We recently spoke with Sandy Gerber, Chief Marketing Officer, CubicFarm Systems Corp. about their local company that creates and delivers agriculture technologies to help farmers grow sustainably.
What is your business called and what does it do?
CubicFarm Systems Corp. (CubicFarms) is a technology company, founded by farmers. We’re on a mission to create and deliver agriculture technologies to help farmers to keep growing, sustainably. We have two indoor growing technologies, our CubicFarm System for growing delicious fresh produce and our HydroGreen Grow System for growing nutritious fresh livestock feed. This innovative ag-tech is next generation vertical farming.
What made you want to do this work?
I jumped at the opportunity to help lead the CubicFarms team. I’ve always craved impact and significance through my work and actions, so this role is very rewarding. With CubicFarms unique indoor growing technologies, an exceptionally skilled team, and a mission to grow more, with less, we are inventing a new industry that is changing the way we will feed ourselves, sustainably. What is better than that?
What problem did you want to solve with the business?
We are running out of the resources to produce the food we need responsibly, sustainably, and affordably. The world is demanding a food supply chain solution that is so far not available. The long chain sequence of food production processes required to feed us healthy, fresh food and livestock feed has put our people, farmers, environment, and economies in a dire situation. We have unreliable food access, increasing farmer costs, foodborne illnesses, environmental regulations, irresponsible food production, insufficient food transparency, excessive food waste, and depleting natural resources.
CubicFarms is a local chain Ag-Tech company, founded by farmers. We believe to protect our resources and ourselves, food and feed must be localized, and grown indoors by farmers. Our agriculture technologies help farmers to produce consistent, indoor, high quality nutritious food and feed, in any climate, 365 days a year.
Who are your clientele/demographics?
At CubicFarms, we are passionate about creating technologies to help farmers to keep growing, sustainably. We have Farmer Partners (that’s what we call our customers, because we truly partner with them) across North America and internationally, including Australia. A few of our current Farmer Partners stories and results are profiled on our website. Our technologies were developed by farmers, for farmers, to solve the problems with outdoor growing.
We also provide our Farmer Partners with the ALLWays Local brand, our consumer-facing brand available in select stores in Western Canada. We believe that we must grow what we eat where we live. By choosing the ALLWays Local brand of fresh produce grown indoors in a CubicFarm System, it is the easiest choice you can make to save the world today. Seriously. There are so many ways the produce grown in a CubicFarm System can benefit our people, resources, and economy. We provide the popular ALLWays Local brand to our farmer partners to use for their produce, herbs, and microgreens. Our CubicFarms farming technologies and team are focused on helping farmers to localize food production, not competing with them.
How does your business make money? How does it work?
We create and deliver indoor growing technologies, provide brokerage services to support farmers getting into the local supply chain, and sell consumables like seeds and substrates to use in our modules. We’re a publicly traded company listed under the symbol CUB on Toronto Stock Exchange.
Where in the city can we find your profession?
CubicFarms is proud to be headquartered in Langley, B.C., with our Farm Innovation Centre R&D facility in Pitt Meadows, B.C. We also have a U.S. office and our HydroGreen Headquarters and Innovation Center are located in South Dakota.
What is the best question a prospective customer could ask a member of your profession when comparing services? Give the answer as well.
Q: The best question we get asked is how we grow more sustainably than other farming methods.
A: Our CubicFarms and Hydrogreen technologies were invented by farmers, for farmers to accelerate their ability to grow more with less, consistently and reliably, in any climate. The CubicFarms system grows fresh produce using 95% less water. To grow a head of lettuce in our system takes only two bottles of water, compared to 40 bottles of water needed for field farming. Being 52x more land efficient, the amount of produce you can grow in just one CubicFarm module is the same amount you could grow in an entire football field! Our unique patented Crop Motion Technology maximizes cubic space by moving plants under just one set of growing lights simulating outdoor growing, minimizing energy use. The CubicFarm System is unaffected by changes in weather patterns, temperature, cloud cover, lighting, pests, drought, heat domes, and has frequent and consistent harvests. Where in the field you can get typically 2 harvest a year, with a CubicFarm System, you can harvest all year round, regardless of season or climate. Our HydroGreen Grow system uses 90% less water than conventional irrigated field crops. One HydroGreen Vertical Pasture (12 HydroGreen grow modules) replaces a remarkable 500 acres of farmland. That is the size of 380 football fields! The HydroGreen Grow system has zero waste, can produce up to 365 harvests a year and can save 500 million gallons of water per year in replacement for irrigated farmland.That’s enough water to give one glass to every person on the planet.
What is the best part about what you do?
At CubicFarms we are solving serious problems in the world. In my role as the Chief Marketing Officer, I have the privilege of igniting and leading a team to create and communicate the magic of our mission, technologies and results. Collectively our team is creating a new industry that is transforming agriculture to enable local food independence, now and in the future. I am very proud that our team and work at CubicFarms are helping farmers and contributing to a zero hunger future.
Where can we follow you?
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube
PAY IT FORWARD: What is another local business that you love?
A local business I love is BEVO Farms, one of North America’s largest plant propagation businesses. Since 1986 BEVO has been on the forefront of plant propagation technology and process – nobody has more experience when it comes to plant propagation. I am a little biased as the BEVO CEO is Leo Benne, the founding farmer of our CubicFarms Crop Motion TechnologyTM! The BEVO team have helped to shape global industry through their innovative approach to efficiently growing greenhouse seedlings, field crops, and bedding plants.