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I am the founder of Optimal: http://optimal.ag http://optimal.ag. We are a team of engineers and scientists from DeepMind, Palantir, Oxford and MIT. Our missio
by davidhunter 7y ago
I am the founder of Optimal: http://optimal.ag http://optimal.ag.
We are a team of engineers and scientists from DeepMind, Palantir, Oxford and MIT. Our mission is to grow safer, healthier food by deploying fully autonomous greenhouses outside every city on earth. We are backed by leading deep technology funds, including Founders Fund.
We believe that high-tech greenhouses will be an important part of our agricultural future, for improved human nutrition and as a hedge to climate change, and we are doing everything we can to accelerate the deployment of new farms around the world.
We are in stealth mode right now so there's not a huge amount about us online but we've made strong progress with the core technology and I would be happy to speak more about our work privately.
- spiderfarmer 7y agoWhats the big difference with modern existing greenhouses, like the ones in The Netherlands?
- davidhunter 7y agoHigh-tech Dutch greenhouses are our base class. We are working very closely with operators in The Netherlands currently.
- aussiegreenie 7y agoWageningen is the world's leading Agtech university. I just returned 2 weeks ago and the 2025 European Food production estimates are ugly, dairy down 30%, potatoes down, onions down, maize, wheat and other cereals down a lot. Basically, Europen food is in trouble.
- pkaye 7y agoWhat is the reason for this? Does the same problem exist in US, Canada, etc?
- sampo 7y agoEurope is very hostile to gene technology in plant breeding. A lot of the technologies developed after the 1970s are banned in plant breeding (while they are allowed in medical industries). European legislation also regards CRISPR editing as GMO, and most GMOs are effectively banned in Europe. In America, GMOs are typically allowed, and in America CRISPS editing is not regarded as GMO. If you are a plant breeding scientist, you can either work in Europe with your hands tied behind your back, or move somewhere else and innovate more freely. I am sure there are other equally important reasons, but this is one.
- groby_b 7y agoThis seems to be contrary to what the EU's ag outlook report from 2018[1] is saying. What changed in the last year? And do you have any sources (i.e. studies) that support that point? [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/food-farming-fisheries/farming/documents/medium-term-outlook-2018-report_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/food-farming-fish...
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoEurope is facing many problems. Soil compaction, climate crisis, lack of labour force, ground water contamination in some places. Very little demand for organic produce. And pest/pathogen pressure. Example: Even places like Spain and Italy are uprooting olive groves and moving it to Turkey and Morocco where labour is cheaper and plant pathogens haven’t entirely destroyed the soil. Africa used to supply a lot of food. But EU insisted on non-GMO. Now that China is moving in to Africa(and South America) with their Belt and Trade initiative, Africa is happy growing for China. And China isn’t slacking either. China..for example..supplies most of the tomatoes and ketchup internationally.. competing with Provence and Italy .. this is a good documentary: https://www.moderntimes.review/the-untold-story-of-the-red-gold/ https://www.moderntimes.review/the-untold-story-of-the-red-g...
- dfsegoat 7y agoJust curious if you are planning to open your solutions up to non-food solutions: E.g. commercially licensed cannabis cultivators? Autonomous / IoT greenhouses seem to be a big "thing" up here in Northern California where many commercial cultivators are.
- davidhunter 7y agoGood question. Growing cannabis does not align directly with our mission. However the production methods for cannabis are fairly similar to crops such as tomatoes and so it may be something we consider doing. I want to be clearer on the health benefits before committing.
- elasticventures 7y agohey dfsegoat -- GrowPotBot http://growbot.online http://growbot.online is 1/3rd focused on cannabis. we also do vegetables so we aren't a "weed appliance"; if you'd like to collaborate and test a prototype sounds like we'd get along. ;-)
- PenguinCoder 7y agoHow do you propose to keep those autonomous systems secure against threat actors ?
- HeyLaughingBoy 7y agoSecurity guards?
- shantly 7y agoIf google tag manager doesn't load, the links on your site do nothing.
- davidhunter 7y agoThanks - will sort
- hbrundage 7y agoI spent a bunch of time modelling out the unit economics for autonomous greenhouses and struggled to find any combination of technologies that could even come close to competing with the current costs of field agriculture, including labor. Do you folks need something key to change in the competitive landscape (like climate change or very different immigration laws in the US) to become profitable? See https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-agriculture-hydroponic-greens https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-agr... for an example of the costs for the case of indoor vertical farms.
- davidhunter 7y agoThere’s a significant efficiency difference between high-tech greenhouses (glasshouses) and warehouse (aka vertical) farms. High-tech greenhouses will not compete with field farms for staple crops, but they are already profitably supplying fresh produce in many countries.
- hbrundage 7y agoOh of course, and to be quite honest, I really hope you folks can succeed in your mission. But, I still found that at least locally (in southern Ontario), the unit costs of importing from California still make sense compared to growing locally because of the cost of artificial lighting and the difficulties growing year round. The big greenhouse operations locally grow a premium product that can command a much higher price in order to justify the capex compared to field agriculture or just importing. I assume that premium price would have to go up even more to justify a big investment in automation, right? That's why I was asking if expensive robotics are viable now vs reliant on some change in the market dynamics.
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoCalifornia’s lettuce production alone is a 3 billion dollar industry. Entire Ag income in Netherlands is around 3 billion dollars. California lettuce farms have a year round growing season and we move from Salinas to Yuma in winter. We grow organic lettuce with cover cropping and crop rotation. Glass houses are NOT more efficient than how we grow in CA. We have water shortage and a labour problem. The main problem is labour. We need robotics to solve our problem. Not data oriented Agtech. Most of the Agtech startups are creating a new sector that didn’t exist before. They are not addressing our throbbing pain point. Labour. Labour. Labour. Even automation solutions needs engineers who need to draw 6 figures to work and live in the Bay Area. It’s still cheaper to hire minimum wage labour and make human beings do repetitive manual labour. There is nothing cheaper than FREE. Sunlight is free. We don’t need energy hungry indoor automation in CA. In east coast maybe..in the frozen northlands of Canada maybe..but CA is an Ag state. We do upwards of 45 billion in Ag income every year. We need real solutions. Every Agtech company wants a piece of the 45 billion dollar pie. They are not working to make it bigger. CA farms are consumers of new tech. Without ROI. Agtech startups need to Keep It Simple. Ping me if anyone wants to discuss this further. [..] GDP From Agriculture in Netherlands decreased to 2544 EUR Million in the second quarter of 2019 from 3071 EUR Million in the first quarter of 2019. GDP From Agriculture in Netherlands averaged 2641.87 EUR Million from 1995 until 2019, reaching an all time high of 3343 EUR Million in the third quarter of 2016 and a record low of 1860 EUR Million in the fourth quarter of 1996.[..]
- s_k_ 7y agoI clicked on "Careers" at optimal.ag but it doesn't work( Wanted to see who are u hiring at the moment
- davidhunter 7y agohttps://angel.co/company/optimal-labs/jobs https://angel.co/company/optimal-labs/jobs This is a better link.
- frereubu 7y agoHow do you envisage the impact that these greenhouses will have on the environment surrounding them? I often wonder about polytunnels and how they shut out quite a bit of wildlife. Something like this view in Almeria, Spain - https://lh6.ggpht.com/-IHVqCZRVzzo/UiGekR4rgEI/AAAAAAAAr6M/eOxFxGxMse8/greenhouses-almeria-2%25255B5%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800 https://lh6.ggpht.com/-IHVqCZRVzzo/UiGekR4rgEI/AAAAAAAAr6M/e... - concerns me given broader issues such as the collapse in the number of insects - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalypse.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/27/magazine/insect-apocalyps... (although pesticides seem likely to be the main culprit there).
- quixoticelixer- 7y agoThat's an enormously productive piece of land though and any sort of food production is going to be bad for the environment.
- frereubu 7y ago"... any sort of food production is going to be bad for the environment." This isn't true per se. There are lots of people trying to farm in an environmentally sensitive manner - like http://www.polyfacefarms.com/ http://www.polyfacefarms.com/. There are discussions to be had about whether this kind of farming can feed enough people in the world, but it's not a given that farming is bad.
- jsilence 7y agoI think the rationale here is that the intensified production in greenhouses frees up formerly used as agricultural land elsewhere that could then be repurposed for wildlife and insects. Personally I am not sure this math adds up. At least in Germany farming land is categorized and once the land loses its status as farmland, it can never be turned back into farmland, losing much of its monetary value in the process. Thus the land owners have an intrinsic motivation to keep their property in the farmland category.
- wuunderbar 7y ago> Our mission is to grow safer, healthier food by deploying fully autonomous greenhouses outside every city on earth. How exactly is food grown from autonomous greenhouses than traditional greenhouses safer and healthier? Or, alternatively, how is it safer and healthier if it is grown right outside of the cities in which in supply?
- ac29 7y agoPresumably the health/safety improvement in high-tech greenhouses is that you can eliminate the need for pesticides and herbicides.
- elasticventures 7y agodifferent set of problems; equipment failures and mold's & fungus become bigger problems. it's not a closed loop since we need fresh co2 to trigger photosynthesis and nothing is 100% failure proof.
- thinkpad20 7y agoSeems like there's plenty of CO2 to go around. What's the issue?
- jsilence 7y agoCommercial greenhouse growers usually supplement CO2 up to Levels of 1000-1500 ppm and above. The CO2 storage and distribution facility is one more technical component and there is one more dependency to the supplier of the liquid CO2.
- colechristensen 7y agoControlled environment means pest and weed management is easier with fewer or no chemical agents. Closer to end user means less plant engineering for transport and storage which is correlated with worse nutrition (or just less variety)
- relaunched 7y agoI've long been fascinated by this space. From the farm ERP system / IoT, autonomous vehicles in ag, to vertical farms, hydroponics, aquaponics, etc. I'd love to learn more about what you are doing.
- mrpopo 7y agoHow would deploying greenhouses be helping to fight climate change? Many greenhouses now use energy for heating. Or maybe are you talking about passive greenhouses only?
- jsilence 7y agoWhile true, climatization during the summer months is the bigger challenge and probably even more expensive when trying to achieve a closed system to keep out the pests. A greenhouse in temperate climate (eg. Sweden) captures approx. 2.9 fold the energy amount that is required for heating in the winter. But this excess heat of course is captured in summer, wehen you need to get rid of it. Seasonal heat storage is not easy. Passive solar greenhouses are promising with that regard.
- o13nna 7y agoVery interesting. I have experience building an automating aquaponics gardens for this very use case. I also have industry experience in "The Valley" and a fancy degree as well. How do I get in touch with you?