Looks like no one has mentioned Nori: https://nori.com/. They are doing good work around creating a marketplace where you can buy carbon credits. From their site: "Nori’s platform makes it straightforward for companies to pay farmers for storing carbon in soil."
Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
151–160 of 205 posts
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#152This is exactly what I am working on. Using climate data for more efficient farming, in a nutshell. Established players are like sledge hammers. They are successful if they are hard working and have some competitive edge (could be labour cost, could be local knowledge, could be profit reinvestment, could be rights to varieties). Farmers are the most efficient managers you'll ever find. They don't need management, so…
Chicken coops that are picked up at night by 6 heavy duty drones and flown to a new part of the field —- sign me up
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#153I worked for The Climate Corporation when it was acquired by Monsanto (now Bayer) for $1B. There is certainly plenty of potential for innovative tech in agriculture, but it’s a really tough space. Machine learning and big data are not magic bullets. The level of noise in experimental measurements is very high, which makes it difficult to prove the effectiveness of almost any intervention. Climate Corp did (and still…
can it work for a different country ?
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#154Definitely want to take the time to throw out a huge recommendation for FBN (Farmers Business Network), a KPCB/Google Ventures backed startup that's doing really cool work in data analysis + aggregation + insights for farmers.
For the sake of clarity, I was an intern there, but I objectively think that their approach is very insightful and hits a lot of key points that many ag startups get wrong. Two of my biggest personal takeaways were that obsession with farm yields doesn't actually translate very well to increased profits, because there are so many other factors and costs (and risk) in farm operations. Furthermore, because of all these other operations (e.g. researching better seed varieties, buying inputs, loans in order to buy inputs and hope that they can be repaid later when harvest time comes), there is a huge need to address pervasive and complex issues with regards to the entire farming enterprise, not just the yield portion. FBN does a really great job at tackling the holistic approach, which I think really helps increase the effectiveness of FBN's product and makes it a really powerful tool.
Definitely check it out! https://www.fbn.com
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
different set of problems; equipment failures and mold's & fungus become bigger problems. it's not a closed loop since we need fresh co2 to trigger photosynthesis and nothing is 100% failure proof.
Seems like there's plenty of CO2 to go around. What's the issue?
Commercial greenhouse growers usually supplement CO2 up to Levels of 1000-1500 ppm and above.
The CO2 storage and distribution facility is one more technical component and there is one more dependency to the supplier of the liquid CO2.
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#156I worked for The Climate Corporation when it was acquired by Monsanto (now Bayer) for $1B. There is certainly plenty of potential for innovative tech in agriculture, but it’s a really tough space. Machine learning and big data are not magic bullets. The level of noise in experimental measurements is very high, which makes it difficult to prove the effectiveness of almost any intervention. Climate Corp did (and still…
Do you know how much the climate corporation is involved in cross selling/promoting the products of Monsanto/Bayer?
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#157I am the founder of Optimal: http://optimal.ag . We are a team of engineers and scientists from DeepMind, Palantir, Oxford and MIT. Our mission is to grow safer, healthier food by deploying fully autonomous greenhouses outside every city on earth. We are backed by leading deep technology funds, including Founders Fund. We believe that high-tech greenhouses will be an important part of our agricultural future, for imp…
How do you envisage the impact that these greenhouses will have on the environment surrounding them? I often wonder about polytunnels and how they shut out quite a bit of wildlife. Something like this view in Almeria, Spain - https://lh6.ggpht.com/-IHVqCZRVzzo/UiGekR4rgEI/AAAAAAAAr6M/e... - concerns me given broader issues such as the collapse in the number of insects - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/ins…
I think the rationale here is that the intensified production in greenhouses frees up formerly used as agricultural land elsewhere that could then be repurposed for wildlife and insects.
Personally I am not sure this math adds up. At least in Germany farming land is categorized and once the land loses its status as farmland, it can never be turned back into farmland, losing much of its monetary value in the process. Thus the land owners have an intrinsic motivation to keep their property in the farmland category.
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#158Speaking as a customer. I want an any sized farmbot. I'd buy that product in a second. I even offered a bounty in the farmbot forums recently:
https://forum.farmbot.org/t/any-size-farmbot-with-a-cash-bou...
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
marketing strategy is key. The tech & science behind the yield optimization -- up to 6x 'overclocked photosynthesis' using aeroponics (not soil), optimized for photonic efficiency -- humans can accelerate the growth of plants substantially effectively "overlocking" nature. it's based on the Minskey/MIT media lab designs and some pieces I found in China -- a training gym for growing plants, but with a non-laboratory '…
I’d be careful before following the MIT media lab designs too carefully. Their agriculture project has been called “mostly smoke and mirrors”: https://www.businessinsider.com/mit-media-lab-personal-food-...
thanks @shoyer -- i'm not; but conceptually they were closest. By increasing the intensity of the light (in pulses) at specific frequencies in the 420nm growth & 700nm veg we can increase yield. Each light frequency causes a different type of growth inside the auxins part of a plants central nervous system.
Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction and it works similar to a doped transistor pre-saturation when going from light to dark. This is why plants roughly grow the same on sunny and cloudy days despite having MORE energy on the sunny day. By controlling the nutrients; pulsing the light and watching the leaves we can build stronger chemical pathways inside the plant .. I'm calling these "cybernetic pathways" since it's organic plus artificial intelligence.
The MIT work was funded (in part) by the world-class douche nozzle Jeffery Epstein as well; but studying that did inspire me so I feel like credit is due. MIT at the time also lacked the AI technology libraries we have today to make something cost effective anyway. Espressif Esp32 w/ov2640 cameras are so cheap!!
I grew up in commercial agriculture; 3rd generation ornamental farmer & ag-scientist who dropped the family business of farming for the dot-com bubble yay "Internet" tech! This is me going back to my "roots" and teaching a positronic brain how to accelerate plant growth, so it scratches my AI & IOT itch at the same time.
I showed my dad that MIT research as a kid and he called it crap told me the reasons it doesn't work "no soil" haha .. farmers don't like to change unless they need to which is why I'm not targeting farmers at all; instead a residential appliance which is "soil-less" allowing more efficient nutrient distribution and also allowing oxidation of the roots by disabling pumps. In China they use positive pressure on the root systems to actually force the fertilizer in -- haven't seen anything like that in the west. The soil in the US is almost dead; it's losing nutrients so fast due to over fertilization we need better solutions.
Being from Southern California we had a lot of hyper water efficient indoor stealth growing in the Cannabis space. That's where most of the experience comes from -- but those guys (my friends) don't like to show off what they're doing. .. that's why this needs to be something that works anywhere.
Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?
#160Check https://www.tend.com/ out, this startup has gone public since 2016, I'm one of their beta users. Its a suite that help you make growing plan, keeping track of almost everything needed during your farming processes, your plants, your tasks, when to harvest, your soil test records,... They've been developing some other tools that will eventually help you sell
your farm produces.
Here's what they say "We’re a small startup that’s passionate about building tools to help organic farmers grow quality food and run successful farming businesses. We started Tend with farmers in mind, and are proud to have team members who’ve farmed throughout the U.S. and Latin America. We’re also fortunate to have a first-class technology and engineering team who’ve spent many years working in startups and larger tech companies. Most of all, we’re proud of our close relationships with the organic and diversified farmers who use Tend to manage their farm."