Shownotes
Episode Summary
Caleb Wilkins, co-founder of the innovative vertical farming startup Renaissance AG, sits down with Harry Duran, to discuss their revolutionary approach to creating safe and sustainable livestock feed. Listen in to learn how Renaissance AG is creating a consistent, reliable, and on-farm premium feed for livestock producers, as well as tackling the challenges of food independence and security.
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Key Takeaways
- Utah-based vertical farming startup, Renaissance AG, is leading the way in innovative agricultural practices
- Co-founder Caleb Wilkins and his partners, aim to address the challenges of food, water, and electricity access
- Their focus on forages as a solution to inconsistent and unpredictable livestock feed costs
- Created an on-farm forage production system to automate the process of sprouting grains for animal feed
- Overcame challenges such as inefficiency and unpredictability in their initial product design
- Working on innovations to improve delivery and quality of seed used in fodder, and creating targeted feeds for different animals
Tweetable Quotes
“That's something that we care immensely about, we think the AG producer deserves a very meaningful place in the global conversations and that the AG producer is close to the ground, they're close to the production of life, and they have a unique view in this world.”
“We think there's room for a lot of other seed types to be included to target feed certain types of animals.”
“We have come quite a way since then, even though it's only been 2 years and 9 months. We have a machine that will produce 16,000 pounds of feed in a day."
Resources Mentioned
Caleb's Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebwilkins/
Caleb's Website - https://renaissanceag.com/
Caleb's Twitter - https://twitter.com/AgRenaissance
Caleb's Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/renaissanceagriculture/
Caleb's Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/renaissanceagriculture
Caleb's Email - [email protected]
Caleb's Youtube -https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJREMQ6YTBVzKqY5pcBLAUg
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Mentioned in this episode:
2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews
2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews
Transcripts
$680 million poured into precision ag last year.
Speaker:Autonomous weeding robots dominated, and John Deere made 2 acquisitions in 3
Speaker:months. A food company, not an equipment maker, bought a
Speaker:robotics startup to protect its own supply chain. The deals are
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Speaker:Precision Agriculture Intelligence Report From iGrow News is now
Speaker:available. Get your copy today at
Speaker:igrownews.com/precision. If you are starting a vertical
Speaker:farm and don't know where to begin or which technology would suit your needs,
Speaker:then reach out to the experts at Cultivated. As indoor farm brokers, they
Speaker:help connect you to the right technology and ensure your project is successful.
Speaker:Best of all, their service is free because they work on behalf of their partners.
Speaker:Visit cultivated.com to learn more. And that's spelled
Speaker:C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-D.com,
Speaker:or click the link in the show notes. Our ideology is not
Speaker:that ag needs to be disrupted in this massive way and that no one knows
Speaker:what they're doing and the future is in technology that disconnects
Speaker:animals from the program and that disconnects the consumer from a
Speaker:knowledge of where their products come from. We don't think that's where
Speaker:the future is really strong. Where we think the future's really strong is looking
Speaker:backwards to these animal husbandry
Speaker:practices that are well-worn, well-established, and
Speaker:leveraging technology to assist in those
Speaker:well-understood, well-established programs.
Speaker:Welcome to the Vertical Farming Podcast, weekly conversations
Speaker:with fascinating CEOs, founders, and agtech visionaries.
Speaker:Join us every week as we dive deep into the world of vertical
Speaker:farming with your host, Harry Duran.
Speaker:Vertical Farming Podcast, Season 7. Regular listeners, welcome back. So
Speaker:happy to have you back each and every week to listen to the show. I
Speaker:truly appreciate the folks that have been there from the beginning, the folks that just
Speaker:discovered it 1 or 2 seasons in, or folks that have recently
Speaker:discovered it, and this is maybe your 2nd or 3rd or 5th episode. If you
Speaker:are new, if this is the first time in this episode, got into
Speaker:your hands and into your earbuds, then I'm so happy that you're here, and I
Speaker:hope you'll keep coming back as we share some of the
Speaker:most fascinating interviews from CEOs and founders of the leading
Speaker:vertical farming companies from around the world. I'm your host, Harry Duran.
Speaker:In case you missed last week's episode, we had a great round 2 visit from
Speaker:Tobias Peggs, who's the CEO and co-founder of Square Roots.
Speaker:If you're not familiar with them, they're taking an innovative approach to creating
Speaker:not only a sustainable but a resilient business And something that Tobias talked about was
Speaker:the company's focus on reducing carbon emissions and environmentally friendly
Speaker:packaging, which is something that doesn't get discussed a lot, and I'm seeing more
Speaker:and more folks talking about it now. We also talked about the importance of staying
Speaker:strong and focused on delivering products that customers actually want.
Speaker:So I really love the fact that Tobias came back, and we had a brief
Speaker:meetup in person at AgTech NYC last year,
Speaker:and it was nice to see his face again, and hopefully I'll see him at
Speaker:a future conference as well. This week, speaking of conferences, I was at AgriMe
Speaker:conference in Dubai in October of 2022,
Speaker:and courtesy of the Cultivated team, I met up with Caleb Wilkins,
Speaker:who's the co-founder of Renaissance Ag. In this conversation,
Speaker:we discussed their revolutionary approach to creating safe and sustainable livestock
Speaker:feed, which is a first for this show. Caleb talks about their commitment to
Speaker:creating a consistent, reliable, and on-farm premium feed for livestock producers,
Speaker:as well as tackling the challenges of food independence and security, which as you
Speaker:might hear in these conversations is a common theme. It was great because we had
Speaker:a brief chat and a brief connection in Dubai, and I knew I wanted
Speaker:to have him on the show. So I'm glad we were able to make the
Speaker:timing work. I say it all the time, if you're loving the show, leave us
Speaker:a rating and review. And I'm grateful to Marcos Enriquez from Spain who
Speaker:left us a 5-star review. He says, I highly recommend this podcast.
Speaker:Living in a country where vertical farming is still in its infancy, I have to
Speaker:say that I've been motivated and inspired by most of the interviews I hear week
Speaker:after week. One thing that clearly stands out is Harry's ability to bring together
Speaker:experts and leaders from different parts of the world, but all with a passion for
Speaker:vertical farming. Muchísimas gracias, Marcos, for that
Speaker:review. And again, if you want to have yours read out, by all means,
Speaker:leave us a rating and a review at ratethispodcast.com/vfp.
Speaker:Nothing brings a smile to my face like reading those out on the air.
Speaker:Excited for several conferences on the docket this year.
Speaker:So I'll be excited to connect with you, my fellow listeners,
Speaker:or past guests at Indoor AgCon, Indoor
Speaker:I'll be at the VertiFarm conference in
Speaker:Dortmund, and whatever else might come up this year,
Speaker:we'll see what happens. But hopefully, if we do get an opportunity to meet in
Speaker:person, please by all means come up and say hi. Okay, before we get into
Speaker:this uninterrupted conversation with Caleb, here's a few
Speaker:words from the amazing folks that support this show. This episode is brought to you
Speaker:by Indoor AgCon 2023. I'm so happy to have
Speaker:been working with the team last year. Indoor AgCon
Speaker:2022 was my very first indoor farming conference,
Speaker:so it was really eye-opening. Opening for me, so I'll always be grateful to the
Speaker:team there for rolling out that carpet for me. And I really had a
Speaker:good time meeting a lot of past guests and excited to join them again this
Speaker:year. Entering its 10th year in a row, it's the largest trade show and
Speaker:conference for vertical farming and CEA, and it's returning to Caesars Forum
Speaker:Conference Center in Las Vegas on February 27th and 28th of
Speaker:2023. Once again, they'll be co-located with the National Growers Association
Speaker:Show as well, which is a really good fit for them. The conference keeps growing,
Speaker:and this year it's doubled in size. The expo floor now has more than
Speaker:170 booths filled with new product resources and solutions
Speaker:to explore. You'll hear from experts including CEOs, growers,
Speaker:investors, and others in the field during this full-scale
Speaker:educational conference. As always, you'll be able to connect with peers, grocers, and other
Speaker:potential new business partners at their great networking events. I haven't even gotten
Speaker:to the best part. The team at Indoor AgCon has given
Speaker:listeners of this show 20% off their full
Speaker:access conference pass. class. All you have to do is use promo code
Speaker:VFP, as in Vertical Farming Podcast, and sign up at
Speaker:indoor.ag. See you there. This year, Vertifarm takes
Speaker:place from September 26th through September 28th at the Exhibition
Speaker:Center in Dortmund, Germany. For those new to Vertifarm, it's the
Speaker:most significant trade fair for next-level farming and new food systems.
Speaker:Their international platform is set to showcase the latest developments in
Speaker:innovative controlled production systems for vegetables, salad crops, herbs,
Speaker:and microgreens, As well as sustainable fish, insect breeding, fruit
Speaker:cultivation, and medicinal plants. Vertifarm is shaping the future of
Speaker:vertical farming and new food systems. Reserve your ticket and learn more at
Speaker:vertifarm.de. That's
Speaker:V-E-R-T-I-F-A-R-M dot D-E. All
Speaker:right, Caleb Wilkins, CEO of Renaissance Ag, thank you
Speaker:so much for joining me on the Vertical Farming Podcast. Yeah,
Speaker:pleasure to be here, Harry. So we're getting really in the
Speaker:weeds with our pre-interview chat. And I realized we weren't
Speaker:recording, so I wanted to make sure we got some of the good stuff on.
Speaker:So you have a co-founder as well. You want to talk a little bit about
Speaker:that relationship as well? Yeah, happy to talk about that relationship. We've known each
Speaker:other for about 12 years. We grew up professionally
Speaker:together, so to speak, in the software space. We both entered
Speaker:software knowing nothing about software, and we left knowing nothing about
Speaker:software. That's the joke because I can't write any code. I mean, a little bit.
Speaker:A very small amount of C++ and HTML, but it usually requires
Speaker:a lot of Google searching and using some of the online
Speaker:resources to copy and paste. So I wouldn't call it any coding. But
Speaker:through that interaction in that early-stage software company,
Speaker:we learned that we both have like a similar approach to
Speaker:why we do things and what we care about. And eventually, you know, we
Speaker:got far enough along in our career that we decided why don't we
Speaker:try to do some of the things that we care about? And from our
Speaker:perspective, you know, we thought it'd be really interesting
Speaker:if we spent our time working on people's access to food, water,
Speaker:and electricity. So we started a little holding company and then we
Speaker:spent, you know, nights and weekends working on, mostly nights,
Speaker:working on our different concepts and our different ideas. And we ended
Speaker:up with Food First. And initially we thought, let's tackle
Speaker:Or try to tackle, you know, not to be who can tackle anything, but we
Speaker:want to try to tackle the last mile, you know, from the grocery store
Speaker:to the table, not to like your pantry or to your
Speaker:fridge, but all the way through to consumption. And there's a
Speaker:lot that goes on there and there's a lot of, there's a tremendous amount of
Speaker:waste that happens. Like I always say about my fridge, food goes
Speaker:to die in my refrigerator. It doesn't get eaten, it goes to die,
Speaker:and then I throw it away and I buy more food and put it in
Speaker:there and let that die. And it turns out that's pretty common. And
Speaker:so, you know, we were focusing on that. And then we, as we got deeper
Speaker:and deeper into things, we realized that it would be probably
Speaker:more meaningful for us to really focus on the beginning of the food supply chain,
Speaker:on livestock producers and assisting
Speaker:livestock producers from a foundational production perspective.
Speaker:But no real, you know, what the world would call expertise in this
Speaker:area. You know, our degrees are not in agriculture. Our degrees are not in animal
Speaker:science or plant biology or horticulture or anything like
Speaker:that. I think I have a degree in psychology. I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker:I never got my diploma. I did walk. I'm not sure if I got my
Speaker:diploma. So I don't know. But my business
Speaker:partner, I don't know if he even got a grade for 9th grade.
Speaker:Maybe he got a grade for 10th grade. I don't know. Something like that. So,
Speaker:you know, we don't leverage our own backgrounds in
Speaker:agriculture to be interested in agriculture. What we leverage is our interest
Speaker:in freedom and our interest in domestic food
Speaker:production to drive our efforts in this
Speaker:space. And that's, you know, as I mentioned, access to food, water, and electricity,
Speaker:we think are incredibly important for everyone anywhere they're at.
Speaker:And so we wanted to focus on trying to make an impact there.
Speaker:And, you know, if we do, awesome. And if we don't, You know, we
Speaker:died trying, I guess, Harry. Yeah, we'll get in,
Speaker:probably dig into a couple of aspects of what you shared there. So where's home
Speaker:for you now? Right now, home is Vineyard,
Speaker:Utah. Have you been to Utah? I have in a previous
Speaker:job experience. I've been to Provo. I think it's Provo.
Speaker:I'm trying to remember where I went. Yeah, Provo is right next door. So there's
Speaker:Provo and it goes up against the foothills and the benches of the
Speaker:Wasatch Mountain range. And then if you go west from
Speaker:Provo, and I'm not talking very far west, I'm like throw a baseball west
Speaker:from Provo, there's Vineyard and then there's Utah Lake. So
Speaker:Utah Lake kind of squeezes this part of the valley fairly
Speaker:tightly. And there's a golf course on
Speaker:Utah Lake that has nice business offices. And so
Speaker:we have our business office here in Utah, in Vineyard, Utah specifically. So
Speaker:very close to where you were. Is that where there's the, like a bowl
Speaker:effect and you get like dust bowls? And I think that's vaguely what I
Speaker:remember. You get a couple of things. You get lake effect snow and some
Speaker:lake effect weather. You know, the water maintains its temperature better than
Speaker:land does. And so you get the dynamics of that impacting
Speaker:snowfall and humidity levels, that type of thing. But you also,
Speaker:because we're in a valley, in a high mountain valley, you get what
Speaker:locally is called inversion. Where you get a warm air layer
Speaker:that traps a cold air layer below, and that cold air layer gets
Speaker:really dirty and it gets filled up with pollution. And in
Speaker:California, we would call it smog, but here it's— we refer to
Speaker:the meteorological phenomenon of inversion.
Speaker:But it's weird because you could be down in the valley and then drive up
Speaker:40 minutes into Park City and it's blue skies. It's
Speaker:a little bit warmer. And it's clear. And then you drive back into the
Speaker:valley and it's like you went into industrial production zone or something.
Speaker:Yeah, that's what I remember. Did you grow up there? No, I grew up in
Speaker:Southern California. I was born in Palm Springs and then I lived in a
Speaker:little town in the high desert called Yucca Valley. And I lived
Speaker:there until I was 14. Then I moved to Atlanta, Georgia. My parents
Speaker:moved us there for my father's job. And then I
Speaker:came to Brigham Young University. In Utah,
Speaker:and then I've stayed. I've lived in both states. I've lived in Atlanta
Speaker:for a couple of stretches, so familiar with that town. And then I lived in,
Speaker:uh, prior to home now, which is Minneapolis, I've lived in LA, but
Speaker:my heart home is New York. So that's where I grew up. Yeah. I was
Speaker:going to ask what you actually want to call home. So New York is where
Speaker:you'd actually call home. Where in New York? Just outside the city, Yonkers, New
Speaker:York is where I grew up. Technically, I was born in El Salvador, but I,
Speaker:my parents brought me over here when I was a year old. As soon as
Speaker:I was eligible to drive, I made my way to New York City and
Speaker:didn't look back. After college, went there, lived in
Speaker:various spots in the city— Upper East Side, East Village, Brooklyn.
Speaker:Yeah, love the energy. Try to get back as often as I can. My folks
Speaker:still live there. Still live there. Yeah. So now the real important question:
Speaker:Mets or Yankees? Yankees,
Speaker:1,000%. The Mets have a terrible uniform.
Speaker:I like the Yankees a lot. I think they make baseball more exciting. I just
Speaker:wish they could win in the postseason a little bit more. I would appreciate that.
Speaker:It's interesting because we got our folks into it. So my mom is like
Speaker:diehard now. She screams at the TV
Speaker:when they're playing. But in '96, when they
Speaker:clinched— the game that they clinched the World Series, we were in
Speaker:Yonkers watching the game. And we got in our cars. We drove
Speaker:down to Yankee Stadium immediately. And we got online because it's still—
Speaker:there was none of that lottery stuff. You just literally get online and you wait
Speaker:for tickets. And so I think we ended up being like 24
Speaker:hours or 26 hours or something like that. So overnight, we had lawn chairs. We
Speaker:lost the lawn chairs during like a midnight like stampede when someone
Speaker:thought like the gates were opening. So it was pretty hectic for a while because
Speaker:it was almost scary because you thought you were gonna get crushed by this sea
Speaker:of people. And our lawn chairs literally got sucked out of our hands. I was
Speaker:like, okay, just keep going. And then when we got to the
Speaker:gate— so this is the next morning, we finally got to the gate, and they're
Speaker:selling out games 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We get to the
Speaker:window and he's like, we only have games 6 and 7. And we're like, all
Speaker:right, we'll take game 6. And as a true Yankee fan, I'm
Speaker:thinking, well, they're going to sweep it, so I'm probably not even going to get
Speaker:to see a World Series game. So for anyone that remembers, they
Speaker:were playing Atlanta, of all people. And Atlanta had a really
Speaker:solid team at that point, so Atlanta won the first 2 games. And we're like,
Speaker:oh, they're gonna get swept. And then the Yankees won
Speaker:3, they won 4, they won 5. So Game 6 is
Speaker:in Yankee Stadium. And so we had, you know, tickets
Speaker:for what could possibly be like the clincher, and they clinched it, and they won
Speaker:the World Series in the old Yankee Stadium. 60,000-plus people
Speaker:like losing their mind. You think it's a solid concrete,
Speaker:you know, stadium and bleachers, but, you know, that starts vibrating. and shaking
Speaker:when you got that many people like going crazy. So that was the pinnacle as
Speaker:a sports and Yankee fan. And I haven't been following as much since,
Speaker:but I feel like I checked off the box in terms of like sports
Speaker:moments for myself. Yeah, I love that. That's a great story, especially when
Speaker:you add in the chaos of losing the lawn chairs. That's a great
Speaker:thing to remember. Do you keep your tickets, your stubs at least? Yeah, I like
Speaker:to think that I did and they're somewhere, but I couldn't I've moved so
Speaker:much, I don't even know where they would be at this time. But it's nice.
Speaker:I have made it to the new stadium as well. So I follow them from
Speaker:afar. And obviously while I'm there with my folks, we get into the games as
Speaker:well. So it's nice. It's just I don't have time to watch any sports. I
Speaker:watched— I think the only sports I watched this year was a couple of in-person
Speaker:games here in Minneapolis. And then I think I watched the US-England
Speaker:soccer game in the World Cup. That's about it.
Speaker:Oh, that wasn't that bad of a game. No, it was a good showing.
Speaker:Unfortunately, they really have a challenge making it far in that thing. And so I
Speaker:always end up rooting for some of the other teams like Brazil and some
Speaker:of Colombia as well. Brazil had a pretty rough knockout.
Speaker:It'll be interesting to see how— I think today, isn't it France and
Speaker:Morocco today? Yeah, my brother-in-law's French, so he's probably
Speaker:glued to the TV right now. So I think they're playing. I think it was
Speaker:like a noon game. I don't know. I feel like it's going on right now,
Speaker:probably. Yeah. So thanks for that background. And obviously
Speaker:we're all over the map with this kicking off this conversation. So
Speaker:Just circling back to, you know, how you got started in this, you know, there's
Speaker:obviously a couple of different paths you can go down. And like a lot of
Speaker:the CEOs I've interviewed and founders on this show, you know, they've made their
Speaker:move into crops, leafy greens, and other— a wide
Speaker:variety of crops which we've covered on this show. But you decided to go
Speaker:into livestock feed. And I think this may be the first company
Speaker:that's focused on that that I've spoken to, if memory serves me correctly.
Speaker:And I know my listeners will Keep me honest here, but how do you make
Speaker:that decision? What data points did you have in place?
Speaker:Obviously, like you said, you didn't come from this background. And because it's such a
Speaker:new industry, vertical farming as well, folks are still learning, getting their feet wet,
Speaker:figuring out what makes sense for them. So I'm curious how you ended up here.
Speaker:Yeah. I'm not sure the best way to tell the story, but
Speaker:based on our experiences in software, we realized that
Speaker:a lot of people will pick up the phone and answer. If you call enough
Speaker:people. And I know that probably intuitively makes sense, but a lot of
Speaker:people forget that when they're looking at starting a business. And so we
Speaker:called about 300 livestock producers
Speaker:and just talked to them about their initial issues, their
Speaker:primary issues, their operating issues, what's most
Speaker:important to them on a day-to-day basis, what has the biggest impact on their
Speaker:production capacity, what changes the value of their product in the
Speaker:market. What hurts them, what helps them, that type of thing.
Speaker:And through those interactions, just over the phone mostly, we did go to a
Speaker:couple on-farm visits as well. But through
Speaker:speaking to all of these producers, we learned that,
Speaker:you know, there's a pretty high cost from an operating
Speaker:perspective on livestock feed. Forages being the
Speaker:highest in volume, not necessarily the highest in cost per pound, but the highest in
Speaker:volume. And protein and micronutrients and mineral
Speaker:packages probably being the highest per pound, lower in volume though.
Speaker:And they would describe often that let's say
Speaker:70 to 80% of their operating daily operating
Speaker:costs were tied up in forages and feed costs. And
Speaker:so it was pretty high. And then, you know, me not being,
Speaker:I was fairly naive about, you know, the economics of ag production and
Speaker:livestock production in particular. I asked a whole bunch of questions and my business
Speaker:partner did the same that probably sounded really dumb to the
Speaker:livestock producer. They're like, man, these guys have no idea what they're doing
Speaker:and what they're getting into. But we'd ask questions like, okay, what if you
Speaker:had more land? What would you do with it? And they would
Speaker:describe that several different things that people fall into different categories with more land.
Speaker:They might have more animals, increase the volume of their production,
Speaker:or with more land, they might create a cash crop so they can cover
Speaker:and mitigate their risk on their animal production or their meat, milk, and egg
Speaker:production or a different crop. Like I said, they're growing alfalfa, but they had another
Speaker:crop. They'd grow corn or something that's high in volume that season
Speaker:and use that as a cash crop. Others would look to
Speaker:diversify their farm and have more types of animals on the farm. And
Speaker:so we went through all these different groups and we learned that there was a
Speaker:lot of commonality in between, but they're all paying a high price from their
Speaker:perspective for forages and for protein and for
Speaker:minerals and other micronutrients. And yet,
Speaker:despite them paying a high price, they had no control over it by and large.
Speaker:So, you know, if you and I look at our cell phones, what type of
Speaker:cell phone do you use, Harry? iPhone. iPhone.
Speaker:It's a premium phone. You pay a tremendous amount of money for it. And now
Speaker:imagine that that phone was inconsistent and every
Speaker:day was a different type of phone, but you paid a lot. You pay $1,000
Speaker:for the iPhone 13 or whatever it is. But tomorrow it's suddenly like a Google
Speaker:Pixel phone or it's a Microsoft phone or it's a Nokia phone or
Speaker:it's a Samsung phone. And all those are fine phones, but
Speaker:you wanted an iPhone. And so there's that gap in what you
Speaker:expect and what you get. And then let's say that when it is
Speaker:an iPhone, it crashes all the time and it doesn't work. You
Speaker:have bugs and you can't get down all of your apps and you have problems
Speaker:with connectivity and keeping a phone call, not dropping a phone call, et cetera, et
Speaker:cetera. You'd be really frustrated and you wouldn't buy that premium product anymore.
Speaker:You wouldn't spend all that money on it, and you would navigate over to the
Speaker:product that shows up consistently. It's always there, gives you the experience that
Speaker:you wanted, and it's predictable. But with livestock
Speaker:producers, the thing they're paying the most for on a daily operating
Speaker:basis is the least consistent and the least predictable. And you know,
Speaker:I would never would have imagined that being true. And it's not because the
Speaker:livestock producer is not smart or they don't know better; it's because the
Speaker:market economics around them and market conditions around. around them make it
Speaker:so. You know, they can only buy so much feed at a time. Feed comes
Speaker:from the land. It has to be produced. Therefore, it's susceptible
Speaker:to drought and to insects and to other market dynamics. Like
Speaker:maybe I was growing alfalfa last year and
Speaker:had a terrible drought. It decimated my alfalfa fields. I had to replant. And as
Speaker:I'm going to replant, I get an offer from someone else to sell my land
Speaker:for a really nice high-end housing development.
Speaker:And so I think, oh, do I start over from an alfalfa perspective, or just
Speaker:get rid of it and make, you know, as much as I could make in
Speaker:50 years of farming all at once? And so you have these conditions that
Speaker:change availability of product, that impact
Speaker:the nutritional value of the product, and how it performs for your animal.
Speaker:And that we learned by talking to all these livestock producers
Speaker:is a true thing. And so what we found is that these guys, and men
Speaker:and women, Both are always on the hook for their
Speaker:animal feed. Animals have to eat every day, multiple times a day.
Speaker:And then when their feed changes, you know, the animal's performance goes up or down,
Speaker:shifts a little bit as they go through like a naturalization process where they
Speaker:adjust to the new feed. Then there's quality of the feed changing based
Speaker:on when it was harvested, where it was harvested, how it's been stored, how it
Speaker:was shipped to you. And there's all these logistics that go into it.
Speaker:And so out of that, we thought, you know, maybe there's a real opportunity.
Speaker:to be a foundational partner of production for these livestock producers by
Speaker:focusing first on forage? And is there a way to make
Speaker:forage consistent, readily available, and on
Speaker:farm so that they're not dealing with all of these other, you know,
Speaker:conditional environments that they have no control over and they're at the mercy of,
Speaker:so they can focus on their animal husbandry, what they're really, really good at? I
Speaker:mean, you know, these individuals know how to take care of animals.
Speaker:and are examples, you know, to the rest of us of how we can, you
Speaker:know, look at our own lives, but they're not in control
Speaker:of the forage market. They're not in control of the protein market. They're not in
Speaker:control of the micronutrient market. So we thought was, hey, maybe we could start with
Speaker:forages. And does vertical farming offer a
Speaker:solution for livestock forage production on farm
Speaker:and to do it in a way that makes a premium forage that is worth
Speaker:a premium price, meaning it's consistent. It gives you all
Speaker:the value you're looking for, the impact on the animal that you're looking for, and
Speaker:it has a real place in livestock feed. That's the short, you know,
Speaker:30,000-foot view of how we ended up making
Speaker:this decision to put our time and money into vertical farming for
Speaker:livestock feed. Because you're right, everybody's in leafy greens and,
Speaker:you know, stemmed vegetables and tomatoes, and it, you know, rightly so. There's
Speaker:market demand for it. People consume those things. But part of
Speaker:our philosophy is, can we make an impact on
Speaker:items that are required for sustenance? You know, things you must have in
Speaker:order to maintain a population and to maintain
Speaker:health in that population. And, you know, leafy greens and
Speaker:stemmed vegetables and tomatoes are very important for that, but they're not
Speaker:sufficient. I could eat those and still die. But if I have
Speaker:access to meat, milk, and eggs and they're produced properly, I can eat
Speaker:those primarily and still live and then add in my vegetables and
Speaker:leafy greens as is available. So that was our thought
Speaker:process. We didn't do an MBA project on it and do a macroeconomic
Speaker:evaluation. We didn't do any of those things. We just talked to the producers.
Speaker:Yeah, that makes the most sense. Coming from the startup world as an entrepreneur myself,
Speaker:there's a book, I think it's called The Mom Test, and it's something that SaaS
Speaker:companies and SaaS founders, it's sort of like one of their go-to
Speaker:books, but it's one of those things where you're, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs,
Speaker:they develop things in a silo without getting feedback
Speaker:from the people who might actually purchase or use their service, and that's the
Speaker:mistake most entrepreneurs make. So The Mom Test, I think, speaks to this
Speaker:idea of, you know, showing your product, I think it's your mom, and just
Speaker:having her explain what it is and what it does, and if it passes that
Speaker:test, then you're like, you know, you're on to something. But if you have to
Speaker:like hold their hand and explain like, this does this, and you have to click
Speaker:here, and you have to go here, and you have to do that. So I
Speaker:think just alluding to a little bit to what you were speaking to, you know,
Speaker:you don't know if you have a valid idea until you actually
Speaker:test it, and you test it with the people that you would ideally want to
Speaker:be your customers. And I think probably that you can, you know, speak to this
Speaker:a little bit, but what was that initial feedback when you had something that you
Speaker:wanted to validate? And maybe talk a little bit about the offerings and maybe what
Speaker:crops you were growing, you mentioned Alfalfa, if there's anything
Speaker:else you had an idea to start with and sort of paint the
Speaker:picture going back, what if it's a couple years to kind of
Speaker:talk through that thought process? Because you mentioned you do come from a software background.
Speaker:There may be some advantages to that because you're coming at it from a different
Speaker:perspective and how you think about solving problems is something I'd be interested to
Speaker:hear about. Yeah. Okay. By the way, you said Mom Test, right, is the
Speaker:name of that book? Yes. It made me chuckle because
Speaker:I did call my mother and tell her what we're doing. It turns out she
Speaker:has an animal science degree. Oh, great. Animal
Speaker:husbandry. And as a child, I used to tease her about— she took a course
Speaker:called Swine Science, which I thought was the funniest named course.
Speaker:It's a good course, a very relevant course for us now, of course. But
Speaker:as a child, I'd like to— I harassed her quite a bit. So I did
Speaker:call her and she had excellent feedback. And has really
Speaker:enjoyed watching us get into this space. So it is funny
Speaker:that that is also relevant for Renaissance Ag. We did do the
Speaker:mom test. We passed, barely passed the mom test, but we did pass.
Speaker:So if we look back on how we started
Speaker:getting these, you know, like I said, we first called producers before we had anything.
Speaker:We just called them and said, what are your problems? Where do you think there's
Speaker:an opportunity for changing those problems and mitigating those
Speaker:problems and those types of things. And we decided, let's start with forage. It's
Speaker:not where we want to end, but it's where we want to start with premium
Speaker:livestock forage production through on-farm vertical farms.
Speaker:So our first iteration was, you know, what are the issues with
Speaker:on-farm forage production? And you can call those microgreens, some people
Speaker:call them fodder, but what you're doing is you're sprouting a grain
Speaker:in typical on-farm forage production. environments, you're sprouting a
Speaker:grain and using the value of the sprouting process
Speaker:to enhance the value of the grain for the animal. So grain
Speaker:itself is phenomenal. It holds a tremendous amount of energy and it's
Speaker:poised and ready to go to express that energy the moment it
Speaker:hits the right conditions. So, you know, barley grain, for example, it begins
Speaker:germination when it's absorbed 35 to 45% of its weight as
Speaker:water and has experienced a 35-degree Celsius day. And
Speaker:then, you know, you've got germination. So these grains are
Speaker:packed with energy and they have protein and they have different types of
Speaker:fiber and they've got vitamins and other things. But when you
Speaker:sprout them, there's a lot of change that happens. You know, starch gets
Speaker:converted to sugar, which is great for animal feed, especially for
Speaker:ruminant animals. Enzymes get expressed that otherwise wouldn't be
Speaker:there that help in digestion and help in other aspects
Speaker:of the animal's stomach, intestine, and those types of rumen and those types
Speaker:of things. You get a vitamin expression. In some cases, the vitamin
Speaker:levels go through the roof. In other cases, the minimal expression,
Speaker:you know, increase in expression, but in most cases it is. And then you get
Speaker:things like phytonutrients and metabolites that show up
Speaker:that otherwise wouldn't show up in the feed at a level that makes
Speaker:any sense for, you know, nutritional quality. So you
Speaker:have all these things happening. So the first thing that we knew about was,
Speaker:okay, if we want to do livestock forage, what's already been done? So let's go
Speaker:do this research and let's see what's been done. And there has been on-farm production,
Speaker:mostly at a hobbyist level, meaning there's not a real market. There's no
Speaker:industrial players. It's not industrialized. And all the knowledge sits in
Speaker:the mind of the different farmers that are hobbyists in this on-farm
Speaker:production space. And the words that they would use for it were on-farm
Speaker:fodder production. And it was manual and they were taking grains and
Speaker:putting in a tray, applying water and temperature controls and some
Speaker:light to turn it green. And then they were feeding it to their animals 6,
Speaker:7 to 10 days later. And they would talk about all these upsides
Speaker:and all these benefits. However, as we got deeper into it, we learned there were
Speaker:some real negatives that caused it from getting outside of being a hobbyist
Speaker:market, as I described it. And that was primarily manual
Speaker:labor. A lot of work. The farmer already has a lot of work. The
Speaker:livestock producer already has a lot of work. Now we're putting more work on their
Speaker:plate. Now they have to outsource and hire more hands to work, which cuts into
Speaker:their, you know, top-line revenue and has all these other downstream
Speaker:effects. So labor was a really big issue and a big barrier.
Speaker:That was number one. The second thing we found was mold and inconsistency.
Speaker:Because it was a hobbyist market and most of the knowledge was in the minds
Speaker:of the farmers that were doing it, There wasn't an established practice and
Speaker:protocol for how do you really get the grain to express itself
Speaker:properly? And what's the upper limit on that? What's the lower limit on it? Where
Speaker:is it good? Where is it bad? Where does fodder fit? Or microgreens, where do
Speaker:they fit? Where do they not fit? And so you'd hear all these crazy stories.
Speaker:I mean, we would hear people when we first got into this that would tell
Speaker:us that the grain was creating dry matter through the sprouting
Speaker:process. And then others would say, no, it's impossible to do that. It's going to
Speaker:consume dry matter during the process, or proteins are going to be
Speaker:expressed, you know, 10 times times higher than what the grain itself has.
Speaker:And then the next person would say, no, that's not possible. Just, that's not science.
Speaker:It does less. It does more. It was all over the place. So our
Speaker:first thing that we did was look at
Speaker:how do we solve for a couple of these problems? One, how do we solve
Speaker:for the labor problem? Is there an automation path there?
Speaker:And that's appealing, especially coming from software where maybe we could apply
Speaker:some software learning to this space. Number 2, How do
Speaker:we create a consistent product that doesn't have mold
Speaker:problems or, you know, growth problems and it consistently
Speaker:delivers the output? And then number 3, how do we shore up the science on
Speaker:it so that people know what it actually is and how it fits into
Speaker:a ration and where it doesn't fit? Because that's just as important as where it
Speaker:does fit, you know, knowing the limits of it. So those are the 3 areas
Speaker:that we tried to focus on first. And, you know, the challenge in all of
Speaker:those areas is it takes time and money to solve for each one of those
Speaker:things. So, you know, our first machine that we built was
Speaker:very efficient. It could do a harvest, it could harvest
Speaker:almost 2,000 pounds, probably 1,800 pounds in
Speaker:24 minutes. It would also, during that harvest process, wash the
Speaker:trays, reseed them, and then begin again. And so
Speaker:we built it with a 6-day grow in mind, or a 6-day sprout. And
Speaker:so you put seeds in, 6 days later you get your fodder, your microgreens
Speaker:out. And after your first 6 days, every single day you're getting
Speaker:1,800 to 2,000 pounds depending on your multiple out of the machine
Speaker:to feed your animals. And you're putting new seed in every single day. And we
Speaker:figured out how to automate that process, but it was our first try
Speaker:and we made a lot of mistakes. We made the machine too
Speaker:efficient and not resilient. And
Speaker:so there were a lot of fail points and we started discovering those fail
Speaker:points and We learned very quickly that when you interact
Speaker:with an animal and you begin to give it a feed that the
Speaker:animal adjusts to and begins to perform with, and you take that feed away,
Speaker:it's actually bad for the animal and it's not good for the livestock producer either.
Speaker:And so when you're in the livestock space rather than just the software space, if
Speaker:you make a mistake, it's a big deal because the downstream effects are
Speaker:significant. It's a living animal that you're impacting. It's not, you know,
Speaker:can I log into my Google account? Or, you know, is my
Speaker:Spotify not streaming properly? Although I think they always stream properly over
Speaker:Spotify. But, you know, it doesn't have that, oh, it's
Speaker:okay, we'll figure it out. It's inconvenient, it's painful, but in the end, no one
Speaker:died. In this case, you know, if you screw up animal feed,
Speaker:you can make a real impact that hurts, and it hurts the farmer.
Speaker:And so with our very first product, we learned that
Speaker:the experimenting needs to be in the lab and
Speaker:we need to take something that's already been experimented on
Speaker:into the market more readily than experiment
Speaker:in the market, right? Software is like, hey, just throw it out there. I don't
Speaker:know if you used Google in its early days, but Gmail in its early days,
Speaker:rough product. And even got those ads in the Gmail interface that were
Speaker:reading your emails and adjusting ads based on it. I think they only
Speaker:removed the beta label from it, I think last year. Yeah,
Speaker:something like that, right? They're very smart. They know what they're doing. Yeah. And so,
Speaker:you know, what we've tried to do is bring a software approach to a physical
Speaker:world, but there are upper limits to that. It is an animal
Speaker:and that you're impacting, and then it's the producer that's living on
Speaker:the production of that animal. And so there's a whole nuanced
Speaker:approach that needs to be taken, and we had to discover that. It's probably already
Speaker:been discovered by others, but we had to discover it for ourselves because we didn't
Speaker:know. So that first product that we brought into the market Gave us
Speaker:tremendous amount of learning. We're very grateful for it. It's like a love-hate
Speaker:relationship where it was very painful to learn those lessons, but
Speaker:very meaningful to learn those lessons. And fortunately, we had a
Speaker:phenomenal first client that is really more of a partner than a
Speaker:client. And he and his—they're a
Speaker:natural goat dairy, and it's a raw goat dairy. Their products are amazing.
Speaker:But his approach could. Tolerate this
Speaker:because he wanted the upside and he's a really
Speaker:thoughtful individual. So he allowed us to be on farm
Speaker:every single day and to learn these things and to produce. And he gave us
Speaker:really strong feedback and he was into details. And so because we
Speaker:had the right partnership with our client, we were able to
Speaker:survive that, take the learnings and put it back into,
Speaker:you know, the next version, the next iteration. And that has been
Speaker:something that, you know, we feel emotionally indebted to this individual for the rest of
Speaker:our lives because it was through that experience that
Speaker:we gained a tremendous amount of knowledge that otherwise we just couldn't have gained.
Speaker:I don't think I really— I think I answered a different question, but forgive me
Speaker:for that, Harry. No, no, no. I think that's helpful because I think, you know,
Speaker:there's so many different paths to figuring out whether you have a
Speaker:viable product, whether you have something that the market needs, the market
Speaker:wants. And even when you think that you have met those
Speaker:criteria, if you're not delivering something that's useful to them or
Speaker:that makes their job harder or makes their job less
Speaker:predictable— it's, you know, speaking to the importance of having
Speaker:consistency when you're talking about live animals. I mean, that's something to
Speaker:be really conscious of. And, and having a partner that can be patient
Speaker:with you as you're working through the kinks, as you're figuring out what works, what
Speaker:doesn't, you know, that's valuable. Like, again, with the software analogy, like those
Speaker:first customers, like I remember like my first customer, like I
Speaker:bent over backwards to just make sure I do everything that he said. He's like,
Speaker:can you do that? I'm like, yeah, we can do that. We can do that.
Speaker:Right. We'll figure it out. And you iterate. And so, you know, those early
Speaker:first clients have a special place in my heart. And I'm sure it's, you know,
Speaker:as you've mentioned, the same thing for you. So now fast forward to
Speaker:present day, what's the current offerings and, you know, what are the markets that you're
Speaker:serving? Yeah. So we have come quite a ways since then,
Speaker:even though it's only been, you know, 2 years and 9 months. But we have
Speaker:a machine, for example, we have a machine about 45 minutes
Speaker:south of us in an area called Nephi, Utah, that
Speaker:will produce 16,000 pounds a day. So as I talked to you
Speaker:about, the first machine was, if I remember right, it was about 1,800 pounds
Speaker:a day. We were targeting 2,000. We never quite got there.
Speaker:With that first machine. Our current ideology
Speaker:around machine development and growth is completely different than our first one.
Speaker:And I can take you through that in just a moment, but this machine will
Speaker:do 16,000 pounds a day. It's 16 feet tall,
Speaker:104 feet long, 8 feet wide, and
Speaker:it's being used in ways we hadn't conceived of. And we just let the
Speaker:customer and the market kind of educate us as we went, you know, in our
Speaker:ideology. is that we don't know anything about anything
Speaker:and we know nothing about everything. And some people will really go too
Speaker:far on that. They'll be like, yeah, I accept that, you're out. I don't want
Speaker:to even talk to you. You know? Yeah. But others, what we're really saying, which
Speaker:is we're curious, we're open to, you know, the
Speaker:data coming back and educating us. We're not coming in and trying to
Speaker:impose an ideology. Our ideology is to come in and
Speaker:learn and then adjust based on what's happening. So these types of
Speaker:ideologies need movement. I can't sit in a room and figure this out. I need
Speaker:to go out into the space and start to navigate that space to figure out
Speaker:my path. And that's expensive. There's pain that comes along with it, but that
Speaker:is our ideology. Our ideology is the only way forward is to
Speaker:begin moving and then to learn how to interpret which way
Speaker:we should go at what time. And so, you know, one of the things we've
Speaker:ended up with is a much larger machine that
Speaker:does a tremendous amount more per day and is not
Speaker:an efficient machine the way that our first machine was. We would do, you know,
Speaker:1,800 pounds in 24 minutes and that was done. And then it
Speaker:sat idle the rest of the day and, you know, we applied water and temperature
Speaker:controls, but the machine didn't move except for once a day. The machine now,
Speaker:it moves continuously as it moves things around and adjusts the
Speaker:climate and adjusts the watering and the temperature and the humidity
Speaker:and other things. So it's not efficient in the same way. What it is
Speaker:really efficient at is being resilient. This machine, to
Speaker:break it would be very difficult to do. So it can be
Speaker:consistent for the farmer. It can show up every single day. And if there is
Speaker:an issue, it's not catastrophic. It's a small, you know, contained issue that can
Speaker:be handled in a very short amount of time. With our
Speaker:previous, you know, our first version, any issue we had
Speaker:was basically catastrophic. And sometimes we were there till 3 in the morning working to
Speaker:fix it. and there till late at night. And that's not good, you know,
Speaker:for your family. You know, my poor wife had to deal with all sorts
Speaker:of uncertainty when I'd be home, what shape I'd show up when I was at
Speaker:home, you know, how many times I cut my hand or smashed a finger or
Speaker:did something stupid. And, you know, this
Speaker:new evolution gives us the opportunity to be far more consistent, far
Speaker:less catastrophic in our errors and our mistakes, and then to
Speaker:give the farmer what they need every single day, which is that premium feed
Speaker:that's consistent, reliable, and on farm. Yeah, and I think what's
Speaker:important is what you alluded to earlier. They've got
Speaker:so much else on their plate, you know, they've got a full day, they're
Speaker:probably working, you know, 16, 20-hour days sometimes, you
Speaker:know. There's no such thing as vacation in this space. Yeah, and having
Speaker:something that they don't have to worry about, that's easy to maintain,
Speaker:that doesn't require a lot of support, and it— like, to your point, if it
Speaker:does break, it's something that they could be trained on to fix pretty quickly.
Speaker:To get back up and running, I think, is what was really critical in terms
Speaker:of designing something like that. And so, now that these are out in
Speaker:the field, what's been the feedback from the farmers themselves
Speaker:in terms of how this has changed their day-to-day and
Speaker:what life was like before working with you guys? Yeah. I would say
Speaker:that the feedback, and this is why I love many things about the
Speaker:livestock producers of the world, but one of the things I love most is that
Speaker:The feedback is always centered around, did it improve my life or
Speaker:did it hurt my life? And that's really it.
Speaker:It's not a lot of, oh, you know, it was a really cool idea and,
Speaker:you know, I wish you guys the best. It was like, hey, this thing helped
Speaker:me and I want more of it, or this thing is not helpful at all.
Speaker:Get away from me and quit wasting my time. And so, you know, the feedback
Speaker:we've had thus far is that on-farm premium forage
Speaker:production is very, very
Speaker:sticky. If you can do it, our clients
Speaker:want it to be done over and over and over again, and they want to
Speaker:stay in the game, and they want this foundational feed because,
Speaker:you know, from their perspective, all these variables and all these changing
Speaker:conditions are usually hurtful to their
Speaker:economics and to their animals. And so if you can show up with a machine
Speaker:that performs consistently 365 days a year, whether it's cold
Speaker:outside or hot outside or icy or snowy or whatever,
Speaker:it becomes something that they really care about. So the feedback thus far has
Speaker:been very emotional, backed by a very
Speaker:logical outcome. And we are so appreciative of that
Speaker:because, like I said, our goal is to be a foundational partner of production. We're
Speaker:starting with forage, but what we're really chasing is freedom
Speaker:and domestic food production at a local level. is
Speaker:one of the most important factors for freedom. And these guys and men
Speaker:and women are telling us where we're helping them be free in
Speaker:their day and be free to focus on their animal and where we're not. And
Speaker:thus far, the feedback has been very strong that, you know,
Speaker:this type of on-farm forage production could be very
Speaker:valuable for them. But, you know, can we consistently do it? How long does the
Speaker:machine last for? You know, we're still in the early stages of that.
Speaker:You know, is this a really great program for 12 months? And then, you know,
Speaker:the 13th month everything breaks and falls apart and we don't know. You know, that's
Speaker:the part that we're still working towards. No one has used any of
Speaker:our machines for that long yet. Like I said, we're 2 years, 9 months old
Speaker:and our new machines are very new and our old machines,
Speaker:obviously we switched them out. So I don't know what
Speaker:the feedback will be in 12 months from now, or even what it'll be in
Speaker:6 months from now. But right now, the feedback is full of hope and promise
Speaker:because they're getting something that they want, and they're now able to do
Speaker:things they couldn't do before. For example, we have a group dairy farm in Canada
Speaker:that is reusing their land. So because it's called land sparing,
Speaker:so to speak, that because of the forage production
Speaker:capacity of our machines, they'll be able to put more animals on
Speaker:their pasture without overburdening their pasture. And then another part of their
Speaker:land they can sell for, you know, corn production. or something else. And so
Speaker:those types of data points are really valuable for us in feedback as well.
Speaker:So we're really encouraged by the feedback. But again, I mean, there's a real burden
Speaker:that comes with that because the further we go and the
Speaker:more animals we impact, the more the responsibility is on us
Speaker:to deliver every single day, not once a quarter updates or whatever,
Speaker:but every single day the machine needs to perform and produce that
Speaker:livestock forage. Because it becomes foundational, meaning— and
Speaker:let me just describe that real quick, Harry. What foundational means in this case, their
Speaker:ration planning is based around the fodder production
Speaker:being consistent every day. So, hey, I need 16,000 pounds a day of
Speaker:fodder, and that's going to equate to 40% of my ration. And the
Speaker:rest of the ration I can make adjustments on because of the premium nature of
Speaker:the nutrition in the fodder and the starch conversion to sugar and the vitamin
Speaker:expression, the phytonutrients and Detergent, non-detergent fibers, those types
Speaker:of things. Because of that consistent production,
Speaker:I can now be more flexible in what other feed I bring into the
Speaker:animal's diet. If we then take that away, man, we've really
Speaker:hurt them because now we're out of balance and we've taken away their
Speaker:foundational feed. So that's where that pressure comes in of we have to
Speaker:deliver. Otherwise, you know, all this feedback is for
Speaker:naught. And so Since this is— the concept of fodder is
Speaker:new to me and maybe to some of the listeners, is there a specific crop
Speaker:when you talk about fodder, when you talk about forage, are you referring to a
Speaker:specific crop? Most of the time right now, it's
Speaker:barley seed or wheat seed being sprouted as a microgreen.
Speaker:However, that's just based on, like I said, the hobbyist market and the
Speaker:traditions in the space. But we think there's room for a lot
Speaker:of other seed types to be included to target feed certain
Speaker:types of animals. For example, we tested 14 different seed types
Speaker:from day 0 to day 10 in their sprouting process—
Speaker:timeline to sprout, energy consumption to sprout, you know, water consumption to
Speaker:sprout— but then what you get in return for that from a nutrient
Speaker:perspective and all of those aspects and how to blend a ration.
Speaker:So what we want to do is create targeted feeds for chicken or horses or
Speaker:pigs or cows or beef cows versus dairy cows. Targeted feeds when
Speaker:an animal's transitioning, when they're weaning, when they're backgrounding,
Speaker:when they're milking, you know, all of these different milestones in the animal's
Speaker:life often require different feed programs and different rations.
Speaker:And so we think that nature has already done her
Speaker:job and created all the feed that is required for these
Speaker:animals. We just want to make sure that we're leveraging what nature has done and
Speaker:bringing it to the animal at the right time. Yeah. I mean, when you mention
Speaker:all the different phases of the animal's
Speaker:growth and all the different variations of livestock
Speaker:that you can support, it seems like you definitely, if you think about it from
Speaker:a, again, software analogy roadmap perspective, you've got a
Speaker:lot of different paths you can go down. So when you think about
Speaker:where is the best use of the team's time from
Speaker:R&D perspective and figuring out You know, where's the best use for you
Speaker:to put in development time? How do you make those decisions?
Speaker:Yeah, great question. So the first way we looked at it was,
Speaker:where's the market today? Can we just meet the market where it's at? Oh, it's
Speaker:a hobbyist market. Okay, in the hobby market world,
Speaker:what type of livestock producers have primarily grown their own fodder
Speaker:and fed it to their animals? Dairy, both goat and beef
Speaker:dairy, and then Chickens and poultry has
Speaker:had quite a bit. And then there's been, you know, some
Speaker:hobby stuff around meat rabbits and camels
Speaker:and horses. So we said, okay, we have to make a
Speaker:business decision, which is when we begin to enter this
Speaker:market, where do we want to focus? And our first 2 areas of
Speaker:focus are dairy farms and beef farms. And then it
Speaker:was, okay, what's already well understood? as much as possible in
Speaker:this space. And that was barley grains and wheat grains
Speaker:typically are the foundational grains for creating the
Speaker:microgreens. So we said, okay, that's fine, we'll start there. But we want to know,
Speaker:like, I'm not interested in guessing. I will guess if I have
Speaker:to, but my real goal and my business partner's goal is
Speaker:to turn a guess into a question and then ask as many people as we
Speaker:can gather as much feedback as we can, and then make a decision based on
Speaker:that feedback. We're not saying, you tell us the answer. We're saying, you tell us
Speaker:what you think is the answer, and then we'll use our discernment to decide if
Speaker:we agree or disagree. And if we disagree, we need to keep finding more
Speaker:information until we have been taught that actually our disagreement
Speaker:was wrong. And if we do agree, we also go out and find more information
Speaker:until we find that our agreement was wrong. So we're always trying to prove the
Speaker:counterargument in our data research programs. So
Speaker:we took barley and wheat, we first studied those, had them
Speaker:analyzed chemically from day 0 as a seed
Speaker:all the way to day 10 as a sprout, and said, what's the optimal sprout
Speaker:time? 6 days. What's the nutrition path during that time?
Speaker:Protein expression, vitamins, nutrients, phytonutrients, enzymes,
Speaker:fibers, etc., for barley and wheat. And then we said, okay,
Speaker:what if barley and wheat are not the best? What if that's just what people
Speaker:are used to using and grandpa did it, so I do it, or grandma did
Speaker:it, so I do it? What if there's other grains that are valuable? So we
Speaker:picked the 14 most common grains and went and studied those the same way. It
Speaker:was pretty expensive and it took a long time, but we did it.
Speaker:And then we said, okay, now how do we balance rations based on that? Because
Speaker:we're focused on the beef industry and the dairy industry initially,
Speaker:and the dairy is both goat dairy camel dairy, or I shouldn't say
Speaker:both. There's 3 primarily, you know, cow dairy, goat
Speaker:dairy, and then camel dairy. And then beef is, you know,
Speaker:what it is. But there's all different stages in beef, which I did not know,
Speaker:right? The average consumer— Yeah. Myself thinks, you know, I like ribeyes, I
Speaker:like New York strip. I didn't really know all the stages of the animal
Speaker:life, you know, from cow-calf operations to backgrounding to
Speaker:feedlots and other stages. So we're focused on
Speaker:first cow-calf within the beef industry. And then how do we
Speaker:support the entire lifecycle of the beef cow over time?
Speaker:But with that in mind, we looked at barley and wheat first and said, let's
Speaker:solve for that. Then let's look and say, maybe our solve is wrong
Speaker:and that we need to have more data to understand if we did the right
Speaker:thing or not. So then we studied those data points. Then we formed some
Speaker:partnerships in the academic space to give us more rigor around our scientific
Speaker:approach. We have a partnership with Utah State University, Cornell,
Speaker:and the University of Florida to really shore up the science and
Speaker:to make it so that we can do an on-farm translation. You know, often what
Speaker:you read about in a book sounds great, but it's very hard to implement in
Speaker:real life. And so we set up a business unit inside of our
Speaker:company to be focused on that, because your question is really good about how do
Speaker:you make these decisions and then how do you align the company appropriately. So we
Speaker:created the Microgreen Institute, inside of our company to
Speaker:focus on these issues of what's the value of
Speaker:sprouts or microgreens or fodder or whatever name is
Speaker:used, you know, regionally to represent a sprouted grain as animal
Speaker:feed. What's the nutritional value? Where does it do really well?
Speaker:Where is it weak? Is there anything we can do about its weaknesses? Is there
Speaker:anything that could happen to eliminate its strengths? And then forming
Speaker:these academic partnerships and these studies And then on-farm
Speaker:handholding. So our Microgreen Institute will do ration planning for our
Speaker:customers. So if you have a cow-calf operation
Speaker:and you have, you know, X amount of hay and X amount of alfalfa and
Speaker:X amount of corn and silage and micronutrients, and these are your
Speaker:targets and you're in the Upper Midwest or you're in the Sierra Nevadas or
Speaker:wherever you are, our team can build the ration for you and
Speaker:guide you, you know, on that path of how do you feed your animals to
Speaker:get the targeted outcome. So that's the Microgreen
Speaker:Institute. The leader of the Microgreen Institute is a veterinarian that's also a
Speaker:nutritionist. He's been practicing for 35+ years, and then he's
Speaker:got some PhDs in animal science and plant science behind him, as well
Speaker:as master's in plant science and so on. So it's a very academic group
Speaker:that's focused on nutritional value of
Speaker:microgreens, upper, lower limits, ration planning,
Speaker:and how to actually get the desired outcomes through your animal production. By
Speaker:including this as a livestock feed. They also focus on how to grow it and,
Speaker:you know, the optimal grow times and all that. Then we have an engineering
Speaker:unit that is focused on how do I bring that to an on-farm
Speaker:production environment? How do I create a local
Speaker:vertical farm that's economically viable, that's
Speaker:consistent, and has a long lifespan? So our engineering team is
Speaker:focused on practical implementation of what the Microgreen Institute discovers.
Speaker:Then we have a client team that's focused on, okay, we have a
Speaker:machine, we have the knowledge and the know-how, we can marry those together,
Speaker:but then how do we allow the client to get the value
Speaker:into their production? Because everybody's production is different. There's no such thing as a standard
Speaker:livestock production facility. So maybe one is centralized,
Speaker:one's decentralized. Maybe they have big mixers or small mixers, or they have a
Speaker:lot of automation or no automation. That team just helps bridge
Speaker:the gap between the reality of fodder production and the
Speaker:reality of their feed programs and their facility
Speaker:management. And that's allowed us to do a lot with a little team
Speaker:because everyone is not trying to solve the same problem. We have the Microbe Institute
Speaker:that's solving the science and the nutritional value and the know-how.
Speaker:Then we have an engineering team that's focused on bringing it to life
Speaker:and doing all the work in an automated environment. So that we add no additional
Speaker:burden to the producer. And we're not all the way there yet. There's still some
Speaker:burdens that the producer has to handle, but we're getting closer and closer
Speaker:to a no additional burden
Speaker:implementation. And then there's the ongoing lifecycle
Speaker:of getting that value into your animals day after day after day with our
Speaker:implementation team. And we think with those 3 groups really
Speaker:tied together and client-centric, we're going
Speaker:to eventually solve these problems for our clients. And that's what we care about. We
Speaker:don't care about our problems. We care about the problems of our clients. And we
Speaker:know if we can eliminate those, our clients will never want to leave us because
Speaker:we're a true partner in production. That is actually the exact way I would answer
Speaker:your question. Yeah, I appreciate that in-depth, detailed
Speaker:answer because I think, you know, a lot of people wonder how to
Speaker:tackle all the different problems that you're trying to solve for. And I think your
Speaker:approach to breaking it up into teams and so that people are
Speaker:laser-focused on the outcome for what they're trying to achieve,
Speaker:I think it should help to make sure that
Speaker:everyone's, you know, got their marching orders. And then when you bring the teams together,
Speaker:you know, they're all enhancing each other and their findings. I'm curious, you know,
Speaker:how big the team is and, you know, how that's growing and
Speaker:what, if any, challenges you may foresee going forward. Oh yeah,
Speaker:sure. So I don't know in exactly what order I want to answer that question
Speaker:in, but the team has 19 people on it. So Renaissance Ag
Speaker:is comprised of 19 individuals. that work inside this company across the
Speaker:Microgreen Institute, the engineering, and there's multiple aspects within
Speaker:engineering. There's physical engineering, there's the automation, electrical engineering and
Speaker:automation, and then implementation. And then we have a background
Speaker:group like marketing and fabrication
Speaker:that support engineering, implementation, and the Microgreen Institute.
Speaker:But they're all client-facing, meaning each one of them interacts with clients, each
Speaker:one of them is focused on solving client problems. problems so that we're not looking
Speaker:at each other thinking, hey, look how good we're doing, but the rest of the
Speaker:world could care less what we're doing. You know, that's an easy trap to fall
Speaker:into. So that's number one, 19 individuals focused in each one of their
Speaker:areas, but bound together by the client-facing
Speaker:approach that we have. So that's number one. What was the second part of your
Speaker:question, Harry? And I'm curious what, if any, challenges you might
Speaker:foresee in terms of figuring out where you want to grow the team.
Speaker:Yeah. So there's quite a few challenges. That we foresee
Speaker:impacting growth on the team. Let me give you an example. Our
Speaker:product needs to be automated. So
Speaker:right now our machines are automated. That's great. We can
Speaker:produce fodder every single day without the client touching anything.
Speaker:However, once that fodder is produced, it then has to be touched
Speaker:and delivered to the animal. And so we're— part of our focus
Speaker:is how do we improve that process? and take any friction out of it. Like,
Speaker:how do animals actually eat? We produce 85-pound
Speaker:biscuits of fodder. Well, most animals aren't eating
Speaker:85 pounds of fodder all at once. And when they
Speaker:are, let's say a large ruminant animal like a cow, they don't have upper
Speaker:teeth. So they've got to work their way through the fodder. So they toss their
Speaker:head, kind of rip it as they go. And so how do we
Speaker:improve the animal's access to that nutrition? So
Speaker:there's some innovations that we're working on right now to do that, so that the
Speaker:fodder gets to the animal without the farmer having to intervene,
Speaker:in the right condition for that animal to eat it without extra
Speaker:work or extra waste. So that's one area to innovate in that
Speaker:is a problem that we need to solve, but it's a good problem. Then there's
Speaker:another area that's a hard problem. It's a good problem, it's very hard,
Speaker:and it's not readily solvable, which is— and I'm sure you've already
Speaker:recognize this. Our machine is heavily dependent upon
Speaker:seed because we're taking seed and sprouting it. And
Speaker:so where do we get the seed from, and what quality of
Speaker:seed is best? And what we've learned
Speaker:is that in the commodity market, like the seed market, there's
Speaker:not a lot of depth on understanding the value
Speaker:of the seed. Now, I'm going to offend some people by saying that, so let
Speaker:me just explain what I mean by not a lot of depth. There's all sorts
Speaker:of seed types, even within a grain vertical. So let's say
Speaker:barley. Within barley, there's all sorts of barley types—
Speaker:GoldenEye barley, for example, and other types. They're called certified
Speaker:seed. And somebody that was very smart put a lot of
Speaker:work into breeding that seed to hit certain genetic
Speaker:markers and certain performance markers in when it's sprouted or when
Speaker:it's grown as a grain. For example, you know, how one grain
Speaker:planted, how many grains does it produce when it grows up into a harvestable
Speaker:plant? You know, these types of markers are very important.
Speaker:So there's this, all this knowledge around that. But GoldenEye,
Speaker:for example, produced in one farmer's field does not have the same
Speaker:nutritional value as GoldenEye produced in another farmer's field because each
Speaker:field is different. And as it turns out, again, it's intuitive, but you don't think
Speaker:about it until you have to get into the business. Grain is heavily dependent
Speaker:upon the ground for its actual value. It's not the name. It's not that it's
Speaker:genetically goldeneye and good enough. It was goldeneye and it was
Speaker:grown in a mineral-rich soil that was regeneratively managed.
Speaker:And so it was rich in phytonutrients and rich in vitamins, and it held its
Speaker:water really well. And so even though there was a drought, it still
Speaker:produced grains that were big and full of energy
Speaker:and full of starch that could be converted and full of the active enzymes. But
Speaker:more importantly, full of minerals. That's in Field A. In Field B,
Speaker:it's pretty bare ground. It's a rough go. The farmer's amazing,
Speaker:but, you know, they're given the earth they're given. And so they had to do
Speaker:a lot of mitigating techniques to get the grain to express itself. But
Speaker:there weren't minerals in that ground. And so unless the farmer could afford to
Speaker:apply minerals to that ground, those grains, still GoldenEye,
Speaker:still nice grains, don't have the same mineral profile as the grains from
Speaker:Field A. And so that we don't have a depth
Speaker:of understanding because it's expensive to test grains. And so people don't want to pay
Speaker:for that, rightly so, because it cuts into their bottom line. And so they say
Speaker:it's GoldenEye, good enough. Well, when you're leveraging that
Speaker:as a sprout, there's a weakness there, which is if I don't
Speaker:control the production quality and value of that
Speaker:seed, I am not really in control of the production quality
Speaker:of our machines. Because they're expressing that seed and they're bound by the
Speaker:seed. No machine on this earth can get a seed to perform better
Speaker:than it can. It can hurt it. It can provide bad environmental
Speaker:conditions, bad water, bad temperatures, bad humidity,
Speaker:mold, you know, things that hurt the expression of the seed, but it cannot
Speaker:outperform the seed. One machine cannot get the seed to do
Speaker:better than another machine as far as exceeding the value of the seed
Speaker:itself. It can only hurt it. And so really the big hurdle in front of
Speaker:us then is how do we produce the grains from the beginning?
Speaker:And so we have a resolution path for that. We're building a division in our
Speaker:business to manage that and to bring better and better grains
Speaker:into our livestock producers' environments.
Speaker:But until that's done, that is a weakness that has to be overcome
Speaker:or mitigated, you know? And so now what we do is we do a lot
Speaker:of testing. We test those grains and we figured out an algorithm on our machine
Speaker:that can tell you by the weight and how much water we put into it
Speaker:and the initial test if it's hitting certain markers or not. You
Speaker:know, some things that we can do, but that is a forward-thinking problem
Speaker:that we're facing and that we want to address and we think we have a
Speaker:pathway to address, but we're not there yet. That's an example. So I didn't answer
Speaker:the whole part. Yeah, that's helpful because I think it helps the listener
Speaker:understand, you know, your thought process as you try to tackle these problems. And again,
Speaker:to your point, you're not going to have the solution figured out now, and you
Speaker:don't know what the different variables are that are going to be in the future
Speaker:that might challenge some of those assumptions that you might have about where
Speaker:you want to go with this. But I think the approach you're taking makes a
Speaker:lot of sense, and I think it puts you in a great position to succeed.
Speaker:Thank you. For the benefit of the listener, we actually connected in Dubai, of
Speaker:all places. So I'm curious, you know, you've had experience
Speaker:with the livestock here in the West. And I'm wondering if that was your
Speaker:first time there or what that experience has been like, because you did mention camels.
Speaker:So I thought I'd bring that up and see if there's any specific challenges you're
Speaker:having as you work your way into that market. Yeah, there are. So it wasn't
Speaker:my first time there. I've been before for software and then I've been
Speaker:before for ag, but this time specifically
Speaker:we were there to do a couple of things. We have some meaningful partnerships formed
Speaker:in Middle East and GCC that we've been working
Speaker:on for a while. So there were some important meetings, and then we did a
Speaker:presentation in one of the panels for Cultivated regarding
Speaker:livestock feed as a target for vertical farming. You know, my whole
Speaker:approach on that is if you want to be food independent, which is what vertical
Speaker:farming often talks about, you know, controlled environment ag is
Speaker:indelibly tied to food sustainability and food independence.
Speaker:And that is fantastic. But everyone always thinks of that in terms of leafy greens,
Speaker:stem vegetables, tomatoes, that type of thing. But that does not give you food
Speaker:independence because you cannot sustain a population on those things
Speaker:alone. You need milk and eggs at some volume, even if you're
Speaker:consuming it in a very low volume. You still need them for their protein and
Speaker:mineral and fatty acid profiles and protein energies and
Speaker:other things. And then there's the positive impact of animals on land that's
Speaker:properly managed. So there's all these ecosystem benefits as well, if done
Speaker:right. And I'm not saying everybody does it right. I'm just saying if done right,
Speaker:it's very positive. And so there's this
Speaker:growing demand in the Middle East for
Speaker:food independence and food security, and rightly so. I think every nation
Speaker:deserves to be able to produce all of these
Speaker:sustenance for their population without anyone else's
Speaker:intervention or, you know, needing another partner in that. And,
Speaker:you know, the world is largely economically entwined with each other,
Speaker:and we have all sorts of great things that we can do, like we ship
Speaker:grain from Ukraine to one country and from the US to another country, and
Speaker:we can trade all these things, and that's all fine and wonderful. But when it
Speaker:comes to sustenance and being able to provide the bare
Speaker:necessities for your population, I think every country should be able to do that on
Speaker:their own, and I think they all want to. But the Middle East is phenomenal
Speaker:because they want to and they have the money to do it. And then,
Speaker:you know, they have this really arid environment that gets in the way
Speaker:of mass production of food. And so, you know, our interactions
Speaker:in the Middle East are very promising because we bring a companion
Speaker:to controlled environment agriculture of leafy greens, tomatoes, and vegetables
Speaker:of, hey, the right companion to that is indoor
Speaker:vertical farming for livestock feed. And then, you know,
Speaker:increase that over time with a few other measures that we're bringing to bear. So
Speaker:the trips to Dubai and other countries in the Middle East are
Speaker:around those initiatives. They're state-level initiatives. They're very
Speaker:important, and they have the money and the
Speaker:expertise to pull it off. What we provide is a
Speaker:specialty within that area of livestock feed. So that's what's
Speaker:really interesting to me about the Middle East and is that they want this.
Speaker:They want food independence and food security, which I think is wonderful, and
Speaker:they're willing to pay for it, and they have the drive to pull it off.
Speaker:Like, not every country is in that same position. Like, if you look in the
Speaker:United States, you know, we were very worried about drought, but we're not always interested
Speaker:in really solving the drought or the problems downstream. We want to
Speaker:use it for political advantage or other things, but we're not always trying to solve
Speaker:it. What I love about what's happening in Dubai is they're genuinely
Speaker:interested in solving this problem. So it makes sense for us to show up and
Speaker:to work with our partners there. Yeah, it was really eye-opening for me from all
Speaker:aspects and just to see some of the challenges they're facing there. And, you know,
Speaker:shout out to Cultivated. You know, they actually flew me out there, got to meet
Speaker:a lot of the partners there. So I imagine that's been a pretty
Speaker:helpful partnership as well in terms of getting you introduced to
Speaker:folks in the space and people you should be talking to. Yeah, I agree with
Speaker:you. In fact, I'd never heard of or understood the concept of ag broker
Speaker:before I met Cultivated, and we've fallen in love with Cultivated. They're
Speaker:fantastic, and I think we have a really meaningful partnership with them, and
Speaker:we certainly appreciate what they're trying to do in the space of finding the people
Speaker:that have problems, finding the people with solutions, and connecting them. I think that's great.
Speaker:Well, we've had a really, really insightful conversation. I want to thank you
Speaker:for taking the time to jump on here and educating, you know, my listeners
Speaker:about, you know, specifically the challenges in terms of raising
Speaker:fodder for livestock in a vertical farming environment. So it's been really eye-opening
Speaker:for me, and I think for people that are interested in the topic, I imagine
Speaker:they'll have some more questions or be digging around on your site for more information.
Speaker:So as we wrap up, I'm curious, you know, because of the audience that we
Speaker:have here, we're speaking to a lot of your colleagues, a lot of your peers
Speaker:in the vertical farming space. Granted, you know, a lot of the folks that I've
Speaker:spoken to are doing crops, traditional crops for human consumption, and, you know, you're doing
Speaker:something a little bit different, but I always like to leave some space here for
Speaker:you if you have thoughts about, you know, what you're seeing, or if you have
Speaker:a message to, you know, anyone that might be listening, you know, based on
Speaker:the experiences you've had so far in the space. Yeah. Well, first I would say,
Speaker:Hari, if you need to cut this all the way down to 5 minutes— No,
Speaker:it's okay. That's why you have people that can listen to
Speaker:podcasts at 1.5x, and so they can get through it faster if they want to.
Speaker:Yeah. But also, you know, if there are only like 3 meaningful parts, that's
Speaker:fine by me. You know, I won't judge. I do have, you know, something that,
Speaker:that we care about immensely here that I would like to say, which is we
Speaker:think very highly of ag producers, not just in the
Speaker:US, but around the world. And of course, we're right here in Utah and we're
Speaker:in the US and we love this country and we love the ag producers of
Speaker:this country. And we think they're the backbone of what this country is.
Speaker:We also think that's true in every country. We think the ag producers of each
Speaker:country are truly the backbone of that country. And they produce
Speaker:something that's very important. And I think they're not often
Speaker:represented that way. And that's something that we care immensely
Speaker:about is that we think the ag producer deserves a very
Speaker:meaningful place in, you know, the global
Speaker:conversations and that the ag producer is close to the
Speaker:ground. They're close to the production of life. And they have a unique
Speaker:view in this world that you don't get serving the software industry. And the
Speaker:software industry is full of wonderful people. But it's a completely different
Speaker:ethos, I think, in livestock production
Speaker:and agriculture in general. And so we're extremely grateful that this
Speaker:population is doing this hard work, even though they're not always
Speaker:celebrated for it, right? We look at economically, on-farm economics in the
Speaker:United States are down over the last 8 years, 45%. And
Speaker:yet they're still in the game and they're sticking with it and they're still producing
Speaker:and we're still consuming at an all-time high rate, but You know, the money is
Speaker:not making it and the economics aren't making it back to the producers. They're making
Speaker:it quite a bit goes into the middle of that. And, you know, the big
Speaker:industrialized ag, which, you know, I think has its place in society, but I
Speaker:think there's a lot of room to celebrate these ag producers. And that's
Speaker:something that we care about. And I think I'm so grateful
Speaker:for how open they are to letting, you know, individuals like my business partner and
Speaker:I into this world, because if they wanted to, they could shut
Speaker:us out. And they can say, hey, we've survived this long. We can survive another
Speaker:this long without you. And I think that's true. So that's number
Speaker:one. I want to say thank you for letting us into this world and thank
Speaker:you for being in it. The second one, in the world of agriculture and livestock
Speaker:production, the second thing I'd like to say is that our
Speaker:ideology is not that ag needs to be disrupted in this
Speaker:massive way and that no one knows what they're doing and the future is in
Speaker:technology that disconnects animals from the program,
Speaker:that disconnects the consumer from a knowledge of where their products come
Speaker:from. We don't think that's where the future is really
Speaker:strong. Where we think the future is really strong is looking backwards to
Speaker:these animal husbandry practices that are well-worn, well-established,
Speaker:and leveraging technology to assist in
Speaker:those well-understood, well-established programs.
Speaker:You know, some of the people we've met are so good with their animals, and
Speaker:they have real meaningful relationships with those animals, and they love their animals, and their
Speaker:animals love them, and they get the most out of the animal, and the animal
Speaker:gets the most out of their lifetime as well. And I think it's a wonderful
Speaker:thing to see. What we want to do is support that with technology so we
Speaker:can alleviate the burdens on the shoulders of these producers as
Speaker:much as possible, not replace them and not disrupt it and say, hey, you were
Speaker:wrong, you don't know what you're doing, and the future is over here. Look how
Speaker:cool, you know, we took 400 ingredients and made a hamburger patty out of it.
Speaker:You know, that's fine. People will always do that,
Speaker:and there's always someone that will consume that product. But I don't think that's the
Speaker:future of agriculture. I think the future of agriculture is
Speaker:supporting the ag producer at a foundational level
Speaker:and allowing those ag producers to perpetuate over time. You know, we've gone
Speaker:since 1935, we've lost over 5 million ag producers in the United States alone. So
Speaker:it went from over 7 million to just over 2 million. And yet
Speaker:consumption of ag products has gone through the roof, higher than it's ever been.
Speaker:And what we want to do is say, let's allow those 2.1
Speaker:or 2.2 million ag producers to grow to 3 million. And then let's
Speaker:allow the economics to get back to those producers in a way that their next
Speaker:generation wants to stay in the game. You know, some of these guys are— men
Speaker:and women are 5, 6 generations in. Let's make it 8. Let's make it 10.
Speaker:Let's keep that going. And that's something that we care immensely about.
Speaker:We can't solve that whole problem. You know, we're not geniuses or anything like that.
Speaker:What we want to do is first solve on-farm premium forage production and
Speaker:then let the farmers and the producers tell us, hey, do we actually solve it
Speaker:or not? And then are we allowed to play on the next game, which
Speaker:maybe is protein production, livestock feed, or maybe it's water,
Speaker:or maybe it's something else? I don't know. Sounds like you're keeping yourselves
Speaker:busy for a long time to come. Lots to learn here
Speaker:in terms of what you shared. And so I really appreciate it. you coming on.
Speaker:And again, we're gonna have all the links that you mentioned here in the
Speaker:show notes, renaissanceag.com. Anywhere else you want to send
Speaker:folks or to let them connect with you? No, I think that's great. And we
Speaker:appreciate you, Harry. We appreciate you letting us come on and talk to, you know,
Speaker:your audience and expand ours. And, you know, hopefully you can find at least 6
Speaker:minutes of content. Yeah, we'll let the listener
Speaker:decide what's valuable, what's not, and they can pick and choose. So Thanks again for
Speaker:your time, Caleb. Really appreciate it. Thanks, sir. Thanks again to Caleb for coming
Speaker:on the show and sharing his inspiring story and all the
Speaker:great work that they're doing at Renaissance Ag. As a podcaster, it's always great to
Speaker:meet people in person and then have that follow-up conversation on the show, and we
Speaker:just had a great vibe from the moment we turned the mic on, so it
Speaker:was really fun. Special thanks to our Season 7 title sponsor, Cultivated. If you're
Speaker:looking into a vertical farm and don't know where to start, which technology would
Speaker:suit your needs, reach out to them today. Best of all, their service is free
Speaker:because they work on behalf of their partners. Learn more at
Speaker:cultivated.com, and that's spelled C-U-L-T-I-V-A-T-E-D.com.
Speaker:Just leave out that last E. Podcast production and marketing provided by Fullcast. Learn
Speaker:more at fullcast.co. As a reminder, if you're enjoying this show
Speaker:or any past episodes, leave us a rating and a review like Marcos did
Speaker:at ratethispodcast.com/vfp. We'll be sure to read those out on
Speaker:future episodes. Tune in next week for a conversation with a fellow podcaster.
Speaker:It's Trevor Williams from the Farm Traveler podcast, and that is
Speaker:indeed a fun perspective where we talk about each other's shows
Speaker:and our overlapping conversations with folks in the vertical farming space. I think
Speaker:you'll really, really enjoy that. It's a fun conversation. Until we meet again,
Speaker:here's to your health. Thanks for listening. To read the full show
Speaker:notes for this episode, which includes any links mentioned in the
Speaker:episode, as well as a full show transcription, visit
Speaker:verticalfarmingpodcast.com. There you can sign
Speaker:up for our email list to be notified when new episodes are published.
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