S12E158 Kirk Taylor/Land Betterment - From Abandoned Mines to Thriving Farms: Land Betterment’s Vision

Harry Duran 00:00:00:

So, Kirk Taylor, co founder and president of Land Betterment Corporation, thank you so much for joining me on the vertical farming podcast.

Kirk Taylor 00:00:06:

Yeah. Harry, appreciate you having us.

Harry Duran 00:00:08:

Yeah. Where are you calling in from?

Kirk Taylor 00:00:09:

Yeah, so we're just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, where we're headquartered, and we met at the indoor Ag conference in Chicago last summer. It was great to hear kind of your journey from the finance world into ag. You know, I come from an accounting background. Most people wouldn't. Accountants can get into entrepreneurship or other types of things when business partners came out of finance. But Lane Betterment itself. Right. Put all of our skills together to try to solve some of the problems that, you know, we can dive into during our conversation. But appreciate you. It was a great dialogue when we were together in Chicago, and great. Thank you for having us on.

Harry Duran 00:00:50: Are you planning to make it to any other indoor conferences? Indoor Ag in March?

Kirk Taylor 00:00:55:

Yeah, we just had an email come through with our. To say, here's our top three. Which ones can we get a speaking role? Which ones will, you know, do reduce cost if we bring, you know, some. A container farm or new appliance? So, yeah, strategizing on that right now. How about yourself?

Harry Duran 00:01:16:

Yeah, I just got my ticket confirmed for Indoor Ag and they've been a sponsor of the show. They've been such a great support of the show for many years, Suzanne and the team. So it was my first ever indoor farming conferences. After doing the podcast for a couple of years, you know, we were all in lockdown mode, so it was nice to get out and actually meet people. It was refreshing to be on site and just have people say that they've, you know, the podcast was helpful during, like, Covid to help them get caught up on the world of vertical farming. And I've heard many stories of people who have driven to these conferences, and they're like, I was listening to your show on the way here, so that's great.

Kirk Taylor 00:01:50:

There's been so much innovation, right?

Harry Duran 00:01:52:

Yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:01:52:

I think it's great to get people together in those scenarios in those situations where you can have tech focused people, you can have operations focused people, you can have finance focused people and really brainstorming how to make, like, real solutions out of everyone's talent. So I think those conferences can be very, very valuable in that regard.

Harry Duran 00:02:12:

Were you born and raised in Indianapolis?

Kirk Taylor 00:02:14:

Just outside of Chicago.

Harry Duran 00:02:15:

Okay.

Kirk Taylor 00:02:16:

So went to school, Indiana University for accounting and finance. Met my wife and we moved to Chicago for about 11 years. We lived up there and then moved back down here to grow our family, but always been in the Midwest. I'm the son of a former corporate executive, returned entrepreneur and so kind of grew up in that scenario. So I knew always, even when I had my, you know, kind of like big four cunning jobs, knew that this would always kind of be much more enjoyable, you know, taking ideas, putting it into practice. A solo journey. Right. You need to have good partners as well as partnerships with external stakeholders. But yeah, it's been a good journey so far. I don't want, I don't want to say how many years because it used to be like, you know, just a few years ago, but now it's kind of.

Harry Duran 00:03:10:

Yeah. Starts to add up. Did you always have a proclivity for numbers?

Kirk Taylor 00:03:16:

Yeah, yeah. I liked understanding why businesses succeed and why they fail. Ideas are awesome. Right. But if the idea doesn't pencil out, it's a way to cover your costs. There's not going to be a viable option. And so yeah, kind of, you know, started taking accounting classes in high school and it was all off of writing from there. But I never found myself. I always look at, looked at it as a ways to understand, right. The how people succeed instead of just trying to kick and tie things. So enjoy being in front of the clients, understanding, learning from them. You know, many clients were very successful right in their business. However, even inside that success there was pockets for, you know, the ability to get better. Right. And so how do you find those potential failures on the front end so you don't have to go through them? It's something I try to draw upon, you know, from my experience in the public county world.

Harry Duran 00:04:25:

How much of that experience was colored by, you know, your father's experience? You said he was in the corporate world, similar to myself. Yeah, I was in corporate for 20 plus years and then I moved into entrepreneurship and like not by choice, but had to figure it out on my own and you know, had to figure out all the things they don't teach you or like accounting or I mean you took a, you know, a shine to it and most people don't. Right. They don't pay attention in their home economics class and like they can get by. But as an entrepreneur, it is literally the lifeblood of like knowing what's happening in your business.

Kirk Taylor 00:04:58:

That's right. And so for me it was the opposite. Right. Where I understood those types of things about the business. But I had to go back to business school to hone marketing or collaboration some of those other skills that maybe I didn't focus on earlier in my career. But for my dad, I think that the unrelentless grind of success is what I learned the most. Right. And so some days those hours are long, or most of these, but you're doing it for your family, you're doing it for your employees, and you're doing it for your. Your customers. That's where you have to gain your desire. Not for the quote, unquote glory of owning your own business or having accolades or external success. You have to want to do it for your internal team. Right. You have to come to work every day to make sure that your employees have that opportunity, your family has that opportunity. I think that's what probably I learned most about, you know, watching him go from that traditional, you know, salary type job to one in which you're.

Harry Duran 00:06:06:

And then as you started to go through, you know, you had a lot of different accounting roles in your career. When did you start getting the idea? Or, you know, tell us a little bit about the origin story for land betterment.

Kirk Taylor 00:06:17:

Yeah. So land betterment itself was born coincidentally, or maybe by some serendipitous reason, but right before the world lockdown in Covid. And so we had previously invested in a lot of infrastructure and industrial opportunities in Kentucky, West Virginia and southern Indiana. Those communities, while they generated the building blocks for maybe the first hundred years of industrial revolution in United States and the world, they were getting passed over. Right. As the energy production in the US Changed, that location of energy inputs changed too, Right. Whether it be, you know, wind or solar or natural gas or oil, those people who worked in those, you know, fossil fuel industries couldn't move their families to where those new jobs are. Right? And so that left a big void. And in that type of community, in a transitioning community, when there's a void comes, you know, drug use, poverty, food deserts, housing dilapidation, lack of investment. And we kept seeing time and time again, government and nonprofits failed to address the fundamental issues of that void. And the void to us was lack of purpose of a job. Right. And so you can give somebody some money to pay the rent or pay their grocery bills, but you're not giving them a reason to make themselves better or make their communities better. And so landmetry was like, okay, we have all this used land across this region, used to be for coal mining or whatever, and it's no longer being used for that. How do we repurpose it in a way that not only do we address maybe prior environmental issues, but work with the community to see what can be done proactively to provide real jobs for these community members? That then we don't have the drug problems or we don't have the other issues plaguing these communities. That's really the antithesis of it. Right. So trying to bring both environmental impact and the social impact together in a way that's not charity, but it's a way to actually provide development opportunities for these.

Harry Duran 00:08:40:

So, Kirk, I'm curious how someone like you decides this is something that you want to take on. Right. You know, there's so many opportunities you have continued with, you know, the accounting work and like all the other things that you had your hands in, you know, and so what's the driver for you personally?

Kirk Taylor 00:08:58:

Yeah, so I think that everybody has these ability to make something out of themselves and be proud of what they do. Not everybody realizes that. And I think that by providing direct roadmaps, direct opportunity for these community members, we can give them the steps that they can walk up on their own. That way they don't need like handrails anymore. And I think that is very empowering because then you're not looking at areas as a problem. You're looking at areas as opportunity. Different mindset, right? Oh, that area is a big, you know, issue. Well, or that area has a lot of opportunity. We just need to give them the steps that they could walk up. When I was in Public County, I did work a lot with various government programs for affordable housing, commercial development, underserved areas. And I really got to see the. The effects of prideful development in those communities with a little bit of investment alongside a lot of human know how and grit, can really make a big change. Right. And so that's kind of how we looked at it. We were purposeful of how we built lean environment. We understood that we were not a nonprofit. Right. We wanted to create a business that made sense financially. But we also wanted our investors and our partners to understand that we were making decisions not just for their return. Right. Just not to maximize their return, but we are going to be making decisions to maximize the return of all of our stakeholders. And so when we did form Land Betterment, we did form as a Betterment corporation here in Indiana and then went through the rigorous work of being certified a B corp as well, which is pretty hard to do, but it's also a lot of land management. Land development companies are not going down that route. Right. Because they are only trying to extract whatever value they could extract for their shareholders. But we really felt it was meaningful to engage the larger stakeholder group and really understand what their desired outcomes were. And that might not Be to maximize every single penny right of return but might actually be have a allowing you to see a longer term view of how that return is measured. And that's why we chose that route which it was hard but I think it benefits us in our stakeholders from a long, long run situation.

Harry Duran 00:11:31:

So we're definitely going to dive into, you know, the. From the origin stories and the projects you're working on as you get into what we're doing with the new. But you're also the co founder of a company called Reelement as well.

Kirk Taylor 00:11:40:

Yeah. So Realm and Technologies is totally different kind of. But it's also. It's taking a new approach technology that Purdue University incubated and well, they patented it and applying it to. How do you reuse elements that have already been mined, specifically the battery and the magnet space. Everybody reads stories about the terrible mining conditions in some of these like third world countries where the all the minerals that you that go into your phone have to be mined in. Right. And so how do you take what's already been mined and purify it in a way that can be used in new applications. We were fortunate enough to license produce technology and then commercialize it here in Indiana as well.

Harry Duran 00:12:35:

So it seems to be a consistent thread. And then even with like the holding company that you have is just this real concern for and stewardship of a lot of reuse.

Kirk Taylor 00:12:44:

Yeah, yeah. So as part of the realm of the business we were tasked with finding a large facility to grow into. Most people would go and look at corn fields or wheat fields or soybean fields, just breeze zone and put up a new building because that's kind of the easy way. We actually purchased a former nearly 100 year old RCA television facility that had been abandoned for about 10, 12 years. Squatters were in there. It was. You could have filmed a horror movie and started it. But it was important for us to take a look at how do you reuse something that was the showcase of the community. How do you make it that again? Right. It was hard. It would be a lot easier just to do it in a cornfield. But yeah, we've generally never done greenfield development. We feel that there's probably already enough, you know, disturbed land out there to make it go reusing it.

Harry Duran 00:13:45:

You mentioned those abandoned warehouses. I'm a fan of electronic music. So I would go to Detroit for many years, the electronic music festival there. I went like nine years straight. But talk about a city that's seen some better times and some like areas I think they're on the upswing as well. But it's just, it just goes to show you what can be done with, you know, people that are dedicated to really turning around, you know, what is essentially a blight on the city.

Kirk Taylor 00:14:10:

Yeah, no, we appreciate that. And it comes down to asking the city or the community members what do they want? Right. Do you want this new, you know, commercial or light manufacturing here back in your city or do you want it way out in the house? And more times than not, they want it in there because they're already paying for the infrastructure right there. It's already. The water's there, the sewer is there, the electricity is already there, the police already made, you know, the roads are already maintained around it. Why not reuse that instead of building, building new ones.

Harry Duran 00:14:45:

So is that part of the work that you do with royalty management holding to just like look for opportunities like that and partner with companies that are in that space?

Kirk Taylor 00:14:52:

Yeah, yeah. Financing those type of projects are very difficult. And so we do look for kind of like minded entrepreneurs who have a challenge that we've probably already solved once or twice before and we can apply a little bit of capital, a little bit of know how to try and make their vision come true.

Harry Duran 00:15:11:

What do you see as a common thread for folks that you partner with the businesses that you partner with in terms of where they're at in their stage of their progress or you know, there's some traits in the actual entrepreneur themselves.

Kirk Taylor 00:15:23:

Yeah. Generally we look at companies who have experienced some commercial success or viability that are struggling with the. How do you take it from an idea that's probably going to be receptive in the market to now formulate a very concise go to market strategy that needs the right type of capital as well as access to larger distribution? I think those are the things that we normally look for. We're not necessarily like venture. I didn't come out of the venture industry. Right. We don't look at it necessarily. Are you only in a series A or only in a series C? Those things don't matter as much to us as where are you today? What do you need to achieve your goals? That's probably the biggest common thread. Right. Sometimes if somebody is too locked in to say no, we're only going to take money at series B. Right now we don't like. We just want to be constructive on how we solve problems. And I think that's our biggest sign that we're going to have a good.

Harry Duran 00:16:22:

Relationship that makes sense. So switching back to land betterment, when you started it did you have an idea of the types of projects already in, did you have those in mind of what you'd be working on and how's that look now?

Kirk Taylor 00:16:31:

Yeah. So housing and food were big issues. Right. We didn't necessarily know how we were going to solve those, but we knew that you cannot focus on being a productive employee if you do not have a home you felt comfortable with and you didn't know where your next meal was going to come from. Additionally, if you were going to be a productive employee and you had a family at home and you didn't know where their meal was going to come from, and you knew your kids were not proud of their homes, they're not going to do as well in school and then you're going to have, you know. Right. So all those things build upon each other, but it's not as simple as just going and building, you know, a 200 unit apartment building in Eastern Kentucky. Right. We talked with very great impact investors who all wanted to invest in San Francisco, New York, Austin, and then maybe get to Kentucky or West Virginia. Right. So that's, that's great. That models out from a risk adjusted irr, but that's not solving the problem. Right. And so we had to find a type of housing stock that could actually work in these communities. And it seems odd, but the best was actually utilizing the recycled upcycled shipping container and turning it into a house, into a home. Based upon your reaction, you're like, well that doesn't make any sense. But in a lot of these communities, a mobile home is actually the predominant mode of housing. Right?

Harry Duran 00:18:13:

Yeah, makes sense. Yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:18:14:

The sticker price of a mobile home is relatively affordable, but the OpEx, the operating costs of that mobile home are generally pretty high and the physical depreciation deterioration is really quick. And so it's really not an affordable housing option. But those people in these communities that have that is their only option, they get suckered in. Right. And even worse, they get suckered into like a lease to own. By the time they actually take ownership, the thing is like falling apart. And so you get into this really bad cycle. And so we search all over for, for good contract manufacturers that can do nice container homes. We really didn't find any. Most were just focused on like really high end, like bespoke, like eight container big homes. That's not what we're interested in. So we found a group out of Alabama that was doing it already and we ended up acquiring them to bring them in house so we could control the quality and the Production and it's been really good. And so we're, we have about 30 homes right now out in kind of the Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia area. And the feedback has all been really good when you've they're built to a custom home quality, but not the cost, which really gives people some pride as to where they live. So that's been going really well. But then we had to take a step back, say, okay, well that's a good method to solve the housing, but what about the food component? Right. We had such good luck about utilizing the container for delivery of housing solutions that we were looking at and doing farm inside of a container. Right. And so we had very little luck doing it ourselves. We're not scientists who are not agriculture background people, but we were fortunate enough to come across Guy and Ivan on the new team who really had solved what we had been unable to solve. Right. The technology component. And we feel we can get into it, but we feel we solve some of the delivery challenges that they have encountered. Right. And so if you think about the container based farm, not only is it deployable, right. It is self contained, is sturdy, really solid from an environmental standpoint, right. We're not taking up large swaths of ground. Even greenhouses are generally energy intensive. Right. But we're not. And which is a great way to hyper localize fresh produce, which is a challenge. Right. So if you look at the entire mean, you know this much what I do. But if you look at that supply chain, right, of agriculture, of fruits and vegetables, it's really terrible. If you think about like, okay, so let's say you have a greenhouse in Mexico that happens to be carbon neutral. Maybe they have wind farmer, they have power purchase agreements and you live in Minnesota and that cucumber has to go from Mexico to Minnesota. No one tracks that component of the cost. Right. And so hyperlocal, I think is both delivering better quality, more freshers and generally would you have fresher produce, you actually bring more nutrients right. With it by compressing a supply chain. You don't need to have a lot of the pesticides and the additives. Nothing needs to go in there because you're not transporting across the country or two countries and you give higher level of consumer choice, community choice as to what they want to grow. Right. They can decide what they want to grow, which I think all of those things are hugely valuable in the partnership between you and us, which you mentioned really unlocks that both from a just a straight community standpoint, but also an institutional standpoint.

Harry Duran 00:22:20:

How did so for the benefit of the listener and the viewer. You're referring to Scott Massey, the CEO of Anew, who's been on the show a couple times. Really smart guy. And you know, sometimes it's like he, we're having conversations and I'm just like, I think he's just slightly over my head in terms of like what he's talking about, but I'm trying to keep pace. But he's just a genius in terms of how he thinks through problems and such as these. How did you guys get connected?

Kirk Taylor 00:22:44:

Through LinkedIn.

Harry Duran 00:22:45:

Really? Oh, that's great.

Kirk Taylor 00:22:47:

Yeah, we, like I said, we were trying to solve this problem ourselves. I saw him through Purdue, I think I saw their page or something and he had posted about some, you know, breakthrough that they had and reached out. And it's probably been about 18 months that we've been working with them. And to your point, yes, we have weekly calls and every week, yes, his intelligence. But it's like you got to dumb it down to three levels here for um. But it's great being partners with super eager and smart people. Yeah, it is. So we did about six months of engineering together to deliver a prototype to their facility. We did that in, deliver that last April.

Harry Duran 00:23:34:

Okay.

Kirk Taylor 00:23:35:

So in the market today there are a few container based farms. Right. Farming solutions. And we like that because we know that there's a market for it. Right. And so one of the things you asked about going into a new market, I don't necessarily want to be the inventor of something. I want to make it better, make it actually make sense. So the container farms that are out There are generally 40 foot shipping container, which is your standard life.

Harry Duran 00:24:06:

Yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:24:07:

And they are highly farmer intensive. Right. Manual intensive. So both of those things are negatives in your viewpoint, Scott's and ours. One is 40ft is too long for most local deployment. Right.

Harry Duran 00:24:27:

Okay.

Kirk Taylor 00:24:28:

20 foot shipping container goes into a parking spot. That's easy. Right. Forty foot. Now you're two parking spots. Right. And it's tough to get into some environments because their delivery is difficult. And so that was one of the key differentiators between what the power of the new technology was able to unlock in a smaller, you know, container. And then their technology as it relates to automation is a game changer. Right. The challenge with any farming is external environment and then human error. Right. We solve the external environment by doing a side of a shipping container. Our quote unquote competition doesn't solve for the human error component, but the new team does. Right. And so when you can deliver, you Know, high results without human interaction, or actually, I guess you remove the human interaction to allow for higher results. Then you have replicatable success, which I think is important when you, let's say you are an owner of three restaurants in like, let's say, I don't know, Lexington, Kentucky or Cincinnati, Ohio or Minneapolis. Right. And you want to be able to have fresh produce for your three restaurants. You generally want to have consistency across your menu and you need to make sure that container farm is delivering consistent results. If it was a manual intensive process and the guy on third shift, you know, didn't wipe his boots off and then infested your entire thing with gnats, you don't have your thing for three months, right. You're in green for three months now, you're kind of screwed. And so that replicatable success is very important from a market pickup standpoint.

Harry Duran 00:26:24:

So what is the model for once these units are built? You mentioned restaurants partnering with them as well. What are the different applications, how they're being used?

Kirk Taylor 00:26:32:

Yes. So we look at. Eventually there will be a government application, right? Government application will include military and first responder or disaster response. Right. Those will be fully self contained, frontline deployable systems. And those systems will be kind of seeded and potted with the same type of produce. So that way, you know, okay, this, every frontline deployment is going to get this produce on this cycle. Right. So you can do it. So that'll be one application more on the commercial side, restaurant groups, and I'm going to say restaurant groups, large restaurant groups in small grocery chains who want to control their local produce. So if you go into some of the big box grocery stores today, there may be a sign of locally produced. There's nothing that quantifies what that means. Right. But if you can go into your local grocery store and walk into a container and pick up your own lettuce, then you know it's locally produced. Right. Now you probably will walk in a container, will probably be inside. Yeah, but then, but you know that it's been grown in that container and it was plucked out last night and you can pick it off the shelf. You know, that's local. Right. And the third kind of prong is on the educational front. Right. And so we're working with two universities right now where we'll deliver farming containers to them, the pure produce container, and they will not only use it in their commissary, right. In their cafeteria, but also use it for educational purposes. So we think that's like the perfect mix of stakeholder engagement not only are you feeding your students, you're teaching your students. Perhaps you create a business around it. Right. Maybe pull in the business school and entrepreneurial school to sell into the local market. So those things are really exciting where you start to collaborate across different silos within a university or school.

Harry Duran 00:28:43:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting because I've seen some of the applications that you have on the site. You know, it's leafy greens, herbs, fruiting, microgreens and flowers. So are you seeing, like, different areas? You know, businesses are looking for different applications.

Kirk Taylor 00:28:57:

Yeah. Mostly you're sticking on the leaves of green or peppers. Fruiting fruits. Good. The spice, a lot like the ghost peppers that Scott grows. I mean, they will put you in your seat. They're so intense. Right. Because they're so fresh, which is great. So if you think about it from a culinary application, now you can really let the chef or the owner of the restaurant really get their mind broad around ingredients. But you're not subject to outdoor climate. You can grow authentic, you know, Asian herbs or spices to have in your restaurant right there locally.

Harry Duran 00:29:35:

Yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:29:36:

It's really the technology just starting and the iteration, the seed, I guess technology is just starting as well. And once you start matching those two things up, we do think the growth, no pun intended, Conventional. Right. Because the machine learning behind the technology is so strong that it is always learning about what grows best under what circumstances.

Harry Duran 00:30:03:

Sure.

Kirk Taylor 00:30:04:

It is always collecting the data. When that tower. I don't know if you've seen the. When that tower rotates, it's collecting data real time. Right. What is growing that thing fastest? And then you can go back to the seed companies and say, okay, we have all this data. Let's start to modify these seeds in a way that's going to grow the best in this container. I think you're going to see some pretty significant breakthroughs.

Harry Duran 00:30:31:

So where land betterment helps to facilitate those interactions, it's you kind of making the connections to these restaurant associations. Hospitality.

Kirk Taylor 00:30:40:

Yeah, both. So, I mean, obviously you talk with Scott. He's incredibly bright. Really talentedly gifted in outreach, too. Um, but I think that just our experience in growing and scaling businesses helps identify markets that will be most receptive.

Harry Duran 00:30:56:

Yeah, yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:30:58:

But I think, you know, it's one of those things where we didn't have any past connection before reaching out. And it's been a really great collaboration together. We each have different perspectives, but still grounded in the same desired outcome, which I think is great. He loves our mission and obviously we love his too. It's been a really great partnership so far.

Harry Duran 00:31:19:

And are you staying in certain regional markets or are you going nationwide?

Kirk Taylor 00:31:24:

Yeah, so it's right now we're hyper focused on just areas that we can kind of drive to and drive people to see the container. It's kind of expensive to haul all around the country, but yeah, we have some bids out for west coast and east coast as well. And I think that you get four or five of these out there where people can come in and see you're going to get a lot higher reception. So yeah, we're definitely looking for other regions. We make them in Alabama, so getting to the Southeast is not an issue, you know, for us either.

Harry Duran 00:31:58: If you make it to Minnesota, let me know and.

Kirk Taylor 00:32:02:

I get you down here to Indiana.

Harry Duran 00:32:04:

Yeah, that could be an option as well. I think indoor ag tech is in Chicago this year again, so I think I'll probably be. Yeah, maybe we should plan something. I'll maybe stay an extra day and get a visit in. Yeah, yeah, I think.

Kirk Taylor 00:32:18:

Hey, I'm not going to pay for parking to get the container. I'm shot. Renault. I don't want that ticket.

Harry Duran 00:32:23:

Yeah, I can imagine.

Kirk Taylor 00:32:24:

Or pay the toll for. You know, it'd be like that.

Harry Duran 00:32:27:

Must be fun to see on the road. What's been the biggest aha for you? Your introduction into this world of vertical farming and seeing what's possible and you know, maybe before you knew something from the outside, but now working, you know, day to day with Scott and the new team and just seeing literally and probably tasting as well, what's coming from there. What's been the biggest half year surprise for you?

Kirk Taylor 00:32:48:

Yeah, I think the earliest stage that we're in and so our prototype that we've delivered that we've been operating since April has probably been improved maybe three times already. And the quickness and the efficiencies of those improvements is really eye opening. Right. And so like the first one, the each tower had these huge like PLC boxes that had to generate each one independently. They took up so much space and they're so energy intensive and heat intensive and all that's been engineered out already. Right. And so not only are we delivering a better product to the end consumer, but it's lower cost and it's better efficiency.

Harry Duran 00:33:32:

Yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:33:32:

So just taking something out of prototype, getting a feel for it and seeing innovation how quickly has been eye opening. You know, I haven't been part of too many kind of tech forward businesses and so just seeing how fast that can occur when you have, you know, highly motivated, smart people has really been. I mean, it's been great to be part of, but it's been eye opening.

Harry Duran 00:33:55:

Yeah. I think the more I enter this world and obviously even just reacquainting myself here in Minnesota with greenhouses and just the complete change in taste and improvement in terms of and how long they last in the fridge, you know, when you look at that greenhouse grown and vertical farm grown versus the stuff that comes over in a bag from Salinas is like, you don't think about it when you're growing up. And I grew up in New York City, so it's like you just go to the supermarket and you just eat whatever's there and it's. The more you started becoming acquainted with how far food needs to travel. Of my past guests recommended the book the Secret Life of Groceries, which was a bit disturbing and eye opening at the same time. When you start to figure out, you know, what we were kind of alluded to at the start of this conversation.

Kirk Taylor 00:34:34:

Yeah, yeah. And from land betterment standpoint too, one of the other things that set us apart was even as a private company, we went out and put together a fully independent board of directors, all coming from diverse backgrounds. Two of our board members came out of large grocery change and then went into entrepreneurship on their own. And both of them have been really helpful in thinking through how do you scale, you know, a produce company, both from a safety standpoint, but also from a market standpoint. Then one of our other board members, she came out of E and Y from a sustainability consulting standpoint and really helped close the loop on some of those supply chain issues. It's not necessarily just trying to greenwash something, but there's real dollars and cents to understanding your supply chain and delivering something to the market that lowers the risk. Right. Of supply chain disruption, but also just lowers the operating costs. Right. As an accountant, I can understand, I want to do something that costs less to do. Right. And so not trying to pull upon trends of, you know, ESG or sustainability or circular or something, just trying to actually make good business decisions, which generally addresses those issues too.

Harry Duran 00:35:56:

Yeah. So what do you see as the future for pure produce? Like what is ideal for you? If we're having this conversation 12 months from now, what does success look like?

Kirk Taylor 00:36:04:

Yeah. I want to say we're going to have, you know, half dozen fully growing.

Harry Duran 00:36:08:

Okay.

Kirk Taylor 00:36:09:

Containers out there, and I want to have you in and do an episode inside of one, I think also.

Harry Duran 00:36:15:

Yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:36:16:

Get you out of your cabin into a farm and Then I think that his solves so many issues. Right. So we've had, you know, Scott's been over to Western Africa. We have a lot of connectivity in some of those countries as well. We talk about the challenges that we were trying to address here in the United States in rural communities and urban communities, the exact same challenges that other countries have as well. Right. So it's highly replicable. And so, yeah, we're just hoping to keep fulfilling this promise of solving these gaps in these communities.

Harry Duran 00:36:52:

So I also wanted to cover some of the other projects, at least touch on some of them that land betterment is working on just for the benefit of folks that are just discovering you for the first time. I want to give, you know, shine a little bit of light on what else you're working on.

Kirk Taylor 00:37:04:

Yeah, so we do a lot of lane remediation work, but we do it again towards an eye towards what the community wants. Right. So some examples is in eastern Kentucky, there was a former coal loading aggregation facility that a large coal company kind of abandoned and never did the proper cleanup work. We did that cleanup work and traditionally the state would require you to reforest it, which is fine. It's good. Trees are not a bad thing. But we asked the community what they wanted and they said, we need housing. And it was like 16 acres of flat land. And the stakeholders said, well, if you put trees on there, then either we have to just come down again to build houses or, or we lose that 16 acres of flat land. And so we worked with them and the state to redo the permitting and zoning. And that's where we have 12 homes as a rental community there now, fully rented. Gives people some idea of homeownership. We put them through like homeownership classes and financial literacy classes. I think those things are good. And I think always trying to say how do you not only achieve what your desired goal is, but how you try to achieve everyone's stakeholder, your community's goals, generally you work with, work towards good outcomes. One other kind of tangential investment we've done is through Texas Tech University. We've sponsored and are a member of their center for Sustainable Fertilizer Recycling. And so we're one of the commercial members working on, on circular ways to take nitrogen and fertilizer out of waterway streams and wastewater treatment facilities and reuse it. Right. So one of the biggest issues in farming, as you probably know, there is farm running. Right. And how do you reuse the fertilizer that's been put into that farm and get it out of the waterways. So that's a really exciting one. And then spend. They had one test unit deployed at the Lubbock Wastewater Treatment center and our container business built the container that technology went into because they needed a mobile solution. The standard trailer for that was quoted for like 14 months delivery time. And we did it like in two months because they needed to get it out in the field to achieve their standard goals. So a lot of good stuff around those areas and you know, appreciate you asking about that.

Harry Duran 00:39:50:

What's a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

Kirk Taylor 00:39:54:

Well, I have three daughters, so we'll keep it to business. But sometimes it's about which opportunity needs the most time. Right. And it goes both ways. Sometimes you get burgers too much time on the best opportunity, even though it might not need as much time or probably too often you focus too much energy on the worst opportunity because it does suck a lot of your time. Right. And so same thing with, you know, bad employees or bad customers. You have to learn to reallocate your time into what's going to be most rewarding for the company and drive the best outcomes. Right. And so we've gone through that transition happy to, you know, allocate most of my time to a new and some of these other really great partnerships and trying to. It's okay. And not everything is achieves the greatest outcomes but you have to reorient to make sure your the entire pie. Right. Works out. Well.

Harry Duran 00:40:53:

I want to thank you for taking the time to come on the show, Kirk. I'm glad we got to connect and have this follow up conversation. It just so interesting to see, you know, a good example of partnering with the right folks and what you look for in a partner, especially in vertical farming, you know, people have certain specialties in one area and then you know, you come in with a company like Land Betterment and I think your understanding of like figuring out what was not in your company's zone of genius, finding someone like Scott and new and then realizing that yes, that's literally like his genius there. And then creating this merger of, you know, one plus one equals three now. And with the results that you're creating, you know, finding these opportunities and these spaces that would otherwise go under developed or in regional areas that are not getting a lot of focus. Like you mentioned the bigger cities. Right. And so I think what you've been doing, I don't know if you've, you take the time to look back at your accomplishments over the years, but we definitely have no.

Kirk Taylor 00:41:45:

Yeah. Generally, we look forward. Every once in a while, you kind of got to pinch yourself to see what the team's done. It's been pretty amazing.

Harry Duran 00:41:54:

Yeah. Just a reminder to you to look back at. Just. I don't know if you knew when you were taking those accounting classes in college that you would end up here. And you know, when you think about the. Your DNA of your dad, you know, just having that entrepreneurial streak as well, it seems like all the roads started to lead to where you are now. So it's. I just like, I'm really glad for the work you're doing with Land Betterment. I think this is really much needed resource and I'm wishing you all success.

Kirk Taylor 00:42:16:

Yeah, of course, Harry. Appreciate. Yeah, I appreciate that and look forward to maybe seeing you in Chicago.

Harry Duran 00:42:20:

Yeah.

Kirk Taylor 00:42:21:

And yeah, I appreciate it's going through, obviously preparing for this, going through some of your past interviews and discussions too. I appreciate your broad view on the industry. Right. Because there are a lot of collaborations to be had and so appreciate your perspective too. Hopefully this isn't our last time doing it in this format for sure.

Harry Duran 00:42:40:

Thanks for your time again. And we'll connect folks to the website. It's land betterment.com where you can learn about the pure produce containers and everything else you guys are working on as well.

Kirk Taylor 00:42:48:

All right, thanks, Harry.

Harry Duran 00:42:49:

All right, thanks.