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I've spoken to a few people who are interested in applying machine learning to hydroponic farming with the aim of creating vertical farms. If you could isolate

by fnbr 10y ago

I've spoken to a few people who are interested in applying machine learning to hydroponic farming with the aim of creating vertical farms. If you could isolate the different rooms sufficiently, you could run machine learning to optimise yield (or Vitamin C). I have doubts as to the commercial viability of this, as farming is pretty low margin, so the overhead requirements for the capital expenditures would require pretty substantial gains in efficiency, which I think just don't exist.

contingencies 10y ago
I have at least one serious potential investor ready for anyone attempting this (vertical farming automation). Also, I am interested to cooperate on creating reliable contracted urban demand without the need for retail packaging - http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ - currently relocating to Shenzhen. If automated urban vertical farming happens it will probably happen in China because dense/cheap/economies of scale/rising food prices/rapid urbanization/transition toward smaller households/cultural preference for fresh and less processed foods/less regulatory issues.
- simonrobb 10y ago
  Why vertical farming specifically? No doubt vertical farming will form part of the solution to feeding urban populations in the coming decades, but the area covered by open-air "horizontal" farming is immense. We just can't do construction on that scale, not to mention the incredible environmental impacts. Growing things with LEDs seems pretty wasteful when we have a great big star shining down on us all day. Vertical farming will bring fresh food to high-density populations for sure, it just isn't going to change the face of farming across the planet. Although it's a much more difficult problem to solve being an uncontrolled environment, my company is working on this automation but for traditional farms (http://touch.farm http://touch.farm). The first step is gathering rich data from different crops/climates, which is why we're starting by designing the cheapest and most usable ag sensors we can. If we can make sensor tech accessible to a wide range of farmers, we'll gain a rich enough dataset to start applying ML (and farmers and the environment win in the process). tl;dr: vertical farming is great, but what we really need is innovation/investment in traditional farming.
  - contingencies 10y ago
    Why vertical farming specifically? Ethnic Chinese investor, China focused. China has removed a lot of arable land recently for urban development, people are urbanizing at the fastest pace in human history, and food prices are rising quite rapidly. Your comments are logical for the US and your project sounds interesting. From what I understand EU agriculture is a sort of middle-ground, with smaller-scale automation.
    - itchyjunk 10y ago
      Also depends on crop types. Makes sense to do large fields for corn, for example. But being able to grow herbs etc locally where it's consumed, inside cities makes way more sense. This in turn frees up resources tied to growing and transporting such stuff to cities. There are pros and cons to both but I think you can get richer data for vertically initially to train systems than move on to larger scale horizontal farms. Tough this doesn't mean there are low hanging fruits their either.
      - simonrobb 10y ago
        That's a good point - the choice of crop will have a large bearing. I don't know if low margin crops like grains could provide an adequate ROI given electricity costs etc, let alone the outlay required to build structures over huge areas. In my understanding vertical farming is usually a hydrocultural practice (doesn't use soil). That works well for a lot of horticulture, but not so much for broadacre crops.
    - simonrobb 10y ago
      Interesting to get that perspective. I'm based in Australia, which has a similar farming landscape to the US/Canada; I'll admit my view is probably a bit skewed. Is rice agreeable to vertical farming? i.e.: could the bulk of China's crops be moved to VF? In my understanding it's typically a hydroponic practice, so I imagine so.
      - contingencies 10y ago

by fnbr 10y ago

contingencies 10y ago

I have at least one serious potential investor ready for anyone attempting this (vertical farming automation). Also, I am interested to cooperate on creating reliable contracted urban demand without the need for retail packaging - http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ - currently relocating to Shenzhen. If automated urban vertical farming happens it will probably happen in China because dense/cheap/economies of scale/rising food prices/rapid urbanization/transition toward smaller households/cultural preference for fresh and less processed foods/less regulatory issues.

simonrobb 10y ago
Why vertical farming specifically? No doubt vertical farming will form part of the solution to feeding urban populations in the coming decades, but the area covered by open-air "horizontal" farming is immense. We just can't do construction on that scale, not to mention the incredible environmental impacts. Growing things with LEDs seems pretty wasteful when we have a great big star shining down on us all day. Vertical farming will bring fresh food to high-density populations for sure, it just isn't going to change the face of farming across the planet. Although it's a much more difficult problem to solve being an uncontrolled environment, my company is working on this automation but for traditional farms (http://touch.farm http://touch.farm). The first step is gathering rich data from different crops/climates, which is why we're starting by designing the cheapest and most usable ag sensors we can. If we can make sensor tech accessible to a wide range of farmers, we'll gain a rich enough dataset to start applying ML (and farmers and the environment win in the process). tl;dr: vertical farming is great, but what we really need is innovation/investment in traditional farming.
- contingencies 10y ago
  Why vertical farming specifically? Ethnic Chinese investor, China focused. China has removed a lot of arable land recently for urban development, people are urbanizing at the fastest pace in human history, and food prices are rising quite rapidly. Your comments are logical for the US and your project sounds interesting. From what I understand EU agriculture is a sort of middle-ground, with smaller-scale automation.
  - itchyjunk 10y ago
    Also depends on crop types. Makes sense to do large fields for corn, for example. But being able to grow herbs etc locally where it's consumed, inside cities makes way more sense. This in turn frees up resources tied to growing and transporting such stuff to cities. There are pros and cons to both but I think you can get richer data for vertically initially to train systems than move on to larger scale horizontal farms. Tough this doesn't mean there are low hanging fruits their either.
    - simonrobb 10y ago
      That's a good point - the choice of crop will have a large bearing. I don't know if low margin crops like grains could provide an adequate ROI given electricity costs etc, let alone the outlay required to build structures over huge areas. In my understanding vertical farming is usually a hydrocultural practice (doesn't use soil). That works well for a lot of horticulture, but not so much for broadacre crops.
  - simonrobb 10y ago
    Interesting to get that perspective. I'm based in Australia, which has a similar farming landscape to the US/Canada; I'll admit my view is probably a bit skewed. Is rice agreeable to vertical farming? i.e.: could the bulk of China's crops be moved to VF? In my understanding it's typically a hydroponic practice, so I imagine so.
    - contingencies 10y ago