Product Leader Spotlight: Mitchell Denton

Heather: Hey Mitchell! What’s your role on your team?

Mitchell: I'm a Co-Founder and the content strategist for PostHarvest. PostHarvest is a food tech
company.

Heather: What product are you building?

Mitchell:We've been developing a piece of technology that is essentially a sensor panel that will be
mounted within old storage facilities. This sends the panel information such as carbon
monoxide, temperature, humidity, ethylene release, all those types of things. This relays data to
our software and will give decision makers health information regarding fruit and vegetable
supplies that are going through the whole chain. The current practices in the industry are very
archaic, others are sophisticated, but they're just very slow and costly. So you have things like
human sensory testing, which is quite literally sending employees into facilities, opening and
closing these controlled environments and disturbing those controlled environments.
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Then they will take a product sample and more often not need to destroy that product sample in
order to get a reading of the fruits or vegetables. There's a lot of guesswork and eyeballing and
just filling in the blanks. We can keep the facility undisturbed and in its controlled environment,
and we can send push notifications and alerts and give decision makers the ability to make
decisions in advance to avoid huge product losses.

Heather: How did you get into IoT?

Mitchell: I've very much come along for the ride. I've definitely been more of a content strategist. So I've
been on the forefront of helping make what we're doing more digestible to the average person.
Trying to get that balance of being true to the science and all of the IoT and engineering, but
also trying to make it so that anyone can really wrap their head around what it is that we're
trying to tackle and what we're trying to achieve.
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That being said, we've worked alongside a lot of talented people onto the team that are working
on both the software and the hardware aspects of the IoT, and it's really cool to have a front row
seat to that and see how that can play such a critical role within the food industry. Watching
them marry up this very simple on paper solution yet complex in execution hardware that sits
within the storeroom. It’s really cool to see the software that is very simple and digestible to read
and very sophisticated in the back end then having them go hand in hand with each other and
pull off this seamless carry of information. I'm just honored to come along for the ride and just be
a part of the team that is making that happen.
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Heather: If you’re successful in your mission at PostHarvest, how will the world look differently?

Mitchell: The statistics around international food loss each year are alarming numbers. According to the
FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the branch of the UN, the research has indicated
that by 2050 we should be at a population of about 10 billion, which is, about 3 billion more than
what we currently have. So that's quite a leap in mouths that need to be fed. But we're already
at that point of strengthening our natural resources where we're looking at all kinds of things like
vertical farming and regenerative farming. They're all really cool and they have that merit but at
the end of the day, we're really straining what water we can use and what arable land we can
use.
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So what we really need to be doing right now is looking at how we can be smarter with what we
do have, as opposed to trying to build upon resources that we no longer have. That's really the
key focus of what PostHarvest is doing. We're wanting to see more fresh produce make it
through the food value chain to the end consumer. If we can prove the wastage numbers
throughout the food supply chain you've got on the back end of that the issue of food waste from
the consumer. Just giving more food products the opportunity to make it through, we'll see great
numbers of a great reduction in, say, things like methane from landfills. We've got a huge
problem with supplies not making it through the food chain and then getting dumped into
landfills.
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Apples, for example, are in season roughly around three months out of the year, but you can eat
apples all year round. Some of this has to do with import export, but a lot of it has to do with just
keeping them in a low oxygenated storage facility for nine months to like 24 months, whatever it
may be. So a lot of people think that the apple got picked like last week and now they're in their
home. And in some cases that is true, but in a lot of cases, they actually do sit within a facility
for months on them, in some cases years. That's where a lot of loss takes place. That's where
we're really focusing our efforts. If a lot more food is making it through the supply chain, there
won't be so much pressure for food to stay in those facilities for such extended periods as well.
So there's a few different ways you can kind of look at this thing, but ultimately, those are the
areas that we want to affect.
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Heather: What advice do you have for aspiring product leaders?

Mitchell: This would be more practical advice than anything. I found that in my time at PostHarvest, we've
done a lot of research into industry support and government support, and obviously it comes
down to the individual product leaders and what they're offering is but for us, we found that
there's been a great hunger from government initiatives and from the industry initiatives to really
help fund and support and make these ideas become realized. So if we're willing to put in the
time and the research and really apply ourselves to some of these grants and awards and
industry and events, it becomes this huge payoff of being connected into the right industry folks
that can take you to our next level. Whether it be product trials or funding or whatever it may be.
Government grants can really help take some of the financial burden of research and
development and make your dreams and your aspirations more realistic and more achievable. If
we didn't really put our nose to the grind with a lot of those types of things, I don't think we'd be
where we are right now with our product journey. We almost need to double our timelines.
Applying those types of things makes the goal that much closer to being in breach. So that
would be my advice, is to really put in the time and research and apply to some of those grants
and rewards and opportunities.

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