3 ms·

I agree and love your tone, but can I just share my naive view as someone who once interviewed for an AG startup? Farming seems vulnerable. First, we hear sto

by fusslo 3y ago

I agree and love your tone, but can I just share my naive view as someone who once interviewed for an AG startup? Farming seems vulnerable. First, we hear stories about patented crop strains and mega-companies suing small farmers. Second, we hear crops are engineered to grow fast and big, with little regard of flavor. Third, we hear about farmers having to reverse engineer their own equipment. Fourth, and most importantly, we hear how the farming industry relies heavily on the poor and vulnerable in order to pick and process crops at reasonable labor prices. It seems like there are issues in farming that fit square into that tech-meets-social-justice. On the surface it makes sense to approach the problem differently (aka 'disrupt') in order to: 1. tackle a huge industry (big problem space), 2. provide tastier food closer to home (good appeal to the market), 3. not exploit people (social justice) I used the word 'seems' a lot, because thats only the impression I've gotten. I have no idea if it's true.

nradov 3y ago
Picking and processing crops is hard work, but the people doing it are not particularly poor by global standards. Drive past the strawberry fields around Watsonville and look at the cars that the workers have parked along the road. A number of companies are working on berry picking robots. This is a hard engineering problem due to the fragility of the fruit. They have prototypes working reasonably well and someone will probably have a viable commercial product within a decade. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-26/strawberry-picking-robots-california https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-26/strawberry...
veddox 3y ago
All the problems you address are absolutely there. But I have to say I have become pretty allergic whenever I hear anybody talk about "disrupting" an existing industry, for two reasons: (1) Existing industries are usually that way for a reason; often outsiders don't understand this until they have tried (and failed) to change things. (2) In those cases where industries were "successfully disrupted", I have the impression the result often just ended up exploiting people in different ways (looking at you, Uber and AirBnB.)
- glitchcrab 3y ago
  Just because existing industries are a certain way doesn't mean they have to stay that way forever - if we thought that way then everything would stagnate. Disruptive changes _can_ be good.
bsder 3y ago
You don't solve most of your complaints by disrupting farming. You solve them by disrupting distribution. The problem is that even if I'm willing to pay 10x for a "better" product I don't have the choice. Do you want grass finished steaks? Good luck buying them in most of the US. If you want one reliably, you're probably buying an entire cow which is more than what you really want. Do you want better tomatoes? No chance because those have higher water content and bruise more easily. etc. You have to solve moving farm production to consumers fast so that you can go from picked/harvested/butchered to on the doorstep in 24 hours or less. This allows you to duck the whole "food has to be able to survive being inventory" problem. Otherwise, you simply wind up reconstituting the cold chain that we currently have with all of its faults. For example, last I checked, all the "fresh" produce deliverers were still using UPS! That means a week or more (in reality--lots more) between picked, boxed and delivered. And everything goes through a logistics chain.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  >You don't solve most of your complaints by disrupting farming. You solve them by disrupting distribution. I would want to go much further, disrupting consumption.
  - bsder 3y ago
    > I would want to go much further, disrupting consumption. If you make it cheaper and easier to use tasty, varied, local production rather than factory farming, you will also disrupt consumption. I like my meat, but I used to happily eat vegetarian at one restaurant that grew a ton of their own produce. Everything there was excellent even if it wasn't to my taste. That's how you disrupt consumption.

by fusslo 3y ago

nradov 3y ago

Picking and processing crops is hard work, but the people doing it are not particularly poor by global standards. Drive past the strawberry fields around Watsonville and look at the cars that the workers have parked along the road. A number of companies are working on berry picking robots. This is a hard engineering problem due to the fragility of the fruit. They have prototypes working reasonably well and someone will probably have a viable commercial product within a decade. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-26/strawberry-picking-robots-california https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-07-26/strawberry...

veddox 3y ago

All the problems you address are absolutely there. But I have to say I have become pretty allergic whenever I hear anybody talk about "disrupting" an existing industry, for two reasons: (1) Existing industries are usually that way for a reason; often outsiders don't understand this until they have tried (and failed) to change things. (2) In those cases where industries were "successfully disrupted", I have the impression the result often just ended up exploiting people in different ways (looking at you, Uber and AirBnB.)

glitchcrab 3y ago
Just because existing industries are a certain way doesn't mean they have to stay that way forever - if we thought that way then everything would stagnate. Disruptive changes _can_ be good.

bsder 3y ago

You don't solve most of your complaints by disrupting farming. You solve them by disrupting distribution. The problem is that even if I'm willing to pay 10x for a "better" product I don't have the choice. Do you want grass finished steaks? Good luck buying them in most of the US. If you want one reliably, you're probably buying an entire cow which is more than what you really want. Do you want better tomatoes? No chance because those have higher water content and bruise more easily. etc. You have to solve moving farm production to consumers fast so that you can go from picked/harvested/butchered to on the doorstep in 24 hours or less. This allows you to duck the whole "food has to be able to survive being inventory" problem. Otherwise, you simply wind up reconstituting the cold chain that we currently have with all of its faults. For example, last I checked, all the "fresh" produce deliverers were still using UPS! That means a week or more (in reality--lots more) between picked, boxed and delivered. And everything goes through a logistics chain.

fuzzfactor 3y ago
>You don't solve most of your complaints by disrupting farming. You solve them by disrupting distribution. I would want to go much further, disrupting consumption.
- bsder 3y ago
  > I would want to go much further, disrupting consumption. If you make it cheaper and easier to use tasty, varied, local production rather than factory farming, you will also disrupt consumption. I like my meat, but I used to happily eat vegetarian at one restaurant that grew a ton of their own produce. Everything there was excellent even if it wasn't to my taste. That's how you disrupt consumption.