Ajit George is leaving a legacy. It won't be his name on a college building or money to descendants. Ajit is feeding others and at the same time, fighting recidivism in the penal system. Second Chances Farm in Wilmington, DE is thriving despite a shaky start and is continuing to grow. Listen to this fascinating podcast to learn about the legacy. Visit www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com to learn more.
Diane Dayton 0:02
This is Changing the Rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.
KC Dempster 0:14
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe at Wildfire Podcast Studios in Woodbury, New Jersey, and we're enjoying a beautiful morning. We love to share our podcast with you because we believe that rules are imposed on all of our lives from the day we're born. And most of the time, they're meant to be helpful. But as we get older, sometimes they are more restrictive. So, the luckiest people in the world, learn how to examine the rules and decide which ones work for them and which ones don't, which ones can be tweaked and which ones can be totally eliminated. And that allows them To live the life they want to live, and they they do that. So good morning, Ray.
Ray Loewe 1:05
Good morning, KC and you're breaking the rules because KC is not in the studio with us. She is beaming herself in from home because she self quarantining after, after being allowed to take a vacation, is that right?
KC Dempster 1:19
That's correct. I was in what New Jersey considers one of those hot states. So I'm self quarantining.
Ray Loewe 1:26
Well, we miss you. So anyway, we're here about changing the rules. And we're we're here to showcase one of the luckiest people in the world today. the luckiest people in the world, by our definition is one of the people who actually personally plan their own lives, and then design them to their specs and then step into them and live them the way they want to. And they don't let rules get in their way. Or if they are going to let roles get in their way they figure out how to make them work for That. So we're here today with a Ajit George. Okay, Ajit has some incredible. He's got an incredible story to tell him now I met him actually through his wife Sarah Brown. And when we were talking about him one day he wasn't here. I asked Sarah Well, what does he do? And her comment was that he goes and locks himself into a room for hours. And then he comes out with amazing ideas. So you want to comment on that as well.
Ajit George 2:36
I suspect that she was referring to the fact that I spent three years before September 4 of 2019. Working seven days a week out of my wine cellar in Wilmington, Delaware, with a friend of mine who was working with me, called Evan Bartel and we were for the better part of those three years we're working on an idea to create Second Chances Farm which was just an idea three years prior to that. And the wine cellar was important because we were sort of exiled because Sarah didn't want us in the dining room and my office was too small to have two people in the house. And so in the wine cellar, which she didn't visit, because she doesn't drink wine, we were hidden it was And plus, we had no clocks and no windows. So we had no idea what time it is like being in a casino. So we could put 18 hours a day and work on the computer and actually get a lot done. But we compress probably five years of work in two and a half years and to come up with this idea which has now been come to fruition.
Ray Loewe 3:37
So we now know why you're one of the luckiest people in the world before we even started on the project. Okay, so so I met you. And I got an invitation that absolutely fascinated to me. This was before this pandemic started, and I got a chance to go to an experimental place that you designed and developed, it was called Second Chances Farm. And you can fill me in on all the details of what it is and how it is but but the invitation was to go and release 10,000 ladybugs into this old building in Wilmington. So that's your lead and you think,
Ajit George 4:17
well, I'm so glad you came. I'm glad you accepted. There were many people invited thought I was kidding or couldn't believe that I would do it. The Ladybug happens to be Delaware State official bug. So just so you know, states can have official bugs and flowers. ladybugs are one of the friendliest thing that you can have in an indoor vertical farm, or any farm for that matter because they eat pests. They don't eat plants or flowers, they eat pests. So we had moved in on September 4 of 2019 into this 47,500 square foot building, which was a warehouse and we had no idea it was 60 years old, what kind of pests might be there and we were setting up A prototype farm at that point to get started. And you know, there are people who do groundbreaking with beautiful silver or gold shovels, there are people who take cameras and knock on drywall. There are all kinds of ceremony more traditional ceremonies, ribbon cutting, and I thought to dedicate this old building I would invite the governor and various other dignitaries as well as friends like you to come help release 10,000 lady bugs, which was my team. So first I had to find 10,000 lady bugs, which I did which and they had be live because if they're dead, they have been released. And among the many things I learned is you can get ladybugs from many sources but Amazon was the best buy and and they deliver them with a promise that they are alive which is pretty amazing. And then we got the lady bugs and we had to sort them out into 300 little beautiful gold tassel bags in the morning of it from their habitat. You serve honey and other things. To them for the two days that they had arrived before. So they're happy because they obviously have no pests to eat. And then we hand transplanted them into these lovely orange bags. And as 300 plus guests came, including you Ray, we gave each of you a little bag with a ribbon on it. And when the moment was right, and when the governor After all, the ceremony went up a ladder to go up to the top of an eight storey module. To release the first set of ladybugs, everybody in the audience came up and depending on whether they liked heights or not, they stood next to the module or they went up the ladder and release ladybugs, it was much more a chance for people to first of all see what an indoor vertical farm looks like because we had an idea as to module that was full of plants. But it was also to communicate the fact that we are we because we're indoors. We can be pesticide free and herbicide free because we don't need to deal with bugs as a general rule. And the lady bugs was just My messaging way of sending a message that we are pesticide free and herbicide free
Ray Loewe 7:05
Well it was a magnificent message. Now we baited everybody so far with two stories. We talked about you while locking yourself in a wine cellar. And then we talked about lady's bug, but I think what we ought to do is talk a little bit about the concept of Second Chances Farm, how it developed, what it is where it's going. So short take it away. So
Ajit George 7:25
let me start by talking about the three words that are in our name. I'll start with the farm because that's the first one that's the smallest one. The farm is an indoor hydroponic vertical farm located in Wilmington, Delaware in an opportunity zone which is especially economically distressed area. We as I mentioned some large building 47,500 square feet. We divided the farm into three zones. We have finished farm one, we are working on farm two, and we have eight levels of indoor growing so it is pretty Amazing and we have working on farm two. We can grow almost anything but we primarily grow right now leafy greens and Herbes and we grow them. With four things are needed in indoor vertical farm, you need light because we don't have natural light. It's all state of the art LED lights which are cool and mimic the sun which is incredible how the lights have evolved over the last four years to essentially mimic the sun and without creating heat because if there was heat then we have to have more age, air conditioning. Number two What you need is water very important. Third, we have to add nutrients to the water and the reason for the water is we have no soil we are soilless which is hard for people to imagine you can grow plants when it but you add nutrients to the exact amount that you need. And the fourth thing which people are shocked to know is we have to provide the plants with carbon dioxide. Plants consume an unbelievable amount of carbon dioxide so they can create oxygen. photosynthesis. I never thought when I was in grade school Wherever I learned about photo photosynthesis, that I would end up having to create a I have to bring in carbon dioxide to supply it for the plant. So those are the four things we need for the plants. So that's what an indoor vertical farm is. And that's what we are we are Delaware's first indoor vertical farm. We plan to be throughout the Mid Atlantic area. But I would never have gotten into farming except for the fact that I was trying to solve a larger problem which is recidivism. And recidivism is what I would say is a tendency for people who have been released from incarceration, to be re arrested and go back to prison. In the United States. We have 2,500,000 or 300,000 people in prison on any given day. That represents 25% of the world's prison population, even though there are much more notorious countries like Iran and North Korea and and other places. We have and we are only 5% of the world's population. We have 25% of the people who are in prison. And 95% or 90% of those people will come out and are serving life sentences. And 65 to 70% of those people after they're released within three years to five years, are re arrested and put back in prison. in Delaware in 2019, it cost over $53,000. for somebody to be in prison, which is, in my mind, a lot of money. I approached this and not as a bleeding heart liberal I approach this as a compassionate capitalist, I think to spend 53,000 plus dollars to keep somebody in a prison after they've been in prison already. This is I'm only talking that recidivism stuff seemed to be a misuse of capital. So I approached this from a unique voice of how can we reuse capital. And so it seemed to me that I could not I didn't have the capacity to solve the school to prison pipeline are the largest societal problems but perhaps I thought I could interrupt the recidivism cycle. And the way I was going to do that is on my 63rd birthday, which was three years ago, I invited 63 friends and I declared as a public witness, Moses, mostly for people called hold me accountable, that my legacy at age 70 by age70, would be that I would create 70, compassionate capitalists, all of them being returning citizens, which is our term for formerly incarcerated persons. And, and I would do this by creating one or two indoor vertical farms. And by doing that I was putting myself to be held accountable because I think it's important for people to people have lots of ideas, but they're afraid to share it. I share it so that people can say what happened to that crazy idea. We're going to do it. Why 70 I was going to be 70 in seven years, so that seems like a reasonable number. Also from a biblical point if you are biblically inclined it just threescore and 10. And because I don't have children, and I have a Red Standard Poodle that will not probably outlive me. I've wanted to think about what was a legacy leave behind, and I thought, if I could impact 70 family 70 returning citizens, their families, their children, their sisters or brothers, I have essentially left a legacy larger than any family that I could naturally have created. And in also in the process, I could create compassion capitalists, because I believe for all of us since capitalism is of our better answers than socialism, and in my opinion, by making a pie larger, rather than cutting smaller, smaller slices of an existing pie. I believe capitalism for me is the creation of a larger pie. And to do that you got to show give people a helping hand and the returning citizens have a scarlet letter behind them when they leave prison, especially if they have a felony record, which prevents them from getting meaningful jobs and because they can't get jobs, they go hungry, they can't get accommodation, say all kinds of issues and if you and I could not eat or have home We probably would commit a crime to do it because in good doing that I would get three meals a day. And all health insurance and accommodations is the irony of ironies, we reward people for on it. So we only hire returning citizens so we discriminate against people if you haven't been to prison. So we're like, we're unlike everybody else, you have to go to prison, or you have to be convicted to come to us so and that is deliberate because we are trying to create a community of people who have shared experience who act as a peer group to help each other because they understand the experience The only exceptions to this is leadership team including myself which is a small group, but otherwise our primary group is returning citizens and you got to meet some of them Yeah, when they were introduced for the first time to the world on our stage
Ray Loewe 13:44
so I can't get a job there.
Ajit George 13:46
You can't get a job unless you get unless you do something silly get convicted or go to prison for
Ray Loewe 13:51
okay shall show this
Ajit George 13:53
We are discriminatory.
Ray Loewe 13:55
It started in the wine cellar.
Ajit George 13:57
Where did this well this started well before so he's really started. From my experience I held a TED license from the TED organization, which on gratis Ted conferences from 2011 to 2018. And I organized TEDx Wilmington under that license in that period. I did 32 events which had 469 speakers. And in 2016 1615, I ended up doing an event and annual conference in Wilmington. I'm sorry, it's 2016 when I did it, that particular year, there were two speakers who gave TEDx talks, both of whom I'd invited and I knew what they were going to talk because I'd coached them, but sitting in the audience listening to them in the same day, along with 30 other speakers, it occurred to me the solution to recidivism because one was talking about recidivism and second chances and redemption. And the other one was talking about this brand new idea, at least to me of indoor vertical farming in urban areas. And I thought, what if I could connect the two because I Do something that could give a pathway to entrepreneurship, which is what they get compassionate capitalist. And they people could be in charge of their own destiny, we could produce locally grown food 365 days, reduce carbon footprint, eliminate pesticides and herbicides, and give at the same time provide meaningful experiences. So we, and it's that out of that I wanted to create green collar jobs. So it was TEDx stocks that inspired me. I had done an event the year before, inside a prison, a TEDx event inside prison under the theme, second chance and redemption. And I got invited because of that to go to tech to the first inaugural TEDx San Quentin and San Quentin Prison and met some of the most interesting people. And so for me, this approach was really how what is the best way to use capital? And is there a better way to do it? So I approach it very differently from my good friends who are liberal, who believe either they shouldn't be No, no, prisons are all bad people have sometimes people make mistakes, and they have to go to prison. So that's part of the consequences. But I think just like once you serve your time, in prison, it's no different from paying a mortgage off. If you have a 30 year mortgage, and you paid it off, you don't expect the bank after you paid it off to come back and collect on it or to say that you have a lien on your self. We believe somebody who has served their term, they have repaid their debt to society, and they are entitled to a clean slate.
Ray Loewe 16:28
Okay, so from a great idea to begin with. You're actually doing this
Ajit George 16:34
Yes, we are
Ray Loewe 16:34
okay. And I've been there. I've seen it. So you took an old building that probably had no use before, right,
Ajit George 16:42
which was used until earlier in the year but if we hadn't used it, I'm not sure it would probably be still empty, and which would have been a blight on the neighborhood. Now it's an asset to the neighborhood. +
Ray Loewe 16:51
Okay, so you have this 47,000 square foot building, and how many of these tiers of plants do you have? Now,
Ajit George 17:00
so we finished our farm one. Since you've been there, farm one has 50 modules, each of them six levels, so 300 levels, and we are getting ready to finish. And by first last week in February we expect to have farm two done, which will be 350 modules or eight levels 700% growth between farm one and two, we will have over 350,000 plants growing in any given day harvesting over 80,000 plants in any given week. And which translates to 4,400,000 plants in a year in a footprint of land if you can just imagine the building not be there. And we just put and just for that land alone is a is 17,000 square feet, which is a little more than a third of an acre. Nowhere in the world can you grow 4,400,000 plants in a in a little more than a third of an acre not even in this Garden State of New Jersey where we are and that's partly because that's a small piece of land. And number two is because we can grow year round. So there's multiple crops. And we control everything which is why this is technology is called controlled environment agriculture. We control everything
Ray Loewe 18:11
cool. Okay, now I have two more basic questions in here. One is okay, so you're growing all this stuff. Where's the market for it?
Ajit George 18:20
Well, unfortunately, we had assumed that primary market would be restaurants from farm one in farm to we would expand to restaurants and grocery stores because obviously grocery stores buy produce every week from and typically places in California or Mexico or Arizona. So we thought we could if we sold them at the same price they got from those folks, they would have a reason to buy local food that's fresher. But of course, best laid plans go to go completely awry. We planted hundreds of thousands of seeds in February after the farm was set. Our first harvest was scheduled for March 16. As we were harvesting I Got notified that the governor of Delaware had declared a state of emergency and had closed all the restaurants that evening at eight o'clock. So we couldn't get to deliver one produce as we were harvesting. And so as a startup, I knew that if we closed the wait for COVID to be over, and at that point, we thought it'd be shorter two weeks or four weeks. We had no idea at this point how the COVID would affect us. I still felt that we probably wouldn't make it back because life would intervene startups pretty hard once you close to reopen. So in 24 hours, I reimagined a solution. We had crops that were perishable, and we designed that farm to table home delivery program, which for which we didn't have a delivery mechanism. We didn't have packaging. We didn't have a place to take orders, but we scramble in 24 hours. We had a lot of friends on I have a large following personally and on Second Chances Farm. So in the evening of the 17th, we posted this idea called farm to table Got for $99 and 95 cents we were delivered to home without a delivery fee, a package of six freshly grown producing Herbes and had no idea how we would get it to them. But we figured if somebody bought it, we would do it. People start thinking, gee, this is a good idea. And over the course of four weeks, we had over 250 people do it. So we sold everything that we produced. So we ended up finding a whole new marketplace that we had no intention of selling retail or going public. It saved us. But more importantly, what it did is gave us a pivoting story for We're known now nationally for having pivoted and stayed alive. Because it and the word pivot is not something was part of my vocabulary, but almost every single day, people said How did you pivot? And when I share this story, and what kept us alive, is that and what it did is gave confidence to potential investors who were who were planning to invest in March but said let's wait to see the world and by the time We survived through June and July, people said, Ah, I think maybe you are real. And we started to attract the capital that we needed to keep farm two. And now we are attracting national and national and sometimes even international attention. And we're hoping if everything goes well next year to have a farm in Philadelphia, and we are in getting inquiries from all over, but first we need to focus on our expanding our farm into farm two in Wilmington.
Ray Loewe 21:25
Yeah. Now two more quick things, and we're almost out of time. But But the issue is, so you had a prison population that you offer jobs to
Ajit George 21:34
formerly incarcerated people.
Ray Loewe 21:36
So So what's happening to these people, right, so
Ajit George 21:38
this so we hired the first 10 people in January 6, and the second group of roughly 15 people we hired on April 27. And I'm privileged to say that the next Monday, next Tuesday, September 8, we will have 20 new returning citizens join us When that all of that our hope is that because some people come in and don't work out for variety of reasons our hope is by February 28 2021, when we have second, that two farms fully operational, we hope to have 30 full time returning citizens work out of that group, then each of them will make $31,200 a year plus medical benefits.
Ray Loewe 22:24
So they can eat they can take care of families and
Ajit George 22:27
and they are not on welfare and because that 31,200 was just the amount needed, that they couldn't be eligible for Medicaid. So my goal was to wean, the dependency on the state because I believe in individualism and capitalism.
Ray Loewe 22:41
Cool. Okay, last comment. You were in the White House not too long.
Ajit George 22:45
I was in the White House last Monday, Monday, August 24. I was we second chances farm got listed as an example one of the best practices in a report science and by Secretary Bennett. Carson from HUD to the President. And in this report, we were listed out of 8760 plus opportunity zones as best practices. And we got attention in the White House because of it. And I was invited to come to the White House to with to meet Secretary Carson and to meet with the executive director of the opportunity zones to share our story with three other communities in the United States out of 1700 communities about how second chances farm is making a difference.
Ray Loewe 23:30
Okay, absolutely incredible story. And we're gonna have to have you back for a follow up and to hear more about what's going on. But this is why Ajit, you are one of the luckiest people in the world. There's no question about this. Anybody who can take a problem or series of problems like this and turn it into a working model and actually have product on the streets, deserves an awful lot of credit. And, you know, I appreciate the opportunity to have met you and to know you And to be a friend of yours, and I want to hear more, we're gonna have to do it on another day. Before
KC Dempster 24:05
we go. I wanted to remind people that being one of the luckiest people in the world, it's not a one shot decision. You have to choose to do things every day that will keep you in the direction that you want to go. And we have ways of as through the luckiest guy in the world to help people to do that. And we have we have our website, www.theluckiest peopleintheworld.com where they can find out about all the ways that we can help so Ray?
Ray Loewe 24:37
Oh, next week, we'll see and Ajit, thanks so much for being here.
Ajit George 24:41
My pleasure. Thank you for listening
Diane Dayton 24:43
to changing the rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topics on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.