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Seed-firing drones are planting 40k trees every day to fight deforestation
- joe_guy 4y agoThis article is clickbait and lacking in real detail. > The company has already planted more than 50,000 trees
- ofpiyush 4y agoAnd firing seeds into the ground doesn't solve anything.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoIt 'solves' getting government grants and possibly VC money on the trope of saving the environment.
- reader_x 4y agoThey also say, "Each of our drones can plant over 40,000 seed pods per day“ - so putting these numbers together, does this mean they’ve so far done <2 days of work?
- acchow 4y agoNo, it means very few of the seed pods actual become viable trees.
- turtledove 4y agoMy car can go 120 miles an hour. I've driven 180 miles, how long have I been driving? (You can't know, the rate that my car can drive is independent of how I've used it.) This drone can plant 40k seeds in a day, that doesn't mean they've used it to plant 40k seeds in a day.
- mistrial9 4y agohmm .. "drones fighting the war on deforestation" .. what about Arbor Day ? seed science.. good soil conditions.. erosion control.. regenerative bio-dynamic ecosystomology ? can the point-and-shoot gaming crowd please chime in on how we can blend the marketing message here, since perhaps we share some goals?
- Nextgrid 4y ago"Drones" "artificial intelligence" "start-up" Sounds like a scheme to scam money out of government grants, bloated charities/aid agencies and/or VCs. I’m surprised blockchain isn’t (yet?) involved. Is there any evidence that throwing seeds at the ground is the bottleneck in fighting deforestation as opposed to for example the lack of suitable land to plant these in where the trees would actually be viable? As another commenter points out, if seed distribution is the only bottleneck in fighting deforestation then a potato cannon will work just as well and will probably come out cheaper (and more fun!), but then you wouldn't become CEO of a "tech for good", AI-drone startup.
- wang_li 4y agoI’d like to invite you to invest in my startup. We’ve got hundreds of strains of trees that will self plant millions of trees each year.
- mirekrusin 4y agoBut do you have NFT to sell "your own tree" to people or not?
- jjeaff 4y agoWow, self planting trees, that's brilliant! Exponential growth!
- grendelt 4y agoIt's a subscription model. You have to pay or we'll cut down all the trees we planted.
- Nextgrid 4y agoIf the trees are self-planting do you have DRM or some other way to make sure you remain in the loop and guarantee some MRR?
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
- nostromo 4y agoI very much doubt many of these seeds will be successful. They say that it's more efficient to use a drone than to manually plant a tree or seed. Yes, blasting seeds out of a potato cannon would also be much more efficient if the goal is to spread unsuccessful seeds. If the goal is to get to a mature tree or forest, then I doubt it's more efficient at all. Forrests are self-sustaining. But recreating a clear-cut forrest usually requires a bit more care than just chucking seeds around.
- colechristensen 4y agoIt’s fine if they’re not, trees produce ridiculous numbers of seeds per individual and if only a few are successful nature will take care of the rest. The problem is that monoculture forests aren’t actually all that great, better than nothing but not that great either.
- Nextgrid 4y agoTo me it seems like if you only need a few to be successful then doing it manually will be just as effective (since you're doing it manually, your success rate will be much higher). In either case, it doesn't bode well for this startup's claimed goal. I'm sure their bank account on the other hand will be fine though.
- FrenchDevRemote 4y agoit's probably cheaper/easier to send drones with lots of seeds over miles of land rather than workers with a few seeds
- patmcc 4y agoWorkers don't plant seeds, they plant seedlings (that are 2-4 years old, depending on species). You get a much higher survival rate that way. It's costly, but so far it's the most efficient way. Maybe drones will change that eventually, but I doubt it'll do it by firing seeds.
- zackees 4y agoOne of the ways the elites are generating carbon credits for pennies on the credit.
- civilized 4y agoI don't know if it's elites who are doing it, but greenwashing is a serious concern. We are too trusting that people claiming to restore the environment are "good" and can therefore be trusted to take a truly effective approach, rather than merely playing a game to maximize profit like a typical capitalist.
- zackees 4y ago"the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, launched last year after Salesforce billionaire Marc Benioff read the paper on the recommendation of Al Gore, the former US vice-president. The Time magazine owner told everyone he could about the research: chief executives, friends and world leaders, even convincing climate sceptic Donald Trump to back the WEF initiative with a multibillion tree commitment." Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/01/ive-never-said-we-should-plant-a-trillion-trees-what-ecopreneur-thomas-crowther-did-next-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/01/ive-neve...
- dymk 4y agoThey’re calling them “carbon offsets” now, to avoid future legal issues.
- Handytinge 4y agoIn Australia (where this company is based), they are called carbon credits, or carbon credit units to be more accurate.
- mcdonje 4y agoThere's a big difference between tossing a seed on the ground and planting a tree.
- turtledove 4y agoPresumably these seeds are encased in a clay like substrate with nutrients, insecticides, capsaicin, mycology cultures, moisture retention, etc. Pretty sure they aren't just dumping bags of seeds on the ground.
- duxup 4y agoIs the problem of deforestation an issue with seed distribution?
- thinkingemote 4y agoTrees left to themselves will each fire off millions of seeds. The idea that humans know best than nature is why we get into the mess that we get into. Trees have everything within them to spread themselves. What's the key thing is people leaving the land alone, (e.g. industrialists, urban planners and farmers) and that's something that is very very hard to do. If we can leave the land alone for nature then we can start to do simple conservation efforts to give nature a helping hand. Drones aren't that.
- seltzered_ 4y agoLike others doubting the claims, it's worth noting the thoughts by professor Forrest Fleischman about "Silicon Valley businesspeople who are entranced with the idea of tree planting as a climate solution": https://twitter.com/ForrestFleisch1/status/1444008823350603780 https://twitter.com/ForrestFleisch1/status/14440088233506037... (2021) If you dig around on SER https://www.ser.org/ https://www.ser.org/ you can find documentation on previous failed restoration efforts - my understanding is these efforts really need an intersection of community involvement/stakeholdership and education.
- seltzered_ 4y agoTo give some benefit to organizations trying this, airseed does have a FAQ if you scroll down a bit on https://airseedtech.com/what-we-do/ https://airseedtech.com/what-we-do/ . Curious about their differentiator mentioned in the article: ""The niche really lies in our biotech, which is the support system for the seed once it's on the ground," says Walker. “It protects the seed from different types of wildlife, but also supports the seed once it germinates and really helps deliver all of those nutrients and mineral sources that it needs, along with some probiotics to really boost early-stage growth.""
- osrec 4y agoOf topic, but the guy has an interestingly apt name given his job, until you look up the meaning of his surname. I believe Fleischman translates to butcher, so he's "Forrest Butcher", which makes it wholly inappropriate given his job!
- acchow 4y agoIt seems with the abundance of cheap money since 2008, Silicon Valley has become very good at just convincing investors to hand them money
- tpmx 4y agoPlanting trees the proper way isn't exactly costly in the first place (e.g. compared to the complete lifecycle cost of maintaining and many decades later eventually harvesting a tree - the planting is a trivial cost). It's a weird problem to tackle, well, since it isn't really a problem.
- more_corn 4y agoThey probably read the article “planting a trillion trees would solve climate change”
- davelondon 4y agohttps://youtu.be/UsvrkVU0Qpw?t=99 https://youtu.be/UsvrkVU0Qpw?t=99 "What's extremely special about this seed pod is that is carries over a gram of carbon [...] putting it back into the ground." After that statement, all credibility is lost.
- cookingrobot 4y agoSurely they’re just badly explaining that it has a bit of “potting soil” to give it a better chance to grow.
- Jabbles 4y ago> The company has already planted more than 50,000 trees That does sound a lot, but I am not sure how they can justify their expected rate: > Each of our drones can plant over 40,000 seed pods per day Their long term goal is in line with the second, not the first: > and aims to plant a total of 100 million by the year 2024. Well, they only need 3 drones then... 3 * 40k * 365 * 2.5 ~ 1e8
- ExtraE 4y ago…assuming a 100% germination rate.
- grendelt 4y agoThey aim to plant 100 million they make no claims to the efficacy of their project. This article is full of hype though. The headline claims they ARE planting 40,000/day. The company only attests to 50k so far. Even the company site has an FAQ where it asks "why seeds and not seedlings?" and doesn't give a good answer other than "we developed the technology for seeds" - they cite "transplant shock" and "increases soil carbon". Also, who's their target audience? Governments? NGOs?
- psadri 4y agoI volunteer with a local organization that plants native trees (mostly Oak varieties) in the area. Over the years they have developed a pretty elaborate system for planting saplings to maximize their odds of taking root and maturing into grown trees. The process involves digging the right sized hole, placing a fertilizer packet at the bottom, repacking the dirt around the plant, protecting the sapling from deer and rodents using a chicken wire fence and a tall translucent plastic tube that’s supported by a steel rebar driven into the dirt. Then building a small berm around to capture water and covering it with mulch. They claim these steps increase odds of survival to 95%+. Point being that it might take more than shooting seeds into the ground to regrow a forest.
- IshKebab 4y agoI hate those plastic tubes. Nobody ever removes them and they just end up littering the countryside. There's a wood near me where someone has collected them all into an enormous grotesque pile. Very creepy.
- gus_massa 4y agoInteresting anecdote. Do you have photos? (Bonus points for a photo with arrows that explain the parts.)
- jaclaz 4y agoI guess they are this kind (and the article is about research on the practice being not-so-good for the environment as these tubes are not collected/recycled): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/24/trees-should-be-planted-without-plastic-guards-says-uk-study-aoe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/24/trees-sh...
- psadri 4y agoYes these are the ones. I'm sorry to hear they can go uncollected. In our case they are always collected and often reused. It helps that the trees are being planted in the local area (the hills surrounding Stanford University) and the crews regularly check on them.
- comice 4y agoI was interested in how many of the trees they've found to be viable, but since they've only planted 50,000 and the drones plant 40,000 a day, they've only been working for 1.25 days so presumably they have no idea.
- lesgobrandon 4y ago
- devindotcom 4y agoExtremely strange to see this writeup with no mention at all of Droneseed, which has been doing this successfully for a few years now, engineered seed pods and all. I've written them up twice, if you're curious or skeptical about the one in TFA: https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/26/that-night-a-forest-flew-droneseed-is-planting-trees-from-the-air/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/26/that-night-a-forest-flew-d... https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/29/droneseeds-36m-a-round-makes-it-a-one-stop-shop-for-post-wildfire-reforestation/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/29/droneseeds-36m-a-round-mak...
- tamaharbor 4y agoIt’s all fun and games until the drone battery overheats and starts a forest fire.
- kennywinker 4y agoA popular seed firing drone you might have heard of before is the PineCone™ - it’s fully autonomous, and deploys during periods of disturbance to maximize effectiveness. I think it might do a better job than this.
- ComradePhil 4y agoTrees are detremental to grassland ecosystems and don't contribute enough to carbon sequestration (assuming that is the goal) as grasslands do.
- rini17 4y agoTechnology would do little good if humans don't care about the local ecosystem at all. This repeats again and again and seems we won't learn. Having people living on the ground who are interested in long term local sustainability, not motivated to exploit the land, is usually the best option.
- egberts1 4y agoI once read an article where a flying stake was used as an airborne delivery mechanism to plant these very expensive and hard-to-procure tree seeds. I do do believe that to be a useful delivery mechanism for that type of seeds. This method effectively deals with going underground, securing constant moisture, and protection against birds and other critters. Too bad that I haven’t seen any followup to that approach.
- o_1 4y agotheres a fantastic study on over forestation and the effects on the climate model. generally mass disruption either way has significant impacts. Plant X get Y is a incredibly reductive model for conceptualizing forestation.