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What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

thinkingagriculture.io

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Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#221

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

dustyleary wrote: post #127
lm28469 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With automation, it seems obvious we'll be seeing way more unemployment than what's happening right now I fully support the underlying message, but automation has been happening at large scale for 70+ years now, unemployment rate doesn't follow automation, jobs are just shifted to other industries/sectors.

In other words, "Automation hasn't increased unemployment in the past, even though some pesky scientists and economists said that it would eventually be a problem. Some of those people were wrong in the past, therefore automation will never increase unemployment, ever."

Yes; if people claim that X will cause Y, and over decades of doing X it continues to not cause Y, I'd like some very compelling reasons to suddenly believe that X is going to start causing Y.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#222

Post by logicNSci »

nradov wrote: post #190
logicNSci wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specialization sure, but science is universal. Unless agriculture is built on trade secrets or art, you can contribute. This is one of my criticisms of Medical. It's not a science or the barrier to entry would be significantly lower, and as a result cost would be lower. Degrees are good, but not necessary if you can do math and get experience.

There is a lot more to medicine than just math and science. That is not a sound basis for criticizing the field. You'll have to do better than that.

>There is a lot more to medicine than just math and science

This is the problem.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#223

Post by AndrewOMartin »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #160
bricej13 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a small peek watch this simple farmer dig a hole, put a seed in, and put dirt on top: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqK5667B5As

Or think that every pistachio that goes to market has been visually inspected and individuals sorted, and has been for the last 25 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqK5667B5As

Did you mean to post a link to a YouTube video demonstrating that? Your link is a dupe of the parent.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#224

Post by Spooky23 »

bgroat wrote: post #207
eloff wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine space is a factor, but energy will be a big one as well. Calorie dense foods will likely need more space and energy (light) inputs. Vertical farms are very water efficient, so I don't think that matters much. Vertical farms make a lot more sense with fresh vegetables like leafy greens that grow quickly, command high prices if grown organically, and benefit from being closer to market. Potatoes are the exact…

Can you expand on this? I get that to store a calorie in a potato I need to supply a calorie of energy from somewhere else. But why is fusion power required instead of better UV lamps in my vertical farm? (Assuming I had enough electricity to run them)

What powers the UV lamps?

Sun + water is cheap and plentiful. Small scale farms can sell potatoes at $0.50/lb or less. Amish farms with oxen can go a little less.

Capital and operational costs for vertical farms don’t seem to make sense, unless there’s some disaster in the Colorado watershed or a trade war that makes hothouse winter produce a viable business again.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#225

Post by mespe »

mtgp1000 wrote: post #193
kumarski wrote: post #158

My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now) Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd. - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms - It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinat…

So you can't grow potatoes vertically? Can you elaborate? Is it a function of physiology, i.e. calorie dense vegetables need far more leaves and supporting stems than can be practically stacked vertically?

You probably can grow them (you can "grow" a potato in a cup of water on your counter), but probably not profitably. Potatoes have a fairly low commodity price relative to their light and space demands. Additionally, they store and transport really well.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#226

Post by Spooky23 »

markbnj wrote: post #177
trophycase wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I was always under the impression that vertical and urban farming would be done for "specialty" crops like herbs or kale or something, never for high volume cash crops like potatoes or corn. I can see a benefit for these "specialty" crops because they aren't done to the same scale (maybe I'm wrong about that)

Yeah that was my take as well. I think there's some sort of trade-off point here, though I don't know where it is. Yes modern outdoor agriculture is hyper efficient, although I think the author's comments about cash flow self-sufficiency gloss over a lot of government subsidies and bank bridge loans. In any case, indoor ag should be able to exploit the lower weather/pest risks, lack of need for damaging pesticides, c…

Even for specialty products, you’re competing with cheap travel and labor.

Guatemala or Peru are short hops.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#227

Post by sushisource »

primroot wrote: post #213
kumarski wrote: post #158

My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now) Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd. - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms - It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinat…

> You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) grows on the sidewalk already, and often next to some wild amaranth (Amarathus Hybridus). What is the point of more efficiently producing specific crops, when there are all these underutilized nutritious plants growing without any human input (or should I say growing despite human input)? This is another problem that I see…

I think this is the type of magical thinking that pervades a lot of these ag startups.

Just because you noticed "Hey, this unpopular grain grows so easily it's popping up from the sidewalk!" does not mean you can actually then go and scale that to providing food for hundreds of millions of people.

We developed modern agriculture the way we did for a reason. Some of those reasons are no longer valid, true, but a whole lot of them are still very very pertinent.

I think vertical farming / rooftop farms / etc are at this point largely an exercise in virtue signaling more than they are actually improving the food system. They might be improving it for high-income Whole Foods types who are upset Amazon owns their favorite store now (ie: us here on HN) - but those people aren't exactly the ones who need to see improvement.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#228

Post by Ericson2314 »

chrisco255 wrote: post #71
Ericson2314 wrote: post #31

Think about it. The biggest legacy of the hippies is that their critique of food and agriculture evolved into the mainstream's. (Well, that and same process with nuclear engergy.) The problem is it's incoherent mix, then and now. We have jumbled together: - Nostalgia. First this was yeoman farmer nostalgia. Now there is also pre-agricultural nostalgia. Primitivism is coherent, but only once you embrace what it really…

We simply have food stamps if you find yourself too poor to afford food. That's a fine system, in my opinion. I, of course, already pay for my lifetime supply of food with a portion of my earnings, which I hand over to the grocery store.

Left another comment below on why I think this could work better than SNAP.

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#229

Post by lazyasciiart »

thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #50
quacked wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that farmers are misunderstood and under-valued by people who are only able to live in stability because of the ability of farms to deliver food to them, but isn't farm complexity able to be documented and analyzed in a similar fashion as other "very complex" fields like law and finance? It seems like farmers are still beholden to long "if-then" chains and risk analysis (what to plant, where to plant, how to…

I think you're right to believe that because it is true and I skirted over why I believe it takes generations. It is not impossible but difficult to document how to do effective farming because every farm has its own individual needs. And what may be true for one farm will likely not be true for another. Hence relying on first hand knowledge, albeit extremely fallible, is more reliable than reading a book and then de…

Suicide rates (in Australia, at least) increase with the remoteness of an area. This shows up as an industry phenomenon because farming is an industry that is only present in rural and remote areas. However men in unrelated industries who live in remote areas are also at significantly increased risk of suicide, and recent meta-studies have found a distinct lack of work actually differentiating between "farmers" and "non-farming rural residents", or even a standard definition of "farmers" (is the farmer's wife counted? What if she works off the farm as well?). (Making this differentiation is important because it influences the approaches taken to reduce suicide - e.g all rural people lack access to mental health resources, but if only farmers were committing suicide then that would appear not to be a significant factor)

A super short paper that points to lots of references - https://www.crrmh.com.au/content/uploads/Briefing-Paper_FINA...

Re: What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture

#230

Post by Spooky23 »

alextheparrot wrote: post #81
alisson wrote: post #42

Around 6 years ago I quit my job as a developer to dive into agriculture. I learned about syntropic agriculture systems and felt in love with it because: - You are able to work with space and time in a way to maximize yield (not 1 crop yield, but but multi crop) - It focus on being biodiverse - It builds forests So in this systems you will see rows of trees intercalated with rows of beans, corn, soy anything "weedy"…

The phrase "It builds forests" is so powerfully, simply descriptive. I think that framing agriculture's transition (hopefully) away from mono-culture into a more ecosystem focused idea seems like a tractable optimization problem. If we look at the reasons for mono-culture, I would argue part of the reason is that traditionally bigger yield is linked to bigger tools -- tractors are much larger than horses, spraying a…

It’s pretty amazing what the land can do if you’re clever. I have a friend from college who makes a decent living as a flower farmer who also does horse boarding, etc.

When he slows down for retirement, he has a few million bucks worth of hardwoods that he planted right out of college on land that wasn’t good for other purposes. Mostly black walnut and maple, which he also produces syrup with and may start making booze with!

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