61–70 of 100 posts
They claim that this farm will produce 10M lettuces per year on 3500m2. They are also looking for partmers to franchise their technology, inside and outside of japan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a surprising phenomenon in microeconomics called the Alchian–Allen effect[1]. Quoting from Wikipedia, "[W]hen the prices of two substitute goods, such as high and low grades of the same product, are both increased by a fixed per-unit amount such as a transportation cost or a lump-sum tax, consumption will shift toward the higher-grade product. This is true because the added per-unit amount decreases the rela…
> There is a surprising phenomenon in microeconomics I was waiting for some counter-intuitive twist, but that seems like common sense and basic math. Not really sure how the concept earned a name.
I'm probably talking out of my hat here, but it feels like Japan opening up to immigration more would probably be a more efficient help to this particular problem
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the electricity for the grow lights is produced locally via solar power, it is actually more efficient than using sunlight directly (provided LED grow lights are used). This is because the grow lights provide only the narrow bands of wavelengths that plants absorb most efficiently. Only about 45% of visible sunlight is usable by plants, compared to around 95% for photovoltaics, which more than makes up for convers…
Nobody seems to be pointing out that it is unlikely to be cost efficient as well (sun is free), which is what matters.
I mean, you can stack farms vertically if artificial light is economical. You can't stack sun-lit farms vertically.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The other is that the quantity of sunlight varies throughout the year in everywhere that isn't on the equator. Grow lights allow you to go from seed to harvest faster Why not have both? Grow lights when the sun isn't optimal, and the sun when it is. Wouldn't it be a huge cost saving measure to use free light instead of burning energy on grow lights when you don't need it?
If you want to use the sun, you'd farm outdoors traditionally. You're right at the core of it, that's why most farming still happens outside. Building a specialized building is a compromise putting you into an uneconomical position, you'd only provide additional light to the top-most layer of plants (small operating savings) at the cost of building specialized architecture (large capital expense). From what I underst…
Couldn't you improve upon things by redirecting the light with fiber optics? Of course, I suspect there's a surface area problem with scaling something like that, so perhaps not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight This is the part of indoor automated farming I don't get. You have this free, abundant source of energy needed to grow plants, and you don't use it... why? Seems like a massive inefficiency. Indoors is fine to protect the crops and control the environment, but why not above ground with a clear roof to let sunlight in?
Indoor offices also use artificial lights despite the workers usually only being there during the day. It's probably because the sun is unreliable and expensive to direct into all the spaces that aren't on the roof directly exposed to the sky.
> The robots will do everything from re-planting young seedlings to watering, trimming and harvesting crops. Has the author been to a farm in the past 20 years? Most crops today are not planted by hand, or watered by hand, or harvested by hand. (Harvesting is still the most labor intensive part of farming for a few fruits, but automation isn't far off.) I think the most interesting part of this farm is not the automa…
>and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight This is the part of indoor automated farming I don't get. You have this free, abundant source of energy needed to grow plants, and you don't use it... why? Seems like a massive inefficiency. Indoors is fine to protect the crops and control the environment, but why not above ground with a clear roof to let sunlight in?
> The robots will do everything from re-planting young seedlings to watering, trimming and harvesting crops. Has the author been to a farm in the past 20 years? Most crops today are not planted by hand, or watered by hand, or harvested by hand. (Harvesting is still the most labor intensive part of farming for a few fruits, but automation isn't far off.) I think the most interesting part of this farm is not the automa…
>and the decision to use grow lights indoors instead of sunlight This is the part of indoor automated farming I don't get. You have this free, abundant source of energy needed to grow plants, and you don't use it... why? Seems like a massive inefficiency. Indoors is fine to protect the crops and control the environment, but why not above ground with a clear roof to let sunlight in?
I'm no expert but lighting has gotten a lot more efficient recently:
http://www.designrecycleinc.com/led%20comp%20chart.html
LEDs are also well suited to farming because you can tune their output spectrum:
http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/products/horticulture/c...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can relate to the sentiment - what's going to happen to countries in the short term when entire industries like transport and farming are automated at nearly the same time?
In the US, farming represents something like 2% of the workforce. If we lost every farming job (and we won't - robotic operations will have to be managed and maintained), it would still have less impact than the loss of manufacturing jobs in the '80s and '90s. Transport, I think, would hurt more, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure.
Rather, I'm trying to take a look at these percentages of farming workforces by country: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.AGR.EMPL.ZS and trying to see what is this new monster of globalization + automation going to do to countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and basically any country that registers anything over 20% on that website.
It's my opinion that the next 20 to 40 years are going to be formative when it comes to introducing technology that could radically change a country's class system - Automated transportation in the US being that technology case study. Others will look to the US to see how and if a technology that is developed in large parts in the US is allowed to take over US jobs. At what rate does the it take place? Will there be limitations? Will it be mandated by your Congress? What will happen to your economy?
There was a really good AMA on reddit recently about the economics and ethics of automation and when it came to transportation, the writing was one the wall: it's going to get worse before it gets better. https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/45k2pv/science_ama...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is a surprising phenomenon in microeconomics I was waiting for some counter-intuitive twist, but that seems like common sense and basic math. Not really sure how the concept earned a name.
Paying $1 extra for a better apple is worth it if you value the better flavor by at least that much. It shouldn't matter whether the choice is between $4 and $5 or between $10 and $11 - how did that dollar become less valuable, or the apple tastier? "Humans act like money is proportionate when it's actually linear," is the crux of a wide variety of "surprising" microeconomic facts. People are more likely to drive acr…
If we slap 20$ tariff - for $30 bucks i get 1kg of great apples or 1.2 kg of good apples.
(That is assuming I want to eat roughly a kg of apples)