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

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

just-food.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 236 posts

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

#141

Post by tfourb »

qqqwerty wrote: post #130
hedora wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call BS on their claim they cut resource usage by 95%. Traditional greenhouses (which the one at that landing site appears to be) are extremely energy intensive. This article explains why, and describes a common, practical alternative: https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/12/reinventing-the-gree... Also, people ridiculously overestimate the percentage of food’s carbon footprint that comes food transportation: https…

> Traditional greenhouses (which the one at that landing site appears to be) are extremely energy intensive. Uhh, I am not seeing anything in that article that supports that claim, other than the first sentence, which does not cite any sources. That article appears to be discussing ways to maximize greenhouse performance in winter, on the premise that glass is a poor insulator. But no where does it discuss energy con…

Climate control is only one aspect of energy usage. Another is light. Flying over the Netherlands at night is spectacular, in some parts it looks like they've just flooded entire regions with grow lights. I think I've read that many use heating as well, though I have no data on that and I don't think it is very common outside the Netherlands.

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

#142

Post by barney54 »

jollofricepeas wrote: post #111
barney54 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is elaboration necessary? Fascism has a simple definition that can be found in dictionaries. “Fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader over the individual citizen.” SOURCES: - https://world101.cfr.org/historical-context/world-war/what-f... - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

Elaboration is necessary because those things aren’t happening in rural America. It happens in people’s fever dreams, but not in the real world.

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

#143

Post by hosh »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #135
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…

The key thing people don’t realize or understand is that hardly any agriculture is sustainable, and even less is restorative. Permaculture is extremely interesting because of that. The challenge is finding ways to harvest food reliably and at any meaningful scale.

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 alien ideas. (Kids think food comes from grocery stores, not from trees). How fresh is that, right off the tree? Yet, now we have marketing that plays into that illusion, like tomatoes on the vine and it misses the point. When I personally harvested an apple and interact with an apple tree in my back yard, I am directly participating in the well-being of the ecology.

There is no way forward for our civilization to “scale” in a way that maintains that illusion of on-demand-food. It’s how we view the world, and our way of life that needs to change.

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

#144

Post by neild »

hosh wrote: post #136
scythe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the percentage of food they produce that is thrown into landfills (and turns to methane) The last time I tried to advocate for replacing landfills with incinerators on HN, someone came along to insist that methane recapture from landfills was possible and preferable (methane is useful, if you can confine it). I haven't had time to study that further, but managing food waste — aside from the actual lack of food it ca…

Food is thrown away because grocery stores want to sell uniform looking produce with no blemishes, and consumers came to expect that. That is the largest reason they get sent to the landfill, with growers have been sending it there before they get shipped. There is a lot of waste going on here because: - Consumers turn their noses on perfectly edible food that looks ugly. (There are volunteer organizations that inter…

Blemished, non-uniform product is turned into more processed food products or animal feed. Tomato soup isn’t made from the prettiest tomatoes. Blemished apples become applesauce. Tropicana puts a picture of a beautiful orange on the bottle, but they don’t care about what the ones going into the juicer look like. Consumer preferences for nice looking fruits and vegetables have little to no impact on overall food waste.

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

#145

Post by daveguy »

swamp40 wrote: post #106
cyanydeez wrote: post #84

[flagged]

> deprive them of their subsidized agriculture Yeah, that's not going to work out the way the "cities" think.

Especially since the only one "considering" this is some random hn commenter. Don't fall for the bs.

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

#146

Post by atlantic »

hosh wrote: post #136
scythe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the percentage of food they produce that is thrown into landfills (and turns to methane) The last time I tried to advocate for replacing landfills with incinerators on HN, someone came along to insist that methane recapture from landfills was possible and preferable (methane is useful, if you can confine it). I haven't had time to study that further, but managing food waste — aside from the actual lack of food it ca…

Food is thrown away because grocery stores want to sell uniform looking produce with no blemishes, and consumers came to expect that. That is the largest reason they get sent to the landfill, with growers have been sending it there before they get shipped. There is a lot of waste going on here because: - Consumers turn their noses on perfectly edible food that looks ugly. (There are volunteer organizations that inter…

> Food is thrown away because grocery stores want to sell uniform looking produce with no blemishes, and consumers came to expect that.

In Europe, it's not the stores, and it's not the public either, it's EU regulations. I still remember the small, irregular, tasty fruit and veg from before - and how it disappeared almost overnight after joining the EU.

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

#147

Post by hosh »

echelon wrote: post #140
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key thing people don’t realize or understand is that hardly any agriculture is sustainable, and even less is restorative. Permaculture is extremely interesting because of that. The challenge is finding ways to harvest food reliably and at any meaningful scale.

> sustainable While we're solving for human markets and economies, the unspoken goal is to turn earth's limited resources into thought, whereby some intelligent process achieves the escape velocity to leave this gravity well and proliferate throughout the universe.

I know there are people who see it this way and feel like this. It presumes a couple things:

- that intelligent thought (or in other belief structures, spirit, consciousness, etc) are the only thing of value worth propogating

- that by escaping the gravity well, we can also escape the problems we wrought by bad design.

We’re more likely to carry the problems forward. Our so-called “intelligent thought” have problems built into how we approach the design, so like running away from our shadows, it will come up wherever we go.

And, if we are aware of the bad design, why wouldn’t we just fix it while we’re here on this planet?

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

#148

Post by abakker »

hosh wrote: post #147
echelon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sustainable While we're solving for human markets and economies, the unspoken goal is to turn earth's limited resources into thought, whereby some intelligent process achieves the escape velocity to leave this gravity well and proliferate throughout the universe.

I know there are people who see it this way and feel like this. It presumes a couple things: - that intelligent thought (or in other belief structures, spirit, consciousness, etc) are the only thing of value worth propogating - that by escaping the gravity well, we can also escape the problems we wrought by bad design. We’re more likely to carry the problems forward. Our so-called “intelligent thought” have problems…

because fixing things costs money. Even when it saves money. Money is the catalyst that allows anything to happen, and not enough people have enough of it to turn good ideas into good designs into good products.

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

#149

Post by gtop3 »

tfourb wrote: post #141
qqqwerty wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Traditional greenhouses (which the one at that landing site appears to be) are extremely energy intensive. Uhh, I am not seeing anything in that article that supports that claim, other than the first sentence, which does not cite any sources. That article appears to be discussing ways to maximize greenhouse performance in winter, on the premise that glass is a poor insulator. But no where does it discuss energy con…

Climate control is only one aspect of energy usage. Another is light. Flying over the Netherlands at night is spectacular, in some parts it looks like they've just flooded entire regions with grow lights. I think I've read that many use heating as well, though I have no data on that and I don't think it is very common outside the Netherlands.

If you look at https://district.farm/ as was citied in the root comment, you'll see they aren't using lights or heaters. California doesn't require those.

The energy usage and output of greenhouses varies significantly by seasons and region. You really need to do direct comparisons for individual bits of land instead of broad statements. It's probably worth the light and heat costs if a country cannot grow enough vegetables for it's population without it. The US doesn't have that issue, because we have lots of growing space with long growing seasons.

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

#150

Post by maerF0x0 »

hosh wrote: post #132
efields wrote: post #71

High tunnels are very efficient. Greenhouses are very efficient. I've visited https://district.farm/ and it's clearly the future (or the present if you're in Northern Europe). When I went there they were at 1/4 of grow space that they are now. Ready to expand? You just add more enclosures. You slowly recoup the capital cost of the structure. Might take a few years, but you will. Rinse and repeat. The US is not hurtin…

It’s not always about efficiency. Sometimes, it is about resilience, anti-fragility, and food source locality. And maximizing efficiency tends to lead to trade off in those other areas.

+1 All of what you mentioned are a form of efficiency observed over long enough timelines
Post reply on HN