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

thinkingagriculture.io

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

#291

Post by demosito666 »

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"…

Ok, this is very cool, but it looks like as of now it requires orders of magnitude more manual labor than existing agriculture. This means increase of produce price to about the same extent. Unless a huge paradigm shift will happen (which takes decades without a major disaster), I don't see this as feasible any time soon.

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

#292

Post by polotics »

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…

Hi You write: Sweet potatoes and sweet potatoes ?Could this be a typo what's the other one please?

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

#293

Post by imtringued »

dustyleary wrote: post #127
lm28469 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With automation, it seems obvious we'll be seeing way more unemployment than what's happening right now I fully support the underlying message, but automation has been happening at large scale for 70+ years now, unemployment rate doesn't follow automation, jobs are just shifted to other industries/sectors.

In other words, "Automation hasn't increased unemployment in the past, even though some pesky scientists and economists said that it would eventually be a problem. Some of those people were wrong in the past, therefore automation will never increase unemployment, ever."

This topic is boring me to death already. I'll keep it short. Automation+competition mean cheaper potatoes (or anything really). Cheaper potatoes means you save $10 per month. Now you can spend $10 on something else. Maybe on a movie or you save the money and go to a theme park with your kid. This represents a new employment opportunity (less farming more entertainment). Therefore automation isn't causing structural long term unemployment.

However there is a darker side to automation. What if automation is used without any competition? e.g. your company has a first mover advantage and it takes 4 years for the competition to catch up. What happens is that the potatoes stay at the same price but the company is increasing its profit margin which benefits the owners/shareholders of the company at the expense of workers. This isn't about unemployment. This is about wealth inequality. When a company replaces a worker with a machine it becomes more profitable but the worker gets nothing.

Society needs to change in a way that the laid off workers benefit from automation to the point that people are hoping their job gets automated or they decide to automate their own job. If someone gets laid off by automation for the third time that person should be happy, not sad.

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

#294

Post by imtringued »

ddxxdd wrote: post #208
lurquer wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every once in a while you see some high school science fair project where a kid has the brilliant idea of making 3D solar cells... maybe little pyramids or ridges instead if a flat plane, to capture light from all angles. The kid gets patted on the head. Those who know better, immediately recognize there is no great increase in power obtained as the 'shadows' caused by the raises structure invariably decrease the eff…

It's been a few years since I've followed vertical farming, but I have recalled an argument being made that an artificial light source can be made efficiently by using a single-wavelength, super-efficient LED with a specific color that stimulates photosynthesis. On the other hand, I've also read (old, long-lost) sources that state that the energy cost per loaf of bread is about $10 for indoor farming, vs $5 for outdo…

Sure you can do that but now you have a much harder problem: Invent a novel energy source.

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

#295

Post by imtringued »

dx034 wrote: post #24
Justsignedup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also, indoor and especially vertical farming can save precious land. Maybe the US has enough land for farming, other countries certainly do not. Rain forests burned to make space for soy or palm oil are proof of that.

That land is quickly abandoned. Rain forests are burnt because once you drain the soil of nutrients (takes less than 3 years) you can just move on to a different plot. Conventional farming reuses soil by adding fertilizer to artificially replace the missing nutrients.

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

#296

Post by trickstra »

tathougies wrote: post #235
mtgp1000 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can't grow potatoes vertically? Can you elaborate? Is it a function of physiology, i.e. calorie dense vegetables need far more leaves and supporting stems than can be practically stacked vertically?

Amateur hydroponicist here. It depends on what you mean by 'vertically'. You can certainly grow potatoes in containers that are stacked vertically. You can also grow them hydroponically. However, the issue I've noticed in the hydroponics community is that no one is interested in growing potatoes. That is really the problem with these vertical ag startups and such. They focus on ridiculous foods like greens, which --…

Do you have a blog or a youtube channel where we could follow your endeavor?

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

#297

Post by youngtaff »

ethbro wrote: post #264
oddsockmachine wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might not count as the great plains, but Mark Sheppard's New Forest Farm in Wisconsin is a good demonstration of a similar approach in a different context. https://newforestfarm.us/about/

Not to belittle the difficulty, but as someone who just drove from WY to WI over the last couple days... east of the Mississippi is drastically wetter than western MN+.

Yeh, there's a chicken and egg situation…

Having trees increases rainfall but need to grow the trees with little rainfall first!

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

#298

Post by FeloniousHam »

chx wrote: post #174
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…

> 1MWh/capita annum Oh this is fascinating! I never thought of this but of course energy consumption per capita is going to be an indicator of how industrialized a country is. I briefly checked the two countries I am a citizen of (Canada, Hungary) and counterchecked with one of the poorest countries I know of (Chad) and the numbers are as expected: 14.6, 4.1, 0.013 (oof).

I highly recommend Energy and Civilization[1], the most engrossing dry recitation of facts I've ever read.

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/energy-and-civilization

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

#299

Post by snarf21 »

kickout wrote: post #198
snarf21 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, no mention of drought and other extreme weather events. Additionally, no talk about how the Ogallala Aquifer (and others) is being decimated and continued trajectories would be catastrophic in just a few decades. The higher yield and minimal water and and getting rid of pesticides/fertilizers and removing transportation pollution are interesting things to research and see if we can do better. It is already a hi…

I'm very familiar with the Ogallalla aquifer. When the drought of 2012 hit, people were very worried about it never recovering. After several 'wet' years it appears to be fine. Mother Nature is stronger than we give her credit for

I'm not suggesting it won't ebb and flow. The issue with aquifers is that as parts go empty and stay empty for long periods of time the sand that stores the water compresses and then can never be re-expanded to be refilled. There is also the worry about what will happen if we have several "dry" years. All this to say, we don't have unlimited fresh water.

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

#300

Post by bgroat »

fataliss wrote: post #126
antocv wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey man no way, you have been living my dream! First I wanted to just grow berries, then I realized, pesticides and so on, so add another plant to fight that attacker instead of pesticide, then add another plant to protect that plant by being attractive for those other bugs which kill the bad bugs. Then I realized, this would eventually be a forrest with just more berries and edible fruits than normal. Thats where th…

The good and the bad news is that eventually, when the rest of the land goes infertile from overuse, your method will be worth the money :)

I'm actually harvesting water through condensation machines and storing them in a man-made underwater resevoir now.

Soon I'll be pumping it into the house for plumbing, etc.

My reasoning is, in 20 years I'll have a cool project to talk about, or I'll be sitting on a fortune in freshwater.

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