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Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

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Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#21

Post by _m8fo »

randomdata wrote: post #20
na85 wrote: post #6

>an entire one acre farm The way you wrote this reads as if you consider one acre to be a very large tract of land. I have family that farm and I can tell you that one acre is actually quite petite as farms go. The average size of a farm in North America is something like 400 acres.

One of the farms I run has a small 2.5 acre section of the main farm divided by a ditch. If that chunk were much smaller, I'm not sure it would be even worth pulling the equipment into it. If it were any smaller, some of these large implements you can buy nowadays wouldn't even fit. But perhaps what he means is that with more automation, the new tools would make utilizing small pieces of land up to 1 acre more attrac…

Indeed. What I imagined was that if a single acre could produce a high yield, balanced diet, then they could simply be placed in places where it before wouldn't make sense: e.g. interspersed within the suburban sprawl. And since it's just an acre, a few people or a single person could take care of it, no heavy machinery required.

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#22

Post by randomdata »

martinza wrote: post #19
randomdata wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This land by the way will cost you approximately $7,183 per acre. That's surprisingly cheap. A farm near me, with similar production capabilities, recently sold for $25,000/acre. Around here, you won't find anything really worth farming for much under $15,000/acre on the low end these days.

Where do you live? Prime land in California? Average acre in America is $4000 [1], so wouldn't call $7183 an acre cheap. 1: http://www.agweb.com/mobile/land/farmland-value-guide/

> Average acre in America is $4000 [1], so wouldn't call $7183 an acre cheap.

But presumably we're talking about land that specifically can produce the 200bu of corn and 60bu of soybeans the the parent specified? There is most certainly cheaper land around, even locally, if you are willing to accept less production ability, but there is good reason why that land is cheaper.

The average corn yield in the US is 160 bu/acre and 49 bu/acre for soybeans, so it seems that the average land is not capable of delivering. Not to mention that there is land that wouldn't even be worth trying to grow corn and soybeans on, which would drag the average down even further if you tried.

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#23

Post by jsilence »

_m8fo wrote: post #7
planteen wrote: post #3

I don't know what the maximum number of people you could sustain on an acre is, but my guess is way less than 1000. Like an order of magnitude less, perhaps closer to two orders less. The world record corn yield is 500 bu/ac. 1 bushel of corn is about 1500 calories. EDIT: 1500*56=84,000 calories If you could do 1000 people per acre, you would have enough food for 36 billion people from the state of Iowa.

Really? I thought aquaponics and other advanced techniques drastically increased that by an order of magnitude. Doing a quick search, it seems that you're right. For an average person, with an average diet, to feed a SINGLE person you need an acre (with traditional farming techniques)[1]. Wow. I doubted a thousand people could realistically be fed on an acre, but I thought at least 10 would be trivial, and 100 possib…

Unfortunately aquaponics and vertical farming are often advertised as "the future of food" with bloated claims of yield increase. While controlled environment agriculture (CEA aka greenhouse farming) does have increased yields and an elongated production period, the gains are nowhere near the claims that are being made (factor of ten to factor of hundred). Apart from that greenhouse production is mainly used for produce and leafy greens. It does not make sense to produce grains in a greenhouse. Yet the bulk, like 90%, of our calories come from grains and leguminoses.

Plant yield without artificial lighting is limited by light influx. Prof. Bugbee from NASA co-authored a paper on this titled "Exploring the Limits of Crop Productivity : I. Photosynthetic Efficiency of Wheat in High Irradiance Environments" (DOI: 10.1104/pp.88.3.869). The gist of this paper is that one gram of dry biomass needs at least in Mol of (sun)light (for lettuce, other crops need even more light per dry mass).

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#24

Post by kozikow »

There are lots of interesting agriculture use case being enabled by drones. "Ground" robots are still too expensive and unreliable, so they are not widely used yet. On the other hand, there are estimates claiming that 5-10% of farmers are using drones[1]. In addition to providing analytics, some drones already perform active tasks. E.g. take a look at spraying drone from DJI[2]. As another example, there is a startup that produces a drone that shoots weed in your field with the laser ;).

1. http://bestdroneforthejob.com/drone-buying-guides/agricultur...

2. https://www.dji.com/mg-1

Shameless plug: I am a co-founder of the startup working on deep learning from drone imagery - http://tensorflight.com. We primarily work with agriculture. Please get in touch!

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#25

Post by robbiep »

rmason wrote: post #11

The fully automated farm is a few years off. Here in Michigan large families with one or two employees farm 5-10,000 acres. With good Iowa or Illinois farmland you can expect 200 bushels of corn per acre or 60 bushels of soybeans. This land by the way will cost you approximately $7,183 per acre. If you're interested in this topic you might consider attending the precision ag conference, the next one will be in 2018 h…

Those are some pretty wild corn yields - 5 ton/acre - is it irrigated?

In Australia dryland farming about half as productive is around $2,000/acre

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#26

Post by knieveltech »

martinza wrote: post #19
randomdata wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This land by the way will cost you approximately $7,183 per acre. That's surprisingly cheap. A farm near me, with similar production capabilities, recently sold for $25,000/acre. Around here, you won't find anything really worth farming for much under $15,000/acre on the low end these days.

Where do you live? Prime land in California? Average acre in America is $4000 [1], so wouldn't call $7183 an acre cheap. 1: http://www.agweb.com/mobile/land/farmland-value-guide/

That average has to include vast areas of aggressively useless and unwanted land (eg Wyoming).

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#27

Post by stan_sf »

What are your goals for you research or project? Many ideas stumble not on the technology, but on the people aspects of the project.

If your goal is a single family sustainable farm, I've read reports of 2 or 3 acres being plenty for a family of four if you are in an area with enough rainfall (Ohio, for example). However, they needed to have outside income since their land did not produce everything the needed.

If you are thinking of a larger group like commune of 25 people, or a town like you mention, you will to look into the issues present in those communities, and getting food is usually not the biggest issue. For example, several co-housing projects fail due to the families involved not being able to raise enough money to purchase the land the need. Other small groups buy farmland but don't have the capital or expertise to actually farm and produce enough to be economically viable. Useful farmland is not cheap, and the economics get in the way quickly.

Farming is a complex business. It won't be "fully automated" anytime soon, particularly for the variety of crops people like to have. For example, my parent's potato farm also had a vegetable garden for carrots and onions, and they raised chickens. They ate a lot of soup, since that is what they grew without needing to spend money, meat was expensive. Economically they sold potatoes to have money to buy everything things they needed (gas for tractor, salt, tools, etc.).

Note: I am a cofounder at www.powwowenergy.com, a data mining company based in San Mateo CA where we help farmers be more efficient. If you are a data scientist or developer looking to help the world feed more people, drop me a note, we are hiring.

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#28

Post by elcritch »

jsilence wrote: post #23
_m8fo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I thought aquaponics and other advanced techniques drastically increased that by an order of magnitude. Doing a quick search, it seems that you're right. For an average person, with an average diet, to feed a SINGLE person you need an acre (with traditional farming techniques)[1]. Wow. I doubted a thousand people could realistically be fed on an acre, but I thought at least 10 would be trivial, and 100 possib…

Unfortunately aquaponics and vertical farming are often advertised as "the future of food" with bloated claims of yield increase. While controlled environment agriculture (CEA aka greenhouse farming) does have increased yields and an elongated production period, the gains are nowhere near the claims that are being made (factor of ten to factor of hundred). Apart from that greenhouse production is mainly used for prod…

It's unfortunate how much hype surrounds vertical farming and hydroponics as it'll likely cause a let down and potentially lead many people to miss the actual benefits. Vertical Ag won't completely replace large scale crop farming, especially given the record population levels we have nowadays. The "green revolution" of high yield mass crops has been a boon to world food stability.

Why the hype for vertical farming then? Variety, locality, and nutrition. While bulk calories come from grains which don't grow well in vertical system, many leafy greens and vegetables do. Importantly many nutrients (especially phytochemicals) degrade very quickly after harvesting. Transporting food like strawberries or leafy greens hundreds or thousands of miles results in quite severe reduction in nutrition, and often taste suffers and require significant refrigeration to counteract. [1, 3]

Great point about the lighting Influx! Indoor growing without greenhouses requires a lot of light. Alas, it's not well understood... We review a lot of lights for our customers and seem to regularly get companies who claim to increase power efficiencon over 90%! Amazing -- except they confuse lumens with light flux and won't get the corresponding plant growth. Photosynthesis requires a high light density, measured in Molson of light per volume. Kinda cool! Thanks for the link above, my coworkers will find it helpful.

All that being said we ended up developing our own custom LED lights using water cooling techniques similar to Google data centers. To achieve high enough light density while not frying the plants from waste heat, we pump the heat out via a chiller system. Basically, anytime you can water cool something -- do it! ;) [2]

1: http://www.fruitandvegetable.ucdavis.edu/files/197179.pdf 2: https://brightagrotech.com/coolbar/ 3: http://pure.au.dk/portal/files/45962257/PostharvestQualityCh...

(edits: grammar and forgot a link)

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#29

Post by _m8fo »

stan_sf wrote: post #27

What are your goals for you research or project? Many ideas stumble not on the technology, but on the people aspects of the project. If your goal is a single family sustainable farm, I've read reports of 2 or 3 acres being plenty for a family of four if you are in an area with enough rainfall (Ohio, for example). However, they needed to have outside income since their land did not produce everything the needed. If yo…

This is just a tiny part of a much broader goal, which is to create a completely self sustaining town of 100 to 1000 people within my lifetime. My intention is with 100k that could get you 10 acres. 1 acre for food, 5 for solar/energy production and 4 for housing/community. Of course, with the comments in this thread, I'd need more land, haha.

As far as the economics goes: I've been doing reading but haven't formed a good conclusion yet. Initially I thought a communalist approach would work. I thought of too many ways that would fail and then opted more for a centralized, socialist approach, but that seems like it would fail as well. Capitalism, of course, would just result in what we have now, defeating the purpose. Personally I think communities where each person knows everyone else have unique advantages not present in large cities.

Disclaimer: I haven't done a ton of due diligence on these things yet. When I get closer to actually doing this I'll start doing more serious research.

Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?

#30

Post by Tangurena2 »

planteen wrote: post #3

I don't know what the maximum number of people you could sustain on an acre is, but my guess is way less than 1000. Like an order of magnitude less, perhaps closer to two orders less. The world record corn yield is 500 bu/ac. 1 bushel of corn is about 1500 calories. EDIT: 1500*56=84,000 calories If you could do 1000 people per acre, you would have enough food for 36 billion people from the state of Iowa.

I think the ballpark you are looking for would be Biosphere 2 [0]. This is a 3 acre enclosed system that supports the food and oxygen needs of 8 people, although the people lost a lot of weight and oxygen levels dropped dangerously. While this (somewhat failed) experiment is in the ballpark of what long-term spacecraft will need to sustain generations of crew, it also shows how much land is needed to supply the air we breathe.

Notes: 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

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