Episode Summary

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Ceres Greenhouse Solutions, Marc Plinke. Ceres designs and builds advanced, energy-efficient greenhouses that grow year-round while saving energy and water.

In this episode, Harry and Marc dissect Marc’s career trajectory, from his time at Synergistic Building Technologies to his current role with Ceres. Marc breaks down his passion for bringing about positive change in the world, the inspiring work he’s doing with Ceres and the state of food in our society.

Episode Sponsor

Ceres Greenhouse Solutions

Key Takeaways

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• 03:22 – Harry welcomes to the show Marc Plinke, who discusses his natural curiosity, growing up in a family of engineers and the inspiration to launch Ceres Greenhouse Solutions
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• 13:37 – Marc reflects on his early career, including his time at Synergistic Building Technologies
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• 16:17 – Challenges Marc had to overcome as the founder of Ceres
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• 24:04 – Marc expounds on what it means to design and reinvent greenhouses
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• 38:02 – Marc shares a unique perspective about food deserts and the state of our food
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• 46:25 – What excites Marc most about the future of AgTech
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• 53:29 – Marc recalls his first invention
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• 56:19 – Harry thanks Marc for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can learn more about Ceres
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Tweetable Quotes

“The world is waiting for you to change the world. That’s what I want to tell kids. You have the power and all you need to do is pay attention and ask yourself, ‘Why is that happening?’” (09:59)

“Every decision that we make we ask, ‘Is that better for everyone or is it just better for me?’ And that better for me is not the option that we often choose. We look for the win on the bigger scale.” (19:09)

“We’re an engineering and architecture office in essence. We’re not actually producing the steel itself. The beauty of this is we’re quite flexible to change according to customer demand.” (29:06)

“People that grow things generally have a certain amount of patience, because it takes time to go from a tiny seedling to the full plant and production.” (39:01)

“COVID has helped us and really everybody to think more about, ‘Where does my food come from and how do I stay healthy?’” (43:23)

“To see things grow is an enormously satisfying feeling. It is healing to grow.” (45:36)

“I just learned last week that a tomato that is stored under fifty degrees – meaning in your fridge – loses half of the nutritious value in less than a week.” (51:20)

Links Mentioned

Ceres Website

Marc’s LinkedIn

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Mentioned in this episode:

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that we make is, okay, is that better for everyone or is it just better

for me? And that better for me is not one

option that we often choose. We look for the

win on the bigger scale. And I have been very lucky

that I found a lot of people that follow me

there or that drive me there, that I can

learn from, that are even in some ways more

hardcore.

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 2. Welcome back. If this is your first time

listening, I'm positive you're in the right place, as this is the show where we

interview fascinating CEOs and founders of the leading vertical farming companies from

around the world. I'm your host, Harry Duran. In case you missed last

week's episode, I had a great conversation with Nate Storey, the Chief

Science Officer at Plenty. If you haven't listened to it, I

highly recommend you go back and check it out. This week, we have the pleasure

of speaking with Marc Plinke. He's the founder of Ceres Greenhouse

Solutions. Ceres has been kind enough to be a

sponsor partner for us this season, and we couldn't be happier to be working with

them and excited to tell Marc's story today. This would probably be

a good time to formally thank Ceres for being a sponsor of

this episode. Ceres combines smart greenhouse design with

customized climate control technology to build sustainable grow environments

for year-round production. They work with their customers and clients

every step of the way, from helping to secure funding to providing growing

data. Whether you're a commercial entrepreneur, an educator, or

someone looking for a rewarding hobby, visit

ceresgreenhousesolutions.com That's

ceresgreenhousesolutions.com

to get started on your greenhouse goals. In this conversation, we discover the

source of Mark's natural curiosity and what it was like growing up in a family

of engineers, and the inspiration to launch Ceres Greenhouse

Solutions. Mark reflects on his early career, including his time at Synergistic

Building Technologies, and the challenges he had to overcome as founder of Ceres.

He shares what it means to design and reinvent greenhouses. And we hear

his unique perspective about food deserts and the state of our food today.

Lastly, we find out what excites Marc most about the future of agtech, and I

did get him to share his first invention as well. Really love Marc's

energy and enthusiasm, and I know you will too. If you enjoyed this episode

or past episodes, I'd love it if you leave a rating and a review at

ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

I'd love to read out yours next on the show. Okay, let's get into this

conversation with Marc. So, Marc Plinke, founder and chief

operating officer of Ceres Greenhouse Solutions, thank you for joining us, Vertical

Farming Podcast. Thank you so much for taking the

time to speak to me. I really am excited. This is, this is fun.

I just am all giddy about this. You know, we'll have fun with

this. Yeah, that's a good feeling. Are— do you do a lot of interviews?

Nope. No, I give a lot of presentations often. Okay.

and almost exclusively about technical issues. And I've

given presentations to 1,000 people in Australia and

Venice and all those kind of places, but it's, you know, the exciting

about some technical invention or another, but never

really about the history of the company or something. That has never

happened. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember the first presentation you ever gave? Oh,

my professor at UNC Chapel Hill,

You know, I just came from Germany. I'd got my master's there and then came

here for the PhD. And he said, Marc, the most important thing you

ever learn is how to present. And I was like, I thought we're

learning things about technical issues. And he said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You

got a PhD. You're going to lead something.

You need to present. And I was like, okay. And then he started, okay,

so here's myself and my research assistants,

and now go ahead and present something about your work. And I was just,

mortified. This was horrible, but it was a

great training, and I'm so happy he did it. So interesting that

you would have a professor that would be thinking that far ahead and

knew that if you could have the best idea in the world— and this is

probably something you've learned over the years— but if you can't articulate it

and communicate it to an audience, then,

you know, it's almost like you're halfway there because they say when you learn

something, that's the first step. And then when your ability to teach that to someone

else, that's when you really have demonstrated that you have a grasp of the

topic. So that's something I think about as well. And so I'm sure you

owe him an immense amount of gratitude for pushing you out of your

comfort zone. You know, I'm kind of an extreme

extrovert, so speaking to people is not something

that's really hard. Maybe I speak too much, so you're

gonna have to calm me down. But it's— I

want to communicate, which is a nice thing that you know, I have tons of

ideas. I get people around me that have tons of ideas and

talk about them and think about what is the most exciting one to pick. It's

just like a playground, right? Just like, this is fun if we just had

unlimited amount of money. But of course, that's not really happening either. But

yeah, we're doing okay. As a child, were you always

coming up with ideas? Uh, yeah, I think my dad

taught me that too. question, question, question everything. He was—

I'm a 5th generation engineer, but

3 generations of chemical engineers. It looked like my

daughter is going to go into that direction too. And it was

always every aspect of everything, he

always tried to say, hey, why does the water boil at this

temperature and how does that change? And so this was always questions

that he asked and that I'm asking my kids. And so

just need to keep your eyes open without that

and questioning, why is this happening? Why is the snow

melting off buildings in certain ways? I just saw it last

night. There was the snow behind my fence. I have a

little, you know, pole fence and snow in certain areas

melted and others it doesn't. And it's very relevant to greenhouses because

if you have a— now I'm going to get technical, but you have a—

east-to-west obstruction in a greenhouse, for example,

everything in that shade in this time of the year stays in the shade

all day long. And so, this actually is very relevant

to greenhouse design, but it's great to take photos. I took a

photo and sending it to the company to say, guys,

remember, keep purlins really small.

So, it's fun. It's like every— Good. thing you

do, you can just nerd out. Yeah. Yes, I was— I'm always

curious where the impetus for

curiosity comes from, and it sounds like it was

something that was cultivated in your household when you were

young, and it's something that you've carried through to your kids. When your kids question

you on things, do you— are you open-minded about some of the

questions that may seem, may seem silly, or do you

encourage them to continue to be curious? Oh, that's an easy one to

answer. There is never a bad question. And I

will always, always teach them and ask them. It's like,

why is this that way? Why, you know, what does the

snow feel like? Why is the snow harder than it is? We like to go

skiing or we were just windsurfing. Yeah. So it's like,

how do you need to hold the sail to make that go faster? Those questions

are always there anywhere I go because I think about them and

So it's easy for me to communicate that. And it is—

I do want to say a part that even more

inspired me to do this was another professor in Germany during my

master's. And we kind of all made fun of him because he

wasn't really very researchy. You know,

he didn't do formulas, but he came from industry,

was a bigwig at BASF, which was one of the biggest German

companies and my university hired him. And he

taught a class that changed my life because

he taught us to look at any process and

look for the fundamentals of that process. And he loved wine.

And so, he said, so, how is wine made? Right? And so, in the old

days, you had people standing in a tub and they were walking in the

tub. And he said, so, they squished the grapes. He said, how

exactly did they squish the grapes? What is the process to

get the most juice? Oh, so it's a shear force instead

of just pressure. And then the next question is, well, what

kind of a machine can we come up with that can actually

mimic that and make that more efficient? And so, he went through the whole

process of how you invent new processes. And

that was endlessly fascinating. I could just write and

write and write every question, every exam. It was just— That was

mind-boggling, and I wish I had the time at this point to teach

that at a high school because it is empowering. It allows you

to look at the world and say the world is waiting for you to change

the world. That's what I want to tell kids, right? You have the power, and

all you need to do is pay attention and ask yourself, why is that happening,

right? Yeah. Lots of kids play soccer. A ball flies straight

most of the time and it rotates, but if it's not, then it goes up

and down really quickly. Why is that happening, right? And so it

is so good to look at it that way and

then provide the power to tell people you can change

it, which gets us to this greenhouse company, right? It's kind of the

same thing. Yeah. It's— I had the dream of my life was always to

say at some point I want to live in a net-zero energy house. And in

those days I only thought about net-zero zero as

something that is energy related. And I thought, okay, that's,

we need to make sure we don't use more fossil fuels, this, that, and the

other. And so here we are taking an old house from

1961, which is the year I was born. It's like, okay, let's make it

energy efficient, right? And make it, and it turned out with the

engineering we did, it actually turned out to be net positive. So we're making

more energy than we're using. In this process, somebody said,

hey, Marc, so you have a net-zero energy house and you have a plug-in car.

Where exactly does your food come from? And I was like, the grocery

store? Which I knew was not the right answer. Yeah. But

it is that moment that I thought, oh my God, I

haven't really looked at this the right way. And

so he said, hey, I have this grant, USDA. They

give us money for $100,000 to build a new greenhouse. What do you think about

greenhouses? Like, well, greenhouses are kind of silly. People

have not— none of these things that we talked about in this house,

right, that are standard in energy efficiency are used. They're

just glass boxes. That doesn't really make sense. It makes sense in

Holland and, you know, Belgium and England where the

weather was relatively calm. And it was great to have greenhouses that way because

not too hot, not too cold. It's all good. Here, especially in the US,

But in many other places, and even more so as you go further north,

Canada and First Nations, the weather can be in

Arizona really hot, in Florida really hot and muggy, and

in our area, Colorado, very hot in the summer, very

cold in the winter. A glasshouse is just not the answer.

Mm-hmm. It isn't because it takes a huge amount of energy to make it

happen, right? So what we did is we just looked at

this, we did a lifecycle analysis, which I think is a great

tool to look at the positive impact that you make and looked at

the structures that we build. And we found out that, huh, if we use

more energy-efficient materials, they take a little bit more

work or CO2 to make, but after only

3 months in operation, you are at the break-even point

compared to a standard greenhouse. Okay. That means after 3

months, you are actually doing good in the world,

but you do good from the beginning. Yeah. But I'm just saying the greenhouse is

not built for 3 months operation, it's built for a long time. And

that really makes a difference. And so that's the motivation to say,

hey, we can actually change the way that food is

grown. And that came to this issue, okay, so how do we

get food locally and how we can get

better food made? And the questions start piling

on. At the beginning I thought, yeah, how difficult can it be? A little engineering

question. do this wall, that wall, you know,

whatever. A year, I should know everything. I'm wondering just from a timeline

perspective, because prior to Ceres, you had started

Synergistic Building Technologies. Was that the first time

that you were the creator and the founder of the company? Because

previous to that, you had held positions in other companies? Yeah, so this is my

third career. Okay. And so, and Synergistic

Building Technologies was really owned by a friend of mine.

That's the person who came to me and said, Marc, I have money

for this greenhouse. Do you want to build it? And so, he and I

built it. And he, Larry Kinney is his name, he got me into this.

He was at the time 70 and we built

a big greenhouse all by ourselves, schlepping

2x8 all over the place. It took a whole summer in

100-degree heat and he was working every day. full-time. It

was crazy, but that thing worked, and we wrote

tons of papers and all of it, and that

got me started. But in Synergistics Building Technologies,

it became clear that Larry, at his stage in his life,

wanted to be an academic. He was always an academic, and he wanted to just

go to international conferences and actually give presentations and

share the knowledge that he had. Which was fine, but I had

kids and a wife and I needed to make some money. And

so, we decided that I want to go the commercial route and actually

build structures. That's how I started

Ceres together with my partner at the time, Lindsay Schiller.

And so, together we started Ceres because we

wanted to not just provide knowledge but actually

affect people. And that started with little tiny

greenhouses. 8 by 10s was my first one I built for a neighbor, and then

10 by 12s, and then they became bigger and bigger. And then the

cannabis world started, and we have been

trying to get into big greenhouses because we knew our technology would

work. But most of the farmers were very conservative in the sense that,

oh, we've been doing it this way for many, many

years, you know. If you want to show me something new build

it for me for free and then we'll try it. And I was like, well,

I don't have that kind of money. Yeah. And so the cannabis people came and

they said, hey, I want to, you know, here's an energy calculation. They

know the energy models. They looked at it and they said, yeah, that makes sense.

Of course we're going to do this. And that's how we got into the

commercial realm, which then was driven first by

cannabis in Colorado, but ultimately then moved into the

vegetable world, which is what I really care about. I want to make

better food. A couple of questions that come out from there. What were some of

the challenges as you started building Ceres, either

from a change in management style because you had— you were partnering

with someone previously, and this is really— would you consider that Ceres

is the first time that the buck stops with you? Or, you know, you have

to be the one making all the key decisions and then figuring out how to

build a team that can support you and help you fulfill your vision?

Yeah, that's a good question. So I want to— I've always started

businesses, even my first job, which was at W.L. Gore,

and I made filters for— catalytic filters for power

plants. And I got there, they said, here's a computer, find a project to

work on and do something. We have money to spend,

we need to do something. So I gathered around, I got the

idea, I presented it, I got money, and we started. And then

I'm not a business person. I'm so much a technical guy. I

think by now that's clear. I do not do money well in the

sense that I don't really care how much money

we make or not make in the sense that I'm all

into sustainability and trying to have a

long-lasting impact. And we can get into that in a minute. But so

at the beginning, yes, it was just me and my money. to start the

company. And that was not— that was cheap, relatively.

Just an engineering office. We have no capital expenses beside a

few tools to build the first ones, right? After a while,

it became apparent I needed to get a CEO, somebody who actually—

whose job it is to make sure that we have money left over

at the end of the year. And so, I was lucky to have a friend

living 3 houses down. His wife started working for me.

She was one of the very first employees at the time. She

mowed my lawn because she wanted to get rid of her kids. And I said,

hey, by the way, can you do my books? She said, I've never done that,

but I can learn. And so, you know, at some point he came

involved and then it became a business. Before that, it was

a passionate hobby. Hmm. Right? And I had a vision.

I knew where I wanted to go, which is back to this

motivation of I love my kids. I was born to be a dad.

I love kids, period. And my wife is a medical

doctor. She works in the world of hospice care, so

she sees death a lot. She loves that job. For me, it was

the possibility to be with my kids, to actually do the work

at any and all times. I've been at every single soccer practice and

I've been at every single school event and science fair and all of it.

And then, I work till late to get everything done. And, my motivation is

to leave the world a better place for them. That's the only

thing that I care about. I wanted to be leaving better for them.

And so, every decision that we make is, okay, is that better for

everyone or is it just better for me? And, that better for me

is not one option that we often

choose. We look for the the win on the bigger scale.

And I have been very lucky that I found a lot of

people that follow me there or that

drive me there that I can learn from, that are even

in some ways more hardcore because they

really believe in, in this mission. And

yes, you need to make money to pay everybody. Of course we do. I'm not

saying we're doing this for free, but it's not— making money

is not, has never been, and I don't think it will ever be

the prime directive. It has to be, can we make a difference?

And Chris Ulig is your CEO, correct? That's correct. And how has

having, bringing Chris on board helped you?

Well, has it freed up some mind space for you and helped you?

You hear me breathing deeply. Oh, your reaction says

it all. Yes, I mean, not to have to look at spreadsheets

with, yeah, what's the forecast and how do we do this, that, and the other.

It's just so nice. I just get the summary and I'm good.

Yeah. And I love looking at spreadsheets, don't get me wrong, but

if they are about production numbers or about light levels or about

the energy that we're using, I look at it all day. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. It's just a different skill set that people like him

have, and I'm glad to— so glad to have him

But the relevant thing is really that the person that

I need to work together with needs to be somebody that

is knowledgeable, fair, and trustworthy.

If I wouldn't trust him completely, it

would be really hard. Yeah. And luckily, in each of those

businesses I started, not necessarily myself, as I said,

at Gore, that filter I had it. partner that

became the CEO, right, for the business leader. And

he was similar than Chris, just the same relationship.

It is beautiful to have people that you can form a bond

with that share your vision. And I don't think that he

necessarily shares quite the same passion on the sustainability side.

He does, but not quite the same, which he doesn't have to. I

think a part of it is he cares deeply about

how we treat people and especially keeps me honest in

making sure that the promises I make will actually be

kept, right? And it's like, okay, remember you said that? Let's

also do that. It sounds like you complement each

other well. Yeah, I mean, I— that's my feeling, but I think you should

all ask the 30-something people that work for

us right now. I think we're about to hire 3 new ones in the

next week. So that's good. I think what's interesting is when

people come on board, they've no doubt done their homework

on the company and they believe in the mission, or else they

wouldn't be applying to work with a company like yours. How

important is that everyone that is on the team believes in,

and maybe at different levels, but that they're all passionate? And you talked about this

idea of leaving a long-lasting impact as well. How important is that,

that everyone's moving forward on the same mission? We have tried different

things and we have put our name out, you know, and said,

hey, we're looking for these and these people. We haven't particularly

had so much success hiring people from the

outside that we were looking for.

And I don't exactly know why. I mean, at Gore, again, I was

part of an interview team and I was interviewing all the PhDs that came.

Or some at least. So, I knew all the questions and I

thought I figured it out, but somehow we just didn't do

so well. Most people that are working with us

are passionate about what we're doing. Most people started by being volunteers

because we didn't really have a job and we said, well, you can volunteer for

a month or 2 and then we'll see how you're working and when you can

see where you fit in and then we'll find something. And

those people are the ones that we have had the most fun. And

the one that we're just about hiring, a project manager, he came

out of nowhere and just wrote to us and said, hey,

do you have any job openings? And we said,

well, what do you do? And all of a sudden, here we are. I think

we're about— by the time that this airs, certainly he

will be working for us. And that has worked really well because those people

look for us. Yeah. And luckily we have enough people, always had

enough people that look for it. It's not a problem of finding people even in

the times when we had a lot of people working. Yeah, I want to

talk about how you explain to someone who is not as

well-versed in the intricacies and the differences between greenhouse design, because

Ceres is touted as an alternative

design, and I think some of the copy on the website says something to

the effect of reinventing greenhouses. And so when you

explain to people who have this vision, maybe

an outdated one, of what a greenhouse is— this glass box and not

a lot going on, not a lot of science behind it— how do you

explain how Ceres is different? There's a few aspects. I think the

key of that in a greenhouse is light and

temperature. You need to control both of those, and you

need to have The right amount of light, especially in the

winter if you want to grow all season because there's just not enough

naturally from the sun. And you need to have the right temperatures.

Traditional greenhouses, because of the way they're built, they're often

built north to south. The sun comes in from

the morning from the east, comes in through the roof at the daytime, and then

the afternoon from the west. And so that plant inside the

greenhouse gets the same amount of light it would normally get.

outside minus the absorption of whatever the hull

is absorbing, which is 20%, 30%,

somewhere in that range. And so that's fine in

the summer. And the difficulty in the winter is that there's just

not enough light there. And so the plants will kind of

light-starve and need to be helped with some artificial lights.

The disadvantage of building it that way is that you can really not insulate

any part of this building because the insulation of the glazing

material, the material that you actually have the light comes through, is so

poor that you can't actually insulate it.

Therefore, it takes an enormous amount of energy. On

top of that, those buildings are generally relatively leaky

because they need to be cheap. Farmers don't want to spend a lot of money,

so they make these leaky greenhouses where the cold

air comes in and it just— Any heat that you're getting just goes out and

then you're getting it to be freezing and then you need to put huge amounts

of propane or gas into it to heat it. That's not very

efficient. So, we basically turned the building

from east to west and make it a solar collector. And so,

you're still having the sun coming through the roof at any of

those times as we had morning, midday, afternoon, but the

north wall now is completely insulated. And so, you have

the insulation which gives you so much more energy

efficiency, but also the light that hits that

north wall is reflected back to the plants. And so, the

plant in the greenhouse, especially in northern climates, actually has more

light in the winter inside than it would have outside.

So, all that extra light you don't need to add. And so, that's

the light aspect. The other thing that conventional greenhouses

have is they actually, when it gets hot, you put the vents

on and then all the heat goes out in the daytime. Yeah. Every day, it

doesn't matter. It could be -10 degrees, the sun is shining, inside

the greenhouse you can have 100 degrees and more, right? That's how effective

greenhouses are. But the problem is in a normal greenhouse, you would just put the

vent on and you need to get rid of that heat. At night, on

the other hand, at -10 degrees, you need that heat, right? And it's like, why

did I just throw this away during the daytime? That makes no sense. So, you

need to— Yeah. The trick is what methods can I

use to harness that energy that I have extra in the day

to use at night? And there's a variety of technologies we

use. One of them is the GATT system. Okay, it's a very

ground-to-air heat transfer system. It actually came

to me at least from a Chinese acupuncturist who said, oh,

we have been doing this for 2,000 years in China. And I was like, well,

you didn't have fans 2,000 years ago, but I'm sure, you know,

anyway, the idea of that helped to create,

save, to save the energy inside the building

for— it's already there, you just need to save it, right? Yeah. And once

it is saved in the ground, in this case, you can

cool the air in the daytime, and at nighttime you take that heat out and

heat your greenhouse. All that heat you don't need to add with

natural Yeah, and so

how do you think about the designs? Because I know that

all different sizes of greenhouses that Ceres offers, and

I'm wondering when you think about the different applications and

where people are, you know, what— when you think about who is a good fit

for a Ceres greenhouse, because you do have the high-yield

ones, you have the modular ones, backyard kits, there's a whole range. Yeah, so

of offerings that you have. And so how do you think about when you're

creating them? Do you wait for the demand, or are you—

or do you see that there's an opportunity for these different flavors of Greenhouse

available? So we're an engineering office, in essence, engineering

and architectural office. We're not actually producing the

steel itself. We have suppliers that do that for us.

But the beauty of this is we are quite flexible to

change according to customer demand. This is a vertical

farming podcast, so we're talking about vertical farming. Yeah. The

schools and education is a wonderful market, and we love, we love

working with schools. They also have often an issue

because it's easy to find money for

the Joe Smith greenhouse, right? Somebody wants to donate money,

that's great. If that greenhouse uses a lot of energy,

it's just not very attractive to find funders for

the gas that it takes to heat the greenhouse. So having an

energy-efficient building that doesn't require

you to spend a lot more on utilities is really great for

schools. Schools often love vertical farming because they want to

teach their kids that in a small space they can do a lot. So,

the design of that building can be different than

it can be for a mid-scale,

small to mid-scale commercial farm. Our

greenhouses tend not to be multi-hectare greenhouses. They

tend to be greenhouses for customers that live in more

rural areas that want to supply

food to a city of— 1,000,

5,000, maybe 10,000 people. You know, I don't

know how much you know about this. Many of our farming

communities are actually food deserts. They're farmers,

but they don't have food to eat. So they need to drive in

eastern Colorado. It's a farming country. These people need

to drive 2 hours to get to the next grocery store. They have to take

coolers in their cars so that they can put their things in the cooler so

that they can get it home, that the ice cream gets home before it

melts. And those people grow corn

or soybeans or whatever, right, on large scale.

They don't have their own food. We can help

people grow food in these areas because in

a greenhouse that works all year, you can do that. You can go

into the urban areas, of course. So our greenhouses are

not as big, but they allow people to grow on a

smaller footprint, very energy efficiently, and when

necessarily, with almost no water usage. So even the

water that you have to capture, you need to

water your plants, most of that water goes back out into

the air through the leaves. Yeah. We can capture that water and

bring it back to the feeding of the plants, which allows in

areas that are having water problems, right? Where the water table

is very low, we can actually make things happen. You know, Australia

comes to mind too, is not only in the US, but even there gave

presentations, extremely important to be sensible about

water usage. And so again, we are an engineering

office. We can tailor the solutions to the

problems that are out there. What's the largest implementation

that you have of a greenhouse? I think currently we have the

biggest one that we have built is 40,000 square feet, which is an

acre. And we have a few projects in the pipeline that are

probably in the order of 2 acres. So, they're going close

to a hectare. But that's kind of where we can

do more. And then, we go to other partners. Some of our

technologies don't quite— this reflection

of the north wall, that principle works really well

when you have a certain height of that building versus

the depth of the building, right? So, if the building is 20-foot high and the

building is 30-foot wide, you get a lot of light in there. But, if your

building is 20 feet high and hundreds of feet

wide, there's no effect. Then, you're just like any other

glasshouse, which is fine because if you want to create, and I think

many people in your wonderful podcasts I listen to

talk about feeding the world, right? On that scale, Yeah. You

have to have greenhouses that big. And that's fine. And that is

not our market currently, unless of course these greenhouses are

on the island nations where it's very hot and very humid.

In those places, certain crops cannot be grown in these structures

unless there is an energy-efficient

cooling system and dehumidification system to bring the

humidity levels and the temperatures down to a level that they can be grown at.

And we have developed technology, which I think is the first in the

world that can do this extremely energy efficiently.

It's what we call the Ecoloop system. And I don't really

want to have this be an advertising thing. So anyway, but

that's— it allows us to grow. Well, you can, if

you— yeah, I mean, feel free to go into as much detail as you

want, because I think the purpose of the show is also to educate people who

don't understand the different types of challenges that people face in these

different climates. And, you know, it's the extremes of a place that's so

cold they have to heat it to, you know, islands where it's so

hot that you have to cool it. And so, as you know, I think you

should feel free to highlight some of the things you've been

creating at Ceres to tackle some of these problems. So some of those

challenges— island nations, Bahamas, you know,

Seychelles— I mean, you know, people call to us and say, hey, we don't

want COVID here and we want to keep it out as far as possible.

We want our own food supply. How do you do that on an island like

the Seychelles, which is mostly on corals, right? And

most of the grow systems that use minerals,

you also have to get rid of. You cannot get rid of these minerals

on these islands. It's simply not possible that you cannot put a

bunch of highly nutrient-rich

effluent somewhere on the island. It's just not possible. So you have to find

solutions to make sure that these people can grow sustainably and not destroy

their own environment. And they need to do it energy-efficient way

because they don't have big power plants. So those are

applications where we actually do quite well, even with bigger greenhouses.

On the other hand, we have quite a few lately,

especially First Nations in Canada, but also in the

US, Native American tribes, where

they want to grow their own food because the

ice is melting. You can't really get the same food that you've

got regularly. And you cannot—

you have to do this energy efficiently in these places so

far off that in the winter nobody can even fly there.

And so having an energy-efficient greenhouse is

one way for them to grow the food that they need all year long.

It's a great place for us because that's— we love those kind of

challenges. You know, it's challenging, it's fun. Yeah,

well, it speaks to you being the inventor at

heart, right? Seeing a problem and then figuring out like, what's the solution

for this? How do I— and maybe even invent something that hasn't been done before.

The nice thing is that it's not just me. I loved— we

have an engineering— internal engineering meeting yesterday about future

ideas. you should have been there. It was crazy.

It was— the ideas were flowing. It's like, wow, if we had a

few billion, we could, we could do a lot of things

really, really well. But you know, it's like, you need to find the right balance,

of course. Well, it reminds me of the Apollo 13 movie that Ron Howard

created. And they were forced to solve a couple of problems. I don't remember the

specifics. And then they had to recreate what the only

materials that they had on the shuttle at the time. We have

this copper wiring, this tape and this thing and we have to make

the thing that they need. I imagine when you see a movie like that

you smile because that's where the wheels start turning about what

can we build with what we have at our disposal.

Duct tape was involved, I remember that. Being a German we don't

have duct tape so when I came to the US and I was on the

first B-team and everybody was duct taping their shoes because they had not

enough money to pay for them, you know, in college and all that. I was

like, wow, that's strange, I've never seen that. And then, you know, I said,

America has held it back together with duct tape, and then here it was

on the Apollo. I said, of course it was there, why would it not be?

It's so universally helpful. It seems like the opposite of German

engineering, just duct tape. Yeah, no,

no, no, no, no, we try not to use duct tape in our greenhouses, but

I'm sure the clients do. After all, what's the— it's

interesting, this idea of food desert, because in past conversations

it's typically been inner cities where, you know,

and they're considered food deserts because they also don't have access to fresh food.

But I think what's interesting here is a bit a different take on food desert.

And the irony is that it's a farmer that's producing food, but it's just a,

you know, one or two crops and it's not enough. You know, it's

obviously not, not the full diversity of food that they would

need. And it sounds like having the greenhouse helps to alleviate

and solve some of those challenges. It's quintessential, right? And it feeds

people's souls. I mean, I think that's the beautiful thing

about growing. And I, I can't say that enough. And people say, hey, you know,

they talk about their horrible days at work, and this customer did this and that

customer did that, and they were mean, and they were— you know, it's like, you're

talking with people that grow stuff they are all nice. I mean,

in general, they're just nice, you know. And to just—

they— and most people have— some people that grow things

generally have a certain amount of patience because it

takes patience from the little tiny seedling to

the full plant and production. And, you know, tomatoes, oh my God, you're like

100 days. I mean, that's such a long time, right? It's—

people, it's a beautiful field. Yeah. The people are— they have a mission.

And it is so wonderful to think about, again, that

sustainability part about most of our clients, but

our employees, our suppliers, everybody is—

it is just nice. It feeds your soul. You know, for

everybody listening to this that is not in the food field, I can highly

recommend it. It's very different than the chemical field and all of

that, but it is Oh my God, this is such a wonderful—

it just can be such a wonderful life to feel like you have a purpose

and everything is aligned. That's really well put and very

motivating and inspirational. Thank you for sharing that. I'm also just out of

curiosity, you've talked about some of the larger implementations. Do you know offhand what the

smallest greenhouse is that you've installed or supplied? The smallest

one? Yeah, that was my very first one in my neighbor's yard. That's an 8

by 10. 8 foot by 10 foot. It's still in operation,

and I built it partly with my kids that at the time were

6 and 8. And I have all the

photos of that. It was very adorable. They loved it. This

GAT system we installed, and they actually put it into the

ground. It was awesome. So that was the smallest. And then, as I said,

10 by 12. And I think these days in the commercial realm, at least,

they're usually 30 by you know, something 30

by 50, 30 by 100, 30 by 150, and then they get

multiples of that. So our idea is to bring the cost down, we need

to have multiples. It needs to be somewhat of a

repeatable system, modular. And so this is all

going to modularity to bring the prices down. On the

residential side, of course, it's not the part that makes the

most amount of money, right? So you're talking about projects that are several million

dollars versus Whereas the homeowner that wants a $1,500 drawing

for his backyard or attach a greenhouse to their house,

that's not really profitable in that sense in

comparison. But I own the company, it's my money, and

we do not— if that department pays for itself and we're

doing good for the world, that's great. Yeah. And if we make a little

money, that's awesome. And we want to not ever get

rid of that. We want to keep it so that people can

afford small greenhouses,

including, again, vertical farming, farming towers, to use the

small space as efficiently as possible to grow as much food as they

can. Vertical farming systems are great. They work

and you need to get the right nutrients

and all of that, but people succeed with it and that's what we really look

forward to, right? They get fresh food at home. tasty food.

And that's really— the quality is different when you get it

right from the plant on your plate. We want to do

that as much as possible, of course. Are you seeing a growth in that sector?

Because you have the DIY kits and you have the backyard kits. And I

imagine what happened and what I read a lot about in COVID is

obviously lived in New York City, I've lived in Los Angeles. And

the news, you know, a couple of months into COVID was everybody was leaving the

cities and just realized home prices were going up. in the suburbs.

And I'm wondering, as a result of that, you know, people are trying,

asking these questions of where their food comes from and figuring out a plan for

having fresh food available. And I'm wondering what you saw and what you continue to

see from that. You know, I don't keep track of all the numbers in the

marketing department. That's Chris's part. But I know that

they're probably tripled the amount of increase in

buildings that we build. So we We had to hire more people. We had to

outsource a bunch of those designs. People were

interested in more buildings and better buildings.

I was so— I do not want to make fun of

a very serious topic, but COVID is a very serious topic. Yeah. This

is not a— but in my mission in life and

Siri's mission of sustainability, COVID has

helped us and really everybody to

think more about where does my food come from,

how do I stay healthy, get the right nutrients, get

the right amount of sleep, do the job the right way.

Get people to grow more and live more sustainably

has been a fundamental shift since the beginning of COVID

that I observe. And about that, I am happy

because it aligns with my life's mission. Is there an

enormous amount of suffering for people that lose their job?

Absolutely. And it is horrible. I see it. I have friends.

It is devastating. And I don't— on one hand, I

say I'm happy. I'm happy about the shift towards more

sustainable because— and I hope politically

we move towards a more sustainable behavior because without that,

it's really hard. It's going to be hard. And we see the changes in the

climate everywhere. When we talk to those First Nations in

Canada, their way of life is collapsing.

And it's great that they want to grow vegetables. It's not something that they're really

yet good at. So they need help to do this because

they're bright and wonderful people that have a lot of knowledge. Yeah. But

growing vegetables in the greenhouse is not necessarily what

Do you see a lot of interest from First Nations for this stuff?

Absolutely, absolutely. It's a huge part of our business.

Yeah, I think what's interesting, and it's how, you know, when

you think about the history of this country and the, you know, the Native

Americans who lived here and, and understood the land and cultivated the

land and were in direct communication with nature on a daily

basis, and, you know, And then hundreds of years later

and colonization, all that went away and was gone. And I

think it seems like it's just— there's something cyclical about it coming back now

full circle and being able to help First Nations, you know,

reintroduce, you know, that connection back to, you know, growing your own food and

self-sustainability. It is huge, not only for

them. It is— it's a societal shift. Yeah,

it gives people purpose. To see things grow

is an enormously satisfying feeling.

It is enormously satisfying for people that are

in the veterans— it's a lot of veterans

greenhouses now, the wounded veterans— that it is

healing to grow. Yeah. And anybody

who has grown something— my whole house is full of plants, they

go all the way into my bedroom, you know, it's like the

banana trees and all that. It, it just feels

good. It— there's no other way to say that. It's

satisfying. It's to a more— to a deeper

level than the mind can ever tell you. It's a fundamental

body experience to grow. It feeds the soul. Yeah, it's—

yeah. So as you think about the future of

Ceres where you're seeing where you're making inroads and

where the innovation is happening. What has you most excited as we

enter, start to enter 2021? What comes to mind for you? You always ask

these questions to everybody and I was like, I need to have an answer ready

for this. And then I just like, oh, forget, what did I say?

I love that question. The things that are exciting is I

hope this shift towards a more

sustainable thinking will continue.

And not just for us as a company from Siri's

standpoint, but as a whole. No one person can make this happen. This

is a community. Yeah. It's not about yourself. It is about everybody.

It's about the employees, the customers, the suppliers.

Everybody needs to participate in that. The nonprofits

that worked so tirelessly in these difficult times,

spending their time on making absolutely wonderful

contributions, the education of our kids.

I feel really sad that really nothing

agricultural is ever taught in high school. That's true. Or

elementary school, really. There are great organizations,

one of them called the Grow Foundation. There are many others that bring at least

raised beds to schools so that they can actually have kids grow

and learn how to grow and what it feels like. That food is not something

that you get from the shelf of a supermarket. Yeah. And so,

what am I excited about is if that fundamental

shift towards food and where the food is coming

from is a shift that I want to see. The next thing

that I feel very strongly about is the quality of the

food really matters. We don't talk and think about it.

We just buy a tomato, we squeeze it a little bit and say, okay, that's

a good tomato, as if that would tell us anything about that tomato, of

whether or not— we know it's organic, so it wasn't sprayed. Yeah,

maybe. But nutritious, healthy, we know nothing.

Yeah. So we need to learn how— we need to change this on a

bigger scale. And, you know, a little bit of a story, and I

hope I'm not over my time limit here. No, no, no, go ahead. You know,

I, I don't know, do you know where the first organic farming idea ever came

from? I don't know. I'd love to learn. So it actually,

as far as I know, it came from a guy in Germany called Rudolf

Steiner. Okay. He was the founder of the Waldorf schools, or at least— Oh,

that's right. Yeah. Yeah, so he gave a talk in

1924, so that's almost 100 years ago, about

a different way of farming. And one of his disciples

was an uncle of mine, married into a Dr. Hans Müller,

and Dr. Hans Müller was married to Marie

Müller, and so she was a relative to me and we visited them

often. Hmm. He changed farming in

Switzerland at the time and created the first

biodynamic label called Bioland. That was the first

organic label that ever existed. And so,

he actually was a part of my family and we visited

their farm often and they gave us tours. And, you know, I'm talking about chemical

engineering, but really that part of the family was always there. And we—

I always remembered, you know, Hans Müller. He was not necessarily the

most pleasant person. He was a politician for a long time.

He was very strong-minded. His wife Marie was actually

the— Dr. Marie Müller, she did a lot of the work, the actual

work to change farming practices. And then

this, I feel, is a was the first call for a

quality of the food. And this

happened in the '50s, so it is 70 years ago. This is not that new.

No. But do you see a label in the supermarket that says, oh, this

has so much sodium,

calcium, whatever, on your tomatoes or your cucumbers? No, you don't,

right? There are people out there that do a

lot of work on this. So one of them is Dan Kittridge who

has done some work on trying to quantify

the quality of the food. And he found huge

differences between one carrot to the next carrot, a

factor of 1 to 100 in terms of nutrient content. Wow.

And he found that organic or non-organic did not

make any difference. It is farmer to farmer that's different,

right? And so the beauty of this movement

that's coming, and I'm really excited about that, is for people to come

and say, I want better quality food

and I want to know what that food is that I'm eating. And there are

a lot of moms and dads out there that want to feed their kids healthy

food and want to have them taste the vegetables. I

just learned last week that a tomato

that is stored under 50 degrees, meaning in your fridge,

wherever in the transport, loses half of

the nutrient value within a week.

Wow. Less than a week. So, when you think the transport of the tomato getting

to you and then you put it in the fridge, it goes down

enormously just by storing it the wrong way. Who knows about this?

I didn't, right? This is the kind of things where you need to think about,

oh, wait a minute, that's why my tomato out of the garden tastes so

much better. Yeah. Right? It is amazing. And I said,

right now it's a week. I think it's what I just heard, it was a

PhD scientist from one of the biggest tomato growing operations in the

world. I think he said in a day, 50 degrees in one day

diminishes the nutrient content by 50%. That

I just was mind-blowing. And so those changes are there and

we want to see more of it, right? And we look for partnerships with

people that share this vision and say, hey, what can we do better? We have

so many ideas. It's fun. It's a playground. That's

fascinating. And I think I always appreciate the ability and the

opportunity to educate our listener, because that's

the purpose. That's the reason why I started the podcast. I was trying to educate

myself and then have these types of conversations so I could learn who's doing

what in this industry. And I'm just grateful that we had the chance to have

this conversation because I learned a little bit more, and there's probably a lot more

that I don't know. But I think what this conversation does

do is it stimulates people's curiosity, and I think,

you know, definitely going to encourage people to visit the website. And so we'll make

sure we have all those links available. Is there a question that I should have

asked that I didn't? I had so much fun. I'm

full of adrenaline. I, I can't even think about that right now. I just

Ari, I love your questions. It is so much.

You're so thoughtful. I just love to— I think we covered

it. I'm sure we could have another hour conversation and we would have another other

topics to come up with, but I think we're good for here. Let me

see, maybe one or two more. Do you remember your first invention? Oh

no. Well, I remember the one that I had a few patents before

that one, but one that I could get a patent for, which I thought was

really, really cool. And so I want to talk about that maybe. And

that was at Gore, and we developed basically what's a

fluidized bed reactor, which is basically a very

efficient reaction system. So to make sure that

all the pollutants from power plants are, are filtered out, right? And

it was what's called a fluidized bed reactor. That's normally

huge, big reactors costing millions. And we

compressed it in a little film that's only about a quarter of an

inch thick with thousands and thousands of reaction spots.

It was really, really cool, and especially seeing it under electron

microscope, it was so thrilling to see

that and see how powerful it was. And so

it wasn't the first, but it's one that I really—

I didn't think that something that cool was possible. And we tried it and

worked on it, and it just turned out great. What I find

fascinating about that is it feels like almost that you're

tapping into a bit of a lineage, because people think about, you know,

Edison and Tesla and some of these famous inventors. And

that must be a special feeling when you created something that you

realize is being birthed for the first time ever.

That must be a nice feeling. I did this with my daughter, who She's on

a patent. She's— when she was 14.

And they always did summer projects for me. And so that was always there. And

that was just normal. That's our summer activity. You do a project for Papa

because I had so many— we had so many ideas that need to be done

and they're cheap labor. And so she had some ideas about some

fireproof way of doing things and just like, well, let's write

a patent about this. And That made me the

proudest of all of it, right? So it's like when your kid comes up and

says, Papa, why don't we do it that way? And then we looked and didn't

find anything else, and I was like, that's a really original

idea, that's really cool. Well, let's, you know, so that's the one I'm

most proud of, even though, you know, not yet a commercial project.

Yeah, pretty soon though. Well, it sounds like it's in the genes

and the family, so I'm sure there'll be more coming in. And I think at

that age The beauty of it is that there's no wrong answer and their

minds are really fertile. And so they're always thinking of

out-of-the-box things that adults would normally laugh at. And

you realize that they're tapping into a different type of energy source there. So

wise. That happens all the time. They inspire me and say, Papa, why are you

doing this way? And I was like, I don't know. I may

just think about this. That's actually not quite

good. Okay, we learned something. Well, we

definitely learned a lot on this conversation, Marc. So thanks again for the

opportunity to share your story. It's Ceres GS,

Ceres Greenhouse Solutions, and we'll have the links to the website and all the

links you mentioned in the show notes. And I appreciate you being a

sponsor of the podcast, Ceres being a sponsor, and

for you coming on and telling your story. It's very inspirational. Harry,

it was an absolute pleasure. Thank you for that. And, you know, I think on

the website is my telephone number of people want to call me or reach out

to me by email or whatever. I love talking to people. It's,

yeah, the extrovert. The world is there.

It's all good. You may have people taking you up on that. So thanks again.

Thank you, Harry. What a pleasure. Thanks again to Marc for coming on the show

and sharing his story. As always, full show notes including

a summary, timestamps, quotes from the episode, and links mentioned

available at verticalfarmingpodcast.com. Special thanks to our

episode sponsor, Ceres Greenhouse Solutions. Ceres is creating

sustainable growing environments by combining smart design, innovative

technology, and dynamic partnerships. Learn more at

ceresgs.com. That's

C-E-R-E-S-G-S dot com.

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

brainstorm at fullcast.co/ Chat 15.

Tune in next week for my conversation with Ed Harwood, CSO of

AeroFarms. And as a reminder, if you're enjoying this show, please leave us a

rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

We'll be sure to read those out on future episodes. Until we meet again next

week, 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

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