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> All of those things affect the ultimate price of the box, and that’s why we have a range from about $50,000 to $60,000. If you were to a la carte all the diff

• cylinder 10y ago
  My scam senses were tingling before I got to the comments. Most likely this is a routine NGO/EDU/Gov scam backed by an aggressive and shiny sales approach.
  • smoodles 10y ago
    This is not a scam. This is the real deal, with years of research and testing behind it. Disclaimer: I know one of the principals directly.
    • roel_v 10y ago
      You should ping them to get them to answer some questions on here.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  • koolba 10y ago
    > Most likely this is a routine NGO/EDU/Gov scam backed by an aggressive and shiny sales approach. And this is why I don't like those Gov (capital G intentional) programs. The scamsters are the best at exploiting them. That's how you end up with things like this: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/free-golf-cart-but-call-it-a-low-speed-neighborhood-vehicle/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/free-golf-cart-but-call-it-a-low...
    • yardie 10y ago
      This reminds of the massive deductions the govt have for commercial trucks. They weren't very specific about what the usage was so everyone bought an expensive H2 Hummer and slapped a business sticker on the back gate. Usually realtors, appraisers, or some mobile DJs.
      • toomanybeersies 10y ago
        New Zealand has something similar. We have a fringe benefits tax, which applies if you drive company vehicles for personal use (since you are gaining something by not having to use your own vehicle). This tax doesn't apply to pickup trucks with business markings of a certain size (and I think they have to be on the side?) that are permanently affixed (so no magnetic stickers). The result is that there's quite a few companies with Toyota Hiluxes and other trucks that don't actually need trucks at all, since they're a service company that has literally nothing to haul. I think that pickup trucks depreciate differently as well, with tax benefits to using them over a sedan.
  • mkaziz 10y ago
    What's an NGO/EDU/Gov scam?
    • NetMonkey 10y ago
      It probably takes many different forms, but the ones I know about go something like this: 1) Government identifies some area that needs focus, usually so they can say they're doing something. 2) A fund is created with whatever the government thinks is enough to sound like they're doing something. 3) Request for proposals on how to spend the money within said area is sent out. 4) Interested parties figure out how to get their hands on the money in the fund. Examples of who will apply: a) Existing companies who try to spin something they already have into something that can give them free money for whatever they were already doing. b) Scammers who have no intention of doing anything of value and simply try to do the minimum to say they tried (like some Kickstarter scams). In best cases the winners are picked based on superficial evaluation of who lives up the criteria and who can bullshit most on paperwork. In worst case winners are picked based on who can provide the best kickbacks, ranging from just professional relations or dinners to actual kickbacks.
      • extrapickles 10y ago
        There is also the well meaning scam where they try to do something good, but have very little ability to actually execute and/or are trying to solve a problem without running the numbers (eg: gravity lights). They can end up going full scam when they refuse to pivot to techniques that would work better when the numbers come in and say their idea doesn't work. These guys don't seem to qualify for this and fall into standard NGO scam, as the wifi/computers/etc in a farm that is destined for the 3rd world just seems to be there to generate buzz and justify their outrageous price tag. It seems like another box of stuff that will break in a year that gets dumped on the third world.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • edblarney 10y ago
        You don't need to be so cynical. In every one of those steps, people usually have good intentions. But the same thing happens anyhow. There is money, managed by people who don't know how to create value.
• cloakandswagger 10y ago
  I was shocked by that too. From what I gleaned from the article, you get a shipping container, some solar panels (and, presumably, batteries), a system on a chip and a drip irrigation system.
  • mi100hael 10y ago
    It's not even clear you actually get a shipping container, just that everything could fit in one (and how could it not? It's just a bunch of hoses, a pump, and some electronics). The shipping container itself would probably be the most valuable part of the package.
• thrwoutacct8 10y ago
  From the article... > We have a three-part training program that comes with the box. One: Covering sustainable farming, making sure everyone knows a little bit in terms of crop rotation, and composting, and intercropping. Two: Covering technology use and maintenance, making sure that the individuals know how to maintain and troubleshoot all of the components of the farm. Three: Farming as an enterprise, making sure that there is a market-based approach to farming. It's not just 2 acres of irrigation equipment and a solar-powered raspberry pi. There's at least initial support to help improve odds of success. Not saying that bumps to $50,000 in value in material terms. Just pointing out you don't just get a box dropped off on your driveway.
  • toomanybeersies 10y ago
    So you get some American boffin telling you how you should run your farm in Africa? Sounds like a great use of money to me...
• shanemhansen 10y ago
  > It also looks like they've so far deployed exactly 1 of these setups in the real world and haven't even really started producing units for sale. Right now this venture is a complete pipe dream and feels awfully out of touch. So what you're saying is they posted it to the right forum? Not making fun of hacker news, but it is literally a forum for not-yet-validated startup ideas.
  • seangrogg 10y ago
    You forgot it also being a forum for ideas that have no concept of how they're going to generate revenue in the first place. This would probably get a positive outlook if it were made free and planned on monetizing by selling solar to the grid after it blew through five years of VC funding or something.
• tjic 10y ago
  As I've said in other threads re high-tech farming ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13063841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13063841 ), most of these websites and startups and schemes are completely inane. I'd bet that this one is in that category too.
  • kbenson 10y ago
    I was about to post another submission[1] regarding DIY farm tools that someone had commented on saying they thought it was another case of it being crap, but were pleasantly surprised that it had some good ideas, and in making sure it wasn't already mentioned came upon your comment. Turns out, you're the comment in the other submission saying it was actually not bad, so I suspect you'll appreciate this link. :) 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13063541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13063541
• thinkcontext 10y ago
  I agree that skepticism is warranted especially since its not clear what is included but I think the idea could have merit. The key value it could provide is time savings on getting the farm up and running. The time between putting money down on land and equipment and getting revenue flowing is crucial for any business, with farming being more unforgiving than most. If this product allows a farmer to cut the time to acquire and integrate most of the pieces they need then that's quite valuable.
• ryanmarsh 10y ago
  If your village received one of these it seems to me the smart thing to do would be to sell it immediately and use the cash to invest in cattle, tools, better huts, and things like that.
  • kbart 10y ago
    I don't think it would easy to find somebody stupid enough to buy it.
• narrator 10y ago
  In my experience, Raspberry Pis are nice hobbyist toys but tend to corrupt data on their SD cards at random and generally are unreliable. For 50k you could at least send them a somewhat rugged fanless PC with a SSD raid for added reliability.
  • Fuzzwah 10y ago
    Counter point; I have 3 RPis (an original B, a B+, and a 2) and in 4 years have never had any data corruption. I use the 2 every day running OSMC as my media center and the B+ sees very frequent use in a variety of projects.
  • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    Better yet, get them a big stack of these: https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/expedition https://fieldnotesbrand.com/products/expedition They are pocket sized, "plastic paper" water and dirt proof field notebooks. And a stack of pencils to go with them. Because really, someone running a two-acre farm in some developing country has enough time to make manual adjustments to the irrigation system, manual notes of minutiae etc. They will be manually going through the fields to pick weeds, inspect crops etc. anyway.
    • fauria 10y ago
      Nice product! This kind of waterproof notebooks are also used for technical scuba diving: http://eshop.daretodive.eu/produkt/wetnotes-complete-black-/ http://eshop.daretodive.eu/produkt/wetnotes-complete-black-/
  • peteforde 10y ago
    Off-topic, but I've become something of an unintentional expert on making Pis reliable. First, consider using f2fs instead of ext4 with a nice big card (and get a good one). Next, attempt to disable all of the unnecessary logging and writes to the SD. Either send them to a server, write them to a ramdisk or even consider mounting the partition in read-only mode. This will drastically increase your duty cycle. Finally, follow proper system shutdown procedures. Do all of that (bonus points for putting heatsinks on your chips) and the Pi becomes rock-solid or something like it. Hint: it's not the Pi that fails, it's the SD card.
• nylonstrung 10y ago
  The 2 founders literally have no agricultural expertise. One's last job was at a no-name business school accelerator and another worked in an administrative role in the non-profit world. There is a conspicuous absence of any kind of agronomy experience here. As someone who has some perspective on the conditions of the purported customer for this they are so out of touch it is ridiculous and.
  • wott 10y ago
    I don't know what is the thing with startups and containers :-) There were the very same kind of guys proposing the aquaponic version of a farm container for 20k€. I made a 2-minute napkin calculation, keeping the ridiculously high advertised yield for the whole duration, assuming no other starting cost (which is not true), assuming not any running cost (which is of course far from true), assuming not incident at all, assuming no opportunity cost, assuming a relatively high equivalent price of the vegetables. So with all those positive assumptions, it would take 13 years to just break even. If you factor in that not everything is going to be so perfect and that, perfect or not, there are needed running costs, you can easily push that date back to, I don't know, 20 or 30 years. All this point, your original installation isn't worth a penny any more and you can re-new it. You haven't saved a penny. And what you have been eating for 20 years: indoor off-ground vegetables that taste no better than the industrially produced vegetables. But yeah, it was two 25-year old city-dweller ex-business-school-students who claim they know things coz granpda was a farmer and they once went to his farm when they were 12, and they have an uncle they visit a week a year who has a garden.
    • beambot 10y ago
      To be fair... you could've said the same thing about solar 15 years ago: 20-30 year unsubsidized payback, with energy that is the same as industrially-produced energy.