[HN Gopher] Vertical farming company raised $500M, and then it a...
___________________________________________________________________
Vertical farming company raised $500M, and then it all but
disappeared
Author : doener
Score : 106 points
Date : 2023-12-13 12:55 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sifted.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (sifted.eu)
| psychlops wrote:
| Israel, Ukraine, Climate Tech, Green Tech, there's a little bit
| of everything for everybody in this article. There's a common
| theme in all these things. Ah yes, disappearing money.
| jairuhme wrote:
| > "Some of the facilities figured out way too late, 'oh we should
| probably be checking how much we're paying for electricity per
| month.' That's pretty basic when 30-40% of the cost of the crop
| is electricity," he says.
|
| > "Those things were just overlooked because investors will pay
| for it, it doesn't matter,"
|
| I'm always amazed when startups operate like this. I'm equally in
| awe when they get capital and VC's don't notice this either. I
| guess the later could be naive and just assume that the tech
| required to make it works requires this, but it is still baffling
| that nobody thinks its a good idea to get one of your bigger
| costs down
| bsenftner wrote:
| Colossal due diligence failure; I'd say the investors in the VC
| funds that financed Infarm have a lawsuit.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I always found it extremely weird that no one runs even the
| most basic back of envelope calculations on things like this.
| Like how much power and at what cost we need to input or what
| is the throughput of some system and then how much we need to
| charge just to cover the building costs...
|
| Most simple multiplication and division... Just to get some
| idea of unit economics. Thus do things make sense even in your
| own fantasy world of ultra-rich tech workers.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Very simple reasons actually. VCs dont fund people based on
| logic, but on ability to BS.
|
| Go hang out with some bootstrapped founders. They will have
| great common sense. If not they are dead.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| What's stopping VCs or their staffs from double checking or
| keeping track after the money has been disbursed?
| masfuerte wrote:
| The same reason I'm slow to check my lottery tickets.
| Pre-check I can imagine the ticket has won. Post-check I
| know it hasn't.
| skc wrote:
| I've always assumed VCs take gambles like this because they
| know it just takes a single success to cover their lost bets.
|
| So being first to bet on a possible winner is probably
| statistically better than taking the time to sift through the
| actual details of these startup ideas.
| orangepurple wrote:
| It just needs to last long enough to sell it forward to
| more dumb money (e.g., Saudis).
| balderdash wrote:
| Because in order to do this math you actually have to
| understand the business/product- which should tell you
| something - or there are is some hand waving bet that like
| "costs will come down with scale"
| imtringued wrote:
| People do. They get attacked for it actually. There was this
| blog post about an indoor wheat farm exhibition piece and it
| criticized how it actually consumes more land when you add in
| the land requirements for renewable energy. The comment
| section consisted mostly of people attacking the author.
|
| There are plenty of people on HN who will tell you how
| growing LEDs are more efficient than sunlight and other
| nonsense to justify vertical farming.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| > Most simple multiplication and division... Just to get some
| idea of unit economics.
|
| I always considered this to be the fundamental promise of
| vertical farming. Maximum efficiency and easy forecasting of
| outcomes. Basically, reducing farming to a function with
| several very controllable inputs and an easy computation
| yielding the outcome.
| ta988 wrote:
| Typical of a lot of VCs they have absolutely 0 idea how to
| judge a business plan. So they just gamble on people and
| companies that look interesting to them. This is one of the
| least efficient if you look at one company, but it injects so
| much money around that it helps people bootstrap their own
| ventures with the money that leaked. So indirectly it may be a
| not too bad model that requires pure incompetence. (last
| sentence is almost /s)
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Which startup has everything figured out in the start? If
| investors are this picky, they are not investing in startup and
| won't be getting a deal which could grow 10x.
|
| If Tesla failed due to high cost to manufacture or OpenAI
| failed because it couldn't earn revenue or Uber failed because
| of doing illegal stuff or overpaying drivers you would have
| said the same thing.
| bluGill wrote:
| So invest a tiny amount to figure that out before investing a
| lot of money. There is a reason funding goes in rounds -
| round one we have a few smart people who want to work
| together, fund us for 6 months (maybe a year) to figure out
| where there is a market. The output of that round is those
| calculations, then you get more money for round two to create
| tiny prototypes/models to verify the problems you identified
| in round one are solvable, then round three to perfect the
| prototypes, and round four to scale it. You can add or remove
| rounds as needed, the important point here is that as rounds
| more $$$ the risk needs to go down.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| No, my point was that tiny bit wouldn't have worked with
| this. Some startup get benefit of scale like Tesla or
| OpenAI or Uber. If they are constrained in how much money
| they could burn they wouldn't have gotten anywhere. They
| all chose to not do calculation on RoI and won(but most
| would lose). To make vertical farming successful we need
| new discoveries and inventions that requires money and has
| uncertain success probability.
|
| Startup investors are wary of the fact that they are more
| likely going to loose all of the money.
| bluGill wrote:
| Tiny would have been enough to run the math.
|
| Some things do need a large scale to work. However you
| should do whatever prework is needed to run that math
| before investing in scale.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > but it is still baffling that nobody thinks its a good idea
| to get one of your bigger costs down
|
| Bean counters can rarely distinguish between different types of
| cost. Labor costs can scale with automation and tech, but
| energy input can typically only make incremental efficiency
| gains, which _decrease_ over time. So you really need to look
| at energy input vs your competition.
|
| Even those willing to pay a premium for "local farming" are
| doing so because of the supposed environmental benefits. But if
| energy to grow indoors exceeds energy for regular farming +
| transportation then you're bad for the environment in addition
| to wasting dense city space. Unless you're in a highly unusual
| electric mix region.
|
| > Right now, the economics for vertical farming make the most
| sense in the Middle East, where extreme heat prevents the
| growing of crops in fields, food security is a pressing issue
| and energy in the region is cheaper, says Rabobank's van
| Rijswickl, as well as former Infarm employees.
|
| LOL, case in point. Wonder where that "cheap energy" is coming
| from. This article is waaay to soft in their assessment.
|
| In general, it's not _that_ hard to do back-of-the-napkin
| energy and CO2 calculations. No amount of buzzwords and green-
| tinted concept art changes that there are real physical
| quantities at play.
| gizmo wrote:
| > I'm equally in awe when they get capital and VC's don't
| notice this either
|
| VCs invest other people's money (Limited partners) and get paid
| fees based on the size of their fund. VCs also get paid when
| they hit a homerun, but it's much easier for a VC to double how
| much they invest (and double their fees in the process) than to
| double the ROI by making more intelligent bets. The bigger the
| checks they write the more they make.
|
| VSs don't want to to get blamed for making dumb investments, as
| that would interfere with their ability to raise money from LPs
| in the future. That's why they want another firm to take the
| lead in any investment round.
|
| The incentive structure guarantees that VCs make terrible
| investments and have very little accountability.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > I'm always amazed when startups operate like this.
|
| I'm not. This is just people trying to acquire other people's
| money as efficiently as possible. Siphon off as much as you can
| and then disappear.
| usrusr wrote:
| There's probably some well established hand waving routine
| that's played whenever energy comes up. Perhaps there's some
| paper that starts with a ridiculously high first guess for
| energy demand and then goes through a list of reasons why it
| would not be quite as bad, concluding with some multiplied
| percentage of how it would be so much better than expected.
|
| Certainly including the old "photovoltaics use a wider spectrum
| than plants, so if we take the best panels, re-emit the energy
| at a wavelength that matches the plant's chemistry we could get
| more from a given square unit of sunlight if everything else
| was free". Last five words conveniently omitted.
| figassis wrote:
| I believe VC at this stage are willing to accept wasting money
| for the chance of finding that one solution/technology that
| will make it all worth it. They aren't paying for you to run a
| business, they're paying 100 crazy engineers/scientists like
| Sam Altman to get one Open AI for agriculture. They know you're
| being wasteful. They can afford it and can't be bothered to
| help you run your business by checking your bills.
| KevinMS wrote:
| No surprise, an idea this dumb could only be used to separate
| investors from their money.
| mc32 wrote:
| Vertical farming is a nice PoC but it's not financially viable
| when there is ample land for farming.
|
| Indoor Automation for leafy greens and some high value produce
| like edible/gastronomic mushrooms and others like controlled drug
| producing products does make economic sense, but it's overkill
| for other things when you have proven transportation networks to
| bring things to market from the hinterlands.
|
| Ok it may make sense in st Helena and Tristan da Cunha islands
| for some things.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > it's not financially viable when there is ample land for
| farming.
|
| I've not heard of it being financially viable even when
| farmland is very constrained - say, in Holland.
|
| The numbers probably work on the ISS, Moon, or Mars...so those
| places will probably be "stars of the show", in the next round
| of hype which vertical farming companies use to bilk idiot
| VC's.
|
| (St. Helena has a reasonable latitude and low population
| density - so at most you'd need some greenhouses.)
| romanovcode wrote:
| Right, I agree about Holland. Same would apply to Belgium or
| Luxembourg. But what about 90% of the countries that do not
| have this problem? Everything east of France is just fields
| and fields of nothing.
| orangepurple wrote:
| That's not true. There are lot of forests and mountains. To
| get to nothing you have to go all the way to Ukraine. It is
| relatively featureless south and east of Kyiv.
| lightedman wrote:
| Most of the big hydroponic cannabis growers here in SoCal use
| vertical farms for sea of green operations. Financially-
| viable? Those people rake in MILLIONS yearly. Those systems
| consume very little in the way of resources, with tightly-
| controlled NFT hydroponic application and targeted-spectrum
| LED lighting running the show.
| mc32 wrote:
| We accounted for high margin things like drug producing
| plants and high value gastronomic things like mushrooms and
| leafy greens. These are the only viable crops and are
| exceptional, not normal.
|
| This is like saying mice are a desirable pest because drug
| labs use them for research. Yes, sure but it's a very
| specific use case, but don't pretend it's the norm.
| lightedman wrote:
| "These are the only viable crops and are exceptional, not
| normal."
|
| No, they are not the only viable crops. I'll guarantee
| your studies don't take into account various methods of
| hydroponics for various crop types. Almost every study
| I've ever seen is purely focused on NFT vertical farming.
| NO JOKE it doesn't cover everything. You aren't growing
| corn in an NFT system. You will do it in a vertical DWC
| system.
|
| I took ag/hort-sci in high school, where I learned about
| these systems (hanging gardens of Babylon, anyone?) I was
| running vertical farming systems in the 90s in high
| school. The tech works. Learn which method of hydroponics
| is required for which crop. Plan your economic
| requirements.
|
| Literally basic high school education requirements and
| most of you don't seem to get it. not sure what happened
| between the 90s and now for y'all to mess up basic
| technology so badly.
| civilitty wrote:
| _> Those systems consume very little in the way of
| resources_
|
| Since when is electricity not a resource?
|
| Unlike cannabis, you can't sell tomatoes for $2,000 a
| pound.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Ah, Nutrient Film Technique.
|
| I was trying to figure out how the blockchain helped with
| hydroponics.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > I've not heard of it being financially viable even when
| farmland is very constrained - say, in Holland
|
| There is EU single market. If farmland in Holland is
| constrained, it would be still cheaper to farm in other EU
| countries with plenty of land.
| tremon wrote:
| Land farming isn't financially viable either under market
| prices, that's why there's huge farming subsidies to ensure
| crops remain affordable to the average citizen. I don't know if
| vertical farming receives less or more subsidies than regular
| farming, but "financially viable" in the food industry is an
| entire field of study, not something that can be determined in
| a single HN post.
| mc32 wrote:
| That all underscores the folly of vertical farming. Regular
| farming has thin enough margins. Vertical farming is multiple
| times more expensive and would require hoodwinking consumers
| into paying multiples for their produce through payments at
| the cash register or through tax subsidies for it to survive.
| Farm subsidies are much cheaper than this goldbergian
| alternative.
| Loughla wrote:
| >Land farming isn't financially viable either under market
| prices
|
| Is that the reason subsidies exist?
|
| From my experience in farming, subsidies exist to ensure I
| can stay afloat if a crop fails for whatever reason, or if
| the market tanks, or just ensures a minimum income to make
| sure I don't go out of business.
|
| It seems like ag subsidies are one place we actually want
| government intervention (but I am surely biased). We don't
| really want our food supply to be open directly to the whims
| of both nature and direct market changes. There is too much
| of a ramp up time needed if a large share of farms go out of
| business. It's not like we don't need food next year just
| because we had a bumper crop this year that caused prices to
| tank, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
|
| For example - look at pork in the 90's. The price fell, and
| hard, causing most family pork farms went out. This is the
| reason we have like 2-3 producers of pork for the US now with
| mega factory pork farms. Is that good? I can't be convinced
| it is.
| soneca wrote:
| Off-topic English question, if I may.
|
| _"all but disappeared"_ means it disappeared, right?
| mc32 wrote:
| It's an understatement but there may be monies lying around in
| equipment and IP and some other corners.
| pyb wrote:
| Yes
| js8 wrote:
| No, it actually means "everything else" happened, except
| disappearing. The usage in the title is wrong, IMHO, but I am
| not a native speaker. (Though I would bet there is David
| Mitchell video out there ranting about this topic.)
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Why wrong? The website is still up. There are remnants still
| around.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| You're correct, but the specific usage "all but disappeared"
| is used in English in this case to mean it has declined so
| much that there is almost nothing left (everything bad has
| happened to it, the only thing left is for it to be gone
| completely). Like right now I would say the snow we had last
| week has all but disappeared, because there technically are
| small piles where people had shoveled it or built snowmen,
| but it has functionally gone.
|
| Mitchell is funny but I doubt he ranted about this one
| because it strikes me as old-timey and posh, and he tends to
| rant about new things ;)
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Nope! It means it got as close to disappearing as possible
| without fully disappearing.
| lovich wrote:
| It's a hedged statement meaning you might find some bit of it
| laying around, but that it has functionally disappeared.
|
| It's a common way of phrasing things in articles so they aren't
| accused of lying because someone found the equivalent of a
| single dollar bill of assets and points to that as evidence
| that it hasn't "disappeared"
| ta988 wrote:
| This is one of the confusing idioms. I found that page that
| explains all but, anything but and everything but:
| https://jakubmarian.com/all-but-vs-anything-but-vs-everythin...
|
| A lot of native speakers tend to use them inappropriately.
|
| An interesting song if you are learning english that shows some
| of the common horrors people commit is Weird al "Word crimes".
| soneca wrote:
| Great link, thanks.
|
| "Word crimes" is a great song indeed. More than learning
| English, I am a Weird Al fan.
|
| In this case, it translates well to _"nearly disappeared"_.
| Which matches a sibling comment explanation that it means
| "everything happened for it to disappear except it didn't
| quite disappeared yet". But also makes sense another sibling
| comment explanation that it is a hedge. Like "for all
| purposes it actually disappeared, but let me say it nearly
| disappeared for those who will point out that the site and
| the company still technically exists".
| mjhay wrote:
| There's nothing about vertical farming that wouldn't be better
| done by a greenhouse outside of a city. Or, in many
| circumstances, just a regular farm.
| chewmieser wrote:
| The point of vertical farming is that land is scarce
| (particularly in cities) and the idea is to reduce the
| footprint of the farms. So yeah, of course what you're
| suggesting works since it already works today...
| romanovcode wrote:
| If you go 50km out of any major city (which is 30min drive
| with a truck) you always see lots and lots of space that can
| be used for farming.
|
| I literally don't get it. Why not just incentivize more
| farming work like reduce taxation?
| ta988 wrote:
| Because then you get money from traditional banks which
| costs you a lot. VC money is free, especially if you fail.
| And the next time is always easier because they like people
| who failed "they learned something".
| romanovcode wrote:
| You are right, and it makes me sad.
|
| If a guy shows up and says "Give me 25 mil to open 10
| acre potato farm" nobody would give him money because
| there is no chance of 10x+ return on investment. However
| his contribution to society is 10x+ than 99% of the
| startups.
| blovescoffee wrote:
| Many many many farmers rely on loans to start their
| ventures. VCs fund because of possible returns to them
| not to society. Banks and Gov do the heavy lifting on ag
| funding.
| swarnie wrote:
| Maybe in some countries (i'm assuming this is about the
| US?)
|
| Over here you drive 50km out of a major city and you've
| probably passed through a second and arrived in a third.
| romanovcode wrote:
| Was actually referring to bigger countries in EU (and
| smaller countries in east-EU). But would apply to US as
| well.
| RGamma wrote:
| Depends on place. Look at satellite images of Germany or
| parts of Europe in general and it looks like it's all farms
| with some fake forest interspersed (the "forest" is itself
| farmland for wood).
|
| Very few places left that are free from intrusion on land
| (and none if you count biochemical or atmospheric
| disturbance). And it's mostly spots that can't be exploited
| for physical infrastructure, tourism or agriculture.
|
| I've done some back-of-the-envelope calculations with a
| farmer acquaintance of mine. To preserve a sizable
| naturally developing habitat you'd need to at least halve
| Germany's population given current consumption patterns...
| ta988 wrote:
| But where are the calculations showing that the electricity,
| chemicals and equipment needs and their ecological cost are
| worth it Most of these places are producing herbs and salads
| which are low weight and low volume per consumer. And they
| have a volume of waste that's pretty colossal (growing media
| for example but also electrical equipment that failed and
| chemical containers) all of which almost doesn't exist in
| traditional farming if you measure by unit produced.
| chewmieser wrote:
| Yes this is how new developments occur. First it's
| prohibitively expensive and then we figure out ways to
| reduce the costs/waste/etc.
|
| This is in its infancy and I'm sure it'll make more sense
| as it develops more.
| mc32 wrote:
| Why on earth would you want to take farming "footprint" and
| transpose it in an expensive real estate environment like a
| city where it would need much more intensive energy to
| produce anything?
|
| There are a few products that are viable, but not very many.
|
| Moving footprint from farmland to city is the opposite of
| reducing carbon footprint. It's foolhardy.
|
| Terracing hillsides comes before vertical farming.
|
| Vertical farming is an "eversilly" project.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| My other response is that air quality is relatively bad in
| cities compared to middle of nowhere.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Exactly this. Back of the envelope calculation tells me this
| concept is fundamentally NOT economically viable. Period. No
| amount of software engineering can change basic laws of
| thermodynamics or laws of demand and supply
| lightedman wrote:
| Regular greenhouses use way more water and resources.
|
| In 1/8 an acre I can produce in a vertical farm the same amount
| of animal fodder grass that a regular greenhouse would need a
| whole acre for, and use 99% less water.
| seszett wrote:
| > _In 1 /8 an acre I can produce in a vertical farm the same
| amount of animal fodder grass that a regular greenhouse would
| need a whole acre for, and use 99% less water._
|
| And use 1000% more energy (or more than that, likely). Which
| is actually lost, unlike water which doesn't actually
| disappear when used to water plants.
| leoedin wrote:
| Why do vertical farms use less water than greenhouses?
|
| I can see why they'd use less water than outdoor farming -
| the water is lost to the atmosphere. But surely whatever
| mechanism a vertical farm uses for collecting and recycling
| water, a greenhouse could use too? Surely vertical farms are
| the same plants and growing methods in a greenhouse, but
| stacked?
| cushychicken wrote:
| Former AppHarvest employee - similar company, similar outcome.
|
| The absolute naivety / arrogance of some of these green tech
| companies is astounding. The basic assumption of a lot of these
| types of companies are "We're smart tech people who are good at
| fundraising. We are absolutely equipped to solve this problem of
| indoor horticulture." Almost all of them think that they have
| nothing to learn from an existing industry with decades of
| experience in growing produce at scale in greenhouses.
|
| Warning signs:
|
| 1. Not hiring anyone with prior experience working in industrial
| scale greenhouse ag. (They're the sort of people you would expect
| to know about basic operations, labor, pest control, etc.)
|
| 2. Not listening to those people once they did hire them.
|
| 3. Trying to position / advertise themselves as tech companies
| rather than agriculture companies for the express purpose of
| inflating their valuation.
|
| The experience really soured me on green tech and agtech. The
| problems they need to solve aren't technological at all. They
| have to do with distribution of the produce.
|
| Jonathan Webb and the entire AppHarvest leadership team can
| absolutely go fuck themselves. They are at best disingenuous, at
| worst, cash-grabbing liars.
| davidhunter wrote:
| Would be interested to chat and hear your views on the
| viability of the greenhouse industry in the US if you're up for
| it? david [at] optimal.ag
| cushychicken wrote:
| I'm not at all interested in chatting. I've already given
| enough of my limited lifetime to the ag tech space, and I
| never want to go back - even via a phone call.
|
| The main problem isn't growing the fruit - it's selling and
| distributing it.
|
| Mastronardi has a monopoly on North American distribution in
| all but name. (For tomatoes, at least. ) You can grow as much
| produce as you want, but they're going to figure out a way to
| capture any consumer surplus produced by the growers as part
| of the distribution chain.
|
| That didn't really matter so much for AppHarvest because they
| couldn't profitably produce fruit at Mastronardi's market
| rate. But if they did, Mastronardi would figure out a way to
| shift the market pricing they negotiated with them. Since
| they control most of the foodservice and retail grocery
| supply, and have those contracts pretty sewn up, Mastronardi
| is basically the only way to get fruit into store shelves.
| That gives them a ton of power negotiating with greenhouses
| that are otherwise commodities - water and sun go in,
| tomatoes come on.
| peweet wrote:
| Anyone who is involved in farming knew this start up was a pie in
| the sky project. One thing about farming and especially farming
| in Europe is how regulated it is.
|
| For example, you are not permitted to spread cow manure at
| certain times of the year due to risk of run-off or you get
| fined. That is one small example amongst dozens or hundreds (for
| beef farming). A cow is better tracked in Europe than a person is
| and I am not exaggerating. It can tracked its entire life from
| farm to farm and its entire health history is tracked. There are
| genomics testing, various other iniatives to ensure standards are
| adhered to. If you sell produce (milk/beef) that has antibiotics
| or too much bacteria in it, you can forbidden to sell that
| produce.
|
| You cannot negotiate the price if selling to an abattoir or a
| creamery. The same exists for vegatables. There is no
| negotiation. On the Continent food prices change once a month. In
| the UK it is once a year. The farmer gets assessed for quality of
| his produce and receives a pre-determined price. No wiggle room
| no negotiation.
|
| Farming mostly runs at an abject loss and the idea is you have a
| sliver of profit that is buffetted by a subsidies. It caps at
| 300k. The objective of this subsidy is also to protect small
| farms from being crushed by bad seasons and give economic
| stability to far flung regions and isolated villages. Europe is
| also protected by immense tariffs and barriers to entry that made
| it difficult for crops that are washed with pesticides (ie
| Ukranian wheat prior the war) to get into the market.
|
| These tarriffs are reciprocated by other nations. It is
| functionally impossible for a US farmer to export beef or chicken
| to the EU due to rules on the presence of hormone, antibiotics
| for beef and chlorine washed carcasses for chicken.
|
| The historical objective of the farm subsidies was to:
|
| 1. protect farmers from what national governments thought of as
| unfair competition
|
| 2. Avoid a repeat of the 'hungry 30's' (especially in Germany).
| Which destroyed the support for democracy and fuelled the rise of
| the extremist parties.
|
| 3. Give protection to massive peasant populations and stop them
| from supportng Communist parties post WWII. (France and Italy
| most especially). In return other countries got expanded market
| accessses.
|
| The biggest innovation in Europe specifically in crop growing
| since the 90s was the greenhouse produced vegatables created
| mostly in the Netherlands or Andalucia in Spain. However the
| crops are extremely sensitive to diseasea and blights and any
| kind of contamination can rapidly spoil a crop.
|
| Agriculture is as highly regulated as pharmaceuticals or
| aviation, it is more politically rife and riven with competing
| lobby groups who still have immense sway in many national
| governments.
|
| Also the European Union as a whole has some really odd views on
| specific technologies. The eurocrats are very skeptical and
| horrified by GMO food and effectively ban any usage in this area.
| This would be crucial for this particular start up for the
| aforementioned pollution and disease control.
|
| Even pesticide you have to register your name with the local
| supplier and it is cross checked and verified and you can be
| subject to an inspection by a Agricultural officer to check if
| its stored correctly.
|
| My point is this industry is so complex and regulated any
| disruption should be viewed with heavy skeptism if it isnt coming
| from either a biotechnology lab or a University with a heavy
| bankground in Agri-science. (ie Wageningen University in the
| Netherlands is one of the best in the world).
|
| If you any commenter wants a decent picture of European farming
| have a look at 'Clarkson Farm' produced by Jeremy Clarkson.
| paganel wrote:
| As per the GMO, that is one of the few areas/subject on which
| Eurocrats are on the same side with the majority of the EU
| citizens. Related, if left to the same citizens there's no way
| in hell that the US beef/chicken would enter the EU market, but
| that might be subject to change depending on what the Americans
| will further ask from us in exchange for their defense umbrella
| (the same goes for GMOs, of course).
|
| Of course, your comment is spot on, just wanted to add some
| small stuff.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| 214,000 m2 of land saved...it's only 52 acres.
|
| I'm also not convinced that growing this way, essentially in a
| lab without the soil web etc, leads to the health-giving foods we
| all need.
| stevebro wrote:
| Mismanagement and poor execution seems to have doomed this
| project, but the idea still seems viable to me. Some of the price
| disparities with vertical hydroponics fall away when compared
| against pure "organics."
|
| Admittedly, I'm no expert, but I'd be interested in a comparison
| of economics and impacts with regenerative farming for turning
| out high quality organic produce.
| romanovcode wrote:
| The whole idea is idiotic. There is enough land to provide
| agriculture development. The problem is that farmers are gettin
| paid too little and taxed too much.
| peweet wrote:
| If real prices reflected the production costs, the cost of meat
| would be 3X, 4X the cost. Milk is alreaded traded at a loss by
| the supermarkets. You'd also see most small medium sized farms
| gone within 5-10 years and see mass unemployment in many those
| same isolated villages
|
| Countries like Brazil will become even bigger agri superpowers
| and finish converting all of the Amazon into a giant pasture
| for beef.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Will the cost be more than $32 USD (28 CHF) per kilogram or
| $14.53 per pound of chicken? That's what people pay for
| chicken at the Migros supermarkets in the tiny landlocked
| country of Liechtenstein which is part of the Swiss customs
| union.
|
| I think the closest thing to that chicken is organic free
| range, which cost $5.79 a pound a few years ago in the US at
| Trader Joes.
|
| So the 3x multiple is in line with what you're suggesting if
| we assume Swiss customs union area chicken cost reflects
| reality.
| braza wrote:
| > finish converting all of the Amazon into a giant pasture
| for beef.
|
| I do not believe that it's going to be so simple like that,
| since the government has social and environment pressures as
| well. And being completely pragmatic, the issue with the
| pastures is more structural due to the Military Regime from
| 70s [1] in a failed strategy than to some availability of
| land to do it [2].
|
| [1] - https://g1.globo.com/economia/agronegocios/noticia/2020
| /10/2...
|
| [2] - https://mamiraua.org.br/noticias/gado-amazonia-criacao-
| pecua...
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Where is Elizabeth Holmes when you need her? Oh wait...
| busterarm wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISAKc9gpGjw
|
| Been sending this video to every charlatan pushing vertical
| farming for years now.
|
| The math is pretty obvious and insurmountable on this one.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Should send it to the investors. The charlatans know they're
| charlatans. They know vertical farming is bull. They don't
| care. It's the investors who should do their due diligence.
| They should know better. Alas, a fool and his money...
| lightedman wrote:
| Funny, I run vertical farming and it works great. Perhaps those
| charlatans are listening to the wrong experts on the subject?
| I've been doing it for over two decades.
|
| For how long have you done vertical farming?
| Loughla wrote:
| If you don't mind me asking, what is your crop and scale?
| lightedman wrote:
| The the majority of the systems my clients bought were
| primarily fodder grass systems. Scale? UAE, Saudi Arabia,
| Yemen. Pretty large scale, you need a lot of fodder grass
| to help support a burgeoning livestock industry in a
| desert.
|
| Then I had California clients. Cannabis left and right. I
| only had one unhappy client and that's because the system
| worked TOO well for their chosen strain - the buds it
| produced were so thick that they got no air circulation and
| molded on the inside.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| So, you don't actual run a vertical farm, you sell the
| tools to run a vertical farm.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The good ole' selling pickaxes in a gold rush.
|
| "Let me tell ya, those hills are packed with gold and
| this is the pickax you need!"
| busterarm wrote:
| Nobody is saying that it doesn't work. The point is that it's
| strictly worse than alternatives if you have them.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I feel certain there was no shortage of people mentioning the
| impracticality of these schemes when the company was soliciting
| for investors.
|
| "Told you so" is cheap afterwards.
|
| Does anyone actually value it beforehand? Or is it no longer
| considered socially acceptable to avoid obvious mistakes?
|
| Is the difference "spending someone else's money?" Were people
| investing their own funds major participants here, or was this a
| darling of "fund managers" who are looting other people's purses?
| davidhunter wrote:
| The people who are said it wouldn't work lost credibility as
| these startups raised rounds at progressively higher
| valuations. After all, money talks, so clearly the naysayers
| were missing something...
| davidhunter wrote:
| After the later rounds closed at insane valuations, the early VC
| investors in infarm were seen as legends. This created jealously
| amongst other VC investors who felt they had 'missed out' which
| resulted in more money being invested into infarm and other
| vertical farming companies e.g. Bowery/Plenty.
|
| Decisions to invest were made on FOMO, not a first-principles
| analysis of the farming technique which shows very clearly that
| vertical farming is unfeasible.
| mattgrice wrote:
| Never trust an ag startup that's not near UC Davis, Salinas,
| Waginenigen NL, UIUC, Cornell, or Iowa State. I grew up on a
| farm, my parents still farm, and if anyone wants to be an ag-tech
| VC feel free to hire me but I'll give you one piece of advice
| gratis: never invest in an ag-tech company with HQ in a big city.
| Any farm boy could tell you this nonsense would never pencil out.
|
| Half of this ag-tech shit is so stupid I wonder if it's not just
| straight-up money laundering.
| Loughla wrote:
| I would like to second this. There are a large amount of
| comments on this site, just as one example, when anything ag is
| talked about that are just insanely uninformed. The assumption
| seems to be that farming is just good old boys doing what
| they've always done, instead of the massively data informed,
| extremely sophisticated business it is, even for family
| operations.
|
| I was a full-time farmer until after graduate school. The guy
| who rents the family farm now farms _to the square foot_ and
| sometimes even at precision even tighter than that (applying
| chemicals sometimes is based on the 1 /2 square foot)! And that
| is over the entire 7-10k acres he rents/owns in total.
|
| The amount and variety of data he uses is startling.
| thecyborganizer wrote:
| I shared this with my spouse, who worked for an ag startup in
| Boston (still exists, different leadership, who knows what
| they're up to now). They had this to say on the matter:
|
| One big competitive advantage of [company] was that we were
| able to hire smart, young ag scientists, especially LBGTQ+
| ones, who wanted to live in a big, queer-friendly city. We had
| a lot of great people who were really excited that they didn't
| have to live in Davis or Ithaca, as well as people whose
| partners' careers tied them to a big city in some way (doctors,
| lawyers, finance).
|
| (They would also add UMich, University of Minnesota, and the
| Research Triangle in NC to your list.)
| tomhoward wrote:
| I've been working in ag-tech for about 10 years, having spent the
| prior 10 years in other kinds of startups/tech companies.
|
| When I see the new ag-tech startups coming out of accelerators or
| being established by supposedly seasoned entrepreneurs, the ideas
| that keep coming up over and over are vertical farming, weed-
| killing laser robots and insect protein.
|
| They all seem to be based on this assumption that traditional
| farming/food production is antiquated and inefficient, and that
| what the industry needs is clever outsiders to come in and re-
| invent it with the latest technologies. And they all just seem to
| go nowhere.
|
| And in my view it's all based on a flawed premise: that farming
| needs any kind of technological revolution. It just doesn't. It's
| mostly fine. And whilst some things could/should be improved
| (environmental externalities and resource consumption being the
| most significant), these issues aren't going to be solved by
| outsiders with messiah complexes coming in and telling
| established growers/experts that they're wrong/stupid, they'll be
| solved via unglamorous work over many years by people who really
| understand the field.
| doener wrote:
| I believe there is already a very decisive lever for the
| negative ecological (and to some extent also health-related)
| effects of agriculture. However, this is less on the supply
| side than on the demand side: less animal protein and more
| plant protein would solve a lot of problems at once.
| realusername wrote:
| Yes, that's basically it, most of the environmental problems
| are due to the inefficiencies of the meat production which
| you can't realistically solve by tech.
|
| What people think as a technical problem is in reality a
| social problem.
| gizmo wrote:
| > They all seem to be based on this assumption that traditional
| farming/food production is antiquated and inefficient, and that
| what the industry needs is clever outsiders to come in and re-
| invent it with the latest technologies. And they all just seem
| to go nowhere.
|
| You see the same in construction. All the real innovation is in
| more mundane stuff like flexible piping (as opposed to rigid),
| adhesives that dry quicker, insulation foam, laser levels,
| self-tapping screws. As opposed to prefab construction,
| construction robots, or VR glasses.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Everytime I see one of those silly concrete extruding robots
| with claims that it will somehow replace some portion of
| residential construction I just shake my head.
| tristor wrote:
| The behavior here is largely because the investors and the
| founders don't come from an agricultural background, they're
| born and bred urbanites who think they're inherently superior
| to the rubes in the flyover states, rather than realizing that
| agriculture is the most mature of all industries and the
| average successful farmer is effectively a renaissance man.
|
| My farmer family members are brilliant at math, have masters
| degrees (and a Ph.D in one case), and understand business
| accounting better than most business people because agriculture
| has very thin margins and is a ruthless business for smaller
| operators. They commonly encounter "Brads and Chads from the
| city" who think anyone that lives more than 20 miles from a
| Walmart is a stupid hick that failed out of elementary school
| and needs a savior that knows better than they what is good for
| them.
|
| The same attitudes that funnel stupid money into agtech
| boondoggles is the one that fuels the urban/rural
| sociopolitical divide in America, and I will give you a hint,
| it's not the rural folks that are the condescending assholes
| here.
| quantified wrote:
| Interestingly, this story is about founders from Berlin. Look
| past the place and business names, imagine North American
| ones, it fits. But it's not a Silicon Valley or American
| story.
|
| And in this case looks to have classic business problems,
| like salespeople selling things that can't be delivered. As
| well as the Ag issues, whether or not those would be
| solvable.
| CipherThrowaway wrote:
| >They all seem to be based on this assumption that traditional
| farming/food production is antiquated and inefficient, and that
| what the industry needs is clever outsiders to come in and re-
| invent it with the latest technologies. And they all just seem
| to go nowhere.
|
| I think we can safely say this mentality goes well beyond ag-
| tech. There seems to be a founder/engineer specific flavor of
| "epistemic trespassing" - especially with respect to fields
| that tech types look down on as banal or unsophisticated.
|
| Outsiders can make valuable contributions to fields beyond
| their own, but I'd imagine the chance of doing so steeply
| diminishes with arrogance. If you walk into a market thinking
| everyone is an idiot waiting to be disrupted, get ready to fail
| hard.
| fusslo wrote:
| I agree and love your tone, but can I just share my naive view
| as someone who once interviewed for an AG startup?
|
| Farming seems vulnerable.
|
| First, we hear stories about patented crop strains and mega-
| companies suing small farmers.
|
| Second, we hear crops are engineered to grow fast and big, with
| little regard of flavor.
|
| Third, we hear about farmers having to reverse engineer their
| own equipment.
|
| Fourth, and most importantly, we hear how the farming industry
| relies heavily on the poor and vulnerable in order to pick and
| process crops at reasonable labor prices.
|
| It seems like there are issues in farming that fit square into
| that tech-meets-social-justice. On the surface it makes sense
| to approach the problem differently (aka 'disrupt') in order
| to: 1. tackle a huge industry (big problem space), 2. provide
| tastier food closer to home (good appeal to the market), 3. not
| exploit people (social justice)
|
| I used the word 'seems' a lot, because thats only the
| impression I've gotten. I have no idea if it's true.
| nradov wrote:
| Picking and processing crops is hard work, but the people
| doing it are not particularly poor by global standards. Drive
| past the strawberry fields around Watsonville and look at the
| cars that the workers have parked along the road.
|
| A number of companies are working on berry picking robots.
| This is a hard engineering problem due to the fragility of
| the fruit. They have prototypes working reasonably well and
| someone will probably have a viable commercial product within
| a decade.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-26/strawberry.
| ..
| veddox wrote:
| All the problems you address are absolutely there.
|
| But I have to say I have become pretty allergic whenever I
| hear anybody talk about "disrupting" an existing industry,
| for two reasons: (1) Existing industries are usually that way
| for a reason; often outsiders don't understand this until
| they have tried (and failed) to change things. (2) In those
| cases where industries were "successfully disrupted", I have
| the impression the result often just ended up exploiting
| people in different ways (looking at you, Uber and AirBnB.)
| glitchcrab wrote:
| Just because existing industries are a certain way doesn't
| mean they have to stay that way forever - if we thought
| that way then everything would stagnate. Disruptive changes
| _can_ be good.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > And in my view it's all based on a flawed premise: that
| farming needs any kind of technological revolution. It just
| doesn't. It's mostly fine.
|
| if insiders think it's "mostly fine", that might explain why
| you only see outsiders coming in with radical ideas.
|
| Sure farming is mostly fine at producing food efficiently. And
| coal is mostly fine for producing electricity and oil is mostly
| fine to fuel our cars.
|
| All those things are mostly fine to achieve their primary goal,
| they are absolutely not fine once you consider externalities.
| You hinted at it but seem to brush off the external cost as a
| small thing to be improved. It's not small and that's why it's
| not a flawed premise. Being able to reduce land area used by
| farming would be a major win for humanity.
|
| I do agree with you though that this can't be solved by a bunch
| of technologist in isolation.
|
| Rocket-industry insiders also thought our one-time use rockets
| were mostly fine and having a reusable rocket was a pipe dream
| anyway. That took an outsider to change the status quo and now
| companies that used to be at the top like Arianespace are a
| decade behind.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Agriculture doesn't use so much land because it needs to; it
| uses so much land because that's the cheapest way of
| producing food. There are lots of existing technologies that
| could produce more food per acre, but they are not
| economically viable. One example: greenhouses. Land use is
| primarily a political/economical problem, not a technological
| one.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > Agriculture doesn't use so much land because it needs to;
| it uses so much land because that's the cheapest way of
| producing food.
|
| And that's precisely why there is an opportunity here that
| is attracting entrepreneurs: How to get farming techniques
| using less land to be as economically viable (or more) than
| traditional farming techniques.
|
| Coal also was the cheapest way of producing electricity,
| but after 30+ years of investment in wind and solar it's
| now getting completely phased out. That happens only by
| having people seeing the long term problem and working on
| better ways of doing things long before they are actually
| economically viable.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It took 50 years of heavy government subsidies to get
| wind & solar to the scale necessary to be cheaper than
| coal.
| acdha wrote:
| Coal and oil are also heavily subsidized: companies are
| given tax breaks, land and discovery are often provided
| below market rates, and cleanup is usually subsidized by
| taxpayers.
|
| In aggregate, those subsidies are greater than what's
| been spent on renewables by a significant margin.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| And I am certainly glad that 50 years ago we made to
| choice to invest in them at a time where it was clear
| they wouldn't be viable for a while, if ever.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| I don't think that is a good comparison, because plants
| need basically the same input - coal to solar is changing
| everything but the end result. Different farming isn't.
| If AgTech were to directly create sugar from air and
| water then that would be a real switch.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It's possible to grow bacteria on electrical energy, but
| I don't know if anyone has tried to commercialize that.
| nradov wrote:
| You're missing the point. In most places we don't have a
| shortage of land. What's the point of using less?
| Voloskaya wrote:
| It's not about lacking physical space to grow crops, it's
| about what you have to destroy to claim that land for Ag.
| In brazil 80%+ of the deforestation of the Amazon is
| caused by cattle ranching or soybeans cultivation.
|
| In Europe most of the land used today for Ag was once
| forest. But they have all been cut down so long ago that
| we forget.
|
| This has an obvious massive impact on CO2 emission,
| habitat loss etc.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I don't really see the business model though. That's like
| trying to sell Chinese fishing fleets subpar nets that
| cost more and catch fewer fish because _you_ think
| overfishing the oceans is a bad thing. It 's not going to
| be a very successful business.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > I don't really see the business model though
|
| None in isolation. But if/when countries start enacting
| carbon taxes & bonuses that account for the
| externalities, that could significantly change the cost
| equation, it could become more profitable for farmers to
| adopt farming techniques that require less land (less
| carbon tax to pay), and use the now unneeded land for
| passive income through forestry (get paid by the state to
| manage a carbon sink).
| tomhoward wrote:
| > You hinted at it but seem to brush off the external cost as
| a small thing to be improved.
|
| I understand you reading that way but it's not what I meant
| or at all what I think. The work I do (environmental
| monitoring and data display/analysis) is used heavily to
| reduce environmental externalities (I spent much of the past
| four years working on a project seeking to eradicate
| pesticide spray drift events) and to minimise resource
| utilisation (particularly irrigation water); the experience
| has taught me that these are major, difficult-to-solve
| problems, but they can be solved by people who are willing to
| do the work over many years to bring about the requisite
| changes both in technology and practices. Of course I know
| outsiders can sometimes bring about important changes that
| insiders didn't consider (indeed I've tried to be that kind
| of person in this and other industries, with some success at
| times); but it still needs thorough work over a long time to
| get major breakthroughs (as it did for SpaceX rockets),
| whereas these startups never seem to stick around for long.
|
| > Being able to reduce land area used by farming would be a
| major win for humanity
|
| I'm not convinced this is true, now we can see that the
| global population is flattening and likely to start declining
| in the foreseeable future. It's not a particularly strongly
| held opinion or one I need to argue about, but it just seems
| to me that the amount of land used for agriculture now is no
| great problem.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Can you say more about the pesticide drift work you did?
|
| I can see that being valuable for a number of reasons -
| mainly just reducing the amount of human exposure to
| pesticides.
| veddox wrote:
| On reducing land area: as an agroecologist, I do think that
| this is a very important goal.
|
| First, because in many modern agricultural landscapes (such
| as intensive farming regions in western Europe or the US
| Midwest), there is simply no space for nature. Agriculture
| is the leading cause of biodiversity loss in large parts of
| the world, and much of it has to do with lack of natural
| habitats.
|
| And secondly, because we have such a lot of pressure on
| land in the more densely populated regions of the world -
| now only exacerbated by area demands for renewable
| energies.
|
| However, I agree that vertical farming is unlikely to be a
| workable solution. Much more promising (though also more
| boring and irritating to some people) is to (a) reduce food
| waste and (b) reduce meat consumption. We could easily
| triple our food output without any further technical
| advances if we "just" did those two things.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Re-useable rockets predate SpaceX. The boosters of the Space
| shuttle or its main engines come to mind. Aircraft launched
| systems is another. It wasn't thought of as a pipe dream as
| such.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Arianespace exec, in 2013, talking about SpaceX before they
| managed to land a rocket [1]: "reusability is a dream.
| [...] SpaceX is selling a dream. [...] The market will wake
| up and realize it's a dream." the word "dream" appears 3 or
| 4 more times in that single sentence.
|
| I cannot find a quote, but I also remember distinctly an
| exec from ULA claiming reusability was a dream, because
| even if you could land a rocket successfully you would
| never be able to reuse it as the stress on the rocket from
| the flight would make it unable to fly again, with any
| material you can use to build a rocket. (SpaceX has a
| falcon 9 booster they have reused 17 times so far).
|
| [1]: around 3:00
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210723155930oe_/https://r1---
| s...
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Executives talking their book isn't in contrast to what I
| wrote.
| realusername wrote:
| > Being able to reduce land area used by farming would be a
| major win for humanity.
|
| We do know already how do do that though and the answer is to
| reduce meat usage which is by far what's taking the majority
| of the agricultural land use. The crop production is as
| almost as efficient as it can get after multiple agricultural
| revolutions.
|
| It's a social problem, not a technical one.
| bradley13 wrote:
| That's one solution. However, I am not giving up meat, nor
| are a lot of other people.
|
| So: let's look for other ways to reduce land use.
| realusername wrote:
| Well there aren't any, it's been more of a century of
| technological progress in agriculture and the field is
| very mature.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Sure there are. One example: stop subsidizing corn for
| ethanol. The fuel used to plant, fertilize. harvest,
| transport and process the corn exceeds the fuel produced.
| realusername wrote:
| That won't help very far when close to half of the land
| use is for meat.
| slaw wrote:
| Stopping subsidizing corn for ethanol will help a lot.
|
| [0] > U.S. farmers have planted 91.7 million acres of
| corn in 2019
|
| [1] > roughly 40 percent of all corn is now used to make
| ethanol
|
| https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-
| lar...
|
| https://civileats.com/2022/02/14/how-corn-ethanol-for-
| biofue...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Are you willing to reduce meat consumption? What if you
| don't have to give it up, you just have to commit to
| cutting down on it a bit? If enough people do that, it's
| still an incredibly valuable change.
|
| I'm a pescatarian* not because I think eating fish is so
| much better for the environment than eating meat, but
| because it's a little harder to eat fish and I have to
| think more about eating meals and in general eat more
| vegetarian dishes. And because going full vegetarian
| seemed too challenging, and I wanted to take a step to
| improve my impact even if I couldn't go all the way.
|
| Do I think eating vegan is ideal? Yes, but I'm not yet
| willing to give up dairy, and it's better to make some
| move than none.
|
| If you eat meat every day, could you set one day a week
| when you try not to? If you eat it a few times a week,
| could you set like two days a week when you eat meat, and
| try not to outside of those?
|
| You don't have to go 100% to make a real difference, and
| I think people get too caught up in trying to defend
| their decisions (because they feel attacked) when they
| could just make a small change at very little personal
| cost.
|
| *Except sometimes when my food order gets incorrectly
| completed, or when there's no good non-meat food, or when
| I just really feel like eating meat
| ecshafer wrote:
| Land usage for food production isn't a big deal for me. I
| would rather see less suburban sprawl and more farms. There
| is a lot of good fertile land that has been cut up over the
| last 50 years and had the farms replaced with housing
| developments.
| cushychicken wrote:
| I think his point was that the radical outsiders come up with
| ideas that sound great but don't actually have any meaningful
| impacts towards making farming better.
|
| This mirrors my own experience in the field to a T.
| rchaud wrote:
| > if insiders think it's "mostly fine", that might explain
| why you only see outsiders coming in with radical ideas.
|
| Radical ideas may be needed occasionally, but these techbros
| just set half a billion on fire trying to execute something
| farmers likely realized wasn't logistically feasible in their
| market ages ago.
|
| In the article, employees say the leadership signed deals
| with contractual terms that their own researchers warned
| couldn't be met. The founder is now launching a Farming-as-a-
| service startup, presumably without any of the employee
| expertise they fired at their last company.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| People have no idea how efficient farming is. In 1260 the price
| of wheat was 6- 8 shillings (~1/3 pound sterling) per bushel
| (60 pounds). By the early 20th century, it was about 1
| PS/bushel. At that point the US became the efficient grower and
| dominant currency, and so switching from pounds sterling to
| dollars at the rate at the time of $5/PS1 is appropriate. Today
| wheat is $6.50 per barrel. Put another way, the price of wheat
| in the dominant currency has ~tripled in 750 years. That's an
| inflation rate of ~0.1%.
|
| Put another way, a typical Saskatchewan dryland wheat farm is
| about 5,000 - 10,000 acres per employee or operator in size.
| That 5,000-10,000 acres will produce enough calories to feed
| ~100,000 people. (Those acres will also require ~$10M in
| capital and ~$1M in annual operating expenses)
|
| Put a third way, modern agriculture can provide enough grains
| and legumes to feed somebody for around 30 cents per day at
| bulk prices.
| azalemeth wrote:
| You raise some very good points - but I think that looking at
| the monetary price of wheat is a particularly bad example in
| England because of the Assize of Bread and Ale [1] which ran
| from about the 13th century until being repealed in 1836 (!)
| and later protectionist issues like the Corn laws [2] across
| "the empire".
|
| In many ways these laws directly tied the strength of the
| currency to the prevailing value of wheat - a very different
| sort of gold standard(!) - and occasionally caused massive
| economic difficulties as a result (I remember a story
| involving the value of silver, Isaac Newton, and shippers
| directly clipping or smelting coins and moving the metal to
| amsterdam to sell at a profit compared to the value of the
| coin, all indirectly powered by the very variable wheat).
|
| Your broader point about the pricing of wheat definitely
| stands though: in the 13th century, wheat drove the economy;
| as we got better at trading and ultimately the industrial
| agricultural revolution both served to reduce the variability
| of the harvest on macroeconomic climes and ever since really
| the black death we've been in a society where the relative
| power of the grain (if not its importance!) has steadily
| declined. [3]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assize_of_Bread_and_Ale [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws [3]
| https://academic.oup.com/past/article-
| abstract/219/1/3/14727...
| a_cardboard_box wrote:
| Put a fourth way, every second the operator works can feed
| about 4 people for a day.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| 1 employee - 10 000 acres - 100 000 people fed
|
| We can have free unlimited food for everyone today
|
| maybe not free unlimited saffron, but flour(s), legumes and
| nuts, potatoes could be distributed for free (subject to some
| rationing, 5000Kcal per person per day). This is not utopian,
| this is technical possible right now.
| veddox wrote:
| There's no such thing as a free meal. Of course you could
| distribute free food to all your citizens (the Ancient
| Romans famously did), but somebody still needs to pay for
| it.
|
| It's not just about on-farm labour, you need big machines
| (and lots of diesel!), fertiliser, pesticides... And that's
| before you look at all the rest of the food system, because
| to put a meal on the table you need the whole supply chain
| (ag-tech, fertiliser production, food processing, wholesale
| suppliers, etc.)
|
| In modern agriculture, the farmer only gets a fraction of
| the money you pay for your loaf of bread, because there are
| so many other people involved.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Machines and free energy (solar, for example) make free
| meals possible.
|
| Maybe if we can reduce the need for profit we also reduce
| the need for fertilizers, maybe the relation between
| fertilizers used and crop productivity is not linear
| (-20% productivity but -40% fertilizers?). Food
| processing won't be necessary: why have a factory for
| chips? or for hummus? _Most_ people can cook.
|
| The thing is, contrary to other things, like fusion, this
| is possible. Now more so than ever; we have everything we
| need to start a food UBI.
|
| The rest are just accounting details, like how less rich
| the 1% should be to fund all this.
| veddox wrote:
| > contrary to other things, like fusion, this is
| possible.
|
| Of course it's _possible_ , I'm just saying it's not (and
| can never be) _free_. "Free for consumers" simply means
| somebody else paid for the costs - or more likely, the
| consumer paid the costs through taxes rather than at the
| store. You will always have input costs to produce an
| output, and these will not be negligible.
|
| Just a few points on what you said, and these are not
| "accounting details": (1) Solar energy is not free - you
| need to build, install, and maintain panels and a power
| grid. (2) Of course you can reduce fertiliser, organic
| farming does so and takes ~20% yield decrease (depending
| on the crop). But then you have higher labour and machine
| costs to control weeds, and an overall higher per-hectare
| price. (3) Food processing matters because you probably
| don't want to spend most of your day milling your grain
| ration to make flour that you can then bake into bread.
| Ditto for other types of staple foods (you want to make
| your own sausages?). (On a historical side-note, here's a
| write-up of how ancient food systems worked:
| https://acoup.blog/2020/08/06/collections-bread-how-did-
| they...).
|
| Bottom line: Food systems are incredibly complex!
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Pretty sure the devil's in the distribution.
|
| Nuts also take enormous amounts of water, which is a pretty
| big problem where they're grown.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| Nuts would require the same amount water regardless of
| whatever economic system they're grown under. Maybe we
| can reduce the amount of water going to red meat and use
| it for nuts?
|
| Big centers, like Costco, could serve as distribution
| centers; while software can handle the rationing.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| It's not the economic system they're grown under, it's
| the geographic locations and their propensity for
| drought.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > modern agriculture can provide enough grains and legumes to
| feed somebody for around 30 cents per day
|
| This just 30 cents for feeding are not real. Wheat is not the
| same as bread. It must be processed. Baking bread for 100,000
| people will require also a lot of energy and water that
| aren't free normally. Would be 30 + X cents.
| anfilt wrote:
| Where do you think the term daily grind comes from. People
| used to grind their wheat everyday and then use it for
| cooking/baking.
| adwn wrote:
| > _They all seem to be based on this assumption that
| traditional farming /food production is antiquated and
| inefficient, and that what the industry needs is clever
| outsiders to come in and re-invent it with the latest
| technologies. And they all just seem to go nowhere._
|
| * The car wasn't invented by insiders from the horse-drawn
| carriage industry.
|
| * Electric lighting wasn't invented by insiders from the candle
| industry.
|
| * Airplanes weren't invented by insiders from the balloon
| industry.
|
| * The development of the modern smartphone wasn't driven by
| insiders from the mobile phone industry.
|
| * The development of reusable orbital rockets wasn't driven by
| insiders from the rocket industry.
|
| > _And in my view it 's all based on a flawed premise: that
| farming needs any kind of technological revolution. It just
| doesn't. It's mostly fine._
|
| That's exactly the kind of bias that makes industry insiders
| (usually) unable to revolutionize their own field. Sure, many
| outsiders will fail, but they'll at least try, and one of them
| might actually succeed.
|
| _However_ , I believe it can be very beneficial - maybe even
| essential - to have experienced advisors from the established
| industry, provided that they haven't lost the ability to see
| and recognize the problems and inefficiencies of "doing it the
| old way".
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I think you're _mostly_ right, but the weed-killing laser
| robots are less about efficiency and more about herbicides and
| pesticides. Those are a large market and diverting money from
| that to weed-killing laser robots could be a big payday for
| somebody.
| oneshtein wrote:
| > And in my view it's all based on a flawed premise: that
| farming needs any kind of technological revolution. It just
| doesn't. It's mostly fine.
|
| Modern agriculture is good at producing of astonishing
| quantities of calorie-rich food, which makes people obese
| because of lack of nutrients. 4.7M dies _per year_ because of
| obesity, which, of course, is not a problem for those, who
| produces bland food.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The weed-killing robot products seem qualitatively different
| from the other tech, assuming it can be scaled. We probably
| should develop a technological alternative to massive
| herbicidal over-use, and computer vision stands a chance of
| being cheap enough to provide it.
| alan-crowe wrote:
| My reference point for this kind of thing is the video
| cassette recorder (VCR). Trusting to memory I think that they
| entered the consumer market at around $700 and were down to
| around $100 by the time they were obsolete. But before they
| reached the consumer market, they were a super-expensive
| professional item. Getting helical scan VCRs (a high
| precision, complicated electro-mechanical technology) to the
| consumer market involved impossible price reductions, just to
| reach the consume price point of $700. I never expected
| further big price reductions to follow and was wrong.
|
| A weed killing laser robot seems obviously stupid - an
| expensive electro-mechanical system generating trivial value
| with each weed zapped. There is no way to get the price down
| low enough for this to make sense. But CD players have servo
| control of the tracking and focus of the laser. Much lower
| power than needed for weed wacking, but much faster and more
| accurate than needed and _very cheap_.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wplLkxBsqQo Adequate cameras
| are cheap enough. AI vision processing is on a roll and we
| can look forward to huge price falls. The technology looks
| promising from the outside.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| My reference point is electric cars. They were a complete
| non-starter, all but physically impossible because the
| energy density of batteries was so incredibly much lower
| than that of gas.
|
| Then batteries got better, and hybrids came out that had
| dramatically better mileage than ICE cars. But they were
| expensive, and looked weird, and electric cars still
| weren't possible.
|
| Then electric cars came out that were expensive, and low
| range, but pretty viable for city driving. But the range
| would never match ICE cars, and they'd always be to
| expensive.
|
| We're now at a point where the infrastructure and economics
| hasn't caught up, and the range is still arguably a little
| low for super long road trips, but once we get working fast
| chargers saturating most transit corridors, and once we get
| cheaper, smaller cars offered, we'll be pretty much there.
|
| From "The physics really just don't seem to add up" to
| "Well they're a little pricey" in, what, thirty years?
| guidoism wrote:
| I honestly can't imagine a future where we don't have
| robots tending to each individual plant coming out of the
| ground like that one plant is the most important thing in
| the world.
|
| We currently treat an entire field as one uniform thing
| because that's the cheapest way to do it. We plant in rows
| to allow our simple machines to operate on them. We drive
| massive combines up and down the field. We spray the entire
| field uniformly.
|
| I think there's a move in the precision farming world to
| using remote sensing imaging to treat smaller tracts of
| land (like an acre) separately. But at some point the
| technology will be cheap enough to focus in on each
| individual plant.
|
| Clearly there's some extra growth that each plant would
| have if it would treated really well and harvested at the
| perfect time. That's the opportunity. The cost is
| developing swarms of robots that go up and down the fields
| 24 hours a day checking on soil moisture, leaf disease,
| weeds and doing what it needs to tend to that plant. I
| think the hardware already exists and is cheap enough. It's
| now just a matter of developing the software (yes, the
| devil is in the word "just").
|
| If there are 10 plants per square meter and we give the
| robot 1 minute per plant, and there are 10,000 square
| meters in a hectare, then we will need 70 robots to tend an
| entire hectare in a single 24 hour period. That's the sort
| of math that I've been thinking of.
| jondwillis wrote:
| As a journeyman gardener, I have really been interested in how
| to scale up no/low-till, no/low herbicide and pesticide,
| regenerative soil practices.
|
| From what I have seen so far, I think the market forces (e.g.
| most food people eat is unconscious, taken for granted, is a
| total commodity) are a major driver of the status quo.
|
| Why improve your negative externality industrial practices when
| you can get organic certified, get your product in Amazon Whole
| Foods, and outcompete more "ethical" growers?
| cushychicken wrote:
| _...these issues aren 't going to be solved by outsiders with
| messiah complexes coming in and telling established
| growers/experts that they're wrong/stupid, they'll be solved
| via unglamorous work over many years by people who really
| understand the field._
|
| Couldn't have said it better myself, as a former ag tech
| employee who worked for one of the tech god complex people.
| hengheng wrote:
| > the ideas that keep coming up over and over are vertical
| farming, weed-killing laser robots and insect protein.
|
| Ah, are drones finally gone? I'd love to tell farmers things
| about their land that I saw from above which they already know,
| for a horrendous price, and fly at a time that's no use to
| them.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Not exactly. I've entertained the idea of vertical farming
| because it can make fresh food possible in the core of the
| densest cities. It can also reuse energy for heating buildings
| to heat greenhouses. So it's an energy play.
|
| Laser weed killing isn't just about efficiency. It could mean
| eliminating the pesticides and the diseases they may be
| causing.
|
| Insect protein seems to be loved by the vegetarians who don't
| see eating insects like eating beef.
|
| In other words, efficiency is only part of the mix.
| tivert wrote:
| > When I see the new ag-tech startups coming out of
| accelerators or being established by supposedly seasoned
| entrepreneurs, the ideas that keep coming up over and over are
| vertical farming, weed-killing laser robots and insect protein.
|
| > They all seem to be based on this assumption that traditional
| farming/food production is antiquated and inefficient, and that
| what the industry needs is clever outsiders to come in and re-
| invent it with the latest technologies. And they all just seem
| to go nowhere.
|
| It's also based on an arrogant assumption that SV techies are
| smart, _everyone else is stupid_ , and all you need to do to
| fix a problem is throw some techies with a bad cases of
| Engineer's Disease at it to "disrupt" the industry.
|
| > ...these issues aren't going to be solved by outsiders with
| messiah complexes coming in and telling established
| growers/experts that they're wrong/stupid, they'll be solved
| via unglamorous work over many years by people who really
| understand the field.
|
| That's a message that every software engineer needs to be
| reminded of daily. There's a serious problem with respecting
| the expertise and knowledge of people in other domains.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| It's a problem with so many startups.
|
| Some arrogant observer sees an industry from the outside, makes
| assumptions about it, maybe catches a good wave due to investor
| money, then unsurprisingly flounders, because they didn't
| approach the problem as an insider with skin in the game,
| tackling a known problem with known customers. No, they did it
| as an outsider, with no tangible knowledge of the problem or
| the industry. And they're arrogant because among the
| assumptions they've made is that the incumbents are stupid.
| Especially if it's agriculture, "Oh I can do this so much
| better than those dumb hicks fooling around in the dirt."
|
| Reality sends these failed entrepreneurs home with a bruised
| ego, and hopefully newfound humility.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If the world bans certain chemicals for *icides etc., what is
| the risk that clean vertical farming is required?
|
| I'm long term positive on vertical farming, I just assume it
| requires a future of unlimited energy backed by nuclear
| fusion/fission.
| pard68 wrote:
| I worked for a hydroponic tech startup, in no world is it cost
| effective if you're a large company. Small scale in a basement or
| backyard, yes, but this stuff doesn't scale, largely because it's
| priced for the marijuana industry. If you are growing lettuce
| with your hydroponics equipment that you paid weed prices for,
| you will never see your way out of the red.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| But is that the cost of fabrication, or the cost of off-the-
| shelf? Like you said it's priced for the marijuana industry,
| but if you scale up enough you can make your own manufacturing
| deals, no?
| shellfishgene wrote:
| There are large companies that produce hydroponic lettuce
| commercially, and have for a long time, making good profits.
| ensocode wrote:
| The idea of vertical farming doesn't really appeal to me. I mean
| it sounds efficient, but as we see we are throwing electricity to
| simulate natural processes. With all the organic hype isn't there
| a much higher demand on traditional grown food in an organic way.
| The idea of growing food in a city laboratory seems counter-
| intuitive to me. Isn't there much more market in developing
| supportive technology for efficient classic organic farming? Or
| am I completely wrong here?
| braza wrote:
| https://archive.is/brXAt
| thelastgallon wrote:
| Vertical farming is based on the premise that land is no longer
| available. Technology can be used to free up land from
| understanding where it is wasted. We waste ~160 million acres for
| biofuels[1]. 60 million acres just in the US[2].
|
| A small fraction of this land can be solar PV, or even zero[4].
| You can drive about 150 times as far from a solar-powered
| electric car compared to using corn bioethanol[3].
|
| Switching to EVs starts a virtuous cycle of (1) accelerating
| renewables (EVs are parked >90% of the time, have flexible
| demand, perfect for solar/wind), (2) freeing up 160 million acres
| of land and the associated water usage, fertilizer, etc (3)
| Freeing up water usage, 47.5 trillion gallons (just in US!), 40%
| of water withdrawals[5,6]. Availability of this 40% water allows
| us to farm a lot more land than whats possible currently. EVs +
| renewables will also free up 40% of global shipping, stop 10
| million deaths from air pollution and save us trillions in fossil
| fuel subsidies [7,8,9].
|
| ---
|
| [1] For bioethanol and biodiesel combined, total land use
| worldwide is at least 155.47 million acres:
| https://hungermath.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/how-much-farmlan...
|
| [2] The US uses 60 million acres for biofuels (most of it for
| corn). That's 25 million hectares. This is about the size of the
| United Kingdom:
| https://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/biofuels/recordisplay.cfm?deid=35...
|
| [3] https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/us-corn-biofuels
|
| [4] Solar land usage can be zero from agrivoltaics and from not
| using farm land at all, covering water bodies (lakes, reservoirs)
| or land along the highways.
|
| [5]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698
|
| [6]According to the U.S. Geological Survey, electric power
| generators are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals and
| account for about 40% of total water withdrawals in the United
| States: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=37453
|
| [7]https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-shipping-
| cargo-c...
|
| [8]Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept
| That as Normal?:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
|
| [9]https://www.axios.com/2023/08/25/oil-government-subsidies
| tyho wrote:
| I don't understand vertical farming for anything other than crops
| that aren't eaten for their calorie content.
|
| To me, it seems like an expensive way to increase the land needed
| to grow food. Land use is increased, assuming the energy to light
| the greenhouse comes from solar panels. You need ~ 10 m^2 of
| solar panels to provide 1 m^2 of sun-equivalent light, sure there
| might be some optimization to be done with wavelengths and
| intensity, but I haven't seen anything to indicate you could ever
| break even.
|
| Why build a solar farm to convert light to electricity, then a
| big greenhouse where that electricity is converted back into
| light? Just plant the crops where you were going to put the solar
| panels!
| byyll wrote:
| It doesn't work, stop trying and stop falling for it.
|
| Food grown in soil and in sun has more nutrients than anything
| vertically grown with artificial lamps and no soil, just water.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| It can and does work, its just this company was incompetent and
| arrogant as covered by the article.
|
| Artificial lamps provide the same uv light that the sun does.
| The "just water" is regularly cycled with nutrients because yes
| plants need those. Different crops do better or worse with
| this. It's already used at scale for certain crops, ironically
| often because it decreases water usage (evaporation losses on
| large fields are enormous, plus runoff)
| mountaintimefrm wrote:
| The most successful form of vertical farming is agroforestry, or
| tree-based agriculture. It provides habitat, shade, carbon
| sequestration, and water retention while raising per acre
| productivity over that of 2-D cropping. Agroforestry is a well
| studied, widely implemented practice that big talking green tech
| "big thinkers" tend to ignore if not openly scoff at.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I mean in summer, the sun delivers almost 100,000 Lumen / m2 to
| crops _for free_ , you'll have a hard time competing with that
| alone using indoor LED lighting, which has efficiencies of around
| 200 Lumen / Watt. Of course you don't need the full sunlight to
| grow crops but anyone with an aquarium can tell you that even
| keeping a very small number of plants thriving using artificial
| light and nutrients isn't cheap. So many other factors like the
| price of real estate in cities and the logistics seem to doom
| these indoor farming companies as well, I can't imagine they will
| ever serve anything but a niche market. There wasn't even real
| innovation here, Ag-focused countries like Spain and the
| Netherlands have the most efficient growing processes figured out
| for a long time, so all this vertical farming stuff was
| nonsensical from the beginning. Savings in transportation costs
| can't possibly offset the other costs either.
|
| So really the only surprising thing is how long they managed to
| keep alive without producing anything of value. I guess what
| really killed them in the end was the end of dumb and cheap
| money.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| Wonder how much money the founders walked away with
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I got caught up in this. I even had several meetings with Caleb
| Harper. In the end a co-founder and I had a provisional patent on
| a wifi controlled relay ac power strip before they were
| ubiquitous. He chose to not pursue the patent and ended up
| patenting a bunch of software nonsense that's not dependable or
| understandable or usable. Meanwhile the folks making the power
| strip are doing well. There are some ag focused ones, check out
| Amazon.
|
| In the end it was like a lot of VC cycles I've been through, all
| hat no cowboy.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-13 23:02 UTC)