 You know when I was studying sustainability management Columbia what I learned really quickly was that there was this idea when I entered that sustainability was kind of a destination oh we've arrived we're sustainable now. And it's just it's total bull it's it's not I mean sustainability is a process. Right so so it's not like oh this city is sustainable now or this building is sustainable now. No because you attempt something you make a lead platinum building and then you observe and you learn and you increase the standard again to go further right you want to go from carbon neutral to carbon negative. You know and so that journey is what people need to remember very often I think in vertical faring people have missed that they just kind of see it as like oh we've arrived and this is it it's constant improvement. And because it's improvement that means that the method matters almost more than the kind of like final result, you have to have the method, and that's what I've tried to focus my practice on is, you know what are the steps to ask the great questions that observe and focus your improvement on to get that process of sustainability constantly going. And Gordon Smith is my guest on this episode of inside ideas brought to you by 1.5 media and innovators magazine. Henry is a sustainability strategist focused on urban agriculture water issues and emerging technologies. In 2007 Henry started exploring urban agriculture and launched the blog agriculture to share case studies and analysis from around the world into in 2013 Henry co founded the Association for vertical farming. And he worked on that staff and served on the board until 2017 in 2014 Henry responded to a global need for technology at agnostic guidance on urban agriculture by launching the advisory firm agriculture consulting, which has now consulted on over 100 urban agriculture in over 20 countries, agriculture consulting primarily helps entrepreneurs with vertical farming feasibility studies, recruiting and systems designed in 2018 Henry was voted top 10 and produce in the United States of America and 40 under 40 food policy influencers in New York City. In 2019 he was accepted as a Guelph University food policy fellow and an advisor to the rice on university urban agriculture and food security curriculum development committee. Henry was named as top 20 influencers in food and agriculture agriculture by rabble bank in December 2019. He serves on the advisory board of numerous ag tech startups including small hold and food shed.io. The board of directors of nonprofit food access organizations teams for food justice in New York City. Henry has spoken at numerous places on the topic of urban agriculture in four continents and has been interviewed about urban and vertical farming for the Wall Street Journal Futurism. I would like to welcome Henry to the board of directors of urban agriculture, men's health, Bloomberg, the Atlantic, Arabian business, CNBC, and I could go on and on and on. Follow him please on social media because he is a fabulous man. Our paths have crossed many times. Welcome Henry. It's so good to see you. I actually shortened it a bit because you've done so many, many things and you've been around the block and you've seen all sorts of things. I'm sure it's been a journey and a learning process for you as well. But I could probably mention a lot more fabulous things that you've done for our world and for this industry. Well, thank you so much for the intro. I'm so excited to be here on this podcast. So yeah, let's get into let's talk about urban agriculture vertical farming. You bet. I want to start out first of all, I mean, let my listeners know our paths have crossed the sky berries, seeds and chips, and many other urban agriculture events, food events, innovative, innovative events around the world. And it's been a sure blessing to know you and have had that rough connection with you as well. How have you weathered this whole pandemic time this has been a crazy time and I feel that it's maybe gone similar to my experiences but I would like to hear and let our listeners hear from you how it's gone. So I mean when COVID-19 started and it hit I was on one of my typical business trips. In this case I was in the Middle East. I was going to speak and we were also collaborating with the event the global forum for innovations in agriculture, which is a large annual event that happens in Abu Dhabi. So, you know, essentially we got there and the trip with the event was canceled. Okay, and I had planned a little bit of an exploration of the region with a colleague of mine after that. And so the pandemic really began getting attention. This was March, probably March 3 or 4 so really when the break before the lockdowns began. And so we decided to kind of continue on our trip because we were going to leave around March 14 to go back to the US. I was going to go to Australia to another conference and my colleague was going back to the US. So just, you know, crazy conference travel thing. So we tried to kind of relax and kind of get into it and then the news kept getting worse and then our flight back from Oman got canceled. And so I had a difficult decision to make because I'm not a US citizen and there was some conflict with the airlines. They weren't sure if they were going to let me on the flight with my visa. There was a lot of questions about who's allowed in. So I told my colleague, I said, you know, get out, get out on the next flight. So she booked a new flight had to spend some money and Brianna got out. Meanwhile, I decided to stay in Oman thinking that okay in two weeks I'll get another flight and I'll just try to go to Europe, which is where my parents live. I'm half Czech, half British. I sound very American, but I'm not. So two weeks go by and I have a flight booked and then it gets canceled. And then another two weeks go by and the next flight gets canceled. And so I'm in Muscat Oman staying on the couch of a business contact of mine and now dear friend Majid Almasuri. And I'm sleeping on his couch and I'm six one I can barely fit on the couch. I'm your tall guy too. So, you know, I'm there indoors lockdown is going on this whole craziness and I kind of just realized that I'm stuck in Oman. And so essentially 123 days go by 10 canceled flights. And it was crazy because that was the longest I had been in a location in five years that I just been in one place. And I started to realize the travel was just out of control that I had before. I mean, it's difficult as a sustainability leader or someone who considers himself when it wants to be one to travel and speak at conferences and weigh that challenge of, okay, this is the impact I'm making through travel. Plus, but I also am inspiring people and educating people which is a positive benefit. So, I don't know, it's very hard to describe all the things I experienced in that period of time I'm happy to answer more questions about it. But the first part was that travel just canceled immediately and I had 65 flights last year. And now this year is a totally different situation and I'm grateful for it to be honest. I don't want to travel as much as I did. The virtual kind of phenomenon that's happening now or this Renaissance is exciting, because I can speak with you and many of the events have actually kind of pivoted, and even some of our own events have found ways to connect people virtually. So I guess from the travel perspective it's been a bit of a shock. The business perspective is another element that we can talk about, but that's really what I've been going through and now I'm in Europe. It's just family is so important during these times of crisis and so I just decided to stay here and kind of hunker down here for the next little while. Well, I stalk you and follow you online obviously because your fingers on the pulse I like to keep my finger on the pulse and know what's going on and follow those directions. During this time I saw some some digital pivots or transformations where you you start putting a lot more content online and doing a lot more videos and things, which was fabulous to see. But it was also all your prior experience and that's might be hard for some people to read out I didn't also go into all your degrees and your university affiliations and experiences there. But all that in some respects, especially around food and the type of food we focus on growing food and how that that process is really has a lot to do with sustainability and resilience. So has any of that helped you to even weather it better and then the client part of the business aspect of that have people like said, man, we need to convert to this model what you've been talking about for years. How can you help us let's get us there. Can you give us maybe some insights in that respect. I think it's there just on your first point, you know it's very important for me as a consultant to go out there and to speak at events and to get an audience because I'm trying to connect with people that want to plan farms or cities that want to strategize this so when those events all canceled that's a big business development loss for our company. And as we said okay well other people are experiencing this too so we launched that digital conference series you mentioned and we actually had five weeks I think four weeks of consistent of every day we released every week day business day we released a new episode. And so we gave people a voice and also gave others an opportunity to learn about us we did that all for free. And so there's like 45 videos on our website now still across the topic of sustainability and food that people can look at even today. It was really rewarding and quite successful for us as a pivot took a lot of time, but it was also good to create that energy on the next piece, you know we've had two things happen since coven 19 from the business perspective. You know one of them is that you know, we have a dramatic increase in leads, especially in the Middle East where there's been new incentives for food security is people have seen that the supply chain for food is really flawed and it's kind of fraying at the seams especially in the face of coven 19. You know, imagine that people can't get to work. They can't get to the farms you've got migrant labor it's a big part of agriculture that affects it you've got supply chain additional costs with food with just protection and ppes. So all of that has been very difficult for governments, especially in the Middle East so they created incentives. And so we get all these entrepreneurs and organizations who were never interested in food security before. And I think to us and saying that with that said, most of them are not ready to spend and even the governments have created these grants but they're not deploying the money yet because they have their own cost issues. So while we have dramatically more leads and dramatically more traffic to our website, our conversion rate as a business has gone down and so that's been very difficult for us and we've had to really adapt. So what are the proposals how do we give people value in the proposal request stage, but not have it cost us so much time and money. And, and there's a lot of things we've done related to that, but we are encouraged by the fact that that there is kind of this new understanding of how important it is to localize our food systems and just to understand where the risks are in that, and when these shocks happen in the system, we have to ask ourselves, you know how resilient is it. To do an urban agriculture we believe that is going to make it, you know more resilient and to your last point sorry about adaptation. Oh no you're fine. I grew up around the world so I think yeah the degrees is one part of it but there's been many experiences through my life that have made me adaptable to something like coven 19, I guess so you know, my parents are very international I was born in Tokyo, then Germany, Czech Republic, Russia, and in these places sometimes they threw me into kind of public schools where I had to learn the language and a new culture. So, you know there were different shocks like that. I grew up Mormon, I had to go on a Mormon mission for two years so I had to work with people of different cultures and people I'd never known before I'd to live with them and work with them every single day, and I had to meet them every day. And then when I moved to New York you know I really started from from zero and had to really kind of work my way up in that big city so there's a lot of different experiences. You know, I didn't make it easy for me because I'm very social so I think loneliness was the hardest part for it for me but but yeah I think everything in our lives in different ways is either prepared us or not for something like a pandemic. I'm so grateful to hear there's so many things there that I could be unpack and maybe we'll go down a couple little rabbit holes as well. One, I'm, I also used to be Mormon LDS. No way. I went on a mission as well I went on. Where'd you go. I was in Munich, Germany, so it was kind of crazy that that's where I grew up as in in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany and so that's where my mission was as well. Also where I went to, I went to, you know, yes, unbelievable, it's crazy. But that that's, that's neat of neat to hear as well. Yeah. My real first question is going along this whole guise of what you've kind of unpacked your, you are a global citizen and that is my, that is my first question do you feel like a global citizen and do you, how would you feel about a future without various walls, divisions, limitations of humanity, one from each other. And then I want to, when you're done so that we don't forget, I want to back into something that you mentioned in this global citizen and you kind of with the in the way had some experiences a lot in the Europe. And what happened before the pandemic with this Brexit, that has had a huge impact on food and some things that we've seen unfold there that I want to address as well. So your question. Yes, I consider myself a global citizen. I mean, I, you know, most of my, so kind of up to 10 years old, I was in Southeast Asia, 10 until 18, I was in Europe. And then I've mostly been in North America. I kind of feel like Europe or maybe even the Middle East is my next chapter. So kind of every decade or so I go to a different place, but I still have, you know, a couple more decades to go to the rest of the world. And so, you know, how global it is I, I haven't actually been to Africa, for example. So I still have to get to that continent. But I'm certainly very, very honored and lucky to have the experiences I've had and have that global experience I have three passports. So I'm pretty global in that sense as well. Borders or not. I mean, honestly, that's a difficult question. I, I definitely because of the upbringing that I've had, I think people who grew up in one place, I have a very open mind and I've learned that through process of observation, you can really start to understand how people see the world, and then you can connect with them, no matter what their races, no matter what their classes, no matter what, you know, religion or a place they come from, it's really about that, the process of awareness and that's kind of what my life journey is really about is, is can I become more aware. And I think that that's part of a global citizens kind of learn when they're young. So yeah, I mean I suppose I would be totally happy if there were no borders. Overall, but I think that we need to be a process for how people interact with each other from different cultures. I'm not so naive to say that there isn't culture shock I experienced culture shock so whether it's people coming to my country or me having different people come to my country, there would need to be a process for them I think it's a very interesting question to ask what are the policies that would make that possible. What are the kind of urban planning and education and economic structures that would make that the answer to that now we can talk about it. But I suppose in principle, I would like the world to be more connected more integrated and more equal. So for me to say no we have to have borders forever, wouldn't really align with my values. This, and I'm kind of leading you in a direction with this question but but and you know, I'm very transparent so I'll reveal to you why there's no secrets here, but really, during the pandemic, one of the major things that we deal with every day is food, and it is a global citizen it's all over it's one that didn't get stopped at the borders that continue to move, for the most part, all around the world, because it's an essential and it's also that way. But it's also our energy source and so to have our energy source be a global citizen so to say but humans not that those are two systems that almost always don't seem to jive well together when you're blocking one thing, but the energy source of that human is something else and that's maybe a whole nother discussion or debate were it ties to the Brexit so there's been a lot of bad civil frameworks in our world that are kind of unrest and bad decisions bad players. And there was this big push with the the Brexit and the vote that happened that had a strong play really around food and migrant workers going to the United Kingdom, taking jobs but in a well above 200,000 and I've heard the numbers clear up to 600,000 some years that travel to the United Kingdom to harvest produce and create crops in the United Kingdom. Well, the Brexit kind of got rid of those migrant workers and then the pandemic the lockdown occurred. The first question would normally be, during that time, did all those UK residents have voted on the Brexit did they jump into those 200,000 plus jobs to harvest the food and produce the food did those jobs get filled and taken and, and is everybody happy if you know the answer you're shaking your head. The answer is no. And then the second travesty that happened with food was that because they didn't have the workers the harvesters even though that vote was made. What they were doing is they were killing food back into the ground so they were growing it and go to harvest and instead of harvesting and producing it or transporting it. They were just telling it under because they didn't have the labor to deal with it. So, some of these political and things that have to do with geopolitics or globalization, whether it's workers or however we see that aspect, or having some really negative consequences but it's unique for us to see how they're so strongly tied to food. And if you have any other specific issues maybe with your dealings over this time to comment on that because it wasn't just the United Kingdom was multiple multifaceted areas and I'd just be interested in hearing your views or your thoughts. Well, I mean I think one of the things I'd like to say is that you know it's it's certainly not exclusive to the United Kingdom when we look at our agriculture system as a whole there is a huge number of migrant workers and a lot of women that are actually growing our food globally that we just need to recognize that they're doing that work and without them doing that work for a lower cost, we certainly wouldn't be able to have the low cost of food that we do in the Western world so if you look in somewhere like Vietnam or if you look in somewhere like India the percent that people pay for food relative to their total income is much higher than the percent that someone in the United States or the United Kingdom would pay. So we benefit from a cheaper total cost of food as our total budget as a result of them doing that work for us. And that's one of the multitude of paradoxes but certainly if we look at you know there's Mexican migrant workers that go to the United States and Canada, most of the greenhouses in Canada are operated by migrant workers. In the Middle East we have migrant workers from Bangladesh, from India, from Pakistan that are driving a lot of that and all across the globe, they were kind of put on hold or sent home in the face of COVID-19. Now in some ways that's a good thing because the governments have had to recognize that this externality as David Suzuki calls them right, the externality of getting cheap labor and the other consequences of that the risk related to that in this case has not been accounted for. So whether it's what's happening with Brexit and then learning, even though I think it's ridiculous that the United Kingdom is trying to exit the EU or it has done it. They are recognizing these risks that they have in their system. Will they do a good job in solving it? I don't know but that's the benefit of any time we experience a, let's say a failure or a crisis in our personal lives or in our governments or in our globe is we do have an opportunity to learn from it because we've identified a risk. So you know there's always that two sides to it. So I guess my point is it's global and then it's not necessarily only a bad thing because whether it's the governments back home that have to figure out how to deal with these laborers and how to integrate them to the economy or whether it's the countries that are benefiting from the migrant labor that have to learn how to be more independent and reduce that risk. There are some benefits to that but it's too soon to say, although I'm an optimist, I'm a realist, I like to think optimistically but I think I really do see things realistically. You know I'm not certain that we are going to learn from those lessons based on history. Yeah they're definitely hard learning lessons. It's a hard way to have to learn it that way but I think it is and really if they can come out of that lesson more resiliently and realize that almost like it's a vulnerability in their system that there's some kind of a hole or something broken in the system that's a learning lesson that they can fix it and not repeat that mistake again. So I really like that. I'm going to hit you right off the bat with probably one of my hardest questions period so that we can get it out of the way and maybe deep dive. It's the burning question WTF and it's not the swear word, it's what's the future. Well this is an exciting question you know one of the things that I first thought a lot about when COVID-19 hit was I remembered this future of society workshop that I had done with an organization called Future IQ that does a lot of scenario analysis imagining you know what are possible futures for regions or countries and it's a really exciting interesting consulting firm but I had the honor of being invited with 29 other experts so that Ex-Mera Vienna was there, the head of government for KPMG was there and it was in Windsor Castle, it was really exciting you know in St. James's house which is a kind of a thought, a think tank space in Windsor Castle. So I go there and I'm excited to imagine the future of society but when COVID-19 hit I remembered what our conclusion was so we kind of didn't access so we imagined four possible scenarios that we had agreed upon and we went through really interesting activities including imagining the headlines between now every five years until I think 2040 was our last element and I'll send you the documents so you can link to it in the podcast, it's an interesting report. So what we concluded these 30 experts was that the direction we're going and this happened December 2018, the direction we're going, the most likely direction we think we're going is towards sort of what we called you know clusters which is essentially these kind of you know guarded walled cities or communities, think of a gated community but the gated community inside of it has more than just a gym and a pool. It has the co-working space you need, it has actually a school where students go in and there's a caretaker, not necessarily a teacher, a caretaker and then teachers are zoomed in virtually to the classroom and the parents feel safe because the kids are around their own culture, their own race maybe unfortunately this is what we thought people would feel and it was really in a response, we did talk about pandemics but it was really in a response to safety and also just the human need to be around the same kind of people that we do feel safer almost inherently safer around people that look like us and behave in the same way as us. So it wasn't a more integrated society which was one of the other scenarios we were mentioning. We kind of went through a vote, we, most of us thought we were going there, but most of us wanted to go to a more integrated society so we had to answer both questions where do we think we're going and where do we want to go. And I'll send the report was very interesting, but some of the headlines we were looking at was like first student graduates without ever attending school, you know without ever going to a school classroom where they're going into a building. And, you know, we, you know, these virtual jobs that where people are always at home was a big part of it, robots, executing the services that they need so you know robotics is getting a huge amount of attention now in the face of COVID-19 how can we reduce labor even further and in the industry and agriculture and certainly the high tech agriculture I work in vertical farms and greenhouses automation is a very expensive kind of, you know, extra that you that you had now it's a must have. Right, so that's one of the big shifts that's happened as well. So, what do I think is next I mean, big big question I do think that we are going towards more clusters and pods and society I think that this COVID-19 is not going to force us to integrate more. I think it's going to the rich are going to get richer through this experience and there's a lot of evidence they already have. There's gonna be more division as a result of this. I think in some ways, overall, kind of impact on the environment might go down because if, unfortunately, more people are being pushed into poverty. So what's happening is, is as you get pushed into poverty in many ways your carbon footprint actually does go down. So, as we're as we're having millions of people pushed into poverty from this economic slowdown, there could actually be a reduction in overall emissions, as there's an increase in density smaller homes, less consumption overall. So, a sad but potential consequence that we're seeing, I do think that travel will change a lot again not so much for the rich, you know change in a luxurious way. But I think, you know, I certainly am going to travel to much fewer events, and I'm excited that I have an excuse now to say, you know, I don't want to go not just because it's not safe, but I think after this pandemic is done I'm really going to be even more selective because 25 flights in a year was absurd. I mean, that's just, I should not have done that and we, we committed agriculture to offset a percentage of our flights so last year was 60%. But still, you know, that's not enough you need to kind of just reduce consumption. Other parts of the future that I imagine I mean agriculture will become more automated agriculture will go more indoors because the benefit of year round production. It can reduce the need for migrant labor it can localize that you're going to see the UAE Saudi Arabia, these countries are going to accelerate their potential to produce their own food, very, very rapidly it's becoming a much more high priority for them. What else is there to talk about and so so many things obviously more digitization of everything. I don't know I was talking last night at dinner is virtual reality going to have its moment. I don't know you think about that. Who runs fashion events. He, you know they're doing fashion shows now virtually so when you buy the ticket you also get the VR glasses and I don't mean the, I don't mean like the cheap ones I mean you're getting the really good ones. Yeah. So you're getting the ticket and that and that's going to obviously drive the cost down of VR and the experiences become more normal for people. So I wonder, I wonder whether it's going to have its moment as a result of this so so many things to talk about I mean what do you Yeah, I really think that so with the VR question that we're already seeing just in our area, a lot of vertical farms and nurseries that have already walked through a 3D walk through where you can use your own VR to kind of get the live feeling in in the greenhouse vertical farm yourself. That really leads me as well into some things that you touch touched upon with with vertical farming nurseries. There has also been some trends and movements and I you're going to probably have to help me distinguish the two so there's a vertical farming association which you you were on the board till 2017 and then there's a lot of consulting and all the other many things and we're going to get into the super new thing that came out just recently that I also was part of winning a prize of which I did not, but that there really started out as an open system. So it was either aggregate, agri-texture or bright agri-tex zip zip lines or kind of these open nursery platforms that there's been a little bit of a shift more to closed system controlled environmental agriculture, CEA, and I believe also that you've been involved and hopefully I'm not confusing it. Didn't you also do a workshop that was also very futuristic with the European Space Agency as well for some some products growing growing plants and outer space so that's pretty futuristic but it but it's it goes back to what we're talking about resilience where you have to find a system that's highly efficient, uses resources, only what you need, and that can survive an outer space and that is a closed environmental type of a system. So not only have you had the preparedness but you've been involved in that so I don't know if you want to touch on some of those already. Yeah, I mean that's a lot so Hank, I'm going to kind of give you a history of vertical farming 1.0 moving. I want to drink from the fire hose. Okay, okay let's go for it. So, you know, I again I started getting interested in this around 2010 and that's when I noticed that there was this gap where people were talking about community gardens but they weren't talking about rooftop farms and they were talking about vertical farms and greenhouses and greenhouses all differently and agriculture is about integrating that discussion and saying, well, sometimes a vertical farm will make sense but sometimes a greenhouse will make sense and so we can't talk about one without talking about the other and if we're going to talk about them we need to kind of think about a methodology of how do you answer that question. So it began as a blog I was blogging about it and one of the people I discovered in the early days was Dr. Dixon Dupamye and Dr. Dixon Dupamye is a microbiologist professor at Columbia and he had published a book I think in 2009 maybe 2008 called The Vertical Farm and that launched the internet phenomenon of this modern era of vertical farming. There was even a vertical farm back in the I think World Fair 1950 or something like that a very old world there but that's the history of it let's say but the modern one is that book launched all these people around the world asking this question and the vertical farm as Dr. Dupamye thought about it was actually skyscraper kind of ecosystem imagine like a circular economy tower. Right, these are skyscrapers that clean the air they produce food, they've got renewable energy. They've got robots as needed and they're they're also stunning beautiful architectural pieces and that was his vision for where cities could go and the potential for that and he did some estimation of the yields and things like that, but there wasn't a concrete discussion of isn't economically feasible. Technically it was feasible because NASA was already growing indoors for space space research. So they're even in the 80s there's a lot of research you can look at for them growing potatoes and wheat, all kinds of things have been grown indoors even prior to this period. I read that book and I thought okay well I'm very inspired by this but again I see some of the same. I'm interested in seeing what's under the hood, like, what would it cost, and how many people would work in it and you know, would that tower be competitive against a tower of Bank of America's offices, you know in Manhattan, what would they compete. And so my pursuit was really about how can we make Dr. Dupamye's vision feasible, you know, and also there were other people around the world that were looking that read his book and started vertical farms like here farms one of the old farms farmed here, you know, back in the early days you would meet entrepreneurs and say oh I read Dixon's book and start and raise some money and started a vertical farming company. But the vertical farms ended up looking like warehouses so it's a warehouse it's not a tower, you know, most of them, maybe could be three stories high but most of them around two stories high. And that was the reality of what was happening. And so it started to be this kind of divide between the, I don't want to call it Dixon did hype because it was really visionary. But there was a lot of hype that spun out from that people putting architects designing things that were not feasible. There's this dragonfly concept for New York which is enormous tower. So it started at agriculture started digging deeper into it running workshops trying to get into the depth of it, and estimating those costs and I realized very quickly it wasn't economically feasible for vertical farm to be in Manhattan for example, because agriculture, even in its most dense format of vertical farming cannot compete with residential and commercial rental rates. So it doesn't have a place in the city but it doesn't have a place in the most, you know, valuable parts of the city. And so Dixon actually became my mentor I went to Columbia and we worked together. And I remember we designed a vertical farm for the Bronx I created this course called challenge and vertical farming and my job was to take his vision and make it real. So I found a real site in the Bronx. I looked at the kind of zoning that a vertical farm would fit within I designed it according to F they are what was allowed legally. I thought about the community I thought about the number of jobs. And that was my first really like feasible feasibility study, and Dixon kept saying make it bigger make it taller and I said, No, it's, you can't it's not even allowed on the site to make it bigger in that way. But on that journey, you know, I started connecting with this global community. One of them was Max Lohsel who was also talking to Dixon, and he's the CEO of AgRolution, and Dixon said you know we need an organization to kind of bring people together and so with Max we co founded the Association for vertical farming. And that was a very exciting period of building up that organization and getting kind of global events and workshops and we did so much work to standardize there's a great glossary on their website. There's great visuals of how you understand vertical farming, but I had to resign because I faced the same problem is that you know the companies in the associate vertical farming we're pushing vertical farming as the solution. There is no one size fits all. And for me as a design thinking individual, I couldn't align myself with those values any longer. So I ran a workshop where I was teaching members about the differences between greenhouse and vertical and soil. And some of our members criticize me for that as a board member and saying no you should only be promoting vertical farming. And that just wasn't for me. So I resigned and I also realized in that process that to create a global kind of nonprofit is very difficult because agriculture is so contextual to your climate, your labor conditions or policy. So that's when I started the NYC agriculture collective which is a more regionally focused organization, just on New York City. I created an organization has no membership fees. So, you know, the ability to kind of collaborate and put sweat equity in was better. And we were able to pass the first bill for urban agriculture as a result of our lobbying which was very, very exciting. So if I covered everything you talked about, but you know that's kind of the journey and now we're, I would say we're past the hype stage, and people are really asking the tougher questions. What I love now is that new entrance to the space aren't as naive as they were before. They can get more information online. They can, and that's really exciting because that's how we're going to kind of leapfrog and get this technology as a real solution out there and so that's really kind of what's been going on with the journey I don't miss anything. I agree with you I don't think there's a silver bullet or magic bullet for for all it's not one size fits all it's a, it's very diverse and needs to be done, not only biodiverse but it needs to be a diverse field for the location for the situation and be be fit in precisely for that. So I think that's the need and the situation to have it function properly. I actually want to emphasize that point again just sorry just one more time. Yeah, you're fine. It's important. So, you know when I was studying sustainability management Columbia what I learned really quickly was that there was this idea when I entered that sustainability was kind of a destination. We've arrived we're sustainable now, and it's just it's total bull it's it's not I mean sustainability is a process. Right so so it's not like oh this city is sustainable now or this building is sustainable now. No, because you attempt something you make a leaf platinum building and then you observe and you learn and you increase the standard again to go further right you want to go from carbon neutral to carbon negative. And so that journey is what people need to remember very often I think in vertical firing people have missed that they just kind of see it as like oh we've arrived and this is it it's constant improvement. And because it's improvement. That means that the method matters almost more than the kind of like final result, you have to have the method. And that's what I've tried to focus my practice on is, you know what are the steps to ask the great questions and observe and focus your improvement on to get that process of sustainability constantly going. That's fabulous. Thank you so much. In that it leads nicely to really what I want to discuss so I and I'm teased it a little bit. So you came out during the pandemic, you've been working on it. And well before that way you'd kind of tease and said you're working on at night. I joined the slack group and the others and went into, you know, it was following on Twitter and others about this but it's a design program which really can, you know, help you get the numbers the true cost, which is so needed, and especially for people who are who want to eventually leapfrog or who are starting out that have no clue, but needs some good some good tools can you tell us a little bit more about that tool and and the evolution over the past little while and how how the success is or what you're seeing. Yeah, I'm really excited to have the opportunity to talk about agriculture designer, because it's really a big part of my DNA and my experience and what we've done as a company. So you know I talked about that vertical farm I designed for Dixon and it was so difficult I literally had to go to different vendors to get quotes, and then I would have to change my scenario right so if I get a bunch of quotes I say actually you know, I think I actually want to change to this crop. Now I have to get a whole new set of quotes about the equipment and the costs. So you know that was like a six month study. And when I look at the entrepreneurs that I was working with on the consulting fraud which we started consulting business in 2014, and been doing it since then, you know we've worked with hundreds of clients on answering their questions about how much is it going to cost etc. And you know, there's a constant process of iteration and experimentation with what's going to be like, but the journey for them if they don't work with us, we can typically design a vertical farm in about three to four months. If it's if it's a big one maybe a little bit shorter if it's a smaller one to do it right to make sure you reduce those costs and make sure you think about the sustainability questions. But if they were to do on their own it can be six to 12 months of attending events and researching online. And so two things for me one I said okay well 100 is great, but I want to make thousands I want to help hundreds of thousands of people globally do this not hundreds. And so how do we do that. So we did we took our methodology and we took the data that we had learned about over the past 10 years, and we basically put it online. So agriculture designer basically allows you to input data like where is your arm what's the zip code and it takes in global data on temperature and light. You can input in your own labor costs your own energy costs water costs, you can input the kind of financing you're having whether it's a loan or an investment, you can input the size of your farm, you can select this is the first time online. You can go through a list of crops. Okay, typical and urban farms select them, and it'll actually give you the yield for him. So I can say my greenhouse going to have 20% arugula, you know 10% tomatoes and the rest of it's going to be bok choy. And you can do all of that and basically within minutes, you will get a 10 year economic projection for your greenhouse or vertical farm will tell you how many people you're feeding will break down the catbacks how much is going towards lighting or equipment will break down the charts and pie charts that tell you that will tell you your payback. But what's great is that you can actually go back and do another one. So you can say okay well what if I did a greenhouse instead of vertical farm or what if I did a container vertical farm, or what if I change the percentages. But what if I actually maybe I'm looking at two markets, what if what if I use the energy rates from this market, and so you can do your own scenarios super fast and get data based on the typical costs in this you know these are estimation or something that we take seriously and we have validated through our experience. And at the end let's see you get to a couple models or one model you're really confident in. Then you need to do some of the most important work which is do your market research. So you may have input a price there okay I'm making X amount of dollars per pound for tomatoes, but you need to go to the market which is what is on the consulting side we're just giving you the power to do it, and you can take your phone, and you have your market research tool on there and so I can be looking at the tomatoes and I could say okay. This tomato is organic. It's packaged this way. I wouldn't be going to rate it you know three out of five as far as quality, and this is the size it is. And so as you go through that you can select the ones you want it'll update the economics on your model. So you can refine your model based on what your customers actually going to pay for. There's a whole suite of other tools now we already have a DLI calculator a daily like integral calculator for for greenhouses, we're building an equipment marketplace we're raising money for that right now so after you've designed your model you can actually order your equipment. And we're even thinking about bringing in like resources for grants or financing to take your really a disease in this DIY way. I may need some consulting in addition to this depends how independent you are, but this is great if you're thinking about talking to your first investor, or if you're an architect and you're saying okay well, I want to think what I could do with this rooftop, or your developer you want to ask, well how much can I rent this for or if you're sitting you want to run a competition you want to say okay, all of you submit it through the software. So I'm really, really excited about it. We've been getting more and more users every month, and it's a very, very exciting thing that we've been getting feedback on and improving it. And so, you know, very, very excited about agriculture designer and I'm sure you'll link to it in the podcast but it's at design dot agriculture.com and I just really hope it's going to make things so much faster and cheaper, so that anyone anywhere can take their ideas and get to the costs and refine them. So you had a little, I don't know if it was a competition it was more like a drawing on Twitter where, depending on how you post, I won that. If you want to do something like that on this podcast we'll say whoever does the, the gives a direct message to you or somehow either on Twitter or on one of the posts. You can maybe do a drawing if you wanted to incentivize our listeners to go in and check it out try to get to use it and I would I would encourage to look at it definitely because as far as the markets concerned as far as the industry is concerned. You're the leader you have the tools you're providing the help you you've got the knowledge you can not only do the consulting but you've been around the block I mean it's not that. We could say yes the hanging gardens a battle on I come from four generations of hydro culture nurseries in Germany, Germany's largest hydro culture nurseries, which is you know the lava rocks and the different type of hydro culture that was done back then but you need to get that knowledge that wisdom somewhere if you're not reading the book up or the plant factory or Dixon to discipline years are consulting with you. It's nice to have those tools to make your process your journey. A lot easier. I want to kind of let's do that to the contest we can do it let's just do it so so we will do it. Yeah. Shout it out for like let's say within a week of this podcast being published, you know you can tweet at agr dash designer. And actually if you go to this agriculture designer you could you can use the free part so you can develop your vision your first idea. I'm using some questions completely free, and you can click share that and when you share that just tag agriculture designer, and we'll give one lucky winner, you know free access to the classes, which is the first part of the software. So I'll keep an eye on that and we can include that in the description. Why not perfect yeah I'll do that I'll put it in the link and then do exactly what I did on the show when we release it. You said a lot of things and we didn't really get on pack them so you discussed. I'm a global food reformist I'm also an advocate for the sustainable development goals. You've heard this probably for me and set it yourself and you you set it at the beginning that global reform food to we need to empower women, three we need to empower girls, and a lot of people don't understand that women and girls why do we need to empower them. They're the majority of farmers food workers food harvesters food producers in our world they're not farmer Joe in Germany or in Ohio. It's, it's the women and girls around the world who are sacrificing school education, and not only a fair wage, but that true environmental cost is percentage of EBITDA that environment total environmental costs of producing food that is not going into our food which disrupting our food systems and so I really like that that you mentioned that earlier and I wanted to to touch upon that as well because a lot of what we do is not only educating people. So, where our food comes from how it's produced what future methods of production are, but that that whole education around how we can improve it and empower people to be stronger on our journey of vertical farming urban agriculture. Nurseries and that I really been enthralled and excited about controlled environmental agriculture and even the progress of that and also the hype and what I have not seen. And I want to discuss with you about this is there's high HVAC costs there's high lighting costs there's high energy costs, high water costs or land and space costs, you know, especially you discuss New York. My God, the price at real estate, you know then you have to charge 1010 bucks for a head of lettuce or whatever just to break even I guess. So, that's not a good model. So, how much are you seeing this trend. Or is there of of close environmental agriculture or even vertical farms that are implementing 100% renewable energy 100% battery backups 100% water full water management systems not only gray water recycling backwater turned into organic fertilizer. Using IMOs indigenous and microorganisms as as nutrient film technologies, things like that, and also get rid of getting rid of that high pink or color issue in the lighting spectrum and just throwing in a white that really doesn't make a lot of difference in and how you view and keeping that system completely closed. Taking away those aspects that would maybe reduce cogs cost of goods sold and increase efficiencies, but also increase your margins so that you can say hey we can compete with China 6, 6 cent head of lettuce. Yeah, so let's just talk about control environment agriculture for audience just those that might not know it so it's kind of what it sounds like you're basically creating a controlled environment, a sort of greenhouse or a box warehouse or a container, and you're going to create a greenhouse inside to control the environment, the plant needs to perform its best. So, you know, there's there's genetic modification what we're doing here is we're trying to say okay this is like a plant going through like a gym. We're creating the right temperature, we're creating the right ventilation. We almost have it like hooked up to a sort of IV through hydroponic systems to get the nutrients it needs. We're not actually manipulating the plants genetic code we're just trying to help it perform its best. And I think the first step in understanding this is, we may think that a lot I get a lot of critique like it's unnatural, right, but I always tell people the same thing well when was agriculture ever natural, right, you know, we have been engineering and organizing agriculture since the beginning of agriculture right. So, it's not that the engineering and the technology is bad in itself, but it's the questions you're asking mark, which is what is the cost and the consequence of that on the environment, because in some places, you know, natural is not actually always the lowest carbon footprint away and natural is also very vague term. So, you know, we're trying to control that environment but because of that we have a lot of equipment and so inherently there's a lot of embodied energy with that equipment relative to something outdoors. We also have other benefits on the operations side, which is that we can control the amount of water that's used. So when the main benefits of control environment agriculture across the board is the water savings and there's really not a lot of critique of that, because you typically it's about minimum 70% if you use hydroponic methods sometimes it's upwards of 90% and there's a lot of different academic data you can look at and it does vary based on the region. But in our economic models that are planning. That's about the range that we see so when we use 70% of the fresh water globally for agriculture. Obviously, a lot of that is for meat production, but you know, we want to make sure that when we're growing other things that don't need that much water. You know, that we're not just irrigating outside and losing it we want to recapture it. So I think that that is just a benefit that we can kind of agree upon it's a main benefit of this the other benefit is that we don't have to have as much pesticide as I'd use because we're creating an enclosure that protects from the past so while there's an embodied energy cost that enclosure. We actually are getting the benefit of not having to spray with pesticides which is a big environmental benefit. Because those issue fertilizer fertilizer pesticides are causing ocean ocean acidification which is a big issue as well. But another cost on the environmental side is again as you mentioned when we try to control that climate we have to use sophisticated climate control systems. Now in a greenhouse. Let's say your greenhouse is in Abu Dhabi. Okay, you're going to have enormous costs to power and cool that greenhouse in the winter in the summer, because you have so much humidity and so much heat. You're getting year round production through the greenhouse it comes at a cost, and that cost, obviously translates to a carbon cost, if the source of the energy is carbon source. Now if that greenhouse is somewhere else that's more seasonal, that may be reduced if it's somewhere colder you can have increased costs in the winter. Okay, no vertical farms can can exclude that entirely. So actually your age that cost can be more stabilized in a vertical farm and extreme climate, but nonetheless, you have the lighting in a vertical farm that you don't have in a greenhouse which is the point you were making. So in the lighting in that vertical farm, you have thousands of lights I mean you're talking about like, like if this is the plant, light, light, light. So think about all that equipment and all the energy related to that. So it really comes down to where is the source of the energy and nine times out of 10, the source of the energy is dirty. The greenhouse farming tends to have a higher carbon footprint globally in its current format than other methods of methods of agriculture. The greenhouses do tend to have a lower carbon footprint. Now I will say it does depend where it is. My answer to this question comes from an analysis we did for Coca Cola, which compared to greenhouse in the outskirts of New York to a vertical farm in the outskirts of New York to a traditional farm in California and greenhouses were most the time at the lowest carbon footprint, a bit lower to think about 20 to 30% lower than the soil based agriculture so not that dramatically. Life cycle analysis hasn't been done for these systems yet. So that's why we're talking about the process of sustainability. You can't label these farms as as inherently sustainable because it's an evolving technology. And so until a full life cycle analysis is done of what the cost of those equipment are the sources of the materials in it. We don't really know. But there also needs to be a life cycle analysis done for traditional farms, which is very complicated because how do you calculate, you know, the embodied energy and wells and irrigation systems and other elements like that. So there are some farms that are going renewable. Dream Harvest is a vertical farm that uses renewable energy. You find in the US that most of them don't focus on it that much. Some of the greenhouse companies like Gotham Greens and Lufa Farms do have a bit of a commitment towards it and that's great but most of the vertical farms in the United States, the energy consumption is so high. They can't find an economic case to go renewable. In Europe there's a lot of criticism of vertical farms because the LED lights and their stricter commitment to sustainability. So you are seeing more of those farms, especially as it's a lot of retail deals so retailers are building vertical farms in Europe. They have a lot of pressure from the consumer to make it renewable and so they are kind of pushing the envelope with that which which I really like. And even more and more of the greenhouses in the Netherlands are going more renewable too. So Europe is a leader in kind of the use of controlled environment agriculture from a circular economy perspective. On your water question, you know, most farms, your vertical farms or greenhouses take water from the grid from the utility. I did see one which is urban harvest based out of Belgium and they've got a big focus in Brussels and circular economy that is the only vertical farming I've been to that captures rainwater. And most of them don't do it because they use so little water relative to their counterparts, but I really admire that that these these two entrepreneurs took the time to just capture rainwater and do that. And as far as, you know, kind of organics and, and that there's, there's, there's a farm, there's very few of them to be honest mark, but there's a farm in Florida called three boys farm. And this is kind of the story of of it so it's kind of a hippie run hydroponic greenhouse farm, you know, it's awesome, and the product is great, but it was all organic and was certified organic. And they have these big kind of compost tanks that they would make their own compost tea, and it was a pretty big facility and I think 10 greenhouses, quite large production. It was a really difficult time competing on the market because the certification for organic was taken away from hydroponic farms. And so if you don't have that additional certification value, and there's still a debate going on in the US and the Europe it's not allowed at all. And there's not really an incentive for the farmer that's using hydroponics to go organic, and to use, you know, more sustainable sources for those nutrients. And, and there is a fair critique that the nutrients using hydroponic systems are for mine sources, and we don't know, you know, what the environmental impact of those is or who's working on them, and are those laborers treated effectively. So, there's a multitude of sustainability questions and potential critiques for CA. What agriculture is doing to do that is we we actually provide our clients with those answers, even if they don't pay for it. So we, we tried, we can't force them to be sustainable if that makes sense, but we can at least be transparent with them about the carbon footprint or some of these decisions, and let them know that this might not be a good sustainability decision, or that it might be a PR issue or whatever to justify it for them. And we're trying to bring this into agriculture designer as well. So you'll get some metrics as you finish your design on on some of those sustainability questions. So we have a long journey ahead, I do believe Cornell is engaged in a life cycle analysis, compare greenhouses vertical farms and soil based so so we will get there. But certainly you can't assume that these farms are sustainable and there's many areas across the board to do that and I would like to see, you know, human waste, you know, an animal waste used for the nutrients and these farms in the future. We have a long way to go before that's acceptable. I have a couple other questions about in that direction so just in the past two years there's been some some pop ups of some big movements and in this arena, one of them being plenty. Do you have any thoughts or feelings on how that's going and how that's actually impacted the entire industry and the move. I mean I, I look the the big vertical farming companies and plenty being one of them. Let me let me just do a little bit of a history lesson how about people need to know about that yeah. So, you know, King Nebuchadnezzar has the myth and Nebuchadnezzar as the myth goes, his wife was kind of like oh the desert so hot. I miss my my home where I grew up where there were gardens. And so Nebuchadnezzar as the king and this powerful man built the hanging gardens of Babylon. Now, the hangouts of Babylon might have been beautiful but were they sustainable, you know, what was the driver for that wasn't an aesthetic driver sort of was a sustainability driver to draw water from other places to the desert to build a garden for the king and his wife. So, you know, I'm not saying that plenty and these other companies are the same way but I think that there is kind of a phallic obsession for a lot of the CEO men in the space to change the world sustainability wise by building the biggest. And maybe I don't come from that world of finance where I'm just saying let's raise hundreds of millions of dollars on an idea, but instead I come from a world where it's like saying let's take step by step and prove our way because that process of observation is so important. I like the hype and plenty made a lot of dishonest claims at the beginning and as his CEO, their CEO has been on stage talking about growing watermelons in their facility in completely indoors and that's just not what's happening at a commercial level. And so, you know, I am strongly opposed to hype and dishonesty in the context of sustainability and I'm not saying that plenty doesn't have a future because you know Nate story, for example, who is there is a real scientist, a real experienced grower. And I hope that he can continue to drive biology and science in the organization, but we have seen a lot of hype in this industry that has gone up and failed. And that doesn't help the investors it doesn't help the consumers and it ends up having a lot of equipment lights plastic that is sold on the market. And if you look at auction sales for these farms, you know they're pretty ridiculous and how much money is lost and all that. So I am more of a step by step kind of guy. And I think that don't underestimate what the smaller companies that are going step by step can do to really impact food security in their communities and impact sustainability. So I like to kind of work through that hype and I, I encourage everybody to ask the tougher questions about those companies. And there's a lot of emphasis on robotics and high tech and Silicon Valley and AI. And in the end, you know, it really is still farmers practicing agricultural science to produce a product at a low enough cost that the consumer can benefit from higher quality and lower impact on the environment. I mean, that's what it's about. And so everything else tends to be a bit of fluff. I want these are three questions that I have for you but they're more like sustainable takeaways for our listeners. I want, we have a lot of innovators and startups and people who are really interested in this space or they're, they're, they're trying to find themselves and okay, I want to move in this direction. Maybe is this something for me. What should young innovators and your field be thinking about if they're looking for ways to make a real impact. Yeah, so I mean if you want to break into the industry. I really admire that any industry and sustainability you know before I was interested in food I was interested in the water. I'll just give some things from my journey and I'll give you three tips on what you need to do. So, when I first identified the sustainability was what I was interested in it was when I was doing an internship at the international organization for migration I was looking at climate induced migration, and that we're going to have 350 or more million refugees because of climate change by 2030. And that number was just so hard for me to digest. How are we going to deal with that I mean, how are the issues between various countries going to deal with that from an environmental security perspective. So I realized I need to find a gap, you know, sustainability entrepreneurship is like any business, you can choose you can build a better wheel or you can build a better watch. But what's the gap you're filling you know what is the disruption you're making. And so you need to first observe and look around so I actually started three blogs. I started a blog called technology water which was about water and technology and news on that. I started a blog called urban layering which was more conceptual about a new idea of density for cities, and I started agriculture. I would just research and blog these things and this is the first step which is the process of trial and error, where you want to find a low cost way to test your ideas in the market, and social media is great for that so I managed all three blogs, and multitudes higher agriculture perform better. There's the combination of the name and the topic and the specific need that it was filling by providing that kind of agnostic spectrum wide understanding of urban agriculture. So I dropped the other two and focused on this one. Now you have to go into your once you've done that stage. I have to go into your three steps. Okay, so step one is building your archive so as I was blogging I realized I was learning all these things, but you know, can I pull them out for my brain when I need them. No, nobody can store that much information. So I had to build an archive so I built a Google sheet with key information plenty has raised this much money arrow farms grow these crops. This company started this year went out this year and actually worked with Max a little bit on an archive with him as well so you can find collaborators if you want. Dan Nelson is another guy who has a kind of ag tech archive that he's built. So this is really useful for you because if you're networking or if you're in an interview or if you're just talking about it, you have that available. The second piece is hands on experience, especially in agriculture, I think in other sectors you might not need as much but hands on experience always helps you. But until I had experience working on farms, the farmers and take me seriously. And so, you know, certainly other people weren't going to take me seriously as well. So you just volunteer and honestly, you know, not everybody has the privilege to do that. But if you can find even just a few hours every week to work on a community garden, or I what I did is I said I'll do social media for free for you. If you teach me hydroponics. That's kind of what I would do. And so I worked at hydroponic greenhouses, and I worked on, you know, vertical farms, and I worked a little bit on some community gardens as well. And that really helped me sets number two. And then number three is networking. Of course you have to grow your network you have to get referrals you have to get, you know, because we've met at events and we've networked your many me to this and now I've got this amazing audience, you need to do that for yourself. And the key tip for networking is and my mom taught me this at an early age is, you know, don't go to networking thinking what I need from that person. Right, like you go to an event just like okay oh my gosh it's the CEO of Microsoft for this country I need to talk to them. I want to get a job want to get a job that's going to make you nervous. Instead, think about what you can do for them first. Okay, think of giving first before you take. And so for me it was pretty easy because I just said hey I'm Henry I'm an urban agriculture blogger I'd love to interview for my blog. And so now I'm creating value for them right away because people usually want to be promoted. And that's why I got to learn things and build my network and got known as somebody that does answer questions easily and help make introductions. And so those three are very important and then there's one more it's a bonus once on the foundation. It's it's it's on my LinkedIn the articles called called I want, I want to be an agri tech. And so the foundation is your brand. So you need to have a consistent message about who you are what you do right. And so. Mark Buckley yours is all about the SDGs globally and what you're doing in the space that's very clear that you're an SDG guy, and we like that for me I'm kind of the communicator blogger consultant guy. You need to have your thing at the beginning. And you just stick to that brand and I recommend usually testing a brand for a minimum of three months before you make any pivot it might not stick being to kind of stick to it consistently for those returns to come. My tips for breaking into sustainability or agriculture. That's fabulous. Thank you so much. What have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you would love to have known from the start from the beginning. Wow, so many things. I think I knew it. Definitely my mom is a successful consultant and she's an HR director and emotional intelligence experts so she really taught me so many things from an early age. One thing she taught me is it doesn't matter about your technology or your brand or your business model. It's your team is the most important thing without a great team, you're nothing and so you need to retain your team and take care of them and create the culture that they feel excited about the work and the impact. And that's been super valuable to me and so I kind of knew it but I think it's like even more important than I thought it was. So just don't forget about that that that's that's something that you can never really sacrifice is making the work experience positive for everybody you're working with. And that it's a great experience for all of them. Other things. I mean, you know people say cash is cash is king you know that cash flow is like your life blood. And it's so true. I mean, when you go through something like coven 19 you really remember that so you know, if you're doing any kind of business you have to really think about that cash flow and keeping it going because the act of going to raise money, or finding other funding sources is very difficult when you don't have cash flow and just keeping your business going or growing is very difficult cash flow so it's a very important business aspect to keep in mind. What else what else is a really good one. I have other questions for you if you. Okay, let's go to those are my two. I think this is so we're, we're, we've gotten into a good flow and I think everyone has really gotten the message and we've touched on that. We wanted to get out because you, you are a shining example and the leader and our industry and I've really done leaps and bounds for pushing this whole, not only global food reform but this industry forward really in a positive Oh, thank you Mark. I thank you for it so it's fabulous. I've been stalking you and learning from you on the sides for a long time. The last question for you is really, it's your personal answer, but it's really one on a worldwide basis. What does a world that works for everyone look like for you. I think that, you know, the happiest moments in my life have been where I can see a path forward for my dreams. So I think that a world that works for everyone would be one where people's dreams can be connected to actionable next steps, and you still have to do the work to get there. But if you do the work, it's possible. You can get there. There are the government infrastructure, the policies, the investment, the support, the resilience is all there for you to get there if you have, if you put in the work. And I think that anybody that has a vision and is willing to put in the work and learn and do that work. That's the world I want, where they can get there. You know, if you don't have vision, then stay where you are. But if you've got dreams and vision, you should be able to get to your next step in the future you want. That's, that's what I think we all want. I agree and I would probably even have a little bit of persistence what what you've shown over the years is a lot of persistence not giving up being in the right place, keeping the message going. We probably forgotten more than we learned. That's why it's also good to take away that you gave that, you know, put that in a Google document put it there somewhere because that's all vital information that you want to share with other people to empower if you write a beautiful speech or you a poem or a song or you do a presentation or you create a super design tool that will change the industry or make people's lives easier. If no one hears about it if you can't regurgitate or empower other people that has no meaning so thank you for your words of wisdom I appreciate your time. I really appreciate it's so good to have you on the show and if there's nothing else you want to add or ask me, then I'm done I really appreciate your time and I hope we can do it again very soon. Well, thank you so much Mark, it's, you know, we should talk more often but I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to be on your podcast. Thank you to all of you that have been listening, you know, if you want to find me you can find me on Twitter, the AgriTech or LinkedIn or I'm pretty easy to find. You can track me down and contact me. You know, I get a lot of requests, but I'm committed to always getting you an answer so even if it takes a while I will always at least give you a response. So feel free to reach out and I wish you all the best in your journey and thanks so much again Mark I really appreciate it. You better believe it I'm so glad that you were on and I'll put all those links in the show notes. Great, thanks.