Urban Farming Initiative Newsletter #2: Highlights from Cultivate Conference & State of the Green Industry

Our mission: build economies around urban farming!

Author

Kevin Mackey
July 17, 2024

Cultivate 2024 was a great time in Columbus this year! I tip my hat to American Hort for putting on a well delivered conference. 

As a horticulture industry event, the halls are filled with beautiful plants and scenery. It’s a cool place to be because it has a very homey feel, which is not what you typically feel at large conferences. 

Shout out to Jeremiah Landi and Landi Industries, who I spent the day walking the corridors with. We got to meet a ton of great vendors who have built cool new technologies and approaches that will benefit our farms. A couple of vendors and companies that stood out to us:

Pipp Horticulture - Innovative Racks. Image below.

Jiffy Group - Substrates and growing mediums.

Apogee Instruments - Multi-sensor monitor.

American National Insurance - Agribusiness Insurance

Argos Software - ERP for green logistics businesses.

Genap - Water Storage.

Water storage to keep our systems flowing.

Innovative racks that will fit very well in our container farms.

Finally, the State of the Green Industry presentations on Monday morning were terrific. I thought the way the speakers handled politics was brilliant in that they acknowledged we’re in an intense election year, yet they never took a side in any way but merely referenced facts about the industry to reveal what consumers are doing - consumers of ALL parties!

Good slide to lighten the mood. There seemed to be zero interest in talking politics.

The chart in the middle shows how differently parties feel, yet both keep spending.

I was moved by Matt Mika, VP of Advocacy and Government Affairs, revealing he had actually been shot at the Congressional baseball game in 2017. What a powerful moment for that man to be standing there saying he wants life, to live, and not to fight each other. Well done. 

Dr. Charlie Hall finished the show and came packed with stats! I loved it. Here are a couple of his slides that I thought were particularly astute to how consumers are spending and feeling right now. In general, the messaging to industry players was: this year is slightly down from last year but still up significantly since pre-pandemic levels with growth expected to continue throughout the decade. Don’t panic and let’s see what these new spending trends mean relative to the longer-term trends, which are still very attractive in this $350 billion industry.

Weather, including being too hot, directly impacts sales and revenue.

This year may be down slightly, but overall numbers are way up from pre-pandemic.

Housing starts are down, which has an impact on horticulture and landscaping spend.

Slightly down year over year. The message was, “don’t read into what this means yet.”

Some regions doing better/worse than others.

Good breakdown of spend in the industry.

Projected revenue in the industry expected to keep growing.

Expenses also expected to increase, but not as much as growth.

CEA + Urban Farming Jobs and Entrepreneurial Opportunities

In each newsletter, we'll feature job openings in the CEA and urban farming sectors. Because we’re central to the Midwest right now, a lot of these opportunities will be near the center of the country, likely in Ohio, as we get started.

There were also job postings at Cultivate, which you can see here (sorry for the poor image quality; zoom in to view).

If you are looking for work or hiring, reach out to our in-house recruiting team to get some help at [email protected].

Help Us Fundraise!

$50,000 will help us fund our initial prototype in Cincinnati, build our virtual farmer’s market ordering and procurement system, and hire our first general manager and interns.

$1 million will help us build 20 farms that will extend across Ohio and operate for a year, at which point we will be cashflow positive to sustain our efforts permanently!

Minimum check size is $5,000. Right now I am self funding and I’m at the end of what I can do financially, so your help is greatly appreciated!

Please send introductions or your personal interest to [email protected].