Doing the bees’ work with Thai Sade of BloomX

Hello and welcome to how I built this lab. I'm Guy Raz. So about a third of the food we eat, things like blueberries, citrus, almonds, and carrots, are pollinated by insects and mostly by bees, and By and large, they do an amazing job. The problem is that with rising global demand for food and dwindling bee populations, we'll have to find other solutions to make sure the world can produce enough food for everyone. So a company called BlueMex has developed a technology that replicates the process of pollination.

Using robots and artificial інтеліз. not to replace insects, but to enhance what they're already doing. The technology developed by Bloom X can help increase the crop yield. by up to thirty percent, which means more crops using less land. The company was started by Ty Sade, who has a French and an Israeli background.

He grew up thinking a lot about agriculture while living on a kibbutz in Israel and working in the orchards every week. So I I grab a nephew boots. Uh for growing everything from you know orchards. Of uh person, citrus, avocado.

Uh bananas. To big open fields of wheat. Uh cotton. Corn and No, big farming activity.

Yeah. Orchard that was where I was involved since I was Eleven years old. understanding and loving this space of agriculture of

Producing food and and growing crops. So, I mean as a as a child, as a teenager, you were working in the orchards. I'm assuming this was a commercial farm. It was producing fruits and and vegetables. To sell. Yeah, you're right. So it's I think it's a very unique

way of how kibbutz is a managed which means that you know the youth the education was very involved in the farming activity. Uh and it means that while you are studying Also uh involvement uh community. So it could be farming to be

Are there things that you can do and I specifically was involved in farming. one day per week, you know, as a mandatory uh part of my of my life, of my routine. As part of going in a key boots. All right, so you grew up in this environment, but was your intention as you were growing up? Was it your did you think, you know, I'm gonna stay in agriculture?'Cause I know I I mean people I know who grew up around agriculture or farms

very few of them stay there. They they tend to move on to do something else. Um When you were I don't know, going to you know, when you were a teenager or thinking about going to university Did you imagine? that this is what you wanted to continue to do, or did you think, you know, I'm gonna go

Do something completely different. So I think you know back then It wasn't something that was I like that that was my dream or intention to do. I'm also coming from

A family from a French family who You know, in our culture uh back home was very a lot about Food and I think that's a very Strong. tool for us back home to to share love. Absolutely.

From very young age I was exposed for my mother. Which is originally from France and was a big, big part of my culture and influenced me. So you know, fast forward I open a restaurant.

With my mother and sister. It was a family business that we had uh for almost nine years. You were managing the restaurant? Yeah, we were the owners and managing together with my mother and my sister. Um of the fuse that uh

Business was established basically I could say successful or self sustained. you know, a lot of the drivers for me to t to do what I'm doing today is This entrepreneurial mindset. And then back back then.

Maybe seven years ago, right? Eight years ago and I said that I want to Deal. With a more impactful um challenge or challenges

That we are uh facing globally. challenges of agriculture. And food. So I mean some context here because Um you live in a part of the world that has many

challenges to producing crops. There's not a lot of water. There could be extreme heat. and a limited amount of arable land. So There's been a lot of interesting technology that's come out of The Middle East of Israel, I believe.

Uh your country is one of the biggest recyclers of water for agricultural Use right. So So there is already an infrastructure around developing technology around agriculture, right? Like you you probably saw that growing up already. Right.

So I think that's you know Yes. uh mindset is coming from place that They they needed to innovate because they didn't have the right infrastructure to produce what they need. If it's water If it's uh to fertilize the land.

If it's finding new Ways to Protect the crops. And I think that a lot of the innovations that we have Came from from the from kibbutz.

So The irrigation. uh pipes that were invented by Netafim. That's a kibbutz in Israel that basically Yeah, that's it on the desert. We basically invented that because he needed to control the water. Uh an irrigation. This is you're talking about drip irrigation. Yeah, drip irrigation. Yeah. You're right.

Because they needed that, right? But because it uses obviously uses less water when it's just dripping from the The hose, yeah, which is obviously widely used around the world. Um, I I wanna ask you about what you started though, because uh I guess you you decided to move away uh from the restaurant business, of course, to focus your full attention Uh on trying to solve some pretty big global problems connected to food and agriculture. Um

And eventually you honed in on on a single problem that that is not just specific to your part of the world but but exists all around the world, which is honey bees as pollinators. Bees are essentially Right. They are essentially well the the workers of of of of ag ag agriculture. Not everything requires bees

for pollination but I think A significant percentage of the food at least consumed in the United States. re m maybe a third or half of the food we eat requires bees as pollinators. So things like blueberries and avocados and almonds and strawberries, cucumbers, different kinds of fruits and vegetables that we eat. require bees as pollinators to carry

pollen from one plant to the next in order to produce yields. You're right. And I used to do stories on this when I was a reporter about bee colonies just collapsing, you know, and it was scary because without bees we d we can't there's a significant amount of food that can't be produced. Um, presumably you when you were growing up H I mean you would have

You would release bees into the orchards or I mean because this is a Um th there's a process to it, right? I mean bee colonies are brought on to uh on Trucks Colonies are deposited in in orchards and fields and then the bees do their thing and then a couple months later they're

Is that more or less how it worked on your kibbutz? Yeah, so yeah, that's how it worked. You make your boots and That's how it worked today.

To produce food we need uh pollination. pollination mean the transaction of pollen. Yeah. Uh a single flower to the other flower which is usually transferred by uh insect.

So Around eighty percent. of the commercial growing crops that we use today are pollinated by insects. The other twenty percent are pollinated by wind. And I think out of the insects, most of them are bees, right? There are moths and others and butterflies, but mostly bees. So you're right. We use those honey bees boxes. pushing them into the orchard or whatever we want to pollinate.

And uh and effectively they plan. So here is the interesting part. The number of honeybee hives How's it Increased.

From the nineteen sixties to today by around eighty one percent. But the number of land that needs pollination globally In the same time group much more. And that's what created this big gap that you know today. And effectively how we manage and use honeybees to polynute.

Make this process Very problematic. Which basically decreases the functionality and decreases the hive. uh numbers and etcetera because of the

Commercial use, which is very intense. We talked about trucks. Transferring them from one place to another. Pesticides. That affect them disorientation. Bad nutrition, for example, too.

Plenate only avocados if they don't like the avocado nectar or pollen. So to eat only one thing is not good for For any living creature. The reason we use them is because it's easy for us to manage them and put them in boxes. And we can manage them because it's a very socialised Organism. That we can just commoditize.

But the other natural point was the insect is actually Much more Important to plant made up of crops. But you cannot just spread many insect or different butterflies or whatever what to pollinate the crop. Uh because they are not controlled like honeybees. And that's why we created Blumex, basically because what we find out.

Is it not only that we're harming the honeybees while we're using them Like that. They're not pollinating effectively. Many type of crops. Gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, Ty's big idea and his process that pollinates crops.

without using B's at all. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So my guest today is Ty Sade, who realized that honeybees alone, which have been commercialized by humans to pollinate crops for centuries, are actually not always great at pollinating. Especially as global demand for food rises. Alright, let's talk about let's talk about BlueMex. I know you started this you started working on this idea.

in twenty nineteen and you launched it in twenty twenty two. Um let's let's talk about how this idea came about. Essentially we've talked about what the problem is, which is Bees as pollinators obviously crucial and vital, but the commercialization of bees is a problem because Some bees are non native

Two. Uh, and certainly it's not healthy for bees to just be sort of m monocrop pollinators. I mean my understanding is you can I mean humans can pollinate, like you can physic pollinate. Plants, right? You don't necessarily need bees, but bees are are obviously important and they do it well and they can do things much more quickly than humans.

But but you were you essentially said ca is there a way that we can artificially pollinate. plants essentially I don't know, to replace Bees was that. What you were thinking?

So it it wasn't To replace these, but to enhance the pollination activity. And I think that That's a very interesting thing.

You know, from what I've shared, you can understand that If honeybees are not the natural planetals. I think that from our logic It was meant okay, so we we shouldn't look on the honeybee. And how to improve it, we should look on the plant.

We should Focus on the plant, not on the insect. In order to understand the mechanism. And how we can enhance the activity on the plant. Essentially, from what I understand, the way pollination works, I mean if it's a bee or a hummingbird,

They land on a on a flower. They're um vibrating and that shakes the pollen loose. Which kind of it's like a a a cloud of pollen that lands on the bee, then it goes to another flower and drops that pollen and then you've got um It's doing its job. It not only does bee get nutrition from the pollen, but it it

propagates that that plant and um Wind also does this. Wind also shakes. plants and spreads pollen. So essentially you need you I guess you need to figure out How do we vibrate? plants, right? How do we like shake them a little bit?

Yeah. Get the pollen. From one flow to another. sort of how you were thinking about it? So actually

Mm. flowers that have different mechanisms to transfer potential one flower to the other. What to differentiate those mechanisms is the forces that you need to apply on the flower in order to release The pollen or transfer it. So vibration, for example, the bumblebee vibration, which you mentioned is is one of them.

It's one of them regarding to Blueberries. Tomatoes, peppers. Another mechanism that we're applying, for example, is Basically electrostatic forces. to collect the pollen out of the flowers and then apply them by friction.

And what we are mimicking there is that For example, sticky pollen like avocados, mangoes. That have a very sticky pollen, which means that The plant requires from the insect to Really.

Work hard to get to put it out. Yeah. And that's why it's sticky and for those kind of flowers, for example, Apcarus. In a co evolution between the plant and the insect basically means that When uh

Uh honeybee. flying the became electrically charged. That electrical charge when they approach a flower gets the But the the pollen to jump on the body. So we try to

Basically to to mimic that process. And to create electrostatic mechanism that collect upon out of the flowers and then apply it. Huh. Okay, so essentially uh you know, as bees, right, as they approach

A flower. there there's like an electric charge that's created by their buzzing Um and that Shakes loose the sticky pollen from the flowers, so it can pollinate other flowers and and and basically your company

has figured out a a way to kinda replicate that process, but But maybe do it even better than bees? Yeah. And we actually see that It's walking.

No, and that's a very Interesting mechanism that we are replicating. That's We apply today for for several crabs, but could be others. But we also have

Like the data. On when to pollinate. We have an algorithm that allows us to understand how environmental conditions affect the flying behavior for every crop that we are working on. That give us the right pollination window.

To pollinate. and create a focus of the Polynesian season based on real time environmental conditions that we have in the field. All right. This is A business show about entrepreneurship. If you've if you're just joining us, you are listening to High Built, this is not a show about agriculture, but I am going to do my best

You started to work on Both. hardware and software. So let's break it down a little bit. Cause you've developed a Literally, I've seen a video of it. It's like a machine with arms on top of an autonomous vehicle.

And this This vehicle just goes down. The aisles of You know of Let's say citrus trees or whatever whatever crop it needs to pollinate.

And the arms brush up against The plants. And Essentially they're pollinating those plants. Can you explain, especially'cause most people listening to this show d do not understand, including me. Don't work on farms, don't understand agriculture.

But understand technology. So can you explain how That system works. Yeah. So What you describe is is correct.

We are. Mimicking the Bumblebee vibration system. By those uh electric vehicle which have two mechanical arms.

But ba basically vibrate the bottom of the plant, the blueberry flowers, not the branches With the same frequency that we are uh trying to get the the the vibration of the pumble be. So just to clarify, I'm looking at a picture of this. It's like a small little um looks like a

It's an autonomous vehicle. It's very small. It's called a Burrow. And and your technology's on top of this autonomous vehicle. And it vibrates the b um I've seen a video of it. It vibrates the blueberry bushes. Ever so slightly. So the blueberries don't start coming down, right? They're not like dropping. It's a very almost imperceptible vibration. But that

Alone Spreads pollen? Yeah, so what it create basically and I and that's something we don't see in the video, but it's the The flower.

When he gets a vibration for those mechanical arms. The pollen is basically released. It's like a pollen cloud that just is d is developed and then drops onto the other flowers. Yeah. Yeah.

How I mean how much Better are these operating than bees. So I think that it's like everything there is this How I and the cost uh effectiveness of everything we do, right? So yeah. This specific vehicle will

Replicate every week the same plant. It can do up to twenty hectares a week in six days. Wow. And and just to clarify, one hectare is I think about two and a half acres. So So this vehicle Can pollinate about Fifty acres worth of crops.

In a week which Which is probably more than a than bees could do on their own, right? Yeah. But I think that the comparison is not on on you know on Anibis The comparison is more that's w that's um that's what we emphasise eventually.

It's on the results on the yield. It's not in the compelled to the insert. In compared to N Bs, when we apply those, you know, machines, we we see a range of between ten to forty percent of yielding grease. The cause get of using our services.

If they're so much more efficient in in pollinating and if the yields are clearly higher than using, you know, commercial bee colonies. It sounds like they could replace the commercial use of bees. Yeah, I I think that they could replace, but you know Trying to replace

Uh natural process that you know goes have been working for years, which are Having a lot of you know. Yeah. Uh and but you want bees on your farm. They have value, but

If we will reduce them, that could also affect Uh Uh The yields of the crop. So Essentially

The girls need to understand. What they have Wiz honeybees. Essentially so what what what the the technology does is you would say you keep using the honeybees. But you will see that your yields will go up because

where the bees can't actually perform efficiently. This technology that we have, these that you know, we can actually Um produce better results.

Yeah. Yeah, and I think that we'll need to strategize together how to use honeybees and us. Maybe they will reduce the amount of honey bears because it's becoming more and more expensive and using us as a supplementary um Tool for pollination.

So I think that it we are very agnostic. In a sense of We want to show you the value of using our services. And you eventually, you the goal, will uh will evaluate what sh is best for you. Again, agriculture is not natural. And if you want to have this essential process of pollination in the field that you irrigate if you treep or fertilize differently.

You need to have also a control on your pollination process. We're gonna take another quick break, but when we come back, how BlueMac's technology could actually help save rainforests across the world. More on that in a moment, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this lab. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So my guest today is Tai Saday, his company BlueMex has developed technology to help farmers pollinate their crops, including one of their newest products, the Crosby. So the f one product you have is this this sort of apparatus.

That has these kind of metallic arms that that ph physically vibrate the the the bushes. You also have another product called a cross bee, and I'll describe it'cause we're on we're on raw podcasts. So it's basically like a long pole. Um And attached to it is like a a panel. It it's like a square panel.

And a human holds this long pole. And walks through I guess Through the orchards. And holds this panel up against the trees. And that also

Pollinate. So this is an electrostatic System, can you explain how that works? Yeah, so you describe it correctly, that's the manual version that we have today. We're also developing a mechanical version, which is basically

Big mechanical arms that have big electrodes, big plates. Flexible place that Uh the that's your tractor will pick up. And that would just drive down the rows, and it would electrostatically. move the pollen from one flower to another. Yeah, w what's happening there is that Eventually we'll have two

varieties that we use in the orchards to Cross pollen? So avocado is a great example. We have The pollinator variety. It could be adding a free up to

Is the Edinger avocado the smooth skinned one, by the way? Yeah, it's the smooth green. Yeah, I don't like those ones. I'm always I'm a hoss guy. Usually can you those any day. Yeah, so you know the the market Love's has. But we plan upon an inter variety to enhance the has Productivity.

New. Near each other in the orchards. Uh so what we do is basically we collect from the pollinator variety, could be Ettinger Creity other smooth skin. um avocados and we transfer the pollen that we collect into plate

Just rub it by friction. On the flowers that we want to connect on the house. So you take basically the pollen from one variety of avocado with these electrostatic plates and you transfer it to

An another variety of avocado. Why why? But why do you do that? So why we do that is because honeybees don't like To put an eight. Uh the house have a colour of flowers. They don't like the pollen taste. They don't like the nectar. So if they don't have it's not that they're not pollinating at all, it's not binary, right? But

Eventually statistically you will have less visits of honeybees, you will have less fruits. Okay. So statistically we increases the distribution of pollen. Because we predict what is the right time when pollen is receptive to collected. Presumably.

Yeah, so it's in the spring, but I mean not as a period, I'm talking really every day. We know what is the right Yeah. Per day we know the hours. How do you know how do you how are you able to know that? The the the algorithm. Basically that

What we do there. Uh easy to understand. How environmental conditions Affect flowering behavior. Mm-hmm. And by that, basically that's something that you know part of the secret cells of

How we've built that, but in every And every crop is different flowering mechanism, different complexity. But the operational essence is the same. But trying to understand

uh what will be the right time in every day having those Temperature, humidity, a sun of light. Uh what will be the right time to plan it? Tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. And et cetera. So we we can identify that

But it's a per day practice because for example Avocados of one million Flowers. In a season of one months and a half. One one avocado tree.

Yeah. Eventually out of it. If you love two hundred fruits. From an avocado tree, that would be amazing. From one tree, even though there's a million flowers. W yeah. And that's why we we're trying to improve the statistics of the pollen distribution.

On the right and the best conditions we can have. And then to effect the size To affect the fruit sets. And that's what we are doing. So you could I mean you could in theory

If you could get that treated To produce two hundred and fifty or three hundred avocados. That could be exactly. Well one weird question. Could I mean w is there w there must be a point where the f the tree should not be producing that much fruit because it wouldn't be it would

Damage the tree. Again, you're totally right. And and maybe I can take it back again. In the natural process, you know, trees don't need to have two hundred fruits, you know, we're trying to optimize that From a commercial perspective. Yeah. But but for the trees to To reproduce himself, you don't need that amount.

So yeah, there is this balance of What we're trying to take out of the tree, but Also, in our perspective, do it that responsibly. Yeah. And other crops that we are dealing with

Pollination is a limiting factor for ill. Okay. Okay. So there is a very big gap that we can increase the yield. Responsibly without taking Too much resources from the trees. That will be like a negative effect in the following years, okay? Not demanding.

Uh that's that's kind of our you know philosophy and that's very important. We are focusing on crops that have pollination challenges. It's not that every crop have pollination challenges. Citrus. Oh, don't have donation challenges. Because honeybees where we use them.

Yeah. But avocados are challenging. Oh okay, that's channel g. Mangoes, leaches. Almonds. Apples, cherries, blueberries.

Yeah. Uh cocoa, coffee. And so so those are the crops that you're mainly focused on? Those are in the pipeline, we're still not there yet with all of them. But yeah, definitely. So definitely where do you see the biggest potential for your technology to be used? So the main activity we started with avocados.

And that was More in Latin America where the market is. Colombia, Peru. Mexico. So we started engaging with companies there in our you know validation process. And from there we also understand that

No, Blueberries is a very big uh opportunity which suffers from pollination limitations And it's a very It's growing rapidly in Peru, Mexico. And I was a Generally orchards

And the outdoor. That we want to leverage our cross B Mm. So it could be the subtropical, like mangoes. Peaches and Macademia or nuts. So

That's that's the focus. software, this algorithm that you've developed. I know you raised about eight million dollars to date. Um from investors uh in mainly I think in Israel.

Um And You have started to work with Customers.

Now you are in a situation where I imagine It would you know To state the obvious, there's been some disruption. With with the war

that's happening in the background. Um is your business On hold are your employees. Not you know, your team is it is it is its focus elsewhere, or are you still able to

Run the business. Yeah, so that's a good question and I mean in the current climate and situation we are in Israel. Uh but We we must go on as a company.

and provide our services uh and operation. uh to where we have commitment, you know, the main much the majority of our activity is not in Israel. It's in in Latin America today. So a lot of our uh And employees and product managers are there to be the result.

And and so essentially the war uh has not disrupted your business because you're main mainly focused on Central and South America. You're right. Okay. Yeah. It's interesting because you you you mentioned um you know avocados and blueberries and Those are two Significant.

crops, particularly in the US market. I think some of that has to do with their the beneficial health qu you know, qualities around inflammation, reducing inflammation. And I know there's been a lot of a lot more interest in blueberries and raspberries. Um I just read an article in the New York Times about avocados and how Mexico in Mexico the a lot of land is being cleared. to produce avocados which presents its own challenge and own problems uh because there's there's

Rainforests are gonna be cleared and land that's gonna be cleared. But if you could increase the yield. For Hector. I you know, I guess in theory

You could prevent some of that. environmental destruction by by clearing land to make more and more farms. You're definitely right. And I think you really touched the point of Yeah, I talked about um what what I'm doing yeah.

Which is Um Trying to to face with global Challenge.

And find a solution. So that the incentive to Better produce from your own farms. It's better. It's better than mentally and financially for you. Okay. And that's something that retailers, you know, having this conversation. With their producers and as long as it

became more and more aware. And that's something that is Also something that we can measure and Add value for the go. Um It's a conservative world agriculture, but

You think that this problem for a nation where we are It's something that the goals really want to To use and solve. If this technology becomes the standard, right, and you mentioned that that growers are conservative, that agri farmers are conservative, which makes sense. I mean, they know what they're doing, right? They they're many of them are coming from generation to have this generational wisdom that's been passed down to them. You know, so they

They are they have a a deep um inherent understanding of of land management and s and so on. But I I mean there are uh they are innovators too. There's a lot of innovation that happens. uh in in big commercial agricultural

um facilities. So if this technology is widely applied, w in theory, you wouldn't need to build you wouldn't need to develop that much more land because you would just increase the yields in existing plot on existing plots of land. Yeah, I I think that you know, our our mission that's part of our mission statement.

Uh, from an environmental perspective for sure. And that's Oh yes, but also for the farming industry. So I think that pollination is the tool. to have better Control

Better for performance and also Better environmental Outputs on how you produce your foods. Uh People understand that we need to produce much more with much less.

And not only as a you know, as a buzz, but that that's the reality that we'll need to face, uh, in order to feel the world and Uh the same as we're gonna be. Having today. Taiser Dead, thank you so much.

Thanks a lot, guy. It was a pleasure. That's Ty Sade, co-founder and CEO of BlueMax. Hey thanks for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by R teen Arab Louis. It was edited by John Isabella with research help from Carla Estevez. Our audio engineer was Neil Rausch. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Massini, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, Malia Agadello, Neva Grant, and Sam Paulson.

I'm Guy Raz and you're listening. to how I built this lab.

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