11–20 of 135 posts
Silicon Valley is great at tech because it has a high concentration of tech companies and top universities. It doesn't have that for agriculture. The "Silicon Valley" of agriculture is in Wageningen, a small university town in The Netherlands. In the surrounding area you have a huge number of food/agri-tech firms.
thats a bit of hyperbole, farmers do like to experiment as well, and bad yields do happen, they are not risk averse. at this point there are many places in the world that crave for more agtech
> 4. You can't A/B test a farm (yet) This is done all the time. When evaluating a new seed variety, a different seed spacing, a new nitrogen application, farmers will do a test plot next to the control. If things looks good then they'll expand the new change to more acreage.
The key insight Silicon Valley lacks about agriculture is that there is little potential for a big win. Major improvements mean 10% of something, not 10x. US agriculture is already highly efficient. On the down side, there's potential for a big loss if you screw up.
The key insight Silicon Valley lacks about agriculture is that there is little potential for a big win. Major improvements mean 10% of something, not 10x. US agriculture is already highly efficient. On the down side, there's potential for a big loss if you screw up.
The key insight Silicon Valley lacks about agriculture is that there is little potential for a big win. Major improvements mean 10% of something, not 10x. US agriculture is already highly efficient. On the down side, there's potential for a big loss if you screw up.
> 4. You can't A/B test a farm (yet) This is done all the time. When evaluating a new seed variety, a different seed spacing, a new nitrogen application, farmers will do a test plot next to the control. If things looks good then they'll expand the new change to more acreage.
This is really funny to me after living near a place that has done exactly that for ~100 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Experimental_Farm
The key insight Silicon Valley lacks about agriculture is that there is little potential for a big win. Major improvements mean 10% of something, not 10x. US agriculture is already highly efficient. On the down side, there's potential for a big loss if you screw up.
Vertical farming can do 10X, GMOs can do 10x, urban farming can cut out 90% of transportation costs, (not exactly what you mean but getting people to eat less meat would 100x our efficiencies) there is still room for improvement.
I'm not aware of any vertical farm that is 10x as efficient as a regular farm.
> 4. You can't A/B test a farm (yet) This is done all the time. When evaluating a new seed variety, a different seed spacing, a new nitrogen application, farmers will do a test plot next to the control. If things looks good then they'll expand the new change to more acreage.