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Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

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Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#181

Post by asdfman123 »

whitemary wrote: post #175
hosh wrote: post #131

When I first heard of the concept of things like vertical farming, or shipping container farming, or even farm bots. I thought those were a great ideas. That tech like this will solve for food problems, such as urban blight. Back then, I was still optimistic about the role of tech, and that more tech will solve things like this. It was also before I really deep dived into permaculture design, and many of the related…

Keep digging and sooner or later you'll come around to accepting that your previous discoveries (like broad implementation of permaculture) can never be realized under capitalism; that capitalism is in fact the opposition to your vision.

Centralized state control has no obligation to the environment either.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#182

Post by echelon »

esafak wrote: post #165
Alupis wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And flying to another planet that happens to be completely inhospitable is somehow cheaper or easier? When you realize there are no hospitable planets, besides earth, within our solar system - you will realize there is no escaping the problems we have created here on earth. No, they must be solved, not avoided. There is no future where any of us alive today, or for many, many generations (dozens, maybe hundreds or th…

Besides, how could terraforming Mars be easier than fixing our problems?

> Besides, how could terraforming Mars be easier than fixing our problems?

We don't need to terraform Mars to our incredibly fine tuned biology. What comes next will evolve beyond our limitations. Humans are a stepping stone. Just a blink of an eye in an infinite time scale.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#183

Post by dpflan »

hosh wrote: post #131

When I first heard of the concept of things like vertical farming, or shipping container farming, or even farm bots. I thought those were a great ideas. That tech like this will solve for food problems, such as urban blight. Back then, I was still optimistic about the role of tech, and that more tech will solve things like this. It was also before I really deep dived into permaculture design, and many of the related…

Check this out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34963057 From a previous article discussion on the vertical farming bubble popping: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34959649

""" It appears to me that Silicon Valley is unaware that there's such a thing as Food Valley. Which does exactly what you ask for. Food Valley centers around the Dutch University of Wageningen, the pinnacle of agricultural research, teamed up with a network of innovative food companies and experts.

... Here is a link: https://www.wur.nl/en/article/Foodvalley-2.htm

"""

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#184

Post by kube-system »

Timon3 wrote: post #127
barney54 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Strangled by fascism?” Care to elaborate what you mean?

>Care to elaborate what you mean? My non-American interpretation of the use of fascism in this sense is relating to: - taking away rights (e.g. abortion, and please don't argue technicalities) - banning medical intervention which provably increases quality of life and decreases likelihood of self-harm - suppressing dissident literature (e.g. recent "temporary" bans of books on Rosa Parks) - lowering the threshold of…

You're got it backwards, that's the "urban America interpretation of fascism".

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#185

Post by xyzzyz »

monetus wrote: post #177
xyzzyz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do harvesting machines work with this mixed planting approach? Do you need to redesign existing machines completely for this novel planting scheme? Won’t it be extremely hard to harvest from one type of plant without damaging other plants that are “occupying different canopy layers”?

It takes new machines and they generally damage something, yes. Despites op's emphasis on low-tech, the people I know who do permaculture seemed like they were excited for robot arms and computer vision to be better and cheaper.

> I know who do permaculture seemed like they were excited for robot arms and computer vision to be better and cheaper.

If you need robot arms and computer vision, it sounds then like permaculture is impractical at scale necessary for replacing standard agricultural practices.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#186

Post by claudiulodro »

asdfman123 wrote: post #181
whitemary wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep digging and sooner or later you'll come around to accepting that your previous discoveries (like broad implementation of permaculture) can never be realized under capitalism; that capitalism is in fact the opposition to your vision.

Centralized state control has no obligation to the environment either.

I don't think they said it did? There are many more social systems out there than simply US-Style Capitalism and Soviet-style Communism. Something like Anarcho-primitivism is one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#187

Post by asdfman123 »

claudiulodro wrote: post #186
asdfman123 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centralized state control has no obligation to the environment either.

I don't think they said it did? There are many more social systems out there than simply US-Style Capitalism and Soviet-style Communism. Something like Anarcho-primitivism is one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

I see the word “abolition” in the first sentence of that article.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#188

Post by claudiulodro »

asdfman123 wrote: post #187
claudiulodro wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they said it did? There are many more social systems out there than simply US-Style Capitalism and Soviet-style Communism. Something like Anarcho-primitivism is one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

I see the word “abolition” in the first sentence of that article.

Did you finish the sentence and get to "abandonment of large-scale organization"? The state isn't the one abolishing things in that system.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#189

Post by asdfman123 »

claudiulodro wrote: post #188
asdfman123 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the word “abolition” in the first sentence of that article.

Did you finish the sentence and get to "abandonment of large-scale organization"? The state isn't the one abolishing things in that system.

If you don’t want to use the phrase “the state,” that’s fine.

Whatever powerful entity that determines the laws has no obligation to the environment.

Re: Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business

#190

Post by ethanbond »

echelon wrote: post #182
esafak wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides, how could terraforming Mars be easier than fixing our problems?

> Besides, how could terraforming Mars be easier than fixing our problems? We don't need to terraform Mars to our incredibly fine tuned biology. What comes next will evolve beyond our limitations. Humans are a stepping stone. Just a blink of an eye in an infinite time scale.

What? There is no reason to think humans are "a stepping stone," there are plenty of dead-ends in evolution. There's certainly no reason to think that putting biological things on Mars will in any way cause them to evolve into Mars-robust creatures. Evolution is a slow, slow, slow random walk throughout which nearly all conditions have to be nearly-perfect.
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