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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:06] SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Angela Faye from Canada's podcast and founder of Futureville.
[00:11] SPEAKER_00: Well, this is an interesting time and I wanted to highlight that Acutus Therapeutics is a Vancouver-based biotech company
[00:18] SPEAKER_00: that developed the nanotechnology that enables the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to work.
[00:25] SPEAKER_00: Imagine where we'd be without that technology.
[00:28] SPEAKER_00: Well, in a similar fashion, nanotechnology is used in farming to ferry critical elements to the parts of plants that allow them to take their effect.
[00:38] SPEAKER_00: Until recently, many farmers were using 30-year-old technology when they applied pesticides.
[00:44] SPEAKER_00: And today, farmers and farm operators are using precision chemistry to help with the delivery of chemicals and biological agents to boost efficiency and farms.
[00:57] SPEAKER_00: There are still problems for crop production. The big challenge is also about getting the active ingredients stable and capable of working on the correct part of the plant.
[01:07] SPEAKER_00: This is the problem that ViveCrop is solving.
[01:11] SPEAKER_00: So, getting more of what the plants need and helping farms become more efficient.
[01:17] SPEAKER_00: Today, we're talking with Darren Anderson about the application of nanotech in agriculture.
[01:24] SPEAKER_00: Welcome, Darren. Darren, you're the CEO of ViveCrop. Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[01:29] SPEAKER_02: I am happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
[01:32] SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a starting point. I mean, you know, what's your entrepreneurial journey? How did you get started in nanotechnology?
[01:40] SPEAKER_02: It's funny to you ask that. So, remember talking to one of my mentors early on. This is probably after we'd started the company. We'd been going for four or five years.
[01:48] SPEAKER_02: I remember saying to her, you know, I never really thought I would be an entrepreneur. And she said, what do you mean?
[01:55] SPEAKER_02: I was convinced she'd be an entrepreneur the entire time. This was my PhD supervisor.
[01:59] SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My mother was an entrepreneur.
[02:05] SPEAKER_02: And I definitely growing up, I always started things. When I was in college, I started a group of scientists that were interested in building connections amongst the various science disciplines of physicists with biologists and that type of thing.
[02:18] SPEAKER_02: And when I finished my undergraduate degree, I started a tutoring business that was quite successful and really enjoyed that.
[02:24] SPEAKER_02: But I never thought I would be doing this for a career. And then I did my PhD at the University of Toronto.
[02:30] SPEAKER_02: And we developed a technology that eventually turned into ViveCrop protection and really convinced ourselves as we were going through development of that technology.
[02:39] SPEAKER_02: And I think that was something that could have a real impact. And so we decided to spin the company off. And I remember at the time thinking, well, 95% of startups fail.
[02:49] SPEAKER_02: But I'll get more experience doing this for a couple of years than I would be if I went and worked for a big farmer company for a couple of years.
[02:56] SPEAKER_02: And Vive turns 15 next week. So it's amazing how time flies. But that was, yeah, I was having all got started.
[03:07] SPEAKER_00: Well, and I had no idea it was 15 years old already. It feels like it's brand new technology. And you and I spent quite a bit of time when first meeting each other on the whole entire workflow, which we're not going to spend a lot of time on that today.
[03:23] SPEAKER_00: But can you just give me a sound bite on what your technology means for farmers and also ultimately for consumers?
[03:32] SPEAKER_02: Sure. So farmers need pesticides in order to be able to produce food effectively diseases, insects, weeds, date that can be a huge yield driver.
[03:43] SPEAKER_02: And one of the biggest challenges with pesticides is you want them to be able to be used very precisely. You want them to be able to be used at the right place, at the right time, with the right product, at the right rate, in order for them to be as effective as possible.
[03:56] SPEAKER_02: And for growers to be productive and for them to have the most the most efficient use and the best profile from a sustainability perspective.
[04:06] SPEAKER_02: But the technologies that are being used to deliver these pesticides are really old. Nothing new has been under the sun in a long time. And so what we've done is we've used now technology, those same kinds of delivery technologies that as you mentioned earlier used in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to help control how these pesticides work.
[04:25] SPEAKER_02: In order to help them be at the right place, at the right time, at the right rate. And what that does is it increases the yields that farmers get. It increases the quality of their crops that they harvest.
[04:38] SPEAKER_02: It decreases the water that they use, decreases the diesel fuel that they use.
[04:44] SPEAKER_02: So it ultimately it improves the performance of the products increase and increases the sustainability of the products at the same time.
[04:51] SPEAKER_00: And how would you address, you know, maybe the consumers fear or concern about using pesticides at all, right? There seems to have been this movement towards organic and local farming, but as a farmer's daughter, you know, it's always been my dad's kind of position that all great, but we just would not be able to feed the population with a little bit of organic growth in the backyard.
[05:18] SPEAKER_00: So how do you deal with the perception at least of the dangers of pesticides?
[05:25] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you're bang on. So the conventional market today, depending on how you count it, is 95% or more of the world production of food.
[05:35] SPEAKER_02: And ultimately because of exactly what you laid out, which is that conventional chemical pesticides are just a more effective solution.
[05:44] SPEAKER_02: You're just you're not going to see organic take off to the point where it's 20 or 30% of the global market, at least not with the tools that are available today.
[05:52] SPEAKER_02: But if you can improve the performance of those products that grows have been using for a long time and improve their sustainability profile, then you can make a really big difference to that very large part of the market that's really important to to do more with less.
[06:08] SPEAKER_02: So that's the same versus just focusing on the organic piece. Right.
[06:12] SPEAKER_02: Now we do develop products that that in the long run are going to unlock a lot of the potential for organic regenerative agriculture.
[06:20] SPEAKER_02: And that's actually a major focus of our business as well. But I think it's really important that that we focus on the existing tools and changing existing agricultural practices for the better versus just focusing on that organic piece.
[06:35] SPEAKER_00: So that's a whole nother podcast and I'm earmarking that we're going to do in the future about this regenerative agriculture.
[06:42] SPEAKER_00: You know that pathway, but focusing on doing more with what we've got.
[06:49] SPEAKER_00: What plants are you are you do have products for right now.
[06:57] SPEAKER_02: So our products are used on a pretty broad cross section of crops, mostly large field crops are key crops are sugar beats potato.
[07:06] SPEAKER_02: So sugar beats are actually a crop probably most of your listeners don't know of, but they 50% of the sugar or so that we get in North America comes from sugar beats.
[07:15] SPEAKER_02: And it's also the molasses that comes from sugar beats is also used to treat roadways and that type of thing, but sugar beats are major crop potatoes corn soybeans and alpha are major crops today.
[07:27] SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm just going to so sugar beats potatoes corn corn and alpha.
[07:33] SPEAKER_00: So okay, and where are you working mostly at this point where have you launched and been most productive in the last 15 years.
[07:43] SPEAKER_02: So we sell into the US primarily in the upper Midwest, so Minnesota, North Dakota and the major corn producing states.
[07:53] SPEAKER_02: But we do expect to be launching our first products here in Canada within the next 12 months.
[07:58] SPEAKER_00: That's very exciting and what plants.
[08:01] SPEAKER_02: So in Canada, we're going to be starting with potatoes sweet.
[08:05] SPEAKER_00: So I was totally envisioning Eastern Canada then with the McCain family and you know the chips and everything that we've got, but will it be across the board across Canada.
[08:17] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so there are some significant potato markets at West as well, and we will be selling there and we do plan to extend from potatoes into those other crops that I mentioned that we're currently selling into in the US.
[08:27] SPEAKER_02: It's just a question building at our market a little bit at the time here.
[08:31] SPEAKER_00: And we talked a little bit about building out that market, which I think is important, even just to understand how much behind the scenes of the infrastructure setup and the partnerships and the relationships that you've developed over time.
[08:47] SPEAKER_00: Could you just give me an idea from manufacturing in your manufacturing plant to getting to the hands of the farmers.
[08:55] SPEAKER_00: What does that system look like?
[08:58] SPEAKER_02: So it's funny because earlier when I mentioned that we turned 15, you were shocked.
[09:03] SPEAKER_02: And this is one of the reasons why we're 15.
[09:05] SPEAKER_02: You know, when you're working in an industry like agriculture, there's a lot of things that you need to think about and you need to be able to address in order to really be commercially successful.
[09:13] SPEAKER_02: And that goes all the way from the research and development piece of developing these products, which involves lab work and then field testing.
[09:23] SPEAKER_02: You want to make sure that the products are going to work as soon as they go onto the farm because it's a farmer's daughter, you know, a farmer only gets one kick at the can every year, right?
[09:32] SPEAKER_02: And maybe over the course of their lifetime, they're only going to get to run 30 or 40 experiments.
[09:37] SPEAKER_02: So they want to make sure that the products are going to work right away.
[09:40] SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of research that goes into developing these products.
[09:44] SPEAKER_02: Then once they've been developed, there's a lot of work that goes into ensuring that they're going to be able to be used safely and having the regulatory bodies in Canada and the US review that and assess whether or not they can be used safely.
[09:57] SPEAKER_02: And then once you've done that, then you get to the point where you're now looking to sell products.
[10:04] SPEAKER_02: And in our case, the way that we do that is we have our own secret sauce that goes into these products that makes them more effective and makes them more targeted and makes them more precise.
[10:14] SPEAKER_02: And so we manufacture that here in the Toronto area.
[10:19] SPEAKER_02: We then ship that to a manufacturer that will basically combine it with the pesticide to make the new and improve more targeted, more sustainable version.
[10:29] SPEAKER_02: Then that's bottled, then it sold through distribution to a co-op and then a grower picks it up and then they'll apply it on their farm.
[10:37] SPEAKER_02: And again, you know, all of that needs to be seamless in order for our growers to have a successful outcome.
[10:44] SPEAKER_02: And I think sometimes, you know, we're so used to technology entrepreneurs where none of that infrastructure is necessary.
[10:52] SPEAKER_02: Yes.
[10:53] SPEAKER_02: Anything physical and it is a very different, different model and it, I mean, it's in my, one of the things I love about it is that we're building something real, building something tangible.
[11:04] SPEAKER_02: But it does have a lot more pieces to it than in a traditional technology company.
[11:10] SPEAKER_00: So you are one of the disruptors or I guess aggregates using your technology makes things better and more productive, which I love.
[11:20] SPEAKER_00: Do you, are there any technologies or disruptions happening in agriculture in your experience that are either aiding and abetting you or that are on the horizon.
[11:33] SPEAKER_00: And that that others in the egg, egg tech sector should be aware of.
[11:39] SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So it's really interesting that you asked that.
[11:42] SPEAKER_02: So one of the things that I'm the most excited about if we think about agriculture 20 years from now is how different innovations that are currently kind of growing up separately can build on one another in order to just transform the industry.
[11:55] SPEAKER_02: And I'll give you a specific example that applies to our products. So there's a lot of companies now that are developing what I would describe is kind of the personalized medicine for the farm.
[12:07] SPEAKER_02: So they, you know, they'll do an aerial send a drone and look at the farm and they'll say, okay, based on what we're seeing this farm needs these products in these locations.
[12:15] SPEAKER_02: And then there's all these innovations around, you know, how do you precisely apply that? So maybe products are being applied by drone so that they're only being applied where they need to go or something like that.
[12:26] SPEAKER_02: And then what you want, ideally, is the precise chemistry, the the jug that the farmer buys to have a technology built into it that helps that product also be as targeted as possible.
[12:36] SPEAKER_02: And so if you think about the personalized medicine that prescription on the field level, combine with the hardware that make sure that it's able to be applied, combine with our product, the software that's being run in that product, a run on that application system, you combine those three can be just absolutely transformative.
[12:56] SPEAKER_02: And currently those three sets of innovations are all being deployed separately, but you can really see how they can start to add on to one another and really accelerate progress.
[13:06] SPEAKER_00: Now I was approached and found out about five through the Mars Discovery Center, right? So I just wanted to happen to that because I, one I was super excited to hear about the product.
[13:18] SPEAKER_00: I'm also curious about that converging, right? The convergence of those technologies and where is that going to happen? What opportunities and platforms and discussions or places are you a part of that where some of those convergencies will happen?
[13:35] SPEAKER_02: So Mars is really interesting. There's a few of these kinds of programs that have started to happen in Canada. And I think they're really important.
[13:42] SPEAKER_02: If you think about growing a business, there's a ton of information out there about how you start a business, right? Like how do you get your first board? How do you get your seed funding? You know, how do you think about product market bid?
[13:55] SPEAKER_02: But there's almost nothing available that really teaches you how to scale a business, right? Like how do you get?
[14:02] SPEAKER_02: But those scale ups are going to be an incredibly important part of Canada's future economic success. That's where the jobs are. That's where the tax returns, like that's how we build a successful economy going forward.
[14:17] SPEAKER_02: And so the portion of Mars that we've been involved in is their momentum program. And that's really about providing mentorship and training tools to help companies scale.
[14:28] SPEAKER_02: And there's another program that we participated in that's very similar called the Lazarida Scaleup program. And it provides entrepreneurs, most of whom myself included have never scaled the business before with the tools that you need in order to be able to think about how to do that effectively.
[14:44] SPEAKER_02: And one of the other things that both groups have really encouraged us to do is think big.
[14:49] SPEAKER_02: You know, in Canada, sometimes we settle for a single instead of swinging for the home run. And I think that's a shame. And you know, one of the things we've started to look at in our spaces, okay, you know, we've got products that are selling today.
[15:03] SPEAKER_02: We've got growers that absolutely love what we're doing. You know, what can we start to bring in to build out that platform, right?
[15:10] SPEAKER_02: You know, whether that's through M&A or in licensing or partnerships, how do we do that in a way that that really builds an incredibly exciting success story that has a real impact on growers lives.
[15:22] SPEAKER_02: And you know, eventually is is is is a really important tech company based here in Canada. How do you do that? And I think these organizations like Mars, like the Lazarida program, do a really effective job of challenging Canadian entrepreneurs to really think big and really go for the gold ring.
[15:40] SPEAKER_00: I love it. Well, clearly you think big and I'm going to come back to that in a moment. It's first what the what the big end goal is, but one question I have in the in that scale up what.
[15:51] SPEAKER_00: What did you learn that is maybe specific to Canada? Do you believe that Canadians have a global competitive edge in the sector that you're in? And if so, why and if why not if that's the case.
[16:08] SPEAKER_02: So there so ag so yes, I think that Canada has some enormous advantages in agriculture compared to most other countries. One reason is I mean for most startups, you look at the US first because the US is 10 times the size of the Canadian market.
[16:25] SPEAKER_02: And in ag and ag tech, it's only three times difference like Canada punches above its weight. We have a huge agricultural sector. And so there's a real opportunity for homegrown innovations to have a real impact on Canadian farmers.
[16:38] SPEAKER_02: The second piece is that it may, you know, it's funny. It's something that I talked to companies global companies all the time. Canada is an incredibly efficient place to conduct research and development.
[16:51] SPEAKER_02: You know, our shred program is incredibly useful to early stage companies in terms of helping get more for every dollar that's being invested in R&D.
[17:05] SPEAKER_02: There's a number of government programs that really help encourage collaboration and commercialization of early stage technologies.
[17:13] SPEAKER_02: And the university infrastructure we have is incredible. Like there are incredible researchers here who are honestly under engaged compared to, you know, similar quality researchers at US schools.
[17:27] SPEAKER_02: And so I think that that provide that combined with the fact that Canada punches above its weight from an ag point of view creates a real competitive advantage to starting an ag company here.
[17:38] SPEAKER_02: And you're starting to see more and more ag or ag tech companies based here in Canada. Farmers edge is one that's based at West. And they just went public last week on the T.S. X had a very successful IPO and are off to the races with a platform on sensing and agronomic recommendations.
[17:59] SPEAKER_00: What is the big picture? I mean, was something that blew me away a little bit as I'm looking at your website and things like that was literally the list of, you know, this is your crop and the drop down menu was massive. And then, you know, here's the results that you're trying to achieve. And in a very short period of time, I realized that there was all of these combination of just five crop products.
[18:22] SPEAKER_00: And I just went, I'm not producing alfalfa or corn, you know, we were weird classic green, right week farm growing up, but what is the big, what is the big picture for for five.
[18:36] SPEAKER_02: So our technology can make a more a higher performing and more sustainable version of almost every pesticide that a grower uses today.
[18:45] SPEAKER_02: And so that's the goal is to be able to develop improved versions of every product that a grower uses, obviously a little bit at the time. And on top of that, we mentioned organic earlier. So there's starting to be more and more interest in using naturally derived products in crop protection.
[19:01] SPEAKER_02: Some of those are used in organic, some of those who used in non organic farming as well. And one of the big challenges, if you're using like a micro like a bacteria to help protect your farm is keeping that bacteria alive long enough for it to be able to get into the roots and help the plant capture nitrogen from the soil or whatever.
[19:21] SPEAKER_02: And that's a, it's a real technology challenge that we've also managed to solve. So in addition to being able to develop better and more sustainable versions of products that are currently used today, we can also do the same with an unlock the potential of these biological systems, which were really excited to about.
[19:42] SPEAKER_02: So ultimately it's all about doing more with less, but the sky's the limit in terms of what we can, what we can impact.
[19:48] SPEAKER_00: Well, we talked about the technology of 30 years in pesticides. I, you know, I have these very keen and succinct memories of those that had farms, right? It was kind of this.
[20:03] SPEAKER_00: It was a privilege, first of all, to have a farm. And, but the risk to return ratio was very high, right? With weather, pattern changes, but also, I mean, the tractors and the combines and the, and the body.
[20:17] SPEAKER_00: Barnes and the big grain trucks and, you know, the amount of infrastructure that a farmer had to invest in upfront to produce a yield subject to weather was huge. So, you know, I guess in some ways, most farmers are entrepreneurs, because there's just so much risk capital upfront.
[20:37] SPEAKER_00: Do you see in the future of agriculture 20 years down the road with, you know, some of the other pathway regenerative or do you see a, that shift happening where there'll be less risk upfront, but more yield and maybe different products down the track.
[20:57] SPEAKER_00: What, if you could future future scope, what do you see?
[21:02] SPEAKER_02: So, I think the answer is there's enough innovation happening now that there are going to be more options available for different types of growers, different types of farmers.
[21:16] SPEAKER_02: And what I mean by that is, you know, if you think about somebody today that wants to take a, you know, highly regenerative, highly organic approach to producing food and, you know, they're going to have a 50 acre farm, not far from a city and primarily do, you know, CSAs or farmers markets or those kinds of things.
[21:35] SPEAKER_02: They have a very limited tool set that's available to them in order for them to be able to get the kinds of yields that they need. And so therefore they, they have the same challenges that you're talking about where their profitability is right.
[21:47] SPEAKER_02: You know, it's knife edge in a lot of cases, but with the amount of innovation that's going into egg and egg tech right now, that grower in 20 years is going to have a lot more options available to them.
[21:59] SPEAKER_02: They're going to have the kinds of options that we enable. They're going to have the options that new biological companies are coming out with new products that may be organic certified.
[22:09] SPEAKER_02: They're also going to have new options that are going to be available to them where they, you know, maybe they are using, you know, drones that, you know, go out and just spray a little part where they notice that there's a disease there.
[22:20] SPEAKER_02: And at the same time, the large farms are also going to have more options available to them right where it's more precise in terms of how they're how they're applying products and the amount of inputs that they need and, you know, there's companies that are developing biologicals that will help crops produce their own nitrogen so that you don't need to apply as much fertilizer.
[22:39] SPEAKER_02: And I do think that those tools are going to help with the profitability profile of some of those large farms that haven't been said, you know, I do think that from consolidations almost certainly going to continue because there are some real advantages.
[22:55] SPEAKER_02: Some of these innovations do require some significant investment or are extremely capital intensive and the farmers that are able to get to a scale where they can use those kinds of tools are going to have a competitive advantage.
[23:08] SPEAKER_02: And I do think that's part of where the consolidation in this space has been coming from.
[23:14] SPEAKER_00: Well, I am totally imagining maybe planting a seed or hopefully it's already a seed in your mind, but I'm imagining like a pilot project regenerative farm sponsored by five right like it's and other partners where we go, well, this is a demo, maybe more than a field probably, you know, 50 acres and and this can be reproduced in different areas with a different crop something like that, I think that would be amazing.
[23:40] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and there's a there's a ton of things that the growers are already doing where those kinds of demonstrations are pretty straightforward. I mean, you know, one of the things that I think a lot of the general public doesn't understand is how transformative no tail farming was.
[23:54] SPEAKER_02: And no tail farming for your audience that doesn't know is the idea that after you harvest a crop of corn, you leave all the corn stocks on the on the field.
[24:03] SPEAKER_02: And the reason that that's important is because then those corn stocks degraded and so they provide food for effectively free fertilizer food to the soil, but they also cover the soil to prevent it from blowing away if there's, you know, in the winter, if it's windy or from rain or that type of thing.
[24:21] SPEAKER_02: And so it dramatically reduces erosion and it's an incredibly important innovation that's developed in agriculture over the last 30 or 40 years that people just don't even know about.
[24:30] SPEAKER_02: And it's a, you know, there are things like that, they're cover crop systems, there's so much incredible innovation happening in agriculture that has an impact on climate has an impact on sustainability, has an impact on soil quality has that regenerative characteristic that I actually, you know, going back to your point about that demo farm.
[24:50] SPEAKER_02: I think, you know, for a lot of urban consumers, I think that's really fun to be able to go see.
[24:56] SPEAKER_02: And there's also, and I know I'm going off in a bit of attention, this is a bit of a soap box for me, but there's also, there's also a lot more innovation that's going on in terms of being able to communicate to the consumer.
[25:09] SPEAKER_02: Yes, how products are being produced and what kind of practices are going into it, because I mean the organic certified organic is the only label we have right now that tells you anything really in detail about the farming practices that are used, but, you know, you don't necessarily know, hey, is this being grown no tail, as I mentioned earlier, you know, are you using cover cropping systems.
[25:30] SPEAKER_02: And so with a lot of the tree stability innovations that are happening in this space, which I haven't talked about at all, that allows the consumer again, not today, but 10, 20 years from now, to be able to help influence those decisions that are made at the goal, or goal level and effectively vote with their wallets.
[25:50] SPEAKER_02: Yes. And that can drive innovation as well.
[25:52] SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think that's really important. And I mean, I can add to that one of my friends at the co-working space here in a Nibbo, he had the technology for the microchips.
[26:01] SPEAKER_00: The idea was you place them on food and at any point in the story from farm to table, you know, you could kind of take your phone and check this app and see where it is and meet the farmers and have the story and say, hey, this is a vibe crop, right?
[26:20] SPEAKER_00: This was not used with those pesticides and all of that is rated the consumer's touch point.
[26:25] SPEAKER_00: And that's just a microchip and it was something like, I don't know, it was crazy. It was like 12 cents a microchip to be able to capture all of that.
[26:33] SPEAKER_00: Would I as a consumer pay 12 cents more to know where my food came from? Probably.
[26:40] SPEAKER_00: And to the point now where it's like, okay, I will start to look for that in consumers and I will start to look for.
[26:47] SPEAKER_00: And that's part of the fun for me is bringing awareness to these kind of technologies through a podcast is suddenly I want people to say, hey, I would like to know that my food is, you know,
[26:58] SPEAKER_00: the five crop supported and without as many damaging products as what's been used over the last 30 years that caused horrible things.
[27:07] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[27:08] SPEAKER_02: And it creates, it creates an opportunity for companies like ours, but also, I mean, the big companies in this space are also doing some really innovative and unique things to improve the sustainability footprint of what they're currently selling or grows that are using their products.
[27:24] SPEAKER_02: And it gives, in addition to giving consumers visibility, it also gives producers or people with technology like ours, the ability to proactively push those stories out to the consumers and really build that connection, which is, I think, one of the biggest things that's going to drive continued innovation in this space.
[27:44] SPEAKER_00: Well, and I only can ask because I live on an island and I mean, island innovation and bass it or so a lot of my clients are island based, but you're primarily right now your product is for land based agriculture.
[27:57] SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
[27:58] SPEAKER_02: That's correct.
[27:59] SPEAKER_00: The little bit of future and water based.
[28:01] SPEAKER_02: So there are some aquaculture applications for what we're doing.
[28:08] SPEAKER_02: I mean, effectively, you know, if you're looking to deliver, you know, whether it's bio based or a conventional chemical based product, if you're looking to deliver, deliver them more effectively and again, right product, right place, right time, right rate.
[28:23] SPEAKER_02: If you're looking to be able to optimize that with a technology that's being built into the product, that's where we fit in and think about aquaculture, there are, you know, feeding applications, there are applications around pest control, it is a big problem in aquaculture.
[28:38] SPEAKER_02: And again, I don't think most consumers are aware of there's all sorts of opportunities to provide effectively vitamins and other kind of stimulants that help help fish or, you know, if you're producing, you know, even if you're producing seaweed, there's applications there, so absolutely.
[28:57] SPEAKER_00: Darren, talk to me just for a moment about red tape.
[29:01] SPEAKER_01: Mm hmm.
[29:03] SPEAKER_00: If we could wave a magic wand and eliminate some, what would be in your favor and what is the comfortable level of red tape, particularly in Canada now or maybe in another country that you're looking at exporting in the future.
[29:18] SPEAKER_02: So the biggest thing that I would say is it's funny. So I'm on the board of crop life America and I think sometimes there is a perspective amongst consumers that.
[29:31] SPEAKER_02: You know, companies are, are, you know, don't like the regulatory process or whatever. And in fact, it, nothing can be further from the truth.
[29:38] SPEAKER_02: It is incredibly important to us that consumers have faith in the regulatory process and know that they, when they're consuming produce that's being produced by our awesome Canadian farmers or awesome US farmers, that it's something that they're going to be able to consume safely.
[29:54] SPEAKER_02: And it's incredibly important to me as a consumer and as, you know, somebody who's got a family, like we, that's really, really important.
[29:59] SPEAKER_02: And so I think one of the awesome things about North America is our regulatory systems in Canada and the US are the envy of the world.
[30:10] SPEAKER_02: You know, the rest of the world looks at it and really in a lot of places, a lot of, a lot of other countries will actually just rely on regulatory decisions that are made in Canada and the US.
[30:21] SPEAKER_02: So those are both really positive.
[30:22] SPEAKER_02: The biggest challenge that I see from a red tape perspective is, and I understand why this is the case, but regulatory systems tend to buy their nature be reactionary.
[30:37] SPEAKER_02: So they wait for something new to come in before they figure out how they're going to deal with that new thing.
[30:44] SPEAKER_02: And that just slows down innovation because the new thing is going to be brought to you by an innovative company like ours.
[30:51] SPEAKER_02: And then we're going to spend 12, 18, 24 months figuring out what we need to do.
[30:57] SPEAKER_02: And during that period, there's no, you know, we're not seeing the sustainability benefits.
[31:05] SPEAKER_02: We're not seeing the benefits from a farm perspective because we're just working our way through the process.
[31:13] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[31:14] SPEAKER_02: And I think it would be really useful for our regulatory agencies.
[31:18] SPEAKER_02: And I think this is true too, if you think about, you know, some of our oil and gas regulation or what we do on the pharmaceutical side for regulatory agencies to be a little bit more future facing.
[31:29] SPEAKER_02: And kind of be casting their eyes out and saying, all right, what's coming down the pipe and let's try to provide some guidance to those companies that are going to be coming to us in two years so that they know what they should expect when they're coming in the door.
[31:42] SPEAKER_02: Because that would dramatically improve the pace of innovation if you've got regulatory certainty and that even has an impact on investors.
[31:51] SPEAKER_02: Now, if you're raising money and there's a regulatory uncertainty that it can be very challenging.
[31:55] SPEAKER_02: Whereas if you can go to an investor and you can say, hey, I've got this new innovation.
[31:59] SPEAKER_02: This is how health Canada as an example would look at it.
[32:03] SPEAKER_02: This is what's going to be required.
[32:04] SPEAKER_02: This is what it's going to cost and this is the risks.
[32:07] SPEAKER_02: That's something that's a lot easier to assess than I have this new innovation and I have no idea how health Canada is going to view it when we go in the door.
[32:15] SPEAKER_00: So I think that's an excellent segue into just sharing a little bit about elect stem because I see that almost a bit of response to how to, you know, perhaps empower our regulatory systems with the expertise or the
[32:33] SPEAKER_00: even just the mindset shift, right, that understanding that with exponential growth of technologies, we can really only protect one or two years down the track, but there's a pattern to thinking that is in the mind and DNA of, you know, the STEM sort of community.
[32:54] SPEAKER_00: So sure, if you don't mind a little bit of elect stem, what are you up to there?
[32:57] SPEAKER_02: Sure. So this is a nonprofit that I've set up on the side with two other co founders, Monica Scholar and Chris Caputo.
[33:05] SPEAKER_02: And the idea is to ensure that science is crosspartisan as much as possible by, and I'll find what I mean by crosspartisan in a minute by encouraging more scientists and engineers to run for public office.
[33:20] SPEAKER_02: And when I say crosspartisan, the idea is, I mean, everything's political like you can't have a nonpartisan issue in general, but the idea is that we want to make sure that the importance of science and engineering is baked into every political party coast to coast at every level of government.
[33:37] SPEAKER_02: And we believe the best way to do that is to ensure that we have more scientists and engineers elected to public office, again, coast to coast, every political party and every level of government.
[33:48] SPEAKER_02: And the reason we think that's important is exactly what you just described. It's because there are so many complex issues that we're struggling with as a society today that touch science in one way or another, that having more scientists in caucus at the cabinet table.
[34:07] SPEAKER_02: Helping make assessments or evaluate pros and cons or think about risks or vision out what, you know, the country could be looking at in 10 or 15 years, just elevates the quality of that debate and ensures that as a country we're making the best possible decisions.
[34:25] SPEAKER_02: And it can also depoliticize some of the underlying science if you have that cohort of scientists in every political party, because then the debates that we're having is our about what values are important to us and what trade offs are we willing to make as a society.
[34:44] SPEAKER_02: But you know, it's it's that old line you can be entitled to your own opinions, but you're not entitled to your own facts.
[34:50] SPEAKER_02: Having more scientists and engineers elected in every party helps ensure that you've got not perfectly, but you've got a little bit more alignment and agreement on the facts.
[35:00] SPEAKER_02: And instead you're talking about what to do about it.
[35:04] SPEAKER_00: How can we support five in your growth as sort of media as consumers as people with networks in different countries. What what would be your big ask.
[35:18] SPEAKER_02: So the big thing for us over the next couple of years is going to be to continue to grow our business and international is definitely a major component of that.
[35:26] SPEAKER_02: We're currently focused on the US we're going to be coming to Canada, you know, if there are Canadian folks that are involved in Canadian agriculture that would be interested in potentially talking to us about the products that we're planning to bring to market here that would obviously be interesting.
[35:38] SPEAKER_02: But we are looking for for global partners and global connections and allow us to, as I mentioned earlier, make that impact across the world. So that's really important to us.
[35:47] SPEAKER_02: You know, the consumer piece is something.
[35:51] SPEAKER_02: Again, it's not something that's going to have an impact on our business today. But what I would encourage consumers to do when they're thinking about agriculture and supporting food that's produced in alignment with their values.
[36:07] SPEAKER_02: So I would encourage them to not just think about it in terms of the black and white, you know, we have organic or we have conventional.
[36:13] SPEAKER_02: There's so much innovation going on in the non organic sector. And I think a lot of that innovation is incredibly important for consumers to support.
[36:23] SPEAKER_02: And so I would encourage consumers if you're, you know, if you see a new label at the grocery store that talks about something that's grown with, you know, integrated pest management, which is basically the idea that you keep a very close eye on your crop and you try to make sure that you're only applying a product when you know you have a specific problem that you're trying to address.
[36:39] SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, somebody, you know, a producer talks about the fact that they use cover cropping or no till very heavily in their production, support those kinds of buyers as well.
[36:50] SPEAKER_02: Because that non organic segment is such a huge part of agriculture today. And you really want to support producers that are doing everything that they can to do more with less in that area.
[37:00] SPEAKER_02: And, you know, that'll have a trickle down effect on us because that's the part of the market that we're most intent on helping, helping improve because that's that's that's most of it today versus just working on that organic piece.
[37:14] SPEAKER_00: And Darren, you and I talked about the possibility of doing a live stream event where people can join us in a Q&A live with you and I can help facilitate.
[37:23] SPEAKER_00: Like I just, you know, first introductory call we talked so much about the pathway and how, you know, what's the market readiness for another country to take advantage of your product as a Canadian, you know, coming out of the Canadian system, having a perception and reality that it's safe and.
[37:43] SPEAKER_00: And knowing that they want to create higher yield for maybe look more local sustainability in their crops, those are the types of excitement.
[37:52] SPEAKER_00: Exciting things that I get excited about sharing with other nations. So we talked about the possibility of doing that in a couple of months beyond that.
[38:01] SPEAKER_00: Darren, how can people get a hold of you and what what's the best best way?
[38:05] SPEAKER_02: Sure. So the website for five is www.vivencropp.com pretty easy to find. We're also on most of the social media sites.
[38:13] SPEAKER_02: In terms of personally, the best way to reach me is probably on Twitter. I'm at Darren J Anderson and relatively active and Vivencropp is at Vivencropp and Alexa stem for anybody who's interested in that is at Alexa stem and stem is STM just the way it sounds.
[38:30] SPEAKER_00: Perfect. So lots going on with you, Darren. It was such a pleasure to to have met you and I look forward to supporting the evolution of your growth over time.
[38:38] SPEAKER_02: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
