- People have a false sense of food security
because we go to the grocery store, and there’s
basically always food there.
- This is Mike Straight, and he's on a mission
to reimagine the way we farm.
- Large-scale agriculture has pesticides,
uses a huge amount of fossil fuels, and is really rough
on the planet.
- There are lots of companies working on
high-tech alternatives to traditional farming,
but not quite like this.
Instead of shipping produce from a farm in
another part of the world, this founder
wants to put the farm in a shipping container
that can fit in your parking lot.
- We're trying to feed the world one pod at a time
by hyper-localizing farming, and taking a farm
and putting it right in front of the place
that needs to use it.
- FarmPod is a company that aims to increase
food availability by combining
vertical farming and automation with the help
from an interesting source,
fish.
- We've kind of lost our connection
to where our food comes from.
We're taking it that whole extra step and we're saying,
"The relationship with the farmer is you."
I don't know that we have an option for not succeeding.
We have to make this work, or we're not all gonna get fed.
All right, let's go.
You gonna show them the pod?
- Mike Straight is the CEO and creator of FarmPod,
and he developed a way to grow food indoors
in a pretty tight space.
- All right, this is upstairs in a FarmPod,
where all the plants live.
By controlling the environment
inside of something like this,
we don't have to worry about it being too hot or too cold.
- The FarmPod grows food aquaponically,
which means their secret ingredient is actually-
fish poop.
- Woo!
You have fish in the bottom. The fish produce nutrients
into the water.
The water's flowing down through these towers,
going through the plants. Inside of these towers
is like a large filter material.
Once the plants start absorbing it, this all then
flows back down into the fish tanks downstairs.
It's just constantly recirculating.
We use 95% less water
than traditional farming.
A product like this has to be simple to operate.
And if it's not simple to operate,
it'll never get adopted.
- The system allows users to grow produce
without much work because it's automated.
- You can run a FarmPod
on about five hours a week of labor.
And then we have it all report to your smart phone
so it makes it easy.
Yeah here's the graph of it.
It's a lot easier to control a system
because we're imitating nature here.
'Hey, I just wanted to check if that last catfish guy
came though or if we're doing the tilapia,
and we're good to go.'
- After starting an IT company
in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Mike got the idea for FarmPod.
- I've kinda been an entrepreneur all my life.
I've always loved to garden. I happen to be a lazy farmer;
I'd forget to water plants.
I had this night where I woke up at three in the morning,
and I just drew a FarmPod.
- But to make this idea a reality, Mike knew
he needed a partner.
- Beecher being one of my oldest friends,
I just called him up
and I'm like, "Dude, I got this idea. I want to build
this farm that fits in a parking space."
- I flew out to Santa Fe and we built the first prototype
in six weeks.
- The next day I flipped the main switch
and it worked the first time. That's kinda when we knew
we really had something.
- After the first prototype, FarmPod relocated to
St. Croix to build up and test the system
in a new climate.
- All right, so this was sorta the ultimate plan,
and this is where we landed
based on the existing space in the pod.
- We didn't want to put anything out
that wouldn't be successful everywhere that it went.
Deciding when we're ready to get it to market
has been one of the challenges because we just
want to keep solving it.
And we're going to keep innovating.
That's kinda what we love to do.
Beecher and I work together really well
because I'm the guy that gets out there and goes,
"Let's make a million of these things!"
He's the guy that always pulls me back
because too much growth can be as much of a killer
as not enough growth.
- You'll put that in right over here.
- Right there. Got it.
We do have a very large
order list happening right now.
I'd say we are trying to tackle a lot at once.
- Nothing like this has really been built.
With each little box that's in here, it's probably
the tenth iteration.
- Hard days when it comes to development
of the pod have never been an issue. That we love,
we thrive on it, it gives us energy.
The biggest challenge is
capital.
We've run out of money three times.
And we've had to fundraise within weeks,
or we would literally have to close our doors.
- Shortly after FarmPod launched,
Mike was presented the opportunity of a lifetime-
a seven-figure exit.
- A large, national food purveyor offered to buy us.
It was millions of dollars.
- The problem was, this company
wanted to buy them to shut them down.
And Mike had to choose
between money and his mission.
- We realized that we just couldn't do that. If somebody
wanted to buy us they would have to be able to provide
more food production to the world,
or we weren't interested.
We're doing something that is so outside
of what anybody else has seen
that getting traditional loans
is tricky, but on the plus side of that,
people that have the vision for what we're doing
see the benefit, and they wanna
be part of something innovative.
- After three years in development,
FarmPod finally has a version
they're ready to bring to market.
And St. Croix communities are first on the list.
- We have to get back to the idea of
producing our food more locally.
- If we put the FarmPod right there, right?
- Yep.
- This is Chef Todd, a local restaurant
and distillery owner and FarmPod's first customer.
- And you're going to be able to produce enough then for here
and your other restaurants.
- The other restaurants and the community.
- We wanted to start local both because we care
about our local community, and because it's an advantage
to us to make sure that these pods are working right.
The first people that we approached were restaurants.
- Then FarmPod found an unlikely customer.
- What we found out was that schools
were extremely interested in this.
This thing is kind of a perfect classroom.
So we can do STEM learning in here; we've got all this cool
automation and solar technology and robotics
and 3D printing.
Once we get back in touch with our food,
and we're experiencing it, it encourages us
to eat it naturally. We get kids excited, we get people
that are in different industries excited,
and all of those industries are now coming together
around this box that's growing food
in the middle of a parking lot.
- Mike is one of a number of founders
looking to address food shortages and climate change
with innovation thinking both outside -
and inside the box.
- The reality is, is we're gonna have to
get more creative in our food production if
we're gonna feed
the growing population on this planet.
There is a better way to grow food,
and we're trying to show people that it's now here.