31–40 of 139 posts
Interesting, but not that dissimilar to the United States. I grow a couple thousand acres of tomatoes in California, all of which are for processing into juices and pastes. These tomatoes are all transported in open-topped trailers by semi, and the losses have always bothered me. There is a tight turn just after leaving our property and the pile of tomatoes there grows steadily with the season as they roll off the to…
We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…
An interesting tidbit about tomatoes, and other nightshades: They contain nicotine! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10552617/
I am one of the rare people for which tomatoes taste like poison.
But it is a trade-off. Apparently I got "tomatoes taste good" in return for my "cilantro tastes toxic."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I grew some tomatoes on my balcony this summer, and the way they taste compared to what I would buy at the store you would think they are completely different fruits. I would pay maybe 30% more for a sandwich with fresh tomatoes as opposed to the.... red slime that usually come on them.
Brown tomatoes are showing up in more grocery stores now, and have a much better tomato flavor than beefsteak tomatoes. They are often sold in a sleeve of six or so, or labeled as "kumatos". Really, give them a try - they are much better than regular store tomatoes.
We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…
Interesting, but not that dissimilar to the United States. I grow a couple thousand acres of tomatoes in California, all of which are for processing into juices and pastes. These tomatoes are all transported in open-topped trailers by semi, and the losses have always bothered me. There is a tight turn just after leaving our property and the pile of tomatoes there grows steadily with the season as they roll off the to…
We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…
I strongly believe that the best way to help people in other places very different from our own is to open source the best of what we know. Everything we rely on. For example instead of buying refrigerated trucks from an expensive European suppler (let's suppose) they could clone the designs and manufacture refrigeration more cheaply. Such an effort would take time but if we shared the plans for everything we rely on, someone could make it cheaper and offer it to those with less income. A free market of manufacturers would compete based on who can manufacture goods the cheapest, rather than who can both design them and manufacture them.
Maybe refrigeration is already generic enough that this particular item would not get cheaper, but in general if everything was open source then people in places like this would be more able to manufacture what they really need even if they lack certain technical skills required to design the things. And with trade normalization required by the WTO, many of these companies cannot clone certain useful goods due to patent restrictions.
We are so wealthy in the USA and yet we do not often consider sharing our wealth in this way with every other person sharing this time with us.
We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…
What do you mean by "cloud-based optimization?" Are you running reinforcement learning algorithm(s) on these plants?
We (Optimal Agriculture) have built an autonomous growing system for high-tech greenhouses and have achieved 'superhuman' performance in a recent tomato trial. We collect a bunch of sensory data about the crop and growing environment, run cloud-based optimisation, and then control the actuators of the greenhouse autonomously (lighting, screening, heating, cooling, irrigation, etc). We are turning $100M greenhouse fac…
How many square meters will that facility be, and what is the cost to construct? At $100M I don’t see how it would be financially viable. 50k kg a day is approximately 600 acres of tomatoes with our yields. That much land in CA might sell for $6-30M depending on water rights and latitude.