Elesif McDonald breaks down vertical farming in an exciting discussion about agriculture of the future.
Transcription:
Brian Lebrecht, President of Clyde Snow & Sessions 0:01
This podcast is brought to you by the law firm of Clyde Snow and Sessions based in Salt Lake City with offices in Oregon and California. For over 65 years Clyde Snow has represented clients throughout the West. Clyde Snow: Serious About Solutions.
Emily Lewis , Host 0:24
Hello, and welcome to Ripple Effect, a podcast putting water into context. I’m Emily Lewis, your host, and I’m a water attorney here in Salt Lake City, Utah, practicing creative solutions to today’s and tomorrow’s water problems. Welcome to the conversation.
Hello, and welcome to Ripple Effect, a podcast putting water into context. I have with me today Elesif McDonald, who is the senior sales manager at Plenty, which is an indoor vertical farming company based in San Francisco. And pretty much since the day I started this podcast I’ve wanted to have Elesif on because I think that this is such an exciting and unique attribute to agriculture, and really is a key component to our discussions about what agriculture looks like in the future. And something that I think would be a good concept to explore and start to tease out here for Utah and the other western states. So Elesif, if you could, could you just kind of give a brief introduction to kind of who you are, what your position is at Plenty, and kind of what the day to day operations of what you do in your position and kind of the mission of your company.
Elesif McDonald, Guest 1:38
Sure, so it might help if I give a bit more information on the company overall before diving into the day to day. But basically, we’re a fully indoor automated vertical farm, we use a hydroponic system, which just means recirculating water, and we’re really able to use a lot less water and land because of the way we’re growing. And right now we’ve launched our first commercial farm in South San Francisco. And so I’m based here and I work with our customers day to day to just make sure they’re getting the products they need. I work closely with the farm and our fulfillment team to just make sure everything is going smoothly and customers get what they’ve ordered. And right now we’re selling leafy greens. So products like baby kale, baby arugala, and then some more unique blends as well. Long term, we’re hoping to bring products like strawberries and tomatoes and legumes to market. But right now we’re just focused on on leafy greens.
Emily Lewis 2:36
Exciting. So can you give me a little history about, you know, how did you come to this particular company? And kind of how did you get involved in this operation?
Elesif McDonald 2:45
Yeah, so I actually started with a company called Bright Agrotech. And that was six or seven years ago. So it was quite a long time ago. And when I started Bright Agrotech, Bright Agrotech was focused on just selling this vertical growing technology to customers utilizing greenhouses. So we started in Wyoming. And in Wyoming, it’s obviously not always cost effective to be growing year round. And when you’re heating a greenhouse and trying to be efficient, it doesn’t make sense to just be utilizing one horizontal plane of production. And so by going vertical, you’re able to get more plants per square foot and utilize the resources you’re already paying for like the heat, or cooling in the summer. So we started as primarily using this technology, a much more rustic version of the technology in greenhouses and selling to farmers who are trying to make their operations more effective. And then over time, we realized there’s a demand to bring this technology indoors. And so we started doing that with Bright Agrotech. And then three years ago, we were acquired by Plenty. And so since that acquisition, I’ve transitioned from working with small farmers to now working with retailers and getting these greens to market.
Emily Lewis 4:03
Awesome, very exciting. And plus Wyoming is the best state, let’s just say it out loud. So for someone who is new to vertical farming and the concept of vertical farming, could you give kind of just like if you were just to pick a sample project and a sample operation, you know, what are we looking at? What would that look like if I walked into the facility? What kind of things are happening? How many people work there, obviously dependent on the size of the operation, paint a picture for what wouldn’t indoor farm using vertical farming looks like.
Elesif McDonald 4:38
Sure, I will do my best. But I will say that if you’re able to just google Plenty there are really great pictures of the indoor farm because it’s hard to do it with just words. But when you walk in the farm, there’s basically towers of greens. So you basically walk through an aisle of greens and in the center of those aisles, there is lighting. And then we also have robots in the farm that help us with some of the harvesting and planting activities. So you see some of the robots as well that are a little bit removed from the gross space. And then the, I mentioned before the system is hydroponic. So we have a water tank setup, and that water is re-circulating through the walls of plants. Basically, the plants take the water and nutrients they need. Anything that’s not being used by the plants goes back into those water tanks, and re-circulates again. So we have the water, we have the plants growing, and then we have the robots that help keep the farm running.
Emily Lewis 5:33
And then you mentioned too that there was also a light source, what kind of light source is that for the plants?
Elesif McDonald 5:46
Yeah, so we just use an LED light. And it’s one that we’ve built custom to what we’re doing since the way we’re growing is so unique. And we’ve also built out that technology to work in the most efficient ways possible.
Emily Lewis 6:00
Awesome, I’m so excited about this. So we have kind of a picture of what a operation might look like. Can you tell me about I mean, I heard several things in there right now about what your impact is from an operation like that. Because you know, you’ve got LED lights that are low energy, you’ve got recirculating water, can you kind of tell me what a vertical farming operation will look like, compared to, you know, a traditional agricultural operation that’s generally outside that doors?
Elesif McDonald 6:35
Yeah, so I mean, the biggest difference is the amount of control we have over the environment. So not just light and water, but also heat and all the other factors that can be somewhat out of your control when you’re growing outdoors. It’s much more – we describe like outdoor agriculture is like running a manufacturing plant that you don’t have control over. Whereas indoors, we just we have that precision, which makes the plants happier, we’re able to not use pesticides, and we’re getting product from seedling out to harvest in 10 days, we’re able to move product through the system pretty quickly.
Emily Lewis 7:13
Whoa, 10 days. That’s very short.
Elesif McDonald 7:16
Yes, yeah.
Emily Lewis 7:17
So I’m assuming it’s like a 24 hour growing period, then like your lights run all day and all night?
Elesif McDonald 7:24
It depends. Not necessarily when plants do like a little bit of rest, but they can certainly handle a lot more daylight than they get out. outside.
Emily Lewis 7:33
Okay. So what kind of yields do you get in a production like this? Can you give us comparison, of what you would get on a traditional farming versus what you get in the space that you’d have for a vertical farm?
Elesif McDonald 7:46
Yeah, so obviously, the actual yield numbers will vary depending on the farm. But generally speaking, we can compare the amount of products we will get out of one of our farms. If you look at a soccer field growing, let’s say it’s growing kale or another leafy green, we can get that same amount of products that you’d be able to get from that size of field per year, we can get that same amount of product out of just the footprint of the goal. So it’s a very sizeable difference reasonable, less than 1% of the land and less than 5% of the water to get a yield.
Emily Lewis 8:21
Sweet so that one more time, you’re using less than 1% of the land and 5% of the water to get the same yield
Elesif McDonald 8:27
Yep, as compared to traditional agriculture.
Emily Lewis 8:29
That is crazy. Is there any kind of nutritional difference in between the two? I mean, I don’t know, is there any other difference?
Elesif McDonald 8:36
It’s pretty hard to study. I mean, what we do now, just based on other studies people have done is that nutrition degrades over time. So if it takes seven days for a product to get from the farm, to the shelf, in the grocery store, you might be getting, you know, 50% of the nutrients as opposed to when it was just picked. So our focus is on getting product from the farm to the shelf as quickly as possible.
Emily Lewis 9:01
Awesome. So that leads me to my next question, Who are your clients? Who is the target audience for operations like this? Where do you see this fitting most in in you know, as now you’re working more on the retail side of retail is the right side of the customer service side? Who are those folks? And what are they really looking to do?
Elesif McDonald 9:21
Yeah, so we have, I guess, two customers in a sense. One is the retailer. So right now we’re selling primarily through retail here in San Francisco. But of course, the end consumer who is the customer of our customer is also important in what we do. So the person who ends up eating our product cares a lot about how environmentally friendly we are the fact that we’re not using pesticides, and then flavor is a really big thing as well. And we’re able to focus on plants that bring out more flavor and may be harder to grow in the field and we can bring those to market. And so I thought that – and with the consumer we’re addressing what they are wanting out of a product that also addresses you know what our customers are looking for. But in addition to the flavor and pesticide free customers also care about shelf life as well. And we’re finding that because we’re able to get product from the farm to them so quick, they have more time to sell it and more time to get that to the consumer.
Emily Lewis 10:20
And are you envisioning, you know, do you have one farm in operation? Or do you have other operations around? Or what’s the scale of Plenty right now?
Elesif McDonald 10:29
Yeah, so we have one commercial farm in South San Francisco. And that is our only farm right now, where we are selling product to market, we are planning to build out a farm in Compton in this next year, as well, so that is in process. And then we do have one R&D facility in Laramie, Wyoming. So that’s where our plant science team is, and that’s where a lot of our research happens.
Emily Lewis 10:52
Awesome. So are you seeing this as kind of more of an avenue to address food deserts and kind of urban food scarcity, or do you see this as also a potential solution for other parts of the country like the West, or where do you see this fitting in and kind of what needs do you see this meeting?
Elesif McDonald 11:09
Yeah, there’s a lot of me as I see this fitting, one, we can just bring food closer to our people are actually consuming it. So we don’t need to ship it thousands of miles across the country. We also just as a country, and you know, globally, are not getting enough fruits and vegetables. So we still need field production, we need other indoor farms, we need to increase the overall amount of fresh produce, we are bringing to market. I have a pretty fun stat here, actually. So people in the US eat more fruits and vegetables per person, but it’s still only half of what’s recommended as part of a healthy diet.
Emily Lewis 11:51
And aren’t they mostly potatoes? I read a terrible stat once that said we eat a lot of vegetables, but when you take out potatoes, it’s like miniscule.
Elesif McDonald 11:59
Potatoes and onions I think a large part of that.
Emily Lewis 12:03
Well, Idaho is the second best state in the union. Okay, so tell me like, Who are your partners that you partner with? I mean, because I’m assuming if you’re looking for the end user, to be excited about the product and engaged in the product, it’s hard to just come into a community, you know, sight unseen. So do you suss out partners, like in the Compton project? Like are you looking for people who are already in the community working on like local agriculture and this is like a supplement to that? Or, how do you kind of find and suss out where you want to put a project?
Elesif McDonald 12:41
Yeah, so with Compton, we’ve worked really closely with that community to understand what the needs are there and to understand the role agriculture plays in that community. Compton actually, is a very agriculture focused community, there’s lots of farms there, they have community gardens. And so we’ve worked really closely to understand the impact we can have there. And we definitely plan to hire from that community. So I mean, more generally, where we’ve got farms is just going to be where we see market opportunity. And especially, you know, the first few farms, you know, we’ve announced Compton, but we’re looking really broadly at what customers are there, what the current supply is, and trying to figure out how we can add value to different cities, both in the US and then eventually globally as well.
Emily Lewis 13:34
Alright, so interesting, it’s just a different way of thinking about – I love bringing the farm to the people. Do you see this as something scary, because, I mean, we here in Utah, you know, agriculture is such a huge interest, it’s such a large part and 80% of our water in Utah is – 80 ish percent of our water in Utah is dedicated or owned by or used by the agricultural community. So you know, it really is a large percentage of our water portfolio for the state. And an important one, I mean, we did a survey, like five or six years ago called, I think, was Your Utah, where we had Utah citizens rank various, you know, priorities and maintaining, like a vibrant agricultural community was like really high on the list in terms of like culture and keeping the money in the state for for that for producing crops. So, you know, the other issue that though is with Utah, we all have so much growth, we have so many demands on our water, I do think our culture is looked to as kind of like the bank for future water resources, and, moving water out of agricultural and into municipal or industrial or industry flows and environmental. How do you see like vertical farms and kind of like indoor farming, playing a role, you know, not so much in the inner city, but just kind of like as, I don’t want to say replacement. That’s not what I really mean by it at all. But like as a compliment or supplement to like existing traditional agriculture?
Elesif McDonald 15:04
Yeah, I think in the long term this balance of you know, what makes sense to grow indoors because we’re not going to be growing apples indoors or you know, I don’t know if we could ever grow potatoes indoors, there’s certain crops that just are not a natural fit right now at least to indoor farming, like leafy greens are a very easy plant to bring indoors. And so I think there’ll be probably a transition over time, what crops can grow well and efficiently indoors and things like leafy greens do use a lot of water. And when you’re shipping them, it’s, you know, 90% water, so you’re basically just shipping water around the country. So I think it’ll start with the products that that are easy to grow indoors make sense. And we can use the land for crops that don’t grow well indoors. And then over time, hopefully we can grow more indoors and outdoors, because we just are going to have a real supply shortage potentially in fresh produce if we’re not utilizing all of these different systems and lands efficiently.
Emily Lewis 16:04
So leafy greens, what other kind of crops are well suited to indoors?
Elesif McDonald 16:09
Yeah, so right now, we’re primarily focused on leafy greens. But things like fruiting crops, like strawberries, and tomatoes also have potential, potentially even legumes. But strawberries are high on our list to bring to market as those do pretty well indoors.
Emily Lewis 16:26
And strawberries are tasty.
Elesif McDonald 16:29
And our indoor grown strawberries are very tasty.
Emily Lewis 16:33
Yeah, for sure. Can you tell us a little bit about what your exposure is to, other systems? You have your system with the robots and the vertical – did you call them crops? Like what do you call them, like vertical stations?
Elesif McDonald 16:47
Towers is how we usually just refer to them because they’re just, you know, tall vertical structures. But there’s also – so within controlled environment agriculture, there’s other types of indoor farming technology as well as greenhouse technology. And you know, in greenhouses or indoors, you can utilize a hydroponic or aeroponics system. And the different ways you can grow in those environments, and with those systems is different.
Emily Lewis 17:15
What’s an aeroponic system?
Elesif McDonald 17:17
So there’s, there’s aeroponic systems, there’s aquaponic systems. Aeroponic systems are where you’re basically misting the roots of a plant with water and nutrients. So you have – there’s different types of technology that that utilize aeroponic watering for those plants, basically, we have this little misters that hit the roots and make sure plants are getting what they need.
Emily Lewis 17:37
Do they have a solution that has nutrients in it? Or is it just water mist?
Elesif McDonald 17:44
It’s basically just water and nutrients. And so depending on what you’re growing, you’ll I mean, just like in the field, you’re gonna tweak the nutrients you’re getting in the plant to what the plant wants. So like tomatoes on something pretty different than lettuce. So the water, you know, is just a way to hold those nutrients and bring them to the plant.
Emily Lewis 18:03
Okay, great. So and then, so that’s aeroponic. And then you mentioned aquaponic, is that the same as hydroponic?
Elesif McDonald 18:11
So aquaponics a little bit, it’s different. So aquaponic is where you’re using fish waste, to get your nutrients for the plants. So you’re using, it’s a lot more water volume in the system, because you need to have space for fish and you’ll use like tilapia, some people I think, use like trout, and there’s different fish you can use. But their waste is what provides the nutrients. We actually with Bright Agrotech run an aquaponic greenhouse and sell via CSA and Laramie. And those are a little bit harder to handle. They’re great for greenhouses and smaller operations. But at a large scale, you’re basically having to deal with two living systems both keeping the fish happy, and the plants happy. So it can be a little bit harder to balance.
Emily Lewis 18:58
Yeah, I can see that. And then hydroponic is just slowly what you’re saying just water. And then, it sounds like you get a re-circulating system for the water once it’s been applied, it’s kind of brought back into a system and the reapplied again, essentially. So you’re pretty much consuming all the water that you would apply to the plants just through multiple cycles, right?
Elesif McDonald 19:17
Yeah, exactly. And then the different technologies that can be used in a hydroponic farm either, you know, orient the plants in horizontal or vertical way. And then there’s typically some sort of media that’s used to kind of keep some of that moisture close to the plants. Like it could be dirt or, you know, a different like a cocoa core or something like that. That just helps retain some of that moisture and nutrients so they’re readily available, and then that water is recirculating as well.
Emily Lewis 19:41
Awesome. So is that water just typically a municipal connection? Are these plants just like you’re just in the San Francisco water, you’re just like an institutional water user, like a school essentially on a municipal system?
Elesif McDonald 19:54
Yeah, basically, there’s nothing that you know, special that needs to be needs to be there for us to be able to use that water. Of course, you know, we’re adding nutrients and doing some filtering and things like that. But yeah, we just use the city water.
Emily Lewis 20:07
So you mentioned when you had the the kale example that you use 5% of the water that a traditional agricultural field would use, you know, in your facility, do you have an idea of how much water- Well first, how big is your facility in San Francisco? And then second, do you know how much water it takes to support that facility?
Elesif McDonald 20:27
Yes, I don’t have exact numbers on how much water we’re using at the farm right now. The farm where we’re at, we’ve had a few evolutions of the technology. So it’s our headquarters. That’s where we’re, you know, testing out new technology, and also getting product to market and just learning through that as well. So the actual water uses would change as our technology improves, as well, and then serve as the second part of your question.
Emily Lewis 20:54
Just what the size of the facility is, like, how many square feet or you know, what, how big are we talking when you’re talking about your farm?
Elesif McDonald 21:01
Yeah, the whole building isn’t a thousand square feet, there are a few other companies in there. We have storage space and office space. So the building is big, but the farm is just taking up a portion of that building.
Emily Lewis 21:13
Okay, that’s not a huge footprint actually, for commercial space.
Elesif McDonald 21:20
We don’t need to use office space. Yeah.
Emily Lewis 21:24
So with that facility, you know, what is your yield? When you are selling do you sell directly to grocers? Do you go to CSAs? And then what kind of volume of produce are you guys creating?
Elesif McDonald 21:37
Yeah, so it’s all going directly to retailers. If you go to our website, you can see how many stores are supporting now we’ll continue to bring on more stores throughout this year next, as well. So we’re still very much scaling up the farm here.
Emily Lewis 21:52
Woah, it’s so exciting. You mentioned a few moments ago that you you’ve been like tweaking your technology. And as you go, what have you learned? Like, what are you learning along the way while you guys are doing this?
Elesif McDonald 22:06
Yeah, there’s no shortage of lessons. I mean, just look at the equipment, we were using a Bright Agrotech, and then compared to where we are now, it’s pretty extreme the evolution of not just the growing technology, but our understanding of, you know, what the plants need in that environment. So it’s almost like relearning what plants really want. Because in the field, we’re just doing our best to react to, you know, the elements we’re given and the things that you have to deal with, whether you want to or not. So in an indoor environment, it’s really interesting. There’s just so much more to learn about, you know, even like you said, mentioned with the lighting, like how much lighting does a plan actually want? And how much light is too much? How much light is not enough? So, you know, we’re learning more and more every day, but there’s still so much we can learn now that we have control over all those aspects and ways to record that data and learn from it.
Emily Lewis 23:06
And so who are these people who are doing that learning? Like, you know, what kind of people do you employ at the farm?
Elesif McDonald 23:12
Yeah, so our company is primarily made up of engineering and plant science. We do have a big farm team as well. So even though the robots help we do have a lot of people in the farm every day and helping keep an eye on the plants and bring that product to market. We have plant science, engineering, and then the farm team is definitely the majority of our company.
Emily Lewis 23:33
Okay, so how many employees do you have with your operation is just like a 10 person operation? It’s a 25 person operation, you know, how many people does it take to run a farm in the middle of San Francisco?
Elesif McDonald 23:46
Yes, we’re actually up to over 300 employees as a company. But those employees are spread out across both Laramie and San Francisco, and are definitely not all involved in the day to day operation. Long term, we want to scale our technology to markets around the world. And so there’s a lot of work on the engineering and plant science side to make sure the technology can scale and we have plants that can thrive in these indoor systems.
Emily Lewis 24:12
That’s a lot more people than I thought it’d be involved. So then, if you have 300 employees that are kind of, you know, keeping tabs on the operation and how it’s evolved in what do the robots do?
Elesif McDonald 24:28
Yeah, so our farms will always be a combination of technology and people. The robots can do some of the simpler things in our farm, and they help us with harvesting and planting. We still need people there to make sure the robots are staying on track. And, you know, we always have people checking our product to make sure it’s hitting our quality specifications. And it’s, you know, the high quality product you want to be sending to market so there will always that balance of the tech and the people to make sure we’re growing efficiently, but also not compromising anything, either.
Emily Lewis 25:04
Do you feel like you live in a sci fi film, sometimes when you go down on the floor?
Elesif McDonald 25:09
Kind of, because I’ve watched it evolve, though, it’s, you know, I’m used to I’m seeing it day to day, but whenever I just take a step back and just look at the farm, or think about how far we come in, it’s pretty amazing.
Emily Lewis 25:22
Yeah, I think it’s very exciting. It’s very, very exciting. So how are you planning on scaling? You mentioned you want to go, you know, national and global, what are your plans for doing that? How are you going to accomplish that?
Elesif McDonald 25:34
Yeah, so our farm in San Francisco, we are making sure that the technology is working, and will continue to evolve as our latest version of technology is called Tigris. So making sure that, you know, what we plan for when we’re looking at designing farm is actually what happens when we’re running the farm day to day. So when we expand to Compton, that will be the next big step up. And, you know, every time we open a farm, or start using new technology, there’s lessons learned, but over time, you know, we shouldn’t be having to learn as many lessons the hard way. And once we feel like we’re at a good spot with that technology, then we can start scaling faster.
Emily Lewis 26:18
Yeah, do you have, I mean, to me, the intersection of water and tech is a hot place to be, you know, I just think that the reality is that scarcity is is the mother of invention. And I think that the scarcity component of water is becoming very real to lots of people. And so I think a lot of people are interested in figuring out, how do we measure our water? How do we meet our water? How do we, you know, adopt technologies use it more efficiently? And you’re now in the tech hub of San Francisco from the other tech hub of Laramie, Wyoming. Are you finding that people are coming to you wanting to invest and be involved in this project? I mean, to me, it seems like if I were out there in the world, looking for a cool project, to put some support behind this would be a really, really interesting one and a good one to do.
Elesif McDonald 27:11
Yeah, you’re not the only one who sees opportunity to be more efficient and reduce water use. We have raised money from like SoftBank vision fund Bezos expedition, innovation endeavors. So there’s definitely a lot of interest in ways to, you know, reduce water usage and see this technology be available more broadly. And yeah, there’s no shortage of interest there. Right now everyone knows that we need to be more effective with farming and our water use. So yeah we do tend to see a lot of interest.
Emily Lewis 27:47
Is there a community of the controlled environment agriculture? Do you guys have conferences, you know, is there – who else is out there playing in the space right now? And you know, what kind of collaborations or work do you do – not work with, but do you learn from because if you’re, you’re learning so many lessons on your farm, and if this is a global need, it makes sense to kind of talk to your contemporaries and colleagues, is there a vibrant community that you guys are working with, that is also doing this in other spaces and fields?
Elesif McDonald 28:21
Yeah, so there’s, I guess, a few ways to look it up. There certainly are conferences like, um, you know, indoor ag tech, which is an annual conference there. The tricky thing is that people are using this technology, at so many scales. So there’s both, you know, small farmers or people like, with Bright Agrotech, we worked with a lot of people just trying to grow food for their family in a small space. So there’s, you know, anywhere from people using technology like this at their home all the way up to the scale, we’re talking about there’s definitely collaboration, different areas, you know, companies at a larger scale. But the technology is different enough. There are things like food safety, that we can all align around and make sure that we’re doing what we can to educate consumers on why the products are safe. And so there’s certain things like that that are true across indoor farms. But when it comes to you know, how we’re saving water, the systems are pretty different. And it is more of a proprietary topic, I guess, the technology that’s being used and everything. So there’s less collaboration when it comes to those specifics, but certainly collaboration around educating consumers and customers around the benefits of these systems.
Emily Lewis 29:36
Yeah, that makes sense perfectly. I know because it’s so Vertical Harvest in Jackson Hole I follow on the other technology platform called Instagram. And I think that that is one enterprise that has done just a fantastic job of promoting their mission and promoting kind of their concept. And being in a location like Jackson Hole where there’s so many people who are already coming through that space, it’s such a great introduction to kind of some of the concepts of controlled environment agriculture, it’s exciting to see it gaining kind of a traction, like a public face traction, in a sense that it’s exciting and people get excited about it.
Elesif McDonald 30:21
Yeah, there’s a lot of really cool projects. That’s definitely one of them. There’s so many cool applications of the technology. And that’s why it’s really exciting is, you know, someone can be growing, produce in a shipping container in Alaska, or in an old warehouse in Alaska. There’s a lot of ways to utilize spaces that may not have normally been utilized at all, even now, like Vertical Harvest, and Jackson just on the side of a parking garage. So it’s really cool to see how people are utilizing this technology in ways that we could not have before.
Emily Lewis 30:58
Yeah, and will continue to think about and evolve.
Elesif McDonald 31:01
Yeah, definitely.
Emily Lewis 31:02
Cool. Well, so those are kind of my primary questions for you. Do you have anything else you’d want to add or you know, something that strikes you as fun and interesting about what you do? Or that you would like, you know, kind of listeners to like, take away?
Elesif McDonald 31:15
I would just mention, again, it’s worth looking at some photos of these different projects and seeing you know, how the technology is different. There’s really a lot of variety in terms of how everyone’s using technology and growing, whether it’s in a greenhouse or indoors. So it’s pretty cool to just see how it’s evolving and how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time. And I’m just excited to see how things continue to evolve over the next five plus years, because the progress we’ve made in these last five to 10 years is really amazing.
Emily Lewis 31:42
Yeah, I concur. Well, one, I think what you’re doing is great, two, I’m really glad that you could share it with us. And three, I agree that I’m excited to see what happens in the future.
Elesif McDonald 31:52
Yes, it’s gonna be fun.
Emily Lewis 31:54
Totally. Cool. Well, thank you so much, Elesif, and we might have to check back in and see how things go when you get your Comptom facility going.
Elesif McDonald 32:01
Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you so much for having me.
Brian Lebrecht 32:24
Nothing said in this podcast should be taken as providing legal advice or as establishing an attorney client relationship with you or anyone else.
MacKenzie Nickles, Podcast Producer 32:32
This podcast was produced by Mackenzie Nickles. Find Ripple Effect on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai