Franz Drack is head of marketing and sales at &ever, a company making indoor incubators to grow plants for human consumption. He tells The Common Table how, after 20 years in brand marketing in the industry, he came to be convinced that the old mass-production food chain systems need to change radically. A conversation about the rise of vertical farming, the value of food, and growing greens.
Orlando Lovell: You are also new to the business of vertical farming. What convinced you to get on board?
Before &ever, I was working for a coffee company on sustainable topics such as direct trade and compostable coffee capsules. This is where I think my climate awareness journey started. I got quite interested in agriculture in urban environments: community gardens, rooftop warehouses, and the like, but I felt that these solutions were hard to scale and provide for larger communities. Then I discovered vertical farming and a few weeks later an opportunity at &ever came up on their website. I applied and was lucky enough that the interest was mutual.
Sophie Lovell: So are you going to solve the world’s food problems with mass-produced indoor salad?
I wish I could! (laughs). But as we know from Darwin, the systems with the most diversity are the ones that are the most adaptive to outside challenges. I really believe that vertical farming can be one of a vast range of initiatives, responses and solutions to the threat climate change poses to our access and availability to food.
Read the complete article at www.thecommontable.eu.