IFPA Takes on Tech

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Welcome to PMA Takes on Tech, the podcast that explores the problems, solutions, people and ideas that are shaping the future of the produce industry. I'm your host Vonnie Estes, Vice President of Technology for the Produce Marketing Association, and I've spent years in the AgTech sector. So I can attest, it's hard to navigate this ever changing world in developing and adopting new solutions to industry problems.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Thanks for joining us, and for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. My goal of the podcast, is to outline a problem in the produce industry, and then discuss several possible solutions that can be deployed today.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
This season of PMA Takes on Tech is bought to you by Plenty. Plenty is an indoor vertical farm, that sustainably grows produce using less water and land than traditional farming, and no pesticides or GMOs. The farm is able to grow peak season flavorful food year round, and deliver fresh produce to its retail partners daily. Plenty's proprietary towers, and intelligent platform, make it the only vertical farm that can grow multiple crops with consistently superior flavors and yield.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Hello, you are going to love my conversation with Sonia Lo. Sonia is an indoor farmer, a chef, an angel investor, and a mother of two, who speaks seven languages, and holds a third degree black belt in TaeKwonDo. Sonia has over 32 years of combined agriculture, technology and business experience. In the industry, Sonia was CEO of Crop One Holdings, Inc., a vertical farming company that owns FreshBox Farms and a joint venture with Emirates Flight Catering in Dubai. Most recently, Sonia was the CEO of Sensei Ag, an AgTech company focusing on CEA, founded by Larry Ellison in Hawaii. Sonia was appointed one of the Global 100 Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum two years in a row, and named one of Management Today's leading 35 business women in the UK under the age of 35.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
This conversation goes where most do not in indoor Ag. With Sonia's unique experience and view of the industry, we spend time on business models and financing, which are huge issues in CEA right now. But we also talk a lot about the political economy of CEA, the problems with lack of diversity, creating a eco-system and how the industry needs to openly monitor, share and compare data on cost structure and carbon footprint. So fun, check it out, let's drop into the conversation with Sonia.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Welcome Sonia, so tell us about your background and your journey in controlled environment agriculture.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Thanks Vonnie for having me, it's great to see you again. So I generally work for myself as the world's unlikeliest lady farmer. Because I came into vertical farming because I'd invested in a vertical farming venture, and became the ultimate in active investor when I ended up stepping in to venture interim CEO, and then the interim title fell away two years later, and then six and a half years later I was still the CEO of that venture.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
And then I was recruited away by a wonderful venture that was looking to transform human wellness, founded by Larry Ellison, he of Oracle fame, and Dr. David Agus, a world famous oncologist and scientist. So my journey in CEA has been varied, between vertical farms, greenhouses of multiple farm factors, different geographies, and a widely varying capital mix as well as crop mix.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So what about vertical farming as you first started getting into it. What drew you to it from some of the other things you did before? And what got your passion aroused for vertical farming?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So the food value chain has always interested me. After the sale of my first venture I ended up actually going to culinary school and being a chef.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Really?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Yes. Being a chef in London for two years. Which I absolutely adored, it's probably the hardest job I've ever had in my life. You're up at the crack of dawn, you're soliciting ingredients, you're thinking through the day's menu, and then you're still on your feet at 11 o'clock at night. But I loved it, have just adored feeding people and being in Europe for 20 years, there is such a focus on the food supply chain, about eating locally, eating seasonally, and using those wonderful ingredients. And that really became part of my DNA, and when I moved back to the US, the very long supply chain, the fact that 40% of post consumer food is thrown away because it is spoiled, other people think it's spoiled. There's so much about our food supply chain that doesn't work, and I don't think it's going to be tenable to feed 10 billion people on the planet within the next 30 years.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So when I looked at vertical farming and the potential for basically climate agnostic growing, I thought, "Wow this is amazing." And of course all entrepreneurs in vertical farming represent a set of unit economics which are aspirational, and over the last eight and a half, nine years, I haven't seen that much that has moved the unit economics. I keep hearing of improved yields through the use of automation, I keep hearing of better energy optimization. But ultimately I think we have to figure out a path to profitability for vertical farming, otherwise this industry is going to remain very interesting and niche, but it's not really going to overcome the energy balances.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, definitely is a challenge. I'd like to talk a bit about business models and financing, and these are areas that you're uniquely qualified to speak about from your numerous industry leadership roles and backgrounds in markets and investing. So with a lot of the companies that we're talking about, there's a lot of outside investments, so there's always a need for an exit. We've had some high profile SPACs and some IPOs. Can you talk about this and what's working and what's not working around investing, exits and business models.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Oh gosh. Well, I guess there's always a little bit of a crystal ball exercise, right? And I don't have one. But I do think that SPACs are here to stay, as an instrument, and I think they are important. But I think that for early stage companies, potentially pre revenue companies, to be going to market to a SPAC is a very difficult path. Because for SPAC arrangers to get their money back, and for the underwriter to get their money back, the target has to be two or three x the value of the cash. And while Venture Valuations and private have their own rationale, I think when you play that out in the public market it can become very uncomfortable, and I think that that sort of rationality is behind some of the more recent failures to merge, that we've witnessed, right. And I think that the private capital markets are efficient, I think they're good at understanding what the risks are, and playing out the governance that needs to happen with some of these earlier stage companies, and the private world is far better to do, then doing so on a public stage, right. And I think that in terms of venture capital, venture capital at least in the vertical farming area has to be very crisp, ha-ha pun intended. About the segregation of the real asset which is the farm from the technology access, and the technology investment that it's making.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
How you actually start to monetize that technology is as of yet unclear, right. Because nobody per se, is actually selling the technology, they're not selling a robot, they're not selling an automation line. The initial foray into this was lighting, oh we've found another set of LED lights, that are somehow going to improve your yield some tiny percentage, hasn't turned out to be true. Lighting is a cost based analysis for most vertical farmers, though I hope that the venture return from all of the capital is going to come from more than the real asset that they have invested in today, which is the farm. Because if you look at the ROI on these farms, even with full automation, even with great energy optimization and chasing two to three or six cents a kilowatt hour energy profile. Your returns are still in the nice private equity level returns, maybe mid-teens, low twenties, they're not 80, 90, right. So I think that segregation, the trajectory, the monetization of the technology, is going to be incredibly important for that venture promise to come true.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, one thing I'd be interested in your thought on the SPACs. I spent a lot of years in industrial biotech, and one of the things I'm watching is some of those companies going public through SPACs, and then some of the other companies, not just indoor farms that have used SPACs that are more in biology and it's more on... Technology has not proven yet, and I just wonder if investors, it just seems that's hard for investors to kind of understand. So you see these companies IPO through a SPAC, and then the stock tanks when people start looking at, well you don't really have any revenues, or, you're not going to make any revenues. So is it just a different kind of investment thesis that people aren't making cereal, or tables, or cars or something. They're actually making something that doesn't have revenue yet and is kind of on the cuff, and is a public market place the right place for that to play out?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So, biotech is certainly not my area of expertise, but I am familiar enough with companies that are, no revenue, but high growth, high impact. And I think that, if the management of the investor expectations is consistent. Which is, "No, we don't have revenue," "No, profit is not a target," and what we're building is an enzyme, we're building a biological process, we're building a biological platform, and that's what your capital is going to do. I think there are enough exit models, which is essential you build enough of the science that it becomes a viable proof point for one of the major biotech companies to buy you out, right. It is a publicly traded stock, an easier and more valuable way for major to buy you out, yeah, maybe. I just don't think we've seen that, and then the problem is that these are all micro-cap or mid-cap companies when they come to the market, and 80% of your shares value, when you are a micro-cap is external, it has nothing to do with your intrinsic value. So you're going to get tossed around like a little bow in the ocean, and I think that's also very hard for management teams that are not accustomed to navigating in the public markets.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So there kind of learning curves for everybody, but I think, again, SPACs are here to stay, I think they're a valuable instrument, and I think that there will be good target to bring to market.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
So back to CEA and just looking at what business models and financing could work better. I think, funding a farm with IPO money or even venture money, is a pretty expensive way to fund a farm, and you wouldn't do that if you were growing outside. So, should we be looking more at project financing, or are there different ways to kind of fund the growth of this industry that might put us in a better position?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
I think the industry has to move to project financing, otherwise, you're only going to see four farms out there. I think these are big heavy lifting machines, even greenhouses, greenhouses can certainly be cheap and cheerful, if they are the kind of low cost hoop houses. But those of course don't work all over the country, and they certainly don't work year round. So your cost per square foot of a vertical farm, or something where the climate is controllable, but say within 80% variability. Then, these ticket prices get large, and for the average farmer, they're well out of the reach of the average farmer, and there also isn't an infrastructure to support, there isn't a financing infrastructure or a logistical infrastructure, that supports indoor growing yet.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So I think the sort of opco/propco model, where there is a technology company, there is an operating management team, sort of like hotel management, is the future. I don't see anybody who's done that yet, who has built their own farms, proven that they can operate at certain yields, and then gone out to other farmers and said, "Hey, do this, we'll give you the playbook and you go off and be the grower." I think these sort of, the co-op models that have existed, thus far with open field growing, are closest to that. Where there is a co-operative of farmers that come together, they each agree to grow within certain seasons, everybody gets paid even if there's a crop failure. That's a powerful model in the open field world, I think that is probably, because of course catastrophic greenhouse failure, catastrophic vertical farm failure does occur, and the industry needs to get to the point where it can mitigate that. So I think you will start to see co-operative networks come together, I think you also have to start to look at multi farm factor. Because even if you're on a vertical farm and you are ostensibly climate agnostic, you still have to heat and cool that building, you still have to de-humidify the building envelope to the external environment. So there are costs and design engineering implications to all of that.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So again, I think if we're really aiming for a future where indoor growing is dotting the landscape, I think you have to see a migration to the opco/propco model. I think you have to start to see co-operative networks, I think you have to start to see multi farm factor with the relevant expertise that needs to happen for that to occur. And then finally I think you bring along the insurers and the financiers, because again, if indoor growing is going to become a permanent shift in agricultural infrastructure, then in 10 years it would be wonderful if we could see indoor farms financed by municipal bond issuers. We're a long ways off of that, a long ways off of that, and even today with big greenhouse growers, they self-insure, because the insurance companies, they say, "Well, I don't know how to write a policy on a new greenhouse."

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Wow, interesting. So there's no eco-system really to support this all industry yet?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
No.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Interesting.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Not yet, not yet. Which is why it's amazing and terrific that Venture Capital has taken the first step to finance this. But if they... We're going to build a machine, that machine is going to be very precise and we're going to be able to speak to the risk parameters of all of those machines, and we're going to drop these machines across landscape, until one of the machines doesn't work. So when I first started out in this industry, now almost nine years ago, I reached out to my fellow CEOs across landscape and I said, "I think we have to share information, I think we have to share data, because otherwise all of us are going to be in these silos of Venture Capital. I was met with a wall-

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
And how did that go?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
... I was met with a wall of silence. I started my life many, many, many years ago professionally in telecoms, and in so many ways it was the perfect grounding for understanding the digitization of anything. Because everything is predicated on I's and O's, as I said to my first big media boss, three decades ago. And with agriculture, the digitization has to have a point, and the point is not just improved yields and the ability to see and ace it on a leaf. The digitization really is because you're driving the lowering of risk, and then once you've lowered risk, or you can quantify risk adequately and in a way that is transparent, then you're kind of off to the races.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
But these are big machines, and I think what it really means as well is that these are natural oligopolies. We spoke earlier about biotech, biotech has 10 major companies in it, and a bunch of tiny start-ups, because it takes that much money to actually get a product to market. With telecom why have we gone through the break-up of AT&T, back to AT&T? And only four major telcos. Oh, well cable, why do we only have four cable choices? Cable is effectively a monopoly, and it's because the heavy lifting required an infrastructure essentially settled into an actual oligopoly. And I think that the same is going to be true of digitized agriculture, there are going to be 10 competitors, all of whom make good profile, not supernormal profit, but good profile. And where they have borne the cost of digitizing the risk of making the risk transparent, and then they basically have that share of the market.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
But do you think those companies will be actual producers, or will they be the developers of the technology that then gets either licensed or sold or whatever to people? Because actually, production is never where you make the money, I mean, it's hard to make money in producing food. And so, when you say there's going to be like four companies, what part of the chain will they be in do you think?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
I think there'll be more than four companies, because food and agriculture is such an enormous value chain. I think it will be possible to make money at every step of the way, so I think it will be more akin to the hotel industry. So, there will be the big brands like the Four Seasons, the Ritz-Carlton's, and their playbook and their brand gets issued to a variety of smaller hotel owners who own the property. But the property owners make their money too. [crosstalk 00:24:12].

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Okay, so you see it that it will be set up that people will be able to make money in the chain?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Yeah, because I think if you look at what's happened with some of these more... You squeeze the grower model, where you own the germ plasm, you own the seedling, you provide the grower with the seedling and then you become the only market for that grower after they've grown the product. The grower has seen their margins collapse from 30% to three, and at some point people go, "I don't want to grow for you anymore, I can make more money being an independent grower, sowing my stuff directly." And that's also the great kind of liberation of vertical farming, right, is, "I don't want to be part of your squeeze me distribution and packing play anymore, I actually am going to go direct to consumer, I'm going to go direct to retailer." And that's what has shaken up Salinas. They don't believe the unit economics yet, and so every time I speak to one of the big packers, they all go, "Yeah, pretty niche still," but they're keeping a keen eye on it, that's for sure.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, and one of things that I'm watching and kind of wondering how it's going to play out is, I think a lot of our growers, producers in places like Salinas or Florida. That's what they do and they kind of own a part of the supply chain. As we have more climate problems, like here in California, less water. Those producers are going to want to mitigate the risk.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Wild fires.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, exactly, smoke. And they're going to want to mitigate their risk, so you are starting to see some of the big producers, Salinas type producers start to get interested in this. And so, I'm really curious in how this is going to play out as more of the really large producers, packers, shippers, in Salinas are going to say, "Okay I want to mitigate my risk and get into indoor..." And then does that change this whole kind of infrastructure thing and eco-system that we were talking about? Do they kind of take it over or does indoor Ag, kind of create its own? I mean this is all speculation, neither of us know, but I was just kind of wondering what you thought about that.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
I think right now, the valuation between indoor Ag and outdoor, the packers, the big packers prospective on their valuation is so vast, there isn't anybody willing to cross that chasm. They look at the valuations of these indoor growers that have a million dollars in revenue and they just go, right? I mean, that was the sound of me guffawing. So, for right now, I don't think the big packers are likely exits, I think they are potential partners, but I think for most indoor growers, they look at what the packers want them to do, which is kind of set up outside their DCs, and let their engineers crawl all over the operation. They're just thinking, "Well they're going to watch us do two cycles of this and they'll build their own, and then they'll be vertically integrated and then I'm good." I don't think that's going to be true, I think there are enough bells and whistles now in the more mature indoor growing operators and in the indoor growing technologies, that it's still a two year development cycle.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
And so, I think the packers are very prudent excellent business people who at some point will agree that a partnership is the right way to go, and I had a very thoughtful discussion with the CEO and chairman of one of the big packers, and he said, there will be partnerships, the partnerships are going to be where indoor growing has massive strength, like seedling production. And I think if you can create a hardened seedling in an indoor growing environment in a vertical farm where you're getting 98, 99% germination rates, and then transport those to open field, that's a logical and very comfortable fix. I think the costs of open field growing are... there's so much infrastructure around open field growing, you can lease the land, you can lease cold storage, you can buy occasional time in a packers line. There is already massive investment in automation in the packer, for an indoor farmer to replicate at the scale of some of the big packers, is who knows how long away. So definitely large potential for partnership, again, as exits I think the big packers are just going, "I can't get my head around the valuation." Which is why you also haven't seen so much investment from the big packers into the indoor growers.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
I think also some of it is geography. That the indoor farmers haven't really started in California, they've started on the East Coast, where their product is going to be most differentiated. And it's a big country, and it's two very different business cultures. So you get the smart New Yorker's, you get the smart Bostonian's, who are doing very well now, growing for the North East markets, and California going, "Yeah, they're kind of not really hurting us," yet. Now what's interesting is to see the big greenhouse growers enter the fray, because greenhouse production is well known, there is a full automation suite. There is a whole financing infrastructure for greenhouses, if you're buying Dutch, and I think they are the real competitors to the vertical farms. Because they can come in at a lower price point, their product is as good, and I think the vertical farmers have always taken on this sort of, "The open field is our competition," but actually I think greenhouses and their real competition.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
How interesting, and they are doing more variety, at least for now, they're doing a more variety of products then leafy greens and herbs and so they can do more. So switching a little bit to looking at the political economy of CEA, so a lot of people are getting involved in the conversation of saying, "We don't really want really rich companies in charge of our food," and, "Who profits from growing this food?", and "Should there be B Corps?", and "Should there be worker ownership?" So we don't really put big outdoor Ag under this scrutiny. But I'm just starting to hear these conversations around CEA of really, should the indoor Ag vertical farming industry be more attuned to workers’ rights, and not controlling our food system in a way that we may not want. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
On the question of corporate structure, which is whether these companies should be B Corps and what that really means, and worker ownership. I think that indoor Ag and AgTech probably is one of the greatest potential areas for crossing the political divide. I think it empowers people of all backgrounds, I think it creates a next generation of knowledge workers, but instead of having to have a degree in computer science you can have a degree in anything, and you cannot have a degree. You can come from a background, where you are good with your hands and have good attention to detail.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So I think that it is an amazing entry point to the knowledge economy. Having said that, trying to explain a sort of VC option structure to somebody who works in a farm all day is a challenge. So I do think that the well-trodden path of tech options, probably not the right compensation structure. I think co-operative ownership programs, where you've got a collection of growers, yeah, something like that, and each grower then administers their HR according to their own market conditions, sure, collaborative ownership structures. The question is, how far down do you push that ownership.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
I think the issue of B Corps are much murkier, I'm not sure of whether or not the designation of the B Corp actually certifies you as anything. I don't think there is enough knowledge yet across the market of what it means to be a B Corp as a grower or even as a AgTech operator. Then I think there is the thornier issue of whether or not indoor Ag is actually green-

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yes, let's dig into that too. I definitely wanted to talk to you about just with... That's one of the big selling points of, "This is so much more sustainable, our carbon footprint is great." So I'd love to hear your thoughts on, how we look at that, and how we're measuring it, and really keeping ourselves honest in that area.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
... Yeah, so again, I think indoor Ag is all about the transformation of energy into calories, and unless you have a robust accounting of your energy consumptions, and that conversation into calories, you are going to have a hard time defending your green credentials.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Say more about that, how does that kind of play out?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Yeah, so if your vertical farm is growing on coal fire power, you don't have a green leg to stand on. And you can argue, how close you are to the consumer, you can argue the fact that you don't have all these refrigeration miles. But there are numbers out there for what it costs you in terms of carbon output to do open field growing of a leafy green in Salinas, or numbers out there on what it costs you in terms of carbon output to refrigerate that leafy green and drive it to New York. There are very few numbers around what it costs to move water around, just because that's the kind of awful dirty little secret, and then there are no numbers, right now, around what your carbon emissions are if you're depending on the energy source that you're using as a vertical farm.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So, if you're going to build your own plant, fine great, but if you're going to build a one ton a day vertical farm, growing leafy greens, it's three and a half megawatts of power is required, on a footprint of, now I've seen leafy greens growers at 30,000 square feet. So you've got 30,000 square feet of vertical farm, growing one ton a day, phenomenal, phenomenal land use. If you're going to solar power, that one ton a day farm, you're going to require 20 acres of land, but the panels. So not a viable land use calculation.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
So, I think the industry has to start to look at combination energy sources, and siting, site selection is going to really matter. Greenhouses of course, not as energy intensive because they're using daylight, but if you get the daylight wrong, then you're never going to develop the brick that you need. You're going to need supplemental lighting, you're going to need supplemental heating and cooling and desiccation, and whoop, your energy balances go completely out of whack in a greenhouse as well. So again, transparency, a sharing of information, all of these things may be initially painful, but I think they're necessary if the industry as a whole is going to claim green credentials that are factual.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yeah, and I think a lot of companies that I talk to say, just the same as some of the cost structure stuff. Were working on it, were getting there. And I think that's true, I think we need this nascent industry to grow and improve. But we also need to start having ways to kind of monitor how it's growing and improving, and so, I can see both with cost structures and just kind of carbon footprint, that we need to work together and share information to kind of understand that.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
One last kind of big area I'd love to touch with you on, is the incredible lack of diversity in we could probably say most of Ag, but just focusing on CEA, we can start there. Just looking at founders, investors, board members, C-suite. You can just look across the industry, we just don't see much diversity. So I'm sure, you are many times the only woman in the room, as I have been throughout my career. What can we do? Are there some positive things that, I can do, you can do, the industry can do, and how do we kind of change this lack of diversity?

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Gosh, that is a very big question, and I think it's one that is repeated across boardrooms irrespective of sector, right. I think in indoor Ag, just the price of entry, whether it's the cost of building a high-tech glasshouse or whether it's the cost of building a vertical farm, means that you are caught up in the dearth of capital overall that goes to women and non-binary gender recipients of that capital, and forget people of color. At one point they had a slide of the leadership in AgTech, and there was one woman, needless to say there was only one woman of color, and there was one other brown face on the page, and everybody else was a guy in a Patagonia vest. And so, again, I think this is where, if you make data transparent, if you make the risk of each farm really more machine driven, then I think it almost doesn't matter who is running the farm.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
I think if you were to dig down into three star hotel ownership across the country, that carry a Hyatt or a Hilton Garden Inn brand, you'd see a lot of brown and black faces. I mean, I think you'd start to see that the businesses, because they're so well known as businesses and as franchises, that the ownership of the asset becomes irrelevant. Now, the playbook for the asset, Hilton, or Marriott or any of these, is that it's still concentrated in the hands of a few, yeah, but what they border risk, to kind of get it up to that playbook status where a hundred room Hilton Garden Inn is a well-known, well financeable model.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
We're not there yet with indoor Ag, so I think the rules of venture capital still apply and the reality is that, venture capital, 2% of that goes to women, I'm sure some minuscule percentage goes to women of color. So, I don't think you're going to solve the diversity issue through legislation, because then what happens is that you get capital flight from that. I think you're going to solve it through making the asset category easier to allocate to and by making risk more transparent.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Great. Well, before I let you go. What is next for you? You're kind of in a transition, and I'm excited to hear what you're thinking about and what's next for you.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
Gosh, I've accepted a couple of board roles. I had an existing board role with a private company that is amazing, that is a purpose driven organization and on this board I'm honored to serve. The other two roles are, working in the low carbon economy, which I believe has to become the economy.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Yes.

Sonia Lo, Chalsys LLP:
And working in the design engineering space for indoor Ag, and I believe that again breakthroughs are going to come from that ability to see across farm factors, across how people are growing, and then apply and share that knowledge. I think the design engineering nexus is where a lot of this information sharing and knowledge sharing is going to occur. So the board roles allow me to keep my hand in right now, while I make a decision on, sort of, what's next. I'm probably not quite ready for it to be a full time portfolio career, where I serve on five or six different boards, but it depends on the boards. And then I've had approaches from people that want me to helm something else, I'll make a decision sometime in the early new year.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
Watch this space, right? Well thank you so much Sonia for your insight into the industry. I think you have a very unique insight into this young industry with a great lens, and I think we touched on a number of things that people don't usually talk about. So I really appreciate your openness and willingness to have this conversation. So, thank you.

Vonnie Estes, PMA:
That's it for this episode of PMA Takes on Tech. Thanks for allowing us to serve as your guide to the new world of produce and technology. Be sure to check out all our episodes at pma.com and wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe, and I would love to get any comments or suggestions of what you might want me to take on. For now, stay safe, eat your fruits and vegetables, and we will see you next time.