Horticultural Environmental Systems Technology can trace its roots back to 1985 when two engineering companies merged to form Duninger Corporation.  It was Northwest Engineered Products Company (NEPCO), a heat transfer engineering company in Seattle, and Electrical Power Services, a design-build electrical contracting company, that joined forces to address new technology options for third world greenhouse environments.  Duninger Corporation was a total success story from the start.  They studied greenhouse environments to understand and better defeat the effects of humidity, infiltration, sun radiation, air stratification, heat retention, and wasteful energy usage. The knowledge that was gained from two years of their research would come to transform the way greenhouse environments are managed today.

Over the years Duninger Corporation became quite diverse.  It developed its own product line of heating systems called “soft heat,” and a 100% energy efficient space heater marketed as “The UHE“ unit heater.  Duninger also designed and built their own greenhouse buildings as well as custom environmental controllers.  Their approach to greenhouse environments took them around the world, completing projects throughout the far and middle east, Africa, Russia, and of course design-build greenhouse projects for production and research for universities and large-scale growers in America.

In 2014 an employee of Active Engineering, Ricardo Garza, moved from Seattle to Eastern Washington State to take advantage of his degree in Horticultural Science where he would continue to work in his family tradition of farming. His ties to the Active Engineering’s greenhouse consulting group were never broken.  Seeing opportunity in the farming industry with emerging new organic approaches to nutrients and with the assistance of Active Engineering’s consulting group, Ricardo Garza established his own agricultural company, R & J Ag. Services.  This company focuses mainly on utilizing bio stimulant products in conjunction with soil and plant fertility to help growers in the Northwest grow high yielding crops with higher total ROI.  However, the unique perspectives Ricardo has into farming challenges and his industry relationship with the history and personal of Duninger Corporation began a dialog of how all of Duninger’s, IGC’s and Active Engineering’s knowledge could live into the next generation to inform the future of farming.

In the first few months of 2023 Ricardo Garza negotiated the purchase of Duninger Corporation’s greenhouse consulting group: Horticultural Environmental Services Technology (HEST) which is mainly a brain trust of collectively 70 years of international greenhouse design, construction and consulting along with a rolodex of the who’s who in the greenhouse industry.  HEST is now a closely held private Limited Liability Company with a sole ownership of the Duninger greenhouse legacy.  Included with the purchase of HEST, the former owners have contracted a final obligation to help establish with the new ownership of HEST an artificial intelligence that can engineer, asses options, select protocol, assign environmental footprint scores, direct best practices, and inform purchases for the integration of greenhouse food production with open farming.