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Episode 6 | Dr. Peter Konjoian
70 Plays1 year ago
Dr. Peter Konjoian has been involved in the U.S. greenhouse industry's commercial and research areas for over four decades. He began his career as a faculty member at the University of Maryland, returned home to Andover, Massachusetts, to run his parents’ greenhouse operation, then formed Konjoian’s Horticulture Education Services (KHES).
Today, Dr. Konjoian continues to offer third-party independent research through KHES and co-hosts The Grower and the Economist podcast.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:03
Speaker
you
00:00:39
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to the Ag Show podcast. Again, I am your host, Johan Buck, a.k.a. Doc Buck, and joining me today is a very special friend of mine. Oh, goodness, I think we are going on a decade putting up with each other. And my last guest is my current guest's fellow co-host on a podcast called The Grower and the Economist. My dear friend, Dr. Peter Conjoyan. Hello, sir. How are you?
00:01:09
Speaker
Well, hello, Dr. Buck. Hi, Johan. It's nice to be with you. Well, thank you for joining me today. I know we've had to kind of reschedule due to our busy schedules and whatnot. So I appreciate your patience and good to nail down some time with you. So I'll do a brief introduction and then I'd like you to jump into maybe your background and upbringing.
LED Technology Evolution Discussion
00:01:34
Speaker
Peter and I met at an event called Cultivate, formerly the Ohio Short Course. It was about a decade ago and I was working for a greenhouse distribution company.
00:01:50
Speaker
And this is when horticultural LED lighting was really kind of starting to take off prior to that it was more LEDs were more research oriented and you know chime in in a moment there was a lot of hesitancy around LEDs oh it'll never work this that in the other and what have you and there were a lot of companies.
00:02:14
Speaker
And I can always compare when I discuss biostimulants, I use the analogy or the comparison to LED technology. There were a lot of companies making a lot of claims and only a fraction of those companies were actually performing. And you, Peter, were hosting a group.
00:02:32
Speaker
So you were taking people around to different booths at Cultivate, which is a large trade show and educational seminars. And I was working the booth for this company. My friends at Horde Americas, if you're in the greenhouse business and if you don't know of Horde Americas, give them a look. They're a great company.
00:02:47
Speaker
And we were one of the early adopters of LED technology. And Peter, you came by with a group and we hit it off. The next thing I know, I'm visiting your operation in Massachusetts and we're drawing up research plans and looking at how you could help us with research. And gosh, we've worked on several projects since then and have become friends throughout that course of time.
00:03:11
Speaker
You know, Johan, it's very interesting that you're starting off taking us back to that original, because most of the time together, you and me, has been in the arena of biostimulants. And I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point as we meander through this conversation. But yes, you're allowing me to reflect on how fast
00:03:37
Speaker
how quickly this arena of LED lighting has changed and evolved and progressed. Coincidentally, in the hour before hooking up with you this morning, I was reading a current issue of Greenhouse Product News Magazine, GPN, and two of our colleagues have lighting articles in this current issue. One is Dr. Eric Runkle at Michigan State University, and he wrote an article
00:04:06
Speaker
encapsulating what you just said, how much LED lighting has evolved and how much better it is now than it was a decade ago. And then another shared colleague of ours, Mark Van Ersel at the University of Georgia, was speaking about LED controls and how the
00:04:27
Speaker
technology of the controller that is now telling the LED when to burn, when to rest, and the dimmability of the new LED bulbs. So it's all fascinating, Johan. It's changing. It's like the earth's shifting under our feet. It's changing so quickly. And for me, having grown up in New England, we have a saying, if you don't like the weather, wait a minute. And I think
00:04:56
Speaker
Isn't it true with some of the technology, whether it's biostimulants or LED lighting, it's okay. If you don't like where we are today, just blink and wait a minute and we'll catch up. We'll get there.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, you got that right. And two people that I respect very well. It's also enjoyable to see how their careers have evolved over time. Dr. Runkle's not so much. He's primarily been involved in LEDs. I think early on he was doing a lot of temperature work, if I remember correctly.
00:05:31
Speaker
And, you know, then Mark, I remember working with him on early sensors. So to see him move towards the control side of LEDs is not a surprise to me if you've known Mark long enough. He's always dabbled in in those types of things. And now, I shouldn't say he's no longer dabbling. He has his own company around this. And
Peter's Background and Transition to Floriculture
00:05:53
Speaker
it has been interesting to see. And it hasn't taken that long, 10 years, give or take, as much as things have changed.
00:06:00
Speaker
So speaking of changing over time, let's fill in the listeners a little bit more about who you are. Are you from Massachusetts originally? How did you get into horticulture? Let's go back a ways and tell us a little bit about yourself.
00:06:17
Speaker
All right, Johan, thank you for asking. Yes, I grew up here in Eastern Massachusetts. I'm in a town named Andover, about 30 miles north and west of Boston. And I grew up on a small family truck farm.
00:06:34
Speaker
truck farm for for those every now and then you get someone that doesn't understand what the phrase truck farm or what that terminology means and and that's a small farm that grows produce we add row crops to special we specialized in trellis tomatoes cucumbers zucchini squash and butternut squash in the fall and
00:06:58
Speaker
A truck farm is simply a farm where you load up your produce in a truck, take it into a wholesale distribution center, and off you go. That's how we did our business. It was in 1960 that my father saw handwriting on the wall in terms of making a living farming in New England.
00:07:20
Speaker
And he built his first greenhouse in 1960 and decided that flowers and ornamental crops was an area or category of farming that he wanted to get into. So over the course of through the sixties into the mid seventies, we had this
00:07:40
Speaker
a dynamic in the family farm Yohan where the greenhouse business was growing and expanding at the same time the farm was kind of retracting a little bit. So we had this playing where over the course of this dozen years or so we were doing both, which is fairly common.
00:08:02
Speaker
for a lot of horticultural operations, have greenhouse operation, and then move out to the farm in the summertime. So I'm going to assume that we will enjoy conversing back and forth. So instead of me just talking 10 minutes about my background, let me give you opportunities to jump in. So we're in the 60s, early 70s.
00:08:25
Speaker
family truck farmers operating. The ornamental greenhouse slash garden center operation is rising and so it was a mixed operation and those roots of mine continue to serve me today, Johan.
00:08:45
Speaker
When when you and i first met i was still primarily a horticultural researcher consultant educator in ornamental horticulture greenhouse operations spending plants etc and since you and i met in this past decade i just felt.
00:09:02
Speaker
flip-flopped completely. And going back to the 60s and 70s, you know, now I'm focusing more on hydroponic food production and edible crop production. And the way I describe my research is, during this decade, as I've shifted my emphasis, I've called my umbrella research project From Flowers to Food.
00:09:25
Speaker
And so for me, it's closing that circle. I started out with farming as a youngster. We shifted to Garden Center for the majority of my career. And now I'm returning to those original roots and getting back to the farming and the agriculture side.
00:09:42
Speaker
What were some of the lessons you learned early on in your truck farm experience and going into floriculture? 60s and 70s. When I hear greenhouse agriculture, 70s, I start thinking about the difficulties of heating greenhouses in the upper Midwest on the East Coast and the challenges that farms faced as a result, I think, of the oil embargo.
00:10:03
Speaker
right before i was born i was born nineteen eighty so i can make was born in wasn't aware of the world for a few years but you know looking back on the history of green house agriculture that's one of the things that has come up and i think we'll get into this in a moment but it's interesting in ohio and east the the greenhouse agriculture business kind of because of those challenges went away and now it's interesting to see all those companies coming back into
00:10:29
Speaker
Ohio for example building sixty eighty hundred more acres of greenhouses but again my original question as a youngster growing up on the family truck farm what was what was that like for you.
00:10:42
Speaker
Oh, what a perceptive question, Johan. You're allowing me now, I'm being washed over with a flood of childhood memories. Oh, 99 of a hundred of my comments and memories are so positive. They're so good. I have such a fond memory of growing up on a farm.
00:11:06
Speaker
Part of that was that we lived with my mother's parents. So for the first 10 years of my life, I grew up in a three generation household. My grandparents fled Armenia during the Turkish genocide in the late 19 teens. They arrived in the United States with
00:11:32
Speaker
nothing and found their way to purchasing a plot of land, starting a farm, starting a family. So I've got such memories of growing up in this household. It was a broken English and mixed with Armenian. So it was a, you know, spoke both languages. And to this day, I can close my eyes, Johan, and see myself as maybe a seven or eight year old on my knees in the field.
00:12:02
Speaker
with a handful of corn or bean seeds, and my grandfather standing above me with a hoe, and in Armenian he would be saying to me, put the seeds closer or put the seeds further apart. I'd drop the seeds and he would cover them with a hoe.
00:12:17
Speaker
All the while with a cigarette hanging from his lips yo han and in those days some of these guys could smoke they would never take the cigarette out of their mouth and half of the cigarette it was the ash just hanging there and it didn't fall off so so yeah all kinds of memories.
00:12:35
Speaker
You jump in and we'll keep toggling back and forth. I want to say kudos to you. So before you were born, you now understand the history. Yes, I was able to live through that original Arab oil embargo in the 70s that changed everything. And a few years
00:12:59
Speaker
after, as that was unfolding, I found myself at Ohio State University starting my graduate education. And it was in the crunch of all of this energy emergency. And I remember at that point, there were some greenhouse engineers at Ohio State that came up with the concept of putting a double layer of polyethylene over a glass greenhouse that we came to know as double poly over glass.
00:13:27
Speaker
just to insulate and cut down a little bit on that heat leakage and that energy usage. So yeah, a lot has changed.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah, you bring up the double poly. That's one of the things that I discussed with another friend of mine, Dr. Merle Jensen, who attended Rutgers. So I think, yeah, there was probably the similar research going on at the same time as there was Professor Roberts at Rutgers, who I think came up with double poly. And I'm sure then other universities started to conduct research. And that's the kind of greenhouse that I started in, was
00:13:59
Speaker
a greenhouse that utilized double poly in north central Kansas. Oh gosh, that was such a challenge. Challenge isn't the word I want to use, but that's the word I'm going to use for the podcast, putting on that double poly. I may have missed that your grandparents were the first generation that came over from Armenia during that time, in an event that I think, quite frankly, a lot of people probably aren't aware of.
00:14:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of under the radar. It had such an effect on their generation. My grandparents fled as teenagers. They didn't know each other. They found their way to the United States on their own. My grandmother's path was filled with violent memories of what was happening.
00:14:56
Speaker
My dad has stories of his parents where his mother had an infant daughter taken from her arms and the Turks would raise them as servants. But not to go into a dark side on that, but it's a perceptive question you asked me, Johan, because my childhood and all of what we're talking about is what made me what I am. And if my career has been
00:15:24
Speaker
dedicated to agriculture or let's say horticulture. I can trace it very easily back two generations to grandparents. And I say anyone in agriculture who is able to do that, many can. It's a precious, precious part of our lives.
00:15:44
Speaker
What was college like for you? You mentioned Ohio State. I can't remember. Did you get your PhD or master's from the Ohio State and then did some teaching for a while too, didn't you? I did.
Educational Journeys of Johan and Peter
00:15:54
Speaker
The path, I'll back up a step. By the way, yes, you're absolutely correct. Rutgers University during that period of time was the anchor for greenhouse engineering
00:16:07
Speaker
and help lead the way through that first energy embargo and crisis, and then it spawned engineering accomplishments after that. So after high school, I did my undergraduate work, Johan, at the University of New Hampshire.
00:16:28
Speaker
And the reason that I picked UNH over UMass was that UNH was an hour away from the farm and UMass was two hours away. And being a proud introvert, I was also a little more drawn to the smaller student body and population at New Hampshire. So I did my undergraduate work there with the intention of returning to the family farm and greenhouse operation.
00:16:56
Speaker
And as you've walked your path that included graduate school and advanced degrees, I'm sure you have similar stories. It was during my junior and senior year where my undergraduate advisor planted the seed that there's other options. And I had done well enough on the academic side of my UNH work that
00:17:21
Speaker
that he started steering me toward graduate school. And my folks were all for it, to their credit. And Johan, after each of my three degrees, after each one, I wanted to come back home to the family farm.
00:17:37
Speaker
But my parents kept pushing. And in essence, we're saying, go see what the world has to offer. We'll always be here. You can always come back. And that's exactly how it played out for me. So from UNH, I then went up to Ohio State out in Columbus.
00:17:58
Speaker
And funny story, Johan, during my career, my undergraduate career at UNH, I was home every weekend and I graduated early. I graduated in three and a half years because I loaded up on course. I took as many credits as I could and figured, okay, that second half of my senior year, I'll have a living laboratory. I'll graduate and then I'll go back into the family farm and greenhouse and, you know,
00:18:27
Speaker
When i knew i was going on to graduate school it was just this what do they call it now a gap year where she takes the year off it was for me it was like a gap semester where i finished my bachelor's degree and had essentially nine months before i ended up in columbus so then it at ohio state that was.
00:18:47
Speaker
now for a small town, New England, or that was the big time. So where the UNH undergraduate body population was 10,000, Johan, Ohio State's graduate student population was 10,000. Oh, here's something. I want to know if you were young enough where you still did this. About half of the weekends at UNH that I would come home to work, I would hitchhike.
00:19:17
Speaker
and throw my thumb out with my laundry bag over my shoulder. And it's so sad. It makes me sad today that society is at a place where the danger and, you know, you can't allow that to happen anymore. But I met such interesting people hitchhiking home from Durham, New Hampshire to Andover, Johan.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a shame, but it's cool that you had that experience. We have so many things in common. I think we've shared some of these before, but a lot of your experiences are very similar to my college experiences, starting with, well, I did not grow up on a farm. I got involved in FFA, and of course, as you know, I started picking tomatoes at the local greenhouse there.
00:20:01
Speaker
in Plainville, Kansas in 1996 and that kind of set me on the stage. I was not a good student in high school the first year and a half or so and then really just kind of flip the switch and just got after it. FFA really had some great teachers at our small public school there in Plainville and they really turned me on to science and
00:20:23
Speaker
Then I went to Fort Hays State University. Similar to your experience, I probably could have gone to K-State. That's the land-grant institution in Kansas, and they have a good ag program. However, my family's situation was such that they couldn't pay for me to go to school, and I did their college.
00:20:42
Speaker
I really there were a couple factors when i really wasn't in a hurry to leave my hometown i knew early on during high school once i flip that switch that i want to attend the university of arizona. It was how do i get there and going there for a bachelor's was out of the question when i don't think i was personally ready and financially ready.
00:21:03
Speaker
So I started looking at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas. They have a good ag program and it was affordable and it was 20 miles from home. So I could live at home. Parents said, hey, we can give you room and board. Can't pay for college. You get in, you can stay here as long as you like. I said,
00:21:20
Speaker
Deal so got into for a state university originally i was gonna go after a biology degree cuz they had a professor there he's retired at the time he's retired now is named god joe thomas and dr joe had a botany class so in my mind is okay i gotta take i gotta be a biology major.
00:21:38
Speaker
I received a phone call one day after I still had some time. I was applying and I received a phone call and it was the department chair of the AG department at Fort Hayes. Hi, Johan. This is Dr. Great House. How are you? Great. I see you're looking at Fort Hayes State University. Good choice. I see you're looking at the biology department. Why? And I explained to him and he said, well,
00:22:02
Speaker
He said, you could still take that botany course. Why don't you give the AG department a look? We have lots of scholarships. I was like, oh, OK. So I ended up in the AG department and ended up with a lot of scholarships and started looking at that graduate school opportunity very early on, which I discussed with Dr. Jensen. I reached out to him first semester.
00:22:22
Speaker
And like you said the unh to ohio state mirrors or parallels very similarly to what my experience was five thousand student body. At for a state university at the time compared to gosh i think university of arizona's total student population in the early two thousands may have been twenty five thousand.
00:22:43
Speaker
So it was quite the change, but it was a great experience and it's interesting how similar our experiences have been. There are so many that have stories like this, Johan. For all the complaining we hear about our educational system in the United States, and absolutely there are things that we need to improve upon and need to address and accessibility, et cetera.
00:23:12
Speaker
But there's a part of this that I still pinch myself. I'm 69 years old, and I still pinch myself and say, as I reflect, gee, you had an opportunity as this small town boy from, you know, kind of Nowhere'sville, Massachusetts.
00:23:32
Speaker
to rise up and take on our educational system and kind of ride it as far as it would let you ride. Now, you and I could have both done postdocs. I went after my PhD straight into the academic community and started teaching at the University of Maryland.
00:23:50
Speaker
in college parks. So I followed a pretty traditional path. This was in 1982, Johan. Since then, during my career and now your early years, a lot has changed in that, in my opinion, in horticulture,
00:24:10
Speaker
We have more PhDs outside of the academic community than we do now inside. I've seen this trend and this shift where horticulture has become much more technical, much more scientific, and it has required or it supports having this advanced education within its ranks, not just at the university level as professors and researchers.
00:24:40
Speaker
in several stops along your career have always been kind and thoughtful and brought private sector research, which is how I make my living now.
00:24:52
Speaker
to me and we've worked on some exciting projects together. There's more and more of that going on, Johan, and I see more of our university colleagues now making an effort to reach out and work more with the private sector where two or three decades ago, if you were conducting research outside of
00:25:16
Speaker
Academia, it was either frowned upon or it wasn't taken seriously, but today we've got more equal footing.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yeah. What prompted
Peter's Shift from Academia to Agriculture
00:25:26
Speaker
you? Did you leave the University of Maryland to then come back to Massachusetts? How did you make that leap? What prompted you to exit academia to pursue your next goal? What was next in life for you? For me to answer that, I first have to say, again, kudos to you as an interviewer. The questions that
00:25:47
Speaker
You're asking, there's just so perceptive, Johan, and I hope it's sounding as interesting to your listeners as it is for you and me to talk about this live. That's an excellent question. It's one that the answer to the question I think about daily, and answer your question, why did I leave academia the following?
00:26:13
Speaker
I spent two years on the faculty at Maryland and I loved every minute of it. I enjoyed the teaching. I was just starting to get my research program going. My wife and I at the time had our first of two children.
00:26:31
Speaker
And Johan, it's emotional for me, but I enjoy describing things this way. I think I paid my parents the ultimate compliment, the driving reason for me leaving academia and with my wife's support.
00:26:52
Speaker
we wanted or chose to bring our children up in an agricultural environment as similar as we could to how I was raised.
00:27:03
Speaker
So that reason, Johan, had nothing to do with the job at Maryland. I loved it. So when I reflect, I say, how lucky were you that you were able to choose between something you loved and something you loved even more? And oftentimes career paths are adjusted and changes are made out of necessity. And sometimes they're not
00:27:30
Speaker
You know, it's like, you know, a restructuring of company or downsizing or laid off or whatever. So my condition or situation was not that at all.
00:27:42
Speaker
And to this day, Johan, I miss, I gave up the opportunity or the privilege of advising graduate students when I left the academic world and teaching undergraduates. So the only regret that I have to this day is that I was not able to train graduate students, masters and PhDs.
00:28:06
Speaker
I found ways to sit on advisory committees, graduate advisory committees with adjunct appointments here and there, Johan. So I've been able to scratch the itch a little bit. But it was just that, remember when I said a few minutes ago, after each degree, I kind of found my way to close that circle. And while my children did not grow up in a three-generation household, my wife's parents were two doors down the street.
00:28:35
Speaker
Um, so our children had all four of their grandparents in their daily lives. And that's something that we consider precious to the state. The four of them have now passed, uh, the grandparents, but, uh, and now we're the grandparents. So, so that, that was, that's the career path, Johan. I, I, uh, I love my time at Maryland. I was teaching there when Boomeros Iosin was quarterbacking the Maryland Terrapins.
00:29:04
Speaker
Well, it's a very honorable reason that you did what you did. And I commend you for that. Well, thank you. Similar decisions made on my behalf is graduated college as well. Graduated during the recession, had a young family.
00:29:20
Speaker
No postdoc for me. I was done with graduate school. And so when, as I hear you, I mean, that's, yeah, you made, you made a good either, either one is a good decision. That's right. It was a win-win. There was no, there was no losing, Johan.
00:29:36
Speaker
Yeah, you're bringing up such nice analogies between the career paths. To this day, I still enjoy interacting with college age, the late teens, early 20s, young adults.
00:29:51
Speaker
I don't have the tolerance for primary school teaching. I could not be a middle school or a high school teacher. But you give me students that want to be there and are choosing to be in class. And that's what I enjoy most. So when you moved back to Massachusetts, did you form your company right away and start doing the independent research?
00:30:19
Speaker
No, I did not. The first task, and my parents made it real clear, you know, Peter, if you're going to come home, the business needs to grow. So during the first five years or so, you know, I left Maryland in 82. So through the mid 80s, Johan, it was all about building greenhouses. And my dad welded, so we built all of our own structures and
00:30:46
Speaker
I enjoyed working with him. I learned basic electrical and plumbing. He had the welding. We had the tractors excavating. So I was brought up with a philosophy from my dad, Johan, that if you can do it yourself, do it. And if you don't know how to do it, learn how to do it. So you don't have to depend on others.
00:31:12
Speaker
And I understand that there's a different philosophy that's opposite of that, that many people operate under. And it's, okay, my time's too valuable. I can hire somebody to do that. And there's place in agriculture for both of these philosophies. I am quite proud of the fact that my dad instilled in me that if you don't know how to do something, teach yourself.
00:31:37
Speaker
And I think that that goes along. It's quite parallel to graduate education that both you and I have experienced. If you don't know the answer to a question and you can design some research to answer it, you do that.
00:31:52
Speaker
So I'm sure that subconsciously some of these things that my dad taught me, and he was one without the benefit of even a high school education because he lost both of his parents, my fraternal grandparents when he was a teenager, for a man that didn't have the opportunity to finish high school to then be instilling in me someone who's pressed our educational system to its limit.
00:32:16
Speaker
Um, that's a really cool thing. So again, you can see that family magnet that keeps pulling me back. And I was fortunate that, you know, to answer your question, no, the first five years was all about building the family operation.
Research Work on Floral Plant Growth Regulator
00:32:31
Speaker
Then we get to the late eighties, Johan. And yes, I'm a trained researcher and I missed it. So I started, um, dabbling.
00:32:40
Speaker
In the family business, I take a corner of a greenhouse, and I first started doing some work that hearkened back to a master's project that my advisor had given me, and that was working with plant growth regulators on geranium crops. One of those growth regulators is a trade named Floral, which is a compound called ethafon. It's an ethylene
00:33:08
Speaker
hormone producing or delivering product and i started researching that you are not knowing a little did i know in the late eighties that what i was stumbling upon was going to be a twenty year research career that really defined me.
00:33:30
Speaker
As a researcher so so the my ethylene work i was able to accomplish in the commercial setting and i think it was whatever standing and goodwill or reputation i had cultivated your hand during my time in academia in graduate school and at maryland that i was i was accepted by by our colleagues.
00:33:57
Speaker
And and that's that's the rest of the story from my part of the floral project put me on the map. And from there, it allowed me to to do a lot of research, a lot of speaking, writing, et cetera. And I just built that project led built upon itself. Then I take it. And that's kind of snowballed into your company today.
00:34:21
Speaker
It did, Johan. It got to a point where as fast as I could conduct an experiment, there was a magazine article or a conference presentation waiting in the wings and the momentum started. So it was in 1992, I believe,
00:34:42
Speaker
that with my wife's assistance and support, I started my private research and consulting business. And then through the decade of the 90s into the first years of this century, I was wearing two hats. One was a commercial grower and two was a private sector researcher. Those were very active years.
00:35:09
Speaker
during my late 30s and through my 40s, and that's the part of your career that you're in now, right? So when I look back, whoa, I mean, that candle was being burnt on both ends, Johan, but it was, oh, the garden center and the greenhouses were booming. I refer in the ornamental industry,
00:35:33
Speaker
My audience is often hearing me refer back to the late, great 80s. It was during the 90s that mass marketing and the big box stores started to appear. And since then, a lot of our commercial production has shifted from small operations to some mega operations that you and I have both visited and stood in these greenhouses where you can hardly see the end of the greenhouse.
00:35:59
Speaker
So it was that late 80s, early 90s where everything was going great guns in the garden center ornamentals industry for small operations. And then it got to a point where my research business, Johan, grew to a point where I needed to cut back on the family commercial operation.
00:36:19
Speaker
And so here I am back in, you know, the sixties and seventies where I described to you earlier, we were building the greenhouse operation. The farm operation was being de-emphasized. So we were playing both sides of that. And, uh, lo and behold, I ended up in the nineties, uh, you know, playing both sides of this. Am I conducting research or am I growing a crop of geraniums? Well, I was doing both, but, uh, the research was, was pulling me, was drawing me.
00:36:50
Speaker
But I didn't want to give up the commercial grower, Johann. What do you think prompted companies to start looking and investing more in third-party research versus academic
Private vs Academic Research Investments
00:37:01
Speaker
research?
00:37:01
Speaker
Well, another great question. And you're going to have an answer to this being on the other side of the conversation. In my opinion, what I saw, or let's, here's a comment that I hear often, Johan, from companies that conduct contract research with me.
00:37:21
Speaker
And many of them also they will go to the private sector like to someone like myself and they will also go to a university or two because each of us can offer different things. So what I hear from them over the years is
00:37:38
Speaker
And I hear from them, we come to you, Peter, because we know you're the one doing the research. You're the one touching the plants, measuring the plants, interpreting how our product is behaving. Where we understand at a university it's being handed from the major advisor to a graduate student or an undergraduate student.
00:37:58
Speaker
Now i'm torn your hand i don't want this to sound like it's a criticism because it is absolutely how we teach our young scientists how to conduct science we need to give these types of experiments.
00:38:14
Speaker
And I said to you, one of my master's projects was working on these plant growth regulators. That was something that my advisor, Dr. Harry Tayama, gave me. The experiment was designed. It wasn't me going to a library, coming up with a question. This was him training me how to conduct horticultural research in the floriculture realm.
00:38:38
Speaker
So, I don't want this to sound like a criticism at all, but I have heard that from manufacturers and companies. One story was, well, all we got from the university was handwritten data on a piece of paper. Well, that's not what they get when they're working with the actual scientists. Let me stop there and let you pipe in.
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think my experience has been a couple of things and I agree with you. It is the way that young researchers and scientists learn how to conduct research. I think one of the challenges that I've seen over the years is simply with that comes the expectation that the time to get the data in the final report is equivalent to the time it takes to get a master's or PhD degree. In companies as quickly as things are moving, it's time to market. It's proving
00:39:33
Speaker
independently that their product does what they claim it to do or discovering maybe new ways that a product can be used. So it's kind of a difference between basic and applied research.
00:39:46
Speaker
Basic research? Yeah. Very geared towards academia. Applied research anymore. It's like, hey, if we can get the answers we need in six months versus two years, a company's going to decide to do it in six months. It's time to market. And it's not always about, and I'll reflect on again, on my friend, Dr. Jensen, one of the things I've
00:40:09
Speaker
I heard several times during my master's review because I worked on an applied research project was it's not always about the five percent significant difference. It's the five dollar difference. So if those two align because then you have because you're always going to have your critics. Well, was this was it statistically different? Yes. And here's your ROI, which is what a grower is going to be looking at. Oh, wow.
00:40:30
Speaker
OK, it's statistically significant, but what's my return on investment? And so there's a lot of different challenges. And I've been in situations many times where I would have preferred to have ran a trial through a university when you start looking at overhead and start looking at timing, et cetera. And from a business standpoint, it's like, it makes it very difficult to make that decision. And it is on a case by case basis. So I'm with you. Having gone through
00:41:00
Speaker
that system, I certainly want to see as many opportunities be afforded to universities. And probably another challenge from the academic side is the way that the departments have evolved over time. Of course, I've not been on the other side of it as a faculty member,
00:41:19
Speaker
But I was a graduate student during a time where departments were shifting from the department no longer really providing the financial support. Faculty members had to go out and search for the grants, et cetera, et cetera. So it's been kind of a combination. And to that, additionally, companies have been investing in their own R&D departments. So now they have put forth
00:41:41
Speaker
the dollars to hire the PhDs to conduct the research so that way they can keep it internalized because another thing that you get from working with academia more often than not versus third-party independent data or internal data is you can keep that information to yourself whereas in academia it's all about what publish or perish so they want to share that information so companies
00:42:03
Speaker
I don't necessarily want this information published. It's proprietary. There's ways to get around that, of course. It is a little complicated. That's my perception on it.
00:42:18
Speaker
perception there is kind of mirroring what I said earlier where, yeah, back in the 70s and 80s, there weren't many departments, R&D departments with the PhDs that you're describing. And so you're kind of reinforcing what I said earlier, we've got more PhDs outside of the academic arena.
00:42:39
Speaker
You mentioned on statistics, Johan. That's an excellent thing to bring up, especially when we're discussing topics that growers are listening to and interested in. And you made a really good point about the difference between a statistical 5% difference versus a return on investment. And most of my research over now 40 years
00:43:07
Speaker
most of my research has not been accompanied by statistical analysis. And our university colleagues, as you deftly referenced, need to publish, and statistical analysis is an integral part of a research report. I take pride
00:43:31
Speaker
in reflecting on the Floral Project, Johan, where, again, 20 years of research, looking at how ethylene stimulates branching, inhibits internode elongation, controls the shift from vegetative to reproductive growth, 20 years of researching those three main effects of this simple plant hormone. And I'd say 95% of it was not accompanied by statistical analysis.
00:44:00
Speaker
Now, every now and then I feel guilty, Johann, that I didn't do these analyses. But in my mind, over my career, this is the rule that I share with companies when they come to me like you have done over the years. In my opinion or experience,
00:44:20
Speaker
for a grower to make the decision to change from product A to product B or from crop cultural practice X to Z. That grower needs to see a difference in the crop that's visually accompanied by about 15 or 20% in my opinion.
00:44:43
Speaker
In other words, if we're using a growth regulator to keep young tomato plants in bedding packs short, in order for the grower to look at two treatments and say, yes, that one is shorter to my eyes, in my experience, that tomato plant has to be 15%, 20% shorter than the control.
00:45:08
Speaker
So if we're looking at a six-inch or a five-inch tall control tomato plant, in order for the grower to say, okay, that growth regulator prevented these from stretching, he's looking to get a four-inch plant compared to the five-inch untreated plant, if I'm describing that correctly. So while I say this, statistics is a tool in a toolbox.
00:45:32
Speaker
And I've also learned Yohan over the years as I deal with more and more individuals like yourself in your career stops, I'm dealing with more who are PhDs. And I've come to learn that you might want to run your statistical analysis in ways that you're comfortable. So it's actually, at times it's a waste of time for me to run the statistics knowing that
00:45:59
Speaker
The PhD, my primary contact at company A or B, is going to run his or her own statistics to show what he or she wants to show. So you brought that point up about ROI and statistics. I thought it was important enough that I wanted to fill in and color in between the lines a little bit with my own experience.
Setting Up Trials for Growers
00:46:22
Speaker
Those are very good points and it leads me to my next question, which is, and it also ties into your podcast, is you focus on the small to medium sized grower and they may not be able to afford to do as a farm.
00:46:38
Speaker
they're forced maybe to do their own research, which is a good idea in evaluating a new product. How many times we do field trials, greenhouse trials all the time. Regardless, if it's an academic trial or a third party trial, what's the first thing a grower wants to do when you present them with a new product, when they have their program, their livelihood depends on this being successful. What's the first thing they want to do? That's great. You have the data,
00:47:07
Speaker
I want to try it in my farm from my greenhouse. So what tips might you have for that small to medium size grower that if they're not, should be taking more of a academic perspective on adopting new products. So that way they can with confidence say, oh yeah, that 20% wasn't just a fluke. I set up an experiment in such a way that I can make a decision confidently to adopt this product or not.
00:47:37
Speaker
Yeah. Wonderful question, Johan. In the past decade, one of the conference presentation topics that I've delivered the most is exactly this.
00:47:54
Speaker
for growers, how to set up, how to conduct meaningful trials in your greenhouse or on your farm. And that, it all, in my opinion, Yohan, it boils down to the simple two syllable word control.
00:48:12
Speaker
And I spend most of the time in that presentation or in written articles or in a discussion like this one, talking about the two levels of meaning that the word control has when we are conducting research, or in this case, a down and dirty grower trial. And by the way, in terms of experiment, research techniques and whatnot, Johan,
00:48:41
Speaker
There's really no difference between applied and basic research. If we're doing good science, if we're practicing good research habits, I dislike it tremendously when I get a sense that a researcher is frowning upon the word applied.
00:49:04
Speaker
research and we need both we need the basic research which what you know one might say okay that's the high-powered laboratory university level research but equally we need the more applied practical research we're actually just comparing product data product be and you brought that up.
00:49:24
Speaker
And a lot of the work you and I have done together has been applied research. But because both of us are PhDs and live in the world of science, our experiments that you and I tend to design together have a little bit of a flare. They have a little bit of a direction that is aiming towards some more basic questions. So it's control, Johan. And we'll come back to that in a minute after you make a comment.
00:49:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think what you're saying is making sure that you have a comparison. When you say control, I think what you're saying is having your grower standard or your current practice and your experimental treatment. And also don't change too many things at once.
00:50:11
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes. So you just touched on that two levels, the two meanings that I think that word control brings. So we have to teach growers, number one, when you and I use the word control, we're talking about what you just said, your standard procedure, or I will say in different words, your untreated plant. So if we're using a growth regulator or a new fertilizer,
00:50:40
Speaker
a control is going to be a plant that we don't spray with that growth regulator, or it's going to be a plant that we don't use that new fertilizer on. It might be the plant that we use the standard fertilizer that we're using around the range on. We need that, Johan, because there has to be a basis for comparison
00:51:02
Speaker
Right. And so if now, OK, let me let me just skip the the best way for me to describe this to you is back during the floral years and it was pre-internet, Johan. So our communication was either by regular mail where I'd receive a letter from a grower in maybe Hayes, Kansas.
00:51:26
Speaker
saying doctor can join i heard you at the ohio short course talk about this i have a question or it might be a phone call johan how many times i had phone calls and now picture i'm standing in my greenhouse operation you know doing my daily commercial grower tasks
00:51:46
Speaker
But I was also accessible as cell phone technology became mainstream, accessible to growers. So how many times I would stand in a greenhouse, take a break. I'm talking to a grower from, I don't know, one or two time zones away from Massachusetts, US growers, sometimes Canada.
00:52:08
Speaker
And Johan, the conversation would go something like this. Dr. Conjoyan, I treated Floral, you know, I treated my ibudranium hanging baskets with Floral. I treated my petunias with Floral. And I'm not sure what I'm seeing. And Johan, you could answer this question for me. My first question to the grower was, how do the Floral treated baskets compare to the ones you didn't spray?
00:52:36
Speaker
And how many times, Johan, there'd be a silence for a few seconds on the other end of the line. And there'd be an answer, something like this. Oh, I heard you speak at the conference. I trusted what you were saying. I just went and sprayed everything.
00:52:53
Speaker
And then it was a teachable moment, Johann, and I'm laughing because it's amusing, but I'm not laughing at them, I'm laughing with them. So it then afforded me that opportunity to say, please, please, always.
00:53:08
Speaker
leave a few baskets untreated. I'm not asking you to do any extra work. It's actually less work because you'll finish spraying the crop sooner. But please always leave yourself this untreated section of the crop or else how are we going to compare? How are we going to make our decisions? So that level of experiment control that we use the word control to mean and
00:53:33
Speaker
It's another word or name for the plant that we don't treat the other level of the word control that I like to teach and you hit on this also is. Controlling the experiment itself and that is you mentioned it earlier don't don't insert too many variables don't try to do too much.
00:53:53
Speaker
And I'll stretch that a little and say your experimental control, not your treatment control. The experimental control is, okay, let's do this in a way that can be reproduced. Let's do this.
00:54:09
Speaker
If we're running an experiment on a bench of geraniums, don't pick the bench right next to the vent. Pick a bench in the middle of the greenhouse so that if we go to make decisions that are going to affect, as you brought up, the return on investment, we know that we're working with good numbers and we're making good decisions. Yohanet, for small, medium, any size grower,
00:54:35
Speaker
Learning how to conduct basic trials and it all goes takes us back to middle school. For me it was junior high school back in those days where we first learned or were exposed to the scientific process.
00:54:49
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And putting it into real life, yeah. Well, like you said, you've done a whole presentations on this and many things came up as you were talking like, okay, yeah, make sure you separate your treatments, especially if you're spraying something because you don't want drift and the control part is
00:55:06
Speaker
have dedicated personnel that are responsible for the trial so that way it's done consistently because consistency is very important. So yeah, we probably do a whole session on that as well. But I do want to ask you, transitioning from that, your business. You mentioned earlier, you've shifted from floriculture to edible crops.
00:55:32
Speaker
You also have a podcast. Is there anything more about your business that you want to discuss? Maybe some of the exciting projects you're working on before I jump into my next question?
00:55:41
Speaker
Well, thank you for asking that, Johan. And yes, there is.
Introduction to SCAFT Project
00:55:47
Speaker
You've had Michelle Kliger on as a guest. And Michelle and I have joined up as podcast creators. We call the grower and the economist. You were an early guest of ours on the podcast. So thank you for reciprocating and inviting her and myself onto yours. Happy to
00:56:10
Speaker
jump in and help out. She and I started the podcast. Michelle is an agricultural economist. I'm the grower, so when we titled it The Grower and the Economist, it was, again, to bring both sides of that part of agriculture to our growers. As you referenced, we tailor the podcast to small and medium-sized greenhouse and farm operations.
00:56:37
Speaker
So an exciting project that I'm in the process of creating or building, Johan is now kind of a project where I've spent my career dreaming about doing this and it's finally time for me to do it. I am creating a project that I have titled or named Small Greenhouse and Farm Technology.
00:57:03
Speaker
The acronym for that is SCAFT, S-G-A-F-T, SCAF. I'm in the process of building my website and have a workshop at this year's Cultivate, which will be our first official SCAFT conference activity.
00:57:23
Speaker
Now, Johan, I am unapologetic in saying I am building this project to help fellow small growers and farmers. And my story is that for most of my career, I've sat in presentations
00:57:40
Speaker
about technology. Going back to colleagues that we started this conversation with Eric and Mark and many others, and as a small grower, I've sat through these conversations knowing full well that I cannot afford what they're showing on the screen. I cannot afford that equipment. It's beyond me.
00:58:02
Speaker
And it's more frustrating than it is helpful for me in those presentations. So I've decided that this project, yes, it will show the state of the art, but it's not going to spend all of the time on the state of the art. We're going to translate down to the small grower operation level. And I want to create this website, Johan, where it's a place, it's a space,
00:58:30
Speaker
where small growers and farmers know they can get information that's tailored to their needs. Along those lines, I have a principle or a philosophy that I'll be describing in this project that I refer to as a technology ladder.
00:58:50
Speaker
To try and share with small growers that you don't have to jump to the top rung of the ladder all in one step you don't have to get to state of the art just learn enough so that you can understand what rung of the technology ladder you're currently on.
00:59:09
Speaker
And then educate yourself so that you can take the next step up to the next wrong you don't have to jump to the top of the ladder at once and along the way you want to educate yourself in a way that that whatever wrong you're leaving you don't say i wasted my money on that step you want to be able to integrate and and make a plan.
00:59:31
Speaker
And I find that lacking. I find that there's not enough information available for small operations. So this is going to be a safe place. I've got started to attract sponsorships and companies that I'll link to on the website. But thank you for letting me share that, Johan. It's the first time in public that I've gone into that kind of detail on this SCAFT project.
00:59:56
Speaker
Oh, wow. We heard it here first. That's cool. Breaking news. So how do we define a small to medium sized grower? And before you answer that for a lot of different types of people listen to this to this podcast and I've geared it to be more eclectic. So if they're in field ag, you know, they may be learning something about greenhouse agriculture and vice versa.
01:00:18
Speaker
In greenhouse agriculture, we tend to focus on the top 100 greenhouses, which off the top of my head, we're probably looking at greenhouses that are 800,000 square feet to well over a million or higher and much higher. Is there a definition for small to medium sized grower or how do you define small to medium sized grower?
01:00:44
Speaker
Very cool question. Let's do the greenhouse side first. For greenhouses, we hear phrases around our industry that include under an acre. We hear a half acre tossed about a lot. And when I say under an acre, Johan, that's not the land that doesn't include the land the greenhouses are standing on, right? This is covered space.
01:01:12
Speaker
So my family's operation grew from the single greenhouse in 1960 to its peak at 55,000 square feet. So I was at, you know, under an acre and a half over an acre. I consider myself a small greenhouse operator at that size. There are some fellow growers of mine that might have 10,000 or 20,000 square feet.
01:01:37
Speaker
that look at my operation at 55,000 and say you're a big grower. But in most cases, the large operations, you describe that nicely. The top 100, the ones that get a lot of ink. And oh, by the way, Johan, this is part of the justification or the need for a project that I'm describing is there's so much ink and attention given to those large operations that I feel that a lot of small ones get forgotten.
01:02:06
Speaker
or feel forgotten. And it's like everything, you know, the 80-20 rule that applies to so much of what we do. If we look at number of operations in the US, you know, 80%, it might not be exactly 80, but most of them are small operations, and those top 100 make up the 20% of operations, but they kind of
01:02:32
Speaker
take all the air out of the room, if you hear what I'm saying. And so we need, on the greenhouse side to answer your question, I'd say under an acre, let's say half an acre might be a sweet spot for an average small operation. And then on the farm side of it, that's a little more difficult, Johan, because the outdoor agriculture is by definition more extensive than the greenhouse is intensive.
01:02:57
Speaker
So it's hard for me to give you what I consider a small operation. The best I can do is to say, in my mind, a small farm is one where the nuclear family, that family operation, that comprises most of the workforce.
01:03:20
Speaker
where there might be one or two employees from the outside that are hired, then you might have a much better definition of a small farm than that. But that's how I operate.
01:03:33
Speaker
No, those are good definitions. And I don't know. Have you have you observed like I've observed? It seems I don't have the data to back this up, that there is kind of this, I guess, Renaissance period or resurgence in homesteading and looking at that more and more people looking at doing some level of agriculture. And this might be a way for them to expand their enterprise and starting a small farm. That's where I started. I started on a small farm.
01:04:02
Speaker
That small greenhouse operation in Kansas where I started picking tomatoes, it expanded. I think we added four bays during my time there, but those four bays, we still were probably just under one acre of controlled environment.
01:04:18
Speaker
Hey, that operation provided a livelihood for the ownership and its employees, right? So we can't dismiss these small businesses. And I think you're right. I would like to see the numbers of how many small farms, small greenhouses there are compared to large ones to see what that looks like. And it's good to hear that you're championing those farmers and giving them that resource. So that is very cool.
01:04:47
Speaker
Let me know if I can help out in any way. Well, thank you, Johan. I think we have so many shared experiences, and I think we're both agreeing that this group of growers appreciates the attention. As I view things, let's go up to 30,000
01:05:07
Speaker
altitude and look down for a moment, Johan. Traditionally, through my career, we used the round number of 10,000 greenhouse operations in the U.S. as we went through the Great Recession and in combination with consolidation that results from the big box, that invention, that creation of the big box market.
01:05:31
Speaker
Coming out of the great recession that number of ten thousand drop to what i saw the data i saw was six thousand so the industry the number of farmers green house operators. Almost fell in half as a result of both of those events.
01:05:51
Speaker
And I think in your generation, the Great Recession is a point like 9-11 is for your generation, where you guys grew up with these things. In my generation, it was the Kennedy assassination and the Martin Luther King and both Kennedys, the Vietnam War.
01:06:12
Speaker
So each generation has these points of reference, and it's amazing how the Great Recession affected our industry. Now, I will absolutely agree with what you said, and it's a wonderful word. You use Renaissance. And for me, much of my energy
01:06:34
Speaker
is aimed at, okay, we built this industrial model of agriculture coming out of World War II. It served our country and the world well for a couple of generations, but now we're showing or we're learning that it's not sustainable. So much of my energy, Johan, as I wind my career down,
01:06:58
Speaker
is aimed at the question, how much of industrial agriculture can we return to the family farm, to the locally grown movement? So where you said a moment ago, we've got a lot of gardeners who are looking to grow a more significant amount of produce. I'm looking more at the professional grower and
01:07:27
Speaker
asking the question, can that farm that I described growing up on that had such an impact on who I am, can we make that farm relevant again? I was sad that we had to stop farming Johan in the 70s. Yes, we were replacing it with flowers and greenhouses, but it saddened me that a family like mine could not make a living
01:07:56
Speaker
farming in New England. And so again, things come full circle. I use the phrase from flowers to food. I think at this point in the conversation, listeners might say, well, Peter, you should back up a step. You started in food. So it's actually from food to flowers back to food. So it's closing that circle and it's not coming back to food or edible crops for the first time.
01:08:25
Speaker
So, Johan, there's so much that we share in terms of experiences and philosophies. We could go on and on. I enjoy talking to you about science, and I want to say I wish you the best of luck with your podcast and your endeavor. Do you remember when
01:08:49
Speaker
Soon after we met, when we started working together, Johan, do you remember me at one point saying, you have a good radio voice? I think so. I think so. I made that comment to you and it was in the days, knowing that we were going to connect this morning, I said, he really found the right spot. This is good.
01:09:10
Speaker
Well, thank you. Yeah, I'd love to be doing this more often. This is a passion project of mine. There's so many people I want to speak with and have them share their stories and their involvement in agriculture, and I really appreciate you joining me.
01:09:28
Speaker
today i do want i do want to touch on one more thing and it's a little bit more personal because i'm i really admire this about you if you don't mind sharing if you don't that's okay but you we all have our personal sides as well and you do something really interesting i don't know many people who do this i know people who run ultra marathons or they have certain things about the but you are an avid climber
01:09:52
Speaker
I am Johan.
Peter's Passion for Climbing and Advice for Horticulture Newcomers
01:09:54
Speaker
I call it my sick addiction to altitude. And it was actually my career that put me in this position. I can remember the day it was for anyone of my generation, there was a Grower Association, National Association, named BPI, Bedding Plants Incorporated.
01:10:20
Speaker
And the BPI actually went head to head with OFA, the Ohio Florist Association. And that's where I was weaned at Ohio State. I went through Ohio State in graduate school, Yohan, during the height of OFA. And BPI was created or run by Will Carlson, a very well-known extension specialist at Michigan State University.
01:10:49
Speaker
OFA was run by my master's advisor, Harry Tayama, at Ohio State. And there was this competition between the two organizations. But it was a BPI conference that took me out to Denver, Colorado to speak. And it was 1992, Johan. And I remember looking out at those snow-capped mountains and calling my wife saying, we have to come out here to visit. This is beautiful out here.
01:11:17
Speaker
And it was in two thousand and five that i had a chance to climb to the summit of my first fourteen and you for those listeners don't understand what fourteen is it's a mountain peak that is at fourteen thousand.
01:11:34
Speaker
feet in in elevation colorado has fifty eight of these peaks more than any other state california has ten that's the closest so there fifty eight fourteen years in colorado and i got that bug back in oh five and.
01:11:50
Speaker
Today, I've stood on the top of 43 of the 58. And so I've got 15 left and about five of those. I have no business even thinking about climbing. But so that leaves me 10 or a dozen more to finish this trek.
01:12:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's so neat. I think one of the things you told me, one of the lessons you learned along the way was I started with the easy ones. Maybe I should have started with some of the more challenging ones and worked my way back. Does that do I have that right? You have that absolutely right. I had back surgery last year and I'm looking at the 15 that are left.
01:12:23
Speaker
And i've seen myself you dummy you did all the early ones early and oh by the way i should nip that in the but there is no easy fourteen or it's not easy to get yourself up to that altitude where you can't breathe you can't suck in air fast enough but but the more challenging ones are left on the on the list and
01:12:43
Speaker
So I'm just careful. I want to make sure that I get home. But there are many times where I'll shoot part of my video and it'll be looking down downhill and the comment will be, OK, you don't want to fall here or else you won't be making it home. But I try to keep myself in safe situations. And yeah, because I mean, this is not these are not hiking trails. And I'm sure you have special equipment that you need to use during these these adventures, right?
01:13:10
Speaker
Well, I'm not a technical climber, so I don't get into that part of it. Most of this hiking or climbing is on trails, but when you get up above tree line, a trail can disappear pretty quickly. You look for the stacked stones that people put there called cairns, and you lead your way that way. What elevation are you at in Massachusetts? I am 100 feet above sea level.
01:13:40
Speaker
OK, so how do you how do you prepare for your for your your time in Colorado? That that is good. Hold on just a second, Johan. I have someone's installing carpet and he's. Oh, yeah, sure. He's ready to leave. I'll be right back. OK. OK, I'll need you to unmute. I muted just in case there was background noise there. How's that? Good to go. OK, sorry about that. No, that's OK.
01:14:08
Speaker
So yeah, the acclimation took me a few years to learn what I needed to do to acclimate myself. The first couple of 14ers, I came down from the peaks with some altitude sickness, which was, for me, it was headache and a little slight nausea that ended up in bed for a few hours. So when I go out from sea level,
01:14:36
Speaker
And you may have heard this term growing up in Kansas. They call me a flatlander, you know, the people out in the mountains because I came from sea level. So I've worked out a pretty reliable three day acclimation routine. So I know what to do on day one, day two. And I won't attempt to peak until the fourth day. Oh, gotcha. OK. And you are planning to go out again this year?
01:15:04
Speaker
You know, after this time last year, I was scheduling my back surgery for some disc work and stenosis, addressing some stenosis. So this time last year I was hoping that I'd be scheduling this trip and I made my hotel reservations a couple of weeks ago. So I'm luckily enough through,
01:15:29
Speaker
made it far enough through my recovery that my physical therapist gave me a green light and her blessing. And with the one caveat, Johan, that just remember you can do whatever you want, but do it slowly and you're not a teenager. Yeah, good. Well, I hope you have an awesome, awesome trip later this year. So with that, is there anything I didn't ask that you want to share or that I should have asked?
01:15:58
Speaker
No, thank you for letting me describe that new project. This is a pet project I'm really excited about, Gohan. We covered a lot of ground. We did. And it was kind of, well, you and I have always been able to communicate seamlessly. Michelle's easy to communicate with. You're easy to communicate with.
01:16:23
Speaker
Yeah. You let me know if there's anything that I can do to help. We've had conversations about your career path and, you know, I like what you're doing. You got a good head on your shoulders and, you know, the way I figure it, you could do this. You might end up doing this for a long time or you might end up tomorrow in another position somewhere. But that's why we spent all of these years in graduate school. So we had these, this flexibility, right?
01:16:52
Speaker
That's correct. That's correct. Maybe my last question for you would be what advice might you have for the younger generation going into floor culture based on kind of what your experience and where you see the industry today?
01:17:05
Speaker
Whoa, what a nice question to wrap this up with. I'm encouraged. I'm excited about the opportunities that our young farmers and growers have in front of them. And I think that excitement is related to this renaissance that you mentioned, this return of agriculture to the family farm.
01:17:31
Speaker
that I'm describing, Johan. So I think where 20 years ago I might have been a little less optimistic about this, I am more excited by the day that we are creating some avenues that people can enter agriculture.
01:17:52
Speaker
Now, Michelle will tell you as an agricultural economist, Michelle Cleager, that the barrier to entry for agriculture is still high. It's expensive to buy land and build greenhouses. So I recently wrote an article in my magazine column with a couple of your generation women.
01:18:20
Speaker
We talked a lot about parents and how they influenced, and both of these women are in supply chain companies in agriculture, and they both were born into family operations.
01:18:37
Speaker
It was a month after we published that article in GPN, Johan, that I got an email from a woman working in a greenhouse operation of a friend, an acquaintance of mine in Ohio. She had read the article
01:18:56
Speaker
and made a very diplomatic made a point in a diplomatic and very sensitive way saying hey you know i i didn't grow up in in a business i am employed by a family operation not all of us had the,
01:19:15
Speaker
opportunity to grow into or be born into a business so i feel that you missed you know one angle of this about having the general topic was gender bias in horticulture so i think bring it back to your your question your hand.
01:19:34
Speaker
these, whether male or female, this younger generation, this next generation of leaders that is emerging for us, I'm pleased with the opportunities that they have. I think that the the industry, the horticultural industry, is going to be a little bit easier to break into, to crack into
01:19:56
Speaker
If we can take a slice of that pie from industrial agriculture, I'm not naive to think all of agricultural production can be returned to the local farm.
01:20:11
Speaker
We do need a level. We need both. It's not a zero-sum game. We just need to encourage the locally grown and help the industrial side become a little more sustainable, become a little more regenerative.
01:20:28
Speaker
So maybe if we can take some of the pressure off of that part of agriculture and produce more locally, it will allow some of these big industrial farmers to farm more sustainably. Very good points. So with that, I just want to remind people and also ask you to confirm, you're still writing your article on a regular basis, correct? I am. I have a column in Greenhouse Product News, GPN magazine, that's called Duets.
01:20:58
Speaker
And that comes each each column. I invite you've written one with me, an industry, an academic or industry expert. And we have a casual, nice conversation in writing as if we're sitting in someone's living room or sitting around a kitchen table talking about his or her area of expertise. So thank you for letting me share that.
01:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I want to make sure that people know how to reach out to you or stay and follow along with your endeavor. So you have your new project, you have your existing article and your podcast, Grower and the Economist with Michelle. Is there anything else you want to mention before we conclude? I think just building on this comment about our next generation, Johan, and I think I'll leave you with this this comment.
01:21:51
Speaker
where five minutes ago I talked about how Ohio State and Michigan State BPI OFA were butting heads during the 70s and 80s and it was a competition. I think the landscape has changed significantly since then. So my calling card or
01:22:10
Speaker
My comment to fellow agriculturists today is we're stronger together. We all need to work together, whether it's within the United States or across the planet. So the collaboration, the cooperation
01:22:28
Speaker
I'd like our young growers or young farmers or youngsters that don't know they're going to be farmers yet, I want them to know that there are some old white guys that are welcoming and embracing them and there is a population of us that is not so entrenched in the way things used to be.
01:22:53
Speaker
that we were afraid of change. So I think together we're stronger and I'm trying to do my best to share whatever experience and wisdom I've accumulated over the years to help these youngsters get their feet on the ground.
01:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you. A lot of collaboration and we are stronger together. One hundred percent. Well, with that, Peter, thank you very much for joining me today. Hang tight as we will chat offline here in a moment. But I also want to say a word to the audience. Thank you very much for tuning in to this episode of the Ag Show podcast. Here comes the standard like and subscribe. Share with your friends.
01:23:37
Speaker
And thank you for joining us and Peter, pleasure as always. Thank you. Thank you, Johan, for having me.