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

Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

entrepreneur.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 135 posts

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#61

Post by musasabi »

elcritch wrote: post #55
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes 9 acres of solar panels to light 1 acre of vertical farm crops. Theoretically, you could cover all of Nevada (~70M acres) & Arizona (~73M acres) with solar panels. That would only give you enough vertical farm space for ~16M acres, and apparently the US only has ~10M acres for farmland for fruits & vegetables. Point being - this seems implausible - and I'm not sure how you work around that. IIUC, it takes ab…

Note that vertical farms have about 3-4x yield compared to an equal area of land. They also require significantly less pesticides, water, or fertilizers. Though currently they struggle with many types of vegetables.

3-4x yield for which crops exactly? They are only used for growing leafy greens and low volume high cost fruits such as strawberries. Do they produce 4x corn and soy? 4x potatoes?

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#62

Post by musasabi »

itsyaboi wrote: post #32
boomanaiden154 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends upon what you're defining efficiency as. In terms of yield per acre, there are estimates that yield per acre can increase by a lot more [1]. I haven't seen anything more efficient energy or cost wise (outside of a couple types of plants, really just microgreens). [1] https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2002655117

Land is cheap. Efficiency in this context is units of product per dollar spent.

Or, perhaps, carbon emitted. Either way vertical farms are a huge loser for anything outside of niche products.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#63

Post by paganel »

ijoijiuiuni wrote: post #15
Animats wrote: post #5

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.

Do tech people really believe in the vertical farming hype? Genuinely asking.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#64

Post by jeffbee »

paganel wrote: post #63
ijoijiuiuni wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do tech people really believe in the vertical farming hype? Genuinely asking.

I ask myself this. Are the vertical farm fans really this ignorant? Or is it an act? But there are also people who will pop up and advocate for "personal rapid transit" (they are known as "pod people"), hyperloops, NFTs, and all types of other things that are impossible, nonsense, or pointless. Vertical farms are just the latest of these: a stupid idea with no future whatsoever, but with a vocal army of online boosters.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#65

Post by genocidicbunny »

radicalbyte wrote: post #8

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.

It's not exactly Silicon Valley, but UC Davis, which has a lot of Ag programs, is within fairly short driving distance of the bay area (to the point where some consider it potentially part of the 'greater bay area')

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#66

Post by SteveGerencser »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #60
prottog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear the same about new tech-enabled equipment. I've always been curious, is there a market for continuing production of old-school, simple tractors and the like? Or is it one of those things that people complain about a lot but won't actually spend their own money to buy dumb equipment that may be less convenient or productive?

I'm more curious about why there isn't a market to offer what farmers want. Why not make modern, serviceable equipment with open code and published APIs and schematics? This just screams "market failure" to me.

My primary tractor is 4 years old and it has been in the shop more often than my 35 year old tractor. Most of us, especially the smaller guys, run equipment until it is quite literally gone.

The biggest issue that bringing new equipment to market is incredibly expensive and you are competing with all of the green, red and blue (and now orange) guys that have been building equipment for generations. The new issue is looking for a revenue stream for the manufacturers. My Case while not on a service contract, has very few owner servicable parts to it. My '94 Kubota still does the job but Kubota makes about $200/ year on me at most since I can fix everything on it myself.

It is by no means a market failure, the market is working exactly as it's supposed to. It's just that people think that the market is there for the farmers when it's really there for the equipment and inputs manufacturers.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#67

Post by LAC-Tech »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #49

As someone with a foot in both worlds, I have been in tech for 30+ years and we also own a small cattle farm (can't even call it a ranch), there is a staggering amount of distrust in technology of any kind in the ag world. Every new piece of tech comes saddled with some license, or dealer only issue, or the old tractor/equipment could break down and I could fix it in the field on my own in a few hours, vs my new equi…

Question - how well known is US Cattle Trace? (Industry lead cattle identification scheme, for traceability).

I followed it with interest - they had leap-frogged the state mandated scheme in AU and NZ by pushing UHF RFIDs instead of the LF ones we're stuck with down under - but it's hard to tell if most US cattle farmers have even heard of it.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#68

Post by [deleted] »

agtech_startup wrote: post #38

I launched a self-funded startup to focus on technologies I developed that have the potential to deliver significant benefits to indoor farming operations. We launched in 2019, yet, the pandemic put everything on hold for almost two years. This year we finally completed our first installation (paying customer) at a farm in Singapore. Yes, we are US-based. Due to circumstances and opportunity our first installation ha…

[deleted]

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#69

Post by mlindner »

boomanaiden154 wrote: post #28

> To feed a growing population, we need to double global food production by 2050, but we can't double agricultural acres. We need more food (or more high-quality calories and nutrients) per acre. That's where technology comes in. While it's true that increasing global food production is one way to enable food security for a growing population, I think it's also pertinent to analyze the inefficiencies within our curre…

Food is ridiculously cheap to create right now to the point much of it is turned into fuel. Once it becomes more constrained, food production will increase as demand causes additional supply.

Those inefficiencies similarly become removed once demand is higher.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#70

Post by laingc »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #35

I used to specialize in Agtech as a consultant. It's a weird space. [Disclaimer, this is my experience of the Australia and NZ scene, not much Silicon Valley involved] The gap between "people who know ag" and "people who know tech" is just vast. And I sensed no great urgency to bridge the gap. I tried myself - talked to every farmer I could, moved to a working farm, even had a go at weighing cattle and applying treat…

Hey Lewis,

I’m pretty interested in learning from your experience - I’ll email you at the address in your profile, if that’s ok?

Post reply on HN