Berry Tech & Sweet Success

To start, I'd like to discuss your presence in Japan. We understand that you established your subsidiary there in 2023 and plan to begin operations at the Open Innovation Centre in Tokyo later this year. This initiative is supported by government grants and investors such as NTT and Mizuho Bank. It seems the goal is to position your company not just as a U.S.-based agri-tech startup, but as a forward-looking model for addressing global food security challenges—particularly those related to climate change and supply chain disruptions. Could you share whether the Open Innovation Centre is intended as a blueprint or turnkey solution for vertical farming, one that can be scaled across major cities worldwide? Given the complexities, how do you envision making this technology broadly deployable?

You’ve touched on one of our core challenges and goals. When you consider even something as seemingly straightforward as an air conditioner within a vertical farm, there are countless variables—angles, temperature settings, humidity levels—that have to be carefully calibrated. Currently, our engineers individually tune each element. Without our highly specialized team, setting up these systems isn’t feasible. So, our vision is to develop a solution as simple and modular as assembling IKEA furniture—where everything is pre-configured, standardized, and ready to be deployed. Local construction teams anywhere in the world could then install and operate these farms without needing highly specialized engineers on site. This is crucial because if the setup is too complex or bespoke, scaling globally becomes impossible. The technology base, the know-how, and the operational protocols are already established. The next phase is about rapid, global replication. To achieve this, we created the Open Innovation Centre in Japan. It serves as our development hub for perfecting this turnkey model—making vertical farming accessible, scalable, and replicable worldwide.

That leads nicely into my next question—why Japan?

Japan is uniquely suited to this endeavor. Vertical farming is really a hybrid of indoor agriculture and industrial engineering. Japan excels in both respects. From an agricultural standpoint, Japan offers an abundance of excellent seed varieties and generations of deep agricultural know-how. This kind of expertise, combined with advanced technology, is mostly found only in Japan and the Netherlands. When it comes to industrial technology, the U.S. excels in software and AI, but Japan’s strengths lie in robotics, aeronautics, LED technology, and IoT integration. This makes Japan a powerhouse for the kind of precise, engineering-driven vertical farming we envision. Moreover, the cost structure in Japan for developing and testing these technologies is comparatively lower than many other countries. Until now, we had been focusing on development in the U.S., but now we’re intentionally leveraging Japan’s strengths as a country to pioneer our R&D. This involves considering environmental variables—angles, humidity, temperature—that our in-house engineers meticulously control.

The ultimate aim is to engineer a system that can be manufactured and assembled like pre-designed furniture, eliminating the need for onsite engineering expertise. This R&D hub in Japan allows us to innovate rapidly and refine the processes required to expand globally.

I want to shift the conversation to your strawberries, particularly the “Omakase berry.” Your passion for Japanese strawberries clearly resonates personally for many. Could you explain what distinguishes this berry, and how you are advancing the Japanese standard in strawberry cultivation?

Certainly. Our “Omakase berry” is a unique strawberry variety native to Japan, distinct from strawberries commonly grown in Australia or the United States. To clarify, strawberries in different regions belong to completely different groups botanically. In places like Australia and the U.S., strawberries are typically grown outdoors during the summer season, focusing on volume and affordability rather than exceptional taste. These “summer strawberries” are widely produced but tend to be less flavorful.

Japan took a different approach. Because Japanese consumers have historically been very particular about flavor, growers shifted to cultivating strawberries indoors during the winter months. This method requires more time and care, resulting in berries that are far sweeter and more delicious, albeit produced in smaller quantities. That’s why strawberries are associated with Christmas in Japan—the season runs from December through March, contrasting with the July-August season in the U.S. and Europe. Our innovation is that we can now reproduce this Japanese-style strawberry cultivation in the United States, thanks to vertical farming technology. This enables us to grow premium Japanese strawberries outside Japan. Furthermore, our R&D focuses intensely on optimizing the environment for each strawberry variety—adjusting temperature, humidity, light intensity, and nutrition in a precisely timed manner. This level of environmental control allows us to consistently reproduce the peak flavor and quality that Japanese consumers expect.

For example, even well-known varieties like Amao or Tochihotome can vary significantly when grown outdoors due to fluctuating weather. But in our controlled vertical farms, we can guarantee the same perfect taste every day. This consistency and the ability to maximize each berry’s potential are what differentiate us and form the core of our competitive advantage.

That’s fascinating. I recall from your talks on CNN and TED that your ability to conduct rapid daily testing and refinement far outpaces conventional farming, which would take centuries to match. Beyond strawberries, could you share what other crops or fruits you are exploring?

Currently, we’re best known for our strawberries. We have also launched limited quantities of tomatoes and conducted R&D on crops such as melons. Our technology is capable of cultivating a wide range of greenhouse-grown crops—cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, and more. However, the immediate challenge we face is the enormous demand for our strawberries. We cannot currently keep up with market demand with our existing facilities, not only in the U.S. but globally. The global strawberry market alone is worth around $30 billion annually. Capturing even 10% of that would mean producing $3 billion worth of strawberries, which is a massive undertaking.

While our long-term plan includes expanding into other vegetables and eventually staple crops, this will require significant time, especially given the current costs of electricity. We expect these costs to come down over the next two to three decades, but not within the next five years. So, while diversification is on our horizon, our immediate focus remains scaling strawberry production sustainably and efficiently.

Omakase Berry

Speaking of costs, your pricing has been much discussed—like the comparison of $2.30 versus $0.23 per unit on CNN. Is your ultimate goal to achieve price parity with conventional produce, or do you intend to maintain a premium positioning?

Our vision is to democratize vertical farming technology—to make it the new agricultural standard. This means ultimately achieving price parity with conventional farming while delivering superior quality and experience. We are not trying to compete with the cheapest produce at the outset. Instead, as we refine our technology and drive down costs, we will gradually reduce prices. To give you a sense of progress, when we first launched, our berries sold for around $50 per pack. Now, our most affordable product retails at $7.99, available in over 100 stores. While not yet the cheapest option on the market, it’s within a price range accessible to many consumers. Our goal is to further reduce this to the $6.99, $5.99, and potentially $3.99 range in the future, all while maintaining consistent quality and pesticide-free assurance. Quality is paramount. We want customers to feel that the price they pay corresponds directly to the superior taste and safety of our product.

Who do you see as your primary customer base going forward, especially beyond 2025?

For the foreseeable future, up to around 2030, we will continue to be viewed as a premium brand. Our core customers will be food enthusiasts, or “foodies,” who seek out the best culinary experiences and are willing to pay a premium for superior quality produce. Additionally, we’re seeing a growing market segment among parents, especially mothers with young children, who are highly conscious about pesticide exposure and food safety. They appreciate the traceability and transparency our system offers—knowing exactly where, when, and how each strawberry was grown. This trust is a powerful differentiator compared to generic imports of uncertain origin, and this segment is expanding rapidly.

Moving racks at Mega Farm

On behalf of the Asian and Japanese community here in Australia, we look forward to your projects launching locally. Now, shifting to a broader social perspective: Could you share your views on food sustainability and inequality, and how Oishii is addressing these issues?

Sustainability in agriculture is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today. The biggest hurdle is farmland availability. By 2050, to meet global food demand, we would theoretically need to clear an area equivalent to twice the size of India’s forests for farming. This is simply impossible—not only due to ecological constraints but because farmland cannot be created out of deserts or unusable land.

Population growth is relentless, so the supply-demand imbalance will only worsen. Consequently, the cost of fresh produce will keep rising, making healthy food unaffordable for many and forcing the majority to rely on frozen or processed foods. Water usage is another critical issue. Freshwater is already in scarce supply, with agriculture consuming roughly 60% of it globally. To keep up with demand, agricultural water use would have to increase dramatically—yet there is no practical way to do this sustainably.

Vertical farming offers solutions: it requires no farmland and recycles most of the water used by plants, vastly reducing waste compared to traditional irrigation methods. Moreover, our farms operate in sealed environments that capture CO₂ to enhance photosynthesis, something impossible in open-air farming where CO₂ quickly dissipates. Our farms are located close to urban centers—ours is about an hour from New York—reducing food miles by over 90%, which drastically lowers emissions from transportation.

The main criticism we face is energy consumption, as vertical farms use significantly more electricity than traditional farms. That’s why we’ve invested in a 50-acre solar facility adjacent to our farm to ensure that renewable energy powers our operations. This approach proves that vertical farming can be sustainable even at scale. While conventional farming can improve incrementally, vertical farming represents a paradigm shift—an essential step toward sustainable, resilient food systems.

Following up on that, vertical farming has faced significant challenges with energy costs and scalability. Despite $1.8 billion in investment between 2014 and 2020, many startups collapsed. Oishii has achieved impressive outcomes, such as 95% pollination rates and four to five times yield per plant, integrating bees, robotics, and AI. What do you think went wrong with previous models, and why do you believe Oishii will succeed where others failed?

The answer is quite straightforward, in my opinion. Many vertical farms began with leafy greens, which seemed like the easiest crop. However, that was actually the root of many failures. Vertical farming is a deep tech endeavor—think of it like nuclear fusion or space exploration. Investors must be prepared for a long-term commitment of 10, 20, or even 30 years before returns materialize. Many farms funded hundreds of millions of dollars trying to automate lettuce production but never reached profitability. When I started working in this space over ten years ago, even before the term “vertical farming” was common, I saw Japanese companies fail with leafy greens after a decade without making money.

We realized early on that to convince investors and achieve cash flow positivity, we needed a clear strategy: start with a premium product—strawberries—that could be priced higher due to quality differences. This approach allowed us to reach profitability faster on a facility level and build investor confidence. From there, as we improve our technology, we can gradually reduce costs and prices, expanding downmarket. It’s similar to Tesla’s strategy: launch a high-end, premium product first, then use that success to drive innovation and cost reductions for mass-market vehicles.

Picking robots at Mega Farm

We’re almost out of time, but I have two final questions. First, your recent acquisition of the IP and assets of Tortuga Agtech—a leader in robotic harvesting—stood out. What was the strategic rationale behind this M&A, and can we expect more such acquisitions?

Yes, we have been developing much of our engineering technology in-house, including robotic harvesting. Tortuga has specialized solely in robotic harvesting for over ten years and raised more than $50 million focused on this single challenge. However, because they did not operate farms themselves, they had to design robots compatible with existing farm layouts—meaning robots had to move around the farm and avoid people, which imposed many constraints.Our approach from day one was to automate vertical farming like a factory: plants move through fixed robot stations rather than robots moving around.

Since we own our farms, we designed the layout to optimize this approach—allowing us to use stationary industrial robots that are faster, more reliable, and more precise. By acquiring Tortuga, we combined their advanced AI and vision software capabilities with our industrial robotics approach, creating a fully integrated, highly automated farming system. This merger of expertise has accelerated our path to industrial-scale automation.

Finally, as president, what are your personal goals for the business before you retire? And is there a plan to go public?

This business is my life’s work, and I don’t expect to see the finish line anytime soon. My goal is to transform agriculture fundamentally—to create a system that is both environmentally sustainable and commercially viable at price parity with conventional farming. I want to expand this model across as many crops as possible, eventually including staple crops.

My vision is to replace most of the current produce aisle—currently dominated by outdoor, unsustainable agriculture—with vertical farm-grown products that are fresher, tastier, and affordable to everyone, not just the wealthy. This is a grand ambition, but I’m confident it’s achievable.

One last question—do you see this technology applying to space, such as farming on Mars?

Absolutely. Vertical farming is the only viable way to grow crops in space. There are challenges, of course—pollination is tricky when gravity is different. Bees fly upward on Earth, but in zero gravity, they’d be disoriented.We might need robotic pollinators or genetically engineered plants that don’t require pollination. It’s a fascinating area with many possibilities. Perhaps in the future, vertical farming will be essential not just on Earth but beyond.

For more information, visit their website at: https://oishii.com/?