Upward Farms throws in towel ten years after founding vertical-farming business • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by sheepybloke » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 1:57 AM UTC

davehcker wrote: post #5

We built a company around this very problem- indoor farming (including vertical indoor farming) is pretty complex and by default it's energy hungry. In theory, indoor farming is very efficient for commercial food production though. I thought we could be the company that does all the plant biology, automation complexity magic for growers, and growers just do seedling and harvesting in a super basic mechanical setup. W…

Literally just got fired from a company that was just like that. Had a great idea, but wanted to build everything themselves vs just pieces of system that could differentiate us. Add onto that a weak business plan plus trying to compete with others in the greens space and it didn’t go very far. A lot of fun to work on though!

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

#222

Post by hombre_fatal » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 2:04 AM UTC

clearcarbon wrote: post #169

hombre_fatal wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycoprotein (fungal protein)? I don't know much about it but it's intrigued me for a while. Apparently the only commercial product ("Quorn") is made in a fermentation vat with glucose syrup and Fusarium venenatum spores. But the nutrition content is interesting: 42% protein by mass yet still has fiber and other nutrients. It's also supposed to be highly satiating. Unfortunatel…

As someone in the UK this is kinda strange to read someone wanting to try quorn like I've been wanting to try the impossible burger. Honestly Quorn is not a great meat replacement for anything other than mince, or maybe foods that are so processed all you can taste are the additives.

Heh. As someone who eats textured soy chunks, I assure you my expectations aren't too lofty.

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

#223

Post by perrygeo » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 2:09 AM UTC

lifeonlars wrote: post #81

perrygeo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be interesting to see the EROI on these vertical farms. My guess is that dozens of calories (mostly originating from fossil fuels) go into every food calorie produced. If you want to convert petroleum to food, there are far more efficient ways to do it.

A ratio of fuel calories to food calories isn't that useful a metric unless you have similar numbers for all the conventional methods of producing food at scale. It's not like 1 is a goal: we can't eat fossil fuels (or solar energy), and we know that eating either plants or animals is never going to yield all the energy they absorbed during their lives.

There are similar numbers for conventional farming, and historical estimates too. There's a whole field of study on the EROI of agriculture. And yes, for all of human agriculture until roughly the industrial revolution, the EROI was over 1. By definition. 1 unit of labor + sun better equal at least 1 unit of food! When solar energy is the only external input and all mammalian labor provides the rest (which must be fed by the same crops that you're trying to grow), if you got less crop calories than it took to run the farm, you and your livestock would be dead.

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

#224

Post by defrost » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 3:24 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #76

defrost wrote: post #20

Minor nitpick; the title might be better as Upward Farms closes ten years after starting their vertical farm business. As it stands the title reads a little as though Upward Farms was the OG progenitor of vertical farms, whereas, from the article: > The company started out in 2013 as Edenworks before transitioning to Seed & Roe and then Upward Farms. As prior art in the vertical farm game though, consider verticalfar…

of all places, how does vertical farming make sense in Australia? Surely there's an enormous amount of horizontal space that you could use?

Australia has million acre pastoral farms .. and there is still a price point for dense bulk market garden produce fresh every month source adjacent to the major urban centres to minimise transportation costs .. as there is across the globe which itself is a market for Australian technology.

The two links I provided above are eating their own dogfood to be sure but they are less in the business of growing food and more in the R&D business of designing, building, and onselling | leasing proven solutions.

Both (to the best of my knowledge) are already embedded within large conventional farming areas | businesses - these are growth innovation sub business ventures.

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

#225

Post by ChatGTP » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 11:52 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #210

alpinemeadow wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t is interesting that as a species we don’t have a way to understand where are we in our lifecycle? As a human I can understand life stages and where I am relative to other individuals. I can plan my life accordingly and of course there may be unexpected events but on average I know I have maybe 70-100 years to enjoy life. As a species we have no idea if we peaked or we are in our infancy… one thing that will pro…

> As a species we have no idea if we peaked or we are in our infancy There are so many possible outcomes. It can be true that humanity will peak, yet intelligence will continue to grow and expand beyond humans. Any outcome where humanity is the utmost pinnacle of intelligence likely means that we do not stray beyond our gravity well. That earth-evolved intelligence will never reach the greater galaxy beyond. It falls…

I hope humanity is not the peak.

So what if it was ? I don’t really understand this ultra-intellectual viewpoint.

A planet is just fine being a planet, we don’t need to out glasses on planets and have them reading Shakespeare to make the universe a special place ? I’m sure they will happen on its own anyway if it’s desirable.

In a similar way, an amoeba doesn’t really need intelligence, it just does what it does until it can’t do it anymore and a new one comes a long. Maybe that’s a fine thing and in some ways, it’s own form of intelligence. Doesn’t need to mess with everything and crate ecology crisis for itself.

The way we’re going, the amoebas will likely outlive us and probably any computer systems we produce. So it’s yet to be proven our intellect is really all that valuable longer term.

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

#226

Post by WinLychee » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 3:22 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #215

hosh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think nothing will work without some kind of change to the way of life. Urban living has taken people away from the land, so there is this illusion that we don’t have to participate in the ecology. Like water infrastructure, people growing up in cities expect food-on-demand … if you have the money for it. The idea that if you want to eat an apple means going into the back yard and picking one off the tree is an ali…

It feels like the argument is upside down. Civilization scaled because increased agricultural productivity allowed a smaller number of farmers to feed the rest, freeing them up to do other things. These people also naturally congregated to cities because that enabled fast exchange of goods and ideas, i.e., it was more "scalable" than having everyone scattered throughout the country. In the modern world, it also means…

Logically that would make a lot of sense, if we were to design things in such a way that products are only shipped to their local urban areas. However, the modern day system has given rise to such absurdities as fruit grown in South America being shipped to Asia for packaging, and then shipped to North America for consumption. It's not that the entire system is amazingly efficient, it's that it's simply been possible because energy has been very cheap this last century. The food system will have to adapt one way or another (and I think we will), but it will probably end up being more human-labor intensive and local.

Relating to energy, one of the coming issues we will need to solve is fertilizer supply. Modern agriculture heavily depends on natural gas (via Haber-Bosch) to juice yields alongside genetic engineering. This isn't great for long-term soil health either, we just haven't been doing it long enough to see the effects of soil depletion.

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

#227

Post by WinLychee » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 4:58 PM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #200

hosh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think nothing will work without some kind of change to the way of life. Urban living has taken people away from the land, so there is this illusion that we don’t have to participate in the ecology. Like water infrastructure, people growing up in cities expect food-on-demand … if you have the money for it. The idea that if you want to eat an apple means going into the back yard and picking one off the tree is an ali…

I don't think it is "urban living" so much as just modern living. While people in rural and suburban areas are more likely to have some form of exposure to locally grown produce, they still for the most part live in the same kind of economy as urban areas. I currently live in a suburb surrounded by strawberry farms, avocados, etc. And our grocery stores are just as likely to have strawberries and avocadoes from Mexic…

One point I would add is that this mostly applies to the "1st world" IMO, because in many parts of the world there is local produce and meat and it's often part of the culture to grow your own (or at least to keep a few chickens and fruit trees). However, yes globally most urban dwellers get their food at the grocery store and really enjoy being able to purchase it for money.

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

#228

Post by whitemary » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 6:50 PM UTC

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.

Huh? What are you talking about and who is it directed at?

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

#229

Post by narrator » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 8:33 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #180

narrator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about retooling to specialize in crops that don't need sun, like mushrooms?

You can't just get energy from nothing, not even with mushrooms.

Mushrooms turn inedible things like wood chips into food without sunlight. It's a net win in that sense. You don't need the land space for the trees + the mushrooms and mushrooms can grow in the dark.

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

#230

Post by BMc2020 » Sat, Apr 29, 2023, 9:15 PM UTC

xtian wrote: post #23

dukeyukey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that they're "forced" too, it's that farmers in those countries want to make money, to invest in the future. And the way to make money is to grow cash crops and sell them on the world market, not grow barely-profitable staples. Their governments can and do provide subsidies to make growing staples profitable, but that's on the individual countries.

The strings attached to IMF/World Bank loans, known as structural adjustments, do typically include ending agricultural subsidies. The US and collective West notably do not subject themselves to the same policy. Coupled with structural adjustments which mandate market liberalization, this means farmers in developing countries have to compete against heavily subsidized food staples from the collective West. The end re…

The men came with axes and clubs. They cut the trees down and dragged them to the fire. The fire roared and crackled, and the smoke rolled up into the sky. The Joad family watched in horror as the orange grove was destroyed.

"Why are they doing this?" Tom asked.

"They're destroying the groves to keep prices high," Pa said. "They don't care about the trees or the people who work here. All they care about is money."

--The Grapes of Wrath

edit: this is the quote I was looking for at first

"...Did you ever hear of the Farmers’ Association?”

“Why, sure.”

“Well, I belong to it. We had a meeting last night. Now, do you know who runs the Farmers’ Association? I’ll tell you. The Bank of the West. That bank owns most of this valley, and it’s got paper on everything it don’t own. So last night the member from the bank told me, he said, ‘You’re paying thirty cents an hour. You’d better cut it down to twenty-five.’ I said, ‘I’ve got good men. They’re worth thirty.’ And he says, ‘It isn’t that,’ he says. ‘The wage is twenty-five now. If you pay thirty, it’ll only cause unrest. And by the way,’ he says, ‘you going to need the usual amount for a crop loan next year?’ ” Thomas stopped. His breath was panting through his lips. “You see? The rate is twenty-five cents— and like it.”

“We done good work,” Timothy said helplessly.

“Ain’t you got it yet? Mr. Bank hires two thousand men an’ I hire three. I’ve got paper to meet. Now if you can figure some way out, by Christ, I’ll take it! They got me.