Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 205 posts

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#171

Post by elasticventures »

ironfootnz wrote: post #142

I've seen the focus on the thread, fascinating. The major focus is: To produce more. I haven't seen one to Waste less. Inverse the balance sheet.

We're talking about synthetically accelerating organic life here.

If the byproduct is cleaner air through photosynthesis generated from renewable power is that really a problem? Isn't that just efficiency?

The concern isn't the waste -- it's that a lot of these industrial growers are building proprietary technology monoliths growing "stuff that looks like food" but isn't actually all that healthy and the public burden is falling on nationalized healthcare systems.

As such - there isn't enough work in the open-source sharing of telemetry data and experience between systems.

This is why industrial ag=tech owned by big global ag companies must be replaced with something that anybody and everybody can access.

The soil on the planet is in serious peril.

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#173

Post by samvher »

estsauver wrote: post #165

I think we're doing interesting work at Apollo Agriculture ( https://apolloagriculture.com )! We work with smallholder farmers in subsaharan africa (currently Kenya) to help them transition to commercial farming. Basically, we sell them a package of the seed, fertilizer, advice, insurance, and training that they need to substantially improve their yield and profits. We're moving towards helping farmers shift to a div…

I'm interested in chatting and have emailed you earlier but never got a response. Our organisation (precisionag.org) also works in Kenya among other countries, we provide smallholder farmers with personalized agronomic advice over SMS and voice systems. We're always looking for partners and we use a lot of experimental economics to fine tune and validate our approaches. (One of our founders just won the Nobel prize for economic sciences.)

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#174

Post by tomhoward »

mikorym wrote: post #162
tomhoward wrote: post #122

I've been working on a hardware data logger device and web software platform that monitors soil moisture and other environmental metrics that produce-growers care about – soil temperature and conductivity (which indicates salinity or fertiliser penetration), air/canopy temperature, rainfall, irrigation, humidity, solar radiation, etc. We've been working on the product for about 4-5 years (as a side project while work…

> I'm still not sure why this tech isn't more commonplace It's the same story with DFM probes (artificial root that measures water content). I think the (one) reason is that it's quicker to get in your bakkie (pick-up) or quad bike and go to the block yourself than trying to figure out on your computer why the probe says you had applied water throughout the whole night (i.e., 15 times too much). Turns out someone wal…

Indeed.

By the way, our product uses probes like DFM's. We don't have any users using that brand (from what I can see it doesn't support being connected to 3rd-party data-loggers) but other brands like Aquacheck (also from South Africa), Sentek and EnviroPro (both Australia) can connect to any data logger that supports the SDI-12 protocol. We have several users running EnviroPro and Aquacheck probes.

It's noteworthy that all the leading vendors of these types of probes come from South Africa and Australia, both of which are food-growing countries that have always had to deal with water scarcity. I've long felt it gives us a head start over places that have previously not had major water availability issues, but are starting to experience them now (e.g., California).

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#175

Post by dcustodio »

fillskills wrote: post #151

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."

I wonder how many people will actually buy this. Personally, I would rather get a box full of veggies than some internet karma.

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#176

Post by jelliclesfarm »

hbrundage wrote: post #116
davidhunter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a significant efficiency difference between high-tech greenhouses (glasshouses) and warehouse (aka vertical) farms. High-tech greenhouses will not compete with field farms for staple crops, but they are already profitably supplying fresh produce in many countries.

Oh of course, and to be quite honest, I really hope you folks can succeed in your mission. But, I still found that at least locally (in southern Ontario), the unit costs of importing from California still make sense compared to growing locally because of the cost of artificial lighting and the difficulties growing year round. The big greenhouse operations locally grow a premium product that can command a much higher…

California’s lettuce production alone is a 3 billion dollar industry.

Entire Ag income in Netherlands is around 3 billion dollars.

California lettuce farms have a year round growing season and we move from Salinas to Yuma in winter. We grow organic lettuce with cover cropping and crop rotation.

Glass houses are NOT more efficient than how we grow in CA. We have water shortage and a labour problem. The main problem is labour.

We need robotics to solve our problem. Not data oriented Agtech. Most of the Agtech startups are creating a new sector that didn’t exist before. They are not addressing our throbbing pain point.

Labour. Labour. Labour.

Even automation solutions needs engineers who need to draw 6 figures to work and live in the Bay Area. It’s still cheaper to hire minimum wage labour and make human beings do repetitive manual labour.

There is nothing cheaper than FREE. Sunlight is free. We don’t need energy hungry indoor automation in CA. In east coast maybe..in the frozen northlands of Canada maybe..but CA is an Ag state. We do upwards of 45 billion in Ag income every year. We need real solutions. Every Agtech company wants a piece of the 45 billion dollar pie. They are not working to make it bigger. CA farms are consumers of new tech. Without ROI.

Agtech startups need to Keep It Simple.

Ping me if anyone wants to discuss this further.

[..] GDP From Agriculture in Netherlands decreased to 2544 EUR Million in the second quarter of 2019 from 3071 EUR Million in the first quarter of 2019. GDP From Agriculture in Netherlands averaged 2641.87 EUR Million from 1995 until 2019, reaching an all time high of 3343 EUR Million in the third quarter of 2016 and a record low of 1860 EUR Million in the fourth quarter of 1996.[..]

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#177

Post by jelliclesfarm »

hbrundage wrote: post #115
colechristensen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you model the cost of transportation and logistics to grow things in the opposite hemisphere out of the local growing season or months of cold storage?

I did! Transportation only accounted for 22% of the cost of a head of lettuce in my local Walmart, which wasn't really enough margin to justify the cost of the artifical lighting necessary to grow in Canada (even in dense southeastern Ontario). I think right now the most realistic application of these technologies is for premium products that are branded as such, like hot house tomatoes or living plants that can comm…

The only way it would be comparable to CA flown in lettuce is the greenhouse/vertical farms are fully automated and there is a super short supply chain and absolutely no wastage. This can be achieved by supplying to local markets which would shorten supply chain. But the scale would have to be massive to make a buck out of this.

Automated greenhouses must also look into growing underground. In tunnels beneath or near water treatment plants or anywhere where there is steam.

Further, energy will always be an issue. There are two ways to go about it. Cheap electricity by going nuclear. Or advances in material sciences to develop new kinds of indoor lights/batteries or greenhouse material that can help with light/heat/thermal insulation.(one company is doing it with quantum/nano dots as greenhouse material. ETFE can be a better material than greenhouse plastic or glasshouses)

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#179

Post by jelliclesfarm »

groby_b wrote: post #97
aussiegreenie wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wageningen is the world's leading Agtech university. I just returned 2 weeks ago and the 2025 European Food production estimates are ugly, dairy down 30%, potatoes down, onions down, maize, wheat and other cereals down a lot. Basically, Europen food is in trouble.

This seems to be contrary to what the EU's ag outlook report from 2018[1] is saying. What changed in the last year? And do you have any sources (i.e. studies) that support that point? [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/food-farming-fish...

Europe is facing many problems. Soil compaction, climate crisis, lack of labour force, ground water contamination in some places. Very little demand for organic produce. And pest/pathogen pressure. Example: Even places like Spain and Italy are uprooting olive groves and moving it to Turkey and Morocco where labour is cheaper and plant pathogens haven’t entirely destroyed the soil. Africa used to supply a lot of food. But EU insisted on non-GMO. Now that China is moving in to Africa(and South America) with their Belt and Trade initiative, Africa is happy growing for China.

And China isn’t slacking either. China..for example..supplies most of the tomatoes and ketchup internationally.. competing with Provence and Italy .. this is a good documentary: https://www.moderntimes.review/the-untold-story-of-the-red-g...

Re: Ask HN: Agriculture startups doing interesting work?

#180

Post by botwriter »

I'm sure this will just get lost in, but hey I'll say it anyway.

I've worked in aquaculture science for years before I moved onto programming (Pays better / I don't have to worry about farm alarms going off at 2 am). I've worked in nearly every type of far. I've been at some of the most cutting edge Recirculatory aquaculture systems in the UK, and I've taught degree and master students in the field.

Its a dishearting situation right now. Company after company in this field seems to be going bust because they keep having their technology stolen by the Chinese state.

Other than Salmon farming the UK aquaculture industry is fucked. Even if you automated everything, it's still cheaper to produce aquaculture products in third world countries and ship it in. The recirculatory aquaculture field as it stands is dependant on EU grants. (Which have stopped because of Brexit) And also renewable energy grants. A few years back, the government would pay you money to heat water with a biomass boiler. So it was and maybe still is to run a RAS system without fish in it.

I'm currently working on some R&D with Giant freshwater prawns (Macrobrachium rosenbergii,) to hopefully farm blue claws so that they form in higher densities. But this is only a side project and until major legislative change happens warm water aquaculture in the UK is fucked.

Post reply on HN