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Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
81–90 of 149 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#82If you want to learn more, come work with us at FarmLogs (YC12). We've got about a third of the US farmland in our system, and we use satellite imagery, agronomy, machine telematics, and more remote sensing to help farmers precisely manage every acre.
Is there is a SF office in your future? If not, is the entire team in Des Moines and Ann Arbor, or do you have folks working remote as well?
An SF office is probably not in our future. We do have some remote folks and are working towards becoming a more remote-friendly company.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#83Vertical farms are going to be huge. They're almost fully isolated from the outside environment save for taking in local air and removing carbon from it. They require magnitudes less water than traditional agriculture and no fertilizers. You can build them in the middle of a downtown core if you need to. And you could optimize power consumption so that the majority of your energy comes from renewable sources. See Aer…
Please note that vertical farming is mostly about producing leafy greens and other low-footprint, high-value goods. Purely from the energy standpoint there is no sense in using vertical farming for the bulk of calorie consumption. Compare traditional farming: sunshine -> green parts of the plant -> seeds -> food -> people with vertical farming: sunshine -> [... -> electricity -> LED light] -> green parts of the plant…
They're mostly about producing leafy greens right now for two reasons: proof of concept and profitability. I look forward to the technology expanding to other plant types: tubers, legumes, and the like.
The efficiency of solar panels is improving but not ideal. The advantage is that the energy can be stored in batteries and the light from specialized LEDs only emit the spectrum of light that is useful to the photosynthesis process without generating excess heat. In a controlled environment you're protected from storms and pests. Using aerosolized nutrient delivery eliminates soil management. A good part of your energy profile is likely going to come from traditional sources but the cost of not having to manage acres of land and ship the final product hundreds of kilometres is a big savings.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
Totally agreed. Calories from the fields and acres and variety, vitamins and other nutrients from CEA production.
BTW: I'm following your BA media streams and I'm curious about the coolbar lights. Do you have distribution in Europe/Germany? Would like to get a quote for our (small) systems (NGO community and small research system, both aquaponic).
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#85Agriculture in our age must shift from productivity first to sustainability first, because we are running out of fossil energy allowing to produce most of the fertilizers, and we have already killed our soil with it. A farm involving a lot of machines (i.e. a lot of need for energy) might not be the way to go in order to keep the agricultural system stable. The most you ask from the soil, the poorer it gets, and then…
I don't see any justification though for why humans need to do the labor. This guy found a nice pollination technique. Great, teach it to the robots or spend time teaching the robots how to analyze different techniques for effectiveness. Humans are not great at farming, that's why we have entire industries producing tools to help them do better. It's silly to think that riding around in a tractor all day is a better…
The only way you can even come close to automating farming is through massive conventional monoculture systems. These systems destroy the soil and sacrifice genetic diversity to achieve this goal while producing a glut of a single crop that ultimately drives the value of that crop into the ground.
Humans are incredibly efficient - our pattern recognition ability on a per watt basis is way beyond what we can do with machines. Not to mention we handle environmental irregularities far better than most robots, and we have far more task flexibility. We have millions of years of evolution behind us to make us efficient foragers, it is silly to think we're going to beat that with a few hundred years of science behind us. Instead, we need to figure out how we can make agriculture an enjoyable career instead of soul crushing toil.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#86Agriculture in our age must shift from productivity first to sustainability first, because we are running out of fossil energy allowing to produce most of the fertilizers, and we have already killed our soil with it. A farm involving a lot of machines (i.e. a lot of need for energy) might not be the way to go in order to keep the agricultural system stable. The most you ask from the soil, the poorer it gets, and then…
> Agriculture in our age must shift from productivity first to sustainability first But the two are not mutually exclusive; productivity has a role to play in reducing the footprint of agricultural activity. I don't see it as a dichotomy of 'different OR less', but 'different AND less'. I don't think we should make the mistake of inferring that productivity necessarily means greater and unsustainable use of energy an…
Only in this age of low interest rates does high productivity equal unsustainable use of resources, as the price of anything with a yield (like arable land) becomes prohibitively high for a farmer to have grazing cattle, such that buying a huge barn and putting the cattle in there is at least half the cost (that's what's reflected by the supermarket prices I see, at least). This changes as the rate of interest rises.
With a falling rate of interest, it becomes increasingly cheaper to borrow capital to buy machinery and build barns, and put live animals in these, while any asset with a yield -- such as farm land, or bonds -- is increasing in price.
With a rising rate of interest it's the opposite. Borrowing money to rent machinery and build industrial real estate becomes increasingly expensive, but the price of land will be falling, as there's less and less reason to purchase farm land, in order to earn a yield, when the short term rate of interest is rising (basically risk-free profit).
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#87If you want to learn more, come work with us at FarmLogs (YC12). We've got about a third of the US farmland in our system, and we use satellite imagery, agronomy, machine telematics, and more remote sensing to help farmers precisely manage every acre.
Planning to use that data for trading? I can think of a few hedge funds who might want a look at that data.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reality is that you are not going to feed a town with a tractor or a robot acting as a tractor. This is because with your robot, you are producing cereals. If you want to feed the town, you need fruits and vegetables. Now, if you want high density, sustainable fruits and vegetables production, you need to pay extremely attention to your soil. Practically it means, try to never walk on it and produce multiple spec…
People can survive on cereals.
And primitive hunter-gatherer people tend to be taller, more intelligent and healthier than primitive agricultural people.
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Iowa is mostly not irrigated.
Across the heart corn belt (iowa/illinois/indiana) we see 200+ bu/ac yields for corn consistently and majority of fields are rain-fed (non-irrigated). Hell in 2014/2015 some people around me (champaign IL) were hitting 220/230. Illinois has some of the most productive soils in the world though, we are lucky!
Re: Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology?
#90Agriculture in our age must shift from productivity first to sustainability first, because we are running out of fossil energy allowing to produce most of the fertilizers, and we have already killed our soil with it. A farm involving a lot of machines (i.e. a lot of need for energy) might not be the way to go in order to keep the agricultural system stable. The most you ask from the soil, the poorer it gets, and then…
Sorry, but I think this is nonsense. Robots are incredible more efficient and energy saving than humans. Do you really thing a human would use less energy driving a car/tractor than a robot? Robots never lose attention, are very easy to measure their performance and are incredibly accurate. And I'm not sure why humans would use less fertilizer/pesticides than robots? If you have a system that works better, then tell…
For simple, monotonous tasks, robots are indeed far superior to humans.
For more complex tasks that involve flexibility and high level pattern recognition, humans as so far above robots on a work/watt basis it is silly. We have been developed by millions of years of evolution as efficient foragers.
Of course, if you take the complexity and pattern recognition out of farming you make it amenable to machines. An unfortunate side effect of this is that the farming practice becomes unsustainable.