I think of climate change solutions as living known spectrum. And on 1 spectrum is the mitigation side of things. So just purely how can we reduce, you know, carbon emissions, methane emissions. On the other side of the climate spectrum, I think of it is the adaptation side, which is solutions that... Okay. Like, we accept that this is gonna happen to some degree, but we also know, optimistic. The humans will adapt and live in the world as it changes.
That is Jake Fe of free farms. We you visited us on farm to table talk in 2022. Since, we have been covering a spectrum of options facing our food system. This a good time to where controlled environment agriculture may fit in that spectrum of farming futures. It's time for conversations about our food and how it's grown on arm to table talk with your host, Roger Was. Well there's a lot of people you can go out and ask what do we need
in the world? What do we need in the country and They'll say we need farms. And there seems to be a shortage, maybe shortage of farmers. There's a lot of people that want a farm. A lot of people that feel like they need more farms. So people that are concerned about local food production that could they get more just produced locally? Well, there's a lot of obstacles to that.
And my guest today as, involved with a project that it's... I think, pretty unique in that regard, And I wanna welcome Jake Fe with freight farms. Hey, Jake, Welcome to Farmer Table talk. Thanks for having me. Hey, Jake. I wonder if you've ever been someplace where they're saying, gee, I wish we could farm, and you're tempted to jump in and say, well, we might be able to help you out with that.
I mean, I think all the time, you know, you see this all around you really, and 1 of the things that was very interesting about the pandemic, I think, and especially the early stages of the pandemic was that a lot of people in our communities and and my community went to the grocery store and discovered empty shelves, because shipping and forming was so impacted by that, and that was an event that really raised awareness and I
got to have that conversation a lot. I feel like, and and about what we're doing. So did... Now we're gonna talk about what you're doing and how that is so tempting for you to jump into those conversations and saying, well, we've got an idea here. We've got something it Well, let's... In fact, let's do go back and start at the idea. Someone must have scratched their head after a while and said, I think I think this might work. And so now what we're gonna talk about, Jake is what is this.
You might get a hint when we say freight farms, which, by the way, the first time I saw it I thought that's said fright farms. I thought it was just, like for Halloween or something. But then I realized I had not written down the e in the in in in the freight. So it in freight farms. It's actually actually freight farms, So let's talk about the... Let's talk about the concept.
What was the idea? What was an inspiration that there might be something here that you should your company should pursue. Absolutely. Yeah. So freight forms actually started about 10 or 11 years ago. When we a comparative newcomer in the in the Ce space at the time, like, it was a very small industry. There weren't really anybody else doing this, back in 20 11:20 12 when freight firms got started, And the idea originally came from, our founders,
John and Brad, They were... Working on trying to find ways to make agriculture accessible to everyone. And where they originally started was looking deeply at rooftop gardens and cities, and trying to make rooftop gardens into vegetable producing areas, And now that that... You know, it seems like a good idea and it would be a great thing, but it's actually really, really hard to make rooftop. Economics work, basically. There's a lot of barriers to getting
plants on roofs. There's zoning, there's labor, every roof is different. It's just a very hard challenge. And so they ended up settling on the shipping container as a really good method standardization. Shipping containers are already used all over the world. That's sort the most common way of transcript porting goods around, So it seemed very logical to put the farm inside the shipping container and move the farm not the food.
And so the idea was really born out of porting that and they desire to make farming accessible to everyone. And we figured that if we could make the farm easy to move around and it's a a sort of fixed products that we can scale and make cheaply, then it's something that many more people can can use. And over the last 10 years, we've gone through many, many generations of farm, and really honed our technology into what it is today, which is premier container farming solution on the market.
So a fully turnkey system, and we've got 500 plus systems worldwide operating today. Let's let's remind everybody what a shipping container is, because if if people are out driving on the highway now. They see shipping container put on the back of semi trucks because they picked them up with ports and they are delivering them somewhere else or if you see trains go through cargo trains. I'll have shipping containers sitting on those cars. And so for anybody that might be listening
to the podcast and saying, we... I'm having a hard time picturing this. Shipping they're they're what? Like, are they 40 feet or so longer little longer than that? The... So it does depend there's a variety of shipping containers, but the most common 1. Which is the 1 that we use is a 40 foot shipping container. It's called. And it's 40 feet by 8 feet, essentially in in area.
And then it's very standardized, so it has sort of these steel blocks at the corners that they used tie it down to the boat or the truck or the train or whatever it might go on. But the real power of shipping containers and why they took go over the world is is what's called inter transport. Right? So meaning that you can use the exact same container and you can put it on a train or vote or whatever, and it just gets moved between them, but it's the same exact container.
Now, I suppose there are refrigerated cars and you know, livestock cars and some of that don't work. So it's some sort of just a standard solid walled container, nothing special, like, you know, refrigeration or so forth in it So our containers are actually a bit special, but they still conform to this the 40 foot standard, which means that they're certified for sea worthiness and can be stacked on vessels and things like that.
We actually build our containers to a specific design that we've developed in China. We then ship them to the Us, and that design has all of the insulation that you would need for the farm, it has airflow channels, it has electrical, pass throughs, and all the things in the right place, so that we can build the farm really efficiently when it gets to the states for our final assembly facility. And it is not refrigerated in the same sense that a normal refer refrigerated to refers
what they call. It's the industry sign for a refrigerated container. Yeah. But we do add air conditioning and will environmental control is a huge part of making a Ce farm work well. So. Isn't this isn't a retired. Shipping container that had spent, you know, hundred years on the ocean or something like this. This is this is a shipping container that... That's coming straight into becoming a farm, and it didn't have a life on the rails or something first.
Correct. Our... So in freight farms history, we used to build farms out of reclaimed containers. But the issue with that is that they're inconsistent, and you don't quite know what you're getting. It's very hard to tell if there's a little bit of water damage in the container or... The insulation is degraded or any number of things. And so, in order to get a better product for our customers a few years ago, have you 3, 4 years ago, Moved to a standardized container? So you have them...
And did you say that... Are they made in China and then imported and So the the container itself is made in China. We have a a very global supply chain. So some components are are made in China, others in the Us. We do all our final integration and testing in New England. Pretty close to our headquarters. And the the farm itself is is considered made in America well more than 50 percent of the content is Us. Josh Give you
Pause every once a while. You think you've got an empty container coming over from somewhere that to put something in it for the ride, I think. We do. Yeah. You absolutely what we do. We, you know, obviously, in an emergency, we will ship a container empty, but it's pretty rare. We will sometimes ship our own cargo because we have things that come over, but, we will often ship other people's cargo.
And, you know, 1 of the interesting things that come we're able to do is is actually leverage the high freight rates that are happening right now to use our container space, to offset the cost of shipping the containers. So you might read that because of the pandemic, freight rates are at an all time high. But we... For the most part, don't feel that impacts too much because we ship other people's goods. So you would... It's... It comes in, so you... It's put on the back foot truck.
You need to have, like, a crane, take them off then or, I'm I'm I'm just thinking of, you know, big everything And and, how you sit get it foot get it port to sip. Yeah. So there's basically 3 methods that people use. You can use what's called the container handler, which is what they would use in the port. A special machine that basically it meant for iso container handling only. Most people would not have that in their neighborhood, but when it comes off the boat, they might use that.
Mh. Often the farm deliveries, we use a crane, to just lift it up and put farm down. And then the third way is what's called the land doll. Which is LAND0LL, but it's a type of, basically trailer for... It's a type of flatbed trailer that that tilt up and allows you to set a container down without any other handling essentially. Mh. So depending on the context of where the farmer is going, we will use 1 those methods, but it's really situational. Where well, let's talk out word where you do
put these? I mean, described to me the places that that they we said Is it it typically in a city or is it typically in, like, a a abandoned factories or or we're typically do the... Do you have these farms situated? Yeah. It's a great question. And I think to understand this question. You really need to look at Ce broadly and and our product specifically and follow the economics of it.
Because at the end of the day, our customers are running businesses, and they, you know, they are more successful and they buy more farms when those businesses are are profitable. And so what you see is that our farms tend to follow the economics, and the economics of Ce are such that. You'll be more profitable in places where some resource is limited.
The farm is extremely water efficient. It's about 99 percent more water efficient than traditional ag extremely land efficient, and it can operate in any outside conditions. So our farms tend to live it's yes in cities because cities are limited in land, and sometimes the high produce prices. But more often they live in places, where resources are more explicitly constrained, so places like islands, where Caribbean islands are actually very, low and water as well. Right? They're surrounded
by water, but it's saltwater water. So you can't use to irr gate, and they're low and land, they're also in the far north. So Alaska, Canada, Sweden, anywhere with a short growing season or a lot of cold. And you will also find them, you know, in the Middle East, any place that's particularly hot, also has water shortages, but you can't grow for a lot of the year. So those are the places where you're gonna see a lot of farms, and then we really have firms scattered throughout as well.
Essentially, any place where there's demand for local produce, you'll see them. I'm wondering if you could ever find people that are kind of at, a spot where there's a fork in the road and they say, well, I might be able to get 20 acres here out on the the edge of Boston someplace place, and and produce some foods or I might be able to get a container. It's probably not that simple, But is there
some... Some trade offs that people are saying I'm going to try to to see how far I have to move away from the city and get space to be conventional providing with Csa or farmers markets versus this is an option that I might be able to have a a farm in a container.
Yeah. I think you find a lot of our customers, you know, as they start their businesses You come from all walks of life, which I think is an amazing thing about our tech and that it's successful enough that you really don't have to have farming experience to to do it. And if you don't farming experience, you you don't necessarily wanna move out. I can tell you having how shocked around Boston that finding 20 acres on the outskirts of Boston means you have to move really far. Right.
That is a that is a punishing commute. And so I don't think that people are mostly evaluating us that trade off. I think they're looking at it more in terms of... Not how far do I have to change my community to provide, but what could I do in the context that I have to provide for my community? And then you think out of that way, the scope tends to be more limited. Mh. I I think it's more it's more... How can I? Help where I am, then how do I become a farmer or no
holds barred, I think. Sure. Sure. How many are restaurants? The do restaurants set up their own farm? Yes. It's often a, like, operation that's sort of adjacent to the restaurant. In many cases, what we actually see is that our our customers, customers are restaurants. So, you know, if you're operating... Let's say you're operating 2 farms, you might have a handful of different crops that you're growing, and
you're growing a substantial amount of them. So 2 farms are growing, somewhere in the equivalent of you know, 300 to 400 pounds of produce per week if you're going lettuce. So restaurants are prime candidate for selling that produce. They care a lot about quality. They often have specific requirements that are easier to achieve in a Ce context. Like, coloring of plants, for instance, or particular flavor profiles or things that you can achieve when it's more repeatable.
And then we often see is that people prefer to sell most of their produce, like, maybe 50 to 80 percent to restaurants. Because they're predictable, but then sell the rest via Csa or farmers markets or the other channels that are sort of higher margin, but less predictable. If you will. Right? These don't know how many people are gonna show up with the farmer's market on a
given weekend. So if I could drive far enough that I was act they're gonna get land and try to do some farming for, you know, specialty crops of of some sort. What I... The first thing I think I would do would drive out there stand around and looked and Cg. What am I gonna do with this? And so now I'm trying to picture what that's like? You walk into a shipping container and you've got you've got this great empty shipping container, and and you... You kinda size it up and say,
how are we gonna set this up. You guys get involved with that? You come in and say, okay. Here's what here's what you need to do. Yeah. So we've got a lot of best practices and education that we give our farmers. We operate what's called Farm camp. For instance, which is sort of a... It's a farmer boot camp, if you will. Then helps teach. We also through the software. We have crop planning tool that helps for understand how I'm actually gonna lay out my farm? How what is my demand? Like,
how should I be planting? What is the spacing of these plants in the farm? When do I need to harvest? So we provide a lot of queues for the users. But we... You know, overriding, what this does come down to, when you're operating in farmer or any business, you've got them you've gotta produce what your customers want. So I in most cases, when someone gets there farm what we encourage them to do is essentially a few harvest of sampling.
So you get your customers lined up, whoever that might be, whether it's your neighbors or some restaurants downtown or a grocery store, and you ask them what they want, and then you try to grow it. And you get it so you're happy with it, and then you show it to them, and they say, yeah. I would order this much of this. And then you build your your farm plan around what your customers want. Because if you're if you're making some awesome produce, but no one's gonna buy it, then it doesn't work.
So all, the next place is somewhere along the lines it has to stop start next is going to be seeds. As those seeds, are they gonna go into soil, or will it be go into a substrate when you're... Yeah. So in our farms, the seats go into substrate? We primarily recommend the Coco core substrates, although we have farmers who operate successfully with many different types. And
yeah. I mean, the soy nature of it can be controversial in some cases, but then I think people try the produce and are tend to be convinced. But now, does anyone put soil in them or are they pretty much all substrates. They're all substrates. So you starting with a substrate then that you're going to be do you have several levels or is it floor level and then a a medium or what's... Yeah, How many... Are there layers of substrates, I guess, or levels of substrates within the farm?
Sort. So I'll explain how it works. So... Basically, there's a Germ determination area in the farm, and you know, you start, like, in a 10 by 20 tray with a standard tray. And the substrates we use, whether it's you know, pete or rockwell or whatever, those fit into the the tray, and you seed into the tray with the substrate into the hole in the center and the substrate.
That goes into the nursery station, And that's where Germ nation happens in the first few weeks, usually 2 to 3 weeks and plant life happened there. The the farm can hold about 2500 seed at the time. And then when the ceilings get too big, and there... It should have been art to knowing when the right time, the transplant is. We we help farmers understand this and and time it properly. The plants get moved to to the the
main cultivation area we call it. And that's a vertical panel that uses a different water delivery mechanism that's more akin to a... It's not exactly an N system, but basically, there's a wick strip that helps deliver water to each individual plant evenly. Mh. Now, the next couple things that are necessary. Then, I guess is, we need to talk about light and water. So if you've got the spend nutrients. So I don't know what I'm missing out, but the other thing big
categories once you got the space. And once you've got the substrate, and once you've got the genetics, then, what are you adding? What are the what are the nutrients? How how much water which I'm I'm sure there's easy explanations on getting water depending on where you're located and And then, how do you make up for the lack of sunlight? So how do you wanna tackle those? Yeah. And the 1 I would add also is air. Air air.
I forget about error, and that actually ears done an awful lot of things plants need. It does. Yeah. So we can start on the water and nutrient side. So, you know, 1 of the coolest things about hydro hypersonic is the water efficiency. So our farm uses, but about 5 gallons of water a day, it depends on your performance. So that I would say that is sort of an average. If you're in a humid climate, it can easily be 0 or even water positive because it captures some water from the environment.
We use a rec circulating system, which is why the water usage can be so low. And into that, we essentially manage nutrients, and we use a really any new train that our customers want. We have our own line update trainings that we understand really well that's for people use because it's a lot easier to help them with it. And those nutrients are both your your macron nutrients, your K
as well as micron nutrients. And their balance such that you control both the nutrient content of the water as well as the ph of the water, can you you leverage the ph to help with the uptake of the nutrients and manage that properly. We have a a dosing system that essentially monitors all of those and doses pieces of nutrient as needed into the water, and it's always monitoring 24 7. So I think did that answer that the water component. Well, you mentioned p and k,
so the... So the the nutrients But beyond those those kind of nutrients like P, p and k. What about is there our, are microbes zipper offered? Do you have biological that that get get into the system too? We do. And that is something that... We work with farmers on. We we generally prefer to help people towards a biological, solution when possible. So some farmers are more down that road than others.
But it's something we really like to see, and we we don't have biologic in our nutrient line, but we definitely, have many that we recommend when we use farmers on a regular basis either for different kinds of pest control or additives for growth or different things. Mh. So microbes, So you can you can you can be able to do something that's basically, like, giving probiotics to humans, but probiotics. To the plants that are grown in the in these container farms then. Yeah. And I think you're...
It's partially for the clearance, but it's also partially to prevent the growth of bad microbes. Mh. As what can happen in a rec circulating systems especially is that if you get a bad microbe that starts multiplying, essentially the absence of good microbes, just like, you know, in your stomach, that can be very problematic for the farming for the growth. So that's something we really try to help people avoid.
And you'll sometimes see the growth of bad microbes, actually, when when the farm is almost too clean. You know, someone has really aggressively cleaned the farm. It's much easier for bad microbes to take hold. And in that case, we would... Recommend that you do in ina with a with a good microbe. What about, how you accomplish photosynthesis with artificial light rather than sun. How do you how do you balance... How do you match up with what what the sun's is able to do outside,
Yeah. So, what, 1 of the ways we out match the sun is in inconsistency. So it is the same everyday... 3 65 days a year. Right? Exactly the same. Mh. What we do is we actually balance the light in our farm so that essentially, we only give the plant the wavelength that it needs. So that's a, a red wavelength. On the it's sort of long alongside of red and then a blue wavelength blank. And so, counter intuitively, the plants kind of look gray under that light.
I don't know if you've ever seen it up close, but the plates can actually look kind of gross. But what you're actually seeing is that plants aren't reflecting any light back at you. They're using all of the red and blue together to photos, and there's no you know, when a leaf looks green what you're actually seeing is photons that aren't being used by the leaf bouncing back at you.
And so, in in generating the spectrum, we do, the goal is to keep the plant happy, but not waste any photons that would otherwise get bounced around the farm and and cost energy? Yeah. So what about the nutrition of what's grown Any of the people that have started the farms have they tested? So that there's gonna be some skeptics that are saying, gee, I'm not sure whether you've got, you know, the nutrients I'm looking for as a consumer you know, and then what I might be able to
get in soil outdoors. Does... Has any of them... Have any of them or your your own company done nutritional testing? Is. We do, and we do bricks testing on on our test crops often, and we find that it... We are consistently generating more proteins and more sugars in our crops than what we would get off the shelf. And I think, you know, it's a perhaps a bit of a myth to attribute all of that to have the hydro nature of it.
You know, my take on it is that you're actually seeing substantial improvement because of what's happening to the plant after car. And that's something that I think it's really worth talking about because it's a key difference from local food. If you go to the store, even if you go to Whole foods or whatever, and you buy lettuce that lettuce has been on a journey to get to you. Know, that journey takes a while and while that journey is happening, it's degrading.
Sure. So 1 of the big differences with our farms is, Yes. They're hydro panic, but also you're eating it right away, and it doesn't have to go on that that long journey to get to you. Yeah. Yes You know? But, that... That's that's a really, really good point. And then there are some produce that actually has to be picked early too, because it's gotta take into account that it's gonna be 10 days or or or longer before it's on shelves on the East Coast so there's...
So the journey does have something that should be considered, which brings us up. The other point then. And and that is your carbon footprint, greenhouse gases. This kind of system and somebody saying for, you know, we're for what they're gonna be able to produce. How how do you compare, when looking at your impact on the on the climate. For sure. This is an amazing question, and I think it's 1 where people do find it easy to either criticize or green the Ce space and neither is quite bright.
This was absolutely a topic at in Nora icon last week. And I think is 1 that's really important for the industry to face because it's... In some cases, the elephant in the room. And, you know, we've done a full cycle analysis of our produce. And the conclusions are probably what you would expect. But I think we're really good for us to formally put out on on paper, and you can... Check out this, infographic that we put together if you want, I can send it along. It's public.
But what we found was that all of the all of the technical components of our farm. So some people reacts because they say, okay, well, you've got a big metal container and you've got Leds and all that. Those must take a lot of carbon to make, and they do take carbon to make. But the actual impact of that is sort of similar to those tractor and the barn
and everything that traditional farm would have. And and actually, in both cases, it's a really small slice where both traditional farming and Indoor ag, where the impacts really come into play in the use side of the cycle analysis. And for traditional ag, what you see is big impacts on transport, So from farm to table and there's some studies that have just come out implying that this impact is actually worse than usually modeled. And then also on the water use on
traditional ag. So water use is indirectly in electricity use, something like 20 to 30 percent of California's electricity is spent pumping water around, which I don't think that everyone is sort of aware of the impact of that. Mh. And for the Ce side, what see is you see almost no water use,
and you see much less land use. There's also this other piece of pesticides and and herbicides and chemicals, which is you really hard to quantify for traditional ag, and we didn't actually even go there in our Lc c, but other folks have. We don't use any of that in indoor ag. When in indirect, we use much more energy. And so what it comes down to is where you getting that energy from.
And in the cycle analysis, the what you see is that if you get the energy from coal, for instance, it is much worse. For the environment from a pure carbon standpoint to grow your produce this way that in traditional egg, it's about 10 x worse from for on a carbon basis. But if you get your energy from wind, it's about 4 times better. And so the swing is massive.
And 1 of the things we've put in place to really help our farmers is the ability for any Us farmer and to easily sign up for renewable energy source for their farm. We a partnership with a company called Arcadia that provides electricity through community solar wind to, residential and small businesses. We also put a lot of energy into making the farm efficient, both from climate management and and air handling those elements, as well as the actual Leds we use.
And so, you know, as we're putting energy into being more energy efficient we're also trying to help And we're sign up for the right energy and trying to raise awareness that this is actually an issue. And 1 of the really interesting things for me it, at conference last week was everyone in the room was very aligned that controlled environment agriculture is unnecessary adaptation to climate change. It can be a mitigation, but it is more an adaptation in a lot of ways.
But to be successful, the the industry needs to shift to running solely on renewables. And so I think that's something we will see as a focus. Over the next few years. Well, another focus we need to talk about is the economics of it? So if you are a farmer, you hope to produce food, and you... Maybe you are a restaurant yourself, and you're producing to be able to put through your restaurant. But if you're trying to produce food and sell it.
How do the economic shake out? And and it the, you know, what can you what do can you can look at to be able to produce? What's the production that can come from how much lettuce us or how much whatever prominent of vegetables use it you're producing? Yeah. So we always target our farm to... If you're you're operating well, a 2 year payback is what you should expect. So that is sort of our benchmark. It's how we think about pricing and how we think about success for the model.
And, you know, the yields we've been able to get have grown a lot over the years, just as the technology improves and as the knowledge of product grow improves in our spaces. But, you know, to put it concrete, like, in 1 farm, you should be able to grow about a thousand heads of lettuce per week. Now you don't have to go lettuce, you
can grow lots of other things. And the profitability of that is gonna depend on your customer base and what exactly they want because not all customers will want the same thing. But in sort of the average case, we're targeting a into year payback on investment. What are the other things you can grow besides lettuce? So you can grow lots of things. And we have grown many, many. I think our total tally is somewhere north of 500.
But I'll start with sort of what customers, I would say normally grow and then into more in a wild than wacky things that we grow in our laps sometimes. So a lot of customers grow leafy greens. They're very easy to start with, and there's many more than just lettuce us. So, you know, Char, Bok choy, spinach, ar ar, Or ar, there's a hundred different kinds of lettuce, and various things there. There's also a lot of crops that grow well with lettuce. So often people will crop radish is with
lettuce. Because they canopy be of the lettuce it doesn't block the out so much. Those are also a faster harvest, so you can cultivate them quicker turnip, people grow there's a variety of root vegetables, and then herbs, are pretty common. So we're experimenting with some, you know, really cool pineapple sage and stuff in our farm right now, but people grow at Basal and all the varieties of that and cilantro, parsley, all the things you might expect. But not so much fruit?
Not so much fruit. So you can grow fruit, parsley we're growing tomatoes in our test farm right now. It's a little bit less common in the field. We grow vertically, So heavy fruits need to be supported a little bit more. Otherwise, they'll pull the plants down a little bit, but we do grow pumpkins, for instance in our test. Farm, and it works just fine. You just kinda gotta watch the pumpkin and make sure you hold it up and
Yeah. Yeah. We also go flowers. We have customers who go flowers, both for medicinal or ornamental use. I'm gonna sp on? Yeah. Beads of experiments the pops right now? No. What about... Sit back to to restaurants or grocery stores Do...
Are are there any of them that are using this as a as a marketing story too or that that maybe they're putting a farm right next to the restaurant and saying that we're growing locally or even give tours or have windows or something so that their customers can see this farm that's practically on the premises Yeah. It definitely it definitely happens. We we definitely see a use for marketing in both grocery and the restaurant. We are generally opposed to windows.
So Windows affects the night day cycle that we're able to keep and you'll actually see growth impacts in any place in the farmer you get light on the window. We definitely you have customers who do it. You know, sometimes in a more educational context, they'll put in a window to help hundred, you know, help pass by understand what's going on. But if you're growing for output, I would not recommend a window.
Well, it's really, really fascinating. I think that what what you're doing at just I could see where there's there's a lot of interest in this. And and, I guess, the the other thing I think about though is that you could create the, equivalent of of the inside of a container without necessarily bringing in containers, couldn't you? I mean, Couldn't you take like an abandoned shopping center or something and be able to build what would be the equivalent size and set up?
As a shipping container in in in an area and produce food in it, for example. Because there's just so much empty parking lots and empty buildings around the country anymore. So is it is it an alternative that you wouldn't necessarily need a shipping container to make a shipping container like farm. Of course. Yeah. And you can absolutely do that. And we actually sell our software and our controls to people who wanna set up custom farms and we'll help them with that.
But the the reason we do the shipping container is because it's much more scalable to build a product. So, you know, if you build 1, let's say, you have a you find an abandoned warehouse, you're gonna have to do a lot of engineering to get everything set up in there. And by the time you're done with all that work, it would have been cheaper to just pay for the container to show up, because we make the containers on an assembly line and there. They're much more efficient to
and how they're built. And we know it's gonna work because it's the same product that everyone else has, and we know we can support it because it's the same product everyone else has. And so, totally fine. And many people do that. We're not out there trying to compete with the plenty of the world who we're doing. Huge custom setups. But if you're trying to get started, getting the containers actually gonna be faster. To put it inside the abandoned warehouse. But...
So Jacob, if I told you, I'm I'm convinced. I wonder that'd become a farmer. Ballpark park, how much am I gonna have to spend totally to be able to get set up that if I want to be able to buy the equipment and and, you know, get a shipping container and get started farming. How much money would I have to have on hand to be able to jump in.
So the the Msrp b for the farmers is around a hundred and 50 k. And then there is some level of startup up cost that's gonna depend on where you are and how much it cost to ship there and all that stuff, but, you know, you should budget. It's gonna maybe 10 or 20 k for that. And that's pretty much it. Right? A little bit of supplies, a little bit of software to get off the ground and
you'd be off and running. Now it's worth noting that, many of our farmers don't necessarily have a hundred and 75 grand line around. We finance the farms and we'll help you find financing, many of our farms are financed through well known banks or Usda loans or things like that. So just like any other, far piece of farming equipment, you can, finance it, you know, to pay for all upfront in many cases.
But you certainly could Well, you know, anymore, that's a couple of electronic vehicles that are coming out some a higher end, and they don't give you a thousand pounds of lettuce us a week. Exactly. Yeah. It's So if people would like to know more about this and find out how they could how can they find information? And how do they either, you know, reach you and learn more about these... About these systems? Yeah. So the number 1 thing is... Just to check out freight forms dot com.
We've got lots of information there. We've got our business planning tool. You can reach out to our sales team, they can you up with a lot of information. We also have a Youtube channel that has a lot of different videos, and you can watch a bunch of, like, tours of the farm and things like that, so you
can get involved that way. We also do fairly regular, what we call digital discovery days, where you get to take over virtual tour inside the farm, something we started doing in the pandemic care, that was really successful because turns out not everyone is around Boston. And then you can come here and and check it out. We've got farms at our headquarters we have regional partners, in Chicago and Elsewhere go have farms that you can tour, if you're,
interested. Do So, Jake, before we go, I have a couple more quick questions for you And 1 might now be that quick And that is how would you get here? This isn't the kind of thing that, you know, you were a little kid and instead of going out in playing Baseball you said I'm just dreaming of someday having a freight farm. You know, it's... So how how does 1 go about finding themselves in in freight farms like, yours... What was your journey? How do you get here?
That's a that's a... Yeah. I'm not necessarily a quick answer. I mean, I think... So I... I've always known that I wanted to be an engineer growing up. I did play baseball of other things growing up too. But, you know, I always knew that I wanted to build stuff, and I played with legos and all the cliche things and I was a kid. I got a mechanical engineering degree.
And you know, essentially, in in that time, I was very, I was a sponge about learning what makes the world a better place when I was in college and around that time. And so, you know, I've always tried to have jobs that in some way made the world... Better place. And immediately after college, I actually started a company called Little On. This was back in with, 20 11.
And little Bonsai was a product studio that developed some sustainable products, really simple stuff, like, we did a toothbrush and a key chains, 1 stuff like that. And 1 of the things we did in that company was we were actually part of the mass challenge accelerator. And we happens to be in the mass challenge accelerator, the same cohort that John and Brad were in the mass challenge accelerators starting freight farms.
And we sat near them. And so I got to know those guys that summer And then life goes on, and I went and had a few other jobs and you know, always looking for those jobs that would make the world a better place but picking up a lot of skills and learning how to build things better,
over the intervening time. And then, you know, recently, I I moved back to Boston a few years ago, and it coincided with freight farms evolution and maturation to sort of what it is today, and it was a perfect time for me to come on board and making them back to all the stuff that I've learned. So it's kind of the the nutshell, sort
Well, that's a great nutshell. And I suppose there's some others like you that have a a journey and it's interesting too that there's a part of it that you've been thinking about. You know, how you'd go the right direction, What's the right steps, What's contributing to the environment and and I can see how you can find a lots of satisfaction in the areas you're working in. So let me ask you this. Yeah. We are hiring shameless plug. Where, I've got several positions on
my team. If you're an engineer and you... Want a job in Ce, come hit me up. Can they work from home or is this 1 of these things they gotta go to a a space. Gonna, like in Boston because if you're actually making stuff, I I think there might be a limit to how much you can do from your home office. It depends on the team. So, I mean, I run both hardware and the software teams. And if you're in the hardware team, you
pretty much gotta be here. If you're in the software team, you can work from home. Just level depends on what part of the software you're working on. But generally, it's okay. No, let me wrap up by asking you You look down the road the next 5 years, say, 5 years from now. What are you optimistic about? I mean, where could this be? How do you see this evolving. And if we're were gonna say let's gonna have this conversation again about 5 years from now.
What's the best picture that we could be talking about at that time? I think... That's an interesting question. And I appreciate the optimistic spin on it because I think that climate change is a real problem, and I think that in the next 5 to 10 years, we're really gonna see pressure put on Ce to step up in terms of its place in the food system.
And I think we're gonna see, you know, controlled environment ag, do that and step up and and produce its scale there's a lot of maturing of different technologies that's going on now that will help with that. But 1 of the big things that is gonna push it. That is not optimistic thing is that the climate is changing and and water it's becoming worse scarce, especially in California. If you look at the level and levels in like meat and the levels in the
reservoirs in California. I, those are the water sources that feed most the vegetables that we eat in the Us. And so as as those change, that's gonna have real impact on the food system. Well, unless they're going to be in shipping containers, for example, and in areas that have still are getting 35, 40 inches of rain a year versus the areas that have all that sunshine and are getting 12 or 20 inches of a rain a year and running a week at a time of over a hundred degrees too. So there's that.
So I'm... I'm glad you appreciate the fact that I was putting a positive spin on it, But now you you've puzzled me. I'm trying to get back to another 4 more positive bill. There's a lot to be concerned about, though. I think the positive Pain is there. You know, I I do think that the technology that's been deployed these days in Ce is good enough to produce food at scale in a predictable
way and can displace that technique. And so, like I mentioned before, or I alluded to, I think of climate change and solutions as living known a spectrum. And on 1 spectrum is the mitigation side of things. So just purely how can we reduce you know, carbon emissions, methane emissions. On the other side of the climate spectrum, My think of it is the adaptation side, which is,
solutions that, okay. Like, we accept that this is gonna happen to some degree, but we also know, optimistic the humans will adapt and live in the world as it changes. And so I think Ce solutions can play in both of those. If you're using the correct power profiles. They are mitigation on traditional what traditional eye is doing. And, you know, in 10 years from now as water usage evolves in the west. We may see them coming into their own as an adaptation technology as well.
Jake, as we ramp up, I wanna remind everybody again Ce. You keep saying the acronym and for people listening. They're not used to Ce. So is controlled environment agriculture, which is slightly different than greenhouse in that, greenhouse isn't fully artificial from a light and atmosphere standpoint, but controlled environment agriculture generally is. Well, we've learned a lot today. I wanna thank you. Jake Fe with freight farms. Thanks for being on farm to table talk.
You're welcome. Thanks for having me. You've been listening to farm to table talk your host, Roger Watson. If you like what you. With