Episode Summary

Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he welcomes to the show Eric Levesque. Eric is the co-founder and VP of Business Development and Sales at Cultivatd, an organization that works with a wide range of industry-proven technology partners to provide the best fit for a project’s needs. Cultivatd also offers farming guidance, design consulting, and lending and leasing services to its clients. In this episode, Harry and Eric talk about how the pandemic has impacted our food supply chains and the desperate need for our society to solve these issues. They discuss Eric’s time at ZipGrow, the need for indoor and outdoor Ag to coexist and what the future holds for Cultivatd and the AgTech industry.

Episode Sponsor

CULTIVATD

Key Takeaways

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• 03:29 – Harry welcomes to the show Eric Levesque, co-founder of Cultivatd, who talks about his organization, how the pandemic has impacted his business and how he got involved in vertical farming
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• 08:44 – Eric reflects back on his time at ZipGrow and expounds on his sales background
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• 11:58 – Eric talks about what was different about working for ZipGrow and learning the industry on the fly
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• 14:59 – The inspiration to start Cultivatd and what the business model looks like
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• 18:13 – Eric breaks down the three different types of clients that Cultivatd services
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• 21:05 – The work Cultivatd is doing to educate the world on opportunities in AgTech and other offerings the provide to their clients
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• 27:28 – How controlled environment agriculture and traditional agriculture co-exis
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• 32:42 – Eric talks about some of the partnerships between Cultivatd and other companies
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• 34:19 – Eric speaks to Cultivatd’s plans for growth, strategies he utilizes to grow his team and how Cultivatd is approaching the future of AgTech
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• 36:44 – How Eric keeps up with the changing trends of AgTech
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• 38:47 – Mentors who have helped Eric along his journey
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• 40:46 – A tough question Eric has had to ask himself recently
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• 43:21 – What excites Eric the most about the future of vertical farming
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• 43:56 – Harry thanks Eric for joining the show and let’s listeners know where they can connect with him
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Tweetable Quotes

“People are really realizing now, there is an issue and the world has to trend in this direction. Obviously the lack of irrigable land and water is an issue. But something like this pandemic sheds light on what the world needs in terms of fresh supply of food.” (06:14)

“It’s strange, it always kind of came natural to me. It’s my favorite thing. I think I just really like connecting and making new relationships and bonding with people. There’s something to it. There’s a really personal aspect. Obviously with this, there’s a bonus of you’re selling something that’s actually helping to heal the world.” (10:53)

“There’s something romantic about this industry where when you see the plants growing indoors it’s the same feeling. I fell in love right away when I saw it and I feel like there’s a lot of that.” (20:22)

“I think we’ve got some pretty ambitious goals but we want to hit the full spectrum where we can support you head-to-toe regardless of your plan.” (23:50)

“Indoor Ag was never meant to replace outdoor Ag. It’s something that needs to work in conjunction with outdoor Ag so that we can all get to the common goal of saving the planet and growing more food and being healthier and fixing food supply chains.” (27:56)

Links Mentioned

Cultivatd Website

Cultivatd’s Instagram

Cultivatd’s Twitter

Cultivatd’s Facebook

ZipGrow Website

Eric’s LinkedIn

Readwise App

Blinkist

Instapaper

Link to Houdini’s Biography

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Mentioned in this episode:

2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews

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igrownews.com/precision. If you are starting a

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Best of all, their service is free because they work on behalf of their

partners. Visit cultivated.com to learn more. And

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

or click the link in the show notes. It's strange, it always kind of came

natural to me. It's really like my favorite thing. I think I just like connecting

and making new relationships and bonding with people. And so there's something to

it that there's a really personal aspect. Obviously with this, there's a

bonus of you're selling something that's actually helping to heal the world, and so

that obviously helps a lot.

Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations with

fascinating CEOs, founders, and agtech visionaries.

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

farming with your host, Harry Duran.

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

listening, welcome new listeners. 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, we had a

great conversation with Nicholas Tyner, CEO of Moleaar. And

for those that are new to the term, we got to learn all about nanobubbles.

So make sure you check out that episode. This week, I speak with Eric Levesque,

co-founder of Cultivated. It's an organization that works with a wide range of

industry-proven technology partners to provide the best fit for a project's needs.

You might recognize the name from the beginning of the podcast episode, as

Cultivated is actually a sponsor for this season. They provide

farming guidance, design consulting, and lending and leasing services to their clients.

And in this episode, Eric and I talk about how the pandemic has impacted our

food supply chains and the desperate need for our society to solve these issues.

We talk about Eric's time at ZipGrow and the need for indoor and outdoor ag

to coexist, and what the future holds for Cultivated and

agtech in general. This episode is also brought to you by the Vertical Farming Weekly

Newsletter. Each week, our team member Daniel Dre scours the ends of the earth to

bring you some of the latest and greatest news in the world of vertical farming.

Sign up today at verticalfarmingweekly.com. Don't forget, 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 yours out next. Okay, let's get into this conversation with Eric.

So Eric Levesque, co-founder and VP of Business Development and

Sales at Cultivated. Thank you for joining me on the Vertical Farming Podcast.

Thanks for having me. So where's home for you as of this recording?

We are in Ottawa, or near Ottawa, sorry, Ontario,

Canada. And did you grow up there? Yeah, I am

born and raised. We're actually in a small city called Cornwall, about 50,000 people.

I left a little bit for school, but pretty much been here my whole life.

What's your fondest memory of growing up in Cornwall? Probably

sports. Played a lot of sports, varsity sports around here, so that

would have to be it. And, um, are you still a sports

fan? Yeah, huge sports fan. Absolutely. So

as of this recording, we're in February 2021. How has

life changed for you and how have you adjusted since, you know, we're coming

almost on a year since COVID hit? Yeah, it's been kind of a

wild ride. We actually just left our second lockdown

on the 18th. We went into lockdown, I believe, on

December 23rd or 24th for the second time.

They just lifted us back to orange Whatever that means. I think

it's just small public gatherings, about 25% capacity for restaurants and

such. But yeah, it's been trying. It's been a little taxing,

I guess, but I consider myself lucky in terms of, you know, this

whole pandemic. What was the impact to

the business when COVID hit? So when COVID

hit is about the time we started. Yeah. So there was a lot of

working from home, but it kind of gave us the opportunity to really

see that the demand in food supply and food chains really needed some

work. I think it kind of opened a lot of people's eyes. And so, because

of that, I think, I don't wanna call it a silver lining, that seems a

little too much, but it has been good for the industry as a whole.

I think the consistent thread in the communications I've had since then

were about the awareness that it brought to

our food supply and people's proximity to food

And I think it was top of mind for obviously everyone in this industry,

but I think because of the impacts to the supply chains and

people not having access to fresh food, it's been more

noticeable since COVID And I'm wondering if there's anyone that you've

been speaking with or people who are in your close circle that have noticed

that the topic of indoor farming, controlled environment

agriculture is more top of mind lately. Yeah, we've seen a

lot more inquiries. I think this industry is still relatively new, right?

So there's been a lot of interest, and even though we've just scratched the surface,

the industry has been growing really rapidly. But I think this has kind of

put a lean on that in terms of people are really realizing now

there is an issue and the world has to trend in this direction.

Obviously, the lack of arable land and water is, is an

issue, but something like this pandemic obviously sheds light

on what the world needs in terms of fresh supply of food, obviously.

When for you was this something that became an interest? Was

it something that you knew just going into college it's something you would study, or

is it something that over time, because of what you were getting exposed to, that

you were becoming more aware of this? So, I actually was

not aware, if I'm being honest. I kind of just bumped into this. My

partner and co-founder of Cultivated, Eric Bergeron, actually introduced me to the

system a few years ago, the ZipRow system, which is just another vertical farming

system, and he had become the Canadian redistributor for

Bright Agrotech, which was founded by Nate Storey. I'm sure you've touched on that in

some previous episodes. And so when I went to see the system, he

was kind of explaining it to me. I didn't really understand the gist of it

until I saw it in real time, and I fell in love right away. I

just saw it and I was like, wow, I can't believe that this even

exists. The world is going to need this. And I literally told him, I'll be

here tomorrow morning, 9 AM. And that's how we started. What were you working on

at the time? I was kind of bouncing from sales jobs, doing

startup consultancies kind of stuff. And so, I was

basically available to start and he was looking for someone to head the sales department

for the company. And obviously, if you know the history of Bright

Agrotech, they had a really good base of customers and of knowledge that

they had put out there. So, we had quite the runway

to start ZipGrow in Canada, obviously. How did you two meet?

We actually met playing soccer. We played soccer together for a dozen years or so.

And so, yeah, we just kind of touched on it. He actually purchased a freight

farm, the first freight farm in Canada. That's how he began his whole venture into

this and then designed his own container company, which then evolved into

wanting the project to be a bit less niche. And so he partnered with

Bright Agrotech to launch ZipGrow in Canada. And then that's when I came on board.

Since you had been friends for that long, was he ever talking about it and

you were just, you know, maybe while you were playing or something, then keep

Yeah, when he launched his Freight Farm,

I actually ended up buying some produce from him, some kale and some basil in

his first harvest, just to kind of support him. I don't think I was even

aware that kale was a thing back then, but I guess I didn't really

realize the impact of what he was doing. I hadn't dug into it more than

that. I thought it was cool at the time, but I was doing a different

venture at that time, so we didn't really get into it, but that's how it

happened. And then talk a little bit about your time

at ZipGrow. You were there almost 3 years and working in

business development. And you were introduced to ZipGrow

through your partner as well? Yeah, correct. So he basically had

founded that company. He had another partner that was an investor. They were basically running

it alone, but they had just, just started. This was about the exact time that

Bright Agrotech got bought out by Plenty. So they gave the rights to the

entire Bright Agrotech system to ZipGrow Canada, and ZipGrow basically took over what

Bright Agrotech was under a different name. And so I came on

board to head up the sales. They hadn't really done any sales as of yet.

But obviously the marketing and everything from Bright Agrotech carried over, and so we had

quite the launch pad, like I was saying. So everything went really

smoothly there. When I came on board, sales started coming through right away. We had

a list of clients that was really long, and they were— they knew what they

were getting into to begin with, so the education process was

not so large. So the sales started coming in really quickly, and the company grew.

We grew like crazy for the first, uh, like you said, I was there for

about 2 and a half years. I think we got from 2 employees to

nearly 30 in that time. So yeah. Did you come

from a sales background? Yeah, I've done sales previously, and

so that's kind of what I wanted to focus on. They didn't have anybody with

a sales-type background, I guess, so that's what interested me the most. And

so there was a learning curve for me, obviously, but once I got the hang

of it, we really hit the ground running. I recently had a conversation with

Allison Kawa from Artemis, and one of the things she talked about was, um,

rushing a little bit too much into bringing a sales team on board because

in the beginning that was not her skill set. But I think one of the

things you learn as an entrepreneur, the tough thing to learn sometimes is you actually

have to learn how to do all the things yourself first before

you could figure out whether it makes sense to hand off something like that. And

so it's something that I've been thinking of as an entrepreneur as well, like

learning like the basics of selling. And unless you've been

trained on it, or had experience with it. I think most entrepreneurs

are really uncomfortable when it comes to selling, so that's why I was asking, you

know, how long you'd been doing it as well. Yeah, that's actually— it's

strange, it always kind of came natural to me. It's really like my favorite thing.

I think I just like connecting and making new relationships and bonding with people. And

so there's something to it that there's a really personal aspect.

Obviously with this, there's a bonus of you're selling something that's actually helping to

heal the world, and so That obviously helps a lot.

But yeah, I was always pretty good at it. I was fortunate, the opportunity

when it came, obviously everything just went so well. And the staff that we

hired to help grow Zipgrow was out of this world. Everyone was such a team

player and it was a really good atmosphere. So I think that obviously

translated into the success that we had. Do you remember the first thing you ever

sold? Yeah, the first thing that I did sell was about a month and a

half in, and it was a complete farm package that we had just basically

redesigned from Brad AgriTek, and it went to Kansas, I

believe. Was this something that you were doing since you were a child?

Did you have a lemonade stand growing up? No, no, I

definitely did not. Yeah, I didn't envision myself landing here,

but as soon as we started, I knew right away this was for me and

that I would be in business for the rest of my life, definitely.

What was different about working at ZipGrow than any of the previous

engagements you had? Because it feels like you had more of a vested interest in

the success of ZipGrow. Yeah, I think I just saw

a future for myself there. Obviously, when I came on, I was kind of on

the ground floor. So my ideas were valued in a way that I felt like

they maybe hadn't been in previous positions. You know, my opinion was

taken seriously. And I obviously, I think that's what

basically everyone aspires to have in a workplace. So it really was

nice to be able to contribute something and then to see the

efforts when you're starting in a tiny company like this and then

growing it to the scale that we did in such a short period of time.

It's a really amazing feeling to see that the effort that you contribute every day

is leading to something really tangible that you can, that you can see. And

had you had prior experience in working for like a bigger company, like a

corporation with like hundreds or thousands of employees? I had,

but I, I always thought I, I would be able to climb the ladder

and succeed a little bit more than I had been given the opportunity to. And

it seemed like some of these companies, because I hadn't gotten in on the ground

floor, it was harder to get the opportunity to show that you were capable

of being in the upper echelon, so to say. And then so with this one,

the way it worked out, I was able to climb the ranks and kind of

stay at the top. And so it really made

me want to stick around and made me want to give it my all. I've

heard from people that have had experience in corporate, and I was in corporate almost

20 years as well, so I can definitely relate, that once you're in the startup

environment, there's no looking back. There's no way you can go

to like the regiment of having like the meetings and the bosses and the different

levels of management because it feels like it, and you can Tell me if this

is true, but at Zipgrow, it feels like every day is a new challenge and

a new experience. Yeah, that's absolutely what I loved about it. So every

single day, especially in the beginning, it just seems like there's 300 new problems to

solve. And so you never have the same, the same day

twice. And every little win is just so

monumental at that stage. Just, you know, closing a tiny sale

or just bringing the right person on board, or every day there's just tiny

little challenges, but solving those problems keeps your day so entertaining,

and the days just fly by because every day is something brand new.

And you were learning the industry at the same time. So talk a little bit

about, you know, how that was, because not only do you need to execute on

your day-to-day responsibilities but also learn about the industry

you're in as well. Yeah, so I was a little possessed, I

guess you could say, when I came into it. I love to learn

and I love to read, and so I just found every article I could about

every single company, and I just dug in And then my

co-founder is also, he's been in the industry a lot longer than I have. And

so I just picked his brain day in and day out. I think I was

driving him a bit crazy in the beginning, but it led to some pretty good

successes. So probably worth it in the long run. Yeah, I can imagine in the

beginning you were probably asking him, how do you do this? And why do you

do this? And why do we do this? And what's this about? Yeah, that's

exactly how it was. So you're 2 and a half

years into ZipGrow. Tell me when the idea for

Cultivated started to brew. So even though things were going really well at

Zipgrow, unfortunately, the product is fairly niche and can't

grow everything. And we were getting an infinite amount of inquiries.

It was really crazy the amount of people who were looking to get into this

industry. But so we had to turn away customers all the time because

they were looking to accomplish a goal that the Zipgrow system couldn't accomplish.

And so even though the system works fine and has its applications,

we're wondering, you know, how do we solve this problem where These people want

to come into the industry and then I have to send them away to a

competitor. And so that's how the idea was born to start and

flip the model on its head, so to speak, of just partnering with all the

best in the agtech space and then reselling, acting kind of as a reseller and

educational tool for the people getting into the industry. Usually getting into the

industry, the hardest component is that, like you said, it's really new. It's

really hard to find the information. So you might have a goal of feeding your

city with kale and basil, but you don't know which system is best at doing

that. And having been around this long, we know which systems perform which

tasks. And what is best for you. So when the customer comes to us, we

advise them on that and we get paid on the back end. So our services

are free to the customer, so they know they're getting an unbiased opinion regardless of

what they're looking to accomplish. For the benefit of the listener, can you

describe what Cultivated does and what your

services are? Sure. So our main service is we

just basically act as brokers. We've partnered with about 40 of the best companies in

the space from hydroponic, aquaponic, aeroponics,

container farms, lighting companies, CO2 generators, basically the whole

spectrum. So we aim to be a one-stop shop where you can come to us

and basically preach to us what your goals are in the industry, whether

you want to grow something or you want to do something in a remote location,

and then we find the best application for you. We do that service for free,

and then we make our suggestions based on what you're looking to accomplish

and Then once the sale is closed, we get paid on the backend from the

distributor who we've partnered with. And talk a little bit about

the early days as you were thinking up the idea, because the model that

comes to mind, and I've had on season 1 Henry Gordon-Smith of

Agriqitecture, and I know that's— he does some business, does some consulting

services as well, as well as mapping out some ideas. There seems to be

a bit of overlap, and I don't know if you've had this question before or

if you can explain what some of the parallels are there. Yeah, I feel

like their model is kind of the reverse of ours in a sense.

So, I'm not 100% positive, but from what I can tell, they basically

will do consulting on your project based on your goals and then charge you for

that, and then they don't get paid on the back end. So, we just figured

the majority of people getting into the industry are looking to

start a farm that's smaller and local, and so maybe they don't have the funds

to pay for the consulting upfront. And we really want to help people get into

the industry. Regardless of what system you're buying, you're being a part of the solution.

And so we really want to make sure that people who are coming in are

getting the right information and the right education. Unfortunately,

we've seen a lot of farms close within a year of them opening because they

were not properly educated into what they were getting into. And so that's really

the bridge that— or the gap that we wanted to bridge.

So talk about a typical engagement when

farmers are coming to you. How much experience do they have? How much handholding do

you do? And, you know, talk a little bit about what those early

conversations look like. So there's generally about 3

different types of clients. The first is somebody who's

tired of their 9 to 5, looking to break into this industry and do something

that they would be passionate about. They usually have absolutely

no clue where to start, and that's where we come in. That's kind of one

of the major points of why we started this. And so those conversations

take a little while. Just based on how much information they need to know.

And that's why we basically just start every conversation with asking them what their goal

is. Do you want to feed your entire city? Do you want to feed your

family? Do you want to feed— what is the goal? What is the end goal?

And then from that, I can start to spin off some ideas, and then whichever

one interests them, we can kind of dig into that one more and more until

we find the right fit. And then we have customers coming from traditional

ag who are seeing that this is now kind of an undeniable thing that it's

growing and that they want to at least explore it to not fall behind and

to see if there is some benefit to having partially outdoor

and indoor ag. Those conversations are a little bit simpler because they understand ag as

an industry, and so that's a little bit of a different conversation.

And then we have the mega corporations where we're dealing with huge, huge,

huge projects, plenty-sized farms at

100,000+ square feet where they're looking to feed

You know, entire cities from one project. So we're

consulting on quite a few large projects at that, but for the most part, it's

people looking to leave their 9-to-5s from what we've seen. Those little—

I don't want to call them little farms, but looking to feed their local communities

and make a direct impact where they live. Yeah, that's really interesting

because I think people sometimes underestimate the impact that you can have

by starting small with some of these container farms. And Do

you get a sense that people are coming at it from people who have been

entrepreneurs before? You mentioned 9 to 5, but maybe they had

started a small business or a franchise before, or are they literally coming in

where this is the first time they're going to be in business for themselves? A

lot, it's the first time they're going to be in business for themselves. There's something

romantic about this industry where when you see the plants growing indoors, I don't

know, it's the same. I fell in love right away when I saw it, and

I feel like there's a lot of that. And you can see it online, but

seeing it upfront and right in your face is— there's just something

to love about it where you can feel like you're really actually making

a change in the world. And then when you really learn about the problems, which

I wasn't very educated on, unfortunately, beforehand, of how much water

shortage there is in the world and how there's no more arable land, population will

grow by 50% by 2050, and we need to grow 100% more

food. These are problems that cannot be addressed in any other way.

So this industry is coming whether you like it or not. And I think that

people are realizing that. It's time to adapt now because we're

running out of time. How much of it do you see as

an opportunity for a company like Cultivated to actually

provide more education for people about what the opportunities are?

Because if you're new to this industry, and you're, to your

point, discovering it like you did the first time, there's probably a lot of questions

you have, and probably a lot of material you can provide for people

before they even come to you to say, like, is this something you've been thinking

of? Well, you should probably ask yourself like these 10 questions or something like that.

Yeah, so we're developing materials like that right now. Our team is still

relatively small. And so it's been, you know,

it's a good problem to have, but there's always more work, more work that can

be completed. And so we actually do have somebody who's

making these educational components for us right now. We're launching our own YouTube, we've got

all our social medias that's pumping out educational information all day long.

We're really aiming to be that educational component because one of the

biggest issues is that when you come into the industry, If you

don't know and you just jump in headfirst, there's a large

chance that you might not succeed because you don't know what you're getting yourself into.

And that romance component really can lead you to believe that, like, wow, this

is gonna be so simple, it's automated, I'm just gonna grow, all these plants are

gonna grow themselves, and, you know, I'll feed my community. But there's still a

lot of hard work that goes into this. I think one of the things new

farmers that come into this industry, or may not realize

is in addition to learning all the intricacies of how to grow

and how to maintain and how to, you know, keep the lights on, so to

speak, once you do have a crop, you actually have to go sell it

somewhere if you're not using it to feed a specific audience.

And I'm wondering if, you know, you address those, those challenges that people may have.

Absolutely. So we have also a few different packages that

we offer. More than just what we're doing here. We found

another issue, like you just mentioned, was that a lot of people will be really

good at the farming component when they get into it, even though they have no

experience, but they won't be so good at going to sell, or less interested in

going to sell, or the complete opposite— they don't really want to grow it

once they get their hands dirty, but they really love going and selling the mission.

And so you really need to marry the two together. So we

offer farmers as a service We have about 4 or

5 farmers on staff right now who have been growing in hydroponic systems for a

few years, and basically we'll rent them to you for 3 months to a year,

or even as a full-time position. So when you're investing this money,

if you want to train yourself or to train somebody else to be your farmer,

we'll send somebody there to make sure that there are no hiccups in the first

3 to 6 months of operation so that you're successful. And then we even offer

marketing packages where we'll do your branding, we'll do your logo, we'll explain to you

how to go into grocery stores and sell because we've done it in the past

with our other companies. So like I said, we're really aiming I think we've got

some pretty ambitious goals, but we want to hit the full spectrum where we can

support you head to toe regardless of what your plan is. Yeah, that's

really helpful because— and I'm wondering if that's the, the salesperson

inside of you, you know, thinking of like all that experience you have and how

you can educate people and probably help them work through that

nervousness, especially if it's like we— as we talked about earlier, sales

is not a skill that most people are born with. Yeah, absolutely.

It's a lot to to chew, I guess, but

there's so much to learn and I feel like we've done the

legwork ourselves so that we can adequately prepare you

for what you're getting into. And so it's really, it's a

complex kind of procedure to get from point A to point B.

And we want to make sure that when you're getting into this, you really know

what you're in for. And so we want to address everything

from the growing to the sales side, to the marketing side, because you

need every component to go right for you to be successful. And so that's

why we wanted to offer all these packages like the farming and like the marketing,

because we know that obviously not everyone is great at everything. My partner and I

are polar opposites of each other. I'm really good at the sales and

business and marketing development stuff, and he's really good at the technical

side and the analysis and all of that. And so

we don't work without each other in a sense, and we understand that just because

you're starting a farm and just because you're passionate about the industry, it doesn't mean

that you have every single thing available to you and you're great at

every aspect of it. And so that's why we want to be able to have

somebody on our staff who's able to offer you support regardless of what

portion you may not be so good at. It's interesting, the farmers as a service

that you're offering. Do you now have people who are interested in

working in that capacity for you? It's almost like freelance farmers. And so,

yeah, you probably have people excited to try that out. Yeah, we

are hiring for that position. We cannot get enough farmers on

staff for that. We have so many requests, almost every single request,

especially for the larger projects where they're going to need multiple farmers,

they are investing so much money they are incapable of

taking the chance on just hiring somebody new. The problem with this is that

it's hard to find somebody with experience in vertical farms. So we're actually planning on

launching a farm here where we will be able to train, train new farmers

so that we can send them off. And we're actually partnering with another company, possibly

in the near future, to offer training at their facility near us. So

we are always looking for people in that capacity. But it is a pretty cool

opportunity. We at ZipGrow operated a farm

for a full year in Switzerland, and we were sending farmers there on a 90-day

visa to operate it. And so it's a pretty cool opportunity to get paid

to go live abroad and grow plants. So yeah.

What's interesting about that model is for people that are interested in getting into the

industry, it's a way to get hands-on experience and

travel to a different country, but also like learn because probably

each installation, whether from a container farm to the big

mega farms, they're working with different technologies, you know,

different tools. I can only imagine, like, the resume you build

up as one of these freelance farmers if you start to work on these multiple

projects. You know, you do a year or two of that and you start to

become pretty attractive to some of these other companies, I would imagine. Absolutely.

The consulting fees that, that these guys can command is crazy,

and there's such a need for them because the industry is blowing up so fast,

and there's not enough of these individuals out there. So anyone going

to be a farmer somewhere, it's going to be a really lucrative position. And like

you said, you get to— if you're not tied down, you can travel the world

and work with all these different systems. And it's a pretty cool,

pretty cool thing. Very nice. The second type you mentioned was the

folks that are coming from traditional agriculture. When they

see these systems, you know, how much exposure have they

had, and are they surprised that really what is

possible with controlled environment agriculture? Yeah, so when I

started in the industry and we would bump into traditional ag,

they seemed a little standoffish and they didn't want to admit that there could possibly

be something better out there. But indoor ag was

never meant to replace outdoor ag.

It's, you know, it's something that needs to work in conjunction with outdoor ag

so that we can all get to the common goal of saving the

planet and growing more food and being healthier and fixing food supply chains.

There are a a lot of issues that are being addressed by indoor ag, but

it's never going to replace outdoor ag. So, in the beginning, I think there

was a little bit of animosity there, but it seems like it's coming

around for the most part. What's different in the

engagements you have with this second tier of folks coming from

traditional agriculture? Because the people who are coming from a

9-to-5, it's almost like they have to learn a lot of different skill sets.

So, when you're talking

to the people who are from traditional ag, I guess they're looking at numbers

and just kind of the bottom line a little bit more. They already know how

to sell the produce, so they don't have any issues with that. If they're growing

lettuce or what have you in a field, they already have the distributors and they

have the contracts to sell. So, whether it's being grown indoors or outdoors, that's not

going to change. So, they're basically just looking to get to that bottom line. line

and see, okay, what is the return going to be? Is this going to be

better? What crops can I move indoors versus what I'm growing now?

Or maybe they're growing something that can't be grown indoors, but they would like to

branch off into something that can be grown indoors. And so the conversations are

a little more straightforward, I guess. Yeah. Has it been far enough

along where you're starting to see that conversion of, you know,

their traditionally arable land that's been converted into

either a hybrid or a fully converted over model of indoor

ag? We haven't converted anyone fully away from their outdoor ag,

but we have had some people launch in conjunction. So they'll have their traditional

farm and then they'll have converted a large barn into an indoor ag

project where they can grow something else. I think it's more of kind of an

exploratory phase for them right now, but we're hoping to see some

real adaptation there in the future. And then the third tier that you mentioned was

the megacorps, the mega farms, and what's different about the types of

conversations you're having with them at that level? So these conversations are

obviously a lot different. They're looking to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in some

cases. Most of them will be somebody who's a huge food retailer and wondering

if they can grow their own produce instead of buying it from somebody else

and kind of skip the middleman and become that themselves to cut down on their

margins. These conversations obviously take a really long time.

Applications at that size are a lot different, and we're still kind of figuring

that out as an industry, I would say. But we are

getting a ton of interest from huge businesses like that, a ton, especially like

large grocery store chains that are looking to potentially grow their own produce

and distributors. And they're really looking to crack the code and see if,

you know, big companies like that obviously care about their bottom line a lot, and

if they can make a dent in that, they'll listen to anything.

Yeah, because in the same way you're training, like we talked about the farming as

a service, there's nothing to say that they just couldn't have a

farmer on staff who could basically

manage their own farm for theirs and to your point,

save a lot in terms of— and also just the whole supply chain becomes

incredibly shortened. The produce is actually fresher. They have that

direct connection to the source of their food, which I think is something they're probably

finding that's attractive to them. Yeah, exactly. So they would be buying their own supply

of food so they don't have to worry about growing too much or growing too

little or even the sales process or any of that. So they're basically

skipping a step there and then The average food, I

believe, or the average produce travels about 2,000 miles anywhere in the

world right now. So, by the time you get your lettuce or what have you,

it's lost its nutrients. The shelf life is 4 or 5 days. Whereas, when

you're harvesting it here, you can cut a head of lettuce or kale and put

it in the fridge for 25, 30 days and it's still edible, which is a

concept that's so foreign to people because they've never known differently.

That's fascinating. Does any example come to mind of some of the

conversations you've had recently out of either one of those tiers that's a recent success

story? We just sold a fairly large farm in

Canada to somebody. I believe he

just retired from his job and he just wanted to do good in his

community. And he said, you know, I've got some money saved up, I'd like to

hire some local kids, and I've been looking at this industry. I

think maybe his daughter had been growing in hydroponics just a little bit and kind

of getting her feet wet and he wanted to support her. And so, we just

went through the process over the last month and a half, it was relatively quick

process actually, and that will be installed in the very near

future. So he's just looking to— he's already talking about expansion,

but he's really excited to get going and be able to hire kids and kind

of show that there's a better way of doing things. That's really fascinating and

exciting. Can you talk a little bit about the partnerships now? Because you've mentioned

several companies that you've worked with and you continue to work with. As you

were starting Cultivated, you were mentioning yourself that you were

relatively new in this industry. How were those early conversations happening

and how were some of these partners looking to cultivate it and trusting

that this was an organization that was going to be around for a while, that

this was someone that, you know, they could partner with, especially for their own growth?

Yeah, so when I was at ZipPro, I was fortunate enough to go to a

lot of conferences and meet some of these other companies, and we also worked in

conjunction with some of them. So we wanted to offer greenhouse solutions, which is

how we partnered with Ceres. I had had some conversations with them, plus I have

a lot of friends in the industry just from kind of bumping into them. And

so we also worked with different lighting companies that also wanted us to be a

reseller. And so once we got the ball rolling, we actually found that companies

were reaching out to us more than I had to go and knock on their

door. So now we are getting inquiries all the time from

companies saying, hey, we wanna get listed, we wanna join, we love what you're doing.

I mean, they're essentially getting a salesman without the, without the

salary. So pretty win-win for everybody. I think that's one

of the things, this show actually launched in the middle of COVID and I think

that's one of the things that the industry has been mentioning that they miss the

most, the conferences and the ability to meet, you know,

fellow folks in the— fellow farmers as well. I'm sure it's

been a while since you've met some of your colleagues in person. Is that one

of the things that you're looking forward to as well? Yeah, we're really excited to

get to a conference, especially with the new company. We haven't been to a conference

as of yet, except we've done a few online ones, but it doesn't have that

same feel and that same appeal. So Cultivated is hitting

the ground running, so to speak. Can you talk about plans for growth. You're

still a small team right now, and how you think about

growing the team, which, you know, departments you're focused on,

and what, if anything, you learned from your experiences at Zipgrow on

how to make those hires the right way. Yeah, we have a

team in mind, I guess you could say. We conducted interviews before we

even really got the ball rolling, just to be able to have people ready to

go, and we were able to grow out of where we are now. We actually

just closed a round of investment a few weeks ago just

to mostly use that money for marketing dollars and to grow the team a little

bit. So, we're really excited. I think you're going to see some really big growth

out of us in the near future. The majority of people we're bringing on, like

we said, are farmers, but most of those are contractual. So, they also

help on the education side and develop those materials. And then, mostly just

a sales team because the entire model kind of revolves

around that. And then obviously we have some marketing and social media

that's also part of the team. And so how do you think about

the advances in all the technology aspects

of vertical farming, right? Because there's advances in, in the hydroponics, there's advances

in lighting, in the climate control. Do

you feel like it's really just relying on the

partners that you're working with to, you know, maintain like best

practices, and then you as sort of the broker to

understand, based on what people's needs are at the time they come

to you, which of your partners are going to be a good fit depending on

what technologies they're working on? Yeah, so we've been in the industry long

enough to be able to have a good understanding of what our partners

do. We've vetted most of the technology. We've flown out when

possible to go vet the tech and to make sure that the partners we

were partnering with were the right people. But there's definitely

We tried to pick partners based on who would be able to evolve with us.

So most of these companies are looking to, you know, not

be stagnant. They want to evolve, they want to update their products, they know the

industry is moving really quickly. And so that's kind of how we tried to pick

our first partners. It's just anyone who is willing to adapt. So we've worked

with some companies where even at ZipGrow, we were discussing that we

needed some changes in controller or what have you. And so some

young, hungry companies were able to adapt and follow the trends of the industry

is who we really want to be working with. Who do you follow, or how

do you keep on with trends and eye towards like what—

because it's, to your point, it's changing so fast, technology's changing so fast, a

lot of people come, new players coming into the space. So what are you doing

as an organization or even individually to keep up to date with what's

happening? Yeah, it's a little complex for that. Like I said, the

team is, is not where we need it to be as of yet. But we

have really good relationships with everyone that we've partnered with. You know, I know

everyone really well personally, and we speak all the time. I'm on the phone

pretty much from the time I open my eyes until I close them again. And

so the conversations are really good. All of our partners are

really willing to adapt. And so it makes my life really easy.

Everyone in this industry seemingly that I've met is just like so kind and

so easy to work with. And it's made the transition

so simple. We're hoping that's the trend that continues, and we're seeing

more and more partners and more companies. We want everyone to succeed. Like I said,

everything and everyone getting into this industry is looking to become

part of the solution. And so, we just want to help in any

way that we can. When you think about the pace at which you want to

grow Cultivated, you did mention an initial focus is going to be on

the sales team. Is there anything else that you feel like you should be looking

out for, or anything that might be an area of concern? And, you know, obviously,

there's always the worry that you might grow too fast and not make the right

hires. Yeah, we definitely don't want to do that. We're, we kind of want to

make sure that we don't outpace ourselves. So we're pretty

careful with that. My partner had, I think this is his 4th

agtech venture. And we've been in business for a little while now.

And we've found some pretty good success by taking our time. So we're just

looking to kind of replicate that and just to make sure that we We're

really cautious and that we do grow with the right team. We've been

fortunate, very fortunate in the past of really hiring the right people.

And so the team that we have right now is amazing, and we have a

couple people in sight that we'd like to bring on in the near future. And

so we're hoping that that'll be the right fit as well. Having

been new to the industry and literally coming up to speed very, very

quickly, this is now your second agtech company that you're

working in. Can you think of any relationships or any

people that you've met that would fall under the role of like mentor Or someone

who's helped you along the way? My co-founder, for the most part, since he got

me into the industry. But we had conversations with a lot of other

companies. Nicola at Contain, I was actually just speaking

to her earlier about this company. Yeah, she's been really awesome to work with. And

so there have been quite a few people. Everyone's really open to having the

conversation. It seems like this industry is growing really quickly,

but no one is really cutthroat. I think everyone really understands that It's for the

greater good. And so people are generally pretty good about helping each other.

Yeah. And I wonder how great that is because it's not something that you hear

of a lot of industries. And I think it's exciting probably when people

understand that you can pick up the phone and call one of your colleagues in

the space and ask them for advice. Because I think the consistency that I've

seen throughout these conversations is that everyone feels like everyone else is

needed to solve this food shortage problem and this You know,

distribution problem, and there's a whole list of things that can be fixed.

And I think the more people that are in the space, and that's what I

hear consistently, the better for everyone. Yeah, I think

maybe it's because the industry is still so new, but it just feels like there's

room for all of us. So everything has been simple

because of that, I think, but there's still so much room to grow.

There's no need for anybody to really be cutthroat or manipulative in any of these

situations. So it's really nice to be able to call even a competitor

or whoever and just have open discussions about something like this. So

we've really had no issues in launching this, and even when I was at

ZipPro, we never really had any issues with anybody else. So it's kind of

nice to see. Maybe it's just, uh, you know, I haven't been in

business super long, so I've been pretty lucky to have everything go so

smoothly this far. But we're super excited for what the future

That's great to hear. What's a tough question you've had to ask yourself

recently? I guess maybe just in terms of how quickly

we're growing. I think we kind of touched on this too, but just being cautious

that we don't— or that we do it the right way. It's easy to

get blinded by how quickly you grow. So, you

know, we make a few sales and we raise some money, and it's easy to

just think of jumping right in headfirst and just

hiring a bunch of people and going all out and seeing how

fast you can get there, but it's really important to stay grounded and to make

sure that you do it the right way so that you have continued success and

you're not just kind of a one-hit wonder, which is what we really want to

achieve here. Yeah, that's a very good point. You mentioned earlier that

you were an avid reader. Do you still have time to read? So

yeah, I kind of have the problem where every time I go to a

bookstore or walk by a bookstore, I'll buy a bunch of books and they just

end up on the shelf. Because I have enough time to read them all. And

most of my reading now is consumed by stuff in the agtech industry, so

more of a kind of an articles than novels. But every once in a

while, I manage to sneak one in. What's something you've read recently?

I actually just read Houdini's biography. Oh, very nice. Yeah,

do you like biographies? I will read basically anything I can

find. Have you picked up all the cool tools

for how to make your reading more efficient? I'm a bit of a productivity nerd,

so there's a Chrome plugin called Instapaper. So

if you're reading a blog post, you can literally tag it and it'll save it

for later. I've used Blinkist, I think it's called, where it'll just

like flash the one word. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. And then you can read like

300 words a minute or something. Yeah. Yeah, I used that for a bit.

It's like, it's a little tiring, but yeah, it's like kind of an

information overload. But it's cool that we're heading towards stuff like

that. Well, there's Instapaper, and then another tool that I like is Readwise.

Readwise connects to all your reading services. So Pocket, Instapaper,

Kindle. So when you make a highlight in a Kindle book,

it'll surface in your Readwise. And then Readwise is an app on your

phone, and every day it says, hey, do you want to look at all your

highlights from all the books you've read previously? And so it's a nice way to

kind of like resurface like the best parts of the books that you like.

Yeah, that's cool. I'll have to check that out for sure. So, well, I want

to thank you for taking the time. I'd like to also announce that, uh, We

are partnering with Cultivated for season 3 to sponsor the Vertical

Farming Podcast, so I want to thank you and Eric for that, and looking

forward to spreading the word about what you guys are doing at Cultivated. So

we'll have some more to come from that in a future episode. But

what has you most excited when you think about the future of vertical farming?

I think we're most excited, honestly, about the education component. We just want to

make sure that everyone who's getting into this is getting the right fit for

them. Everyone who's getting into this has a passion to do good,

and so they deserve to be educated properly so that they have the best

chance of success. And so that's really the main component we want to focus

on. That's what we're most excited about. We have all this knowledge, and it was

not super easy to come by, and we are able to speed up that

process and really educate everyone coming in. So that's what we're looking to do.

So where's the best place for folks to learn more about Cultivated

and to connect with either you or Eric? So if you just go to

cultivated.com, you can see a list of our product offerings and reach out to us

that way. But we've got Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,

everything. We post on there just some little educational tidbits, posts about

our partners, and then we've got some press releases coming soon

for our funding and just announcing all of our partnerships. We're still relatively new, so

we're trying to get all that out. It's a lot, but it's exciting.

And it seems like with this new influx of the investment, we'll probably see

more of Cultivated from a marketing perspective as well. Yeah, absolutely. The

majority of the funding is going directly into marketing. We just want to get the

word out there, we're here to help. So, well, Eric, thanks again for

taking the time. I really appreciate you sharing your story and the story of Cultivated

with our audience. Thanks for having me, it was fun. So

thanks again to Eric for coming on the show, and thanks again to Cultivated for

being a fantastic sponsor for season 3. If you're looking into a vertical

farm and don't know where to start or which technology would suit your needs, Make

sure you reach out to them today. The best part about it is that their

service is free, and it's because they work on behalf of their partners.

So head on over to cultivated.com, just leave off the last E.

That's C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-D.com. Fullcast production and

marketing provided by Fullcast. Sign up for a free podcast brainstorm at

fullcast.co/vfp15.

Another reminder, if you're enjoying the show, please leave us a rating and a review

at ratethispodcast.com/review. We'll be sure to read

those out on future episodes. I do realize there's a lot of calls to

action at the end of this episode, but one more I mentioned last

week is the new chat tool we're testing out called Bunches.

If you go to bunches.chat as the URL, forward slash

vertical farming, we've had a couple people and listeners join recently. So

it's an experiment to see if we can engage more as a community. Tune in

next week for my conversation with Niko Kivioha, CEO of

NetLed. Until we meet again, here's to your health. Thanks for

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

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

visit verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There, you can

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

published.

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