IFPA Takes on Tech

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Welcome to PMA Takes on Tech, the podcast that explores the problems, solutions, people, and ideas that are shaping the future of the produce industry. I'm your host, Vonnie Estes, vice president of technology for the Produce Marketing Association. And I've spent years in the ag-tech sector. So I can attest, it's hard to navigate this ever-changing world in developing and adopting new solutions to industry problems. Thanks for joining us and for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. My goal of the podcast is to outline a problem in the produce industry and then discuss several possible solutions that can be deployed today.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Today's podcast is powered by our sponsor AgroFresh. AgroFresh is a global leader and ag-tech innovator in the produce industry with a mission to prevent food loss and waste, and to conserve the planet's resources by providing a range of science-based solutions, data-driven technologies and high touch customer services. AgroFresh supports growers, packers, and retailers with solutions across the food supply chain to enhance the quality and extend the shelf life of fresh produce. With decades of experience across a range of crops, AgroFresh is powered by a comprehensive portfolio that includes proprietary solutions such as plant-based coatings, as well as a complete line of packer equipment that helps improve the freshness supply chain from harvest to home. Visit agrofresh.com to learn more. AgroFresh, we grow confidence.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Today, we will hear a recording of a fireside chat I had with Nate Storey, the chief science officer of Plenty at the 16th Annual Canadian Summit on Food Safety 2021. At the end of the conversation, you will hear a Q and A that I think you will find interesting and was worth leaving in. We will talk about food safety at Plenty and in the CEA space. When indoor ag was first getting going years ago, many companies, not saying Plenty was one of them, positioned indoor ag is us versus them, them being outdoor growers. And that indoor was better on many dimensions, food safety being one of the big ones. Plenty and most of the other indoor companies talk now about growing the pie, that producing more fruits and vegetables in different ways is better for everyone, indoor and out. Nate talks about the problems both sectors face in transparency, technology adoption, and labor. Let's jump into this very candid discussion about food safety and technology.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
My name is Nate Storey, and I'm one of the co-founders at Plenty. Plenty is an indoor farming company. So we grow food indoors under artificial light. These are in big warehouses basically. And we're able to condense a lot of production into a very small amount of space. So we got started because we felt like we needed to grow the world's capacity to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. In the United States, we're incredibly blessed. We have a lot of farm land. We have a lot of agricultural capacity. Other parts of the world, not quite as fortunate. And as we start to think about a global population that's much larger than it is today, the need for fresh fruits and vegetables is only going to grow, but the capacity that we have today, running full bore 100%, for the next decades won't be able to keep up with that demand.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So that's why we started Plenty. To meet that demand with this new source of supply. Yeah, so our farms are very large. We're growing on these vertical planes. It looks like you took a field and you stood it on its edge and put another field back-to-back with it. And these are very big, very complex farms, but they're pretty awesome. They allow us to control everything. The environment's completely controlled. Our day length is controlled, nutrients. We're able to exclude pests. We're able to collect a lot of data in keeping with the theme of these conversations. And we're able to understand a lot about plant growth in our systems and produce a product that's really pretty great day in and day out. So we produce that product and we sell it and people get the same thing every single day when they buy a Plenty product.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
What are you growing? Let people what crops are you growing now and what crops are you planning on growing in the next couple of years.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. So right now we're mostly focused on leafy greens. Most folks in the space start with leafy greens because they feel like an easy crop to grow. You're focusing on that primary production, but we have been working very hard on strawberries. We've got a partnership with Driscoll's developing strawberries for indoor production. We've been working very hard on tomatoes. We've got a few other crops like raspberries and a few other things in the works. So I anticipate we're going to be taking a lot of new crops to the world over the next few years.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And how many farms do you have now?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So right now we have three farming sites. So we have basically our R&D farm. This is our advanced research facility in Laramie, Wyoming. And there we have around 50 discrete environments that we use for plant research. These are relatively small production spaces, but other people call them farms. I think we'll just call the whole complex a farm site. You've got the South San Francisco farm, which is our pilot and we're growing there in South San Francisco and distributing to a number of sources throughout the Bay Area. And we're in currently in the process of building the Compton farm, which is the first instance of this very, very large farm. It's also probably the smallest farm we'll ever built.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Oh, interesting. And when are you projecting that will be completed in Compton?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
We'll be finishing that up towards the end of this year and bringing it online. Yeah.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Great. So this conference is about food safety. How do you think about food safety at Plenty?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. Food safety is something that we spend a lot of time and money and attention on. I think it's become one of these things which is one of these top concerns for consumers. And when they buy product, it used to be the assumption is this is a safe product. I think that that's still generally true, but there's been a lot of food safety recalls. There's been a lot of things in the news lately that I think have people questioning safety. And so at Plenty, we recognize that that's one of the most important things that we can be focused on. I will say, we've got a fundamentally different kind of problem compared to folks who are growing in uncontrolled environment.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So you look at a lot of the food safety recalls of the last few years, and a lot of them had nothing to do with best practices in some instances, right? Or they're totally uncontrolled things, right? You've got a wild boar that walks through a field and poops, right? How do you control for that? So at Plenty we have a very different scenario, that a wild boar can't walk through our farm, right? Because it is inside of a building. It's locked. People are using key cards to get in and out of the farm. They're gowned up from head to toe. We're able to practice really excellent exclusion practices. So keeping pests and pathogens out altogether. So I guess all of that to say, it's a very different problem that we have to solve compared to someone who is still trying to grow in the field and trying to keep wild boars out, right?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So all of that to say, we think a lot about prevention and risk management, sanitization, exclusion, cleanliness, all of the components that keep our produce very, very clean. Human hands don't touch this stuff because we've automated many of our processes in an effort to eliminate all of the potential points of contamination in the growing and processing process. We practice really good traceability so that if something ever does go wrong we know where and how. And then we've got testing and analysis that's quite aggressive. And I guess the thing that I'd say there is testing is getting a lot better. But testing and traceability go hand in hand because you don't want to be using traceability to try and find the source of a problem that's exposed by food your consumers are eating.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
You want to be testing really aggressively hand in hand with traceability so that you can catch anything before it ever occurs. And I guess the last thing I'd add is, again, in keeping with this idea that we've got a very different... In some ways a much simpler problem to solve. Our supply chain is not complicated. There aren't a whole lot of handoffs, right? Traceability can be hard when you've got lots and lots of handoffs, when there's a lot of on process changing hands, 14 times in some instances if you're a field grower. For us, we drive it directly to the distribution center or directly to the store and it's a single handoff. So traceability for us is much simpler. It has more to do with process steps than it does to do with who had it, right? Who had it at this point in the process.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Do you think that's going to get more complicated as you get bigger and you have more farms? Is that going to become more complex and how will you deal with that?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
I mean, I think managing those farms becomes more complex and the number of instances grows because we now have more farms. But as far as the actual process, the process itself doesn't get more complex. So if you think about it this way, if I was growing in a field and I had a farm in California and I'm managing multiple fields but we're aggregating all of that produce with the packing, at the packing stage and then shipping it out and it changes hands half a dozen times across half a dozen different retailers and ends up in stores all over the US, that's still quite complicated.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Whereas with the Plenty farms, because we're very close, generally, relatively close to the distribution centers, each farm is going to be servicing certain distribution centers, certain stores. So when you look at it kind of like the nodes, if you were to diagram it out, farm to distribution center, distribution center to stores compared to the insane logistics problems that many of the field growers have to manage, where it's a hard, hard problem. Our problems are relatively simple. There's just not that many exchanges, right? There's not that many transactions.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. That makes sense. Are there any problems that Plenty or anyone else that's in controlled environment ag has around food safety that are different than outside? Are there problems that are more unique to CEA growing around food safety?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. I mean, I think if there are, they're more around process steps, but even then I don't think that indoor necessarily has any more or any less problems. I think that's simplification of the idea of how pathogens could get into the system. Everyone has to be vigilant. Everyone has to be really careful. The difference is the simplicity of the system, right? And the ability to measure. So I think if there's one thing that's probably true for indoor growers or Plenty at least is we tend to over-index on testing. So because we have this super tight contained facility, because we have these really well-defined process steps, we're able to test with more frequency and more often. And one of the drawbacks of testing is that you learn things, right?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. Yeah.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
You actually have to do something with that data. And so I think the reality is we just have a much more granular view of say the microbiology of the system. And even in systems that are super sterile, there's always a microbiology no matter what. Germ theory, everything is everywhere, right? And the reality is that no matter where you go, no matter what kind of a system you're working with, there will always be a microbiology. So we just need to make sure it's the right microbiology. Is it safe? Is it a good microbiology? And so all of that to say, I think for a lot of field growers, the testing equipment just doesn't exist to engage in the kind of testing that we can engage in, in a controlled facility with a lab onsite, right?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
It's a different scenario. And I think that lack of information in the field both represents a risk in terms of not necessarily always knowing what is in or on your product. It also mitigates the risk of knowing and having to respond to it, right? We just don't have enough historical data to understand how we balance our reaction to some of these things in the field. So often times we end up with these scenarios where it lands on a shelf and some gets sick, and then they do a bunch of testing and we've got big recall on our hands. It's definitely worse in the long run than testing in the field and understanding what's going on and just holding stuff back.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So what did you have to do? I hadn't even thought of this. That because your ability to constantly test and you're able to see things at a much lower level and to follow them through, what did you have to learn and was there anybody else doing that research? Or did you just have to build this whole body of research yourself of really understanding, "We've never seen this pathogen or this microorganism"? It's not necessarily a pathogen, maybe pathogen to the plant, but just that whole body of knowledge probably didn't exist before you started looking, right?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. I mean, so people have been doing research on the microbiology of hydroponic systems for a while. That being said, every little ecosystem is different, no two are alike. They can be the exact same system side-by-side and they might have a slightly different microbiology. So some existed, and it was helpful in a very broad sense and unhelpful in a narrow sense. So there's just a lot that we have to learn about our farms, right? How they behave, how they work. And they're very safe. They're very safe in terms of the microbiology that we have. They tend to be closer to the sterile end of the spectrum than the super diverse into the spectrum.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
And that's frankly the way we want it. We clean the floors, we sterilize the equipment between harvest, right? We're sterilizing everything. So that's how we want it. That's not necessarily to say that it's a good or a bad thing. That's just the management approach that we've taken. And learning how that impacts food safety, learning how that impacts the microbiology of the system has been quite the learning process for us. We are fortunate to have a system that allows us to collect data constantly, test constantly, and really keep tabs on the system microbiology, as opposed to more of the black box approach that frankly we're stuck with in a lot of other production systems.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And you have everything all in one place too, which has got to be a big advantage. So you're growing and any processing, any packaging, anything, it's not moving across town or it doesn't have to go through a bunch of different steps.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
That's right.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So that control has got to be a huge advantage from a food safety point of view as well.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. Again, just going back to this concept of simplification, right? It's like when you simplify the problem, there's only, say two transactions rather than 15 transactions. The number of places where something can go wrong, or the number of points where there can be contamination or the number of processes to audit, or what have you, right? It's a fraction. It's a fraction of what it is otherwise. So we just have a simpler problem.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. You've talked a little bit about traceability. So let's move a little bit about traceability and data. So how can traceability and enhanced data transparency make the CEA sector more responsive to food safety concerns?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, I think the thing to point out about traceability is traceability is typically used to try and understand where a problem happened after the fact, right?

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
That's awful.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
It's kind of like the police, right? They show up after the crime has been committed. If you're the person getting robbed, the cops aren't that helpful in that moment, right? And so traceability is the same way. Usually something has happened and we've got a recall, we've got something on our hands and we've got to go back and figure out in the produce industry, right? So at Plenty, we've taken a little bit of a different approach and we've said traceability is very helpful in terms of food safety, yes, and always managing our food safety, but it's also very helpful at managing our system and our system efficiency.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So for us traceability is as much about system efficiency and material management as it is about human health and safety. And I think the thing to point out there is in most systems traceability again, is something that's helpful generally after the fact. At Plenty because we're able to pair it with this testing, right? Constant testing, just constant, constant, constant testing, it becomes a tool for really rapid diagnosis if we see something that's weird or off, or if we see a shift in system microbiology, or if we see ATP counts go up somewhere, right? So we basically have a unique opportunity to leverage traceability. And the other thing that I'd say is we've simplified the traceability problem at Plenty with our architecture, right?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So it's not like we're coming into an existing system that's already complex and trying to bring a traceability system to try and understand a super complicated thing. We basically just said, "Hey, what's the more simple form, right? How do we get to a more simple form?" And that doesn't make the traceability obsolete per se, but it does make it maybe a little less critical to understanding the system, right? Because the system is just more understandable. It is simple. There's only a couple of transactions there. I guess that's how I would describe our approach to traceability. Consumers want honesty, consumers want transparency, consumers want to know that their food is safe.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
And I think we've used labels for a very long time to try and communicate those things, but I see a world and a future where consumers want to be able to scan a barcode and see how the product was grown, scan a barcode and see who grew it, where it was grown, how it was handed off, whether or not it was cold chain compliant or not. I see a future where people want to be able to take more of a firsthand approach to auditing the food that they eat. I don't think that's everyone, but I think that's an occasional thing that people want. And in a world where we're moving towards more transparency, I'd bet on it rather than bet against it.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So regardless of the system that folks are using to produce, traceability is something they should be investing in. I will also say the fact that we have some of the food safety incidents on the rise, I think in my opinion indicates we need to invest in more testing as well. So in the same vein as pairing testing and traceability for field producers, that's something that we need, is rapid modular testing.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). So we've been at a huge time of disruption with COVID and then some regulatory changes. How can data make the CEA sector more resilient in these times of disruption?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. That's a good question. I think there's a lot of things that we can learn from the last year and a half as it relates to resiliency and the food supply system. Some of those things have to do with things like traceability and data, knowing what is where, right? There were all sorts of logistics breakdowns the last year. And a lot of that is a data problem. A lot of that was a labor problem, right? In some places we just didn't have the people. So investing in more autonomous systems or systems that can basically function in the absence of human supervisors, that's important.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
And then location. So at Plenty our goal has been to solve these by putting farms close to distribution centers, minimizing the amount of labor, minimizing the amount of complexity that can interfere with us, growing the product and then handing it directly off to the retailer and then they hand it off directly to the consumer, that's the simplest possible process, right? And so when we think about resilient food systems, I think it's important to think about simple food systems. Could we just make these super complex things a little bit complicated and reduce the number of dependencies in the system? So if we're dependent on constant labor prices and constant labor supply, that's not a good bet looking forward.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
The other thing I think really changed was consumers started to think about their health and they started to think about their safety, and maybe they're thinking about it through the lens of COVID, but I think that it's going to transfer to the things that people choose to put in their bodies, to the food that they eat. And as people moved home, we saw it in our sales. Our sales went through the roof, right? As people started staying home and started cooking for themselves, they started investing in healthy food. And I think understanding what they're eating, who grew, where it came from is an important part of that decision making process for some folks. And certainly the folks that are the advocates, right? The folks that are quite vocal and the folks that are really involved with promoting fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh, healthy food.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
So I think consumer behavior is another thing to consider here and the speed of change in that behavior. A lot of things happened overnight with COVID. And I think we need to get used to consumer demands, for change. Consumer demands for things being something that we have to respond to. So when we think about data systems and how flexible they are responsive, how we're able to audit, where something was and who was touching it and who handed it off, that's another thing to keep in mind looking forward. So all of that to say, it's just a long ramble there. We have this tendency as humans to engage in this additive improvement, right? So we're like, "Oh, we've got to figure out how to make the system safer. Let's add things to it." And what that results in is a super complex system.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
And it gets to the point where we just hold out this, "Hope machine learning AI is going to come in and solve this problem for us. It's too complicated for humans now." And maybe the question doesn't need to be too complicated for humans, right? At its core, do we really need to make this thing so complex that we need insanely complex computer programs to actually help us understand it? And I think the answer at Plenty is no. As we start to think about how we grow the world's capacity to grow fresh fruits and vegetables, I think we can grow that capacity with a simpler system, with a system that empowers producers, empowers consumers and really makes it something that's understandable.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. Those are a bunch of different great points. I think certainly around consumers it's very important. And we at PMA we've seen a lot of changes in consumers and how they want to get their food and how they think about their food. And I know for myself personally, in the beginning of COVID where we went to the grocery store a lot less frequently, just the decision of what do you buy because I'm not coming back for 10 more days. And so those types of behaviors and looking at how long will this lettuce last on my refrigerator, or how long will this strawberry last in my refrigerator? And so I think just those types of changes in behavior and people wanting to buy online and have it delivered, we saw an ability to really be able to react to those types of things.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And I think that made for a lot more resilience. And at the same time, a lot of consumers really got to see what does our supply chain look like when there was people plowing onions back and in the field because they couldn't go to food service or milk being dumped. I think that really highlighted to a lot of consumers what our supply chain looks like and how important it is on food.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
And we were all really in the hands of these complicated logistics, right? And anyone could produce or could be the victim.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Any group with consumers could be the victim of inefficiencies that jump out.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. So what technology do you see still needs to be developed to decrease the number of food safety recalls and produce? And this can be indoor or outdoor grown. Just what do you think we should be working on from a technology point of view to solve this better?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. I mean, I think for me there's probably three things that matter the most. And I harp on this with my teams a lot, right? You have to make something easier, people won't do it. You have to make it easy or people will take shortcuts and do it wrong or they'll figure out some way to cheat the system to make it easier. So human beings are always optimizing for conservation of energy. So I think number one is testing and I'm still amazed at the lack of really effective testing for pathogens that exist. So-

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Onsite testing.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Onsite. That's right. In the field. So starting in the field, right? Again, traceability is fine. Traceability is great, but it just tells you what is and it's usually after the fact. And so it tells you where something was. It doesn't necessarily tell you the state of the product at that position in the supply chain. So when we think about the fundamental problem here, it's like no one knows whether there's pathogens on the product or not until late in the game. And so if we had modular testing, they could go to the fields, it could be very effective. That would be awesome.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
We at Plenty we've got the advantage of we've got a lab on site, right? We have the lab in the field, if you will. And I think for us, that's awesome. It means that we can do that rapid testing. It means that we can understand what is true and we can walk anywhere in the farm and tell you what the state of that product is. But for the field which needs to keep producing to meet demand, testing is so, so important. And there just aren't any great solutions today that are rapid, modular and really effective. And then second on traceability, this is just a super simple thing, but automated data entry.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Just figure out ways to make data entry automated, fast, effective, easy for people. And the folks especially who are in the field, this is the last thing that they want to think about. Make it easy. So this is technology that already exists, RFID tags, barcodes, the systems around managing and tracking things. And then I think lastly integrated data systems. So getting people to share their data and building data systems that transfer. Before we were talking about blockchain, but these ways of understanding where something came from in a way that's integrated, retailers, producers, everyone.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So these aren't Nobel Prize level technology discoveries. These are mostly adoption and just paying attention to putting solutions together that people can use, right?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
These are not sexy.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah. That's the area that people don't want to invest in, I'm afraid, but...

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Well, I think we have some questions from the audience, right? Beth, were you going to [crosstalk 00:31:47] those? Yeah. Okay.

Beth:
We do. So the first question comes in from Sean Moore who asked, "What forms of technology does Plenty use today?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Oh, that's a really big question. I mean, we're a technology company and so there are a lot of technologies that we use that we don't work on. So think industrial robots, industrial controls, that kind of thing. There's a lot of technology that we've developed because it's either something the market didn't provide or couldn't provide for our specific application. So these are things like, I would say our growing technology, vertical towers and the conveyance systems and just the way that we manage things, the architecture itself of the farm. We have lighting systems that we've designed, HVAC systems, air management, environmental management systems.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
We have nutrient and fluids control systems. Then we have genetics, which I consider technology. It's proprietary genetics that we've paired to match with those environmental technologies. And then on top of genetics there's the classic GEM, right? We've layered all of these management technologies that we've developed in order to help make sure that that match of genetics and environment is perfect. So farmOS, sensor and sensing systems. We're using machine learning and AI in some instances, data management storage, data pipeline, and that kind of thing. So everything from the hardware to the software and then the plant software of genetics.

Beth:
That's a lot. But yeah, it keeps everything moving, that's for sure. So another question came in, how often do you use pesticides in CEA? Is it needs-based only or preventive as well?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. At Plenty we don't use pesticides on our crops. Again, just going back to this concept of simplicity... I know that's not true for all producers, but for Plenty it is. Going back to this concept of simplicity, right? If you can keep the pests out of the farm then you have a much lessened likelihood of having to use pesticides, right? We do our production cycle, is always about 12 days. And so there are very few pests and pathogens that can keep up with those types of... We just outstripped the life cycle of most of our insects, pests. We don't have weeds. So all we're left with is fungal and bacterial pathogens. And those we control with air filtration and fluids filtration, right? And so we can manage all of the different risks to our crops with means other than pesticides or insecticides.

Beth:
Awesome. Thank you. Next question is, are you having a challenge finding enough of the right people to fill this roles at Plenty? Are you partnering with any university programs to ensure the skills needed in the future to allow other companies to get on the indoor farming bandwagon or idea, concept here?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. I mean, I think the answer to that is yes. And I think there are a lot of young, talented, amazing people that are lined up to work at these places. The job market right now is particularly tough. So yeah, I mean, we could always use more. I'd say that the place where we've historically really struggled is to bring in really great mature growers who had experiences in traditional industry. The reality is, ag-tech is tough because you have agricultural problems and you have this partner in a much more conservative established industry.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
And so getting good growers to the door who can come in, have an open-mind and engage with you on new technology is a pretty tough thing. Most growers tend to be more conservative in their outlook and their approach on technology and getting their engagement has been hard. But we're slowly getting there as people start to realize we're a real thing and we're going to be around for awhile. We're getting a little bit more of a response.

Beth:
I was going to ask you if it's changing over time and you're seeing more of understanding and acceptance of new ways.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
It is. It's slowly getting there. We just keep putting out this message, it's like, we're not here to replace the field. We're here to build agricultural capacity on top of the field. Everyone has to produce. There's no one in the world who can slack off here for the next 50, 60 years. The population of this planet, the rising middle-class, none of those things allows anyone to take a break. So there's good job security in ag moving forward. And I think as people start to realize this isn't a competitive thing where we're going to take out the field growers and we're not competing. As people start to realize that they realize, "Oh, well, maybe there's an opportunity here for more collaboration. Maybe we can share people and share ideas and get better together." So we're getting there.

Beth:
Well, and one question that comes to my mind too is domestically versus internationally. So is there more or less interest particularly in the EU or in other countries? What's the difference that you might be seeing relative to interest domestically versus internationally?

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Yeah. I mean, there are massive differences, some of which are cultural, some of which are societal. Some of which are a direct result of the pattern of development to that area. So when we look across the world, there's interest from everywhere, right? The reality is that the world supply of fresh fruits and vegetables can't keep up with demand. That is a fact. And people are not consuming enough fresh fruits and vegetables. And so when we think about what we have to do, we've got to triple the current supply of fresh fruits and vegetables in order to meet that need. How are we going to do that? Right? And I think everyone's wrapping their heads around that.

Nate Storey, Plenty:
Obviously some places in the world are way ahead of us where we have plenty of agricultural capacity. You go to Saudi Arabia, you go to Shanghai, China, you go to Singapore and they're thinking about food security constantly because they don't have our capacity. So for them, this is a no-brainer, right? It just makes perfect sense. So I think there are areas of the world that are going to adopt this very, very quickly. And they're going to be areas of the world that are slower simply because there's less pressure on them from a supply standpoint.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
I think what we're going to see moving forward is a blurring of the lines between indoor and outdoor. We are already seeing partnerships like Plenty and Driscoll's, for example, between outdoor companies and indoor companies. There are both ways to produce food with their own sets of benefits and challenges, which vary by growing regions and crop. We will see growers produce food in ways that are best for them in terms of labor, water, availability, and markets. That's it for this episode of PMA Takes on Tech. Thanks for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. Be sure to check out all our episodes at pma.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe and I would love to get any comments or suggestions of what you might want me to take on. For now, stay safe, eat your fruits and vegetables, and we will see you next time.