Keith Agoada has a young company, Sky Vegetables. A kid with a vision, he takes underutilized space in urban areas and grows food there, creating green jobs, providing access to fresh produce, increasing self reliance, localizing the economy, and creating a better life by building communities through growing vegetables.
The idea came to Agoada just before his senior year at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which he graduated from last year. The vision is both simple and elegant: green rooftops, not just as gardens, but as urban agriculture hubs for herbs and edible greens, utilizing off-the-shelf hydroponics and aquaponics equipment in greenhouses to grow food to sell for profit within the community.
He saw the community gardens in Chicago and thought that it was fantastic that they were building community by growing food and doing it in the city. So he went back his senior year at Wisconsin and received three credits for doing a feasibility study to see if rooftops could be commercial farming locations, quickly learning that it was possible to generate self reliance and grow a myriad of things in the middle of a Wisconsin winter, when it’s below zero and covered in snow.
That led to a business plan competition, which he won, garnering local press coverage and investor interest.
Amid all this, Agoada remained a reluctant businessman. He studied entrepreneurship in school and learned that he didn’t want to be an entrepreneur. He was afraid of the gut-wrenching roller coaster .
He eventually took on investors and business partners, based in the Boston area, a continent away from Agoada’s Berkeley, Calif., base. And Sky Vegetables was born.
Now he is not only going green but is encouraging self reliance in communities and changing the face of the modern urban landscape. Sky Vegetables has unlimited potential to feed all of our appetites for creative and conscious capitalism.
Shane Krider- Polaris Media Group
Women sometimes surprise themselves with their resilience and self-reliance. October is small business month, and I thought we’d take a look at a quirkily successful lady.
Jeff Berman had an idea that would mean self-reliance and financial independence for a town that had empty storefronts boarded up next to grain silos and wheat and bean plantations. He wanted to build a facility in Dove Creek that could turn sunflower seeds into Biodiesel. To do that, farmers would have to start producing sunflowers.
Stress, often thought to be a highly undesirable state of affairs, has been found to be beneficial for some. However, even though that extra burst of nervous energy can help you hit deadlines, but beware the effects is stress happens too often or lasts too long.
The old adage that life is a game may be a cliché, but it is true. What makes a person a success? Why do certain people pull ahead of the pack? What is it that sets them apart from “the herd”?
When you are embarking on your new adventure of sailing off into the relatively uncharted territory of the independent business world a lot of people are going to give you advice. Some of it will be good and some of it will be not so good. Some of it will be downright appalling. Always keep in mind that you are the entrepreneur.
Ever hear that old Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times?”
