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My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years. I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in
by kumarski 6y ago
My father is an ag soil chemist of 50+ years.
I'm an industrial systems eng. w/ a specialty in polymer-textile-fiber engineering. (Mostly useless skillsets in the US now)
Gonna share a few lessons here about agriculture that I try to convey to EECS, econ, Neuroscience, and the web developer crowd.
- You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms
- It takes 10-14 kwh/1000 gallons of water to desalinate. More if it gets periodically polluted at an increasing rate.
- Large majority Agrarian populations exist because the countries are stuck in a purgatory of <1 MWh/capita annum whereby the country doesn't have scaleable nitrogen and steel manufacturing.
- Sweet potatoes and sweet potatoes are some of the highest satiety lowest input to output ratio produce. High efficiency.
- In civilizations where you are at < 1MWh/capita annum - there is not enough electricity to produce tools for farming, steel for roads, and concrete for building things. The end result is that the optimal decision is to have more children to harvest more calories per an acre.
- Property, bankruptcy, and inheritance law have an immense influence on the farmer population of a country.
I remember telling some "ag tech" VCs my insights and offering to introduce my father who has an immense amount of insight on the topic from having grown things for as long as he has....My thoughts were tossed aside.
- messe 6y ago> Sweet potatoes and sweet potatoes Is this a typo? Did you mean to write a second vegetable?
- HeXetic 6y agoProbably regular potatoes; they are incredibly calorie-dense and resilient.
- chx 6y ago> 1MWh/capita annum Oh this is fascinating! I never thought of this but of course energy consumption per capita is going to be an indicator of how industrialized a country is. I briefly checked the two countries I am a citizen of (Canada, Hungary) and counterchecked with one of the poorest countries I know of (Chad) and the numbers are as expected: 14.6, 4.1, 0.013 (oof).
- saeranv 6y agoYes, and for this reason (IIRC) GDP/capita scales linearly with MWH/capita.
- abyssin 6y agoOn the topic of energy, I find this correlation fascinating as well: https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/petrole_graph5.jpg https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/petrole_gra.... Oil consumption predicts GDP. Complete article: https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/oil/is-the-price-of-oil-driving-the-economy/ https://jancovici.com/en/energy-transition/oil/is-the-price-...
- cryptonector 6y agoNow think about what it means to do with less energy. Energy availability is wealth.
- FeloniousHam 6y agoI highly recommend Energy and Civilization[1], the most engrossing dry recitation of facts I've ever read. [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/energy-and-civilization https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/energy-and-civilization
- trophycase 6y agoI guess I was always under the impression that vertical and urban farming would be done for "specialty" crops like herbs or kale or something, never for high volume cash crops like potatoes or corn. I can see a benefit for these "specialty" crops because they aren't done to the same scale (maybe I'm wrong about that)
- markbnj 6y agoYeah that was my take as well. I think there's some sort of trade-off point here, though I don't know where it is. Yes modern outdoor agriculture is hyper efficient, although I think the author's comments about cash flow self-sufficiency gloss over a lot of government subsidies and bank bridge loans. In any case, indoor ag should be able to exploit the lower weather/pest risks, lack of need for damaging pesticides, consistent conditions, 365 day growing season, proximity to markets, etc. at least for some combination of products.
- Spooky23 6y agoEven for specialty products, you’re competing with cheap travel and labor. Guatemala or Peru are short hops.
- elcritch 6y agoThe parents comment certainly is accurate for most staples, cereals, and even meat (raised on corn) but entirely misses the need for more fresh veggies and leafy greens in the US. In the states it generally costs more to buy food made with fresh vegetables. That’s where indoor and vertical ag shines. Many developed countries have plenty of empty calories. Too many. Indoor Ag provides an opportunity to provide scale and freshness to a number of non-grain foods, with less pesticides and preservatives. I hope the field is successful at that goal.
- ploxolo 6y agoSo you plan is to replace calories with mostly empty (calorie and nutrient-wise) greens...
- porcellobanks 6y agosame exact boat. the VC that use to approach us for insights would just never listen. my father literally knew the researchers that tried it in the past and failed. it did not stop this VC from investing his LP's money in a vertical farm. although i suspect his willingness to allocate other people's money in this manner, for this particular company, had more to do with the social side of things re the founders and other investors.
- mtgp1000 6y agoSo you can't grow potatoes vertically? Can you elaborate? Is it a function of physiology, i.e. calorie dense vegetables need far more leaves and supporting stems than can be practically stacked vertically?
- eloff 6y agoI imagine space is a factor, but energy will be a big one as well. Calorie dense foods will likely need more space and energy (light) inputs. Vertical farms are very water efficient, so I don't think that matters much. Vertical farms make a lot more sense with fresh vegetables like leafy greens that grow quickly, command high prices if grown organically, and benefit from being closer to market. Potatoes are the exact opposite. If it ever becomes more cost effective to grow corn, wheat, and potatoes in virtual farms then outdoor agriculture is dead. While I don't agree with the article that it will never happen, it might require energy advances like fusion power or drastically higher _rural_ land values and water prices. Greenhouses make sense long before vertical farming, just look at agriculture in the Netherlands, it's mind boggling how much they produce for such a tiny country.
- bgroat 6y agoCan you expand on this? I get that to store a calorie in a potato I need to supply a calorie of energy from somewhere else. But why is fusion power required instead of better UV lamps in my vertical farm? (Assuming I had enough electricity to run them)
- saeranv 6y agoRe: <1 MWh/capita annum Which brings up another issue, which is energy density/m2 of land. To support industrialization/high density urbanism the only fuel sources that do this are currently fossil fuels, or nuclear, but none of the renewable fuels have the energy density. So if these countries want to increase the amount of MWh/capita, the most efficient (only?) pathway is through high-energy density fuel sources, which right now is being achieved through the use of fossil fuels. To me, this is (one of) the main reasons nuclear energy needs to be prioritized as a climate change solution. ETA: And, now that I think about it, another way to squeeze more effectiveness from your grid is to build super energy-efficient buildings that reduces the overall and peak grid energy consumption.
- MildlySerious 6y agoWhy is energy density important in that context? If all other variables were identical between a high density an a low density solution, the high density one would of course be preferable. But if the low density solution is cheaper and relies less on pre-existing long-distance grid infrastructure, why would high density still be considered the most efficient, or possibly the only viable pathway?
- saeranv 6y agoIANAE but the general idea from the discipline of urban geography is that industrialization, and also the knowledge economy relies on the economies of scales that come from high density, mixed-used urbanization. These regions rely on extremely high power that must be supplied from scarce land resources.
- m3047 6y agoI'm not going to provide a source, but my understanding is that one square meter can provide roughly 1 KW of electricity at noon on the equator. Looks like that's about 4MW per acre. Five acres for the "traditional" family farm. I bet where I live that irradiation equals 1MW per acre, and of course it varies seasonally. Sounds ridiculous, until you've tried to water any sizable amount of square footage, and contemplated the heat energy required to evaporate all that water which doesn't go into the plants and isn't runoff.
- DanBC 6y ago> The end result is that the optimal decision is to have more children to harvest more calories per an acre. For a photo-essay about this there's the New Humanitarian article here: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/94947/lesotho-weather-extremes-threaten-food-security https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/report/94947/lesotho-weat... It describes the interaction between climate change, HIV/AIDS, and poverty. (It used to be called "Too poor to farm").
- Gatsky 6y agoGreat comment, thanks. HN just keeps delivering. It is almost impossible to believe how much embedded technical knowledge is lurking here. You could colonise Mars with it.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago> HN just keeps delivering. It is almost impossible to believe how much embedded technical knowledge is lurking here. You could colonise Mars with it. Of course, in this context you should be prepared for the possibility that if you could tap all that expertise what you'd actually get is "reasons that colonizing Mars actually can't work". ...hopefully not, of course, but beware mixing hopes and dreams and reality.
- njarboe 6y agoSomething as complex as colonizing Mars would really need to be tried before anyone should claim to have expertise on if it's possible. It looks like our current technology and knowledge is up to the task, so I'd say it's worth seeing if humanity can do it.
- primroot 6y ago> You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) grows on the sidewalk already, and often next to some wild amaranth (Amarathus Hybridus). What is the point of more efficiently producing specific crops, when there are all these underutilized nutritious plants growing without any human input (or should I say growing despite human input)? This is another problem that I see with the technification of food production in general (including the Green Revolution). Some food wants to be free, but people keep looking for whatever makes the land produce more money in the short term, not what makes it produce more nutrition, etc., because the latter does not adapt so well to the market.
- sushisource 6y agoI think this is the type of magical thinking that pervades a lot of these ag startups. Just because you noticed "Hey, this unpopular grain grows so easily it's popping up from the sidewalk!" does not mean you can actually then go and scale that to providing food for hundreds of millions of people. We developed modern agriculture the way we did for a reason. Some of those reasons are no longer valid, true, but a whole lot of them are still very very pertinent. I think vertical farming / rooftop farms / etc are at this point largely an exercise in virtue signaling more than they are actually improving the food system. They might be improving it for high-income Whole Foods types who are upset Amazon owns their favorite store now (ie: us here on HN) - but those people aren't exactly the ones who need to see improvement.
- primroot 6y agoYes I agree with you, but maybe I did not express my point with enough clarity. I mentioned this two species because they count as food of negligible caloric value (sidewalk amaranth is mostly useful because of the edible leaves). As far as I understand, human caloric needs at present population levels require the large scale conventional methods of production (including the Haber-Bosch process). But caloric needs aside, there are populations, which are not consuming enough greens or fruit, even when it grows in front of them. I have seen it in the (warm and tropical dry) countryside here, they think they have to eat lettuce, when they have lots of hibiscus plants growing in their garden. It turns out the leaves of hibiscus aren't just edible, but their nutritional value is similar lettuce (I suspect higher in Mg since it's a lot greener). The answer of some technologists to this problem is to grow more lettuce. Another plant that grows plentifully here certain months of the year is Ipomoea Triloba. I don't think anyone should try to produce them at scale following the conventional methods. In the case of cities I imagine there could be gardens with a synergistic diversity of plants, which try to keep a high total yield, but not a high yield of any specific plant.
- MintelIE 6y agoJust one thought, everybody can buy an imported tractor these days. And steel too.
- tikwidd 6y ago> - You can only grow non-calorically dense foods in vertical farms How about seeds and sprouts?
- m3047 6y agoI grow sprouts on my kitchen counter. Mostly they require lavage. For the last day or two they require light to turn green and possibly develop flavor; they don't need much.
- tomnipotent 6y ago> How about seeds You need adult plants to produce seeds, defeating the purpose. > and sprouts? Alfalfa sprouts? That's very much a non-calorically dense food.
- ineedasername 6y agoWhat is it about vertical farms that prevents calorically dense foods? Also, I know something like lettuce would not be dense, potatoes probably dense, but is there a cutoff/metric, e.g., calories-per-gram for this determination? Thanks for the insights!
- armandhammer 6y agoI'd imagine it's sunlight / artificial light + growth to harvest time. It takes energy input to make food calories, there's really no getting around it with technology. The only way to increase the calories in the harvested food is intense direct light in a short time, or less intense (shaded) light over a longer time. In vertical farms, that's a higher cost of production.
- polotics 6y agoHi You write: Sweet potatoes and sweet potatoes ?Could this be a typo what's the other one please?