Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 322: Squash Appalachia (w/ special guest Austyn Gaffney)

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

This week we're joined by freelance writer Austyn Gaffney (@austyngaffney on Twitter) to talk about an issue that is near and dear to all of our hearts: the rise and fall of ag-tech start-up App Harvest Check out Austyn's article for Grist here: https://grist.org/agriculture/appharvest-indoor-farming-morehead-kentucky/ Support us on Patreon here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Welcome to the show this week, billy fans we are joined by a very special guest to discuss a topic that we've been discussing for many years now actually i was made aware uh by a fan a few weeks ago that we had started talking about this topic all the way back in 2019, maybe if not before that. So we were like in on the ground. I want to speak real quick to the unimpeachability of the Trillbo's crystal ball index. We got a pretty stellar track record, honestly. Well, yes, we are speaking with Austin Gaffney,

who is a freelance journalist. Is that correct,in yes um and you know you just put out this investigation into app harvest and when this came out it's in grist and when this came out many people were sending it to us and saying you know you guys are vindicated i just want to say like i'm not I'm not actually trying to take a victory lap because like as your article explains, like there are a lot of people harmed by the business practices of app harvest and the collapse of it and not just the people that work there but also uh even the surrounding communities who had kind of placed some very large bets on this being a viable economic alternative coal mining to uh you know traditional farming to xyz um so yes or what's that tom coding coding well that's the thing like a traditional trade you know yeah i i opened up the new york times this morning top of the page very first story i see new york times from unicorns to zombies tech startups run out of time

and money and this goes into how like 2023 has been a calamitous year for tech startups and what we're discussing today isn't like a formal silicon valley tech startup. However, it was very much built that way from the very beginning. We call ourselves farmers and futurists. We joke now that the robots are roaming through the hills of Appalachia. So now, the next great technological revolution in American farming, it's going to be AI, robotics,

and it's going to be data-driven. This 60-acre robot that we're in, it allows you to control the light. It's going to be data driven. This 60 acre robot that we're in, it allows you to control the light. It allows you to control the heat. It allows you to control the nutrition. If we can control the crop, we can steer the crop. We can forecast where it's going. Really, almost every facet of what we do connects to sustainability. Anyways, all of that, you know, all of that upfront, all of which is to say that, like, yes, we're talking about App Harvest, but we're also talking about, you know, the larger sort of business model that App Harvest was premised on. And we'll get to that in just a minute. But I guess, Austin, if I could just have you, yeah, you know, our readers, our listeners are mostly familiar with app harvest but if they're

not or you know if they haven't had a sort of holistic picture of app harvest from the very beginning and they've just sort of tuned in and got snippets here and there maybe can you just give us a little bit of background on when App Harvest started, why, maybe who some of the people were involved in and where? Yeah. So App Harvest started in January of 2018. It was started by Jonathan Webb, who is a graduate of the University of Kentucky and a Kentuckian himself.

He moved back home basically from Washington, D.C., where he was involved in developing these like large scale solar projects. And he wanted to apply large scale development back here in Kentucky. So he first started the company in Pikeville and actually wanted to build the first greenhouse on a former strip mine. And then when that proved to not be accessible because the former strip mine couldn't hold up such a heavy greenhouse, he decided to move a little bit further west and build the first one in Moorhead. The Moorhead facility is the first of 12 planned facilities across central Appalachia, but it's one of only five that ended up being built between 2020 and 2023. built between 2020 and 2023. Basically, the folks involved, Jonathan Webb was the CEO and former CEO and founder of the company. But it also had these like big name investors and board members like Martha Stewart, who went to jail for insider trading. And Jeffrey Ubin, who is a venture capitalist whose company inclusive capital, I think it's called, just went under last week.

And then like some other, JD Vance was also on the board for a time until 2021. So had these big flashy names and kind of like hoarded media attention, partially through the big investment that was happening and partially through those names associated with it. Yeah, actually, it's interesting you brought that up. I had totally spaced that they tried to open their first facility in Pikeville. That was the whole sale. You know, it's, you know,

to just kind of give the listener a little bit of historical context, like the mid 2000s, even up to even up to probably 2020. In some ways, you can even say up to today. But I think the wind has very precipitously, you know, very much been taken out of the cells of this movement. But in the mid 2010s, you had this a lot of like galvanized momentum for a just transition from coal mining and the phrase that you heard everybody using a lot back then was silicon holler um that was you know it's supposed to be this like alternative to silicon valley supposed to evoke like the region's potential.

And it's interesting because you wrote about this for Rolling Stone in 2021. And to prepare for this, I went back and read that. And it's really a fascinating document because the breathlessness almost, the triumphalism really, the way that jonathan webb talks about this it kind of gives you whiplash right because if you read your piece for chris that just came out a few weeks ago and then you go read in the the rolling stone thing it does kind of give you whiplash just like so sort of like how we have moved from this moment of kind of like high optimism and sort of like breathlessness to like this sort of collapsing realism of the of the project itself um but it's it's weird like you know and some of

the quotes from that piece too are very uh crazy i mean he's talking about like the world faces two choices mad max for avatar uh you know he's like talking about like they are going to they're going to um basically like saw he says we're having a global food security conversation on a farm in freaking moorhead cbs news senior environmental correspondent that's ben tracy traveled to kentucky to meet a pioneering young farmer who's also giving his Appalachian community an economic boost. This greenhouse is the size of 58 football fields. So big, you can't see where it ends. Do you think of yourself as a farmer?

Yeah, this is farming. And it's like, the project, when it was first introduced, caught our attention, right? Because it's Pikeville. It's in our backyard. And I think that the moment that obviously it lost mine and Tom's kind of approval, so to speak, was when they moved it to Moorhead. It's just a kind of acceptance that, okay. It's a kind of like acceptance that like, okay.

The thing I took umbrage with it all was the whole project was predicated on this idea that we're going to utilize these old abandoned strip mines to bring economic development in. And here's a project that we can do that sort of harkens back to an Appalachia from yesteryear that arguably never existed. We can get into that a little bit later when we get into our little world systems theory and get WandaPill. But the whole thing about it is people were sold on that and people sort of bought into that hook, line, and sinker. And the move to Moorhead was particularly cynical for me because it's a way to say, yeah, we still maintain our Appalachian bona fides.

However, we're not going to do it on this land that, you know, and, you know, and I'm fine with the idea that like it's an open question if it's even safe to do anything on these sites. Right. Let alone have people up there or anything else. They didn't really switch up their whole sort of shtick and their whole sort of fundraising appeal and all that kind of stuff to these VC people and all this. It was still going to be like, we're going to put the beleaguered coal miner back to work, you know, making these hydroponic tomatoes or harvesting these hydroponic tomatoes and all this stuff. And they never really adjusted for that. Like the to the uninitiated, the con was still on. for that. To the uninitiated, the con was still on, but Moorhead was a way to have access to that interstate, but still technically be in the mountains, but not the coal bearing part of the mountains, which is what really was the sticking point. Where are the other locations at, Austin? I think you've mentioned them in your piece. Yeah. So they're Round County, Madison County, and Pulaski County.

So Somerset, Berea, Richmond, Moorhead. And so like if you look at the definition of eastern Kentucky and Appalachian states, all of those counties are within that definition. But I agree, none of them are traditional coal counties with coal miners employed within that county. Although there were people who were involved in the coal economy, obviously, in those counties. But I agree that I think from the time that App Harvest first launched, it's kind of like campaign for funding that that transition wasn't publicized and said more head was kind of like swept into that but i also don't i also feel like it's still part of appalachia according to like how we do officially yeah i i think the only reason i pointed out is because and we can get into this now maybe we can get into a little bit further down the road but the only reason i pointed out was that this was essential to the entire business model it was fundamental in a way

that almost it ventured into racial politics like there was some code words there like jonathan webb was talking about putting like dirty agriculture out of work and it's like you dig into what he was saying he actually like meant like mexican agriculture and then like in your story at the very beginning like mitch mcconnell comes to one of the facilities there and he has a quote that's something like that right like like like this is you know we're gonna put like dirty mexican agriculture out of work or something i know i'm not quoting exactly but it was a stop it was an astonishing quote for like for me i mean even being familiar with like mitch mcconnell's like very cynical like race racial politics race baiting but uh it was still pretty astounding so like i guess maybe that's the task before us like trying to understand like why they um like their workforce itself like the composition of it

had changed a little bit um at the end as opposed to at the very beginning well i would say like two two things i would add to that one is that um when webb talked about taking like dirty agriculture away from other countries he was he was talking specifically about like pesticides um like what what makes conventional agriculture in his opinion dirty he would specifically that quote would refer to pesticides um and then mcconnell said i like the idea of taking the tomato market away from the mexicans that's what he said right it i do feel though that if you're a mitch mcconnell like if you're positing like white former coal miners as the kind of like pristine workforce that needs to be like brought up and developed and given benefits like health benefits stock options and everything like i don't know it feels rhetorically pitting them against, you know, Mexican

farm labor. That's what it feels like to me again. I don't know. I mean, I guess there's different ways to read it, but I, I feel very much like the, you know, and I don't know, maybe it doesn't even matter like when you're out there trying to raise VC money. But it does kind of have an allure in a way. If you're if you're going to like guys like Peter Till, I assume because like all these Silicon Valley people like the VC people, like they have a very definite, definite, like sort of political agenda. Not all of them, but a lot of them like Peter Till.

definite like sort of political agenda not all of them but a lot of them like peter till and so i don't know it's just an interesting um thing to dig into We've really deemed this as the third wave of sustainable infrastructure. 20 years ago it was renewable energy, 10 years ago it was electric vehicles and automotive, controlled environment agriculture. We can use infrastructure and technology to grow fruit and vegetable with 90% less water, get about 30 times yield per acre, and get the harsh chemical pesticides out of the growing practice. But where we're doing it, to me, is as important as how we're doing it. We're doing it here in central Appalachia. But so, like, let's talk about, like, the method by which they propose to do this it's called uh controlled environment agriculture um your article in grist mentions it your article

in the rolling stone really digs into it and then in your article in grist you link to a fast company article that talks it's more recent from like 2022 or maybe earlier this year, 23. Can you tell me about like what is controlled environment agriculture and why was it so alluring to Webb and his other investors? Yeah. So controlled environment agriculture is basically like anything where you take a plant inside and control its environment. So like a traditional hoop house or traditional greenhouse, all of that is controlled environment agriculture. But basically, over the last decade, there's been a lot of investment in a very like technologically enhanced version of that where you have like high yield agriculture over smaller spaces. So for app harvest, they had a greenhouse that was 50

football fields, 60 acres. And so an environment like that requires a ton of energy to run because you're replacing traditional farming, like sun and soil and water and nutrients and lights and heat with, um, like artificial versions of that. So, uh, for example, Kentucky, like nearly 70% of our energy still comes from commodified coal. Um, and so if you are running a giant facility on that, you're one increasing greenhouse gas emissions and two, you are, uh, basically it, it costs a lot. It costs a lot to run a facility like that. And so for a lot of these companies across the country that have gone under after starting these greenhouse businesses over the last decade or two, basically what a plant scientist at Utah State University told me was that these facilities are just prohibitively expensive to

make a profit off of. Yeah. You and I had talked on the phone last week, kind of trying to talk a little bit about what we could potentially explore with this topic. And I told you that this idea of controlled environment and agriculture it's like it's not something that i have a firm opinion on in the sense that like yes theoretically i think it is of utmost importance to have connection to the land to be able to use the land in these organic systems to grow food however it is also true that like large portions of our arable land have been decimated through fertilizer, you know, fertilizer over dependence on fertilizers. And so in a world like ours, that's warming with greater population, like we need to be able to grow food somehow. like to a lot of people like that problem that very basic problem cea i guess as you could uh put it in acronym form offers a potential solution to that and i guess that's what inspired webb and others like him right i guess maybe they see that it's not only a potential solution, but also perhaps a profitable one.

Yeah. I mean, basically the idea that I get into the story in Grist is that there's venture capitalists who feel like this is like a magic bullet for solving some of the problems with our food economy right now. And basically CEA at this kind of scale could be one piece of a much larger puzzle that we look at when we think about our food economy. So it's not that CEA inherently can't work or that it's inherently too expensive or that it inherently has to exploit laborers. When you put this much funding behind a single company, you're going to have debtors or investors who say that they need that funding repaid. And right now, CEA doesn't turn enough of a profit to repay the amount of investment that's being put into these facilities. Right. I never I myself never could have seen not been able to recoup billions of dollars from shitty hydroponic tomatoes, but that's just one man's opinion. Didn't they buy an ag robotics firm? I'm pretty sure, what is it? Root AI. App Harvest buys Root AI. buys root ai i guess like in the if you're selling cea i guess that's a potential upside of it that

you can integrate all these other sort of tech innovations into it like art artificial intelligence and robotics and stuff like that yeah basically the basically the guy, again, I spoke to, Bug B, he said, unless energy becomes far less expensive, the other giant investment in this industry is labor. So 75% of the costs of CEA are energy and labor. So unless you are to replace labor with robotics, it's just not going to be a profitable industry. But I don't know that much about how root AI went at App Harvest. I just know that it existed and it, and it did not replace labor there. It was like an investment

that could have added to labor, I guess, eventually. Yeah. It seems like, um, maybe it was Bugbee, the, the, in your article said that it kind of, someone said it in your article, it comes down to this very basic sort of physics problem. You're trying to generate, I mean, you're basically trying to create more food than the energy that you're putting into it. Again, that's a very crude attempt at it i'm not a physics expert i don't know anything about thermodynamics but when you're running that those levels one of your blind spots it's one of the few like um i mean if you're if you're farming indoors like you have to have like a light source for example right uh and if you don't have a natural one then it has to be you know fueled by in our case in kentucky would be fossil fuels and you actually addressed that

in the rolling stone thing and i think webb said something to the effect of like you know we're not a solar company um but uh but it does it does get it some very interesting problems that app harvest and other CEA based companies ran into because aren't there others that folded this year that were trying to sell a very similar product to app harvests? Yeah. There's a Florida based company, I think called Polara there's arrow farms, which was based on the East coast. The fast company article also names a third that I

can't think of off the top of my head. But basically, these companies also had hundreds of millions of dollars, not all quite as much as App Harvest had, but enough money that by the time they were harvesting and selling their produce, it wasn't enough to make up to their initial investment. There are some companies that are still successful. There's one, I mean, as far as I know, there's one called Red Sun, I think, that's in Western Virginia. And then there's another one called Plenty

that's got a couple of locations across the US. So some of these businesses are making it work and they also have high dollar valuations and high dollar investments, but a lot of them are struggling or going bankrupt. Yeah. I mean, Webb, didn't he base his off of one in the Netherlands, I think?

Yeah, his greenhouse is modeled off of greenhouses in the Netherlands. So they're like construction plans for a Dutch company. Yeah. I have questions about when you're in a place that's, you know, elevation wise a little bit up

and you're like, you know, we need to go to the people that are below sea level that famously had to build a dock that the little boy had to stick his finger in to save Holland. That's where we need to go to get our our blueprints from that was brought up to me too by a lot of uh my friends in ag they were like they were really incensed about his aphid problem

he's like i could i could i had a friend i was like i could like fix that problem in like four days and they just continued to have to like like turn their waist into sauces and stuff. And, you know, they're just very, very mad that, you know, these guys really weren't familiar with, you know, some some basic gardening. Yeah, I think one of the points that I tried to bring across in the story, but that I talked to Bugbee about was that, outdoor farming, or like the people who worked for the company were very familiar, it's still starting a totally new type of industry. And so I feel like part of the problem is that they did not give themselves enough time or enough like financial like net to be able to do some of that trial and error to figure out like what worked or how to deal with certain problems or how to deal with like how to better train workers to be in these facilities yeah that's like the the solar question is kind of interesting particularly his comment on

it because it's like for a man that cut his teeth in the solar contracts. Yeah, that's true. With the Department of Defense, too, if I'm not mistaken. Right. No less. And to kind of pun on that question, like, we're not a solar company. I mean, presumably I know a lot about it, but this is just not, you know.

I guess this, I guess, because like what I'm trying to understand is it seems like a lot of the people you interviewed for your story, as soon as they started working there in about 2020, 2021, it almost seems like right out the gate, AppHarvest basically built the jobs to them as these are going to be good paying jobs. You're going to have good health um plans again stock options this other stuff but it seems like almost immediately at the gate they are being asked to do overtime or they're being asked to work in greenhouses where the temperature could get as high as maybe even 130 degrees fahrenheit and like there's even anecdotes in your story of them putting tape or bags over the temp uh the thermometers in the greenhouses um and so is there something i guess is there something

within their specific implementation of cea that made them have to then start squeezing their workers for this extra surplus? Or was it because they just shot very big, very early and had very ambitious goals or just something inherent to Kentucky that made it? You know what I'm saying? Like, what is was maybe a combination of several of these things? Yeah think in broad strokes it's a it's a combination so if if energy is fixed which because app harvest is attached to our grid in kentucky which like you know they're not a solar company they could have maybe built a micro grid and in years from now added that to the traditional grid. Right. Like there's I guess there's ways around that. But when you start that company, you are reliant on the grid as it exists right now in the present. So if you can't cut energy costs and you haven't estimated out how much that's going to cost your facility, the other thing you can cut, which is not fixed, is labor.

going to cost your facility. The other thing you can cut, which is not fixed is labor. So perhaps one of the reasons that they started to, what I talk about in the story, what workers say is kind of like exploitation of their labor force is because that is something that they can, they can change the cost of, right. But the other factor is that initially they had productivity challenges. So they weren't getting as many grade A tomatoes as they needed to sell to their distributor. So they also needed workers to start working overtime in order to make up that loss. Right. They eventually did seeing the writing on the wall. They essentially started bringing in contract labor.

Basically, I'm assuming from Mexico. Is that correct? So from former workers, they say that they were largely Mexican laborers, but they also could have been from like the southwestern U.S. or other Latin American countries. Right. But yeah. So by the summer of 2021, they started bringing in contract laborers. And their their reason and their public filings is to basically replace a decline in local skilled labor, where they say there are other competitive markets now for this labor force that we thought we would be able to rely on because of the decline of the coal economy. And so now we're going to have to bring in other contract workers to replace this declining pool. Right. And so that's how you get this scenario that you portray at the very beginning of your story where you have mitch

mcconnell coming and making these comments about mexican agriculture while just hours before he showed up there was kind of this panic on the behalf of management to get the mexican laborers out of the premises so that they would be able to sort of like maintain the sort of image that they had fostered over the years of Appalachian workforce, you know, former coal miners. Faith, grit, determination, baby, like none other on the planet. Right. They made merch for it. Faith and grit, baby. They made merch for it. They just fight for it.

Well, it's part of your story, Austin. Tom and I were unaware that Web was on HGTV, actually. And, you know, I really appreciated that because, you know, I'm mid 30s, would love to own a home. And it's like I told Tom. Yeah yeah it's like tom is like we you know we all come from basically the same sort of cultural milieu as web and it's like wow that that's i guess where it'll get you if you you know have cozy relationships with vc funders it can just kind of uh pass off a loot various illusions yeah people comment on my credenza game on the internet that's all i've ever wanted yeah but like um but where do we stand with app harvest now

like what what um you know what what is their current status uh i believe webb was fired officially finally a few months ago right like? Like, where are they right now? Where do you see the future of it being, perhaps? So right now, all five of the App Harvest facilities are in the hands of different companies. So one is actually a Dutch grower, and then the other two are former investors. So according to bankruptcy filings, App Harvest Inc has sort of ceased to exist. They've detached themselves from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Their stock can no longer be traded. It's called extinguished on the stock market, which like even though you

couldn't buy stock anymore, it still existed for the past few months. So App Harvest is like 12 affiliated businesses and all of those are included in its bankruptcy filing. As far as I understand, there's only one of those businesses that still exists, which is App Harvest Operations and employs eight people, according to the filing. And it has about twenty24 million of debt. So I don't actually know whether or not the board remains under App Harvest operations. But as far as I know, it still does and web is still on it. Unless more information comes to light. Well, and I would assume that Kentucky Governor Beshear, I mean, like this, this one of the people interviewed in your story first heard about

app harvest and the potential uh employment at part at harvest from an announcement made by like this was you know this was a big sort of feather in their cap like trying to turn kentucky into like a leader in the high tech ag business. Like maybe it's premature, but like, I wonder if just, just based off business trends, based off of the New York times article that I cited up front, based off of what has happened with app harvest in the last year or two.

Do you think like, and know again this may be a bit too ambitious or too big a question but like is the dream of this type of like high-tech agriculture dead or do you think it maybe it maybe it's just a in a temporary lull it might revive or or what are the business trends that you think uh show showing well i would say basheer's already talking about a new cea company that's in northern kentucky now um so so yeah it's still around uh i i i can't predict the future but i i do feel like it is an industry that has not yet disappeared and probably will not disappear because we keep getting really excited about technologically advanced ways to do traditional ways of feeding ourselves, I guess is what I would say.

But like, I think for App Harvest, Bashir once said that he thought that it was the future of the state the more head sight that it would employ it was like the next Toyota would employ which employs almost 10,000 people in our state and obviously that did not come to pass so will state officials like Bashir keep like touting these new businesses before they have any sort of proof of concept. Like, I kind of I kind of hope not because I feel like that kind of investment in a new company that kind of like social investment is what made all of these people across our state, at least like buy stocks and lose like hundreds and thousands of dollars when this company like, pretty quickly fell apart.

I mean, I think CEA will be around just like venture capitalist funding will be around for probably a while. It'll just maybe get better. I would assume that as long as we're deferring any kind of honest engagement with climate change, I would imagine CEa is probably going to be around just myself i got a couple uh couple alternatives if you guys would like to hear them okay okay what you got here's the first one uh first one is is we round up all the unhomed dogs and cats we make a big big, with the facility in Moorhead,

we make a big, like a hotel for dogs. Okay, all right. Like they don't have a home. We go there, we feed them every day. It'd be a beautiful thing. I'm always thinking about dog shelters, no-kill shelters, and that would be a very cool no-kill shelter, you have to say. Where do we get the food from?

What is the mechanism for focusing on the wrong details right now we'll iron that out on the back end okay all right second idea is this you think about okay we already have the infrastructure what could be easy to grow here uh-huh i'm thinking for me i'm thinking squash squash anywhere you can grow up in the damn concrete if you want to. Yeah, it grows in the side of the road. What do y'all think about this? Squash Appalachia. Okay.

Maybe we should flip that around. Appalachian squash or something. Okay. No, I like squash Appalachia. I think that the problem you'd run into with that is that the facilities are still growing tomatoes. So. Oh, OK.

So they're not they're not like Mad Max yet. They're not like abandoned and like graffitied and all that. That's what I was thinking. No, not. No, they're still owned by these other companies and invested in them. So the one in Moorhead is actually owned by a company called Equilibrium now. And they work there. And actually some of the former workers

I talked to talked about trying to get a job there again now that it was under different ownership if that would change like possibly change issues they had with their working conditions. So it is not yet a facility that could house dogs. Oh, we couldn't do squash that's bummer yeah well boy can dream can't yeah um

it's it's interesting this is a total tangent and we can even cut it if we need to however i read a book last year that kind of like changed the way i think about a lot of things called fossil capital by this guy andreas malm i don't know if either of you have ever heard of it hey of uh how to blow up a pipeline fire yeah they made a movie how to blow up a pipeline i've not read that book or seen that movie but i i do like fossil capital you won't you want the fbi to know that you've not read um i too have not seen that movie the premise of fossil capital is very fascinating the premise is this in the 1830s when british industry switched from coal uh from water powered to steam power a lot of people think about

mechanization and about like robotics and other things as something that puts a lot of workers out of work and that's why business owners and capitalists do it however what he's trying to show is that actually developments in technology that save, you know, production effort and capacity actually usually wind up causing worse working conditions for the workers because they create a mechanism for exerting greater power and social control over the workforce itself. mechanism for exerting greater power and social control over the workforce itself and as i was reading your article austin that's all i could keep thinking of and it just it's just something that i've just wondered about like in cea and in uh all of these kind of attempts to use ai and robotics as labor-saving mechanisms, I wonder if they are not actually creating conditions that make working conditions even worse. And I'm not a Luddite necessarily.

However, I just think that... But I'm not not a Luddite. But I'm not not a Luddite. And so, I don't know, just a plug for that book for people if they'd like to go read that or if neither of you have read it. I recommend it. It's very fascinating. But maybe we can use that in the dog farm.

I'm still unclear with this. I'm sorry, let me be clear. I just it's a hotel for dogs. All right. I mean, it's where all the good sweet boys that don't have homes are going to go find the best amenities. Okay. All right. Fair enough.

Providing the forever home experience in the not forever home reality. Right. Right. I mean, we've been clamoring for that for a long time. So I'm glad you've innovated the space, disrupted it. So I guess that's about it um uh i would really recommend people go read austin's article in grist it is called a celebrated startup promised kentuckians green jobs it gave them a grueling hell on earth um please go check out that and um austin if if our readers would or i keep saying that if

our listeners would like to go read uh which they do sometimes where can they find you uh like oh yeah uh they can find me on my website find me at austin gaffney.com um and also if they're on social media they can find me on twitter and i'm on instagram facebook and that's austin with a y by the way so um so go check that out go check out these articles in rolling stone and grist um any any final thoughts any parting thoughts before we wrap this up? Well, I would just plug that it was published with Grist, but it was also co-published with Kentucky Center

for Investigative Reporting. So also subscribe to your local radio and paper, and you can also read it there. Hell yeah. They do great work. I've followed them a lot over the last six, seven years or so that they've been around. So yeah, please go check out all that. And please, if you're a VC funder, Tom's got some ideas for you. Squash Appalachia.

Squash Appalachia. You know, when you hear a winning idea irresistible alright well thanks so much for listening everybody you can go check us out on Patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party please go fund us over there

we will see you next time adios We will see you next time. Adios. Adios. Jonathan Webb, I'm in awe. You're all in awe. I had no idea this was going on. And it makes so much sense when you think about it. Yeah, but what a brain he has. Oh my gosh, I like him. We've got tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and berries all growable and those kinds of things. it yeah yeah but what a brain he had yes oh my gosh i like him tomatoes cucumbers peppers and

berries all growable and those kinds of things and i like how ben did the piece because i was wondering is there anything more than tomatoes and then he adds that i also like that jonathan was worried about what martha was going to say because if she didn't like it she would say that too i tell you what i got my martha stewart grilling book out just the other day just because summer is coming and i wanted to refresh you Those are some good looking tomatoes. Yeah, they are. I just think a lot about salad. He knows. And Jonathan wept 35. Bye. Thank you.