[HN Gopher] Larry Ellison's half-billion-dollar quest to change ...
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Larry Ellison's half-billion-dollar quest to change farming
Author : nradov
Score : 105 points
Date : 2025-02-24 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| spamizbad wrote:
| Ellison's strength, I felt like, has always been in the field of
| sales and ruthless contract negotiation rather than technical
| innovation - a "golden touch" that doesn't benefit disruptive
| scientific innovation, but might instead prove more fruitful if
| applied to an a mature technology that just needs to proliferate
| out there in the world.
| gadders wrote:
| There was an interesting article on him linked from The Diff
| newsletter today. It seems a large part of his strengths are
| strategic M&A.
|
| "1. Larry Ellison has an insight which leads to a breakthrough
| initiative which has the potential to reposition Oracle to the
| forefront of the industry, completely bypassing the
| competition.
|
| 2. It works.
|
| 3. Larry Ellison checks out to go sailing or play tennis or
| something for like a year.
|
| 4. Oracle gets into trouble. New entrants and existing
| competitors are eating away at its market share, and Oracle is
| losing head-to-head.4
|
| 5. GOTO 1."
|
| https://www.notboring.co/p/who-is-larry-ellison
| soared wrote:
| 6. Divest losing tens of billions in the industries where
| this strategy doesn't work (see adtech, oracle data cloud -
| few billions in acquisitions just closed down not even sold)
|
| 7. Doesn't matter, still have billions to spare and can eat
| huge failures
| Aurornis wrote:
| A lot of people are going to sneer at this because they like
| seeing rich tech people fail, but I think it's great that he's
| trying something.
|
| Results don't need to be dramatic or come right away. Even
| failure is a learning experience. Improving agriculture is a
| worthy goal, even if it's not immediately successful.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| In the meantime, he can buy up all that cheap farmland from the
| farmers who tank right now because of DOGE.
| leovingi wrote:
| Can you please post links to some of that cheap farmland
| available right now because of DOGE?
| duxup wrote:
| I think the idea is that farm subsidies potentially being
| cut would make land available. That would take time.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| It might not take a long time; many farmers are on a
| knife's edge in terms of solvency.
| duxup wrote:
| Most farmers are petty involved in year to year
| fluctuations and financing things so hard to know how
| many would stick it out in hopes of legislation....
|
| Granted this is all a hypothetical.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| also a few suicides.. the process does take time
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| USAID spends ~$2B p.a. on food from US farmers, I assume
| the presumption that without that backdoor subsidiary farms
| making less money will be cheaper. Though total output
| value is ~$200 p.a. so that's %1, but price is set at the
| margin so actual loss could be greater.
|
| I think this loss might already be less than the loss from
| the effects of ozempic.
|
| Edit: looking at total US farm subsidies from taxpayers is
| around $30B which is ~%15.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Will see if I can scrounge up some links, but farmers are
| paid (just an example, there are many environmental and
| other programs) federal money to do stuff like leave strips
| of land uncultivated to reduce fertilizer run-off from
| fields. These payments are stopped and farmers are left to
| foot the bill. Also, technically, if a contract is for 3
| years and a farmer is 1 year in but decide to stop because
| the money isn't coming in, now the farmer is in violation!
|
| On a related note:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43162502
| bpodgursky wrote:
| It's sad watching people sneer at Ellison lose half a billion
| on an investment that could improve life for billions of
| people.
|
| If he had spent half a billion on a megayacht like nepobabies
| in the Emirates, nobody would have blinked. Don't punish people
| for trying.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| He owns an entire 90,000 acre Hawaiian island and multiple
| mega yachts.. they're not sneering because he tried, they're
| sneering because he's delusional that he thought that one of
| the oldest and largest sectors of the economy just needed an
| untrained rich guy to fly in and save the day.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Yes, they are sneering because he didn't buy another mega
| yacht instead.
|
| > one of the oldest and largest sectors of the economy just
| needed an untrained rich guy to fly in and save the day
|
| This is just investing. There are many old moribund sectors
| of the economy that could use investors not focused on
| quarterly profits. This is not a controversial statement in
| any other context, you just don't like it because it's
| Ellison doing it.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| I don't care one way or another to be honest - he's free
| to waste his money however he wants. It's just amusing
| after all his proclamations about reinventing farming and
| changing agriculture that they're stuck at the level of
| early 2010s Dutch greenhouses..
|
| It's a shame that rather than just hire experts and give
| them access to the unlimited funding to advance the field
| he attempted to reinvent the wheel with 'disrupters' but
| it is what it is
| jimt1234 wrote:
| > ...an investment that could improve life for billions of
| people.
|
| This is the problem I have with startups/tech that intend to
| revolutionize farming: it's rarely to improve life for
| people, but rather to increase profits. Perhaps Ellison does,
| indeed, intend to use this farming tech to help bring food to
| hungry people around the world - and that would be great! But
| I'm skeptical; Larry's never struck me as an altruistic dude.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| I did not make any claims about altruistic intent. This is
| an empirical statement about the outcome of the startup if
| successful.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Larry's never struck me as an altruistic dude.
|
| Don't anthropomorphize Larry Ellison.
| p4ul wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2308s
| Panzer04 wrote:
| The majority of the success of modern society has come from
| allowing these self-serving motivations to help everyone.
|
| I don't get where this moralistic perspective that
| everything has to be done selflessly for some greater good
| has come from.
| verisimi wrote:
| > Don't punish people for trying.
|
| There's no punishment occurring at all. There's just people
| saying stuff, waiting to see how billionaire overlords decide
| to proceed, perhaps hoping they get lucky and ruthless enough
| to join that class.
| taco_emoji wrote:
| he could've just given the half billion to poor people and
| relieved the immiseration of thousands of people. instead he
| set a pile of money on fire because of ego
| sympil wrote:
| _Don 't punish people for trying._
|
| No one should have the wealth he does. We sneer that people
| look up to him for spending a small part of his wealth to
| benefit others when he should not have enough money to fund
| $500 million science projects.
| azinman2 wrote:
| But he does. That's the reality. So how would you rather he
| spend it?
| sympil wrote:
| I'd like people to sneer and get angry over the fact that
| he does have the money. In Les Miserables when the rich
| man gave the begger a penny the bishop says, "Look at
| monsieur buying a penny's worth of paradise."
| nineplay wrote:
| There's no shortage of people sneering and getting angry
| and billionaires and their money.
| sympil wrote:
| Evidently I disagree. Apparently not enough people are
| angry enough. We elected a man who accepted $30 billion
| in brides the day before his inauguration and his
| supporters don't care.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| If you want to make an argument against billionaires, you
| should start by being numerate.
|
| A billion and a million (the actual number for
| inauguration donations) are very different numbers, and
| if you mix the two up accidentally, it mean your world
| model is horrifically broken. One is plausible, one is
| absurd in this context.
| sympil wrote:
| He got $30 billion in bribes from his crypto coin pump
| and dump. Instead of making assumptions inquire.
| coldpie wrote:
| Oceangate's Titan is the shining beacon of how
| millionaires and billionaires should strive to improve
| the world.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| When wealthy people spend a lot of money on big toys, all it
| does is kick money down to the rest of us.
|
| When wealthy people start tinkering with stuff like our food
| supply, in the past that has had big consequences for humans
| (think things like the Dust Bowl or Various British-led
| famines, or the Holomodor and/or great leap forward if that's
| your bend).
|
| A lot of us are aware that it's not great to have one human
| with an outsized influence working on large systems about
| which they have little expert knowledge or personal
| experience:
|
| those folks can do things that have great consequences for
| our lives while experiencing no repercussions themselves.
|
| For instance, I'm pretty sure some asshole is going to try to
| fix global warming by unilaterally deciding to change the
| albedo of the planet, and that'll cause massive problems.
| They will smugly claim that at least someone is "trying"
| something (instead of adjusting the ecocide of the planet by
| the forces that created their wealth) and when it goes wrong
| they will just retire to their lair in Montana or wherever
| and tell themselves that at least they didn't buy another
| great big toy.
| teach wrote:
| I agree with this, even if it has a little XKCD "struggle no
| more; I'm here to solve it with algorithms" energy[0].
|
| I think Bill Gates is much better at finding people with the
| right expertise who are already solving a problem and just
| adding more funding and I think the results speak for
| themselves.
|
| [0] https://xkcd.com/1831/
| davidhunter wrote:
| Bill Gates also lost money on greenhouses [0][1]
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/bill-gates-green-tech-
| fun...
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/iron-ox-lays-
| off-50-amount...
| codr7 wrote:
| It's pretty obvious to me that this is all about profits and
| public image, it's not like they suddenly started to give a
| damn about other people.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > but I think it's great that he's trying something.
|
| That something is throwing AI and robots at dirt as if there's
| some kind of labor and knowledge gap in farming that needs a
| rich guy to throw tech at it.
| biophysboy wrote:
| Agtech is still very much a field: imaging, genomics, etc. Its
| just a very difficult problem; half a billion is chump change
| in biology
| arrosenberg wrote:
| > A lot of people are going to sneer at this because they like
| seeing rich tech people fail, but I think it's great that he's
| trying something.
|
| Is it? It feels like the same money could be given out to
| thousands of people who actually understand farming to run
| little experiments. That's how America is supposed to work.
| Relying on Larry Ellison to succeed in a field he has no
| experience or instincts by throwing money at it seems like a
| terrible strategy.
| diob wrote:
| People underestimate how much our regressive tax structure
| and lax antitrust enforcement are holding back innovation. If
| we didn't allow such massive wealth concentration, we'd see
| more competition and breakthroughs.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Right, of course, excessive concentration of wealth is the
| only thing preventing another Bell Labs or Xerox PARC from
| bringing us tomorrow's future today.
| citadel_melon wrote:
| I don't understand the sarcasm. More competition in the
| marketplace would create more innovation: I don't think
| this should be controversial.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| I hear a lot about how ahead of their time they were and
| how everything since is based on them.. But it seems like
| newer things since then are all being built on the
| shoulders of a generation of thousands of giants instead
| of a generation where we can only identify 2.
| hello_moto wrote:
| It's a different time. I don't think we can compare the
| old Bell Labs/Xerox PARC vs Larry Ellison.
|
| The Larry Ellison.
|
| People have been saying that these concentration of
| wealth will end up hoarding our basic needs and we've
| seen that already with Housing.
|
| First they come for your House, next they come for your
| Food.
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Right, because so much innovation comes from places with
| super high taxation in Europe. Give me a break.
| immibis wrote:
| It does. If you identify "innovation" differently. The
| American meaning of "innovation" is finding a way to
| force ten million people to pay you a dollar each.
| European innovation is, like, Mastodon, where you
| specifically cannot be forced to pay a dollar. This tends
| to not pay as well. This is because America selects for
| people who can get paid lots of money much more strongly
| than Europe does.
| diob wrote:
| You're missing the point. It's not a simple 'high taxes
| bad, low taxes good' binary--it's a spectrum. The U.S.
| has a tax structure that allows wealth to concentrate at
| the top while failing to enforce competition, which
| actually stifles innovation. Meanwhile, countries like
| Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Japan--despite having
| higher taxes--consistently drive innovation.
|
| Germany leads in engineering and automotive tech
| (Siemens, BMW, Bosch). Sweden produces global tech giants
| like Spotify and Klarna. Denmark is a leader in renewable
| energy (Vestas, Orsted). Japan? It revolutionized
| robotics, semiconductors, and high-speed rail while
| fostering companies like Toyota, Sony, and Nintendo.
|
| The issue isn't just tax rates--it's whether a system
| allows new players to compete or just protects entrenched
| monopolies. The U.S. is increasingly choosing the latter.
| david38 wrote:
| As if he personally ran this without people who knew a few
| things?
|
| Go look at the success rate of university research. This
| sounds like someone who hasn't been part of research.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Per the article it sounds like the entire operation took
| place on his company-town Hawaiian island of Lanai,
| so...kinda, yeah, that is what I think. I'm sure he had a
| small staff, but my instinct is that most of the expenses
| were capex and self-dealing.
| antasvara wrote:
| The article specifically says that he had tech CEO's
| running the project.
|
| The mistakes they made also seem pretty fundamental to
| farming; things like:
|
| 1. they didn't consider that a greenhouse designed for the
| desert wouldn't work in Hawaii
|
| 2. solar panels need to be installed differently depending
| on their location and never see the theoretical power
| generation in practice
|
| 3. immature/mature plants were growm right next to each
| other in a way that spread pests
|
| 4. they bought marijuana greenhouses without considering
| that it is grown _so differently_ from other standard
| crops.
|
| This is pretty basic stuff that should have been caught by
| someone with knowledge of agriculture. This seems to
| indicate that while they had a really smart team, they made
| the mistake of assuming that general AI/robotics would map
| 1:1 to the problems of agriculture.
|
| The success rate of university research should have been
| the ultimate warning sign that you shouldn't dump half a
| billion into "solving agriculture." Progress in established
| fields like agriculture is expensive, time consuming, and
| (usually) incremental.
|
| The thought that you could do all of that at once and
| outcompete an approach that has been refined for thousands
| of years is wild. Kudos to them for dreaming big, but I
| just don't see why they thought they had an edge here
| outside of "AI can solve any problem" hubris.
| pengaru wrote:
| It's not like the money vanishes into thin air, wealthy
| people throwing their money at _anything_ is a desirable
| outcome vs. say hoarding it.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| they call that "velocity" of money? it means a rate at
| which money circulates in some wider way.. it is well-known
| in some theory circle IMO
| HPsquared wrote:
| Finite resources (mostly, peoples' time) are expended.
| codr7 wrote:
| So just because it's better than nothing we should consider
| it good enough?
| dan_mctree wrote:
| If all the wealthy would band together to spend their money
| on convincing every farmer to write software instead, then
| we'd all starve
| tbrownaw wrote:
| How exactly would one "hoard" money these days? Even if
| it's just sitting in a bank, that still translates to
| getting lent out at whatever interest rate that bank
| charges.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > How exactly would one "hoard" money these days
|
| They buy real estate and sit on it. Since land taxes are
| so low, you can make money without actually doing
| anything with the land.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > That's how America is supposed to work.
|
| Where did you get that?
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| It's just the default argument someone uses when they have
| nothing of substance to offer to the conversation
| scotty79 wrote:
| He's throwing money at someone. Probably someone roughly as
| deserving (in the grand scheme of things) as farmers are.
|
| So I'd say that it's good that he's throwing his money
| instead of hoarding it or doing some ruthless exploitation or
| something with oil pumping.
|
| Expecting billionaires to spend their money in any way that
| benefits someone other than them is unrealistically high bar.
| We should apploud them if they at least manage to do less
| harm.
| sympil wrote:
| _A lot of people are going to sneer at this because they like
| seeing rich tech people fail, but I think it's great that he's
| trying something._
|
| It is much more efficient for society in the form of its
| government to fund research. We should not leave it up to rich
| people to decide whether or not research is conducted.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Is it? Is government really structured to do this funding in
| an efficient manner? Or do we end up with atrociously useless
| investments that are made as vehicles for delivery of pork
| barrel spending?
| CalChris wrote:
| Vastly most of basic research is publicly funded.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I wasn't addressing the question of quantity of funding,
| but rather the efficiency of the funding. Is the research
| valuable, or is it just pretend-value from spending
| intended as pork? A lot of government funded research is
| of that kind. More generally: the market has a way of
| evaluating research value (did it lead to profit) while
| the government's actions have no reality check. They
| depend on the wisdom of officials who inevitably have
| conflicts of interest.
| sympil wrote:
| The top .1% fund very little research. Therefore it is much
| more efficient for society in the form of government to
| fund research. We should not rely on the benevolence of a
| few rich assholes to have research programs.
| nineplay wrote:
| Surely both the government and rich people can fund research.
| One doesn't preclude the other.
| smt88 wrote:
| Government's ability to publicly fund research is directly
| related to how much it can collect in taxes.
|
| With wealth being hoarded by individuals at unprecedented
| rates and taxes lower than they've been at almost any time
| in the country's history, there has certainly been a shift
| away from public research toward private research.
| sympil wrote:
| There are no instances in the history of the world where
| the wealthy, out of the goodness of their hearts, have
| solved hunger, childhood education, funded research
| programs at scale, provided safe drinking water, etc. These
| things are handled by government. Government is far more
| efficient at this than hoping rich people act in the
| public's best interest.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| However, there is a plethora of instances where the
| wealthy have addressed these issues, not out of the
| goodness of their hearts, but in search of revenue.
| sympil wrote:
| Rich people didn't feed the poor. They didn't provide
| universal k-12 education. They didn't fund enough
| universities to provide higher education for the masses.
| They didn't provide clean water. They didn't get rid of
| smog or acid rain. They didn't band together to start
| space research or build the highway system.
|
| But there are a few instances where a rich person spent a
| trivial amount of their wealth to fund a project or two
| in the interest of humanity.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Rich people didn't feed the poor._
|
| Al Capone's soup kitchens?
| sympil wrote:
| Mass hunger was solved by government. Not charities.
| There are instances where charity fed someone but the
| issue was solved when government did something. Nothing
| works better at scale than good governance.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Is it? Do you think the POTUS will do a better job directing
| funds to worthy causes, and not friends and allies?
| sympil wrote:
| Until this administration funds were spent at the behest of
| Congress and allocated through procedures that were set up.
| There is no evidence of widespread misuse of those funds.
| Of course having an asshole concentrate power in themselves
| will lead to bad governance.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Whatever your commitments, seeing a rich person fail is kinda
| definitionally humorous. Something is funny often because of
| juxtaposition, contradiction. It is why it is the emperor who
| has no clothes, not the poor beggar; or why its "your momma"
| and not you yourself.
| burnte wrote:
| I think how Larry Ellison has decided to run Oracle is both
| atrocious, and his own choice. I think him experimenting with
| better agriculture is awesome and even failing in it can lead
| to progress as now we have ruled somethings out.
|
| Few people are truly all bad or all good.
| alexashka wrote:
| It's great if you treat Larry like a toddler. Anything a
| toddler tries is great.
|
| Larry is an adult last I checked :)
|
| What people find distasteful in my circles is when rich people
| do nothing to solve _systemic_ problems within society and
| instead go about acting as benevolent do-gooders selectively
| handing out resources to causes they feel an affinity for.
|
| When rich folks act this way - we end up with a bored and cruel
| aristocracy and piss poor working people, like England. I don't
| think that's good for anyone.
| turtlegrids wrote:
| https://archive.ph/osGTZ
| afpx wrote:
| The guy makes $20 billion / year just sitting still. I'm sure
| he'll be fine. It's just play money at that point. The equivalent
| to one of us denting our Prius.
|
| I mean even I make passive 10% dividends on my investments every
| year.
| biophysboy wrote:
| My first thought in looking at this headline was "let me guess,
| he was going to try and solve hyper-local
| biological/environmental problems with off the shelf AI and
| robots". Sure enough, that was the subheadline.
| prpl wrote:
| I guess something other than a lawn mower is required to change
| farming
| lvl155 wrote:
| Just curious for the older devs on here, how seminal was Oracle
| in 80/90s? I feel he was actually a good dev but his career as a
| ruthless sales person and corporate tactician overshadows
| whatever accomplishments he had as a database developer.
| jordanb wrote:
| My career started in the 2000s. Oracle was already a bit of a
| cancer then. It was Oracle or MS SQL for "real" databases.
| There were technologies that had been exciting in the 90s but
| were already choked out by the duopoly like InterBase and
| Foxpro.
|
| There were "greybeard" DBAs who were all smug Oracle guys.
|
| My impression then was that Oracle didn't invent anything but
| had dominated through better funding and ruthless expansion.
| Administrating a Oracle DB at scale was really hard but that
| created armys of loyal DBAs protecting their hard-won skills.
| twasold wrote:
| What ever happened to foxpro?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Fox Software was acquired by Microsoft in 1992. Development
| was finally discontinued in 2007.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Bought by Microsoft who gradually nudged users to move to
| Access or SQLServer until they could quietly take it out
| back a shoot it in the head about 20 years ago.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| My vague memory of it is that MS discontinued it because it
| detracted from their plans with MS Access on the low-end,
| and MS SQL Server on the high end. I think, maybe, that it
| may not have fit in with Visual Basic very well.
| chasd00 wrote:
| yeah if you remember way back then the whole concept of ORMs
| came about to make changing a RDBMS backend feasible. I'm not
| sure the plug/play RDBMS dream was ever 100% realized but
| that whole wing of webdev tech was driven by the desire to
| avoid Oracle's extortion based licensing.
| gadders wrote:
| In the 90s, the only two databases you really heard about (at
| least in my industry, banking) were Sybase and Oracle. Where is
| Sybase now?
|
| I'm not a dba, but Oracle was effectively the default, and it
| worked reliably and did what you needed it to do. I think
| _maybe_ Sybase was faster in certain circumstances.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Sybase was bought by SAP in 2010.
| gadders wrote:
| Fair enough. I don't think I heard anyone mention it after
| the millenium though, other than "It's legacy, get rid."
| hcayless wrote:
| I was at a large public university in the 90s / early 2000s
| that used Oracle. The database product itself was absolutely
| rock solid if well-administered. They also kept trying to sell
| us enterprise services built on top of the database that were
| pure trash. "Oracle Forms" was one of those things iirc. We
| never bought that stuff, but it did get us a nice free lunch or
| two.
| kagakuninja wrote:
| In the late '80s, I was in the Air Force. Directive from the
| top was that all military projects should standardize on
| Oracle DB, "because it is portable", and projects should use
| AT&T mini computers (wat?)
|
| They set up a test computer in our building, so me and a
| buddy go down to play around with it. The AT&T computer is
| slow as shit even though we are the only users. We are
| messing around with Oracle Forms, we press a hot key, for
| something important, like enabling triggers on a field. Forms
| crashes.
|
| We call our friendly on-base Oracle rep, his advice is to not
| press that key. We also asked for a quote on the cost of an
| Oracle DB license, and it was something like 5x the cost of
| the DEC DB we were using on our mini-VAX. We decided to not
| use Oracle.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Oracle was a pretty big player in those days. And I don't think
| most people even remember Larry was a developer...his legacy
| will certainly be as a ruthless businessman with a penchant for
| take-no-prisoners sales and ruthless license enforcement.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| 51 year old software developer here and through my entire
| career Oracle was seen among the developers I know as something
| you'd sometimes be forced to use because a non-technical person
| at your company agreed to pay so much for a license that it
| would be too publicly embarrassing not to use it.
|
| It wasn't seen as an inherently bad piece of technology, it was
| just massive overkill (too expensive, too high maintenance) for
| a lot of the solutions it ended up being used for because of
| the effectiveness of Oracle's sales organization.
| kittikitti wrote:
| While I disagree with a majority of Larry Ellison's opinions,
| this is a venture that I think must be celebrated regardless of
| failures. There is such a lack of any green tech coming out of
| Silicon Valley that this one must get its due promotion. The
| front of agriculture and innovation is difficult but none of the
| technology is being used to sow hate amongst ourselves.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Even beyond green, it's nice to see things being tried in the
| real world that aren't just scammy/$ grabs. It's not quite as
| cooperative as the digital, but rather more relevant.
| worik wrote:
| > it's nice to see things being tried in the real world that
| aren't just scammy/$ grabs.
|
| It would be nicer if it was not saddled by hubris and a lack
| of domain knowledge
|
| It would be great if it were not such a colossal waste
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Meh results oriented thinking. Elon revolutionized rockets
| and electrical vehicles with 0 previous domain knowledge.
|
| In another timeline both concepts fail and he's just
| another clueless guy who blew a bunch of money on ideas
| outside his domain - doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying.
| spankalee wrote:
| Why does Silicon Valley need to be doing the innovation here?
|
| Agricultural techniques and tech are constantly improving.
| There's already a lot of money to be made improving all aspects
| of food production, incentivizing tons of non-SV companies to
| invest.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Is Silicon Valley doing the innovation?
|
| They have farms in Hawaii and Ontario with an office in LA.
| makeworld wrote:
| Very few things "must be celebrated regardless of failures".
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Tech is a poor fit for agriculture. Dirt is cheap, relatively
| speaking. All infastructure is an additional overhead cost. Yoru
| robot, your highrise, the soil testing kit...
|
| the short of it is just that if there is no linear increase in
| yeild, your tech product will probably fail. Most of this
| nonsense comes from tech bros who have never farmed and don't
| have the common sense to ask a farmer what they actually need.
| smileson2 wrote:
| If tech means generic webshit sure
| Ancapistani wrote:
| > Tech is a poor fit for agriculture. Dirt is cheap, relatively
| speaking.
|
| Ag is much more than farming, and farming is much more than
| dirt.
|
| Ag is very much ready - past ready - for disruption. The
| biggest blocker there is that "traditional" SV startups can't
| make a dent; their business models don't suit it well. Farmers
| - even mega-corporate ones - are cautious. It's a mature market
| with low margins, so they aren't going to make a capital
| investment in what they see as unproven technology.
|
| To succeed in agtech you pretty much have to exude the opposite
| vibe that startup founders usually have.
| nradov wrote:
| Farmers aren't cautious. They'll all quickly jump on
| something like a new hybrid seed variety if it increases
| yields. This isn't a "vibe" issue.
| whartung wrote:
| Little anecdote sort of along this line.
|
| Early 80's, in college, we had the Cyber mainframe, and PDP
| 11/70. The Cyber was used for computer classes (comps sci
| [Fortran, Pascal], infosystems [COBOL]), engineering classes
| (SPICE, Aeronautical Engr had some Fortran IV stuff the had
| to slog through), statistics runs (SPSS - lot of the sciences
| used that)), the school had some back office software running
| on it (you noticed during registration, the machine was
| noticeably loaded). PDP was used mostly for introduction CS
| classes, and it had a public game account (very nice Star
| Trek program on that one).
|
| Outside of a TERAK and a Textronix 4050 series computer in
| the Math lab, there were no real microcomputers on campus, no
| "public" ones used for teaching.
|
| The first micro computer lab on campus, was in the
| Agriculture school. They had a full lab with 9 Apple ][
| computers, all running, I guess, a sophisticated software
| package for computing feed and what not. We were there to
| play Wizardry, of course, my good friend was the lab tech.
|
| But it was just interesting how the Ag school was a pioneer
| in the personal computing space at an, ostensibly, school
| known for its science and engineering programs (though it was
| also know for its Ag and Architecture schools).
| lurk2 wrote:
| Aren't most of the developments in this sector targeting labor
| costs rather than yield?
| luketheobscure wrote:
| > Tech is a poor fit for agriculture.
|
| Incorrect. I worked for an Ag tech company for almost a decade.
| Ten years ago, farmers were downloading high resolution
| satellite imagery of their fields directly to their GPS enabled
| precision sprayers so that the spray rate would adjust
| continuously based on the vegetative index of the land they
| were over. I don't know what state of the art is today, but I
| imagine it would surprise folks who aren't in the field.
| Animats wrote:
| Right. There's a lot going on. Lots of stuff is measured that
| didn't used to be be. A big controversy is over who owns that
| data. Deere tries to own it.
|
| Vision systems for weeding are effective. Instead of spraying
| everything, cameras look down as the sprayer is pulled behind
| a tractor, and only weeds get sprayed, or zapped, or
| hammered. Uses far less pesticide. Deere and others sell
| this. Deere prefers to sell this as a service, where farmers
| pay fees when the vision system is enabled.[1] There are a
| bunch of autonomous robot startups with similar systems, but
| none seem to have grown much.
|
| Tomato picking robots have been demoed since at least 2018,
| but still aren't used much. There are at least half a dozen
| startups. It's not hard to do with off the shelf robots, but
| not cost-effective yet.
|
| Automated cow milking is used in New Zealand and Australia.
| Those countries have extensive agriculture but not much of an
| underclass, so they have to pay workers real money.[2]
|
| Automated meat cutting is also used in those countries.[3]
| Mostly lamb, which isn't a big thing in the US. Fully
| automated beef lines don't seem to be available yet, although
| the company that builds the lamb systems is getting there.
|
| Vision-based sorting is automated, fast, and cheap.[4] That's
| why when you buy packed berries, there are no bad ones any
| more.
|
| All the big field crops - corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, cotton
| - were mechanized decades ago, of course.
|
| What else is actually working?
|
| [1] https://www.deere.com/en/technology-products/precision-
| ag-te...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o515XdtU7NM
|
| [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZIv6WtSF9I
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsnOu1Y8odQ
| blindriver wrote:
| I applaud him for trying and spending his own money at this.
| nobankai wrote:
| After extorting thousands of Oracle customers and buying part
| of Hawaii, cursory agricultural research is the least he could
| do to give back to the society he leeches off of. Sorry, did I
| say "give back" by accident? If Ellison got results he'd use
| the same strategy he deploys at Oracle to prevent it from ever
| actually helping anyone.
|
| This sort of private sector waste is going to drive America
| back into the clutches of progressive taxation. Our
| "innovation" isn't helping anyone anymore.
| randcraw wrote:
| Ellison's purchase of the island also included several resort
| hotels and homes. It's likely the income from those does a lot
| to cover his $500 million loss in farming. (It's curious the
| article says nothing about his yield from that side of the
| island.)
|
| In the end, it's likely that Ellison's grand farming enterprise
| on a luxury resort island was always just a promotional stunt
| and was never intended to be sustainable or profitable. His
| strategy was to employ none of the resources essential to any
| business' success, like knowing your market or hiring staff who
| know even the basics of the trade (farming). Instead he hires
| supercomputer architect Danny Hillis to reinvent agriculture?
| Sure. What could go wrong?
| cakealert wrote:
| The killer app would be to figure out how to genetically engineer
| good plant flesh economically in a bioreactor.
|
| Imagine strawberry,pineapple,etc slurry production by the metric
| ton. With the only input into the facility being atmospheric
| gasses and electricity.
|
| There would also be huge room for optimization in such a process,
| such as introduction of antifreeze proteins (as some fish have)
| to allow storage of various fruit at freezing temperatures
| without loss of quality.
| floatrock wrote:
| We'd name it Slurry Red or Slurry Yellow, right?
|
| Maybe Slurry Green for the melon flavor.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Don't tell Larry about all of the startups in the Midwest who are
| actually making progress on this.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Is this a joke about conventional mechanized farming working
| well enough as it is or has there been serious progress in the
| AgTech sector? The last time I read of it the big developments
| were hydroponics and tractors that burned weeds with a laser
| beam.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| There's been real progress, and Larry's got a long history of
| gutting people who make real progress because he just thinks
| of anything sitting on a database as a way to push Oracle
| licenses while increasing his personal net worth.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| what's the real progress, though?
|
| I'm a midwesterner originally and I'm genuinely curious
| what you're referencing.
| nineplay wrote:
| Why don't you tell us about all them?
| azinman2 wrote:
| Don't have a WSJ account so can't read the article, and the
| archive link posted doesn't work for me. It sounds like this was
| a greenhouse based business? What I'm excited by (perhaps naively
| so) are the startups using robots to zap weeds and do other
| things to reduce chemical usage. Anyone know the status of these
| companies, and if there's anything intrinsically wrong with the
| approach?
| antasvara wrote:
| I think the approaches usually fail because commercial farming
| with chemical fertilizer is pretty efficient and optimized to
| work at a large scale.
|
| A lot of agtech startups (think vertical farming) just don't
| get this. They don't understand where the inefficiencies are,
| or how their approach loses efficiency at commercial-farming
| scale, or how the approach doesn't integrate with other
| necessary machinery, etc.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Vertical farming might be having trouble but a very closely
| related cousin, the Dutch greenhouse, is doing fantastically.
| The differences are subtle because Dutch greenhouses have
| been used to vertically farm crops as well (though not
| separated in the same way that vertical farms are) and use
| artificial lighting. The subtle differences matter and that's
| why iteration in the space is so good.
|
| The surface level discussion in this thread griping over
| Ellison's approach is probably the least interesting aspect
| of agtech to discuss but is the one that most people have an
| opinion on and generates the most engagement which is why
| this thread is filled with it.
| WillAdams wrote:
| The thing is, there are some hard numbers and some fundamental
| truths which someone is going to have to find answers for:
|
| - peak oil is happening (or has happened)
|
| - current industrial farming techniques burn up to 10 calories of
| petro-chemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy (not an
| inconsiderate portion of which is fertilizer runoff into
| waterways and oceans)
|
| - in the past century the bony fish biomass has plummeted to
| below the weight of shipping tonnage in the world's oceans:
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/
|
| As I've noted before, my grandfather lived in a time when
| commercial hunting was outlawed --- I worry that my children will
| live in a time when commercial fishing is no longer viable.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > current industrial farming techniques burn up to 10 calories
| of petro-chemical energy to get 1 calorie of food energy
|
| The phrase "up to" is doing heavy lifting there.
|
| In particular, this would be production of beef. Production of
| grains is much more efficient, as is production of poultry,
| fish, or pork.
|
| It should be noted that in the US, agriculture uses a very
| small fraction (about 1%) of total primary energy consumption
| (not counting the sunlight being used by the plants). We use
| more energy cooking food than we do growing it.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Almonds also are notable for requiring a great deal of energy
| (mostly for transporting water for irrigation).
| floatrock wrote:
| 1.9% according to this USDA link
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-
| note/chart-...
|
| But,
|
| > Large amounts of natural gas are required in the
| manufacturing of fertilizer and pesticide, so these amounts
| are categorized as indirect energy consumption on farms.
|
| So seeing as modern industrial agriculture only exists
| because of the Haber-Bosch process and pesticides, but those
| are counted as indirect inputs, your phrase "primary energy
| consumption" is also doing a fair amount of heavy lifting.
|
| And that's not counting all of the supply and cold chains
| needed to get that food to your supermarket. All these
| hydroponic/indoor-fresh-greens startups are largely about
| breaking even on the product-to-market side of things.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Primary energy consumption is the right metric here, since
| it's a 1:1 accounting of inputs to HB, chemical
| manufacture, and fuels for vehicles. Not a whole lot of
| electrical input there.
|
| In any case, the amount is small compared to society as a
| whole, and today's energy intensive agriculture could be
| sustained even with entirely renewable inputs, although at
| a cost. It's a small problem compared to shifting the
| larger economy off fossil fuels.
| floatrock wrote:
| Not saying it's not the right metric, I'm saying the
| "1.9% to agriculture" number isn't including fertilizers,
| chemicals, or supply chains so the food isn't rotting in
| your silo. It does include fuel for tractors on the farm
| though.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I believe it IS including those. From the link:
|
| "Large amounts of natural gas are required in the
| manufacturing of fertilizer and pesticide, so these
| amounts are categorized as indirect energy consumption on
| farms. Overall, about three-fifths of energy in 2016 used
| in the agricultural sector was consumed directly on-farm,
| while two-fifths were consumed indirectly in the form of
| fertilizer and pesticides."
| floatrock wrote:
| It's ambiguous, so I regret posting the link. Usually in
| energy accounting, "indirect" means "accounting puts it
| into a different category, but we acknowledge that other
| category wouldn't be making it if the demand for them
| wasn't here in this category and we differentiate it so
| we don't double-count it". Scope 1 vs Scope 2 & 3 in
| carbon-reporting land, if you will.
|
| Combining primary and indirect energy is possible, I
| suppose, but it's not how it's usually done? So I gave a
| shit link, emissions reporting is dead for at least the
| next 4 years, and so none of this matters anyways cause
| we're just burning our way into prosperity for the
| foreseeable future.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I'm no fan of Ellison, but better to be putting money into this
| than entertainment, social networks, the Metaverse, or even AI.
| aurizon wrote:
| One of the early proponents and perhaps a driver, was Dickson
| Despommier, who just passed.
|
| https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-1195/
|
| Part of the problem was excess automation. Another problem was
| taxes in some cities who wanted the industrial taxes of the
| abandoned buildings of yore to be asserted.
|
| It had promise and some success, as they could exclude pests have
| 24/7 optimal LED light. Many focussed on fast salad crops = fast
| cycle and the high volumetric cost of freight to northern cities
| in winter. For those interested, youtube has a list of failed
| startups and some promotional ones
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=vertical+farmin....
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| What he wants is automated food production in his creepy
| autonomous Hawaii sub-nation, which fits with all the other
| Atlas Shrugged "hidden valley" dreams of the SV ultrarich.
|
| He probably did it this way to make it tax deductible or
| depreciable to setup his farming operations.
|
| He doesn't care squat about the world in general.
| westurner wrote:
| Notes for Lanai island from an amateur:
|
| Hemp is useful for soil remediation because it's so absorbent;
| which is part of why testing is important.
|
| Is there already a composting business?
|
| Do the schools etc. already compost waste food?
|
| "Show HN: We open-sourced our compost monitoring tech"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42201207
|
| Canadian greenhouses? Chinese-Mongolian-Canadian greenhouses are
| wing shaped and set against a berm;
|
| "Passive Solar Greenhouse Technology From China?"
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=FOgyK6Jieq0&
|
| Transparent wood requires extracting the lignin.
|
| Transparent aluminum requires a production process, too.
|
| There are polycarbonate hurricane panels.
|
| Reflective material on one wall of the wallipini greenhouse (and
| geothermal) is enough to grow citrus fruit through the winter in
| Alliance, Nebraska. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927538
|
| Glass allows more wavelengths of light through than plastic or
| recyclable polycarbonate; including UV-C, which is sanitizing
|
| Hydrogen peroxide cleans out fish tanks FWIU.
|
| Various plastics are food safe, but not when they've been in the
| sun all day.
|
| To make aircrete, you add soap bubbles to concrete with an air
| compressor.
|
| /? aircrete dome build in HI and ground anchors
|
| Catalan masonry vault roofs (in Spain, Italy, Mexico, Arizona,)
| are strong, don't require temporary arches, and passively cool
| most efficiently when they have an oculus to let the heat rise
| out of the dome to openable vents to the wind.
|
| U.S. state and territory temperature extremes:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_tempe... :
|
| > Hawaii: 15 degF (-9.4 degC) to 100 degF (37.8 degC)
|
| > Nebraska: -47 degF (-43.9 degC) to 118 degF (47.8 degC)
|
| "140-year-old ocean heat tech could supply islands with limitless
| energy" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38222695 :
|
| > _OTEC:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conver
| sio... _
|
| North Carolina is ranked 4th in solar, has solar farms, and has
| hurricanes (and totally round homes on stilts). FWIU there are
| hurricane-rated solar panels, flexible racks, ground mounts.
|
| https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20092018/hurricane-floren...
|
| "Sargablock: Bricks from Seaweed"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37188180
|
| "Turning pineapple skins into soap and other cleaning products"
| https://www.businessinsider.com/turning-pineapple-skins-into...
|
| "Costa Rica Let a Juice Company Dump Their Orange Peels in the
| Forest--and It Helped"
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/costa-rica-let-jui...
| https://www.sciencealert.com/how-12-000-tonnes-of-dumped-ora...
| didntknowyou wrote:
| it wasn't a philantropic or revolutionary attempt. it was his
| venture to grow his luxury fruits for money- which is struggling
| because he is hiring friends with no agricultural background.
| rozap wrote:
| "city boy tries to grow a plant" is a whole genre of hubris
| that is always entertaining.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| can't wait to watch the failures of agriculture on mars. well
| actually nevermind because people will die.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| As long as you have a dozen potatoes, some human poop, a
| sample of earth soil for necessary nutrients and bacteria,
| and rocket fuel to burn to make water, it should be pretty
| easy.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Sabatier reaction also rocks in this context. CO2 + O2 =>
| methane with water as a byproduct.
|
| So all you really need is hydrogen. And conveniently part
| of the water you produce or harvest can be split into H2
| and O2.
|
| The absurd convenience of such things realllly makes one
| think more deeply about the simulation hypothesis.
| acdha wrote:
| If you can't think of reasons why it would be harder than
| that, consider that you might want to read up on the
| problem first before saying it's easy. For example,
| you're assuming compatible soil (no), nutrients (also
| no), and the absence of toxins (again no).
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01158-6
|
| Another way of looking at: have humans over-wintered in
| Antarctica without relying on outside inputs? That's a
| much easier problem on multiple scales (oxygen, soil,
| temperature, water, etc.) so I wouldn't take any mars
| proposal seriously before they've sent the same equipment
| to Antarctica and survived longer than the proposed
| mission.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Antarctica isn't this great example people think it is.
| International treaties require people leave it in as
| close to its natural condition as possible.
|
| Taking a piss outside is illegal, even peoples crap has
| to be collected and shipped back home. Any sort of
| development is essentially impossible.
|
| And that article is an interview with the hipster
| cartoonist who wrote a largely junk science book on
| Mars..
| acdha wrote:
| Multiple countries have bases in Antarctica, so it seems
| unlikely that a spacecraft-sized addition to the 50 acre
| McMurdo station is the proverbial straw on the camel's
| back for a continent's environment. Reusing human waste
| shouldn't be a problem, either, since the proposals are
| to use that as fertilizer - it's awfully expensive not to
| use everything that you shipped between planets!
|
| And, yes, I linked to a best-selling popular science book
| at the level of the conversation here. I should note that
| the book has two authors, and the first one isn't the
| illustrator but the professional biologist. You're
| welcome to provide dissenting views if you want, I'm sure
| they wouldn't claim to be the last word on the topic.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| Neither Antarctica or Mars should be a problem, as long
| as you have sufficient energy source, and bring some soil
| & nutrients with you. After all, people make money
| growing weed indoors with only electrical lights. My
| country has freezing and dark winters, yet we enjoy fresh
| tomatoes all around the year, grown in heated greenhouses
| with extra artificial light.
| acdha wrote:
| I'm not saying it's beyond possible, only that it's not
| "easy". If someone is saying that we can colonize Mars,
| it's orders of magnitude easier to send the same payload
| to Antarctica and see if it works somewhere that, say, a
| failure in the air processing system can avoid loss of
| life by opening the windows.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I am not sure why you got downvoted but probably they did
| not watch 'the Martian'.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i hope this is sarcasm because this is exactly what i'm
| talking about. i will not be joining you on that endeavor
| but more power to you. good luck!
| floatrock wrote:
| "how do you grow a winery with a small fortune? Start with a
| large fortune"
|
| - silicon valley joke since at least the dot com bubble
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Except it's not especially hard? I, and I'm sure many of us,
| have decent little home gardens.
|
| For fruit trees you have to do literally nothing to get just
| massive amounts of fruit that tends to constantly scale up as
| the trees grow. Highly recommended.
|
| Lots of other stuff is completely easy mode as well. Leave
| potatoes out long enough and they start trying to sprout!
| 'Potato boxes' are another super easy high output plant
| anybody can do.
| mlinhares wrote:
| You can always count on someone thinking doing some
| unscalable thing and it being "easy" will scale for an
| actual operation that needs to make money.
|
| Farming is only easy for the people that have never farmed
| before.
| tdeck wrote:
| I once lived in a house that had an apple tree in the back
| yard. Tons of apples at the start of the season.
|
| But then squirrels and deer would come by and rip them off
| one by one, before they were ripe, taking a single bite and
| leaving them on the ground. These same animals ate almost
| my entire vegetable garden, including things deer aren't
| supposed to like such as potato plants and black mustard.
|
| It's a great project to get you outside but there are so
| many ways to be disappointed.
| 83 wrote:
| That's just circling back on "city boy tries to grow a
| plant". Your garden provided you with both fruit and
| meat. You were just unwilling/unable to harvest the meat.
| tdeck wrote:
| I'm not sure it's legal to kill deer in Berkeley, but
| they were also very cute.
| nradov wrote:
| It's coming right for us!
| tuumi wrote:
| I grew up in NW lower Michigan. Cherry and other fruit tree
| country. Orchards need a lot of labor to maintain to get
| marketable fruit. I've seen several go wild and become deer
| feed. Also, they don't really scale as the grow as you need
| to spend more on infrastructure. Orchards now plant dwarf
| rootstock. This results in trees that bear fruit quicker
| but don't grow much larger that a human can pick by hand.
| They need a lot of care (water and pruning) relative to
| larger trees but the economics of the larger trees don't
| work as well as they take many years to bear fruit and then
| they need the infrastructure to prune and harvest because
| they are so big. It's not a simple thing at all.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| You should tell all the PhD agronomists at ISU they are
| wasting their lives before it's too late.
|
| Running a farm profitably vs planting a tree or garden is
| the difference between a successful startup and a hello
| world app. You are incorrect to trivialize farming.
| rozap wrote:
| Scaling crops is not like scaling software.
| acdha wrote:
| > For fruit trees you have to do literally nothing to get
| just massive amounts of fruit that tends to constantly
| scale up as the trees grow. Highly recommended.
|
| What are you growing and where? In Southern California, I
| got high yields of lemons but had to irrigate more water
| than is naturally available, fertilize, and worry about
| frost damage every winter. Apples were similar except they
| didn't mind the cold snaps but they needed careful
| thinning.
|
| On the East coast, all fruit requires heavy efforts to
| avoid animals taking most of the harvest and there are
| diseases like rust which lowered the apple, pear, and
| service berry yields to zero. Things like persimmons do
| better but need consistent pruning to avoid storm damage.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Perfect showcase of aforementioned city boy hubris,
| equating a small home garden with some trees to a modern
| day farming operation.
|
| Growing 100 potatoes is not even in the same stratosphere
| of complexity and logistics as growing 100,000 potatoes.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Easy to grow plant. Hard to make living, if you don't
| subsidise it with other work or income.
|
| Say apples as mentioned elsewhere 1,40EUR to 3,60EUR kilogram
| price now in mid winter in supermarket... 14% VAT. Then whole
| supply chain, stores cut, losses... And all the work that
| needs to go into each tree, collecting those apples and so
| on... Food is amazingly cheap. Margins are very thin in
| general.
|
| Much simpler to sit in air-conditioned office or remote work
| and make more money.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I've seen this time and again in this space. Thick out the MiT
| openag project. Same thing, nonsense.
|
| The folks who are successful don't call themselves tech people,
| they're farmers. To be successful in this business you need to
| eliminate the hubris and just be a farmer.
| worik wrote:
| > To be successful in this business you need to eliminate the
| hubris and just be a farmer.
|
| Yes.
|
| That is not to say that farming is not due for some
| revolutionary redefining.
|
| But it will be farmers leading the change, not software
| people
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Exactly. It's companies like John Deere who automate their
| combines, not software/automation companies learning how to
| make combines, that have been (and I expect will continue
| to be) successful.
| tombert wrote:
| Not a farmer, but I think it's a mistake to say that
| farmers haven't modernized.
|
| I saw some videos about more modern farms, and they utilize
| drones, GPS, and a whole litany of other bits of modern
| tech to help with the farming stuff.
|
| I agree that it needs to be farmers leading the change, but
| I don't think that the farming world is as primitive as
| people seem to think it is.
| graycat wrote:
| Ah, my father in law was a farmer, grew wheat, corn, soy
| beans, but sometimes raised chickens. Along with the
| corn, when he fed the chickens anchovies from Chile he
| noticed rapid growth, called the little fish a _growth
| factor_.
|
| Wellllll, long before his growth factor, we assumed we
| knew what a good _balanced_ diet for chickens was. Then,
| presto, bingo, the issue was what barrels of fish, soy
| beans, ..., to feed the chickens to provide the diet for
| minimum cost. Right: Linear programming, the "diet
| problem", applied math in farming!
| neuralRiot wrote:
| >soy beans, ..., to feed the chickens to provide the diet
| for minimum cost.
|
| Which points to the irony of all this. The real goal of
| the "project" is not better nutrition or more efficient
| farming, is a marketable product. You want to know how to
| make it more nutritious, cheaper, sustainable, healthier
| and efficient? Eliminate animal farming and feed humans
| directly.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| The only people who think that farming is "primitive" in
| a modern economy have only themselves to blame for being
| completely uninformed.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| This hasn't been true in practice. For example, farmers did
| not lead the small sat revolution that's democratized the
| use of satellite imaging for farm management. They did go
| "wow!" when the option was presented to them, but
| technologists saw the use case (and its immense utility)
| before most of their customers did.
| anthony_d wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're saying here. Farmers certainly
| didn't launch satellites or write the software on them,
| but I don't think anyone would expect or want that.
|
| Long ago, when I was young though, the first satellite
| imaging I saw was at my uncles farm. This was dedicated
| equipment in his home office with a simple UI with
| ridiculously high res satellite imagery of all the nearby
| land. This was way beyond anything a PC was capable of at
| the time. Definitely felt like he was on the bleeding
| edge.
| tdeck wrote:
| Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower.
| hibikir wrote:
| I've worked in many an ag company: All the ideas Sensei
| supposedly has are in in way innovative: places like
| Monsanto/Bayer had been trying to do work in those directions a
| decade ago, and it's not as if they were short of people that
| understand agriculture. But as far as I am aware, most of the
| efforts in those companies have been scaled back.
|
| The fact of the matter is that agriculture startups have as
| nasty a failure rate as most other kinds of startups, but they
| take far longer, and far more money, until we reach the point
| that it's clear that they've reach said terminal state. I could
| name a couple that have been running for 6+ years with no
| revenue, and where insiders claim there's minimal prospects of
| the effort going anywhere, but there are some VCs that are
| happy keeping said 100+ employee startups running with no
| output anyway.
| schainks wrote:
| Yeah seems like you'd want to either copy, poach, or acquire
| the talent at Oishii, no? They look like they know what they
| are doing, although it's not consumer cheap yet, and the
| economics might never be.
| Over3Chars wrote:
| TL;DR tech bro's underestimate the difficulty of farming. News at
| 11.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and
| flamebait? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it
| is for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the
| intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
| tycho-newman wrote:
| Farming is an old human activity and it took us thousands of
| years to work out how to do it competently. We had to invent
| Haber-Bosch fertilizers and genetic engineering to get us to
| basically permanent surplus.
|
| Honestly not surprised this is so hard. The area was pineapple
| plantation for years, and the plantation owners were not great
| stewards of the land. No amount of money can fix decades of
| shitty land stewardship. It's just time and effort.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| I am not a fan of Larry so take the next sentences as an odd way
| to confirm bias and maybe this is why I am responding to it now..
|
| Anyway, in order to change something ( implicitly for the
| better.. one hopes ), one should be able to know the current
| approach. Based on the articicle itself ("It has also stumbled
| from farming inexperience."), that is not the case.
| etchalon wrote:
| There is a weird belief in SV that if you don't know anything,
| but have access to a lot of capital, you can build a better
| solution.
|
| This has yet to really prove itself to be the case.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| "<insert semi-fact taken out of context regarding something
| you don't know about>
|
| We are fixing this."
| poslathian wrote:
| https://www.folklore.org/Whats_A_Megaflop.html
| bobbygoodlatte wrote:
| Hasn't this worked out in a few cases? Maybe Uber as a better
| solution than taxis as an example?
| spankalee wrote:
| Uber was far more incremental than most people remember
| now. It started as a luxury black-car reservation service,
| something better than calling a specific transportation
| company, and something analogous to other application /
| marketplace plays. Uber gain experience there to later
| disrupt a whole industry.
|
| And taxis were already a very regulated industry, that
| isn't actually that old. Not only was there on-going
| change, side-stepping regulations was one of the biggest
| advantages. It's not the same as claiming to be able
| leapfrog many hundreds of years of development on
| greenhouse farming.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| There has been massive innovation in the area in the last
| forty years or so. This isn't leapfrogging but attempting
| to scale up what is known to already work.
|
| Netherlands invested heavily in agricultural technology
| in the 70/80s, they are now one of the biggest food
| exporters in the world despite being one of the world's
| smallest countries. No-one thought this was possible, I
| assume there was someone somewhere who said that all the
| innovation was done, no leapfrogging, etc.
| (unsurprisingly, the only positive quote in the article
| is from an academic who works in the area and is aware
| the model has been proven). Indeed, you do actually see
| this today where people argue that it is pointless to try
| to produce food anymore, just ship it on polluting cargo
| ships...that will save the environment.
|
| And, to be clear, the main issue with this is that it is
| politically disruptive. NL are tearing this industry
| apart. They have a gusher of cash, and are trying to shut
| it down. The article isn't about a man spending $500m on
| technological innovation...if he succeeded with this
| model, was making billions like NL, there would still be
| an article attempting to shut it down (and, if NL is
| anything to go by, succeeding).
|
| Economic growth and innovation are very unpopular. Never
| forget this.
| etchalon wrote:
| Uber was a better consumer experience, but I don't know
| that it's really a "better solution" than taxis.
|
| It was unprofitable until literally this quarter, and the
| majority of that profit was, I believe, earned from food
| delivery services.
| oblio wrote:
| And the other thing, Uber became super popular because it
| was subsidized by VC money and fares were cheap.
|
| Now that it's established... it isn't generally cheaper
| than taxis, it just has a slightly better app, though in
| many places that's not true anymore.
|
| Oh, and to add insult to injury, you know how the taxi
| groups lobbied against public transportation, for example
| to airports? AWESOME, now there aren't just a bunch of
| local SMBs doing that, now there is an international mega
| corp doing that too.
| simonsarris wrote:
| In a sense the invention of farming itself was a bunch of
| neolithic hackers fooling around with nature, which they
| knew almost nothing about, until they got it right.
| daveguy wrote:
| The weirdest part to me, especially with that kind of money,
| is the lack of bringing in external expertise. There are a
| _lot_ of ag experts that are up to date on the latest
| greenhouse, climate, and plant science. Many colleges in the
| US started as agriculture schools and still have strong
| agriculture programs. With Ellison 's money it is baffling
| why they didn't bring in a team of these experts to point out
| the basics like "use ag tech from similar climates", "test ag
| tech in smaller facilities first", and "gather local farming
| knowledge". Why in the world would someone put a medical
| doctor in charge of an ag tech venture?
|
| Move fast and break things seems to only work in software
| where "broken" means roll back to the previous state. But we
| have a ridiculous amount of wealth tied up with billionaire
| fools who think that this is the most efficient way to make
| progress. At this point, SV takeover of capital is actively
| detrimental to progress that benefits the average person and
| economy.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Every significant technological innovation has been
| accompanied by an investment bubble. The point is that there
| is a competition for the best solution in terms of money.
|
| The context of these comments often imply that at no point
| before SV existed did anyone invest large amounts of money in
| something that failed to work.
|
| The reason why economic growth is rare (most economic growth
| that occurs globally is due to the impact of technology
| invented outside the country, 95% of countries globally have
| zero organic growth) is because it is extremely disruptive
| and means that someone with nothing other than money, who may
| not have been approved by society can invent something.
|
| The point about disrupt vs reform above is correct...it just
| ignores the fact that reform has never been successful
| (despite it being repeatedly tried by politicians) because
| economic growth is so damaging to vested interests (there are
| multiple books about this topic, Innovator's Dilemma is
| one...I worked as an equity analyst, the number of examples
| of a company actually turning it around when faced with
| technological change are very few, the number of examples of
| a company bailing-in taxpayers due to political connections
| when faced with technological change is too large to count,
| this is particularly case outside the US because so much
| technological change comes from the US so calls to "protect"
| domestic industry are frequent and economically crippling).
| fnord77 wrote:
| Disruption doesn't come from "experts".
|
| Computer science experts could have never built facebook or
| twitter.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| I think the likes of Uber & Starlink might have to disagree.
|
| Often real disruption occurs from people you wouldn't expect
| mmooss wrote:
| Isn't this rehashing the disrupt-vs-reform issue? I guess I am
| concerned that people are surprised every time someone like
| Ellison does it.
|
| Personally, I think it's laziness - too lazy to plan it out
| better, to learn what you are dealing with, to find outcomes
| that benefit someone other than yourself.
|
| But there is something to be said for disruption, and
| understanding it won't be perfect immediately but can be
| improved beyond the current situation.
|
| It's sort of like overthrowing a dictatorship and replacing it
| with democracy - the first few years are tough, but the future
| goes far beyond any dictatorship (it's called, in some places,
| a J curve).
|
| But that doesn't excuse the laziness in any way, or that often
| these people do it for only their own benefit.
|
| [edited]
| Kapura wrote:
| Is it laziness, or is it hubris? In a world where some people
| are told what they do is so good they essentially have
| infinite wealth, it's hard to convince them that any specific
| decision they make is an error.
| renewedrebecca wrote:
| and no error will really cost them that much, anyway.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > Isn't this rehashing the disrupt-vs-reform issue? I guess I
| am concerned that people are surprised every time someone
| like Ellison does it.
|
| ... how often does that happen? Usually it's just illegal
| cabs or e-waste littering as a service.
| lokar wrote:
| For me, "disrupt" is forever tainted by all the startups
| whose only real innovation was aggressively breaking the law
| until they were too big to police.
| cameron_b wrote:
| I'm fairly blown-away at the mission statement: "improve human
| nutrition and preserve the environment by growing food indoors"
|
| Adding a building doesn't improve the environment, so for
| starters you're in the hole, for energy, you're in the hole
| (pending solar and thermal recovery, each with environmental
| impact of their own)...
|
| Larry, let's talk. There's for sure a use for greenhouses,
| sensors, all the tech, but let's focus on the soil.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Works where archive.ph is blocked:
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/technology/larry-ellison-s-h...
|
| Text-only:
|
| https://assets.msn.com/content/view/v2/Detail/en-in/AA1zDBe7
| larodi wrote:
| How does s.o. in his 80s look this well? Even considering the
| possibility of plastic surgery. Even on his 2010 photo in
| wikipedia he looks so insanely younger, perhaps 45 or
| something...
| ozten wrote:
| "People, no offense, don't really love cucumbers. There wasn't as
| sustainable a market for it," Agus said.
|
| Maybe stick to "secret" warrantless surveillance on US citizens.
| rmason wrote:
| As a former agronomist this makes as much sense to me as starting
| a database company where no one understands databases. Without an
| agronomist how do you know what could be possible from what is
| clearly impossible?
| throw7 wrote:
| I just find it funny how tech executives couldn't even make and
| run a stable wifi network.
| mediaoracle wrote:
| Not sure why the headline has been editorialized.
|
| "Larry Ellison's Half-Billion-Dollar Quest to Change Farming Has
| Been a Bust"
| NoPicklez wrote:
| Seeing lots of "he knows nothing about farming", sure he might
| not know as much about farming as the farmers who live it day to
| day. But he has money and access to bring farmers along for the
| journey and build something better.
|
| A lot of true disruption comes from people you'd never expect to
| have had an impact, because they aren't myopic to the pre-
| conceived challenges of that industry.
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