Q&A: Freight Farms' Rick Vanzura talks partnering with schools and universities

According to Freight Farms CEO, Rick Vanzura, universities and community-based organizations are a good fit for the business because they fit in with the company's goal of democratizing and localizing food production. In addition to research and growers, Vanzura says they have agreements with various high schools and universities around the United States. 

This Q&A has been edited for style and clarity.

Produce Grower: When you talk to a university, what is the pitch? Does it take much convincing?

Rick Vanzura: Schools grew as a proposition, I think, really quickly. We have no issue on getting sponsorship from somebody at these institutions. The real issue is just going through the capital expenditure process and making sure they are able explain it fully to whoever has to end up approving and finance the purchase. Particularly for schools, they tend to focus less on the locally grown produce for themselves - some do food distribution - but what they really appreciate about it is the engagement opportunities and the formal research opportunities. 

PG: Is there a school that you think best exemplifies what you guys are doing with schools and what the path forward for this continuing to be a big part of what you guys do as a business? 

RV: I think it's Mountain Vista [High School] in California where they have a program that runs the farms and makes a business out of it and they take a lot of pride in it. It's a demonstration of how simple it is to operate the farm - you can create a business out of it using high school students. I think it's great to see how much they've taken ownership of the program and really learned business as well as agricultural skills through the club.

At the university level, there's a ton of great examples. But I've really enjoyed working with the University of Auburn where students are trained on the technology and they are constantly doing experimentation on different techniques to pull out different characteristics in crops or drive yields. And they collaborate with our different farmers, so they spend time interacting MGM Greens in Birmingham, Alabama that uses our farms to supply their restaurants. With that Auburn, you have the connection between research and the farmer community and participating in that community as cool. 

PG: Aside from the revenue, how helpful has it been to get insight into what can be grown well in Freight Farm? 

RV: It's hugely valuable. And it goes both ways. Auburn being a good example where they spend as much time questioning our head of plant research, Dave Harris, about some of the things he was trying and what he's seen driving yields as they shared information. Whether that information is shared directly or in research papers, that's been valuable just like our community in general has been valuable. That's one of the things we've focused the most on, is adding as many members of the community, both educational and non-educational, so we can all improve what we are doing. 

PG: How do you see these kind of business opportunities growing vs. other options? 

RV: I think they'll grow at about the same rate. I think that'll continue to be true because as we broaden the crop ranges we can develop, we can drive better economics from the farm. The more agricultural programs that are interested in colleges, the more K-12 schools will be interested in introducing their students to it. And if when we add more crops, it makes more sense for small business owners. So both of them we see as big markets that have grown rapidly for several years and I think that will continue.