times, my plants grow differently every time I change flat. So I think

it's really, it's a kind of microecosystem, and you have

to kind of find your way, your varieties, what fits

better. And normally a tomato

should be able to be— once it's picked off the vine, you

can store it at room temperature, right? Everything— from everything I understand,

the last place you want to put a tomato is in the refrigerator. Yeah, exactly.

And because that— can you talk a little bit about what you've discovered over the

years about the The flavors of the different types of tomatoes?

You mean like, what I found is like how much you can influence

the taste. People ask, for example, how you make a

sweeter tomato. This is something I learned from the farmers

in Sicily where there is this area where we produce the cherry tomato that has

a PDO. So it's a certification of quality for the area where it's

produced. You cannot produce the same tomato in other

areas. And that's why, because the reason is that in

that area they have the water of the sea going into the

lands. And the land is very salty. This salt

creates a kind of drought, concentrate the sugar in the

tomatoes and make these sweet tomatoes. And I think, yeah, what I learned is

you can influence a lot the taste and you can change a

lot by the techniques you use to grow the

tomato. How much of that knowledge

is making its way into what you're doing at Kasbeesta?

I still look at these plants and I can sometimes

think back how they were growing when they were on land. But when I

started to work on Kasbeesta and on the varieties for vertical farming, I

also start to think about this hashtag that is, this is not a

tomato. Is I should— I try to forget

everything I knew about tomato because If you're stuck to something,

you think about the tomato and people say, tell me like, how can you

imagine to grow a tomato in— my shelves are 70 centimeters tall, how

can you imagine to grow a tomato there? I was like, if you're talking about

tomato and we think about tomato, how it was on open land,

there is no way you can fit that in that 70 centimeters and there is

nothing I can do for you. First of all, forget about that. Forget

about the shape, forget about the color, forget everything. We don't need that

in vertical farming, so we can reimagine the whole shape as it was already

done from the domestication to the modern day. So

what I say is like, I try to don't think about how— what I think

a tomato is. I try to think in terms of what a tomato should be

now. And this is redraw it from scratch, even the

shape of the leaf, of the color of the leaf, everything. Right. As long as

you get a fruit that is a tomato and it's nutritious and healthy for

people, What the plant looks like, we already decided once

10,000 years ago. We can decide again. It's not against

nature. And the ultimate test would be to take one of those tomatoes

and feed it to one of your family members and see if they approve? Yeah,

actually, I'm thinking of doing this kind of test for real, like

a panel test where 2 groups of people will be asked to taste

vertical farming produce and open land produce to see how

likely it is that a person can recognize The difference in

taste or freshness. You mentioned that you were

introduced to this space through your partner, Laura.

That's Laura Cammarisano? Yeah, exactly. She's

our advisor. How did you meet? We met

because we actually did the 4 years of PhD staying in the same office.

So we were partners. She withstood all the stress I went

through during my PhD. And yeah, we became,

we became friends and we kind of shared the idea

we have of science and what science should be. We helped each other.

We kind of took different ways. She's a good scientist

and she's really good in academia. So when the decision

was about, you quit academia and you come in the company, or

you are our advisor, I had no doubt. I says, like, I cannot see you

in any other place than academia. Academia needs you more than you need academia.

So we need people like you there. She's

kind of an outlier, but she's very good in what she's

doing. And yeah, that's the way we actually, we met and

our story. How much research did you do into what was existing

already in terms of, you know, 'cause there's new companies that are

doing something similar in this space, designing produce specifically for the vertical

farming space. But what did you see when you got started? What was available?

Who was doing something similar? How much research did you do? in that area?

I mean, I did a lot of research. I knew that it was still

a new world for me. I was recently to my

first conference about vertical farming, and I didn't know

anyone. I didn't know the names. I didn't know the people. Wasn't even my

area of research. And so I did a lot

of research, and yeah, I

basically was kind of surprised of the approach

because I thought the first thing you need to do agriculture is

seeds. The first thing you think is plants. Agriculture is

plants. You cannot think of a farm without plants, but

surprisingly people were like, yeah, you know, we got this

fantastic new advanced system. It's completely automatic.

And then I was like, okay, what kind of seeds do you use? What varieties?

Ah, no, it was Joe at the corner. He had good seeds. What kind of

good seeds? I don't know, but they grow. That was everything that was

enough. And there was really

not kind of feeling that different varieties could have grown

differently in that system. The system was doing everything that— what can

possibly go wrong? And my feeling was, okay, who

is out there producing seeds? And most of the companies I have found out there,

they were producing seeds, but they were not ready at the request from

vertical farmers. So they were not able to answer to questions like, what

nutrient solution do I use? What kind of lights?

Do they grow in hydroponics? Many of the labels'

information provided are like which time of the year you should plant,

but they don't tell you what temperature for germination, what temperature for growth, because

you can set this in your farm. Even more

detail is like what's the variation of temperatures along the day

that you have to give to the plant. And no one has ever

gone out and tested along the day how many times

temperature changes. It's spring, this is what you do from

April to August, you can grow tomatoes. So there

was kind of this— I saw an environment that was really at the beginning

and I was really excited by this. It was everything at the beginning, everything, everyone

was trying everything for the first time. And I was really very

inspired because everyone is a visionary in this world at the

moment in vertical farming. How much are

you learning about how a tomato grows

outdoors in the real world? Because you mentioned, you know, I think about this as

well, if you try to grow a tomato outside, you have to take into account

the seasons and the changes in the temperature even throughout the

day. Obviously, when you're in a controlled environment like a vertical

farm, you can keep it one temperature the entire 24

hours, or you can vary it, which would replicate what happens in

nature. And it sounds like what you're saying is that variety

is important in terms of how the tomato is grown and

how it affects, like, you know, all aspects of it— flavor, size,

color, all those things. Yeah, I think at the moment what

I'm observing is in vertical farming The real

stress is the lack of stress. Starting with the fact that

plants, for example, they are able to support on their stem if they get enough

wind to trigger the production of lignin in their

stem. And plants are kind of

accustomed to sunrise and sunset with all the variation of

spectrum during the sunrise and the sunset.

This lack of— even if— and there was, I read recently a paper, they

tried to, okay, There is no— there was a kind of spectrum

missed during the day. Let's try to give it just in one

shot in the evening. It doesn't work. The plant is expecting something,

which somehow is the way plants were accustomed

over the selection process. So at the moment, there is a

stress created by the lack of stress, to the point that

some protocols suggest to stress a bit the plant.

give a little lack of water or lack of nutrients that can

trigger some things to give the characteristics to the

plant. So that's the main difference I notice. Yeah. Yeah,

that's fascinating because a lot of the selling points and the

benefits that people talk about with vertical farming is removing

all the stress, all the inclement weather that can affect a

plant, the extreme cold, the bugs, right? Because if they don't have to

build up a defense to that, What does that do? And it almost

sounds like you end up with lazy plants.

Actually, no, they're very strong plants,

but they've been fighters for so many years and we

selected them to fight that now they are in this kind of

idyllic environment that they don't know anymore. They're confused, I

think. And so how do you think about that when

you're creating varieties specifically for these environments? It

feels like there's so many different variables that you have to think about and you're

You probably are experimenting a lot. Yeah, it's always

exciting when we plan a new experiment because it's

finding a way to exclude the effect of the

environment and test the effect of the variety.

At the same time, we need to test the same variety in different

environments that are the different growing systems that you can have

in different vertical— in different farming systems in protected environment.

So it's always like, what is reaction of the plant?

For example, like just to make an example, we recently found a tomato that

is extremely fast in growth. It grows

42 days from seed to fruit. And that's spectacular.

What we guess and what we think is a very fast

stressful reaction. It's scared by nature.

It wants to flower straight away. Mm-hmm. And it's surprising how,

for example, we are now about to test some varieties

that were excluded by— they were

never considered like from breeding programs because they were not

resistant to pathogens, to cold, and other things that they were killing them

straight away. We're curious to see what are these varieties going to do when

there is no stress. There is not anymore what took them out from the

competition. So It's very exciting. Could be surprising every

day what's going to come out from this test. Yeah. It seems

like if you think about all the different combinations of varieties

and all the different combinations of environment and stress, lack of stress,

and all the different experiments, it feels like this is a project that's gonna keep

you very busy for many years. Yeah. And

that's, I don't know, people say you like complicated things. Yeah. I

don't really enjoy doing straight Simple things. And I

knew from the beginning it could be a work that can last

generations. I don't think I can finish this, and that's why I want

to do this. It's a long, long work. We started with

one crop, it's already huge. So

accessing everything and testing everything is a lot of work,

but I like that. I mean— You seem to embrace the challenge.

Yeah, yeah. So can you talk a little about the team? Because it looks like

from the site it's you and you mentioned Laura, but you also have

Nela Čerwenka on the team as well. Yeah, I have

Nela on the team. She's taking care of most of the operations and

she has been basically doing the great background work that people

see on everything from the recent

registration as a UG company in Germany

to the contact with facilities, giving us space

and contact with other farmers, taking lists,

checking funding. So she's the— and also she's the German

speaker of the group. So for dealing with the Berlin

administration and Berlin offices, we needed someone

speaking German. So she's the one. And then on the side, we have

Laura. She's one of our advisors. And then we have Tim Beard

that recently joined our They say

advisor boards is friends giving us advice.

He's completing his PhD in Bangor at the University of

Bangor, and his full-time job is tomatoes. And

after finishing working on tomatoes, he still works on tomatoes.

So he's really into tomatoes.

And then we have Frederik, he works at the

Danish Institute for Design and he's our advisor in

financial things. Our meeting was kind of peculiar because

one of his main interests is the open-source hardware for vertical farming.

So basically, he reached out because he was drinking a beer with

his friends and talking about open-source hardware for vertical farming.

And at some point, he was like, it would be cool to have open-source

plants for these open-source vertical farms. And they Googled and they

found us. So we got in touch and— I love this

expertise in the financial world. So

he's giving us advice and helping when this comes.

One more question would be, can we do this with just these members of

the team? And my answer is no. I always expect this question

and I hope it comes. I hope to find more, more,

more, more people. At the moment, the selection goes, if you're crazy enough

to contact us and you manage to find us, you're probably someone

that wants to work with us. And we are looking for more people that are

motivated and they want to join us. So obviously

we have a platform and we have regular listeners. We're getting ready now.

This is one of the interviews that's going to be for season 4, which we're

starting in September. So I'm excited to get this published.

But what is the ask when you think about specific needs on your team

or skill sets or people you'd be interested in being

connected with? What comes to mind? The moment we need, what I

can foresee, we will need growers for sure. So people with experience

in growing in vertical farming. We need to

grow our team of breeders. So people that have a

passion for breeding and that kind of familiar or

they appreciate the importance of the open source license for

seeds. And we're also trying to develop a database system

for our varieties and also database system that our customers can access

with all the information about the growth. So we need people

with experience in IT and

backend database development. Who also like tomatoes.

Yeah. And all people that like tomatoes, but I cannot see as

anyone cannot like tomatoes. Or at least Italian food or pizza or

something similar. Why open source?

Why is that important? For me, it's crucial. I mean, I started to think

about that was the, the open source came before the seeds.

I, it was 2007. I completely

deleted everything I had on my laptop by mistake because I was starting to

install my first open source operative system.

And it was the version, was Red Hat. It was

a distro of Linux. And I really loved

that at some point I was totally in control. And not only in

control, I was free. And there was no virus

could ever access my laptop ever again.

And then I start to think about, and I start to be in contact with

the open source community in terms of software sharing

information. My bugs or any problem was sorted in few minutes

because there was millions and millions of people working on it every day.

And I was like, this would be cool if it could happen for

seeds because it was the time when I was attending my lectures at university

about arboriculture, and

the teacher just explained us what is a

proprietary license on a seed and how it works. And it didn't

really make sense to me. So I get the seed, I

plant the seed, I grow the plant, but that plant is not mine. If I

harvest the seeds from that plant and I plant them again,

I'm using your proprietary technology. That didn't

make sense to me. I was also inquiring to companies. I was like, what does

this mean? You, I get the seeds, I plant the seeds. And if

I try to make the seeds, I'm using your technology. And the

answer was, yes, you can't. And I was like,

there must be a different way. And I started to Google just out of fun,

open source seeds. And I found that there was the beginning of— was

2012 was the beginning of the open source initiative in the US,

which was mostly motivated by scientists that wanted to share seeds and move

and transfer seeds between different academia

and departments without breaching any

license. And so that was really a thing. And the

reason why I was really into that is because I was thinking of

a very bad scenario. Imagine a scenario where

a company has the royalties on the seeds

and sells these seeds to the farmers of another country, and

everything is Good and fine until these 2 countries are in peace.

If these 2 countries go in a war or they don't— they're not friends

anymore, you don't need any more weapons to

starve the other country. You just take away the right to use the

seeds. And that's not right. I mean, everyone should have access to

food. Access to food is through access to seeds. There is no

chance that I can see a humanity where if I were— if I eat an

apple and I want to sow these seeds, I can't. Or

I want to make my own plant of tomato from the seeds that I got

from the tomato at the supermarket and I can't. So I

think it should be this way, it should be open source. And people say you

cannot pay for— you cannot pay the breeders if you don't

put a copyright. But that's not completely true. I mean,

it's true if you want to make a lot of money

working on many levels of marketing. But if you

start to think that the farmer can be the breeder

and everyone contributes to the improving of the variety,

you speed up the breeding in such a speed that everyone

benefits, even if the final seed is sold to a lower

price. So it becomes something collaborative. Even if

people ask, okay, you give me one seed, I buy the seed, and then I

make all the seeds I want, what's What's the point of your business? And my

answer is like, yeah, you can make as many seeds as you want. You can

also improve that. But those seeds that you release with the open source seeds, they

will be released again with another open source license. Everyone will

benefit of that. And if I see that's a good variety,

I'll take it back and I'll re-improve. And

we both benefit from this improvement. There is not anymore a

relation where I'm the breeder and I tell you what you need. You tell me

what you need and we do it together. That's how it should be. And that's

how it was in software. And I think it works. Yeah, it's such an

important analogy. And like with the Linux community, I know that everybody

realized the power in that and the power to

not have those licenses belong to one company, because

just as you pointed out, that it's a slippery slope, as they say

in English, you know, you just, where does it end?

And I'm curious just about the specifics of it or the technology for

open source seeds. Is each variety

created from a source seed or can you, I mean, like how

does the process, just to get a little technical, but I'm just curious

how it works and where open source seeds come from. So the open source seeds

come from germplasm varieties that are

out there. So for germplasm, I mean any also

traditional variety, that has never covered with a copyright,

and that is not a natural variety. So if you

want to take, of course, seeds from a wild plant and transform it to a

variety, you need to stand to the Protocol of Nagoya

rules. If you have an old variety which is not

protected, you take it, you improve it to the point that that

becomes a variety that is distinguishable from the original one,

you can decide which kind of protection you put on this variety.

One of your options is going to be the open source license.

So for example, in Germany, there was this— there is this

traditional variety of wheat was improved, and the

variety that resulted was covered with an open source license. And

here in Berlin, you can buy open source bread. How cool is

that? So that's the idea. You start from

partly selected or already selected germplasm,

You improve it, and when it's a variety that you could potentially

register with other licenses, you can also choose the open source

license. Since starting Kazvista, you

mentioned you were connected to open source vertical farms. And

how do— so you explained obviously the process of open source seeds, open

source vertical farming. What are they doing different than the current models?

I mean, I don't know if you're kind of what, for example, OpenTrons is doing.

Open Drones is this company that is actually producing

robots for, for science. You have 2 options. You

can download the whole schematic of the robot, print

everything with a 3D printer, connect all the cables by yourself, and the

robot will work. The cost is kind of $10,000.

On the other side, you can get from them the robot already

assembled and customized to your needs. For a little

bit more than the price that you would spend. And that's the idea of open

source hardware. You can build by yourself. What the company gives you

is a bit of peace of mind. Nobody wants to really go through the

downloading all the specifics, connecting all the cables. And that's where

the actual work you pay is the work of a technician coming and building it

for you. The same with the open source vertical farms. You have the

schematics, the project and the system is open source, you

can access it, you can also customize to your needs. If you want a

standard system that works and you don't want to spend hours and days

learning and building it, it will be provided to you already built.

It feels like at some point there'll be an open source vertical farming conference

just specifically. I hope so. Wow, that's a dream. And

it would have to be in Berlin. I think that makes the most sense. I

hope so as well. Yeah. What's been the biggest

surprise for you since starting Casvista?

The surprises, I mean, I've been surprised

every day. I can't count the amount of bottles of wine we have already

opened celebrating something new happening. I think

the most surprising thing is how much people care and like the

idea. I was really skeptical about my own idea. I was like,

yeah, I can put it out there, see what people think. As soon as I

explain how it works, people say it's important. It's something we

want, it's something we should do. And when I

explain how open source works, people are surprised. They didn't know

before about licenses on seeds and how a

variety works. So I've been impressed how much

people care about this, and I've been impressed about the people I've

met, because there is a whole world of people out

there that they are like, oh yes, tell me what I can do, I will

do, because this is something I really care about. And yeah, I think also

the opportunities that have been given because in one year I went from,

let's see if we can do, to be invited to talk to a

conference. It was the 5th summit of the Association for Vertical

Farming last week. I will be to another

conference at the end of the month and the feedback is always like,

wow. So yeah, that was the most impressive thing because I

didn't expect it. Can you talk a little bit

about your journey as the founder of this company

and some of the challenges you've experienced? Like, I don't know how much experience you

have growing and starting a company, but can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, it's, I would say it's been a long journey. I

started from being a former researcher,

from a former PhD student, a lot of

experience in the lab, a lot of experience with talking with other scientists.

I had to learn everything from scratch, from how you engage

with business and how we engage with customers that

are not just an audience, they're customers. Business partners,

how you attend a meeting with business partners. There are rules that

are different from a meeting with other scientists. And

all the financial part, wrapping my mind around the financial concept

ideas, how you build a business plan and how you

write this in a way that is understood by people doing finance.

How you crunch numbers, how you obtain data, and how you

analyze this data. You try to make sense of yourself also.

And that's been like a continuous learning, plus

the bumping on the bureaucracy. That is something that my mind still

struggles to understand, but you have to go through that. You have to have all

the documents done and you have to wrap your mind around, okay, this

procedure works like this. So if I want to do this, I have to do

this first. And it has been, I

think it has been very hard work going from

being just a scientist to be a scientist entrepreneur.

So it's something different, but somehow I was

kind of not that disgusted or that

like unhappy of what I was learning. I was really happy and somehow I

was fitting in what I was finding. and in what I was learning. So yeah.

Do you remember anything entrepreneurial you did when you were younger?

Let me think. I was always coming up with something

to sell or something to grow that could change the sort.

Always thinking much— what I was always wondering was like, what

can I make useful for people? How can I

make this process better or more efficient? Or maybe

people need this. Most of the time they didn't, but— What

was your most popular invention? Oh, wow. My most

popular invention. The fact is I never sold things.

That's my problem. I was sharing things. I think this,

my idea with CASVESTA was the first time I said, this time we don't tell

anyone. We don't sell this away. That's right. Yeah. I think

it was kind of disappointing. It was before the age of

Facebook and I had this idea of people

could enjoy playing the farmer on a computer.

I was like, yeah, but that's just a silly idea. I was talking with my

friends. I never, I never tried to write a couple of lines of code to

see if it could work. And a couple of years later, there was, it

was called, was, uh, yeah. And you could grow your

vegetables, you had your gardens, people addicted

and— Made millions of dollars. Exactly. I was

like, no, I knew that. And so this time I was like, okay,

maybe it's not cool. I keep this for myself. Yeah.

So as you think about the future challenges, I don't know

if you have time to think about vision or the future of

where you want to be, but if you do think big, you know,

what does that look like, you know, 3 to 5 years out? Oh, well,

assuming we get the funding and we get to grow, I

have many ideas that I would like to see happening. First of all,

expanding to more and more crops. So having more

crops that can be grown in vertical farming.

I see the world really asking for it,

and I see us expanding, I hope and I

wish, on a more global scale.

Most of the future of Casveista that As I say,

it could be a cool idea, could be that for many reasons

that is not there anymore in 5 years. What I really wish

is that the open source idea and the open source model can

for once was, because before us, no one has

tried to make a business model out of open source. This would

be the first time the open source model is actually

making money for seeds. And if this model works, there

is an alternative. So in 5 years, I wish people know that there is

an alternative, that there is not just black, white, you get this or

not, that they have a choice. And I hope we

will be there also to be one of the choices. I mean, I'm excited to

share this story, so I'm looking forward to when we can publish this because I

think more people need to learn about different options. And I

explain this all the time that I started this podcast to learn myself

about vertical farming and educate myself because I came in with

the mind of a beginner. Just everything is a question for me. I'm like, why

are you doing this? Why are you doing this? And so I'm fascinated to meet

folks like you who are doing something innovative and also doing something

that's good for the community. I think admirable and

something to be truly inspired by. And I think more

people should hear this story because I think it's important. Do you have

folks that you, when you, when you get stuck, do you have mentors or people

you turn to who can help you? I mean, I've been many. I

mean, I just work on the shoulders of giants. I cannot,

let me think like someone in particular, apart the big

guys. Okay. That's kind of

nothing great to say, but you know, there was this

guy called Elon Musk. And when

everyone says the cars has to go on petrol, he was alone and

he said, no, it goes on electricity. And he just said that. And

sometimes it's just that's what it takes. And then recently I

met Steve Ritz from New York. Okay. He's leading a

project in the Bronx. He went from zero to meet the Pope and Obama,

and he's doing great for these children there in the Bronx. And if I

think I want to be someone, or I think about

someone, I think about these people, people that when everything is

against them, they still keep saying, yeah, but it works

because I say so, because it must work because the alternative

is much worse. So if I think of the alternative is much worse, so this

must work. Anytime. I live in Minneapolis now, but I grew up in New York.

So anytime, and you can tell by my hat.

And for the listener, I'm wearing a Yankees hat.

So, though I'm a big fan of the Yankees and the Bronx.

So as we get close to the end of this

really fascinating interview, I'm curious if there's anything that you've

changed your mind about recently. I'm a bit more confident that we can make it.

And also, like, getting in touch with

vertical farmers, with more people in the scene of vertical

farming, I see this more likely to happen, and I see

more likely than governmental institutions

and funding will come for vertical farming as well.

So I'm a bit more confident on the fact that vertical farming

is really growing and becoming a thing for the future. Not just a project,

not an idea, it's something. And you mentioned looking

for the funding to come through, so just so we can share anything you may

be looking for there, anyone you're looking to be connected to, Like, what is the

need there in terms of funding? We need— at the moment we

are looking for people that would be our investors,

and because we believe that this is the way we can grow

to a proper size to do what we, we want to do. So if

someone is listening out there and he likes us, he likes our idea,

we are really happy to connect and see what we can do together. Okay, we'll

make sure we— that message gets heard as well.

So when you think about having a platform to educate people about—

people new to vertical farming, people new to the different variety

of 6,000 varieties of tomatoes available, or to the

beauty of open source— is there anything that we haven't covered

that you think more people need to hear about? No, I mean,

one thing I think we should do to educate and

where the education could really start, it's— I think it's at

school. I think children are really the

key to make vertical farming cool because

through children you educate their parents.

Yeah. And that's— yeah, I think the question is

how we make vertical farming and this fresh food cool

and people ask for it. So, yeah. Yeah, I think in

past conversations, obviously with COVID that's changed

dramatically, but there's just the ability to take tours, to

see the inside of some of these vertical farms, for people to actually taste

the difference in the produce. I think that's sometimes the most surprising thing

that people discover. Yeah, exactly. And when people, like,

grow their own food and also they touch the food, I think

that's the moment where they change their mind about They say, ah, but it's, it's

a tomato, it's a tomato. But when you touch it and you, you feel it,

you see it's, it's here. It's not something coming in a box. Yeah.

How do you explain what you do to your mother? Oh wow, that's

difficult. I managed, and

she's really happy about that. She really sees

that the world is changing and this is necessary. And I mean,

she was the one teaching me the principles I'm using for what I'm doing.

So she really agrees on these things. She's always like, yeah, that makes

sense. It's the way we think and the way things should be. I

was like, yeah, and that's what I'm doing. She's really happy about that.

That must feel good for you to bring that knowledge full circle

that you received, you know, as her son and just all this

experience you had on your family farm and to, you

know, to be able to now to bring it full circle and to show

that You know, that those lessons were not wasted

on the youth. Exactly, yeah. One of the

things I told is like, you didn't waste your time. It just,

I took that knowledge, I did something different. I took the long route.

Yeah, actually, yeah, I took a very long round from

what they taught me to what actually to wrap my mind

around what they taught me and making something different

out of that. Yeah, well, Rosario, I'm really glad we got the

chance to reach out. I think we started a conversation

on LinkedIn probably a couple of months ago, and I was

interested to hear what you were working on, and I'm very happy

to just learn more. So if people want to start to learn more about

Cazvista, is the website the best place to get started?

Yeah, they can visit our website,

cazvista.com. Or they can look for Cazvest on social

networks. So Instagram, Facebook, we are happy to

answer questions through private message or just leave a comment. Okay. And

we'll make sure we have all those links in the show notes as well. So

when people hear this episode, they can see all those links as well so they

can connect with you and the team. And I just want to add that I'm

containing myself, but I'm super, super excited to be here because I've

been listening to your episodes and I was like, how cool are those guys

at this? And learning a lot from you. So I think the best

work in vertical farming is— in promoting vertical farming is

the work you are doing in this podcast, because it's really the way you

should explain vertical farming to people. Yeah, I think, uh,

it's helpful to not know a lot and not know all the technical details,

because I'm thinking of my listener, because like, oh, they would probably ask that question,

or that's not something that most common people would know. And like you said, like,

I've seen and heard so much feedback of people who are discovering, I want to

learn about vertical farming and I found your show. So I always, I love, that's

why I like speaking to founders and that's why I like speaking to the CEOs

because I want to hear the origin story and yours is just

as good as the ones I've had before on the show. So I'm looking forward

to sharing it. So thanks again for your time.

Thanks to you for having me. Thanks again to Casvista's Rosario

Iacono for coming on the show and sharing his story. Full show notes

available at verticalfarmingpodcast.com. Thanks

again to our season 4 title sponsor, Cultivated. If you are 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.com. Just

leave out that last E. And Freight Farms, who manufactures and sells the

leading vertical hydroponic container farm, the Greenery S. Built inside a

40-foot shipping container, Greenery S uses innovative climate control

technology paired with an IoT app called Farmhand to enable anyone to grow

fresh food anywhere in the world. Visit

freightfarms.com/verticalfarmingpodcast to learn

more. Podcast production and marketing provided by Fullcast. Sign up for a free

podcast brainstorm at fullcast.co/

VFP15 and learn how a podcast can be helpful for your business.

As always, if you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and a review

at ratethispodcast.com/vfp, and we'll be sure to read those

out on future episodes. Thanks for all you do to support the show,

and until we meet again next episode, 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 transcription, Visit

verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There, you can sign

up for our email list to be notified when new episodes are published.

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