What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture • Hacker News Board

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#211

Post by lazyasciiart » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

infogulch wrote: post #129

Someone wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Stacking a bunch of plants on top of each other cannot change that the lower plants must receive less power, and therefore cannot grow as much“ That assumes all light comes from straight up. That isn’t even true if the sun is straight overhead, and definitely not true close to the poles. I don’t know whether it’s profitable, but I would think the economics of vertical farming on Iceland (sun lower in the sky, greenh…

No, it assumes that power is delivered based on surface area with respect to the sun . Vertical/3d farming can't work more than ~2 plants deep, where "depth" is measured as the number of plants between a given plant and the sun . Sure, build it vertically on the north pole, but it's still gonna be essentially "flat". You can't magically get power deep into a 3D farm when there 20 other plants on every side that would…

I have never heard anyone suggesting that vertical farms enabled 3d planting. It simply removes the linear relationship between square foot of land and number of plants.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#212

Post by evgen » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

bgroat wrote: post #207

eloff wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine space is a factor, but energy will be a big one as well. Calorie dense foods will likely need more space and energy (light) inputs. Vertical farms are very water efficient, so I don't think that matters much. Vertical farms make a lot more sense with fresh vegetables like leafy greens that grow quickly, command high prices if grown organically, and benefit from being closer to market. Potatoes are the exact…

Can you expand on this? I get that to store a calorie in a potato I need to supply a calorie of energy from somewhere else. But why is fusion power required instead of better UV lamps in my vertical farm? (Assuming I had enough electricity to run them)

I think the suggestion is that fusion power here is a stand-in for electricity that is too cheap to meter -- basically free power.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#213

Post by primroot » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:33 PM UTC

kumarski wrote: post #158

My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now) Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd. - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms - It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinat…

> You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms

Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) grows on the sidewalk already, and often next to some wild amaranth (Amarathus Hybridus). What is the point of more efficiently producing specific crops, when there are all these underutilized nutritious plants growing without any human input (or should I say growing despite human input)? This is another problem that I see with the technification of food production in general (including the Green Revolution). Some food wants to be free, but people keep looking for whatever makes the land produce more money in the short term, not what makes it produce more nutrition, etc., because the latter does not adapt so well to the market.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#214

Post by pmontra » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

bgroat wrote: post #207

eloff wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine space is a factor, but energy will be a big one as well. Calorie dense foods will likely need more space and energy (light) inputs. Vertical farms are very water efficient, so I don't think that matters much. Vertical farms make a lot more sense with fresh vegetables like leafy greens that grow quickly, command high prices if grown organically, and benefit from being closer to market. Potatoes are the exact…

Can you expand on this? I get that to store a calorie in a potato I need to supply a calorie of energy from somewhere else. But why is fusion power required instead of better UV lamps in my vertical farm? (Assuming I had enough electricity to run them)

The total amount of electricity to power those UV lamps should be on par with what the Sun sends to the potatoes fields. Maybe that's the reason for fusion. It didn't do the math.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#215

Post by datavirtue » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:36 PM UTC

Justsignedup wrote: post #20

coderintherye wrote: post #3

The author here has a good premise, although glosses over many things. Yes, "vertical farming" is over-hyped. That said, the author didn't mention weather or pesticides/fertilizers at all. Statements such as "Current agriculture doesn’t need an artificial energy source" are plain wrong. Producing fertilizers takes quite a bit of artificial energy and the bulk of the corn and soybean farmers the author is pointing to…

I would like to build on top of your point: - Indoor farming would not have to worry about things like drought. As a water feeding system can be led all the way to the ocean and the salt removed using pure sunlight as power. - Indoor farming has shown to yield crops with 96% less water in many cases, again solving the problem mentioned previously. - Many areas don't have ready access to tons of water so these water c…

And they can be run in the case where a super volcano has blown its top and is blocking out the sun for a year or two.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#216

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #203

kumarski wrote: post #158

My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now) Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd. - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms - It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinat…

Great comment, thanks. HN just keeps delivering. It is almost impossible to believe how much embedded technical knowledge is lurking here. You could colonise Mars with it.

> HN just keeps delivering. It is almost impossible to believe how much embedded technical knowledge is lurking here. You could colonise Mars with it.

Of course, in this context you should be prepared for the possibility that if you could tap all that expertise what you'd actually get is "reasons that colonizing Mars actually can't work". ...hopefully not, of course, but beware mixing hopes and dreams and reality.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#217

Post by saeranv » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

MildlySerious wrote: post #209

saeranv wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Which brings up another issue, which is energy density/m2 of land. To support industrialization/high density urbanism the only fuel sources that do this are currently fossil fuels, or nuclear, but none of the renewable fuels have the energy density. So if these countries want to increase the amount of MWh/capita, the most efficient (only?) pathway is through high-energy density fuel sources, which right now is be…

Why is energy density important in that context? If all other variables were identical between a high density an a low density solution, the high density one would of course be preferable. But if the low density solution is cheaper and relies less on pre-existing long-distance grid infrastructure, why would high density still be considered the most efficient, or possibly the only viable pathway?

IANAE but the general idea from the discipline of urban geography is that industrialization, and also the knowledge economy relies on the economies of scales that come from high density, mixed-used urbanization. These regions rely on extremely high power that must be supplied from scarce land resources.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#218

Post by MintelIE » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

kumarski wrote: post #158

My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now) Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd. - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms - It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinat…

Just one thought, everybody can buy an imported tractor these days. And steel too.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#219

Post by mespe » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

My PhD is in sustainable agriculture, and I have 18+ years experience in both field and greenhouse ag. Ironically, unlike many here, I went from agriculture to data science/programming.

One thing missed by a lot of the comments: Indoor systems tend to be incredibly fragile affairs. If you've ever been in a well managed commercial greenhouse, you will notice a ton of sanitation procedures. There are greenhouse pests and diseases which are never an issue in the field, in large part because there is an entire ecological system of checks and balances working out in a field. Even in modern intensive ag fields. The truth is an agricultural field is an amazingly complex system which we don't fully understand (we are only starting to explore soil ecosystems and plant roots). Vertical farms are disconnected from this, though the costs might not be obvious. As a consultant, I watched a "trendy" aquaponics startup crash and burn because they underestimated this.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#220

Post by awavering » Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

newyankee wrote: post #124

alisson wrote: post #42

Around 6 years ago I quit my job as a developer to dive into agriculture. I learned about syntropic agriculture systems and felt in love with it because: - You are able to work with space and time in a way to maximize yield (not 1 crop yield, but but multi crop) - It focus on being biodiverse - It builds forests So in this systems you will see rows of trees intercalated with rows of beans, corn, soy anything "weedy"…

I am thinking of a similar route, as a data scientist i am eager to know what graduate level courses would you recommend ? Especially for agriculture in cold climate (Canada )

It's not a graduate course in the traditional sense, but Paul Wheaton runs a number of hands-on permaculture classes and courses on his land in Montana. Maybe not Canada-cold, but there's a large focus on shaping land and designing buildings to use energy more efficiently.

https://wheaton-labs.com/