S11E139 Stefan Hey/vGreens - Why Strawberries? vGreens and Stefan Hey’s Astonishing Insights

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:06

So, Stefan Hay, co founder and chief science officer at V Greens, thank you so much for joining me on the vertical farming podcast.

Stefan Hey

0:07 - 0:08

Thanks for having me.

Harry Duran

0:09 - 0:19Ignore this for outputs

It's been a while since we connected. We were trying to figure that out before we jumped on, but has it been about a year since we connected at Vertifarm in Dortmund?

Stefan Hey

0:19 - 0:22

That's correct, yeah. A little less than a year. Yeah.

Harry Duran

0:22 - 0:30

How was your experience at the conference? Do you usually find that those are a good use of time in terms of connections and meeting other people in the space?

Stefan Hey

0:31 - 0:40

Oh, absolutely. Usually on Verte farm Greentech, I'm usually busy walking around and meeting all the other people from the industry.

Harry Duran

0:41 - 1:37

We talked a little bit there. We happened to be sitting next to each other at dinner, I think, when it was one of the meetups. So it's always fun when you just can randomly meet people that you didn't meet at the conference. But we got to connect at dinner, so it was fun to hang out. And then you were able to coordinate a visit to one of your earlier sites with sepper and myself and I think Adam from cultivated, we all went to check out the facility. So it's always nice because as much as I talk about reporting what's happening in this industry, I don't get as much time to spend to visit these farms on site and go inside and taste the produce. We tasted the strawberries. We saw the bees in that space as well. So it was always nice to get that experience firsthand. It's nice to finally catch up. I know we had planned to do this for a while and get you on the show, and there's been some updates since then. So it's probably, the timing is probably better because there's probably some newer stuff that you can talk about since we first connected.

Stefan Hey

1:38 - 1:47

Yeah, that's right. And obviously, it's kind of lucky since we so close by to the actual venue. I think we took like 15 minutes ride and we were there.

Harry Duran

1:47 - 2:00

Yeah, you drove us over there and you drove us back. So that was nice. So just for the folks that may not be familiar with the V greens, do you want to give just like a quick synopsis of, like, what, you know, what your focus is on and who you work with?

Stefan Hey

2:00 - 2:32

Yeah, our focus is strawberries specifically. For the moment, we see this as a blueprint for other fruits, obviously, but at the moment, the strict focus is strawberries. And there's so much to learn about this crop, and we don't want to lose that focus. And we develop systems to grow strawberries efficiently and in large scale, whereas we partner with engineering companies to build farms, and we mostly take care of the growing knowledge and the software behind it.

Harry Duran

2:32 - 2:42

So talk a little bit about your background in terms of how you got into, how you got into indoor farming, and this is something that you envisioned that you'd be doing when you were in university.

Stefan Hey

2:43 - 4:33

My story starts actually with four years old. When I, as a child, I wanted to be a gardener, and here I am today. I am a glorified gardener. So everything worked out as expected back then. I started to study agricultural biology at university, where it became more and more clear about how huge challenges that are facing agriculture, and specifically the sustainability aspect of how we grow food. Since agriculture is arguably among the most destructive of all human activities, and we have quite a long way to go to turn our entire food supply chain sustainably. And since then, I didn't really want to do anything else. And that's why I went to this field specifically during my PhD and also my postdoc at Iowa State University. I was mostly in coin genetics, like a little bit of molecular genetics, some population genetics, but then specifically during the postdoc, where we've used all sorts of sensor technology to track plant growth and extract novel traits from field grown corn. And some of those insights that I've had during my postdoc, I'm also applying today. And just for the strawberry. And yeah, I came back to Germany and then I had a brief detour into cancer research, where I quickly realized, it's interesting and all, but it's not my hill to fight. I just need my plants and I need this problem of food production in the light of climate change. And so I quickly left that job and co founded V Greens together with Klaas, Max and Casper.

Harry Duran

4:33 - 5:00

How did you decide to focus specifically on strawberries? I'm curious because we have the wide range of folks that are listening. Could be people that are running their own farms in different stages of their lifecycle with vertical farming, but there's people that are interested in starting as well. And I'm curious, as you thought about which crop would be your focus, I'm wondering if you could just walk us through that thought process of how you decided that it would be strawberries.

Stefan Hey

5:01 - 6:21

When we started out, we obviously had a look around what the market is doing. Most people were solely focusing on leafy greens, herbs, lettuce, etcetera, which absolutely makes sense. You plant a seed and you essentially wait and you have a single point of harvest. So we thought we don't need to be another company that does exactly the same thing where other companies are far ahead. So we thought more of, okay, what could be the next logical step in vertical farming? And we ended up with fruiting crops. And the strawberry came to mind since it's a fairly compact plant while still giving fairly good yields for per, let's say, cubic meter. And so that's how we started out with a strawberry. And there are some other features with a strawberry that just make perfect sense for vertical farming, that the fruit itself is very perishable. Then it's a non climactic fruit, which means it cannot ripen once it's harvested. So you need to harvest it ripe, decreasing shelf lifetime. So you always need to be near the consumer to still produce tasty strawberries. And that's certainly one aspect where vertical farming can be a real solution.

Harry Duran

6:21 - 6:36

Talk a little bit about your relationship with your co founder, Max. And you mentioned that you know each other from childhood, but there's an interesting story of how you guys connected and began to start to figure out how that you would be working together on this project class.

Stefan Hey

6:36 - 7:04

And Max knew each other from childhood. I joined the team. Later on, I responded to an online ad of that class put on the Internet, and I was just curious what they are up to. And so I decided to send a resume. And, yeah, we had some brief chats, and then we started to prototype a little bit. And three months later, I quit my job to start. No, I'm doing it with them. That's how we met.

Harry Duran

7:04 - 7:37

William, I know that the concept of entrepreneurship is really strong here in the States, and it's obviously over the years, and it's been more common to see in Europe and other places abroad. But was there a sense of concern from your part of making such a move? Starting your own business comes with its own set of challenges, and obviously doing something in an industry that's growing and it's not as established as something that's been around for decades. I'm curious for you, that thought process, what's going on through your mind, thinking about making that decision?

Stefan Hey

7:38 - 8:31

Quite frankly, I never had the ambition to one day start my own company. I just wanted data, analyze data and just deal with my plans. Never really had the ambitions. So the whole entrepreneurship side was mostly by Max and Glass, who really made me realize how impact lies in the economics and not in simply just putting the knowledge out there, which I've been doing at university. But obviously, you need somebody to translate that into factions. And if you want to truly make a difference, you have to make the economics work, otherwise, nothing is going to change. And this was mostly driven by Max and Klaas. And obviously, in this whole thing, those two are the masterminds behind making all of that happen.

Harry Duran

8:32 - 8:38

And so when you came on board, was it clear what your role was going to be and how the three of you would work together?

Stefan Hey

8:39 - 8:57

It was pretty clear, since we are a founder team from various backgrounds, and I was a biologist in the team, so it was pretty clear that I would be dealing with the plants, and that's what we've agreed to without speaking about it.

Harry Duran

8:57 - 8:57

Yeah.

Stefan Hey

8:57 - 9:00

So it was pretty obvious. Obvious choice.

Harry Duran

9:00 - 9:24

When I was there, you took us on a tour of one of the smaller farms. So can you, for the benefit of the viewer and listener, can you just kind of walk us through, you know, through what was the expectation when you built that small farm? Was it specifically, I think you mentioned at the time, you were doing a lot of R and D work as well, and, you know, and how the building of that farm helped you to take the next step to where you are now?

Stefan Hey

9:25 - 10:09

Yeah, you've got the real beginner's feeling. This was one of the. One of the first prototypes that we've built. We've put all of our blood, sweat and tears into this. We were bootstrapped at the time when we built this. So you've really seen something that we've just kind of taken stuff that you can get somewhere and put it together so that it works and build a farm out of it. It was a fairly small farm of 50 with a production capacity of around four tons, and that's where we've been doing most of our testings of varieties, growing conditions, etcetera. So, yeah, you've got the real feeling from the very beginnings.

Harry Duran

10:10 - 10:12

How long was that farm up and running?

Stefan Hey

10:13 - 10:16

That's been running for almost two years now.

Harry Duran

10:16 - 10:49

Okay. And so for folks that are just interested in the process about how and why it's important to have an R and D facility like that, can you talk about maybe lessons learned or the benefits if you've had it up and running two years, I imagine there was a lot that you experimented with, maybe different varieties, different conditions in there. I'm curious if you had to summarize the two years that you've had it up and running, the benefits of it, and if it feels like it was the right decision for you to get to the next point in the journey.

Stefan Hey

10:51 - 11:48

Yeah, absolutely. A lot of learnings. So we've obviously been doing prototyping before, and this was more of a lesser, slightly bigger step. And, yeah, with one thing to realize is that the science matters and the plant is in the center of everything we do. That is probably one of the important messages that I would say is putting the plant in the center. And everything we engineer, we engineer around the plant. And we don't have engineer for the engineering sake, but always having the plant in the center, because ultimately, that's what we're doing this for, to bring the right growing conditions to the plant and accommodating that. Otherwise you can get mad at a plant, but it doesn't make it grow.

Harry Duran

11:49 - 12:01

And so how did you translate what you learned from the two years of R and D there? And how would you say that improved or helped you make decisions for building the new form?

Stefan Hey

12:03 - 13:00

Yeah, so we've quickly figured out that the strawberry is quite a tough nut to crack. It's literally a nut. It's a tough nut to crack. And so you always need to have that sort of flexibility to always accommodate the plant in various stages and in various conditions that you can always adjust to how the plant feels at the time. And that certainly needs to translate also into layouts and systems for larger farms, because one thing with strawberries is that they easily get out of balance, so that you either get them too generative or too vegetative. And you always need to find that fine line between. Otherwise you burn the crop and then you have to start over, and you need to allow that flexibility to steer the plant in that direction.

Harry Duran

13:00 - 13:11

And so, as a result of the findings and all the research you did in that first farm, can you talk a little bit about the new facility and like your plans going forward, the.

Stefan Hey

13:12 - 13:55

New facilities, we can see the smallest scalable unit of farms in larger scales. And what we've built here is a vertical system where we just replicate modules of that to a size that is desired. And one step that we have taken here is then taking also the next step and looking at the production logistics behind it to make sure that we can sort of minimize the inconvenience of operating a farm. So by having the plants well as accessible, but still making a system that puts the plant in the center.

Harry Duran

13:56 - 14:07

And so what is the, if you think, if you had to explain what the new, I mean, what the current business model is going to be, who you're working with and who are going to be some of your partners going forward?

Stefan Hey

14:08 - 14:40

I touched on the engineering companies, so partner companies that help us build these farms. So we provide layouts and give those to the engineering companies to build them. And then we have the customers that operate the farms, and these are largely large retail groups who have the sales channels for the produce, where we come in with strawberry growing knowledge and the software to operate the farms.

Harry Duran

14:40 - 15:15

And so how much of that is education process for the partners that you work with in terms of the, you explained, like, the intricacies of how challenging it is to grow strawberries and everything that you've learned, obviously, from your R and D facility, when you have these partnerships with the companies and the retailers that you mentioned, is there a lot of education involved in terms of what's involved based on your learnings to grow a farm, to grow these crops? So is it really like a partnership where you're really working with them on a regular basis?

Stefan Hey

15:15 - 15:52

Ongoing, absolutely. And as with any interdisciplinary project, you have people from multiple expertises and you learn from each other. So it's not only the biology, but that goes also from the engineering, goes from the retail side. You sort of have to start learning the language of the other disciplines. And so there's a learning process from all sides, which is quite exciting to find different perspectives from different players in the market and of the entire value chain.

Harry Duran

15:52 - 16:32

And so what does that look like when you engage with a new partner? Is there like an onboarding process? Is there training involved? Do they spend time in your main farm, or are you sending resources on site for them to get them started? What do you mean in terms of when you start these new projects with partners? How much of the handholding, what does that look like for a project, and what is the onboarding time in terms of getting these new projects up and running? Because I imagine there's some education involved. There's some systems that need to be put into place, and I'm wondering if new partners want to think about working with vgreens. What does that process look like from a timeline perspective?

Stefan Hey

16:33 - 17:00

Well, there's certainly when you just start engaging with the new partner, then there's obviously a lot of ground to cover. So a lot of information has to flow forth and back from the individual partners. So we start with general introductions, and then we go deeper into topics. We do deep dives into individual aspects of what a farm entails, and then we, through iterations, we end up at a solution.

Harry Duran

17:01 - 17:28

You mentioned in a previous, some information that you provided that the idea would be to use the strawberry as the blueprint for other fruits at some point down the line. So what does that process look like? And obviously, you don't want to accelerate that until you've feel like you've got a firm handle on everything that needs to be involved with growing strawberries. But what does that look like when you think about the process for adding new berries, for example, into the mix?

Stefan Hey

17:28 - 18:11

Well, with some plants, you have to essentially start with a white piece of paper, because there's no d one system that fits all as sequoia trees, obviously grown in a different environment than a strawberry plant. So you always need to start. How can we accommodate a new plant in a system? What of the parts can we recycle? And how would the grow space essentially look like looking at a developmental process of a plant? Like, how does the plant develop over time? And what are the systems and spaces we need to bring to the table so that the plant feels happy and is ultimately productive?

Harry Duran

18:11 - 18:21

Having done this for several years now, do you feel like your ability to determine when a plant is happy, is that something you've gotten really good at?

Stefan Hey

18:21 - 18:49

Now, I've always been a plant guy, and I have a very strong protective instinct for plants. So I do spend a lot of time looking at plants and figuring out what it is that they need. Another thing that we're obviously trying is to. How can we use data to sort of read the state of the state of the plant and always making the right decisions of what it is that the plant needs at the time?

Harry Duran

18:50 - 19:07

And part of that is when I was looking at the new services that you have on the website, you talk a little bit about the farm management software. Can you talk a little bit about how important that is and how that ties into everything that you're working on to help the farmers have a better grasp of what's happening in their farm?

Stefan Hey

19:08 - 19:43

Yeah. The important thing about a system like DAP running smoothly is that man and machine becomes a unit and sort of works together, and software builds that bridge so that the machine is working together with the human to grow these crops and helps the human to make those growing decisions, to have a productive crop over time? And this is the key component of the software that takes care of the plant balancing.

Harry Duran

19:44 - 19:50

And that's a solution. That's a system that the team designed and built in house.

Stefan Hey

19:51 - 20:19

Yeah, that's what we're building in house. And as with all of them, that is never finished. So this continues to get better and better, since there's a near infinite number of combinations of little dials that can be tuned to optimize plant growth. And the level of complexity is absurd. So we will keep learning and learning, and it will get better and better over time.

Harry Duran

20:20 - 20:48

When you think about who would make an ideal partner for vgreens. Based on the projects you have in place now, there could be people that come to you and after a conversation with them you could decide, hey, you're not ready for this system or maybe you don't understand exactly what you're going to be getting involved with. So I'm curious about those early conversations. When you think about potential partners, what should partners that are looking to work with vgreens be thinking about before they have a conversation with you?

Stefan Hey

20:48 - 21:13

Well, one thing that we do like to interact with is people who are interested in common growth so that we both can grow together. And this is one of the traits that we really appreciate because ultimately both of us will be learning and learning and will be growing and growing and this is something that we value quite much.

Harry Duran

21:14 - 21:23

Yeah, and I saw that there's also partners that can decide if they want to have the v greens branding or you're also offering white label services as well.

Stefan Hey

21:24 - 21:55

At the end of the day, we want to bring this technology on the street and at the maximum impact. And if somebody wants to take a white label solution, that's absolutely fine with us. And it also makes sense if you're thinking about a retailer who has all of the distribution channels, why should he not use his own branding, which they obviously are experts in? They've dealt with their customers for decades. It's absolutely fine with us.

Harry Duran

21:55 - 22:10

So one of the things that you're working on is in terms of outlook, future outlook is subsidiaries and some work you're possibly doing in Singapore. Can you talk a little bit about that, what you're doing from an R and D perspective?

Stefan Hey

22:10 - 23:13

Yeah. So this is one of the things that we've also figured out along the way is how specifically for strawberries, one of the biggest challenges, or a fairly big challenge is to getting decent plant material year round at any location. And the activities in Singapore will be largely in line with this problem. How can we ensure that we get really good plant starting material? It has to start with absolutely fresh and healthy starting material and we will be working a lot on that in Singapore where we develop a tissue culture pipeline to make sure that we have these essentially anywhere in the world. Since there's also a challenge getting plant material across borders and you have a much easier time explaining what you're bringing in. If you can declare sterile plant material.

Harry Duran

23:13 - 23:22

How important for you is the decision to have a presence in the asian market in general?

Stefan Hey

23:22 - 23:46

The asian market is obviously, obviously huge. And so also Singapore is a good entry point to then basically start in Pacific Asia. The entry barriers are fairly low, so it's easy to set up a company in Singapore. So we felt like it was a natural first step into the asian market.

Harry Duran

23:46 - 23:50

What would be an ideal outcome as a result of that work you're doing in Singapore?

Stefan Hey

23:52 - 24:13

So that we scale the technology that we develop in Singapore, not only to supply our own farms with plant material, but essentially to anyone who wants to grow from the best plants in the world. That would be the ideal outcome, that we can provide enough capacity to provide all of these.

Harry Duran

24:14 - 24:15

How big is the team now?

Stefan Hey

24:16 - 24:18

We are currently twelve people.

Harry Duran

24:18 - 24:26

Twelve people. And how has that been? Was it twelve people when we first met? About a year and a half ago? Is it smaller?

Stefan Hey

24:26 - 24:27

It was about the same.

Harry Duran

24:28 - 25:02

About the same. And so how do you think about growing the team? When you have those conversations with the founding team and you think about where it makes sense to grow, obviously with new businesses, you could look at marketing, you could look at sales, you could look at infrastructure, obviously building out the science team, there's so many things to do and so many places to put resources. But when you think about for regreen specifically, what makes the most sense as you think about growth, what do those conversations look like with the founding team about where you want to go next?

Stefan Hey

25:02 - 25:43

Well, a big topic is obviously always focus, and this is often challenging. And also even in the small team that we have, we have so many fantastic ideas, and oftentimes we find ourselves in a fairly short amount of time brainstorming, we are actually coming up with an idea that is a topic for an entire startup. So keeping focus is obviously always key. And whatever strategy for hiring we do, we do need to make sure that those hiring is in line with the upcoming projects and with the focus of our long term projects and strategy.

Harry Duran

25:44 - 27:18

Always curious because obviously there's different environments in terms of basically talent that's available. And I've had that conversation with several of the guests here in terms of finding qualified people, because relatively speaking, indoor farming, it's a lot of movement around leafy greens, but when you start to get into specialty crops, when you start to get specialty expertise around strawberries, and I'm sure that pool of talent starts to get smaller and smaller and smaller. So I'm curious what it's like in Germany. Are there partnerships being developed with some of the universities? Is there support from the government? I know recently here in the states, Virginia. The state of Virginia last year declared a day in March, indoor farming day. So it's, the governor is really saying, hey, this is something that's important for us, Virginia traditionally has been a big state for tobacco growth going back historically, but now there's an awareness and other states are coming online and saying, hey, they're noticing what Virginia is doing. There's going to be a CEA summit there in October. So I'm curious what sort of support you've been seeing from either government institutions or other people, maybe on the broader Europe perspective in terms of support to develop, to think about talent, because obviously it's important. If this is something that's taught in universities, then people come out of university ready and looking for these jobs in indoor farming. And I'm curious what your experience has been with that.

Stefan Hey

27:19 - 28:47

In terms of grants, there's obviously fairly large pools for grants that you can apply to. Oftentimes these are fairly lengthy processes which can make it challenging to tap into those, since you always have very long lead times. And there comes again the question of focus. We're doing our best on tapping into those as much as we can without losing the focus. And in terms of cooperation with universities and research institutes, we do have a couple of collaborations ongoing. So we have like a joint cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute, which is like a german research institute organized in 67 institutes. So it's a fairly big one where we develop some things together and have a couple more corporations on the horizon then. One of our co founders is currently assistant professor at the University of Wageningen, which for this audience is probably also quite known for its strong focus in CEA. And he sort of builds this academic bridge to the University of Wageningen, where we are also having projects in the pipeline to work with them.

Harry Duran

28:47 - 29:01

Do you get the sense from either informal conversations you've had with colleagues or people just outside the space, that people are seeing this now as a viable path, career path, and that people are getting excited about new farming?

Stefan Hey

29:02 - 30:15

One thing that is becoming hopefully clear to most people is that vertical farming, while it is a very important piece of the puzzle, it is by no means the silver bullet. And there are real problems that vertical farming can solve. And I. But the narrative of vertical farming is going to feed the world is certainly not true. It can do to some extent. So when we, for example, talk about what does it mean to feed the world? There's various dimensions to feeding the world. One is providing the macronutrients to the world, and that is calories. And vertical farming is certainly not set up to provide the calories for the world. But when you talk about micronutrients, vertical farming can be a real solution that is vitamins, micronutrients as minerals, and these are mostly found in vegetables, fruits. Vertical farming can be a real solution, especially when you think about having it grown year round so you don't lose some of those important compounds through long transports.

Harry Duran

30:16 - 31:42

I had a conversation with Hiroki, the CEO of Osha Berry. This is now a couple of years ago, just as OSha was getting started. And obviously they made a big splash because they went the premium route. And there was, I forget what the pricing was. I think it was like nine strawberries for $60 us or some crazy amount. And I'm wondering, I imagine you saw and, and see a lot of what they've done from a marketing perspective, which is great because it's obviously made a lot of visibility for strawberries and this concept. And I think what was interesting for people is if you grow up in the states, it's Driscoll farms, and that's basically where everyone gets their strawberries from. But what was interesting about that conversation was that he was explaining how in Japan specifically, there's regions that are where people grow different types of strawberries, and there's different varieties in almost the same way that there's wine varieties in France. And so just to kind of revisit that and just educate people on the beauty that is the strawberry, but also the variety that exists, because I think people are so used to just having one specific taste, and it's probably not the most flavorful because if they've gotten it mass produced, as they've had here in the states. So I'm curious, you know, as the spokesperson for the strawberry, what that's been like for you to learn about the richness and the history and the culture in terms of all the different varieties.

Stefan Hey

31:43 - 32:34

Yeah. First of all, if you're listening, I'm a big fan. No, there's certainly a lot of varieties. I spent some time in Japan myself, and I was, I was quite pleased to see about the love of really high quality produce, and especially fruits. And that makes perfect sense to take this japanese experience and share it with the world because most people wouldn't be familiar with this, having the perfect fruit. That's why I'm a big fan, since it takes me back to that time in Japan where I've tasted like fruits and fruits of extreme quality. Yeah. And the.

Harry Duran

32:35 - 32:58

Will we take this, the varieties? I think what surprises people is that there are different varieties and there's different regions and there's different tastes, and then I think that's what surprises people the most. And obviously, you're not trying to replicate the open field environment when it comes to strawberries, but I'm curious how much of that you're able to think about when you think about what you want to grow. Specifically with NvGreens.

Stefan Hey

32:59 - 33:40

One thing where Europe will most likely be different from Japan, for example, is that the average european consumer wont be prepared to pay the same prices as they are in Japan, obviously. So well have to strike a balance between good strawberry and the golden strawberry, for example. So you can grow the golden strawberry, but it will come at a price tag and the average european consumer may not be prepared to pay those prices. That's where our efforts go into how can we grow a good strawberry but for a decent place?

Harry Duran

33:42 - 33:56

And as you think about the opportunities, obviously there's challenges that you have in that farm on a day to day basis. So I always like to ask this question because it feels like the answer is different every time. But what is a tough question that you've had to ask yourself recently?

Stefan Hey

33:58 - 34:38

Certainly it was going to Singapore or not, since it's always the question of focus. Like is the focus right here? Ultimately, we ended up deciding that it is the right step since since it's almost prohibitive for year round production if you don't have the supply chain of year round availability under control. So it's an absolute must for farms. And that is why we have answered that tough question. Yes, I'm going to Singapore to do these activities there.

Harry Duran

34:38 - 35:08

So when you think about the roadmap for v greens and everything that you've got planned in terms, whether it's expansion, whether it's growth of the team, whether it's visibility for regurgitates itself, depending on the horizon you want to pick twelve months from now, three years or even further when you look forward. What are some of the things that if we're having this conversation, maybe a year from now or a couple of years from now, when you look back, you'll feel like you've made significant progress. What are some of those milestones you want to hit?

Stefan Hey

35:08 - 35:25

A the new plant material is one of those milestones. Having that set up and going and a farm that we can produce in large scale, those would be the two milestones that we're talking about next year.

Harry Duran

35:25 - 35:27

How do you define large scale?

Stefan Hey

35:28 - 35:30

North of 100 tons per year.

Harry Duran

35:30 - 35:32

Okay, that's a lot of strawberries.

Stefan Hey

35:33 - 35:34

Not enough.

Harry Duran

35:34 - 35:56

I'm curious what your experience has been. Do you find that the conferences are valuable either from a business perspective, obviously, because there's a significant investment to show up at these places. But I'm curious what the experience has been like from you, either from a networking perspective or from new business perspective. Do you find that there been a valuable use of time?

Stefan Hey

35:57 - 36:11

Absolutely. I always learn so much from the exchanges with all of the people with all of those expertises. I always find a lot of inspiration from those conferences and always looking forward to the next one.

Harry Duran

36:12 - 36:13

What's coming up for you in terms.

Stefan Hey

36:13 - 36:22

Of conferences at the Singapore food tech? Okay, that is in October.

Harry Duran

36:22 - 36:53

Okay. And so what has you, when you think about the industry, obviously you're in this specific vertical with strawberries. Do you find that there's opportunities for partnerships with people that you know or colleagues in the space that are doing maybe a different crop or where do you see like the sense of collaboration happening, whether it's in Europe or the UK, do you see that happening more and more, that there's an opportunity for collaboration and people not just so focused in their own silos?

Stefan Hey

36:53 - 38:08

Well, I would certainly like to see more collaborations since I think we are still in a very young stage of the entire industry. And at the moment the industry would probably benefit as a whole from more sharing of experiences. So I would absolutely like to see more of the collaboration. One area in particular where I think there could be a lot more is with breeding companies to breed varieties that do particularly well in such systems, since you don't really have to deal with other factors. For example, when you're doing breeding, you breed for a certain environment. But since we can make an environment, we can breed for different traits that make the plants more productive, more healthier, tastier, and in the breeding process, more, there is potential to put more focus on such traits rather than all of the traits that are associated with environmental resistance.

Harry Duran

38:09 - 39:17

Stefan, I'm curious, just from a cultural perspective, growing up, and obviously I'm thinking about specific cultures. I was born in El Salvador and the specific foods and fruits and that we eat growing up. And do you feel like there's education process or return back to the food that you grew up with, maybe as a child? So when you think about conversations you're having with family members who don't know nothing about vertical farming and youre, you know, preaching about the benefits of the beauty of strawberries, I'm curious what those conversations look like and how much of that is a reintroduction to this idea of having fresh fruit available, because it's a concept that if you grow up on a farm, obviously you have it. And we're growing some crops here and we just picked some radishes. And there's nothing like eating something that you literally grew on your own property. But with indoor farming, now you can have hyperlocal produce available, you know, year round. And I'm curious, in conversations with people who may not be in the industry, how much of that is an education process for them to understand why that's important?

Stefan Hey

39:18 - 40:12

The conversations can go either way, depending on who you're talking to. And there is certainly a lot of opinions, especially in a topic that is by nature a very emotional topic. We think of food as. It's a very emotional topic. It's the things that we take our nutrients and our energy from. And so depending on who you talk to, you get very different responses. So you have some that say, no, we don't need strawberries year round. Strawberries is something for May and June. And then you find those that are a little bit more open to new technology. They think, this is super awesome. Where can I get them? So you find people from both ends of the spectrum?

Harry Duran

40:13 - 40:53

Yeah, that makes sense, because I think historically, people associate these types of crops with exotic locations and flying these in from a country that grows them year round, the expense and the costs associated with that, and these are really traditional. Some of these have traditionally been like gourmet produce that you have to only eat uncertain times of the year because of the availability. And I think to your point, it's probably opening people up to saying, how do we think about this? If it is available year round and it is available local at a price point, that makes a lot more sense. I'm wondering if it's going to change people's opinions or chefs opinions about how to start to use some of these.

Stefan Hey

40:53 - 41:20

I'm sure it does. As soon as you taste it and you like what you taste, then absolutely there will be more people catching on. And exotic itself is a relative term. So what is exotic for? I don't know. Northern Europe may not be exotic for somebody in Central America. The strawberry may be a little bit more exotic.

Harry Duran

41:21 - 41:42

So when you think about all the challenges that come with starting and running a business, being in an industry that had a lot of ups and downs, and obviously getting a lot of visibility for some of the bigger failures that have happened, educating people as to the benefits of vertical farming, what keeps you motivated day in and day out to keep going?

Stefan Hey

41:43 - 42:13

It is producing food for a larger audience, producing as much as we can from sustainable sources. This is what drives me and will drive me for a long time. There's no stopping on that point. Since the problems are so huge. There's so much we can do. That's why we need all of the brains that we can get to work on this problem. We should get on that problem.

Harry Duran

42:14 - 42:41

So, lastly, Stefano, obviously it's hard to tell the future, but if you had to, if you looked at the industry specifically with what the work that you're doing, the beet greens is doing with strawberries and some of your other colleagues in the space are doing around strawberries, if you had to predict what would be the next berry that would probably be next to be grown indoors, knowing what you know now, where do you think we're headed there?

Stefan Hey

42:42 - 42:46

The next berry. I could imagine melons.

Harry Duran

42:46 - 42:48

Melons, okay.

Stefan Hey

42:48 - 42:49

They are berries.

Harry Duran

42:49 - 42:50

Yeah.

Stefan Hey

42:51 - 42:54

Yeah. I could imagine melons. I could imagine blueberries.

Harry Duran

42:55 - 42:56

Okay.

Stefan Hey

42:56 - 43:00

A little. A little further distance. Possibly raspberries.

Harry Duran

43:00 - 43:01

Okay.

Stefan Hey

43:02 - 43:05

Yeah, those, those. Those would be my. Those would be my bits.

Harry Duran

43:05 - 43:07

Which melons specifically?

Stefan Hey

43:08 - 43:16

I personally, I love musk melons, and I know how good they could be. It's just hard to find the really good ones.

Harry Duran

43:16 - 43:17

Yeah.

Stefan Hey

43:17 - 43:20

So looking forward to our first experiments with musk melons.

Harry Duran

43:21 - 44:03

That'll be interesting, and I'm sure people will be tracking that as well. Well, I appreciate you giving us a little peek inside what's been happening. Well, at least since you and I had that conversation, and I can't really stress how fun it is to actually be in a farm to taste how much better they taste than what you're normally used to getting in the supermarket. And I can only imagine that you're going to be continuing to improve the process and make them better and better as it goes along. So I just want to congratulate you and the team for the progress that you've made. And it sounds like you're really having a lot of success expanding into your markets, but also educating people as to what's possible with strawberries. I appreciate you sharing those insights.

Stefan Hey

44:03 - 44:09

Yeah. Thank you very much. And I hope we can see each other in the new facility again.

Harry Duran

44:10 - 44:27

Yes, that'll be nice to get a tour of the new facility. And I posted those when I got back. I posted some of those images on social media, and I think they went over really well. So I'll keep in touch with you in terms of what's happening and some of the upcoming conferences, but it'll be nice if we can connect again. That'd be great.

Stefan Hey

44:27 - 44:30

Absolutely. Looking forward.

Harry Duran

44:30 - 44:37

The website is v dash greens.com. anywhere else you want to send people to learn more or to connect with you.

Stefan Hey

44:38 - 44:46

Find me on LinkedIn if you up for a virtual coffee. If you are looking for collaborations, always, always happy to share.

Harry Duran

44:46 - 44:51

Okay. And you've provided all those links? We'll make sure all those links are in the show notes as well. So thanks again for your time.

Stefan Hey

44:52 - 44:52

Thank you.