Episode 154: Irving Fain, Founder & CEO of Bowery Farming
Today's guest is Irving Fain, Founder & CEO of Bowery Farming.
Bowery Farming is a modern farming company building smart indoor farms located close to its cities. Its farms are powered by its proprietary farm operating system, BoweryOS, creating a simplified, agile food system focused on flavor, freshness, and safety.
Irving has a diverse background across varying industries. He started his career in investment banking on Wall Street, where he focused on private equity and helping companies raise late-stage capital. Leaving the financial sector, Irving served as Director of Digital Marketing & Content at iHeartMedia. After four years with iHeartMedia, he knew his real passion was in entrepreneurship. Irving co-founded CrowdTwist, an enterprise software company providing comprehensive omni-channel loyalty & analytics solutions for industry-leading brands. Irving switched his focus towards climate solutions with a nagging feeling that he wanted to solve complex and significant problems with broader societal implications. In 2014, he founded Bowery Farming and currently serves as CEO.
Irving is a great guest, and I felt a lot of similarities in our respective journeys. Irving guides me through his career path, why he's always felt a passion for entrepreneurship, and how Bowery Farming came about. He explains Bowery Farming's mission, the practice of indoor farming, and what sets Bowery Farming apart from its competition. We also discuss the broader agriculture landscape, where policy fits into the conversation, and the future of food. This is a fantastic episode for anyone interested in the future of farming.
You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded April 9th, 2021.
In Today's episode we cover:
Overview of Bowery Farming, the company’s origin story, and its modern approach to indoor farming
Benefits of indoor farming, including individual health, food quality, resilience, and mitigation
Financial and impact challenges of building a business like Bowery
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Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the My Climate Journey or MCJ as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but they were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people, that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members.
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Today's guest is Irving Fain, CEO and founder of Bowery. Bowery is the modern farming company on an ambitious mission to transform the future of food and change the face of agriculture. They believe in better food, better access to that food and better care for the world around us. By leveraging automation, software and controlled environment technology, they're building an innovative new way of growing food locally that's over 100X more productive than the same square footage of farmland while using zero pesticides and less water.
Now, I was excited for this one because there's a lot of hype around indoor farming and I wanted to understand it better, why it exists, what the history of it is, the value proposition, how it compares to traditional farming and also understanding the trade-offs of pesticides and health, but also the increased energy usage and how to think about those things. Now, Irving was very gracious in this episode.
We covered a lot of ground about all those things, plus getting into the specifics of Bowery's approach, their traction to date, where they're heading next and what they will have achieved if they're successful beyond Irving's wildest dreams. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I did. Irving, welcome to the show.
Irving Fain: Thanks so much for having me.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming. Yeah, we were, we were just playing the name game before we got going here. And although you and I have never met, that's actually quite surprising because we know so many people in common.
Irving Fain: Yeah, we, we could have used up our entire time for the episode just making connections.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, and talking about fun vacation spots. But of course I, I've not really left my house other than to go running and to take my kid to sports in over a year because of the stupid pandemic, so...
Irving Fain: Yeah, the good news is though it feels like optimism is in the air and it does feel like we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel quickly. I think you can feel that energy out there. So I think vacations and seeing people as is imminent at this point.
Jason Jacobs: Well, I filled you in a little bit before we hit record, but typically we just kind of take things from the top. So what is Bowery Farming?
Irving Fain: Absolutely. So, so Bowery is the modern farming company. And so one says, "Well, what is modern farming?" Because farming's been around for, you know, thousands of thousands of years. So what, what we're doing at Bowery is building smart, indoor farms that we locate close to the cities that we serve. And these farms are warehouse scale farms where we stack our crops from the floor all the way up to the ceiling.
We grow under lights to mimic the spectrum of the sun in a totally controlled and contained environment. And so that means that we can grow 365 days of the year, completely independent of weather and seasonality. We grow completely pesticide free and agrochemical free so no herbicides, no fungicides, no insecticides. And we are actually over a hundred times plus more productive per square foot of farmland compared to traditional agriculture and we use a very small fraction of water when we grow.
And what enables us to do this is actually a, a combination of robotics and automation across our entire operation, which we designed to develop on our own and what we call the Bowery operating system, which is a software sensor and control artificial intelligence and computer vision system. It's, it's the brains of our farm and our operations and it helps ensure that our crops are getting exactly what they need when they need it.
It helps ensure consistency and organization across the operation. And ultimately what we're doing is we control the entire process from seed all the way to store and you get a crop from Bowery a day or two after harvest versus weeks or months of time in the existing supply chain.
Jason Jacobs: Well, I have a lot of questions about that. But before we get too far down the path, it, it looked like you got out of school and maybe did the investment banking and then the investment banking switched to VC and then you built a company already over a number of years and that had nothing to do with indoor farming. So maybe talk a bit about the origin story for the company, but even kind of going further back on that, like how you came to care about this problem and, and maybe also just what problem it is that drives you to, to build this business.
Irving Fain: A lot there and so I'll, I'll start by winding the clock back a little bit.
Jason Jacobs: Trying to do one question at a time, but then I, o, then it's like, well, let me just add a second and then a third and then it's like, man, it's just too much, but that's-
Irving Fain: [crosstalk 00:06:29].
Jason Jacobs: If I have a post critique, that's my host critique, is that, it's that I try to jam too much into each question.
Irving Fain: I'm a variety fan. I like a buffet so I'll, I'll take it. We're on the same page. Well, you know, I've been an entrepreneur and, and excited about entrepreneurship before I knew how to spell the word or what it meant. I mean, I like, you know, at eight years old I was dragging my younger brother behind me, you know, doing a snow shoveling business and a leaf raking business. And if there was a hustle to get into, I was into it.
I mean, I, one of my first memories as a kid was buying these little plastic animals at a corner store around us called Harrison's for a dime, merchandising them in this little Tupperware and then bringing them to school and sell 'em to kids on the playground for a quarter. So th-this was the destiny in where I was headed before I knew that. And you know, I think people who knew me when I was young would say, of course, this is where he is today.
Maybe not a farmer necessarily, but certainly doing what I'm doing generally building and creating. And so, yeah, I graduated school, liberal arts education, and, and you pointed out I went to banking because I was a naive 21-year-old kid. And I said, "How do you learn business?" And I said, "Oh, you know, I'll go to Wall Street and work in an investment bank."
And it was a very valuable experience actually but what I did was I made sure I was working with the kind of companies I ultimately wanted to build and be a part of. And so I helped companies raise late stage capital. So, you know, series D, series E rounds of capital. And so working with management teams that I wanted to build and be a part of and learning institutional knowledge from a bank.
Jason Jacobs: But those rounds were probably smaller than the C guns are today.
Irving Fain: I have no question. I was joking with somebody yesterday that in my first company, when we raised our series A and this was probably in, it was 2011, I think, we raised our series A, we raised $6 million. And people were like, "Oh my God, you raised $6 million?" And not because that was small, because that was a lot of money at the time. And it is amazing to me right now that a $6 million series A probably wouldn't even register it. So the world has changed fast and quite a bit for the better I think overall.
But so I, I knew banking was not going to be my destiny either, I wa, I was not going to stay there. And so I, I did as you said, I wanted to kind of move into the, the area that I wanted to spend time, which was building and creating companies. You know, technology at the time in New York particularly was, was certainly nothing like it is today. So I was doing a little bit of venture investing and, and sort of quickly realized that I wanted to be on the company building side.
And like I said, there wasn't a ton happening in New York and so I actually went to Clear Channel. And I was, Clear Channel's the largest radio group in the world and I was part of a team that was responsible for figuring out what digital was going to mean for this old radio company. And while I was there, the iPhone comes out and the idea of the app store emerges and myself and a couple of other people ended up building and running iHeartRadio which was a ton of fun, a super interesting project, but my heart was being an entrepreneur.
And so I was spending four or five nights around the kitchen table just kicking the tires of different ideas. And I ultimately left to start my first company, which is in enterprise software, and, you know, very different than what we do today. And it was interesting because it was actually focused on a passion point for me initially, which was sort of the entertainment world.
And as we built the business, it became clear that the product itself was valuable, but the industry was wrong. And so we, we evolved and we really ultimately built a loyalty and analytics platform for big Fortune 500 brands, you know, folks like Pepsi and L'Oreal, and Nestlé and Procter & Gamble and American Express and Barclays bank and folks in the retail space. It was a really interesting business. You know, we raised over 20 million in venture capital, built the company up over a number of years.
And, you know, that's six years in, I sort of looked out and said, you know, I, I don't want to spend the next 10 years of my life doing enterprise software in, in the loyalty space and even more so, I have always been a believer that technology can solve hard and important problems. And I wanted to spend my time focused on problems that I cared about personally, and also that I thought were impacting a broader set of society. And so I started, I left and I started to, to sort of look around me and it didn't take long to sort of look at agriculture.
And the first thing you see is it's the largest consumer of resources globally by a very wide margin. So 70% of the world's water every year goes to agriculture. We use about a billion pounds of pesticides every single year just in the US, we use 6 billion pounds of pesticides annually across the world. And I mean, it's astounding when you think about that number, because it's, it's in the water that we, you know, streams, lakes, rivers, oceans, and you read about these allergy booms in the Gulf and in Florida, which is runoff from agriculture which is destroying the ecosystems and the ocean around them.
It's in the soil and it's destroying the nutrients in the soil that we rely on to grow, and it's on the food that we're eating. And so just in the last 30 years, we've actually... Sorry, in the last 40 years, we've lost 30% of all arable farmland across the world. So this massive consumer of resources is already stretching and straining today. And with the climate crisis that we're experiencing, it's only going to get more difficult.
And then you look at the global macro and we're going to have 9 to 10 billion people on the planet in the next 30 years. According to the UN, we need something between 50 and 70% more food to feed that population. And to be clear, and we were talking about this beforehand, we're not the only solution to that problem, you have to, we need to be eating less meat, we need to waste less food, we need to improve yields in developing countries.
There's a lot of ways we need to get there. But more gross supply is important. And what really drove me to Bowery was all that stuff was standing. 70, 80% of the world's population in the next 30 years is going to be living in and around cities. There's a real shift. And I got obsessed increasingly with this question of how do you get fresh food to urban environments, and how do you do it in a way that's both more efficient and more sustainable?
And a little bit more specifically, like why that's important is what we're seeing around the world, this country as well, but around the world is as, especially in the developing world as populations are getting, gaining more disposable income and wealth people's diets are moving from cereal grains and sort of the cheaper, more accessible ways of eating to wanting things like more fresh produce and meat and fish and things like that. And so there's going to be an increasing amount of demand for these types of food, and certainly centered around a lot of where that wealth is centered, which is in these urban environments.
Jason Jacobs: So as you started piecing that together, how did you come upon indoor farming as the right vessel to try to address that problem? Did you look at other things before you got to indoor farming?
Irving Fain: So it's the right question. So I, one of the things that, that struck me and I think it's a very positive thing for the world is that and started to change in just the last five or six years since I've been working on, Bowery was a massive asymmetry that existed between the scale and the scope of the industry and problem set in agriculture, and yet the relatively few people who were working on those problems, comparatively to many other places, many other areas of focus in Silicon Valley and in New York and in tech hubs around the world.
You know, there were certainly people working on agriculture, but when we started, I mean, when people asked about agriculture companies, the, the only one people would really be able to mention was Climate Corp. And so it just, it wasn't really a thing. And so I thought that was really interesting in and of itself and I thought it represented a huge opportunity. And so I took a very wide lens on agriculture to start.
So I looked at drones on the farm and satellite imagery, and I looked at precision agriculture and I was looking at SaaS on the farm and a lot of the, the opportunities there because I, I wanted to focus first broadly on agriculture. And there was a number of those areas, Jason, that just, I felt were important areas to focus, but I wasn't necessarily the perfect person to focus on them, which I think as an entrepreneur is something that, that you always have to be honest with yourself about when choosing what path you're going to take.
And the more time I looked at this question of fresh food in urban environments, the more, not only excited that I get about it, but the more I felt like this was something that really suited me specifically and made a lot of sense for me and that I was really able to and, and capable of working on solving and focusing on. And once I nailed that down, then for me it was a question of, was there a way to do this that was actually scalable?
Because there was a lot happening in urban agriculture at the time, you know, community gardens, rooftop gardens, rooftop greenhouses, but good community initiatives, important steps forward, but not necessarily approaches that were going to scale, you know, across the country, across the world in the way that we need something to, to help solve the problems that we're talking about.
And so I took a very first principle view and, and said, "Okay, I've got no horse in the race here. I'm going to look at any and all approaches around indoor farming, including the fact that there isn't really a good approach and I'm willing to come out whatever door the exploration leads," and spent the next year and a half building systems and testing and learning. And, and that was ultimately what led to, you know, what we've built about about.
Jason Jacobs: So once you got to a place that, that you said that you wanted to do something in ag, and you, you mentioned some of those stats about the water usage and the pesticides and things like that, when you looked at fresh food to urban environments, what did you see? Was it a problem today or when you were contemplating starting a company, what did the landscape look like at that time?
Irving Fain: So there, there's sort of two questions in there and I'll, I'll start with the was it a problem and then I'll, I'll go to the what did the landscape look like? I think what we're really doing at Bowery, which, which is sometimes misunderstood because I have people saying to me like, "Wow, you're completely re-imagining farming." And there's no question we are re-imagining farming. And if you come to one of our farms, Jason, you'll see it does not look like what you imagine and historically have seen a farm look like.
But what we're really doing is we're reinventing the fresh food supply chain in totality, and we're reinventing it in a way that is much more sustainable, it's much safer, it provides much more surety of supply and it's much simpler and it allows us to control that supply chain all the way from seed to store. And the reason that we can reinvent that supply chain is because we're unhinging what has essentially anchored and driven the, the incumbent supply chain for decades and decades, which is only certain crops can grow at certain places at certain times of the year.
And so we build these complex supply chains around that reality. And, you know, I think what was interesting at the beginning of COVID, 'cause we started talking about that in the beginning of this pod is I don't think people always have appreciated how complex our supply chain is, you know, certainly in food, but in many other areas as well, but we're talking about food today, and how reliant we are on so many other parts of the country and so many other parts of the world for us to be able to walk into a grocery store and essentially find what we want always anytime in the year.
And there's a real cost to that. And essentially in the post World War era in then early 1950s, we came out of that time and said, "How do we get large amounts of cheap food?" And the industrial agricultural complex that helped us get to where we are today is really impressive. And some people say, "Oh, the supply chain is broken." It isn't broken, it's actually doing quite a good job at what it was designed to do.
The problem is the notion of cheap food is cheap in some areas, but extraordinarily costly in other areas, right? The transportation, the storage, the loss. I mean, up to a third of fresh produce goes to waste just sitting on the field often times, right? And you know, the food waste problem is a hundreds and hundreds of billions dollar a year problem in its own right, and of course, it's much beyond fresh produce, but it is a supply chain in a system that has great costs.
And for a while, that cost was in arrears. But I think we are all seeing in the last five, 10 years that that cost is coming due. And so I saw that problem and I think I saw that challenge. And it isn't to say, that's the only problem in agriculture, it isn't to say that's the only opportunity where we can be better in agriculture, and it certainly isn't to say that's the only challenge we need to fix related to climate in agriculture, it isn't.
There's an enormous number of areas where we can be better and we need to be better, but it is absolutely an important part of the equation. And so I think to your second question, there were an increasing number of people starting to think about this problem. When I was doing the same and there were people working on it, and I think what, what had sort of opened the flood gates in that regard was this interesting trend around the LED lights, which is people who have been growing food indoors under lights since the early '80s.
I mean, NASA was doing this so we knew how to grow food when we lived on the moon or Mars. The problem was the lights cost much too much and the efficiency of the lights was really poor. So you couldn't do this in any kind of an economically viable way. It was basically restructured development. About 10 years ago, everything changes, the costs of LEDs plummets by about 85% and the efficiency of the lights more than doubled.
And so all of a sudden, what would have been a research and development endeavor actually could be done in a commercially viable way. And fortunately, entrepreneurs and people who had the same spark to say, "I want to work on something that's important and meaningful on a problem that matters," saw that trend and started to say, "Hey, well, I can do something with this." Now, what I realized at Bowery was that lights and the trend around LEDs made indoor farming viable, they didn't necessarily make it scalable though.
And scalable to us means large volumes of crops, large varieties of crops at a consistent high quality and ultimately at a price point that opens up a large opportunity. We're really focused on how do you democratize access to high quality, fresh food. And to do that, we're leveraging innovation in robotics and automation, innovation in sensors and controls, artificial intelligence, computer vision, storing and processing large amounts of data.
And we put those trends together with the trend in LED lighting and together that's really how we're re-imagining what's farming going to look like for this next century and beyond. And I think that's also why I feel fortunate doing what we're doing because we're at this really interesting and exciting intersection of all of these sort of deflationary technology trends leading towards what we're building a Bowery at the same time as there's a really important societal trend moving exactly into that same direction.
Jason Jacobs: And can you talk a bit about the, uh, offering that you have, who the customers are that you're serving and then how the model works?
Irving Fain: Yeah, absolutely. So we really do control the process from seed to store. So, and then, and so we are a vertically integrated business. We are designing the technology that we have in our farms and the software in the Bowery operating system. We build the farms themselves, we operate and run our farms and grow the food and then we actually sell our product on the shelf under the Bowery brands, so it is a truly kind of vertically integrated business front to back.
And so we, it's actually one of the things that makes this the most fun for me is you've got this incredible diversity of skills and experiences and knowledge basis all coming together in one place to solve this important problem, which is just, it just yields so many interesting conversations and solutions and insights. So from that perspective, we really do focus on that entire value chain. We sell our products to right now primarily the grocery market.
So we work with retailers like Walmart, we work with retailers like Ahold Delhaize and Safeway Albertsons, Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and we are really focused on operating across the entire groceries of ecosystem. So all the way from the super premium grocers like your specialty grocer or your Whole Foods to the value area, which is a Walmart and other folks, and then everyone in between. And that really lives to, of our values, which is how do you democratize access to high quality, fresh food? How do you make sure everyone can access and have that good quality food? And we sell on the shelf today at or below the cost of field grown organic.
Jason Jacobs: And can you talk a bit about the types of end consumers who tend to buy the Bowery products and also what the value proposition is to them relative to other options in the categories where they're making those choices?
Irving Fain: Absolutely. You know, I think the value proposition in some respects is pretty clear, which is, you know, local is one of the biggest drivers of purchase today. And so we're able to produce a year round local product. It is a pesticide free product, which makes a big difference to people. I think one of the things that people are really surprised by often is that just because you're organic does not actually mean it's pesticide free.
And so to have a year round local pesticide-free product that's grown in a sustainable manner and has the freshness, the shelf life, and the incredible vibrant taste that we can offer is what the consumers are looking for. And one of the things that's exciting for me about what we grow is, is really the taste and flavors, Jason are, are what produce used to taste like and is meant to taste like and it's one of the most fun things for me occasionally I'll go into the store and do a demo you know, certainly in the early days.
And a lot of people say, "Oh, how good can greens be?" And you'll give somebody a taste, no dressing, nothing and they'll say, "Oh, no dressing." And you say, "No, just taste it." And immediately their eyes will light up and they'll go and they'll grab the product right off the shelf because it is bringing back what the taste of produce was meant to be. And just a little diversion.
I think what we've done as part of that industrialization of agriculture that we were talking about before is we've narrowed the biodiversity and the types of crops that we actually grow. And we've done that because we're really in agriculture optimizing for a couple of variables. The products we grow have to resist pests on the field and they have to be able to resist drought because of the inconsistencies in the climate before you can imagine what that's going to look like moving forward.
And then back to that supply chain, they need to resist traffic and they need to show up at a grocery store and look good so you want to buy them. And that is the driving force behind the seeds that we select and the crops that we grow. And it's not taste, it's not flavor, it's not quality, it's not diversity because those aren't factors that we have to worry about at Bowery.
We actually work with global seed companies and we can look into their seed banks decades back and find these incredible flavors, these incredible varieties, these incredible crops that you just aren't going to see grown outside. And bringing that to life to consumers is just a really fun part of this business, it is really helping to re-imagine for people as well like what eating fresh produce and eating fresh food can and should be like.
And so that piece is what the proposition is, the who, you know, I think sometimes people mistakingly believe that it's just wealthy people who want to eat organic or want to eat high quality food, but we have increasingly found the more we've grown, and we do research and, and talk to a lot of folks now on this as well 'cause we want to understand our customers, people across the income spectrum, people across the geographies, people in rural areas and people in urban areas, people care about their health and they care about what they're eating.
And people have a much greater awareness than sometimes I think it's given credit for about what they're putting into their bodies, and they have a much greater awareness for the importance of that decision. And then increasingly, and this is one of the benefits of the world we live in today with information being so freely available, I think people have a much greater understanding of the problems with the things that historically they have been eating. And that's why you're seeing these questions asked like what's in my food, how's my food being grown, where is it coming from? And these are questions, particularly in traditional agriculture that the system just isn't really well suited to answer.
Jason Jacobs: So coming into this discussion, I wasn't sure if I was going to hear more of a health story, which I'm definitely hearing or a resilience story, which I think there's some elements of, and we can talk about, or a, a climate story a miti... or resilience is a climate story, but, but a mitigation story from an emissions standpoint, how do you think about those buckets and where Bowery is, is most focused?
Irving Fain: You know, before we started this pod, you and I talked about the fact that sometimes people like to boil things down to zero sum games and my answer not cheating is I think it, what we are doing is all of those things. Now openly, what really drove me initially to build Bowery was the climate piece of the puzzle, was just looking at the impact that this agricultural system is having on our planet and on the climate every single day and the fact that we need to find a better way to move forward.
And it's not just about solving and reversing the trend we are in now, but it's arguably as much about what can we do moving forward that is in fact, a better way so that we can continue to grow food and we can continue to eat fresh food and we can continue to eat meat, all the things that we like to do, what, what is the go-forward plan, essentially, not just the reversal plan?
And so climate was a huge driver, but the benefit of what we're doing is by virtue of building Bowery, we're equally solving this question of resiliency and reliability. Because reliability in agriculture and particularly in fresh produce has been really difficult and it's only getting more so. I mean, just this past winter, you know, we saw a huge issue in the South related to weather and lost enormous amounts of the arugula crop.
You saw what happened in Texas recently, you know, there was something $600 million in crops lost in that short amount of period of time. I mean, this is happening more and more frequently, and that's not even to say for the food safety incidences. I mean, we've, we've had more food safety incidences in 2018 than we'd had at any year in the prior decade. And you know, it's pretty crazy. One in six Americans a year, about 100 are sick from food-borne illnesses and 130,000 of them end up in the hospital and about 3000 people die every year just from these kinds of incidences.
And a lot of that is generated from challenges in irrigation system. You know, the way we grow food, the way we process food and centralize. And so that part of the equation is important. And eating better and eating healthier, also to your point about health, is directly related to having access to a better quality product first of all. And then second of all, it's about making sure the better quality product actually tastes good, right?
Like eating a good product, eating healthy shouldn't feel like a chore or a sacrifice. If you can make eating healthy something as enjoyable as picking up, you know, a bag of Skittles, then you're going to find more people who are willing to make that choice, again, depending their ability to have access to it. So I'm not trying to dodge the question, but there is a bit of all those components into what we do, but the sort of genesis really began on the climate side.
Jason Jacobs: So I get that it's gotta be delicious, that, that makes sense. I get the health piece, I get the resilience piece. On the mitigation piece from an emission standpoint, can you talk a bit about how that fits in, how you think about it and also to the extent that you do just what you do to, to measure and improve in those areas over time?
Irving Fain: Absolutely. You know, so we... there's a couple of areas, well, there's a bunch of areas where we can make a big difference. And so firstly, you have to compare what we're doing at Bowery, not just to a farm, but you actually have to compare it to the whole supply chain. So it's not just the farm, but it's the harvesting and the processing, it's the transportation to the processing area and then the packaging and all the work there and the storage and then all the transportation and the trucking that's required.
So, you know, 12% of emissions are coming from trucking alone, right? And so you're completely eliminating much of that food movement because we're so close to the point where basically it's a last mile type of delivery to the distribution centers of our customers. You have to think about the impact across that whole supply chain.
Jason Jacobs: But you also counterbalance that with the increase in energy usage required to become-
Irving Fain: Yeah, I know. It's a great, it's a great question. So in fact, what I was just about to share is one of the advantages is everything we do at Bowery essentially happens in one place, right? The growing, our processing, our packaging, and then there's a, a short bit of delivery, but not quite, not very long. So everything happens in this one place, all centralized. And so we actually power our farms with 100% renewable energy.
And because we're centralized in one place, we can bring renewable energy to that one place. Whereas if you looked at the entire supply chain, the trucks, the equipment, the different facilities, all the different places and the stops along the way that your food has to take to eventually reach us, I'm very hopeful as a citizen of the world that eventually renewable energy will be able to power every step of the way there. But that's going to take quite some time, right?
That requires trucking vehicles, that requires, you know, renewables at different processing areas, in the field, different ways of doing things. I mean, there's a lot that has to change there. And so we can do that today and we do do that. The other advantage we have from a power perspective is that trend I talked about in lighting that, that sort of got us to today is only going to continue. And so the efficiency of, of the lights we use is, is going to double again over the course of the coming years.
And so we'll need half the power to produce the same amount of energy that we do today. And so we'll become less and less of a power user, less and less of an HVAC user and so our footprint continues to go down and again, it's all from renewable energy as it is today. So we really focus a lot on that piece alone. The other piece that you talked about though, you know, what other areas, the water side for us is a, is a big area of focus.
And so every farm that we build and, and the crops that we grow inside of it save the equivalent of about 15 to 20 million gallons a year compared to the same product that would be grown outside. And that in and of itself, when you look at some of the challenges and a lot of the agricultural land that you see out West and in the Southwest, that's a very important piece of the puzzle. Now, the other side of the water piece which we were talking about earlier is the effluent waste stream again.
We have none of that effluent waste stream which is running off into lakes and streams and rivers with pesticides or fertilizers, and this is what leads to food safety incidences, this is what leads to these allergy booms, this is what, what pollutes a lot of the waterways and the soil itself. We're completely eliminating that aspect that's happening in agriculture as well. And in some ways it's the same idea that precision agriculture can deliver outside, but we're delivering it inside.
Jason Jacobs: So one, one question I've got is just, I know what it's like to be an early stage entrepreneur and it's hard and you know, it's hard to make the economics work, it's hard to make sure the business is funded, it's hard to keep your customers happy, it's hard to hire. It's hard to, you know, keep the team engaged. It's just, it's a, i-it's hard to make partnerships work, it's all hard, right? And when you factor in this whole other element of climate and the systems nature of this problem and all the trade-offs and complexities, like as an outsider, I have no horse in the race.
I mean, I guess you could argue with a growing investment portfolio that those are horses in the race, but from a podcast standpoint, like we try to be truly objective and just look at the big picture and the best ways to address it and like check all of our allegiances to the, and bets, to, to the side and understanding these trade-offs and the nuances and like, well, this one over here uses less energy, but it has more side effects or, you know, this one over here, like it, you know, uses more energy but it's like healthier or... right?
It's, you're trying to sort through all that, I feel like in itself as a full-time job where you're already building a company, which is a full-time job. So has anyone done the work to assess, you know, kind of holistically indoor farming versus outdoor farming versus hydroponics and how to look at those trade-offs and how to make decisions in that regard? Like where do you turn to for that information? Because you can't have the resources to do it internally.
Irving Fain: So it's a, it's a really good question. And we, our view internally is that you can't change things you don't measure, right? You can't improve things you don't measure and you're not paying attention to and, and looking at. And we recognize that we'll always have opportunities and work to do to be better and more efficient in certain areas of our business.
And so we made the decision to say, you know, we're going to do a pretty extensive audit of ourselves, and we're going to understand not only just an audit of ourselves, but exactly as you said, like let's audit ourselves against the field and let's audit ourselves against greenhouses and, and really understand all of the ways to do this out there. Let's see where we're benchmarking ahead, let's see where we're benchmarking behind and let's set goals for ourselves internally at this point around where we want to be and how we're going to actually get there. And we-we've done that-
Jason Jacobs: Is it GHGs or, or what categories were you screening against?
Irving Fain: We honestly looked at, we looked at energy, we looked at water, you know, we know where we looked at pesticides and chemicals, but that was reasonably obvious in that one. You know, some of them were very obvious, others of them were not, right? Because it, so, you know, agriculture is so vast it's sometimes hard to find the specific data. And like we said before, because we're not just farm to farm, it's really farm to whole supply chain, it's a particularly tricky endeavor.
You know, we looked at waste, we looked at all of these components that, that you talk about, the food waste, the energy, the water, the chemical usage, and we benchmarked ourselves. And from that, we've created a set of, you know, internal areas and goals. Even in areas where we're vastly better already, we know we can keep getting even better than where we are today. I mean, that's the great thing about building a company, it's the iterative opportunity to keep improving.
And we hold ourselves to that even again in the places where we're really happy where we are today. And I think that's helped for us to build the roadmap, not only of knowing where you are, but also understanding where you want to go and we're going to continue to do that work, and I think probably, you know, at some point we'll talk more publicly about, you know, sort of what's ahead and what our key goals are. But, but that, that study, that understanding and that looking inwards as sort of, you, you suggested is very important if you want to really truly improve and make the difference that you're here to make.
Jason Jacobs: And what would you say is the most challenging aspect of building this type of business from a financial standpoint and then same question from an impact standpoint?
Irving Fain: It's complicated, you know, it, this is a, this is an ambitious endeavor, there's no question about it. You know, we are, we're designing technology in many different spaces, you know, hardware, and, you know, we have electrical engineers designing, you know, electrical hardware and sensors, and we're building an extensive software system and computer vision system. We've got all kinds of robotics, automation we're building, we are growing food, which in and of itself is, you know, an interesting challenge, you know, it's a living thing.
But then we're also running an operation inside of that farm and then every single day we're harvesting product and packaging it and delivering it to customers. And that's a lot to get right. You know, and you are an entrepreneur, focus matters, right? And, and you want to narrow your focus as much as possible, but there's a lot to focus on. And so just making sure that you are both appropriately focused from a width perspective and the things you've got to get right to do this, but not overly wide because there's so many rabbit holes you could fall down, that focus then has a direct correlation to the capital requirements that you need.
And so I think it's about making sure that earl, said, answering the question differently, early on it was about making sure that I understood what mattered most at each step of the process to validate, improve what we needed to at that stage and continue to capitalize the business and move forward because there were so many things that you could do, but you didn't necessarily need to do. And so sharpening that focus, which therefore meant, you know, effectively and thoughtfully raising money at each stage, I think was the best way to build it but was hard because there's so much you could do there.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh. And putting aside Bowery for a moment or even putting aside indoor farming, when you dream about the future of farming, what does that vision look like and where does indoor fit in?
Irving Fain: Yeah. You know, I, I think there's so many oppor, it's exciting, there's so many opportunities. You know, I think the first place I would go is an increasing adoption of precision agriculture and which I think you're starting to see happen more and more, but the ability to much more carefully give crops in the open field the inputs that they need, water, fertilizers. You know, ideally we can move away from pesticides 'cause there's, there's not a lot of good in that.
I understand why we do it, but it's challenging. And so precision agriculture, I think in and of itself represents a real exciting opportunity. I think you're starting to hear a lot more about regenerative agriculture and, and sort of better farming practices that are emerging. And that in and of itself is important because figuring out how to grow good food economically is something that we need to continue to get better at over time as well.
When I look at the developing world as well, I don't think this is talked about as much, but you know, you see what's happening in places like Brazil. You know, you've got people who need money and it's understandable. When you, when it's about feeding yourself and your family or the climate people are saying, "You know what? I'm going to choose feeding myself and my family." And I under, I can't imagine having to make that choice, but you can understand why people do.
And so you're getting these huge forests getting cleared in Brazil, burned down, you know, destroying rainforest that we need as, as carbon sinks in this world to continue to farm cattle in an inefficient and ineffective way. You see in Southeast Asia people clearing vast swaths of rainforest there to just build more and more palm oil plantations as well. So I think there's multiple ways you go about this.
Like how do you educate farmers in the developing world to understand how they can grow in their communities more effectively. But it's not just the education piece, you also have to figure out how do you get capital to those people, micro loans and other ways so that they can have access to the equipment, the tools, the inputs that they need to productively and effectively actually grow crops so that they don't resort to slashing and burning and cattle and palm plantations in places like that, in methods like that.
I also think particularly when you're thinking about things like palm oil and other, or-or other products that are quite destructive, you're starting to see more sustainable, you know, synthetic ways to produce those same products that don't have nearly the detrimental environmental costs that today were causing just from palm oil generation alone. So I think science in that capacity represents a huge and interesting opportunity, which directly ties into agriculture and so, you know, I'm excited about that.
I think that there's also an opportunity for the USDA and broadly the federal government to encourage and help to support the adoption of a number of these technologies for farmers because there's a lot of farms out there that have really limited free cashflow, right? They may want to implement and introduce things like precision agriculture, they may want to implement and introduce regenerative practices on the farm.
There's a great example, there's, coming from a farm called White Oak Pastures and it's, it's leading this regenerative ag movement and it's proving that you can adopt regenerative practices for a wide variety of crops and pasture raised meat and poultry without fertilizers, pesticides, minimal tillage and you can earn a healthy living doing it, but you've got to help people get that.
And that's a place where I do think, you know, the government and the USDA can help not just with the educational piece, but the capital piece and then through incentive structures and subsidy structures to help encourage the agricultural system overall to more quickly migrate to a place that's not only more climate friendly and not only carbon neutral, but ideally actually becoming more of a carbon sink.
Jason Jacobs: Given how challenging the farming industry has been, and it seems like it's getting more challenging although you would know much better than, than me, but with a, you know, with a changing climate and increases in extremes and heat and drought and, and things like that. So the f, the farmers are already struggling. What do they think about indoor farming? Do they see it as a threat? Do they look at it in the same way that the fossil fuel industry, for example, looks at renewables?
Irving Fain: Well, it's hard because when you say the farmers you're sort of grouping this massive set of people who aren't all of the same, right? So are you talking about, you know, gigantic, you know, sort of large scale industrial farming that happens in some parts of the country, or are you talking about, you know, more localized farms, you know, that are surrounding, you know, cities and communities, you know, all across the country and across the world?
You know, I think when you look at the smaller local farmers, we're excited to be partners with those folks because when you ultimately look at the demand for locally grown, sustainably grown food and the actual supply of it, there's a big delta, right? There's much more demand than there's possibly supply. And then, and then you add in seasonality, you know, you go to the Union Square, uh, Greenmarket in February, it does not look like what it looks like in August.
And so our ability of Bowery to come in and continue to shine a light and support the local food ecosystem and local farming is something that farmers are excited about, I hope and helps to continue to draw focus and attention towards the importance of the local and the regional food ecosystem. You know, I think when you look at larger farms and some of the, the very large industrial farms, I think people are... it's always interesting with technology.
You know, I think I've seen in the time that, that I've been building Bowery a real skepticism early on, this kind of if question. Yeah, that kind of sounds, it sounds like crazy, if that ever happens, if that ever becomes a thing. And it was easy to write off because, you know, I'll admit when I told my wife the first time that I was going to build, you know, gigantic indoor farms inside warehouses and grow crops, she kind of looked at me, you know, skeptical to say the least, right?
It's a, it's a pretty zany idea. And it has evolved in the last years to now really people are saying, "Yeah, this is going to happen. It's just a matter of when, but like I can see this coming." And so I think it's forcing bigger farming operations to take a hard look at what they're doing and how they're doing it. And that's a positive, you know? I think in the same way to your point, like the way the fossil fuel industry is forcing themselves to take a look and say, "Hey, you know, renewable energy is coming." So we're either going to be a part of that change or we're not gonna be around. And we want more people focusing on making change.
Jason Jacobs: Do you need the humans, the local farmers at a Bowery farm?
Irving Fain: Yeah, the farmers are such an important part. We, we have modern farmers in all of our farms and that's actually one of the great parts about the Bowery operating system, is you don't have to ever have grown a crop in your life Jason to be a farmer at Bowery. You know, the operating system helps our farmers know what to do and when to do it and where to do it and how to do it and scheduling and organization.
All of these tasks that in traditional, you know, certainly greenhouses and other places req-require an understanding and experience in the field and any people have been working in those fields for, for a long time. You know, folks at Bowery, you know, you could work at a distribution center, a fulfillment center, you could work at a, you know, a coffee shop or a grocery store, and you can come with very minimal training and become a farmer at Bowery. And so our farmers work side-by-side next to our automation. And, you know, they're an important part of the whole process to ensure a great product that ends up getting to our end consumers.
Jason Jacobs: And it's great that you don't need to. It reminds me of the Uber model actually, where you don't need to have driven cab for, for many years to become an Uber driver, but a lot of cab drivers have made the decision to switch over. Do you see similar things happening or what percentage of the, of the Bowery farmers who were farmers before becoming team Bowery?
Irving Fain: Yeah. You know, I think the truth of it is very few probably is the answer, you know? And I think that's interesting because it means that we're able to offer, you know, new green jobs and, you know, similar to the kind of manufacturer style jobs in communities where our farms are where those jobs are leaving. You know, our newest farm that we're building now is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
And what an interesting, you know, area in the sense that, you know, that's where a storied area of this country, a steel industry was and, and where there was such a vibrant manufacturing culture for so long, which is in many ways just gone. And we're excited to be able to go back there and, and turn non arable land into essentially arable farm land and bring farmers from that community on board and involved in Bowery.
Jason Jacobs: So something just clicked for me and I, I just want to verify that I'm thinking about it right. So if you wanted to embrace local farming before, you had to care a lot about the conditions of the land and the weather patterns and things like that. With indoor farming, you can go and create these farming jobs, but indoor farming, and you can be agnostic to those conditions and go to places where farming couldn't have been otherwise?
Irving Fain: That is 100% correct. What is so powerful about what we're building at Bowery is the two hindrances to scalability and agriculture, Jason have been climactic variance, you know, those places aren't the same and knowledge specialization. You know, people will say that farmer's knowledge is good for about a 10 square mile radius. You know, you know the land, you know the nutritional content, you know the weather, all the things we're talking about.
And you could be the greatest farmer in the world in Denver, Colorado and we pick you up and bring you to New Jersey and you're not, you're not going to be so great because you don't know that climate, you don't know that land. We can build a farm, a Bowery farm next to any city in the world regardless of climate and create that exact climate we want. And controlling climate at scale is not a simple endeavor.
It's not just building four walls and putting up some racks and lights. It's hard. It's why we have the technology we have and what we've learned. And then with the Bowery operating system in that farm, you have the knowledge of every process we've ever run and every crop we've ever grown immediately available to that farm. And as that farm comes online, it begins to contribute data to the network overall. And so we're really building this distributed network of farms whereby every new farm that comes into the network benefits from the network before it, and that in and of itself strengthens the network overall.
Jason Jacobs: It reminds me a little bit of the debates around the natural carbon sinks versus the technological carbon sinks. And so the natural people, they say, "Well, we need to go back to the way it used to be and how we were meant to be and the technological stuff, you know, we don't need it and it's just a crutch." And then once you're on the train, you can't get off kind of thing.
And then, you know, more of the prognosis, they say, "Look, look, we're in a real pickle." And like it's not going to be pretty, no matter which way we go. And, and we, you know, we don't need it to be pretty, we just need to get the job done and we're not going to get the job done with the, you know, with our current setup. So we need to do what we need to do.
So I can't help but feel a little bit sad that we are forced to do more things in artificial conditions. But at the same time, I'm relieved to hear that in a changing climate, we'll be able to do things in artificial conditions over time to ensure the consistency and the quality and the health implications and everything, to make sure that like the billions of people on this planet get the food they need to thrive.
Irving Fain: Yeah. You know, I, I understand how you're feeling, but I would say to you that I think that there's at sometimes an unrealistic sort of pastoral notion to what farming is versus the reality of where most of our food actually comes from. And you know, a-and that's not an accident, let's say that. And so, you know, I think when you really understand the depth where our food comes from and how the farming ecosystem works, it's probably a lot less romantic than we wish it was.
Jason Jacobs: I think people know that, they don't want to know though, or they can sense it, but they don't want to watch that documentary 'cause they'll never eat again.
Irving Fain: Oh, yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Irving Fain: You understand that.
Jason Jacobs: [Laughs].
Irving Fain: I agree. And so I would say to you it isn't that, oh, we're being forced into doing this. It really is this is a better way of doing it. Not all of it, not the only way. We're not saying we're the only solution, we'll be the every solution for every crop, but it is a better solution that is enabled by technology in an incredibly exciting way.
And I actually view it as this incredibly optimistic opportunity to say, "Wow, like, isn't it amazing that technology has taken us to a point where something that we've done in a certain way for hundreds and hundreds of years with iteration and optimization can really be rethought and re-imagined in totality because of human creativity and human ingenuity?" And I think that's actually exciting and that's something that we should be happy about and optimistic about. And that to me is really the message in what we're building at Bowery.
Jason Jacobs: Now, if you look at what needs to happen in order to make this really thrive at scale, what are the one or a handful of things outside of your control that if they change would dramatically accelerate your business and how would they, y-you know, if you could wave a magic wand, how would you change those things?
Irving Fain: You know, Jason, there isn't some magic unlock or singular key. We're not waiting for the golden ticket to show up at our door to unlock the business ahead. A lot of the unlock that we rely on has happened over the years in this sort of deflationary technological trends we've been experiencing. I talked about the LED lighting trend, I talked about how we can leverage innovation that's happened around robotics and automation and just the declining cost of storing and processing data and AI and computer vision of what you can do today versus a few years ago.
Those are the things at Bowery we've really relied on. And the reason we're building the company today is because those things have happened. And now it's about how do we apply them and how do we use them? Going forward, we really in many respects are the masters of our own destiny and it's incumbent on us and our team to continue to excel, to continue to innovate, to continue to execute and continue to operate. And, you know, we have areas where we can be much better, we have areas where we can do things differently and we will continue to do that every single day and week and month and year.
Now, I always say that the day we have no better, no improvements to make is probably the day that I ride off into the sunset. And I think it's a long, long, long ways out, but, but that's internal and I don't think there's an external gate that's in front of us. You know, are there places in ways where support externally from, you know, government programs and areas like that can help make something move more quickly? Certainly, there is in every industry. But it-it's not something that we're sitting and waiting for it to unlock our opportunities.
Jason Jacobs: Do you have a policy team that focuses on pushing those things forward?
Irving Fain: You know, we, we, ourselves along with other folks in the indoor farming space, you know, we have a controlled environmental agriculture group that is starting to spend more time just talking about the issues that are specific to us, a lot of that's historically has actually been around food safety and we made some great strides because a few years ago there was a, you know, you m, and you probably remember this right around Thanksgiving, there was a huge romaine issue.
They took all the romaine in the entire country just off the shelf. Why did they do that? Because they did not know where the problem came from. This goes back to my point of no transparency in the agricultural system. It came from one place, they had no idea where, so everything across the entire country had to go. And it was months and months of time later that they actually figured out, and I'm not sure if they ever even knew for sure. And we spent time with the folks in charge and said, "Hey, listen." Like we knew that that was not us, you know, and, and all of us in the controlled environmental space, you know, we didn't know who it was, but we knew it wasn't us.
And fortunately, unfortunately, a year later when there was another incidence, which is unfortunate almost to the day, which is just odd and the following Thanksgiving, that time they said, "If you can show that your product wasn't grown," I think it was in the Yuma, Arizona region, "then you should stay on the shelf, and you can stay on the shelf." And that was a result of the work that the, the CA council had done. So we're spending time just educating and understanding because farming has been around for a long time in this country. Indoor farming is relatively new, so there's an educational curve there too.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh. Well, I know we're running up on time if I can have a few [laughs], uh, a couple more quick questions I'd love to s, uh, squeeze in. Uh, o-one is just key priorities for the company over the next 12 months.
Irving Fain: We are really focused and excited on continuing to expand what we're doing. We had a big year this past year. In the last 14 months, we've grown about 700%. So we started, you know, the year in 2020 in under a hundred doors, so stores themselves, and today we're in over 800 and growing.
Jason Jacobs: What drove that? Was it one or two key things? Or like, how did that happen?
Irving Fain: Yeah, I think it was a combination. We, we opened a new farm down in Maryland in the early part of last year and so obviously we had a lot more supply. But I think there was also just an increasing excitement interest in focus. You know, we always say there was tremendous excitement in what we were doing long before COVID. But as the trope goes, COVID was a really powerful accelerant as well.
And we were able to offer retailers three things they cared a lot about: surety of supply, a simpler supply chain and safety in their supply. And those things matter, and they matter much more today than they did a year ago or two years ago, and they mattered a lot, two years ago. And so that's helped to accelerate what we're doing as well. And so we are underway with our next farm in Pennsylvania, as I mentioned earlier in Bethlehem. And, you know, we're excited to focus on continue to expand the Bowery footprint across the country and to see Bowery farms in cities around the country, but ultimately Bowery farms in cities around the world.
Jason Jacobs: So five years out, 10 years out, n years out, however far out you want to look, if Bowery's successful beyond your wildest dreams, what have you achieved?
Irving Fain: You will see Bowery farms in cities around the world, and you will see the products that we grow at Bowery not just in the categories we're in today, but you will see more and more of the produce section in a grocery store occupy with indoor grown produce that's grown more sustainably, more thoughtfully, and you see that also helping to drive a focus from the industry around the crops that we're growing to also focus themselves on more sustainable farming practices, more climate friendly farming practices because it will drive a continued focus from consumers who are demanding that out of the products that they eat.
Jason Jacobs: And my, my last question is just, we have an audience of thousands of people who care about climate that tend to put it front and center and focus on it with their professional lives in some capacity or aspire to from a wide range of backgrounds, geographies, functions, industries, et cetera. Who do you want to hear from, and how can they be helpful to you? It could be jobs, could be certain customer types. Again, just, just a chance for you. I mean, you took the time to come on the show so, uh, so here's your chance to ask for some help.
Irving Fain: We are always looking for fantastic people who are excited about what we're building at Bowery and the mission that we're on. You know, we have lots of openings, we're growing and you know, would really encourage anybody who whether they were excited about what they heard today or what they've read in the past and are interested in what we're building at Bowery, please get in touch because, uh, you know, it is the people at the company that really make what we're doing possible.
You know, I, I get to stand up here with you and have a conversation and speak on behalf of Bowery, but the truth is all I'm doing is, is acting as a mouthpiece for hundreds of people who, you know, put their blood, sweat, and tears every single week into the mission that we're on. And, and it's, it's rewarding, it's fulfilling, it's hard [laughs] but it's great to do something that matters every single day.
I think, you know, we, we had a conversation as a team when the California wildfires were raging. And I, you know, I remember going for a run and just sort of thinking about, "Wow, it's just like..." you know, I was listening to a podcast about those fires and just the, the intensity of what's happening right now is overwhelming at times. And there is no singular solution to these problems, but to be a part of the solution even on the hardest days keeps me going. And so anyone who wants to, to be a part of this, please get in touch.
Jason Jacobs: And is there anything you wish I asked that I didn't or, or any parting words?
Irving Fain: We could have talked about so many other things, Jason, I'm sure. There, there's so many places to go with this, even as I'm thinking about it, I'm like, "Wow, we didn't talk about this or this or this." So maybe we do it again, but, but it was a really fun conversation and I'm just happy that folks like you are continuing to shine a light on, on how business can tie together with climate to help drive change forward quickly because I think that's important.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome. Well, I feel like this was a long form tutoring session, I learned so much. So hopefully that means that listeners will get a lot out of as well. But thanks so much Irving for coming on the show and best of luck to you and the Bowery farming team.
Irving Fain: Hey, thanks so much for having me.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co not .com. Someday, we'll get the .com, but right now .co. You can also find me on Twitter at Jjacobs22 where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers may be say that. Thank you.
