Episode Summary

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show co-founder and Chief Science Officer (CSO) of Plenty, Nate Storey. Plenty is on a mission to bring fresh, local produce to communities everywhere in a way that’s better for the environment. In this episode, Harry and Nate discuss Plenty’s local field-scale indoor farms, the importance of having supportive infrastructure for vertical farming and the work Nate is doing at Plenty to promote social responsibility and better food for all.

Episode Sponsor

Ceres Greenhouse Solutions

Key Takeaways

• 
  
• 03:22 – Harry welcomes to the show Nate Storey, who shares his thoughts on the impact of COVID-19, what piqued his interest in vertical farming and what inspired him to start his first business, Bright Agrotech
• 
  
• 
  
• 12:18 – Nate speaks to mentors who have influenced his career, lessons he’s learned and why vertical farming is truly his calling
• 
  
• 
  
• 16:19 – Nate tells the story of how he met fellow Plenty co-founder, Matt Barnard as well as common misconceptions towards indoor agriculture
• 
  
• 
  
• 21:18 – How Plenty’s mission has evolved and innovated throughout the years
• 
  
• 
  
• 24:20 – The importance of having a supporting infrastructure for vertical farming
• 
  
• 
  
• 27:59 – How Plenty decides on where to locate its farms and where they are focusing their growth
• 
  
• 
  
• 34:13 – Nate discusses the work Plenty is doing to advance social responsibility
• 
  
• 
  
• 38:43 – Nate expounds on his roles and responsibilities as Chief Science Officer
• 
  
• 
  
• 42:54 – Harry and Nate discuss the unique technologies that Plenty utilizes
• 
  
• 
  
• 49:33 – A tough question Nate has had to ask himself lately and a hobby that keeps Nate busy
• 
  
• 
  
• 53:00 – Harry thanks Nate for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can learn more about Plenty 
• 
  

Tweetable Quotes

“Covid has been a bit of a reckoning for the world in a lot of different spheres. But certainly in the sphere of managing long-distance supply chains and keeping things on the shelf – things that people have always taken for granted.” (04:23)

“I believe that great design starts with intent.” (10:51)

“The thing that I’ve learned over the years is that brilliant, talented, motivated people can do just about anything.” (14:20)

“We need to double to triple the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables in the world just to feed people the right amount that doctors recommend for your diets.” (19:08)

“The thing about having things magically show up on retail shelves for decades without interruption is that you start to take for granted the complexity and the difficulty of making those things show up on the shelf.” (24:50)

“I believe that most business problems are basically feedback problems. The further away you get from your customer, the less you can understand their needs.” (26:50)

“It would be a travesty if we built farms in food deserts without solving the food desert problem.” (36:01)

“I think when we think about this industry and what’s going to hold it back is access to capital.” (45:58)

“It lands on our shoulders to go out into the world, manufacture as much land as possible, conserve as much water as possible and put food on people’s plates.” (49:24)

Links Mentioned

Plenty Website

Nate’s LinkedIn

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mentioned in this episode:

2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

2025 Precision Ag Report

2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

2025 Precision Ag Report

$680 million poured into precision ag last year.

Autonomous weeding robots dominated, and John Deere made 2 acquisitions in 3

months. A food company, not an equipment maker, bought a

robotics startup to protect its own supply chain. The deals are

accelerating, the money is moving, and the winners are already separating from the

pack. If you're investing, building, or buying in this space,

you need the full picture before your competitors get it. The 2025

Precision Agriculture Intelligence Report From iGrow News is now

available. Get your copy today at

igrownews.com/precision. I think, you know, my

biggest takeaway was that I've got a lot of kind of like thoughts on

business, but my biggest one is like, there are no technical problems, there's only people

problems.

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. 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.

It's been a crazy, crazy 2020, and here we are in the

beginning of 2021. If we thought things were going

to calm down and revert back to normal, then just to timestamp

this, it is January 7th, 2021,

and yesterday saw one of the most bizarre

occurrences in the history of this country. happen in Washington,

D.C., and it'll be one for the history books. And

just a reminder that just when you think you know what to expect,

the world really throws you for a loop. So I don't want to get too

far down that rabbit hole, but that's just something that's been top of

mind and actually had me recording this intro a

bit later than I would have liked, as I was definitely

glued to my TV watching the events

unfold at the Capitol. I realize this is an international show, and it's been interesting

to think about what the view is

of people from other parts of the world. But as with everything else, the show

must go on. In case you missed the last episode, I

had a really good conversation with Henry Stuhl, Chief Science Officer

at Bowery Farming. So if you haven't heard that episode and you're just still

getting caught up, make sure you check that one out. Barry's doing some great things

in the world of vertical farming, and Henry's interview was really

entertaining. Just as entertaining is this week's conversation with

Nate Storey, who is also the Chief Science Officer of

Plenty. Plenty is on a mission to bring fresh local produce to communities everywhere in

a way that's better for the environment. In this episode, we discuss Plenty's local

field-scale indoor farms, the importance of having supportive

infrastructure for vertical farming, and the work Nate is doing at Plenty to promote

social responsibility and better food for all. I want to take a moment to

thank our episode sponsor, Ceres Greenhouse Solutions.

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

C-E-R-E-S greenhouse solutions dot

com to get started on your greenhouse goals. As you might have guessed, we

kick off with the impact COVID has had, and then I dig into what piqued

Nate's interest in vertical farming and what inspired him to start his first business,

Bright Agrotech. Nate speaks to mentors who have influenced his career, lessons he's

learned, and why vertical farming is truly his calling. He tells a

story of how he met Plenty co-founder Matt Bernard, as well as common

misconceptions towards indoor agriculture. We We discuss how Plenty's mission has

evolved and innovated throughout the years, and the importance of having a supporting

infrastructure for vertical farming. Nate explains how Plenty decides on where

to locate its farms and where they are focusing their growth, and shares the work

Plenty is doing to advance social responsibility. My curiosity leads

me to ask Nate at the end of our conversation, what exactly does a

Chief Science Officer do? This episode's also brought to you by the Vertical

Farming Weekly Newsletter. Each week, our team member Daniel Drej

scours the ends of the earth climbs mountains and fords rivers to bring you

the latest and greatest in the world of vertical farming. Sign up today at

verticalfarmingpodcast.com/newsletter.

We had a great review come in from Khoje7, that's

K-H-O-J-E-7, who writes, this

podcast has really helped me satiate my curiosity in vertical farming.

Harry does a great job at bringing interesting guests from different areas of vertical

farming and asking them the right questions to tell a great story.

I went on a binge and listened to multiple episodes in a single setting.

Really helped as a resource, and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to know

more about vertical farming. Thanks so much for that

fantastic and inspiring review, Koji7.

I truly appreciate it. And if you enjoyed this episode or past

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

ratethispodcast.com/vfp.

Who knows, yours might be the one I read out next. Okay,

let's get into this conversation with Nate. So Nate Storey, co-founder

and CSO of Plenty, thank you for joining us on the Vertical Farming

Podcast. Yeah, my pleasure. So we are

wrapping up what is by all accounts one of the strangest,

most interesting years on record in

2020. So I'm wondering if you

had to pick 1 to 2 words to describe the year from your perspective, what

would they be? 1 to 2 words. I mean, if I could do

it in sentences, I would say it was a year

of frenetic structural change. And I

would also say it is a year for reassessing

values. Interesting. And I think that those are like the 2

things that stand out to me. I think that's, you know,

personal, it's political, it's cultural. And

certainly as far as this business is concerned,

it's about this business as well. What's been the impact for you

on a personal level with just with COVID You know, COVID has

been, I think, a bit of a reckoning for the

world in a lot of different spheres, but certainly in the

sphere of managing long-distance supply

chains. and keeping things on the shelf, things that people have always

taken for granted. Yeah. It has been a big year for

indoor farmers. The other thing I would say is it's been a big year in

that people have really started to think about their health, right? It's very

hard not to think about COVID and not think about

it as, you know, an outcome, you know, to be overly simplistic,

of a modern world where people are living in very different places,

and probably don't have the best possible diets. You know, when you look at

the people it impacts the most, it's folks suffering from heart disease, from

diabetes, from high blood pressure, all of these different things that are

diet-related diseases. And so, you know, for Plenty, I

think it's, you know, going back to this idea of, you know, reaffirming our

values. I think for Plenty, it's been a year where we've

realized more than ever the importance of building this industry Both

in terms of people's lives and in this incredibly, you know,

tragic and real way, our ability to

change the world for the better. So it's been a crazy year, and

obviously from the business standpoint, we've been very heads down

working on building the LA farm, keeping, you know, store shelves

stocked, which is, you know, something that we've been able to do

even when, you know, local distributors were kind of impacted,

slowing down, or completely stopped by COVID. So

I think it's a year for proving out, hey, this is a model that has

legs and provides real and measurable

value and something that the world needs to think pretty

hard about. I'd love— we're going to dig into the Plenty story,

definitely. I want to wind the clock back a little bit. It seems

from a little bit of the research that I've done that

agriculture, agronomy, Crop science has been in your,

your genes for quite some time, and it's, you know, part of what you

studied when you were at the University of Wyoming. So I'm curious

to find out when this interest started, if it was

as you were entering college or even before then, if you can go that

far back and point to when this became something that was on your

radar. Yeah, I mean, I think for me it started— I was

I was living in China. I was trying to figure out what to do with

my life, and I lived in this apartment in this rural

village that overlooked a threshing floor. Uh-huh. I

watched the seasons as they were basically

played out on that threshing floor. The village women would be out there

drying garlic and shucking corn and doing all of these

very interesting agricultural activities, and you'd have

the farmers bringing in truckloads of things and

dumping them back there. Over the course of living there, over the

course of that year, I began to just think like, hey, this is something simple

and meaningful, like putting food in someone's mouth. It felt

uncontroversial at the time. I've learned since that it's very

controversial, unfortunately, like everything in life. People can

make simple things complicated and controversial and

manufacture drama around what should really be a no-brainer. Mm-hmm.

But for me at that time, it was kind of like, this is— this feels

like a value, a core value. And so came back and,

and went to school and, you know, did my bachelor's, master's,

PhD in agroecology and agronomy. And during my

master's, started building towers for greenhouses. And at the time,

I was basically thinking about it as, how do we build equipment for

smaller farmers that allow smaller farmers to compete

better, to conserve their resources better, and, uh,

started working on this idea of building these photon traps, right,

using towers and positioning them within a

greenhouse in a way that allows us to make the most of our light. And

so from that, you know, kind of came these vertical towers, and I started to

see the benefits of them and started to test them. And at first yields were

very low, but I started to do the calculations of yield per square

foot And I realized there were multiples higher than

single-plane production, even when plant health was poor. And

back then, when I was first getting started, you know, plant health was poor. It

was a real struggle to keep these things alive in a super low-weight tower.

So, for my PhD, I really got into the hardware design aspect, and I started

to redesign towers for the environment and for the

crop. And that kind of led to my first company, which really

doubled down on building hardware, software, IoT devices,

online educational materials, that kind of thing for folks that wanted to get into this.

And after I felt like that thesis was pretty well played out for me,

you know, helped to start Plenty. What is it in your nature

that would send you to China? Yeah, so

it was part of basically like this organization that

taught English and taught sustainable business practices.

And I was kind of trying to figure out what to do with my life

at the time. And my father was connected with some of the folks that did

this program. And so, yeah, that's, that's how

I got connected to it and thought, why not? So went over there and

that was kind of what started to feed this idea that feeding

people is simple and to do interesting things. It was

so interesting because at the time, you know, Bright Agrotech was

started in 2010. So, you know, we're talking 10 years ago

and a lot of the things that you're referencing Even seem cutting-edge

nowadays. And I'm wondering who or

what other companies were inspiring you at the time and what was giving

you any sort of direction at that time in 2010 as you were getting Bright

Agrotech off the ground? Yeah, I think it was, you know, I think it was

honestly more a lack than a lack of companies in the

space, as opposed to lots of companies. So,

you know, at the time, you know, I would say inspiration,

but kind of in a negative way, right? So, I was playing with these different

towers because, you know, starting to occupy that vertical space

with, you know, these small crops started to seem like something that

was worth spending time and energy investigating. And,

everyone had just stacked things up, right? So, everyone in the space had just built

these stacked towers of containers. Yeah. And,

I just felt like that was fundamentally the wrong approach, right? I believe that In

design, great design starts with intent, right? It can't

be lazy. It can't just take things that already exist and

stack them up. It must be intentional from day one.

And in order to build something that really does what you need it to do,

when we're talking about a totally new application, a new function, Mm-hmm.

you oftentimes have to start with scratch, and that's hard and it's expensive and

it's grueling, but it's necessary in order to build the right thing. And,

so, for me, that was kind of the thing that drove me, right, was

seeing basically what I consider to be a lot of bad tech and a lot

of tech that I felt was holding back production in 3-dimensional

space. And, so, and also feeling like, you know, like the greenhouse

industry, they've got a lot of amazing solutions for the

greenhouse. Yeah. But, you know, those solutions were built for that

application, for that environment. There's a lot of intent that went into them. lot of

thought, a lot of, you know, kind of contextual information.

And when we start to say, what does it look like to

escape the plane, to break free of the constraints of single-plane

agriculture, you know, we need to be willing to fundamentally rethink how we

orient all of these plants in space. And

stacked pots are not the way to do that spatially. It's just

not— doesn't work. So That's what got me

started on Towers, right? It was more a lack of good tech and feeling like

someone needs to build this thing. It sounds like you're also

inspired by— you mentioned this idea of great design. Can you recall,

like, who was inspiring you, or is there anyone that was

serving as a mentor at that time for you? Yeah, I mean, this

is a super unsatisfying answer, but there was really nothing that

stood out, right? I mean, I would say that, you know, I've always read a

lot and I almost think it's like crafting a story, right? Like you can't—

crafting a great story takes thought and practice

and just kind of this process of iteration and editing. And

so I would say more than like working with hardware folks or

working with folks that had designed things in the space, it was more

just, I guess, more of a design philosophy. Right. It

was an idea about what you have to do to get to the right outcome.

I'll be the first person to say that I was incredibly inexperienced,

but I'd had the benefit of—

as a kid, I did a lot of woodworking. I worked with my hands a

lot. I used a lot of tools, and so prototyping

and some of the early work came naturally. Then the thing

that I found I was the most talented at was hiring people that were much

smarter than me and somehow talking them into working with me.

Okay. So my major claim is, you know,

I knew enough to get things started. Yeah. And then I was evidently

convincing enough or found people who are patient enough to

actually work with me and help build something big. What would you

say is your biggest takeaway from your time at Agritech? I think, you

know, my biggest takeaway was that, you know, I've got a lot of kind of

like thoughts on business, but my biggest one is like, there are no technical problems.

There's only people problems. Right? Like, if the laws of the universe say

something is possible, if, if you do your first principles analysis and you come

back and say, hey, we're not in disagreement with, you

know, any of the laws of thermodynamics or what have you, right? Like, the

physics say this is possible. Yeah. Then really achieving it is

just a function of people, right? How can you get teams to work

together? And the thing that I've learned over the years is, you know, brilliant,

talented, motivated people can do just about anything. Yeah. And,

you know, that's a good thing to keep in mind because this is a tough

industry. This is a tough industry. Yeah. You know, if you want to make money

the easy way, this is probably not the industry for you, right?

If you feel called to feed people, if you feel

called to expand the size of the world, if you feel

called to preserve the natural habitat, if you feel

called to fundamentally expand the scope and the

possibilities of human existence, you know, then

come work in this industry. But I'll tell you right now, you know, those things

have historically not paid as well as Wall Street. So, yeah.

Is it safe to say that you feel a calling for all those things? Yeah,

I think so. I mean, I think that's what we're building, right? Like, we're

building this industry not to build a more

expensive version of the greenhouse. That's not the goal. We're building this

industry because we believe fundamentally that what we're

building here increases the size of this world, right? What

would you say is the value of that, right? What would you say is the

value of, you know, expanding the surface area that

people can grow food on, expanding the capacity of the world to grow

without raising the Amazon, preserving habitat for orangutans while

simultaneously growing more food on this planet? Like, these are all,

you know, when we talk about habitat, when we talk about healthy diets,

when we talk about pollution, when we talk about, you know, the

limits of population, we're all just talking about

the amount of arable land we have or don't have. We don't couch it in

those terms, but that's really what we're talking about. And

so, you know, what we're doing as an industry is we're building

artificial land. We're growing the size of the world. And I think that that

is an important way to put it because I hope that putting it

that way impresses on people the importance That's

really interesting. Can you tell the story

of how you met Matt and what that was like?

Yeah, so I was actually still at Bright Agrotech, and I

was at a conference, at one of the indoor AgCon conferences down in Vegas.

And Jack Oslund, one of the other, you know, original

co-founders, had emailed me and said, hey, my name's Jack. I'm using your towers

in a freight farm. I've got to talk with you. Wasn't particularly happy with the

farm, but loved the towers. Gotta talk with you. So he cornered me at this

conference and, and basically said, uh,

you know, we're, we want to start a production company. We want to get into

the production end of things. And, you know, honestly, around that time, you

know, I'd felt like the thesis for why I'd started, why I'd

started Bright Agrotech had, had been answered fairly well. And I was

ready to ask the next question. Hmm. And so they found me at the

perfect time. And then Matt calls it, you know, a

year of creeping commitment where I slowly kind of eased off

more responsibility, handed that off at Bright Agrotech and transitioned

over to Plenty. And, uh, you know, at the time we were just, we started

off in a little container farm and then, you know, scaled into our facility in

South San Francisco and basically built and rebuilt the farm

dozens of times. Hmm. Build it, answer a question, tear it down, build it.

answer a question, tear it down, and just went through this iterative process

to figure out what is the architecture, what is the configuration,

what are the problems we're trying to solve, what are the constraints that we

either need to lift or learn to live within. And that was, you know, that

was a long and exhausting process, but it's kind of— it's gotten us to

where we're at today, which is, you know, a farm that I think is

going to fundamentally change the way agriculture When

people see the scope of what you're doing, or

people— there's news releases about, you know, what people like,

um, the big— the bigger names in the space, the Bowerys, the AeroFarms, the

Plenties— what do you think is a misconception that people

commonly have in terms of relating to, you know, what the scale at

which you're doing farming, and what, if any,

impact that has on traditional farming? Yeah, I mean, I think that people

Going back to this idea of storytelling, we love conflict. You can't

have a story without conflict, right? Man against nature, man against the

gods, whatever the theme is, there's a limited number of them, but

there's always conflict. A story without conflict is pretty boring.

So, people like to tell the story of indoor

farming like it's fundamentally in conflict with the field, and

that's really a false narrative. Yeah. The reality is that the field needs to

produce at 100%. Greenhouses need to produce at 100%. We all

need to produce at 100%. And indoor ag is our means of

building on top of the production that already exists, right? Like,

we don't want production to go down. We need to double to triple the amount

of fresh fruits and vegetables in the world just to feed people, you

know, the right amount of fresh fruits and vegetables that diet doctors recommend

for your diet, right? So, like, people are woefully deficient

when it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables already. we're not talking about a world

where everyone's well-fed. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, all of

that to say, we're building on top of that supply. That supply

needs to exist, needs to continue. But we also know that that supply is

limited, both in the field and in greenhouses. And so, you know,

we view what we're building as a means to supplement that

supply that hasn't existed before. And ultimately, I

think it's the key to a longer, happier human life on this planet. And

hopefully a happier environment as well. If I were to ask Matt

what he saw in you or in that partnership

that got him excited about working with you, what do you think he would say?

I think he would say— I've actually heard him answer this question, so this is

kind of cheating. I think he would say that, you

know, the reason that he was attracted to me was

because I was technical and pragmatic. So

I'd had enough business background and exposure, you know,

bootstrapping Bright Agrotech in a couple of years from nothing

to several million bucks in revenue, you know, and

so I would say that, you know, he saw someone who had some business experience,

was pragmatic about, you know, the realities of business, but also

technical and thinking very hard about, you know, architecture

and what needs to be true for this industry to be a real thing. So,

I think that that's what attracted him to me. And, you know, in

Matt, I saw someone who could lead a business,

raise a lot of money, and sell the vision for what this could be like

pretty much no one else at that time. There's no one else in the space

that was really selling it the way Matt was. Although, you know, if you heard

Matt give a webinar or present to someone, several months later, there are a

lot of competitors using the same messaging, right?

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, I guess. He was just

phenomenal at that. That was kind of the basis for that

relationship. Can you talk a little bit about how, if anything,

the mission has changed from when you started, or for instance, when

Plenius started in 2013, and how the industry

has changed now, and any of the changes that Plenius had to make

to either evolve, innovate on their own? In light of, you

know, the climate and how the industry has evolved? Yeah, I mean,

the industry has both changed a lot and hardly changed at

all, right? I think the mission, the vision, the values of most of the

players in this space are the same. I think what everyone has realized is this,

this problem is much more complicated than anyone thought, right?

So to hear everyone talk, you know, like 5 years ago, everyone was like,

we're going to build 100 farms in 2 years and, you know, do X, Y,

and Z. And the reality is, like, this is an incredibly complex

problem set. You're combining, you know, engineering,

you're combining biology, you're combining data science, you're combining all of these

disciplines, construction management, sustainable operations.

You have all of these disciplines that are a challenge in and of

themselves, you know, to be excellent at, and you're pulling

them together and making them work together in a way that's particularly, you know,

complicated. And so, you know, the thing that I would say is like, I

think that the industry has matured in its understanding

of the problem in the last several years. And that is the biggest thing that

we've all had, had the time to do. I think that our

understanding of the problems that we're solving has deepened. Yeah. So,

I mean, I think that that is, that's a pretty exciting thing

because, you know, I'll tell you, it has

helped us to realize what the real constraints on growth are. it's

also helped us realize that growth is virtually unconstrained when

we look to the future, right? So when we look at the number of crops

that will ultimately move indoors, I think, you know, us

today, you know, would be surprised. You know, we would be

surprised by that, by what's going to happen in the future. So,

so I don't know, that sounds like a pretty incoherent answer to your question, but,

you know, in short, you know, I think we've grown up, we've matured a lot.

Yeah. But I don't think that the fire has died. And the other thing that

I would say has changed is that the world has begun to realize that this

is a necessity. We've transitioned from, from if to when,

right? And that is a big transition. That is a big transition.

It's a big transition for, you know, bringing in financing. It's

a big, it's a big transition for customer

consumer awareness, right? It's a big transition for a lot of things and

even for historical industries. you know, greenhouse industry, the field,

academic institutions that have, you know, been one of, you know,

leading, I guess, research centers supporting those industries.

A lot of eyes have started to turn to what is happening in

indoor ag, as they should. Yeah. And I think that that's very exciting, both

from a resourcing standpoint as well as helping the world to

realize that we are necessary, because I think that that has been a question.

How important is the supporting

infrastructure? We touched a little bit about the supply chain

to support vertical farming as it existed in 2010, as it existed

when the state it was in when Plenty got started, what it's like now.

What are your thoughts about how robust it is to support

getting the food to people's ultimate destination of the plates, and, you know, what

part Plenty is playing in that? Well, I think it's more fragile than we thought.

Right. I mean, I think the thing about having things magically

show up on retail shelves for decades without

interruption is you start to take for granted the complexity and the

difficulty of making those things show up on the shelf. And you take for

granted the stability that allows those supply chains to function.

So I think one thing that has happened this year is people have

realized, maybe I take that for granted. Maybe that isn't a given. maybe

isn't a sure thing. Maybe the world is a little less certain than I thought.

And I think that that is actually an important realization because there's been a few

of us that have been screaming it for a very long time, right? Moving fresh

food across the world thousands of miles may not be the smartest thing.

Concentrating people, you know, in these, you know, population

centers that are farther and farther away from the centers of production,

that's just a fundamental physics concern. Yeah. It's like

you are not in the same place. It takes more energy to get it there.

More things can go wrong. You know, this just does not seem

like wisdom. Yeah. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, and that

doesn't mean it's not a solvable problem, but that does say this non-traditional

concentration of population, this non-traditional way of

putting people in places, consuming the things we consume

without replacing kind of the traditional system of getting those things

to those people, seems to be a recipe for disaster. So

I think this has been an interesting exercise for us.

You know, we had distribution center go down due to COVID, and

Plenty products were the only ones on the shelf. And that's, you know, that was

an interesting thing. There was no other fresh produce being distributed to several of

these stores, and we were able to put produce on the shelf because we're practically

next door, right? It's a fundamentally different problem for us to solve.

So I think that that's true for a lot of local ag. Yeah. And I

think that that excites me about this idea of local agriculture. You know,

it builds a more resilient supply chain. Our food system gets

safer and better for people when we can do that. And, you know, frankly, this

is to some degree a simple feedback problem. You know, I believe that most

business problems are basically just feedback problems. And the

further away you get from your customer, the less you can understand their

needs, right? Yeah. Businesses are built on, you know, an

understanding of the customer needs and building products that meet

those needs. That's very fundamental. And as we separate ourselves further and further

from consumers, as we constrain the

products that we can create through these complex supply chains, through all of

this processing, through all of this distribution, you know, it can become

a challenge to stay in touch with what people want and what people need. But

when you're located next door, not only does it simplify that

you know, chain, all these chains of handoffs, all these points where something

can go wrong. But it also allows us to understand our

customer, their lives, their needs, what they love, what they hate, much, much

better. And I think that that makes us better as a company. It

lets us meet their needs. You know, we can build personal relationships with our

customers. That is a dream. It is a dream to know what people love

and what they hate and what they fear and what they hope for.

And understand how you can tailor your product to meet people where they're at.

How does Plenty think about where to place these farms?

Obviously, there's a lot of buzz around the Tigris farm, and

I'm wondering internally how the team thinks about where it makes sense

to have a farm location. Yeah, I mean, in all humility, we're still learning

that. You know, like, there are very few lessons that I'm going to stand on

a soapbox and say, hey, you know, we have learned how to do this and

we are perfect. What I will say is, wow, have we learned

some valuable things about that. And, you know, there are

massive opportunities that flow from

where you place your farm. And it really kind of just

depends on the priority of your values

and kind of the unique geographical

economics of that farm. Mm-hmm. I

think for us, putting our first farm in Compton

was a big decision, right? The values that

kind of rose to the surface in that conversation were

the first farm or 2 that you build are as much a

statement as they are a business, right? It's our job to

tell the world who we are, who we want to be. If you think

about putting a farm in LA, it's one of basically 2 megacities that we

have in the United States. Yeah. You know, we've got the New York metro, you

know, metro area. We've got, you know, the LA metro area.

And, you know, I think that for us, there were a number of things. One,

you know, we, we made the economics work, you know, but also from

a cultural, from a value standpoint, you know, Compton was about saying,

hey, we can move agriculture into the heart of the city, right?

Mm-hmm. Like, we can put it wherever we want, places where agriculture has never been

possible before. You know, we're moving into Compton, and there's all sorts of interesting

things about Compton in particular. You know, Compton used to be

agricultural land. Compton has this very rich

agricultural history, and that just felt like a really cool

completion of this circle, right? Like bringing agriculture back to

Compton. Yeah. That's cool. It's a food desert, right?

And so when we think about what this problem solves for the world, or what

the solution solves for the world, you know, indoor farming, what it can mean to

people, that is a pretty powerful statement,

right? We're going to put our farm, this production center, in the middle of a

food desert. And that's something that I care a lot about, right? I think it's

crazy that we live— that we still have food deserts today. Yeah. So,

for us, you know, it was a lot of those things. You know, LA is

a cultural center of the country in a lot of ways, and so being able

to put a farm in LA, you know, it's meaningful just from a

finding folks that will partner with us to help share this story,

right, that will espouse our values, that will engage with the rest of the

country and help us explain not just, you know,

why we exist, but why it's important that more companies like ours

exist, that more farms exist, that we grow this, this form of

agriculture. You mentioned this idea of partnering as well,

and in October you partnered with— or the announcement was made that you were

partnering with Driscoll's, which is probably one of the most well-known names when

it comes to strawberries. Yeah. And I'm wondering what you can talk about in

terms of how that came together, because it's interesting because it's sort of that mix

of the old school and the new school. Yeah, you know,

Driscoll's was one of kind of the 2 big commercial deals we did this year.

Albertsons and Driscoll's were, you know, the 2 agreements that we,

you know, that we signed this year. And Driscoll's, you know,

really arose from, you know, our 2 different companies

having needs that we thought the other could meet, right? Mm-hmm.

And for Driscoll's, that was, you know, access to

technology that helps them scale anywhere in the world, even to places that don't

have the environment for growing strawberries. And, you know,

also, you know, thinking about what it looks like to produce a premium

strawberry year-round. You know, strawberries are really

at peak flavor for, you know, they're seasonal. There's a period of time where they're

at their best. Yeah. Simply because the environmental conditions are ideal. They

align with kind of, you know, the age of the plant, and you

could say like the stage in the life cycle of that plant, you know,

and you get this product out that's just awesome. It's fantastic.

And then, you know, outside of that window of perfect weather, it's

harder and harder to get berries that are that perfect.

So when you think about indoor ag, We can reproduce any conditions

day in, day out, year over year over year. And so, you know, for them,

that was an opportunity to partner with someone that could help them

basically bring the perfect berry to market every single day, right?

So that's what excited them. That excites us too, right? Like the

incredible flavors that you get from strawberries. Yeah. This is a

crop that people really have to experience fresh. They really

have to experience it, you know, at peak flavor.

And the idea of being able to do that, you know, with someone like

Driscoll's who has all of this experience, all of this deep

knowledge of the crop, you know, crop physiologists that have just

specialized in strawberries their entire life, you know, the best genetics in the

industry, and then, you know, this incredible market presence

combined with the ambition to grow, right? The ambition to be

bigger and more, you know, all over the world, to take strawberries to people who've

never had them before. I think that the scope of that ambition and

excitement met our ambition and excitement about putting

vertical farms all over the world. So, all of that to say,

we were well-matched in terms of how we

complemented each other, and we're really excited to partner with them.

The company is over 100 years old, I believe, right? Yeah, they are. They've

got an incredible history. Yeah. An incredible history. Yeah, it's

interesting because this concept of growing a crop like strawberries

in a place that you would think it wouldn't be possible— I spoke to Henry

Gordon-Smith in an earlier episode and I was reminded of the work they're doing in

Dubai, or he was talking about some of the work that was happening in Dubai,

and I think strawberries was the crop of choice there as well. Yeah, well, it's

a high-value crop. Yeah, it's a crop that pretty much everyone in the world likes

to eat, but very few people in the world have access to in a form

that's, you know, perfect. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the work that

Plenty does in terms of social responsibility? I know that there was a partnership

with Project Open Hand that was announced earlier in the year as well.

Yeah, you know, we've worked with Project Open Hand. You know, we produce a

lot of product and we're producing more every day. So like the cool

thing is, you know, we're on a technology cost curve. Our costs drop, our production

goes up, right? And so being able to partner with folks like

Project Open Hand, it's both a great place for us to take you know, product

that isn't spoken for in the market. And, you know, in the course of kind

of doing that, as we've gotten the farm going, it's kind of become

something that, that we've realized is really important, you know, especially for

folks like Project Open Hand. They work with a lot of folks that are, say,

like immune compromised or, or have things, have

conditions that fresh vegetables in particular are very

beneficial for. Yeah. So, you know, we've worked with them. They've been

just a dream to work with. And then, you know, as we start to

expand our farms, you know, we think very hard about where we put

these farms, where we're putting these jobs, and then we

engage kind of with those local communities. So the idea is, you know,

if we think about ourselves as like the next phase of agriculture,

it's our job to start raising up kids, even if they're

like 5 years old, right? Start exposing them to the

concepts, the ideas, the things that will turn them

into people who later in life are excited about

working in Plenty Farms, excited about becoming farmers. Yeah.

And, you know, so that might be, you know, Compton schools,

you know, working with kids there, or, you know, kind of wherever we're placing our

future farms, you know, engaging with those schools and those communities, and then

making sure that those communities that we're placing farms in are getting

access to the food we produce, right? So it would be a travesty

if we built farms in food deserts without solving the food desert problem.

Yeah. Now, that's an oversimplification of the food desert problem, right? It

is a complex problem. We can't just solve it on the supply side, but,

you know, we can help to solve it and we can take steps towards solving

it that are meaningful. Is that important for you in terms of standing

in the community and like the long-lasting impression

that Plenty will leave in the communities that it has relationships with? Yeah.

Absolutely. I mean, we view this through a very long-term lens.

We can't be a 5-year business. We're building 20-year farms, at least

20-year farms, and probably we're just

retrofitting and changing things out over time. These are farms that will

probably stand for 50 years, 60 years. And so,

when you think about the life cycle of a farm, that's an

entire generation or 2 generations of people. Mm-hmm. So,

you know, we think about this as agricultural infrastructure in the same way you might

think about handing down a farm from one generation to

the next. You know, we have to think about this in similar ways,

right? We've got to think about this. What, what does the Compton Farm look like

in 60 years? You know, now that doesn't mean we're designing a 60-year

farm today, but that is to say we're still going to be around in 60

years. We're still going to be necessary in 60 years. more necessary than

ever. And so you have to take a long-term focus on

how we engage with communities and pull people into this new

kind of agriculture. Yeah, it feels like there's going to be a

resurgence or interest in agriculture that has

probably been missing in this country for many,

many decades. And I was— I had a conversation recently

with John Purcell of Unfold, and then he, when he mentioned You know, when his

daughter found out he's in vertical farming, she's like, oh, you're in the cool

niche now. So it's cool. You have a cool job. So

it feels like it's getting more attention now. Yeah, it is. And it should,

you know, like farming for a long time has been, I don't know,

not necessarily something that people aspire to, right? And it's really kind of

just recently that people started to think, oh, farming might be pretty cool.

Producing food might be pretty neat. And so I'm encouraged that people

are interested in it. And I think that it is, it is a really

great career to have, right? Like it's honest, it's straightforward work, and

it creates very tangible value. And

in a world that is full of intangible value and theoretical

value and a lot of ones and zeros, Yeah. You

know, creating tangible value can be something that's really rewarding.

So hopefully we see a lot of people come running because we're going to need

a lot of people to come running in order to do this. Yeah. Can you

talk a little bit about your role as Chief— I'm assuming the S is for

science, right? Chief Science Officer. What are some of

the things that you're working on that you can speak to that have you

excited on the science side? Yeah, I mean, on the science side, you know, at

any given time we have a number of different efforts. The primary thing that we're

engaged in is product design and optimization.

So what are the next products that we're going to put in market, and how

do we make those things yield As well as possible within the quality

spec that we designed them to. So, that's actually a

really hard challenge. And, you know, we harvest our crops as kind of baby

greens, so they're not, you know, they haven't traveled very far up the,

like, growth rate curve. They're still, you know,

I guess, building momentum when it comes to, like, metabolism and growth.

And so, you know, we're harvesting them when they're little babies, and there's a lot

that goes into making sure we can take a little baby crop like that

and make it yield numbers that are economical. So, you

know, there's a science team in Laramie, Wyoming. That's where the

science team is. And we've got dozens of

walk-in growth chambers, and all of those are testing different

treatments— lighting treatments, temperature treatments, you know, kind of all of

the different environmental factors that we manipulate to drive

yield. And so, you know, that's what the team does a lot of.

quantifying those, screening new genetics. You know, we screened over

1,400 different crops and cultivars to kind of

come up with this list of cultivars that, that we're using

today or working on. We work hard to make sure the systems

do what we think they'll do. So scale as a treatment is very hard

to predict. All sorts of things start to go wrong the bigger things get,

basically, is one way to put it, right? Yeah. So the larger the system, the

more ways there are for it to fail. And so it's our job to help

anticipate those things and test all of those different crops at scale.

And then we look at new crops altogether. So another thing we do is say,

okay, what is the next thing? So for instance, strawberries, you know, is

something that the team is running on, working very closely with Gistls to

look at a lot of different genetics and figure out what are the best crops

for these systems, and then what are the best ways to grow these crops in

these systems. You know, and then internally we're working on things like tomatoes and kind

of these future crops, breeding them, taming them, if you will, to go

into these systems. It's really an awesome job. You know, we

get to re-architect agriculture, and it's been a while since anyone's done that.

So, Yeah. for me, it's, it's pretty fun because we get to go in and

say, hey, what needs to be true to make

this thing a big deal, right? What needs to be true to blow,

say, historical production out of the water. So, for something

like greens, you know, we're setting targets and we're saying, how do we grow half

a kilogram or a kilogram per square meter per day, right? These growth rates that

are just unheard of, unmatched in the industry, and we've got to go

out and pull them down. How do we grow, you know,

900 to 1,200 kilograms of tomatoes in a square meter in a

year, right? Wow. And those are the kind of things like the greenhouse guys just

roll their eyes when they hear that, ugh, whatever, this guy's full of it, right?

But those are the kinds of yields that we're pulling down. Right. So

it's the kind of thing where we get challenged with practically

impossible challenges, and then we've got to get creative and use

science and use testing and work with

engineers and work with other parts of the business that can do things

that scientists can't do on their own to make something true that has never been

true before. We get to remake the world in our own

way. So I think that is a pretty fantastic job.

Sounds like a lot of fun as well. It is. It's challenging.

Like I said, there's no technical problems, there's just people problems. So

the people aspect of it, getting a lot of diverse

people to work together coming at it from lots of different

backgrounds, those people don't typically work well together. So it's our job

to figure out how do you get people who are speaking different languages from a

technical standpoint or from a business standpoint To all

land on the same page and be effective with each other. And, you

know, that's a really hard thing to do. Most companies never succeed at it. The

other thing that I think is fascinating is what's happening in

tandem is all the components that are required

for this to succeed include things like improving

efficiency of LEDs, data processing power,

number crunching, data science. All these also need

to be happening and are increasing and are improving in and of

themselves. And so is that something that you— the company

watches and is keeping tabs of? Because as those things improve,

your ability to do what you're doing improves as well. Yeah, absolutely. So I

mean, we are— it's impossible for people to understand our business without

understanding cost curves, right? So technology cost curves are at the

heart of our model, and this is Cost curves are hard to

understand, period, let alone if you come from an agricultural background, because

cost curves really don't exist in agriculture. You know, this is an

industry that has been mature, greenhouse, field, you name it. We've been mature for a

long time. There aren't a whole lot of areas where, you know, your

costs are going to be lower next year than they were this year, right? So,

you know, what we're doing is we're saying, you know, we're building a business here

around cost curves like LEDs, processing, power. Yeah. data storage,

deployed AI, sensor technology, all of these different

component technologies, right? Where next year they're gonna be half the price

and twice the output, right? All of our ingredients are gonna be half the price

and twice the output next year. Yeah. On the technology side. And then,

one thing that Plenty has done that almost no one else in this space has

done is we've built a massive engineering and R&D team

to take all of those component technologies, package them with our own internal

developed technologies, We're not just buying things that exist and

slapping them together. Again, like going back to the beginning of our conversation around

intentional design, like we are building our own internal cost

curves, which drive our costs down and our output up year

on year on year. And so, you know, at the core of everything

we do is those component cost curves and the cost curve we've built

internally, which allows us to do more with less every

single year, grow more crops, grow them less expensively.

feed more people at more affordable prices into the foreseeable future.

So we spent a lot of time looking at tech, building our own

tech, combining technologies, figuring out what matters and what

doesn't. And ultimately, you know, you see it in our yields, you see it in

the farm itself. And I don't know if you've seen pictures, but we have a

fundamentally different architecture from anyone else in the space. Yeah. That

came out of, you know, some very basic math, Like what needs to

be true to drive costs down and output up. And so, you know, we've,

we've picked a unique technology path, but it is really paying off. It's

interesting you mentioned path because as you were talking through that, I go back to

my project management days and the idea of critical path items. So I'm wondering,

is there anything that when you think about the whole chain of events that need

to happen for you to do what you need to do on a daily basis

and outside forces, that is there something in there that you would

probably consider maybe one of the weaker links and something to keep an eye on?

Yeah. I mean, I think when we think about this industry and what

can hold it back, what will hold it back, it's ultimately going to be access

to capital. The technology is there. The

genetics, for the most part, are already there. That's another amazing thing, right?

People don't realize that hundreds of years of

agriculture has delivered unto us some

fantastic genetics. And that doesn't mean it's being used in the field

today, but it exists. And, you know, with proper

screening, uh, you can pull those genetics into your system and get the most out

of them. So we've got technology, we've got genetics, we've got all of these

components. We have, you know, great business people, great scientists,

great engineers. We have all of these different, you know, resources,

but farms are expensive. At least farms that mean— that matter

are expensive. I'll put it that way. Yeah. Yeah. You know, really tiny farms

that have virtually no impact on global food supply, those are less

expensive. But if you're really looking to impact, you know, you've

got to build big farms and you got to build a lot of them. And,

you know, we're ultimately talking about deploying many hundreds of

billions of dollars of capital to trillions of

dollars of capital to go out and build capacity

equal to double today's. For fresh fruits and vegetables. So, you

know, we're talking about a massive industry. And really,

you know, when you look at how that capital needs to be deployed over the

next 20, 30, 50 years, you know, having access to

it, finding capital that's looking for that kind of a home, for that

risk profile, understands the business, you know, it's going to be the hard

part. But I'll tell you, once we've got a couple farms up, I think that

that gets a lot easier. That's more of a thing right now today. And then

I see very few hurdles to actually scaling this around the

world. Is it safe to say you have some breathing room now with the

$140 million raised? Yeah, you know, completing

that round is great. You know, 2020 has been kind of a nutso year, and

so, you know, pulling down a round in that chaos, you know,

definitely lets us breathe a sigh of relief. So maybe as a result of the

chaos, people saw what's

needed and where the gaps are and really what's

the opportunity. Yeah, probably. I mean, I think the

problems that are going to afflict us for the next 50 years are becoming

more perceptible. They're becoming more

acute. They're becoming something that people are starting to accept now.

I don't think— there aren't a whole lot of folks left that deny climate change

is happening. So as we start to think about what does a fundamentally

different world look like for agriculture, it really makes

industries like ours stand out as kind of the— not the antidote, but

certainly the insurance policy. That's kind

of a dark and dystopic take on the importance of the industry. On the

lighter side, there's just a lot more people, and there's going to be a lot

more people in 10 years and 20 years. Yeah. All of those people need

to eat fruits and vegetables, and you know what? We've used up every last

acre where it's economical today. We've used up every last

acre, and every drop of water is spoken for. And so, in a world where

we don't have more acres, where we don't have more water, where we don't have

the ability to just magically, you know, produce land, or

if we do produce land, it comes at the cost of the environment, indoor farming

is what's left. You know, this is what we have as far as a

means to manufacture land. So, I think it lands on our shoulders

to go out into the world, manufacture as much land as possible,

conserve as much water as possible, What's a

tough question you've had to ask yourself recently? Oh, there are tough

questions all the time. I mean, this is a hard business. You know, like, I

have to, you know, get myself pretty psyched

on a regular basis to just keep this up, right? To keep the

schedule. And I've been doing it, you know, I've been in this space now for

about 15 years. You know, Bright was a decade ago,

and it's exhausting, right? So I'm constantly

asking myself if, you know, is this the best use of my time? And the

answer always comes back, yeah, for now, for today, yes, this is

it. And is this meaningful work? Are we really solving problems?

And the answer keeps coming back, yes. It's more yeses than ever before,

honestly. I think, you know, we constantly have to

evaluate our structure. You know, the business is evolving and changing.

The industry is evolving and changing. We're moving from R&D Yeah.

Into an industry that has to deploy and operate.

So we're moving from design, we're moving from

optimization to deployment and

operations. And so there are a lot of really hard questions around,

are we set up for that right now? Like, what do we need to change?

What needs to be true for us to be successful tomorrow? And just

like, you know, a person grows, a plant grows,

Businesses grow too. And, you know, at different points in a

plant's life, it will allocate carbon to shoots or to roots or

to other things. You know, as a business, you're trying to allocate,

you know, your capital, your time, your people to the things that matter. And there

are a lot of really hard questions that you have to ask to make sure

that you're doing that on a regular basis. So there's no shortage of the

hard questions. There's very few things that

that I can talk about that don't have very hard elements to them that we

need to question. Sure. But I think, you know, the great thing

about being in the industry is we have

more answers than people outside of this industry have around what

it's going to be and what it can be and what it will be to

the world. And so that's great. You know, those moments of

self-doubt, yeah, you have that to fall back on. As we wrap up, just a

lighthearted note. Given the complexity of the questions you're answering sometimes,

what's something you do as a hobby or something? That's a

good question. It kind of depends on the season.

Most of the time, just spending time with my kids, pretty

boring. But I've got my houses here in Laramie, and so

one thing that I do is I plant a lot of trees during the spring

and the summer. Oh, yeah. So that's kind of a bit of a

release valve for me. So I've got my own little

carbon offset program going internal to the Story House.

So, I calculate my carbon footprint and then try

to cover it with tree planting and then track my carbon

sequestration. That's kind of like my fun little

spring and summer project. Then, in the fall, I just spend a lot of time

outside and in the winter too, just walking around. Yeah, it

definitely sounds energizing and relaxing as well. Related to tree planting,

my partner just put me onto a Chrome plugin called Ecosia.

I've heard of that. E-C-O-S-I-A. It's

called the search engine that plants trees. I think the more you

use it, the more they actually plant trees. I'm

not sure if you had heard about that. That's awesome. Yeah, I've heard about it.

I've tried using it once or twice. Maybe I should try using it again.

Well, Nate, I want to thank you for taking the time. We ran a little

bit over the hour, but it's been a fascinating To hear the

story, you specifically, your journey. And

it's clear that this has been something that's been a passion for you going

back to your, your days in China. And I don't know if you knew at

the time what you were seeing there would spark an

interest that would lead to where you currently are and the work that you're doing

at Plenty. But it's clear that there's a big problem that needs to be

solved. It's clear that the folks

at Plenty are, are well aware of it and are doing— are

playing an important role in alignment with the mission of, you know, improving the

lives of the planet and then the people on it.

So I want to thank you for, for sharing that story and just really excited

to see what's in store at Plenty and, you

know, be following the journey. Yeah, appreciate that. It's been great talking to you.

Sorry I couldn't get my video to work, but, you know. No, no worries. And

so plenty.ag for folks to learn more.

Any other things coming up that you want folks to be aware of? No, I

think, you know, check out the website and stay tuned. You know,

we're going to start sharing more information about Compton and kind of what comes

after here over the next year. And, uh, you know, we're

excited to be here doing this, and hopefully other people are excited

to be alive right now too, on the cusp of this new industry. So

And hopefully when the conferences pick up again, I'd love to

connect and then meet in person. That'd be nice. That'd be fantastic. Yeah, I love

that too. Okay, thanks, Nate. Have a great night. You too. Thanks again to

Nate for coming on the show and sharing his story. As always, full show

notes available at verticalfarmingpodcast.com. Don't forget to sign

up for our vertical farming newsletter at

verticalfarmingpodcast.com/newsletter.

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. Tune in

next week for my conversation with Marc Plink, the founder of

Ceres Greenhouse Solutions himself. As a reminder, if you're

enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com.

We'll be sure to read these out on future episodes

like we did at the beginning of this one. 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

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

$680 million poured into precision ag last year.

Autonomous weeding robots dominated, and John Deere made 2 acquisitions in 3

months. A food company, not an equipment maker, bought a

robotics startup to protect its own supply chain. The deals are

accelerating, the money is moving, and the winners are already separating from the

pack. If you're investing, building, or buying in this space,

you need the full picture before your competitors get it. The 2025

Precision Agriculture Intelligence Report from iGrow News is now

available. Get your copy today at

igrownews.com/precision.