75. Will Brown on Vertical Farming: Hype, Hard Truths, and What Actually Works.

Can vertical farming become a viable option for supplying fresh produce during a crisis? How do the markets for vertically farmed produce change between cultures? What does the future look like for vertical farming?
This week Kit and Ray speak to farmer, entrepreneur and Nuffield Scholar Will Brown. Will explains his background in agriculture, growing up on a tenanted farm in Oxfordshire and how his experience in frozen food wholesale helped him to build a small scale vertical farming business alongside taking over the family arable operation. Will explains how a Nuffield Scholarship turbocharged his learning about vertical farming and also led to an epiphany about the business model for vertical farming alongside traditional farming and why he had to make a difficult call about continuing to build his vertical farming business, OX3 Greens.
Along the way Will turns the tables and gives Ray and Kit a grilling about autonomous agriculture and asks when he can have robotic tractors to help free up his time for him to make more entrepreneurial decisions on the farm.
Will is a forwarding thinking farmer with a passion for new technologies and business models and this episode is a must listen for engineers, farmers and founders.