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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?

#121

Post by wessorh »

Hi, Bay area Farmer here. Aquaponics is a fantastic solution for greens (fast growing stuff like lettuce) and the systems can be highly automated. Demands for electricity are significant but offset with solar.

I enjoy using rpi computers all over the farm to automate things. The best thing I learned is that ally youf folks that live in clickville need to get ousstide and take your hands and get them in the soil. Leave your keyboard for some sunshine and give up your phone for the day and talk to people while you work.

While your question is about technology in agriculture what humans need is a better connection to reality and that begins outside.

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

#122

Post by jrowley »

brootstrap wrote: post #89
wiredfool wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

That nice black Illinois topsoil. Some good stuff.

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

#123

Post by [deleted] »

brootstrap wrote: post #89
wiredfool wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

[deleted]

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

#124

Post by rojobuffalo »

hueving wrote: post #49
subtenante wrote: post #36

Agriculture 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 justification is that we're in an artificial and unsustainable situation at present. Just 8 generations ago, over 90% of the labor force was farming. We're at 1% now. We came up with some incredible engineering practices to achieve this but we lost sight of sustainability in the process. It's the most fundamental good in the economy after water and before shelter. It's reasonable that more than 1 in 100 people should be involved in producing food.

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

#126

Post by snowpanda »

subtenante wrote: post #47
Quarrelsome wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're not answering the question and instead subverting it to discuss your own philosophy. As legit as it is I don't see how this is helpful to the person asking the question.

I am trying to provide context regarding the whole problem. Besides, the guy I talked about uses heavy technology whenever he can (he needs special equipment to take macro pictures of bugs, he needs social interaction with other people in local vicinity spotting larvae of a pest, he needs way to statistically test land lots, he needs ways to measure sun exposition and time, etc.) ; the last thing he needs is robots d…

>I am trying to provide context regarding the whole problem.

You're mistaking context as an opportunity to share your personal views and beliefs. OP asked very specific questions. Your view on renewable energy isn't part of those questions.

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

#127

Post by logfromblammo »

synaesthesisx wrote: post #5
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.

A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds (shelled) or 70 pounds (still on the ear). Using the shelled bushel in this case, 1 pound of corn = 1,656 calories so each bushel is roughly 92,000 calories. With the record yield of 500 bushels/acre that can feed 60+ people for a year! I can't think of anything else that can come close to that kind of yield. No wonder corn syrup is in everything...

500 bushels/acre is probably not scalable. For corn, if you get 150 bushels/acre, you are doing well.

I think the grand champion of caloric yield per unit area is actually the sweet potato. But potato is second place, has more protein, and a better sale price. Also, sweet potato contains raffinose, meaning that it will give you gas.

Browse fao.org for a bit for more information on the nutritional yields of various crops. Though last time I checked, there was no comparison with perennial tree crops like oil palm, neem, and jackfruit.

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

#128

Post by rmason »

logfromblammo wrote: post #119
rmason wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an average price of Iowa farmland statewide. But as you know there's a wide variety. I have no problem believing the price of $10,000 to $15,000 per acre for the premier land. However as you probably are aware sometimes competition among neighbors boosts those prices into the stratosphere. Then there's Detroit where you can buy city lots for $50. Assuming an average size of 50 by 100 ft or 5000 sq feet that is…

That $50 also comes with obligations to pay back property taxes, renovate existing buildings to meet current code standards, and improve the street-visible appearance of the lot. You're paying $50 for a property that has a $50000 debt stapled to it. Also, urban soil frequently has chemical contamination. If nothing else, it often has high levels of lead contamination from mere proximity to the streets used by cars th…

You are wrong. If you're buying a house it might have taxes attached but not side lots if you read the site I referenced. The city is literally giving side lots away so that they are added back to the tax rolls.

Also absolutely no one is going to buy a house with $50,000 of taxes attached! Instead you wait until the land bank owns it and either buy it directly from them or wait for the yearly auction.

Rarely do housing sites have chemical contamination. There are however former industrial sites that do. But if you look at who is doing urban farming in Detroit it is exclusively on former residential land.

Urban farming does make sense economically. Lots of young people don't have the capital to buy good rural farmland. If you're in the city you're also near great markets but the key is growing high value, labor intensive crops like fruits and vegetables.

Unless you're an experienced farmer operating at scale you can almost always buy corn, wheat and soybeans cheaper from the farmer than you can grow them yourself.

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

#129

Post by leakybit »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #117
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you follow the parent's argument, food prices are artificially low because they don't factor in fossil fuel limits/emissions as well as other effects of soil depletion. One big problem in America that we haven't even begun to fully address is the Ogallala Aquifer's rapid depletion. Without it we will need truly massive infrastructure investments to maintain one of the world's biggest breadbaskets. So maybe mor…

Oh god. This times a million. Big Agra is just slamming in N-P-K 10/10/10 and using center-pivot irrigation[0] during peak sunshine hours because hey, the water table's only 15 meters down! Then to stay competitive average farmers have to beat their land just as hard. Here's a guy who runs a mini-vineyard in CA who saved almost half a million gallons of water in one season for his grapes using pretty trivial means[1]…

Where do you think all the water from your septic tank goes? Right back into the water table, and back up your well pump to drink again.

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

#130

Post by cr0sh »

agentultra wrote: post #83
lambdadmitry wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 photosy…

Re: LED lighting

Any idea if anyone has experimented with using heliostats and light pipes (fiber optics) to move sunlight from the outside to the inside for growing plants, while eliminating the heat issue - for growing plants?

I know it has been done for lighting a room, as well as for artistic purposes - but I am not sure about whether it has been tried for indoor farming...?

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