You won't be listening to a typical episode of this podcast. We'll take a deep dive into greenhouses for the production of vegetables. Why? Because the middle class in Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East is booming and they're going to their local supermarket and they're demanding fresh and healthy vegetables which are now trucked or flown in from thousands of kilometers away. So get ready for a lesson on soilless high-tech greenhouse production, CO2, freshness and urbanization. Enjoy! Welcome to another episode of investing in regenerative agriculture, investing as if the planet mattered. Podcast show where I talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land, grow our food and what we eat. And it's time that we as investors, big and small, and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. Before we get started, I've been recording these interviews next to my day job and I will definitely continue to do so and release about an episode a month. But at the same time, I would love to take this further, share more interviews. There are many more stories to share on investing in regenerative food and agriculture. More depth, improve the quality, maybe even doing some video series. So I started a Patreon community, which makes it easy to support creators like myself. If these podcasts have been of value to you and if you have the means, I invite you to to support me and make this happen. For more information, please find the link to my Patreon account in the description below. And now, without further ado, the interview. Enjoy! Welcome to Investing in Regenerative Agriculture, investing as if the planet mattered. I'm Koen van Zijen, your host. Today I'm talking to Dirk Aleven, CEO of Food Ventures. Food Ventures develops and operates high-tech greenhouses close to markets and cities with large vegetable imports, like Kazakhstan, Turkey, Japan, Georgia and Ukraine. Regenerative agriculture in this case is mostly focused on the regeneration of local communities, bringing production and jobs closer to the consumer and not so much on the soil aspect. But we're going to ask Dirk all about this. Welcome, Derek. Thank you. Thank you, Koen, for hosting me. And to start with a personal question, how did you end up in the world of building high-tech, sustainable greenhouses in places like Ukraine, Japan, Georgia?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a good question
SPEAKER_01indeed. You must be wondering about that yourself every now and then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm not educated in agriculture. My first company, which I started back in 2004, that was a meet-in we were all organizing all kind of business trips for Dutch entrepreneurs to emerging markets. So we were traveling with groups of entrepreneurs to China, to Brazil, India, Eastern Europe, all kind of places. And one of the things I noticed was that almost in every big city in emerging markets we were entering, the international retail was already active and they were complaining about the supply of fresh vegetables. So basically they could They had all the supplies they needed, but the issue of fresh vegetables was pretty big. So I noticed that the Dutch are one of the best worldwide in producing fresh vegetables, distribution of fresh vegetables. The whole chain is one of the most professional organized industries around the globe. So we started looking into that and first idea was to see if we could support the industry export their technologies to new markets. But that was already done. We saw pretty high tech greenhouses built everywhere around the globe. In fact, 90% of the Dutch or 90% of the greenhouses worldwide outside of Europe are supplied by Dutch technology providers. But the real issue was that nobody knew how to use these new technologies. So we visited several greenhouses in Eastern Europe which were underperforming yields were well 30 40 percent less than than expected and and then
SPEAKER_01which is a problem in because these are huge huge investments per hectare we're going to dive into some numbers later but if you're underperforming here it it really is a problem as a as a unit because they're high tech and require a lot of cash to to start a lot of capital and then you don't want to be 30 40 percent under your your targets I guess
SPEAKER_00absolutely it's absolutely a a huge issue the issue would be even bigger if it was in the Netherlands then for sure they would face financial crises followed by bankruptcies the fact that they didn't in those markets was simply because the prices for the goods sold was pretty high so the low yields were compensated by extremely high prices and that was explained by the fact that these markets are net importers so they were importing well Russia of as a good example, is importing tomatoes from as far as Israel, Spain, the Netherlands, shipping them for like 3,000, 4,000 kilometers by refrigerated trucks, bringing them to the consumers. So you can understand that the prices for the fresh vegetables are extremely high. Another example is Asia, whereas Malaysia is importing by air freight Dutch truss tomatoes. So the export prices So just to get it right,
SPEAKER_01they are flying in Dutch tomatoes from greenhouses here in the Netherlands because there's not the level of sun you might expect to Malaysia to supply supermarkets there.
SPEAKER_00Well, everything is there in Malaysia.
SPEAKER_01And everything is flown in.
SPEAKER_00Technically, you could absolutely produce in Malaysia, but nobody does it today. So they're forced to import it. Same goes for Singapore. Perhaps you've seen the news that the Dutch growers are extremely proud on the fact that they can supply bell peppers from the Netherlands to China, air freight. So it's ridiculous. So we're basically...
SPEAKER_01Let's not even start about food kilometers there.
SPEAKER_00So this was... This was the reason that we got interested in this industry and we've noticed the huge lack of know-how on how to grow in high-tech greenhouses. So we decided to do it ourselves. I had no know-how in growing either, but I was lucky enough to involve Dutch growers into my business. So we locked in some really experienced Dutch growers who already had experience in growing outside the Netherlands as well, in Mexico and in Russia and among other countries around the world. And we started our first project in Ukraine, building a greenhouse to produce salad, which we are supplying to the local supermarkets in Ukraine. So that answers your question a bit on how I ended up building greenhouses in Eastern Europe by accident and by seeing the need that we didn't only... want to export technology we wanted to invest ourselves commit ourselves and transfer the know-how to use the technologies
SPEAKER_01because otherwise it would be one of those many cases where something very high-tech is shipped from in this case a very high-tech country it arrives maybe it works for a bit and then either it falls apart or starts like you said underperforming which we've seen a thousand times in history and probably will see a thousand times in the future as well with something high-tech coming somewhere where where there is no let's say, good ground for something high-tech. I mean, unless you're operating it yourself.
SPEAKER_00In other industries, you do see better examples where technology and know-how go hand-in-hand and operators are more professionally organized and connect themselves with the technology providers. For instance, in the oil industry, who would even consider buying high-tech equipment without an operator involved? I mean, that's absolutely nonsense. So
SPEAKER_01how come it's not like that in the high-tech group? I
SPEAKER_00guess because the industry in the Netherlands is developed over generations as a mom and dad business so it's mainly family owned businesses rather like smaller scale now we're entering a phase where there's more consolidation and the companies are getting bigger but so far it has been literally thousands of growers in the Netherlands organized through corporations so not having the right scale nor the interest to go abroad so the operators themselves they love the Netherlands which I do as well but they feel comfortable here and they have the whole industry organized in the Netherlands and they have no interest in going abroad investing in Ukraine or Kazakhstan or whatever it requires a different skill set than just being a grower or just being the best grower and
SPEAKER_01to look at Ukraine as an example can you explain what why, first of all, why the shift to supermarkets and thus also more off-season vegetables and why you cannot just grow them outside on a non-high-tech, not inside a high-tech greenhouse. Why is it such an interesting country and such an interesting example for your approach?
SPEAKER_00So I guess what happened so far is that in Ukraine, people had the time to grow some of their vegetables in their backyards. And now more and more families are depending on two incomes. They're living inside the cities. So there's a huge urbanization like everywhere in the globe. So they don't have the time to go outside the city, go to their dachas, their family gardens to grow vegetables. So they start buying the vegetables in in the supermarkets and once they are in the supermarkets they expect first of all fresh vegetable they expect it to be available whenever they go to the supermarket not depending on the season and they expect it to be safe because they think and expect that the procurement department of a supermarket is paying attention to quality and food safety so that's the consumer part of the case. In terms of supply there are still a lot of small holders which do not make that transition from the traditional seasonal production to more extended production throughout the year. So there's a gap between the more professional and modern consumers and the old-fashioned way of producing tomatoes and cucumbers. Now it looks For some of them, it looks like it has a sort of a nice sound of having outside grown vegetables on a smaller scale. The reality is that those suppliers, they use a lot of chemicals because they have a huge influence of weather and insects outside. And there's absolutely no traceability. So in fact, there can be good supplies, of course, if you know them. But there is also a big group who wants to have a decent yield out of open field production, but they have a huge pressure of insects and all kinds of diseases, which they fight with high doses of chemicals. So we think that there's a better alternative if you do it in a protected environment, a controlled environment, and have the right skill to prove your traceability of the products and the safety of your products.
SPEAKER_01And that means in this case, close to the consumer or relatively close to the big urban areas you are building or you have built in this case, high-tech greenhouses and are operating them as well.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, yeah. If you compare that with other industries like bakeries or something, I mean, you would be surprised if the supermarkets buy their breads from thousands of households who are baking their breads somewhere in the backyard. But that's in fact what's now happening in Ukraine with vegetables. So we think it's more logical that you have a more organized and larger scale production of vegetables close to those markets who are depending on on imports right now.
SPEAKER_01And when you look at, I mean, the moment somebody says greenhouses, everybody immediately thinks, or not everyone, many people will think energy use, sustainability. I mean, you already highlighted a bit on herbicides and pesticides. Can you talk a bit about the energy use and sustainability in general, as obviously the sector in the Netherlands has been moving away from heavy gas and heavy energy use? I mean, what are the things you've seen and the things you have put toward in this case in Ukraine and in other countries.
SPEAKER_00So, I totally agree that a few decades ago nobody was caring about energy inputs in the Netherlands and that's the reason why some people have bad memories or a bad impression on the industry itself. Like today, everybody is, well, from a sustainability angle and from a financial angle, looking for alternatives on energy because the energy use in the end makes around one third of the cost price of your product. Plus, consumers start asking, how do you produce your goods and what is your source of energy? In Georgia, we are using geothermal energy. So, in fact, we're almost not using gas at all. And the gas that we use, we use the carbon dioxide coming from it as a fertilizer for the plants. So, we're we're CO2 neutral. In Ukraine, we use biomass as an alternative energy for two reasons. First one, to be more sustainable in our heating, of course, but second one is that the gas is expensive in Ukraine, so we also want to have alternatives. And again, the gas that we use is purely from the need of CO2, so we're almost CO2 neutral there as well. And in Kazakhstan, we're using cogeneration So by cogeneration, we're using flare gas. That's gas which normally is burned, simply burned after the oil production, so not used at all.
SPEAKER_01These are the big flames you see on top of pipes if you live or if you happen to live close to oil production or refineries.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. And we're using that gas and generating electricity from it and the remain heat, which is coming from this electricity generation we're using for heating the greenhouse. So if I look at the industry today, it's in the genes of every grower to think about energy saving. And the suppliers, if you look at the energy consumption today, it's almost like 60% less than 20 years ago. And that's one of the reasons why the old greenhouses are now disappearing in Ukraine. They were still used to very cheap gas in the Soviet Union. So their gas consumption was extremely high
SPEAKER_01and they're super leaky basically
SPEAKER_00yeah super leaky and they didn't have any strategies on how to use energy so today the know-how is developed as such in the Netherlands that the growers they know when heating is absolutely required when it's sort of less comfortable and when it's not needed so they look at the absolute need and say well in these periods of the day we absolutely need heating there There's no alternatives on it. Or they might consider, well, we could use a little bit less. And that results in extremely lower gas consumption.
SPEAKER_01But it does sound funny or weird that I'm burning gas to make CO2, something we're all trying to fight to have less of, for my plants in the greenhouse to eat. I mean, you can imagine for non-greenhouse people that it does sound a bit weird.
SPEAKER_00If we would only use it for generating CO2, I would totally agree. What we do use is we work the other way around. So we say, how much CO2 do we need and in what period? And then we burn the gas. With that burning process, we create heat, which we store in a heat storage tank. And that heat storage tank, we can use the heat at the moment we need it. So in the greenhouse, all the greenhouses that we build right now, They have these heat storage tanks. During the day, when the plant is extremely active, they use a lot of CO2. So we start heating or burning the gas. We store that heat in the heat storage tank. And when the plant is asleep in the night, but still needs a nice temperature, we use the heating, which we have stored in the heat storage tank. So it's not that we are purely burning the gas for the purpose of CO2 dosing. It's a So dual use,
SPEAKER_01basically. Yes, absolutely. emerging industry that hopefully for a very low price will be storing, will be liquefying CO2 so you can use it? Is that something you're dreaming of?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because it results directly in higher yields. So the plants immediately transform CO2 into tomatoes or cucumbers. So we would absolutely be buying CO2. As a result, the beauty of a greenhouse is that it's a direct user of heating and direct user of CO2. So you could connect those greenhouses to, for instance, energy plants or any industry which has a waste heat. The disadvantage today is that if you have waste heat only, you still have a lack of CO2.
SPEAKER_01You could supply that if you could take those two things apart. That would be fantastic. At the moment, there's no CO2 for a good price for you
SPEAKER_00guys. Well, there is. So it's a matter of math. So sometimes we we are interested in buying it. You see that happening in the Netherlands where the industry is more developed, so distribution of liquid CO2 is better. That's a bit of a problem in countries like Georgia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan, where the industry is not that developed yet to supply us liquid CO2 at a reasonable price. Otherwise, we would definitely consider not using any gas. Very, very interesting.
SPEAKER_01And when you look, let's tackle another big one, people that say everything should be grown in soil, what's your normal reply to that?
SPEAKER_00So we would need a drastic reduction of consumption of vegetables. Let me take an example in Georgia. We took over a greenhouse which was underperforming and it was producing in the soil, in a greenhouse. So we took over and the first thing we did was taking samples of the soil And it was absolutely exhausted after three years already. We could see the results as well in terms of yields. First year was more or less reasonable. And then the yields went down by 20 to 30% per year. And the soil was completely exhausted. So I do understand it has a bit of an industry feel on a natural product with growing soil. So I do understand that people have question marks about it the fact so how we use it is that we are growing soilless means that we're using substrate and that allows us to dose exactly the amount of water and fertilizers that the plant needs nothing more nothing less so if you look at things like water consumption for instance our water consumption in a soilless environment is 10 times less than an open field production and that's a that's getting extremely important in countries like Kazakhstan, where there's a lack of water at the moment. In terms of fertilizers, we add the fertilizers through the water, and we have a drain system. So whatever the plant is not absorbing, we collect it in the drains, it's coming back in a drain pit, which is cleaned with UV again, and then we reuse those same fertilizers. So we reduce 30% compared to a non-drained system. And if you would compare that with an open field production that's even more so in those terms we're much more sustainable than open field production so my answer would be like it's more of a question like how many people do we think we can feed on this planet and I think we all understand that there are more people coming so we should be finding ways on reducing the inputs maximizing the outputs so that we have a maximum transformation from a Yeah,
SPEAKER_01I think it all depends on the context and you should depend your tomatoes compared to something that apparently is flown in or tracked in from 5000 kilometers away. And all those kilometers also mean inputs in the sense of diesel for the truck, diesel for free, for cooling it, etc, etc, etc. And in terms of, because I mentioned that at the beginning, in terms of jobs, and then we look at a concrete example and how do you finance it, but what is the Because they're super high tech, meaning probably less people and mostly automated. How many people are working in an average one hectare or half a hectare high tech greenhouse with you?
SPEAKER_00So rough numbers are 10 to 15 persons per hectare. So we're in a normal scale greenhouse. So we have two small ones, one in Georgia, which is two and a half hectares. And we have around... 60 persons working there. It's a little bit more because you need all your overhead stuff, like sales, administration, distribution. We do our distribution ourselves, so we supply directly to those supermarkets. But the one we're building now in Kazakhstan, it starts with 5 hectares and is growing to 20. That will be a starting point, roughly 70 to 80 in the beginning, and then we'll end up somewhere around 200 to 250 people working there.
SPEAKER_01And that's year round because you're not seasonal, which is a huge thing in agriculture.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And we aim to keep our staff as much as possible. So in Georgia, we have the same staff since the beginning because in the end, the yields are determined by the know-how of your staff, not only the grower, of course. So we want to make sure that everyone who works with us stays with us. So we pay very decent salaries. We try to create like very transparent culture and conditions so that people absolutely know that they're safe working with us and they have a long term vision on working with us and as a result we see also that people are starting to spend which is very nice to see like on the first year they simply work for a salary and in the second and third year they start feeling security from the company and also start developing their spending back home in the families. You have to try to imagine an environment where the unemployment is roughly 30 to 40 percent. That's in the countries that we work in and especially in the countryside. So the difference we can make for those who are working with us is huge.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and let's not forget, you need customers to be able to buy your produce at the
SPEAKER_00end. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,
SPEAKER_01it would be great if you automate, no, it wouldn't be, but it could be like an entrepreneur's dream to automate everything, but at the end, nobody can buy your tomatoes. Who are you producing for?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in fact, there are too many inputs in the greenhouse to fully optimize it. So it's a living product. It needs a hybrid,
SPEAKER_01yeah. And in terms of... In this case, Kazakhstan, if that's a great example. Can you dive a bit deeper into some of the numbers if you want to share them just for people to have an idea of how asset-heavy and capital-heavy these type of investments are and what comes out of it and how you're structuring it now because you're thinking about a fund, you're thinking about different vehicles to speed up basically because you can obviously not finance it all yourself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's absolutely an industry which requires a lot of capital. So the setup itself in Kazakhstan is that we start with all the infrastructure works and the head house and the overhead buildings for 20 hectares plus a first five hectare of operation. That investment we're doing right now, this year, that's 18 million euros. That includes the co-gens, that includes all the overhead works and the five hectare operation. This particular one, funded we are co-funded by an agricultural fund which is the Silk Road Agricultural Growth Fund a private equity fund under international management and we invested ourselves along with them we had$12 million in equity and the remaining in local debt that allowed us of course this first phase to be up and running but as well the second five hectares so compared to the first five hectares we expected a budget of 80 million euros and the second one should be done for another let's say 12 so we end up at 30 million for the first 10 hectares operation that's high but that's that's high because of the large part of which is is coming from the from the cogens so normally you would look at roughly like the rough numbers 200 euros per square meter so 2 million per per hectare investment
SPEAKER_01and you're
SPEAKER_00about 50
SPEAKER_01percent up but also because you're already building most of it for 20 hectares
SPEAKER_00right yeah yeah yeah and and and that cogen part so uh our our returns are also higher we we generate we generate our electricity ourselves
SPEAKER_01uh so your fixed costs are higher but your input costs are a lot
SPEAKER_00lower yeah exactly exactly so the the cogens itself have a return of five years Normally, we look at the greenhouses as, well, based on a 2 million euro investment per year, you might expect a 1 million euro revenue per year and roughly, let's say, 300,000 to 400,000 EBITDA per year. So, let's say, for as long as CapEx divided by EBITDA is less than 6 or 7, then we're absolutely fine.
SPEAKER_01And in this case, you financed it. You mentioned local debt. That's a local bank. Or how did that work? And you mentioned equity, which came from this fund. Is that a normal setup for you guys?
SPEAKER_00Yes. So it works. So what we see now, what's happening is that there's quite an interest in investing in agriculture. So we are looking for those kind of funds or investors that are interested in fixed asset investments in agriculture. and which has a decent return. We come in as an operator, we invest along, so we show our commitment, we tender the construction, we build it, and we operate it. So that's our ideal structure that could be through a fund, so where we collectively create a fund, where we as an operator are also part of it, and we start building and operating greenhouses in emerging markets. Now we're focused on this part of the world, Central and Eastern Europe, but we are interested absolutely in the Middle East, which is a heavy importer of vegetables, and in Asia, to see if we can do a similar setup as we've done in Eastern Europe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I saw that. I think Emirates just ordered a gigantic indoor farming operation with one of the startups from the US to supply their airplanes, I think. Or I mean, the people in their airplanes, at least.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's on Salad. So that's pretty interesting to see indeed.
SPEAKER_01It's extremely interesting. And so that fund would be just to sketch a bit. Are you planning that for next year? Are you planning that for this year? And what would be more or less the size and what would would be the fund investing in? Is it debt? Is it equity?
SPEAKER_00So currently we're focused on closing the financial structure on Central Eastern Europe. So that will be in itself a fund focused on this part of the region. That's already funded and will be finalized this year. And then we're aiming to set up a new structure coming here for different regions. There will be a fund not on debt but owning the assets as well. So ideally, I would see a setup where we can raise a fund up to 100 million, which would require us to build 50 hectares in three or four locations. So ideally, you would have four regions with a scale to grow up to 15 to 20 hectares. That's the ideal size that one management team can run. So it requires one grow a set of junior agronomists, one sales team, one distribution team, and then you have your ideal setup. So if we would like to build such an operation for 50 hectares in Asia and Middle East, it would require roughly 100 million. And that could be a combination of equity and debt. But the funds that we're setting up, that would be purely on equity.
SPEAKER_01And what do you see in terms of interest from investors? You see a strong interest in agriculture, but I also imagine maybe these countries are not the first ones on the list and high-tech, mostly sustainable greenhouses aren't either. What do you see from investors when you pitch this and when you share this?
SPEAKER_00Well, actually, I do see quite a big interest in greenhouses. Especially, well, in the US and Canada, there are larger greenhouses. Some of them now are set up for producing cannabis for medical use and they're absolutely large scale even listed at the stock exchange in Canada so I see more professional industrialized investors large scale investors interested in greenhouses but I do see a lack of operators connected to it so the suppliers are there for the greenhouses but there's a lack of professional operators who can run it so I'm pretty optimistic in raising raising equity for those funds. We have several funds who are working with us right now who also have a mandate wider than Eastern Europe only. Eastern Europe in itself was quite a challenge, especially during those, I mean, during the last five years where we have been working in Eastern Europe during very turbulent times of devaluation of 50% of a crisis between Russia and Ukraine. Of course, the sanctions on Russia, so, I mean, The last five years have been rough, but still we managed to raise quite a substantial amount of equity and we are showing good returns.
SPEAKER_01And I want to be conscious of your time, so I want to close up with two questions actually. One, imagine there's a room full of smart impact investors and investors listening to this who are interested to get into regeneration in general, so not just soil, but also definitely local communities and of course fresh produce. What would be your Without giving investment advice, what would be your advice to start and look at first? Where would you advise them to learn and learn more about this sector and how to get involved?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the most sexy stories are about high-tech or new high-tech developments such as vertical farming. And those attract a lot, like a huge amount of capital right now. My advice would be to try to avoid stories on marketing and like all kind of, how to say, sexy stories on the industry in the end, it's food that needs to be produced on reasonable terms at a reasonable price for a consumer. And on vertical farms, as an example today, I mean, I'm very interested in, I see the industry as interesting and I see the technology as promising, but today, CAPEX per kilogram plus OPEX per kilogram cannot even be close to what we can do in high-tech greenhouses ourselves. So it doesn't add up in the end. and it's a niche product for a niche market which is in itself interesting but you can't scale it. So my advice would be just to always make sure that you keep your numbers right and compare it with the industry standards to make sure that you have a competitive advantage in the longer run. I don't think a business case could survive on marketing only and saying that vertical farming is the solution so consumers in the end are willing to pay three times more on the product in the end consumers are willing to pay a premium on a good high quality product but not three times more so I see the investors in the agriculture like the professional ones they are not distracted by any stories but they keep the numbers straight so that would be absolutely my advice the other one is agriculture comes in well it has its seasonality on pricing and it has a large influence on year by year on open field production and the competition with open field so you have to have quite good nerves and not getting nervous if one year it's less good than the other year in terms of pricing so it is a long term investment that you're making and you should be ready to overcome bad years of pricing or bad years of yields which you can't always influence
SPEAKER_01I think that's extremely good advice and to end And if you could, from the sustainability point of view, like wave your magic wand and change one thing in the greenhouse industry, maybe it will take 20 or 30 years. What would you change? Would it be the source of fertilizer? Would it be even better a predator insects that you're using? Maybe the CO2 part? What would be the highest point on your list that you would love to change to make your greenhouses even more sustainable?
SPEAKER_00I guess it's energy. So energy would be the combination of electricity and heating. And I do see huge opportunities in the tropics where there is a high amount of sunlight, but the temperatures are not correct, so you need to cool it down. Now, for obvious reasons, you would think about using solar energy in such locations to... well, to supply your equipments with energy to cool down. Now, that doesn't always work because you need the same sun for producing your goods as well. So you need the same sun for the plants as well. If you can somehow develop a greenhouse which has glass on top which can generate electricity plus still leaves enough sunlight for the plants, then that would be absolutely a game.
SPEAKER_01And maybe even shade it in a way that they don't burn. Yeah, exactly. too much so you need to cool less and so it becomes an interesting yeah
SPEAKER_00you have a lot of so basically you have a lot of surface on a greenhouse and the buildings around it enough to equip solar panels and I think that's a very promising combination greenhouses and solar panels
SPEAKER_01to really harvest the maximum amount of solar energy you can get for both electricity and your solar plants on your plants basically wow thank you Dirk so much for you time and I'll definitely be checking in in your developments and have a great day. Thanks Gun. You just listened to an interview with Dirk Aleven of Food Ventures. I hope you learned something about vegetable greenhouse production and the business case behind it. Thank you for making the time to listen to this podcast and making it all the way till the end. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you found the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast valuable, there are a few simple ways you can use to support it. Number one, rate and review the podcast on your podcast Thank you so much and see you at the next podcast.