2023 was a down year, relatively, for Skout Strategy.
After bringing in about $1 million in revenue in 2022, the Albuquerque sustainable agriculture services company, which launched in spring 2021, saw its revenue numbers dip by more than 50% in 2023, down to around $450,000.
That downward trend wasn't unique to Skout, though, said George Carter III, the company's CEO and co-founder. The wider controlled environment agriculture, or CEA, industry — which Skout services — saw a decline in investment for projects, and financing for those projects, Carter said, primarily because of broader economic headwinds and ongoing competition with a more established food production industry.
But in 2024, Skout has seen a big rebound. In fact, Carter told New Mexico Inno the first quarter of 2024 has been the company's best in its nearly three-year history.
The year has started fast for a few reasons, Carter said. One key factor has been securing a line of credit through Southwest Capital Bank in February 2023, a financial move that helped Skout avoid some pitfalls experienced by CEA companies without more stable sources of financing.
A New Mexico Economic Development Department initiative, called the Collateral Assistance Program (CAP), helped Skout secure that credit line with Southwest. CAP works, according to a June 2023 Economic Development Department (EDD) release, by contributing state EDD dollars to a certificate of deposit account for companies seeking business loans, which acts as collateral in those loan applications. Money for the state's CAP comes from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds distributed to New Mexico.
That more stable bank financing gave Skout a "little cushion" to pull through 2023 as it saw sales revenue drop, Carter said. He's become a "completely different entrepreneur" after last year's challenges, he said, and added the company is bootstrapped outside the bank loan.
The financial cushion helped Skout execute on a number of projects for various partners across the U.S. and in different parts of the world. Carter said Skout has around 10 ongoing projects, including a pair in Oakland, California; one in Camden, New Jersey; another in Augusta, Georgia; and two others in rural Alabama. It also has ongoing work in Santiago, Chile.
The company provides a spate of different services for controlled environment agriculture projects, often in collaboration with developers and other local stakeholders. Those services include site feasibility, farm financial modeling and farm equipment selection and procurement.
Skout hopes to bring those services to Albuquerque, too, by the end of the year, Carter said. Improving sustainable food access in the International District — an area of the city that's seen large grocers like Walmart leave in recent years — is a focus for the company.
Research and development services surrounding CEA development is another area in which Skout wants to expand work throughout the remainder of 2024, and into 2025. To that end, the Albuquerque company has received small business technical assistance and is working with Los Alamos National Laboratory on CEA research.
Specifically, Carter said Skout's work with the Northern New Mexico lab will focus on greenhouse gas emissions in the CEA industry.
Carter has also expanded his own work surrounding controlled environment agriculture. In November 2023, he started as the director of decarbonization partnerships for the Resource Innovation Institute, a Portland-based nonprofit that works with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy to advance climate resilience through public-private partnerships.
His role with the Resource Innovation Institute falls under the "same thread" as Skout's own work, Carter said. He's continued leading Skout while serving with the Oregon-based nonprofit.
Carter co-founded Skout Strategy alongside Jessica Shoemaker, the company's chief cultivation officer. She and Toviah HJ Carter, George Carter III's wife, join the CEO as contractors on the Skout Strategy team. Carter said the company has two more contractors lined up to start in the second quarter of 2024, too, to help with sales and education; controlled environment agriculture services and industry research with Los Alamos National Laboratory are the company's two primary focuses throughout the remainder of the year.
But slightly longer-term, Carter said he sees Skout, a 2023 Innovation Award honoree, expanding into more comprehensive project development, rather than providing specific services for other development partners — building different types of projects from the ground-up alongside various local stakeholders to build food security and more sustainable agriculture systems in underserved communities across the country, and around the world.
