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CELEBRATING ECOLOGY, SHARING ABUNDANCE: THE UPWARD FARMS STORY All For the Love and Passion for Food: With 3 founders and a team that shares a passion for food, a vision to revolutionize the way we eat and a simple dream of availing local greens to everyone, Upward Farms began as Edenworks back in 2013 in Brooklyn, New York. It blends modern vertical farming technology with traditional agricultural traditions to harness nature's brilliance and participate in its bounty. All life is supported through the interplay of animals, plants, and microorganisms, and ecosystems are seen as nature's toolkit for creation (like bacteria and fungi). It is now not only a large-scale vertical farm supplying locally grown, washed, and ready-to-eat USDA Certified Organic leafy greens but also has the Best Aquaculture Practices-certified fish, with capital totaling $141.7 million raised over four rounds (with four investors). Some of the investors are Neue fund, Pay-It-Forward VC (PiF), Prime Movers labs, Founders.org, Steve Juverston, and Bioeconomy capital. Even though Jason, Matt and Ben hadn't begun pitching for money as of April 2014, they had already competed in two competitions: the NYU Social Venture Competition and, before that, the NYCEDC's "NYC Next Idea" Global New Venture Competition (which they had won). As of that time, Green was the only person working full time on the project, with the rest of the team consisting of seven people who worked part-time. As of that time, Green was the only person working full time on the project, with the rest of the team consisting of seven people who worked part-time. It’s worth noting that one of the challenges faced by the company was regulatory constraints. Selling fish directly to consumers (which Edenworks had planned to do eventually) required a different class of permits. But the trio didn’t give up. Edenworks had planned to sell fish directly to consumers (which required a different type of permission) at some point in the future and this future is now, here. Somewhere between 2014 and 2020, Edenworks came to be known as Seed & Roe although info on it during this time is almost non-existent and so it gets a bit challenging to capture what it got up to until July 2020 when she was rebranded to Upward Farms. The rename and rebrand reflect the company's ambition to fix the food system. This corresponds with the company's expansion goal, which includes creating additional farms and expanding its product line for both retail and foodservice outlets. Upward Farms' fresh, clean greens and forward-thinking attitude are reflected in the new logo design, new product packaging, and online presence. Upward Farms raises leafy greens and fish to the highest environmental and quality standards so that everyone may nourish their bodies, families, and the environment. Due to this, their next-generation R&D delivers four to five times as much as high-performing technology businesses in this sector, while also providing higher stability and predictability and eliminating plant disease to an astounding 99 percent. After harvest cleaning is possible because of their product's higher turgidity. This leads to more flavorful and robust products as a result. The objective is to fix the broken food system and reunite diners with flavorful and nutritious local food, with 95% of leafy greens grown on the West Coast and 90% of seafood imported. Its approach to biodiverse production is based on game-changing science as well as consumer demand for environmentally cultivated meals. The Trio Behind Upward Farms: Jason Green He is a New Yorker who enjoys cooking (and eating), gardening, and keeping his hands occupied by fishing, metalworking, and woodworking on days when he wants to get his mind off things. When it comes to tinkering, Jason is the perfect person to talk to. Beginning with a window garden, Jason planted parsley and cherry tomatoes to see how it went. When he's not at the farm, he enjoys (or used to like) hanging out at a dive bar called the Great hole in the wall, which is located just a few blocks up the street from where Edenworks was once located, at 234 Johnson Avenue in Bushwick. He has dedicated his life to the maintenance of our environment and our species, as well as the creation of a collective consciousness of people as a part of a bigger global ecosystem before it is too late to do so. Apart from Edenworks, Green is an Incubator Mentor at Chobani (which produces and markets Greek yoghurt) which reiterates his passion for food and taste Matthew LaRosa In his native Oyster Bay, where he grew up camping with his Boy Scout troop, sailing, and swimming with his extended family in the South Pacific, Matt developed a lifelong love of the oceans, forests, and other biodiverse ecosystems. He also appears to have a tendency to report strange events in NYC, from industrial hoses left unattended to strange natural phenomena and his own amusing thoughts on random topics. Matt graduated from New York University's Polytechnic School of Engineering with a bachelor's degree in construction management and has a fondness for peanut butter, Nutella, and jelly tortilla wraps as a midnight snack. Additionally, he is the human Swiss Army knife who built the early prototypes (the 800 square foot Edenworks greenhouse) and facilities of Upward Farms by hand. On the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for social entrepreneurship in 2017, Matt joined Jason Green. However, his social media presence has diminished (to the point of being non-existent) since 2018. Life and work may have taken up an excessive amount of his time. Apart from Edenworks, Matt volunteers as the Director of Communications at Lambda Chi Alpha Housing Corporation NYU Chapter. Ben Silverman Ben began exploring the roots of how food was grown after receiving his Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. The following year, he volunteered his design services to develop an RFP for an urban aquaponics project with Architecture for Humanity. He then volunteered for a month on an organic farm in North Carolina before heading to the Stevens Institute of Technology for graduate school in 2010. Over the course of his career, Ben has worked in the fields of design, engineering, and advanced manufacturing to create highperformance structures and mechanical systems. Having graduated with a bachelor's degree from Penn in 2008, Ben began looking into the origins of food production. During the following year, he contributed his design talents towards the development of an RFP with Architecture for Humanity for an urban aquaponics project. As part of his preparation for graduate school, he spent a month working on an organic farm in North Carolina. As a member of the design-build team, Ben was involved in the SFMOMA enlargement, the South Street Seaport's Pier 17 in New York City, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C., among other projects. His top 2 tips for other entrepreneurs are that diligence and persistence in pursuing a course, financial preparation, and finding the right partners go a long way to making a successful business. A Link Between the Co-Founders, their Traits and Where Upward Farms is Today Prior to Edenworks, Jason worked in the field of medicine, where he encountered a fairly chaotic system of inputs and outputs. He believes that farming should be approached in the same way. The machinelearning algorithm was used to discover a correlation between inputs and outputs, which resulted in fresher food, fewer waste, and, as a result, double the shelf-life of the products in question. The bottom line was that he desired wonderful local produce to be available in his city all year long. The pursuit of this dream led him to resign from his position as a research assistant at an academic medical center in January 2013, to enroll in several MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) on a variety of topics/fields, to take courses in civil engineering so that he could better understand infrastructure, and to begin pitching his idea to anyone and everyone he could find. Both Matt and Ben were recruited in 2013, with Matt being recruited in February and Ben being recruited in August. It's a worthy assumption (based on the fact that the other two co-founders are hardly in the digital space) that Jason is not only the CEO but also the face behind Upward Farms. This does not discredit the other founders since their contribution to the company is immeasurable but Jason seems to be more ‘out there’ than the others and perhaps this might be because the rest prefer to work behind the scenes. Ben seems to be the less active one when it comes to social media e.g. Ben Silverman, has a background in architecture and engineering, spent the first part of his career designing building facades that were extremely energy efficient. He soon realized that his interest in sustainability had expanded beyond structures to include another one of his passions: food. Ben's father learned about Jason's search for an architectural designer while working with New York University's DUMBO Incubator. Consequently, he made the connection between Jason and Ben in August of 2013. While shipping produce from California to New York grocery shops is inefficient, aquaponics could provide a more sustainable, urban farming option. Ben and Jason addressed this. Fish waste is used to fertilize plants in an aquaponics system, with bacteria acting as a middleman to transform fish waste into the nutrients plants require. For a little more than a year, Ben worked two jobs, one full-time and the other part-time, while also assisting with the launch of EdenWorks. In November 2014, he began working full-time for the company. Interesting fact: Ben, like many young entrepreneurs who start their dream businesses right out of college, struggled to balance paying off his student loans with working full-time on Edenworks. His monthly student loan payment was reduced by 10% after joining SoFi (Social Finance Inc, an online personal finance company) in 2015 when he became a member. Ben's SoFi loan saved him over $2,500 in total interest costs. The company currently harvests and packs top-quality microgreens that are best-selling goods at Whole Foods Market and are brimming with delectable flavor and nutrition. All of Upward Farms' goods are grown to the highest quality and environmental standards. Their leafy greens are USDA Certified Organic, non-GMO, and devoid of synthetic chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers, while their hybrid striped bass is free of mercury, antibiotics, and additional hormones. In early 2023, a new 250,000 square-foot facility in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania (the world's biggest vertical farm) will be completed and operational, offering fresh, locally sourced microgreens and sustainably reared hybrid striped bass to consumers throughout the Northeast and beyond. Upward Farms is investing in the community and workforce by offering vocational training and upskilling, as well as more than 100 high-quality, well-paying employment in manufacturing, technology, and business, as well as 400 jobs during the facility's construction. 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