Cloudponics — Growing Plants from The Cloud
Continuing my Founder Interview series, this interview focuses around how our connected world is influencing the future of how we make our food and changing the game for the cannabis industry. Here ismy interview with Nicolas Ruiz and Pepijn Krogt, Co-Founders of Cloudponics (Fall ’15 Class).
First things first, do you see yourself as a Cannabis company or a plant growing (AgTech) company?
We are an AgTech company that develops internet-connected in-home and professional grow systems for plants, be it vegetables, flowers or cannabis.
Our vision is that technology must have an important role in the global and growing problem of food production. This problem includes not being able to produce as much food as is needed, and not producing quality food that has the proper nutritional value for the population. We have focused on the in-home growing of cannabis for a couple of reasons. The first one is that growing quality cannabis is a truly difficult task, so by taking on that challenge and developing a system that grows top quality cannabis, we are proving a system that can optimally grow virtually any kind of plant. The second reason is that cannabis consumers spend more of their monthly budget on cannabis than say, lettuces, and, therefore, would be willing to invest in our technology. We firmly believe in a sustainable future where people have the ability to drive economic benefit and provide for themselves by growing at home in a cost efficient way while ensuring the best possible quality.
What are some the hurdles that you’ve had to face by having a product in the Cannabis?
Starting a tech company is difficult. As the saying goes, hardware is hard, so starting a hardware company is even harder. Now if on top of that you decide to be in the cannabis space, you must really have some thick skin and allow yourself not get frustrated when presented with hurdle after hurdle. Serving the cannabis industry presents additional challenges on different levels. The first one is on the investment side. An overwhelming majority of investors simply don’t invest in the cannabis space because they don’t know it and consider it risky. Most investors see the huge potential, but some are unwilling to invest before it is legalized on a federal level. Although there are some investors who are investing in this space, it’s still a small niche that has only recently started organizing. On the marketing side, there are a bunch of hurdles since you can’t openly market cannabis products in mainstream channels such as Google or Facebook.
We have been banned from using crowd-funding platforms, as well as using payment services for our first sales.
It seems the only way forward is using tongue-in-cheek language and be ready for someone to pull the plug on our marketing campaign. The final area where we had experienced some minor push back is with public opinion. But this is turning around. We have seen a lot of people change their minds over the past couple of years in favor of cannabis especially given all the published reports on the medicinal benefits of cannabis. The media have also taken a more favorable approach.
Here in California we’ve been in a drought, how to does AgTech and IoT working to solve for food growth?
We believe that a sustainable solution to the drought and food production problem is the use of hydroponics. Hydroponics, a technique that has been used for decades, essentially doesn’t use any soil, so the plant roots are grown directly in water with a nutrient mix. Besides offering bigger yields and shorter growth periods, hydroponics has a huge advantage when compared to the traditional soil agriculture practices we’ve been using since the beginning of mankind. It uses only 10% of the water when compared to traditional soil agriculture, since the water is re-circulated and not wasted as it is with traditional farming (which also contaminates the soil with all sorts of pesticides and chemicals). Another very important fact is that 70% of the world’s water consumption is used for agriculture. If we can significantly reduce the amount of water used for agriculture by using hydroponics, we can single-handedly solve California’s drought problem by focusing on how to make water consumption in agriculture more efficient.
Hydroponics has been around for a long time now, so why is it not being used on a massive scale?
Hydroponics has two major disadvantages when compared to traditional soil agriculture. The first one is that the initial setup cost is higher, since you need equipment to support the plants and water. The second one is that hydroponics is highly complex and requires a hands on approach with a professional that is monitoring and making corrections at all times, which is very time consuming and expensive. With Cloudponics, this process is automated and therefore the operational costs are significantly reduced, making a hydroponic growing environment more financially feasible.
By the year 2050 there will be a world population of 9 billion people. At the current rate of food production, there will be significant food shortage. How do you see the future of food production?
Related to the last question, we believe that hydroponics is an important part of the solution for producing quality food to provide for the world’s population. Another important part of the solution is vertical farming and the use of artificial lights. All of these techniques will allow us to produce food in urban areas and in places where weather and soil conditions haven’t made it possible to grow plants until now. By growing right where the food is being consumed, we can significantly reduce the pollution and costs associated with transportation of food across the globe. Urban farms powered by hydroponics, LED lighting and vertical farming will allow food to be produced year round anywhere in the world, regardless of weather, seasons and soil quality. Cloudponics is a remote monitoring and controlling technology that acts as the brain behind the efficient use of these techniques.
By 2050, AgTech and IoT will play a major role in producing highly nutritious food all over the world, where the name of the game is reducing waste, maximizing efficiency and eliminating the use of toxic pesticides by using closed and controlled environments. We look forward to being part of that solution.
Cloudponics GoBox is available today for pre-order on their website at www.cloudponics.com
