This Brandi DiCarli? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro4Mn7i7hQ8
Yup, seems like it. hahaha
Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
211–220 of 266 posts
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was designing a two-acre farm to feed my family, I wouldn't devote much space to corn. Corn is a very useful crop but mostly once it's processed and you need a lot of it. Here's what I think I'd grow: Potatoes - Incredibly easy to grow. Produces a ton of food. Can be grown in trash cans on otherwise unusable land. Very versatile and useful in so many cuisines. If I had to place my bets on one staple crop, it's p…
Agreed with you list. Corn can be interesting to feed chickens, though. (I mean maize when I say corn, do you guys mean maize or wheat?) BTW, you can grow beans in the corn, it grows over it. I would add a bit of barley/oat but that's more work than the rest.
Americans pretty universally mean maize when they say 'corn', fwiw.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#213$60,000 seems like a lot of amount for starving and underdeveloped areas. I went to their funding page and read more about what's inside the "box" https://republic.co/farm-from-a-box 1: micro-drip irrigation system 2: 3kW solar power 3: Pumping System 4: IOT setup 5: Energy management 6: Basic farm tools As of 2016, average cost of solar power is approximately $3.00 per watt so ~ $9K. I have installed a decent sized…
$60,000 is way more expensive than the 2 acre land it serves in most parts of India
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#214We'll look back on this article and it will sum up dysfunctional optimism around the idea of a 'startup'
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most likely this is a routine NGO/EDU/Gov scam backed by an aggressive and shiny sales approach. And this is why I don't like those Gov (capital G intentional) programs. The scamsters are the best at exploiting them. That's how you end up with things like this: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/free-golf-cart-but-call-it-a-low...
This reminds of the massive deductions the govt have for commercial trucks. They weren't very specific about what the usage was so everyone bought an expensive H2 Hummer and slapped a business sticker on the back gate. Usually realtors, appraisers, or some mobile DJs.
New Zealand has something similar.
We have a fringe benefits tax, which applies if you drive company vehicles for personal use (since you are gaining something by not having to use your own vehicle).
This tax doesn't apply to pickup trucks with business markings of a certain size (and I think they have to be on the side?) that are permanently affixed (so no magnetic stickers).
The result is that there's quite a few companies with Toyota Hiluxes and other trucks that don't actually need trucks at all, since they're a service company that has literally nothing to haul.
I think that pickup trucks depreciate differently as well, with tax benefits to using them over a sedan.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off-topic, but I've become something of an unintentional expert on making Pis reliable. First, consider using f2fs instead of ext4 with a nice big card (and get a good one). Next, attempt to disable all of the unnecessary logging and writes to the SD. Either send them to a server, write them to a ramdisk or even consider mounting the partition in read-only mode. This will drastically increase your duty cycle. Finally…
I will also comment on the SD card quality issue: STOP BUYING SHITTY LOW GRADE SD CARDS AND EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO WRITE TO THEM FREQUENTLY. Just stop. There is a reason why companies like GoPro (which abusively write cards to death) bless only certain products (the top of their list being modern generations of Sandisk Extreme and Extreme Plus, Samsung Pro and Pro Plus, and Lexar Pro). In this case, they also make indu…
I was just recently talking to someone who was very upset that their super cheap 32 GB card wasn't 32 GB and overwrote everything on the card when it ran out of actual space, wiping a whole heap of awesome GoPro footage and photos.
I've had a couple of cards like that before, but after reading an article about fake SD cards a while ago, I test every new SD card and flash drive I get to make sure it's to advertised capacity so I haven't been stung.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#217> All of those things affect the ultimate price of the box, and that’s why we have a range from about $50,000 to $60,000. If you were to a la carte all the different components that we put into this kit, it would end up costing you more than what we’re charging. I seriously doubt that. $50k for what appears to basically be 2 acres of irrigation equipment and a solar-powered raspberry pi is absurd. It also looks like…
From the article... > We have a three-part training program that comes with the box. One: Covering sustainable farming, making sure everyone knows a little bit in terms of crop rotation, and composting, and intercropping. Two: Covering technology use and maintenance, making sure that the individuals know how to maintain and troubleshoot all of the components of the farm. Three: Farming as an enterprise, making sure t…
So you get some American boffin telling you how you should run your farm in Africa?
Sounds like a great use of money to me...
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked on a project to create affordable, electric vegetable graters for rural farmers in Ghana [1]. For comparison, the price point of our grater was $150USD and was still seen as too expensive by a substantial portion of our customers, some of whom opted to purchase the graters on an installment basis (3 x $50 every 6 months as our group traveled to Ghana bi-annually). The main problems our rural customers faced…
Based on what you have said here I feel like technology such as iPhones and IoT networks is not what these people need. Would it help to provide some kind of farming manual with instructions on how to build and maintain farm equipment, how to create a co-op to sell locally, etc? Has it been done? What about providing a printing press to publish pricing data on a daily/weekly basis to try and make that information ava…
There was this phone-based software created by a research team.
https://hci.stanford.edu/research/voice4all/
"In places such as rural India, small-scale farmers struggle to meet the challenges of fierce global competition, increasing costs of farm inputs, water shortages, and new diseases and pests brought on by a changing climate. To deal with these challenges, information has become a critical input to farming operations: faced with rapidly changing conditions, farmers need market information, timely technical advice, and alerts on new and improved techniques. There are currently few sources for reliable, timely knowledge. Television and radio have achieved remarkable penetration in rural areas and stand as an effective means of information dissemination. However, without a platform to discuss, debate, and relate personal experience, information is not actionable.
Social media - email, blogs, wikis, forums, and social networks - has revolutionized how people learn and share expertise on the web, but the Internet and its associated access technologies (broadband connectivity, PCs) are out of reach for much of rural India. Even if Internet-connected PCs were available, widespread usage is constrained by language and literacy barriers. But while computers are unaffordable or unfamiliar to rural communities, mobile phones are not.
Avaaj Otalo is a service for farmers to access relevant and timely agricultural information over the phone. This service was designed in the summer of 2008 as a collaboration between UC Berkeley School of Information, Stanford HCI Group, IBM India Research Laboratory and Development Support Center (DSC), an NGO in Gujarat, India.
By dialing a phone number and navigating through simple audio prompts, farmers can record, browse, and respond to agriculturual questions and answers. In addition to the Q&A forum, the service includes an announcements board of headline-like snippets updated regularly by DSC staff, and a radio archive to listen to past episodes of DSC's popular weekly radio program."
Avaaj Otalo led to the founding of Awaaz.De (literally, "give voice"), a company in India that provides a hosted solution for deploying voice-based social media.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I was designing a two-acre farm to feed my family, I wouldn't devote much space to corn. Corn is a very useful crop but mostly once it's processed and you need a lot of it. Here's what I think I'd grow: Potatoes - Incredibly easy to grow. Produces a ton of food. Can be grown in trash cans on otherwise unusable land. Very versatile and useful in so many cuisines. If I had to place my bets on one staple crop, it's p…
Seconding this. My dad's been trying to grow a bit of corn on our land in Texas for years, probably decades at this point. All we have to show for it is a once-a-year small ear of corn on Thanksgiving. The potatoes, on the other hand, he grows by the bucket in piles of hay thrown into old, bald tires. I suspect the damned things will grow in anything that's been near a nutrient.
Yup. Something that I can recommend if you have children: just buy a large flower pot (15" diameter), put it on your balcony, and stick 2 potatoes in it.
Your children will see potatoes grow live, and you can eat them with them. Fun thing to do, very easy, and works so well.
For soil, just some normal soil you can dig out anywhere is enough, but you can also buy pre-fertilized soil if you wish (as said, the potatoes would even grow in garbage cans)
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was trying to do the math here too. Here's what I came up with. 1) Shipping Container - ~$2,000 2) Tin Shed - Maybe another ~$1,000 3) Hoop Greenhouse - ~$400 [1] 4) 3Kwh Solar Plant with Batteries - ~$8,500 [2] 5) 2 Acre Drip Irrigation System - ~$3,000 [3] 6) WiFi Access - $1,000 (I have no idea what hardware/capabilities they're delivering here, but it seems like that's a safe number) 7) A Bunch of Hand Farming…
3) is underestimated. A typical shipping container is 40 feet long, so I think they ship a 32' not a 24' one. Also, 4' centers are necessary in most parts of the world: 6' will collapse under snow load in half the US. That's $600, not $400. The benches shown are at least another $400. Finally, the most expensive part of a greenhouse is the endwall and the plastic; probably +$500, making it $1500. (I am a small farmer…
Does that make up the remaining 24k?