S1E5: 005 Jon Friedman - A Green Mind

Jon Friedman is the COO and co-founder of Freight Farms, an organization that provides agricultural products and services that enable on-site commercial food production anywhere in the world. Join Harry Duran, host of Vertical Farming Podcast, as he and Jon discuss the growth of the AgTech industry, the value of marketing and the grant Jon and his team received from NASA to further their work with vertical farming.

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Key Takeaways

00:01 – Jon shares his origin story of how he originally became interested in AgTech and the inspiration to start Freight Farms.
13:19 – Jon speaks to the importance of educating those looking to enter the industry in order to scale agriculture
20:25 – The value of having Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and marketing plans in place
25:58 – Jon expounds on Freight Farms’ latest model, The Greenery
29:13 – Jon talks about the grant he and his organization received from NASA
32:30 – Jon speaks to the trends that excite him about the future of AgTech
38:23 – Where listeners can follow and connect with Jon

Tweetables

“Admittedly, I don’t have a green thumb, I would say, but I have a green mind.” (00:52)

“The current food supply chain is not set up to support the entire globe, even though it’s a very centralized global system.” (10:05)

“Our goal as a company is to continually lower the barrier of entry for anybody looking to get in or anybody looking to scale agriculture.” (13:48)

“What a lot of folks in this space look at first is, ‘What’s my ROI? What’s the economics of growing?’ And, if it works at that scale, scaling gets a lot more realistic.” (22:46)

“NASA’s a really interesting organization because you go there and they forget that they’re NASA sometimes. They forget how awesome the scope of work that they have worked on over the years is so they’re very casual about it. We tried to act cool but failed miserably.” (32:14)

Links Mentioned:

Jon’s LinkedIn

Jon’s Website

Jon’s Twitter – @JonFreightFarms

Freight Farms’ Instagram – @freightfarm

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