Eddy Badrina Of Eden Green Technology: How We Are Helping To Create A Resilient Food Supply Chain
An excerpt from Authority Magazine:
Always Put the Customer First: While many startups in CEA have tried to reimagine the future of farming, most have fallen short. And consumers are the ones paying the price. In fact, prices of iceberg lettuce alone have fluctuated a whopping 457% in a single year. We need to always be thinking of our end goal: finding the best ways to feed the population. Costs and supply chain logistics are critical components to making our mission possible.
The cascading logistical problems caused by the pandemic and the war in Eastern Europe have made securing a reliable supply chain a national imperative. What must agriculture companies and policymakers do to ensure secure and resilient food supply chains? In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who can share insights from their experiences about how we can address these challenges. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Eddy Badrina.
You are a successful leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
I’ve learned to never give up. Do I need to pivot sometimes? Sure. But I always try to find a way around a situation to stay focused on a singular vision. Eden Green has been a good example of that. I took over as Eden Green’s CEO about four months before the pandemic hit — not the most optimal time to take the reins of a startup. There was a lot of chaos and uncertainty, but we had a vision from the start of providing nutritious, local, and affordable produce to the everyday American, and we’ve stuck to it. In the era of cheap money and unrealistic valuations, there were also opportunities to deviate from the vision and spin up a high-end retail brand to compete with everyone else in the market. We never wavered, though, and patiently worked through the business and tech to get our margins better, so we can then pass that lower cost on to the end consumer. Three years later, we are in a totally different position — we have great distribution relationships, we are building two more greenhouses when a lot of other companies are folding or pulling back, and we have favor in the marketplace and within state and the federal government, who are recognizing how our tech can fundamentally change the ag sector.