It seems odd to me that this is a for-profit company.
Profits are the things that allow valuable products to scale.
Its odd to me that Venezuela thought that getting rid of profits for producers would help society.
Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
21–30 of 266 posts
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#22Sounds like Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K.).
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#23>...and even individuals who want to start a farm. As a person who lives in a farming area this seems like putting a computer and a box of red bull in a box and labeling it "computer programmer kit". I'm not a farmer but things like crop rotation, regulations, WHIMIS (pesticides/herbicides), dangers such as the PTO on the tractor and other farm dangers all needed training. You see at least once per year some farm han…
> all needed training
Absolutely true. I do think though that such a box would be coming with a big manual/e-learning/video course to complete the hardware.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#24I think I like the farmbot.io idea a little bit better as it seems far more practical. After all I'm not looking to grow all my food but mainly the dirty dozen vegetables/fruits (as well as seasonal ones I like). One of the main reasons I want to grow food though is some vegetables are not carried by my local grocery stores (I have to go to a farmer market or expensive grocery store). For example many grocery stores…
Unless they put the farmbot on wheels, you're talking about too small of a square footage to generate any interesting yields. You'll spend WAY more time maintaining the bot than you would just planting and mulching. The farmbot development is important, but won't be commercially viable with the current fixed rail system.
Well that is what I'm wondering. One of the big issues is real estate. I wonder if it would be more viable instead of just going 2D to make a more 3D system (ie stack plants ala hydroponics).
Obviously the sun is way more efficient and preferred but if you live in an area where the sun isn't exactly available that much of the year it might be worth it for some automated easy to use large indoor like closet system or cabinet particularly in more urban areas.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#25It seems odd to me that this is a for-profit company.
Profits are the things that allow valuable products to scale. Its odd to me that Venezuela thought that getting rid of profits for producers would help society.
Non-profit doesn't mean the company can't make a profit on what it sells or even pay employees a fair salary. It does mean that profits go back into the company, rather than having profits siphoned off by investors and shareholders. Non-profit is pro-reinvestment and therefore pro-scaleup.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#26>...and even individuals who want to start a farm. As a person who lives in a farming area this seems like putting a computer and a box of red bull in a box and labeling it "computer programmer kit". I'm not a farmer but things like crop rotation, regulations, WHIMIS (pesticides/herbicides), dangers such as the PTO on the tractor and other farm dangers all needed training. You see at least once per year some farm han…
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Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#27Pretty light on details, even the website of this company itself. The claim of being able to feed 150 people off 2 acres (about 1 hectare, for those of us who like to think in units that make sense) is a pretty wild one. Maybe you could grow potatoes with [150 x 1700 x 365] calories in them in a climate where you can grow year round, but that's surely not what they're insinuating in their marketing pictures.
I would say corn, then potato. But you're right, the startup isn't being all that forthcoming with details and it's likely their claims are (greatly) exaggerated, or perhaps, from a purely "well, technically..." point-of-view. There's an excellent article that champions the calories-per-acre metric by WP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-... In the calorie department, corn is king [..] corn…
These are 1st year or 2nd year numbers. The output per-acre will steadily decline afterwards unless you know to set some land aside to be fallow and grow something that will return nitrogen to the soil.
And like was mentioned by dghughes, rotation is important. From about the middle ages to the early 20th century, European farmers practiced the three-crop rotation scheme. Winter wheat or rye in one field, peas, lentils or beans in a second, and the third would be "resting". It got replaced in Britain and Belgium with the four-crop rotation plan, which produced more calories.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#28>...and even individuals who want to start a farm. As a person who lives in a farming area this seems like putting a computer and a box of red bull in a box and labeling it "computer programmer kit". I'm not a farmer but things like crop rotation, regulations, WHIMIS (pesticides/herbicides), dangers such as the PTO on the tractor and other farm dangers all needed training. You see at least once per year some farm han…
>We have a three-part training program that comes with the box. One: Covering sustainable farming, making sure everyone knows a little bit in terms of crop rotation, and composting, and intercropping. Two: Covering technology use and maintenance, making sure that the individuals know how to maintain and troubleshoot all of the components of the farm. Three: Farming as an enterprise, making sure that there is a market-based approach to farming.
So it's more like they give you a computer, a box of redbull, and a couple books on putting together a MEAN stack. I think it's a good start for someone who wants to get their feet wet.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#29>...and even individuals who want to start a farm. As a person who lives in a farming area this seems like putting a computer and a box of red bull in a box and labeling it "computer programmer kit". I'm not a farmer but things like crop rotation, regulations, WHIMIS (pesticides/herbicides), dangers such as the PTO on the tractor and other farm dangers all needed training. You see at least once per year some farm han…
The equipment needed depends a lot on the soil. There is no one size fits all solution, especially if you're optimizing for crop yield.
Re: Startup Puts Everything You Need for a Two-Acre Farm in a Shipping Container
#30Pretty light on details, even the website of this company itself. The claim of being able to feed 150 people off 2 acres (about 1 hectare, for those of us who like to think in units that make sense) is a pretty wild one. Maybe you could grow potatoes with [150 x 1700 x 365] calories in them in a climate where you can grow year round, but that's surely not what they're insinuating in their marketing pictures.
Jean-Martin Fortier, in Quebec (not known for its balmy climate), successfully runs a 200-family CSA on 1.5 acres, which is an even higher level of intensive cropping than this box proposes. No, not everything can be grown on 2 acres for 150 people, but you can grow all the vegetables needed.
A CSA with 200 customers != 'feed 200 people'. Yes with intensive agriculture methods you can grow enough to harvest 150 or 200 boxes of vegetables a week during most part of the year; that's still only - what? 10, 20% at most of the calorie intake of those people? And most of those calories are carbs, too - there's going to be very little protein and fat in those boxes. And not year round, either. Again, yes you can grow lots of potatoes (potatoes are better than e.g. corn for this purpose because they keep better than corn with only slightly lower caloric yield per area unit. Yes you can process corn e.g. into flour but that then has to be calculated into the total energy input, and it requires much more preparation afterwards to turn it back into edible food; again with high energy inputs) for a few years (need to rotate crops, especially nightshade family crops) to close the gap over the winter season; but fill your boxes with potatoes and a pumpkin here or there for 3 months once and watch your subscriptions plummet next spring.
People don't generally believe me when I say this, but I've made this point often: for self-sufficiency and/or small scale farming like the GP is proposing, you need a hectare (2 acres) to feed a family year-round. The reason people don't want to believe this is because it shows that it's impossible to do this sort of farming at scale, because there simply isn't enough land to feed everybody this way. So we need industrial scale farming today to produce the food people want in the quantities we need it.
I say this as someone with a 1 hectare experimental alternative agriculture plot; it's not that I don't want better, more sustainable agriculture systems. It's just that the 'solutions' being proposed are wildly insufficient, and I'm not talking double digit percentages, but orders of magnitude. How do we fix it - I don't know. But I do (by now) recognize snake oil and sophistry when I see it.