Balse:
You mean you changed your major or just...
Jon:
Yeah, I did my major my sophomore year. So from environmental horticultural science to not just environmental science, a broader aspect of it. And then I focused on hydrology, and I was really just fascinated about how water really carves landscapes really is the lifeline, the bloodline of most productive areas. You need good quality water and you need water to sustain life.
Balse:
Yeah, I mean most historical civilizations...
Jon:
Exactly on rivers along waterways. Yeah, the Romans built incredible aqueducts to transfer water closer to them.
Balse:
Or even as we speak right now, we wouldn't be here if we didn't have our LA aqueducts.
Jon:
Yeah, exactly taking water from the north or the Colorado River and bringing them to us. Otherwise we'd just be a desert here in LA. So I was really fascinated about the larger picture. And then obviously the horticultural stuff came after I finished all my school, my master's, and everything. I was like, you know what? Maybe I'll revisit that. And then I found, man, people have created a symbiotic relationship with plants as well, whether it be ornamental plants like flowers, shrubs, bushes, and also the edible plants, greens, leafy greens, fruiting plants.
Humans have left such a large imprint on the world. And I was just so fascinated by that aspect of it. Man, we can have such a large impact, which typically tends to be a negative one from an environmental aspect, but small steps, baby steps to make bigger beneficial changes over time. I was like, man, okay, that's really interesting to me.
Balse:
So you switched your major to environmental science?
Jon:
Exactly. Science is undergrad, and then for grad school, then that's where I've kind of pursued in an even more technical field of engineering. Let's do calculations, let's engineer channels for water.
Balse:
This is civil engineering.
Jon:
Exactly.
Balse:
More bigger projects and stuff.
Jon:
Exactly.
Balse:
Building stuff.
Jon:
Exactly. Bridges, culverts, water treatment plants, wastewater treatment plants, all these things.
Balse:
Before you went to grad school, you worked, right?
Jon:
Exactly. I worked a little more. I was doing environmental consulting. So basically before any kind of construction goes on in a building, we need to do site assessments, evaluate what is the current condition of the land that we're going to build. If you want to put a residence on top of a piece of land, you want to make sure that there's no contaminants in the soil, whether it be volatile chemicals, benzene that will kind of disperse into the air over time, or hydrocarbon gasoline, diesel, which can also have negative impacts long-term on people or residents who inhabit that land.
So that's what I was doing before, consulting, kind of getting my hands dirty. Again, different sites, doing soil borings, seeing what's in the soil, and then finding ways that we can remediate it. If it's volatile, we kind of just excavate the site, ship that contaminated soil offsite to a hazardous, depending on what the nature of the waste is. But typically it'd be like a hazardous waste or generally just a landfill in general.
Balse:
Very technical stuff.
Jon:
Yeah, definitely.
Balse:
Basically putting up reports for the client.
Jon:
Exactly. What did we find? What do we do to remediate it? And then what is the final, I guess after our job is done and we've remediated the site, making sure, providing data to say that, "Hey, we've removed all the contaminants and now these are the numbers," to say that whether it be a gas vapor to probe that can measure the emissions of the soil to say, "This was the initial level, and this is after all the remediation. It's basically down to zero or below the ESLs where the safety limits basically."
Balse:
I see, environmental safety limits.
Jon:
Exactly. Pretty much. Yeah.
Balse:
I see. And the clients are usually like-
Jon:
One that I was doing exactly with the builders
Balse:
Or the government?
Jon:
No, it was more private. It was more private, but we would've definitely had the city come by, inspect and stuff, too.
Balse:
Oh, it's more like the city inspecting. You want to nature that, the [inaudible].
Jon:
We were working for the, I guess, the landowner essentially. They hired us to come on and do the site assessment and then take care of the problems that we, I guess identified.
Balse:
I see, I see. So that was the corporate job?
Jon:
Yeah, that was probably the solar one was definitely a lot more corporate. The consulting definitely had that corporate feel to it, but I was working for a small consulting firm, so it didn't have all the politics going on and stuff. But still with the landowner, the foreman of the site, the city coming in, just trying to play politics between the different parties, all the moving parts. I'm like, okay, this is a fascinating kind of.
Balse:
Yeah, I see. And then so you did that for a couple years?
Jon:
I did that for a year. And then I was like, you know what? I've learned a lot here and I think I've kind of got a pretty good general grasp of the process and everything else that goes along here. And then maybe just go try to see something else, see what else I can learn, and how else I can maybe add to my experiences. Because I'm just going to basically go off of my education instead of experience and also personal philosophy. So how can I continue to evolve that philosophy and maybe tailor it more to a way where I feel like I'm having more of an impact
Balse:
Or aligns better.
Jon:
Exactly. Yeah.
Balse:
And so wait, so that was then you go to grad school or you went...
Jon:
Yeah, then I went to grad school after that.
Balse:
So you decided to go to grad school, and that's civil engineering, the more hardcore stuff for a year or two.
Jon:
Exactly.
Balse:
I see. And then you have this, I guess, part of your job afterwards or something that you go to Vietnam or something.
Jon:
Yeah, I've been there several times. So I went there again after grad school too, and that's where I kind of had a better understanding. I was able to work with other people in the industry. So I worked with Dr. Zang. It's been a while since I've talked to him, but he's a professor. He's a professor now in China, but he at the time was associate professor over at Princeton. So it was me and him over in Thailand. And I had met some friends there previously that could speak decent English and help translate for us because neither of us could speak Thai. So we kind of just toured around the province that we were in, visiting different sites.
We thought that we kind of identified on maps before in key areas, in the key areas of the watershed, higher up in the watershed, kind of more in the floodplain area, and more down south where all the confluence of the different rivers and streams kind of discharge into this one southern region where instead of farming, they're now doing more fish aquaculture. So more farming of fish instead of plants. So you see the different aspects around the province and how they're affected. And they're all kind of related in this way. They're kind of connected by the water. And the further south you go, the more I guess territory the water flows through, you find that the more contaminated it becomes. Kind of just converges and accumulates in this one point. And it was eye-opening to me to see how this is how people live? Oh my god, this is a totally different world from my life.
Balse:
You go downstream.
Jon:
All over. All over.
Balse:
Oh, I see. Upstream as well.
Jon:
And just totally different to what I was accustomed to here.
Balse:
I see, so more culturally and everything. I'm talking about just the degradation or anything.
Jon:
Exactly, lifestyle and everything. And also the lifestyle is affected by the degradation of the environment as well, how they have to continually adjust and do things on the fly. So even though these people there aren't really formally educated, they're still incredibly resourceful and able to... Obviously there's a cap to what they can do, but you can see them in real time just trying to make changes of what they see. They understand the land very well. They've worked in these areas for generations. Great, great, great grandfathers lived off the land and they've been doing the same thing for generations.
And it's just kind of crappy now that the government in Thailand has stepped in and said, "Oh, you know what? We're going to make any work or habitation in these areas illegal." But I was like, man, these people have lived here for generations. You expect them to leave, vacate the area, and do what now? Go to the city and find a job. And it's like, but there's a million plus people in these hillsides here that live off the land. It's like they're all going to go to the city and find some kind of skilled work that can pay them a decent wage and help them make a living? Some of them will make that transition, but the vast majority will probably not make that.
Balse:
So the government's trying to do...
Jon:
So the government is aware of the environmental crisis going on there. So that's why their answer or their remedy, I guess would be to get the people out of there, and remove them.
Balse:
The whole problem is the way the people do agriculture.
Jon:
Exactly.
Balse:
Burn down.
Jon:
Exactly. Slash and burn.
Balse:
Slash and burn, right.
Jon:
Exactly. So work one parcel of land for a season and then kind of move on to the next. So you basically exhaust the soil's nutrients in one growth cycle, move to the next. And if you want to stay on that same plot of land, you would have to spray. And they do end up spraying most of the time anyways, to kind of combat pests, other diseases like fungus and stuff.
So yeah, the way they currently go about it is slash and burn, heavy use of synthetic chemicals, fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, and then they move on to the next plot. So it's interesting, when you fly in, my first time flying in, I had no idea. I was looking out the window from the plane looking down onto these mountains. They're like, man, these mountains, some of them are dense, lush forests and other ones, they're just barren, brown, bare soil.
Balse:
After the slash and burn.
Jon:
Exactly. So you just see the dichotomy between the two. Holy cow, that one looks not good, not productive, nothing on it just bearing death. And the other one is just full teaming with life. You see the contrast. And over the last 10 years, it's been like, what, 15, 16 years now. But my first time there, what I've learned was that over 10 years, they basically cleared a third of their forest. And man, and there's a lot of forests. And in 10 years you guys did this much, holy cow. And that's probably a product of raising the cost of living for the people. Maybe they're exposed to other parts of the world where they see people have technology, other ways of living. They're like, wow, okay, now we should expect to have this for us. We got to make more money.
And also the agricultural companies that they would sell their product to is primarily just corn, cutting down the forest to grow things on corn on the mountains and to say, this doesn't seem a practical or sustainable solution long-term. So the problem a lot of these farmers would face is that these ag companies that they're selling their product to are also the ones that are loaning them money and equipment. So these companies know exactly how much they lent out to farmers at the beginning of the season. So at the end, come harvest time, they can undercut them, say, "Oh, we'll only buy your product for this much." So you kind of keep these farmers in a cycle of debt where they have no choice but to keep doing what they know how to do.
Balse:
Exploitation.
Jon:
Exactly. If you're in this position where you feel you have a boot on your neck, on your throat, you're not really going to be incentivized to kind of try to do things differently, try something new. You're going to stick with what works. We know how to do this, let's just do this. Instead of trying to venture out and try something maybe more creative or something a little bit different. So it keeps them kind of trapped in that sense. And it's just unfortunate. It's like, wow, we have to find ways to get these people, give them access to whatever information, resources, whatever it may be to help them improve their situation.
And that's what really inspired me to see how hard these people work and just how genuine they are. You go out there, you talk to them, you meet them, they're so hospitable, they welcome you with open arms. They're willing to talk to you about whatever they're facing, the challenges, what they're doing, all these things. And at the end of the day, they're just people too, just trying to make a living, feed their family.
Balse:
Yeah. I think I saw one of the photos on a webpage and about the section. Is Ms. Professor Zang in that picture?
Jon:
He probably is. He probably is. Yeah.
Balse:
I'm guessing he's a pretty young guy.
Jon:
He's young. I think he was a little older than me, I think maybe a few years older than me.
Balse:
Oh, I see. Now I clicked. So I noticed a few people with you.
Jon:
Had a little team out there.
Balse:
I see. And the thing is that it's similar, that's like one sample that you actually hands-on saw and multiple times over the years in Thailand, but that's happening in Amazon, everywhere.
Jon:
All over the world, exactly. South America, Southeast Asia, Central America, Africa, everywhere, all over the world. We were being exploited for their natural resources, unfortunately.
Balse:
So all that, having experienced that, seeing that and with your background and interest and your engineering background, you came to... Or you were constantly thinking about, okay, how can you solve or what can I present as a potential solution and come to this vertical farming.
Jon:
Exactly. It was a combination of just education, my experiences in life and what I'm seeing and work as well. How can we find ways to help these people? Obviously they're kind of forgotten, unfortunately. And for me, when I'm out there, I'm like, man, these people are so good and understanding, reading the land. And they obviously don't want to cut down the forest because what can they do? They're not skilled in the traditional sense where they'll pick up a computer and go learn C++ or Java or whatever, HTML. And that's kind of the direction that a lot of nations tend to be headed. We're in a more tech-centric economy, and these people are kind of getting left out in the dust.
So in my head I'm like, man, these people are so good with growing things, understanding the land, harvesting time, weather, and all that. They're so incredibly smart in this regard. Maybe we can channel or utilize their current skill set, but maybe in a different environment where they don't have to cut down the forest. If we were able to maybe use less land with vertical farming, move them indoors, find ways to get donors or sponsors. Because my boss at the time, that was kind of his idea was we can get donors or sponsors to help the farmers here. But then I was like, "We'll help them, how?" We got to have a direction and a direction to go towards. You're just asking for donations, people, "What's my money going to go towards?" Well, helping the farmers, helping the people, we'll help them, how?
So in my head, I'm like, well, one way would be we could build little warehouse spaces where they can do large scale vertical farming. They can come together collectively, bargain and all that, pool their knowledge and their resources together and do farming what they already know how to do, but in an indoor setting. So then I started, when I came back, I was like, you know what? This has really inspired me to try to figure out what the challenges are. I'd never really grown things before. I had grown basic things, basil before. I just threw the seed out there, it grew, oh wow. It grew. Oh my gosh, this is incredible. But I didn't really think of it beyond that.
But after seeing these people working the land, I'm like, man, okay, this is mind-blowing to me, man. Got little Asian ladies that are basically propagating an entire mountainside of hillside rice one at a time. And I'm up there and you look, the whole mountain is rising. I'm like, this one lady did all of that herself in this near vertical slope. I'm standing up there, I might slip and fall myself, and she's doing this. It is no big deal. Oh my gosh. Holy cow. These people are so resilient.
So then I started, I came back and I was like, man, I want to find ways to really understand better and do it myself because I went to Cal Poly. The motto for both of them was learn by doing. And they're very hands-on in that regard, so that's how I really kind of started. I found that what I learned best also was hands-on. So then I came back, I was like, you know what? I'm inspired now. Let's see what I can do here. I started doing aquaponics, which is combining fish and plants. So the fish-
Balse:
Oh, the definition of aquaponics has a fish side.
