6 ms·

Pretty light on details, even the website of this company itself. The claim of being able to feed 150 people off 2 acres (about 1 hectare, for those of us who l

by roel_v 10y ago

Pretty light on details, even the website of this company itself. The claim of being able to feed 150 people off 2 acres (about 1 hectare, for those of us who like to think in units that make sense) is a pretty wild one. Maybe you could grow potatoes with [150 x 1700 x 365] calories in them in a climate where you can grow year round, but that's surely not what they're insinuating in their marketing pictures.

sweettea 10y ago
Jean-Martin Fortier, in Quebec (not known for its balmy climate), successfully runs a 200-family CSA on 1.5 acres, which is an even higher level of intensive cropping than this box proposes. No, not everything can be grown on 2 acres for 150 people, but you can grow all the vegetables needed.
- saycheese 10y ago
  "Rise of the High-Profit Micro Farm" appears to cover the topic in depth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310038
- roel_v 10y ago
  A CSA with 200 customers != 'feed 200 people'. Yes with intensive agriculture methods you can grow enough to harvest 150 or 200 boxes of vegetables a week during most part of the year; that's still only - what? 10, 20% at most of the calorie intake of those people? And most of those calories are carbs, too - there's going to be very little protein and fat in those boxes. And not year round, either. Again, yes you can grow lots of potatoes (potatoes are better than e.g. corn for this purpose because they keep better than corn with only slightly lower caloric yield per area unit. Yes you can process corn e.g. into flour but that then has to be calculated into the total energy input, and it requires much more preparation afterwards to turn it back into edible food; again with high energy inputs) for a few years (need to rotate crops, especially nightshade family crops) to close the gap over the winter season; but fill your boxes with potatoes and a pumpkin here or there for 3 months once and watch your subscriptions plummet next spring. People don't generally believe me when I say this, but I've made this point often: for self-sufficiency and/or small scale farming like the GP is proposing, you need a hectare (2 acres) to feed a family year-round. The reason people don't want to believe this is because it shows that it's impossible to do this sort of farming at scale, because there simply isn't enough land to feed everybody this way. So we need industrial scale farming today to produce the food people want in the quantities we need it. I say this as someone with a 1 hectare experimental alternative agriculture plot; it's not that I don't want better, more sustainable agriculture systems. It's just that the 'solutions' being proposed are wildly insufficient, and I'm not talking double digit percentages, but orders of magnitude. How do we fix it - I don't know. But I do (by now) recognize snake oil and sophistry when I see it.
ComputerGuru 10y ago
I would say corn, then potato. But you're right, the startup isn't being all that forthcoming with details and it's likely their claims are (greatly) exaggerated, or perhaps, from a purely "well, technically..." point-of-view. There's an excellent article that champions the calories-per-acre metric by WP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-... In the calorie department, corn is king [..] corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre [..] wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million. Rice is also very high-yielding, at 11 million, and potatoes are one of the few crops that can rival corn: They also yield about 15 million [..] Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million
- adrianN 10y ago
  The very optimistic 150 * 1700 * 365 metric above means that you need 93 Million / 15 Million = ~6.2 acres.
- chiph 10y ago
  These are 1st year or 2nd year numbers. The output per-acre will steadily decline afterwards unless you know to set some land aside to be fallow and grow something that will return nitrogen to the soil. And like was mentioned by dghughes, rotation is important. From about the middle ages to the early 20th century, European farmers practiced the three-crop rotation scheme. Winter wheat or rye in one field, peas, lentils or beans in a second, and the third would be "resting". It got replaced in Britain and Belgium with the four-crop rotation plan, which produced more calories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation
- chrissnell 10y ago
  If I was designing a two-acre farm to feed my family, I wouldn't devote much space to corn. Corn is a very useful crop but mostly once it's processed and you need a lot of it. Here's what I think I'd grow: Potatoes - Incredibly easy to grow. Produces a ton of food. Can be grown in trash cans on otherwise unusable land. Very versatile and useful in so many cuisines. If I had to place my bets on one staple crop, it's potatoes. Green beans (Blue Lake variety or similar) - Also very easy to grow. You trellis them and they don't take up a lot of ground space. Incredibly bountiful crop--you'll have trash bags full from 50 sq ft of beans. Puts nutrients back in the soil--very good crop to rotate. Kale - Nutritious, versatile crop. Easy to grow. Tomatoes - Nutritious and so easy to grow. Can be grown vertically in raised pots for more space efficiency. Tomatillos - Tasty, good for sauces. These grow as voraciously as the green beans. Pumpkins, squashes, etc. - These are wandering vines so you can plant them in good soil on the edge of unusable land and let them grow out over the areas that you couldn't plant in. Various lettuces - Not easy to grow--they're susceptible to pests and they bolt as soon as the weather gets too warm--but they grow fast and if your family likes salad, you'll eat a lot of them.
devoply 10y ago
Yeah farming is by far one of the hardest businesses in developed economy. It's a good idea for schools and the like, you know just to get the community spirit going and get in touch with nature, and other hippie stuff like that. But the reality is this is going to make not an iota of difference in the world. What is needed are better policies and laws on ethical farming, and holding up corporate conglomerates up to those laws.
yann63 10y ago
There's a gardeners society here (Les Jardiniers de France) which sells a set of packets of seeds which are said to be able to grow on 200m2 and feed a family of 4 people.
- roel_v 10y ago
  They probably say 'grow vegetables for a family of 4'. On 200m2, you'd have an abundance of vegetables, yes; at least in warm climates like in southern France. But not enough to be self-sufficient, and a 200m2 traditional vegetable garden is a lot of work, too (one day a week, averaged over the year, probably?).
  - lmickh 10y ago
    Takes a bit more then that to make a 200m2 plot thrive. My experience has been that it would roughly equate to 3-4 days of 4-6hrs. That is assuming you are keeping on top of all of the tasks and not using any serious tooling. If you do that and have good conditions/knowledge, you'll see a density that is enough to provide for 4 and generate a small surplus.
jaclaz 10y ago
I have troubles in computing the BOM (Bill Of Materials) of such a thing. 1) a container 2) a tin shed leaning on it on one side 3) a small plastic? nursery/seeding house on the other side 4) a 3 Kwh solar plant (including batteries, etc.) 5) a bunch of pumps (and I presume pipes) for drip irrigation 6) web connectivity 7) possibly a bunch of hand farming tools do not sum up to costs that justify the US$ 50,000/60,000 sell price, maybe I am missing something very relevant? And - though admittedly I am not an agriculture expert - the 150 people feeding out of 1 hectare sounds like an extremely tall story to me, I would think more at around 10/15 people per acre (in a proper, fertile piece of land with good climate).
- atourgates 10y ago
  I was trying to do the math here too. Here's what I came up with. 1) Shipping Container - ~$2,000 2) Tin Shed - Maybe another ~$1,000 3) Hoop Greenhouse - ~$400 [1] 4) 3Kwh Solar Plant with Batteries - ~$8,500 [2] 5) 2 Acre Drip Irrigation System - ~$3,000 [3] 6) WiFi Access - $1,000 (I have no idea what hardware/capabilities they're delivering here, but it seems like that's a safe number) 7) A Bunch of Hand Farming Tools - $1,000 (Another guesstimate) 8) A 1,000 gallon water storage tank - ~$700 [4] So that takes us to about $17,600. Let's add another $5,000 for preparation, packaging, research and educational materials. Let's add another $5,000 for stuff that's more expensive than my guesstimates, and remove nothing for the article's claimed efficiencies that makes this so much more cost-effective than buying a la carte. That still only puts us at $28,000, so either there's something I'm totally missing here, or this is total BS. [1] http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/16-foot-wide-cold-frame/cold-frames http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/16-foot-wide-cold... [2] http://www.bimblesolar.com/3kwcomplete-sunny-island http://www.bimblesolar.com/3kwcomplete-sunny-island [3] https://www.berryhilldrip.com/Kit-Pro-2-This-Complete-Kit-will-includes-all-the-essentials-for-a-2-ACRE-crop-using-a-Pond-or-River..html https://www.berryhilldrip.com/Kit-Pro-2-This-Complete-Kit-wi... [4] http://www.plastic-mart.com/category/9/plastic-water-tanks http://www.plastic-mart.com/category/9/plastic-water-tanks
  - RyJones 10y ago
    where are you getting WWT containers for $2k? Last one I was involved in was about $8k for WWT + shipping and picking, which was about another $2k with some minimal site prep (pea gravel and railroad ties). Prices were slightly lower to buy them in Seattle instead of the closest port, but the lower purchase price was offset by the much larger shipping costs

by roel_v 10y ago

sweettea 10y ago

Jean-Martin Fortier, in Quebec (not known for its balmy climate), successfully runs a 200-family CSA on 1.5 acres, which is an even higher level of intensive cropping than this box proposes. No, not everything can be grown on 2 acres for 150 people, but you can grow all the vegetables needed.

saycheese 10y ago
"Rise of the High-Profit Micro Farm" appears to cover the topic in depth: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13310038
roel_v 10y ago
A CSA with 200 customers != 'feed 200 people'. Yes with intensive agriculture methods you can grow enough to harvest 150 or 200 boxes of vegetables a week during most part of the year; that's still only - what? 10, 20% at most of the calorie intake of those people? And most of those calories are carbs, too - there's going to be very little protein and fat in those boxes. And not year round, either. Again, yes you can grow lots of potatoes (potatoes are better than e.g. corn for this purpose because they keep better than corn with only slightly lower caloric yield per area unit. Yes you can process corn e.g. into flour but that then has to be calculated into the total energy input, and it requires much more preparation afterwards to turn it back into edible food; again with high energy inputs) for a few years (need to rotate crops, especially nightshade family crops) to close the gap over the winter season; but fill your boxes with potatoes and a pumpkin here or there for 3 months once and watch your subscriptions plummet next spring. People don't generally believe me when I say this, but I've made this point often: for self-sufficiency and/or small scale farming like the GP is proposing, you need a hectare (2 acres) to feed a family year-round. The reason people don't want to believe this is because it shows that it's impossible to do this sort of farming at scale, because there simply isn't enough land to feed everybody this way. So we need industrial scale farming today to produce the food people want in the quantities we need it. I say this as someone with a 1 hectare experimental alternative agriculture plot; it's not that I don't want better, more sustainable agriculture systems. It's just that the 'solutions' being proposed are wildly insufficient, and I'm not talking double digit percentages, but orders of magnitude. How do we fix it - I don't know. But I do (by now) recognize snake oil and sophistry when I see it.

ComputerGuru 10y ago

I would say corn, then potato. But you're right, the startup isn't being all that forthcoming with details and it's likely their claims are (greatly) exaggerated, or perhaps, from a purely "well, technically..." point-of-view. There's an excellent article that champions the calories-per-acre metric by WP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-corn-the-worlds-most-important-food-crop/2015/07/12/78d86530-25a8-11e5-b77f-eb13a215f593_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-... In the calorie department, corn is king [..] corn averages roughly 15 million calories per acre [..] wheat comes in at about 4 million calories per acre, soy at 6 million. Rice is also very high-yielding, at 11 million, and potatoes are one of the few crops that can rival corn: They also yield about 15 million [..] Broccoli yields about 2.5 million calories per acre, and spinach is under 2 million

adrianN 10y ago
The very optimistic 150 * 1700 * 365 metric above means that you need 93 Million / 15 Million = ~6.2 acres.
chiph 10y ago
These are 1st year or 2nd year numbers. The output per-acre will steadily decline afterwards unless you know to set some land aside to be fallow and grow something that will return nitrogen to the soil. And like was mentioned by dghughes, rotation is important. From about the middle ages to the early 20th century, European farmers practiced the three-crop rotation scheme. Winter wheat or rye in one field, peas, lentils or beans in a second, and the third would be "resting". It got replaced in Britain and Belgium with the four-crop rotation plan, which produced more calories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation
chrissnell 10y ago
If I was designing a two-acre farm to feed my family, I wouldn't devote much space to corn. Corn is a very useful crop but mostly once it's processed and you need a lot of it. Here's what I think I'd grow: Potatoes - Incredibly easy to grow. Produces a ton of food. Can be grown in trash cans on otherwise unusable land. Very versatile and useful in so many cuisines. If I had to place my bets on one staple crop, it's potatoes. Green beans (Blue Lake variety or similar) - Also very easy to grow. You trellis them and they don't take up a lot of ground space. Incredibly bountiful crop--you'll have trash bags full from 50 sq ft of beans. Puts nutrients back in the soil--very good crop to rotate. Kale - Nutritious, versatile crop. Easy to grow. Tomatoes - Nutritious and so easy to grow. Can be grown vertically in raised pots for more space efficiency. Tomatillos - Tasty, good for sauces. These grow as voraciously as the green beans. Pumpkins, squashes, etc. - These are wandering vines so you can plant them in good soil on the edge of unusable land and let them grow out over the areas that you couldn't plant in. Various lettuces - Not easy to grow--they're susceptible to pests and they bolt as soon as the weather gets too warm--but they grow fast and if your family likes salad, you'll eat a lot of them.

devoply 10y ago

Yeah farming is by far one of the hardest businesses in developed economy. It's a good idea for schools and the like, you know just to get the community spirit going and get in touch with nature, and other hippie stuff like that. But the reality is this is going to make not an iota of difference in the world. What is needed are better policies and laws on ethical farming, and holding up corporate conglomerates up to those laws.

yann63 10y ago

There's a gardeners society here (Les Jardiniers de France) which sells a set of packets of seeds which are said to be able to grow on 200m2 and feed a family of 4 people.

roel_v 10y ago
They probably say 'grow vegetables for a family of 4'. On 200m2, you'd have an abundance of vegetables, yes; at least in warm climates like in southern France. But not enough to be self-sufficient, and a 200m2 traditional vegetable garden is a lot of work, too (one day a week, averaged over the year, probably?).
- lmickh 10y ago
  Takes a bit more then that to make a 200m2 plot thrive. My experience has been that it would roughly equate to 3-4 days of 4-6hrs. That is assuming you are keeping on top of all of the tasks and not using any serious tooling. If you do that and have good conditions/knowledge, you'll see a density that is enough to provide for 4 and generate a small surplus.

jaclaz 10y ago

I have troubles in computing the BOM (Bill Of Materials) of such a thing. 1) a container 2) a tin shed leaning on it on one side 3) a small plastic? nursery/seeding house on the other side 4) a 3 Kwh solar plant (including batteries, etc.) 5) a bunch of pumps (and I presume pipes) for drip irrigation 6) web connectivity 7) possibly a bunch of hand farming tools do not sum up to costs that justify the US$ 50,000/60,000 sell price, maybe I am missing something very relevant? And - though admittedly I am not an agriculture expert - the 150 people feeding out of 1 hectare sounds like an extremely tall story to me, I would think more at around 10/15 people per acre (in a proper, fertile piece of land with good climate).

atourgates 10y ago
I was trying to do the math here too. Here's what I came up with. 1) Shipping Container - ~$2,000 2) Tin Shed - Maybe another ~$1,000 3) Hoop Greenhouse - ~$400 [1] 4) 3Kwh Solar Plant with Batteries - ~$8,500 [2] 5) 2 Acre Drip Irrigation System - ~$3,000 [3] 6) WiFi Access - $1,000 (I have no idea what hardware/capabilities they're delivering here, but it seems like that's a safe number) 7) A Bunch of Hand Farming Tools - $1,000 (Another guesstimate) 8) A 1,000 gallon water storage tank - ~$700 [4] So that takes us to about $17,600. Let's add another $5,000 for preparation, packaging, research and educational materials. Let's add another $5,000 for stuff that's more expensive than my guesstimates, and remove nothing for the article's claimed efficiencies that makes this so much more cost-effective than buying a la carte. That still only puts us at $28,000, so either there's something I'm totally missing here, or this is total BS. [1] http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/16-foot-wide-cold-frame/cold-frames http://www.greenhousemegastore.com/product/16-foot-wide-cold... [2] http://www.bimblesolar.com/3kwcomplete-sunny-island http://www.bimblesolar.com/3kwcomplete-sunny-island [3] https://www.berryhilldrip.com/Kit-Pro-2-This-Complete-Kit-will-includes-all-the-essentials-for-a-2-ACRE-crop-using-a-Pond-or-River..html https://www.berryhilldrip.com/Kit-Pro-2-This-Complete-Kit-wi... [4] http://www.plastic-mart.com/category/9/plastic-water-tanks http://www.plastic-mart.com/category/9/plastic-water-tanks
- RyJones 10y ago
  where are you getting WWT containers for $2k? Last one I was involved in was about $8k for WWT + shipping and picking, which was about another $2k with some minimal site prep (pea gravel and railroad ties). Prices were slightly lower to buy them in Seattle instead of the closest port, but the lower purchase price was offset by the much larger shipping costs