Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture • Hacker News Board

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#91

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 11:15 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #23

World food production needs to double by 2050? Why? Population modelling doesn’t have a doubling in that time. I’ve read the link but suspect I need a EILI5. https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

I suspect a large aspect of this is not merely caloric sufficiency (already an issue), but protein, for which much of the world remains deficient.

Protein, whether animal or plant-based, is both an essential macronutrient and sees far lower productivity than staple (carbohydrate) crops. The Green Revolution and following developments have seen major enhancements in the productivity of rice, wheat, and maize. Far less so of soyabeans, whether for human or animal consumption.

Beef cattle is amongst the least productive (and most desired) animal proteins. But pork, poultry, eggs, and dairy, as well as farmed fish also require feed, including protein-rich feeds, to develop.

(I'm not making arguments over the morality or benefits of meat vs. vegetarian or vegan diets, though that's also a concern, especially concerning land-use, degradation, and greenhouse-gas emissions, of which animal metabolism alone is a very significant source.)

Protein-deficient diets, especially amongst infants and children, are a major contributing factor to developmental and cognitive deficiencies. So improving global standards of living will be dependent on increasing overall protein availability.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#92

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 11:18 PM UTC

screye wrote: post #24

Animats wrote: post #5

The key insight Silicon Valley lacks about agriculture is that there is little potential for a big win. Major improvements mean 10% of something, not 10x. US agriculture is already highly efficient. On the down side, there's potential for a big loss if you screw up.

I'd go 1 level deeper than that. Agriculture isn't a real market at all. It is closer to govt infrastructure contract work, than selling a commodity. There are no wins, juts minimized losses. Govts decide farming subsidies, allowable environmental damage & even exploitative immigrant labor practices based on the prices their voters would be willing to pay. This means that an order of magnitude improvement in efficien…

For those unaware: DOP == "Protected designation of origin", or in Italian, "Denominazione d'Origine Protetta". Effectively a form of terroir or appellatian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi...>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origine_contr%...>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terroir>

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#93

Post by Biologist123 » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 11:25 PM UTC

AngryData wrote: post #59

I think most people have no idea how thin agricultural margins are to start with. They see that some farmer bought a $500,000 combine and think they got money just to throw around, but that combine is expected to last the next 40+ years and work near flawlessly for every harvest while performing multiple different functions simultaneously in a dirty and uneven environment. There is no alternative to a combine harvest…

I appreciate the risk adjusted returns are poor. My question then is why farms as assets are so valuable. Seems like a disconnect somewhere.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#94

Post by AlbertCory » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 11:25 PM UTC

Interesting question: what other industries share some of these characteristics (but not all)?

I think some people in tech assume that a lot of advantages we have are present everywhere, but they're not, entirely. A lot of industries share some of this innate conservatism, but in different degrees.

The first one that occurs to me is medical. Elizabeth Holmes' big problem (besides being dishonest, of course) was that she thought she could apply the Steve Jobs paradigm to medical testing. She would say "first they fight you, then you change the world" as if that would work everywhere. It doesn't. Your risks are enormously higher in medical, and there are government regulations everywhere you look.

But there are probably other industries like that, too. Autos, maybe.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#95

Post by Biologist123 » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 11:27 PM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #8

Silicon Valley is great at tech because it has a high concentration of tech companies and top universities. It doesn't have that for agriculture. The "Silicon Valley" of agriculture is in Wageningen, a small university town in The Netherlands. In the surrounding area you have a huge number of food/agri-tech firms.

I had a visit to Wageningen and really enjoyed it. As a gift for delivering a lecture I received a cookbook for insects. I never used it, but the cookbook has pride of place on my shelf.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#96

Post by smackeyacky » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

EdwardDiego wrote: post #41

LAC-Tech wrote: post #35

I used to specialize in Agtech as a consultant. It's a weird space. [Disclaimer, this is my experience of the Australia and NZ scene, not much Silicon Valley involved] The gap between "people who know ag" and "people who know tech" is just vast. And I sensed no great urgency to bridge the gap. I tried myself - talked to every farmer I could, moved to a working farm, even had a go at weighing cattle and applying treat…

I've often wanted to look into AgTech (grew up chasing sheep in Canterbury) but people I've talked to in that space say that it's incredibly hard to grow sales, farmers are inherently conservative on new expenses, what was your experience of that?

I can answer this one. I have an AgTech startup that deals with sheep.

The industry is incredibly conservative (which I knew, having worked in it for over a decade) but on top of that, it's also incredibly insular. You get one shot to get something right. You get one short per year due to seasonality.

You better be prepared to travel a lot. In-person training is not negotiable for farmers using a piece of new technology. Often they will be trying to use it well out of any kind of network access, your tech better work off-line and you better be there in person.

Different countries with the same livestock often have wildly different ways of dealing with livestock. You have to be adaptable to the local practices, often whatever you are doing has to fit in with some other thing the farmer wants to do with the sheep, because they don't want to have to get them in the yards unnecessarily. That goes for the availability of labour as well, some places you will be overrun with helpers, sometimes it's just you and the farmer and you need to be able to adapt to that.

The tech has to be rugged. I used off the shelf Android RFID scanners for part of my project and we have broken nearly everything we have tried.

Compared to Australia/NZ, the US market is just about impenetrable for anybody outside of it. I did travel to Silicon Valley looking for investors but got nothing but blank stares and head scratches when it came to things like genetics. Silicon Valley is about the last place I would ever look for funding again as there are too many fools with their hands on the investment funds looking for dogshit fintechs or web3 stupidity rather than actual businesses.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#97

Post by jcampbell1 » Sun, Jan 01, 2023, 11:39 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #89

jcampbell1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes perfect sense from a biological perspective. I am not aware of any transgenic methods to increase yield as that is done through breeding and hybridization. Do you know of a specific seed that has enhanced yields through a crisper like process? I am aware of accelerated mutations by irradiating seeds, though I think this is rare and I only know of red grapefruits that successfully used this technique.

> I am not aware of any transgenic methods to increase yield as that is done through breeding and hybridization. Do you know of a specific seed that has enhanced yields through a crisper like process? Not sure that anything particularly CRISPR-like is involved (there are other transgenic techniques), but: https://www.science.org/content/article/new-genetically-modi...

Thanks for the article and I read the paper. I know people have been working on it for ages, but it is nice to see some promising results.

One huge problem with the article is this line:

> The plants are also 16% to 18% more efficient at using nitrogen

The paper said no such thing. These plants take up more nitrogen and increase yield.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#98

Post by diordiderot » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 12:59 AM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #86

SteveGerencser wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My primary tractor is 4 years old and it has been in the shop more often than my 35 year old tractor. Most of us, especially the smaller guys, run equipment until it is quite literally gone. The biggest issue that bringing new equipment to market is incredibly expensive and you are competing with all of the green, red and blue (and now orange) guys that have been building equipment for generations. The new issue is l…

I am not in manufacturing or anything. But I really think there could be a market out there for No-Frills appliances and equipment. Tractors that are just a tractor that work well and easily serviceable, long tail money made on replacement parts. Expand this to Refrigerators, Washers / Dryers, etc. So many products are made worse but cheaper, and have unused extra features that most people do not actually want. A big…

Seems like something the Soviets would have done.

E.g

The Lada, Combine, T42, and Mig 17 all being designed knowing they would have to use of the shelf "Soviet standard spring #2"

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#99

Post by LAC-Tech » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 1:26 AM UTC

smackeyacky wrote: post #96

EdwardDiego wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wanted to look into AgTech (grew up chasing sheep in Canterbury) but people I've talked to in that space say that it's incredibly hard to grow sales, farmers are inherently conservative on new expenses, what was your experience of that?

I can answer this one. I have an AgTech startup that deals with sheep. The industry is incredibly conservative (which I knew, having worked in it for over a decade) but on top of that, it's also incredibly insular. You get one shot to get something right. You get one short per year due to seasonality. You better be prepared to travel a lot. In-person training is not negotiable for farmers using a piece of new technol…

Good to see you here David! Yeah sheep is the last frontier of the last frontier of digitisation. Makes cattle look like the airline industry.

Re: Things Silicon Valley gets wrong about agriculture

#100

Post by fijiaarone » Mon, Jan 02, 2023, 2:21 AM UTC

ijoijiuiuni wrote: post #15

Animats wrote: post #5

The key insight Silicon Valley lacks about agriculture is that there is little potential for a big win. Major improvements mean 10% of something, not 10x. US agriculture is already highly efficient. On the down side, there's potential for a big loss if you screw up.

Vertical farming can do 10X, GMOs can do 10x, urban farming can cut out 90% of transportation costs, (not exactly what you mean but getting people to eat less meat would 100x our efficiencies) there is still room for improvement.

Let’s see you sell your easy ten thousand percent increase in farming efficiency.

The reason it’s hard to sell hype to farmers is they live in the real world and they’re not impressed by idiots that are so wrong that stupid isn’t a big enough word to describe them.