The Future of Food Production Speaker Profile: "The industry as a whole must come together to achieve systemic change”

With The Future of Food Production Summit taking place in a little over two weeks, we’re getting to know our expert speakers a little better. Here we catch up with Rick Vanzura, the CEO of container farming pioneer, Freight Farms

When Brad McNamara and Jon Friedman started Freight Farms in 2013, there wasn’t really much of an agtech industry per se – in fact, they weren’t even sure how to explain the concept to friends and family.

A few years before, in 2010, their focus was initially on rooftop greenhouses, but they quickly realized that, to achieve their goals, they needed a modular and scalable solution.

To cut down on costs and logistics, McNamara and Friedman began to seriously consider building their new technology inside shipping containers – which were widely available and would allow farms to exist in areas that couldn’t support traditional agriculture. As a result, Freight Farms was born with the mission of building infrastructure and technology to allow local food to thrive.

“I was approached by Jon and Brad about joining a little over three years ago,” recalls Rick Vanzura, the company’s CEO. “I loved the focus on hyper-local, sustainable food production and democratizing access to food, and I also appreciated the business model and how advanced the technology is. Consequently, I joined and never looked back.

“One of my favorite expressions is a Native American proverb that goes, ‘We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children’,” says Rick Vanzura, the CEO of the company. “It is very gratifying to be part of repaying the debt we have built up by not taking care of the planet, and to be helping ensure a sustainable future.”

One of my favorite expressions is a Native American proverb that goes, ‘We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children’

At The Future of Food Production Summit, Vanzura will be delivering a presentation called ‘Combating food insecurity with hydroponic containers’, in which he will be looking at how hydroponic containers make it possible to grow food anywhere in the world, thereby empowering individuals to grow food locally within their communities to decentralize the global food system.

The company’s recently launched ‘Greenery S’ is the tenth generation of the technology since Freight Farms pioneered the small space farming concept almost a decade ago. The accessibility and versatility of the platform allow customers to use it in a diverse range of locations and applications. The Greenery S is built with the same specifications as a standard 40ft shipping container, making it possible to bring and install the farm in any location, such as a city center, tropical island, or area experiencing food insecurity. Once at its location, the 320ft2 container becomes a commercial growing space, capable of producing 2.5 acres worth of fresh food every year.

There is a desperate need for innovative thinking as we edge closer to 2050 and ~10 billion mouths to feed. “The IPCC report makes it clear that climate change is irreversible,” Vanzura laments. “Having said that, we can definitely slow down/mitigate the impacts, and we can help address the issues of land erosion and water scarcity for future generations. It is not too late for that.”

Vertical farming’s capability to control environmental factors makes it critical for the future of food development. These older, time-tested systems of growing, like hydroponics, are being re-imagined as new technologies – precision-controlled growing environments – allowing for year-round food production in hot deserts and frozen tundra alike. These systems can also be powered by clean energy and need only a few gallons of water daily, making them well-suited to withstand our rapidly changing world.  

Freight Farms has additionally brought precision growing into the future with ‘farmhand’, its IoT farm automation software. The software allows indoor farm operators to control temperature, lighting, and other environmental variables in their farms by connecting to in-farm sensors. Farmhand allows for both monitoring and controlling different indoor farming systems, so that data and insights from the crop planning and planting process can be used to enable production of higher quality, more flavorful, and more nutritious produce.

The transformative power of these vertical farms can best be seen through the work of existing ‘Freight Farmers’ across 34 countries and more than 520 farms, which now also includes a team at the University of Arizona’s ‘Biosphere 2’ in the USA, the experimental research facility that is exploring new ways of growing food in the face of environmental challenges threatening the global food system.

When probed as to what technologies he believes will make the largest contribution to the global food security crisis in the coming years, Vanzura is adamant that it will be a “multidisciplinary effort” that will have positive impacts from “many sources”. One of the keys going forward, he adds, is “unlocking the power of renewable energy”, particularly with what is going on with the war in Ukraine.

At The Future of Food Production Summit, Vanzura hopes a takeaway for delegates is that they “understand the power of a distributed, hyper-local food production solution that can address issues of resource scarcity and broken supply chains”.

“In addition, our solution delivers the freshest, most precisely grown produce you can find, with all of the taste, texture, flavor and nutrition benefits that come with it.”

Our solution delivers the freshest, most precisely grown produce you can find, with all of the taste, texture, flavor and nutrition benefits that come with it

What’s clear from speaking with Vanzura is that he sees collaboration, even between competitors, as a prerequisite in overcoming some of the challenges ahead of us. To that end, Freight Farms and many other leading vertical farming companies committed to a ‘Vertical Farming Identity Statement’ and ‘Industry Manifesto’ back in September 2022. These describe the urgency of transforming current food systems and explain how vertical farming systems can contribute significantly to designing food systems which are resilient and future-proof.

“Freight Farms was founded on the idea of building a more sustainable food system,” Vanzura explains. “We were pleased to gather with other industry leaders to make this formal commitment to working toward solutions for a resilient global food system. We recognize that no one company can present a single solution – the industry as a whole must come together to achieve systemic change.”

We have a growing population and diminishing resources to feed that population. “All forms of agriculture can provide partial answers to solving that problem,” Vanzura concludes. “I hope we can all fit together as complementary pieces to drive a fully sustainable future.”

The Future of Food Production Summit is a virtual conference and takes place 15/16/17 November 2022. It features more than 75 speakers, 50 presentations, seven panel discussions and two start-up pitch symposiums. Even if you can’t attend live, you can access all the content – more than 20 hours’ worth – on-demand. Tickets are priced at just US$495, Click here to secure your place