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How many Farmbots would I need to feed 2 adults and 2 children year round? What challenges might I run into? Edit: Found a link to yield analysis https://farm.

How many Farmbots would I need to feed 2 adults and 2 children year round? What challenges might I run into? Edit: Found a link to yield analysis https://farm.bot/pages/yield https://farm.bot/pages/yield It appears the answer is however many Farmbots cover 549 square meters

serf 2y ago
so 31 farmbots at 3m x 6m? a bit steep still, plus the maintenance nightmare of keeping 31 machines working.. it's a fun farm to envisage though. p.s. I don't think that this gantry has very harsh stiffness requirements; I guess one could scale the thing to a larger size reasonably easy -- akin to a configurable MPCNC machine.
- delichon 2y ago
  Seems like to scale well the gantry needs to be able to travel between grow boxes, like on a continuous track.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
_heimdall 2y ago
You'd be better off doing the farming the old fashioned way if the goal is to feed a family. Farming is a terrible business to be in today, but that's mainly due to the abysmal profit margins. When your goal is to feed your family rather than turn a profit, that stops mattering. Most people with any yard or outdoor space could get to the point of growing/raising a large portion of their own food without too much investment or work. A garden doesn't have to be manicured and ready for Instagram, it just needs to produce quality food. Meat and dairy would be the outlier lowering that % if you eat a lot of it, though chickens work well with a modest sized yard and finding a local dairy or farm for meat is still a big improvement on grocery store meat and dairy.
- Loughla 2y ago
  I've talked about this on this site over the years. My family is close to providing enough food on its own little farm for the whole family, all year (except dairy products and wheat products). It has taken decades. And about 15 acres. And honestly I don't know how many hours. Tens and tens of thousands. You can grow a small amount of your own food "without too much investment or work". To replace a substantial portion of your food with home grown takes a shit load of work and time.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    That's interesting, I've had a very different experience. Maybe it comes down, partially, to a difference in climate? We're on a larger piece of land actually, mainly because we have cattle that we may eventually use for meat and dairy. Were producing a large chunk of our food on about 1 acre though, and even then most of that is non-productive land around our house. We have chickens that give us 6-7 eggs every day. Our garden is 2,500 square feet but well be expanding it a bit for next year. We're very hands off with our garden, though, compared to how most people do it. We don't till, partly to avoid any potential disturbance to the soil and partly out of laziness. We did have to water too much for a couple weeks in June, but that is about it for this year. We haven't hit the 80-90% goal yet but are on track for that next year, our third year here. Right now I'd estimate us at around 40-50% with the rest supplemented mainly from local farms. It is work, no doubt about it, especially if you aren't used to working outside. I haven't yet felt like the amount of work has blown past what it costs to buy groceries from the store though, and bonus that we know it's all local without any pesticide or herbicide use. We live in the southeast US now, the climate is helpful for farming. I lived in Seattle for a few years and that climate would have been much harder to work with. I don't particularly like the task of preserving foods, here we don't need to do nearly as much of that.
    - zamfi 2y ago
      > We live in the southeast US now, the climate is helpful for farming. I lived in Seattle for a few years and that climate would have been much harder to work with. Because of (a lack of) winter sunlight? Or something else?
jamilton 2y ago
To summarize the analysis: you would need 100-200 square meters of farmbotting to get 2000 daily calories from farmbots alone. If you're just trying to get your daily recommended servings of veggies, you instead target volume of veggies, because that's how the recommendations work, and it's a much smaller quantity. It ends up being 3-7 square meters per person for that. A small farmbot covers 4.5 m^2 and costs $3,000, an XL covers 18 m^2 and costs $4,500. I think 3-7 sq m makes sense as a practical range, maybe round up to 10 to have some wiggle room.
defrost 2y ago
In all seriousness, from a real life feeding people farming perspective, it's well short of sufficient unto itself. It's a lightweight gantry system for seeding, watering, and (chemical spray) weeding. Handy for big seeding greenhouses and some leafy greens. It's not going to significantly help with you apple, lemon, orange, fig, grapefruit and etc. trees. It's not going to significantly help with your potatoes and other root vegetables. It's not going to tend to and protect your lambs, goats, chickens, etc. FWiW I do have one spry old chap born n 1935 who can do all that already, has a few decades of experience, and can feed an easy magnitude more than just four. Fun project, needs a wee bit of work. And, there are scaled up Farm bots for farms, not just for oversized regular garden beds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqqOQdDBUwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqqOQdDBUwQ https://www.sydney.edu.au/engineering/news-and-events/news/2017/01/06/the-future-of-farming-agribots-leading-the-revolution.html https://www.sydney.edu.au/engineering/news-and-events/news/2... https://www.agricultural-robotics.com/news/connectivity-in-australia-how-it-applies-to-ag-robots-and-autonomous-tractors https://www.agricultural-robotics.com/news/connectivity-in-a...
NilMostChill 2y ago
This page has a section titled "Cups, Not Calories". It hurts my soul that anybody producing a table such as that is using something as vague as a "cup" in their calculations.
- nilsherzig 2y ago
  I think "cup" is one of these American units, it's about 236ml
  - NilMostChill 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit). American legal cup ? metric cup ? Canadian cup ? or one of the other ones. Even if you narrow it to just the roughly the US you still have 4 + metric , so 5 different options. and that doesn't even account for people just using the cup they have to hand. It's not a rant at you, it's frustration with non-specific, arbitrary units.
    - jannyfer 2y ago
      WAIT. US cups and metric cups are different?
      - NilMostChill 2y ago
        Technically yes and that confusion is exactly my point.
    - collinmanderson 2y ago
      Cups are 236.6 ml. 8 fluid ounces. But, wow apparently the FDA rounds cups in nutrition labeling to be exactly 240ml “legal cup”, which I agree is super annoying. It’s 1.4% more. “For purposes of nutrition labeling, 1 cup means 240 mL, 1 tablespoon means 15 mL, 1 teaspoon means 5 mL, 1 fluid ounce means 30 mL, and 1 ounce means 28 g (21 CFR 101.9(b)(5)(viii))”
- TheDong 2y ago
j_timberlake 2y ago
At about $110k for 8000 daily calories, you might as well just wait for android robots to be capable of farming and then buy one from a company like Figure, though you'd then have to worry about it getting hacked and trying to knife you in your sleep.
James_K 2y ago
It would take 31 of their largest model, the Genesis XL to cover that area as each robot covers 18 square meters. So for the low low cost of 31 × $4,295 = $133,145 you could buy enough farm bots to feed yourself. Then you'd just have to worry about the cost of repairs, land, processing, and harvesting.

serf 2y ago

so 31 farmbots at 3m x 6m? a bit steep still, plus the maintenance nightmare of keeping 31 machines working.. it's a fun farm to envisage though. p.s. I don't think that this gantry has very harsh stiffness requirements; I guess one could scale the thing to a larger size reasonably easy -- akin to a configurable MPCNC machine.

delichon 2y ago
Seems like to scale well the gantry needs to be able to travel between grow boxes, like on a continuous track.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

_heimdall 2y ago

You'd be better off doing the farming the old fashioned way if the goal is to feed a family. Farming is a terrible business to be in today, but that's mainly due to the abysmal profit margins. When your goal is to feed your family rather than turn a profit, that stops mattering. Most people with any yard or outdoor space could get to the point of growing/raising a large portion of their own food without too much investment or work. A garden doesn't have to be manicured and ready for Instagram, it just needs to produce quality food. Meat and dairy would be the outlier lowering that % if you eat a lot of it, though chickens work well with a modest sized yard and finding a local dairy or farm for meat is still a big improvement on grocery store meat and dairy.

Loughla 2y ago
I've talked about this on this site over the years. My family is close to providing enough food on its own little farm for the whole family, all year (except dairy products and wheat products). It has taken decades. And about 15 acres. And honestly I don't know how many hours. Tens and tens of thousands. You can grow a small amount of your own food "without too much investment or work". To replace a substantial portion of your food with home grown takes a shit load of work and time.
- _heimdall 2y ago
  That's interesting, I've had a very different experience. Maybe it comes down, partially, to a difference in climate? We're on a larger piece of land actually, mainly because we have cattle that we may eventually use for meat and dairy. Were producing a large chunk of our food on about 1 acre though, and even then most of that is non-productive land around our house. We have chickens that give us 6-7 eggs every day. Our garden is 2,500 square feet but well be expanding it a bit for next year. We're very hands off with our garden, though, compared to how most people do it. We don't till, partly to avoid any potential disturbance to the soil and partly out of laziness. We did have to water too much for a couple weeks in June, but that is about it for this year. We haven't hit the 80-90% goal yet but are on track for that next year, our third year here. Right now I'd estimate us at around 40-50% with the rest supplemented mainly from local farms. It is work, no doubt about it, especially if you aren't used to working outside. I haven't yet felt like the amount of work has blown past what it costs to buy groceries from the store though, and bonus that we know it's all local without any pesticide or herbicide use. We live in the southeast US now, the climate is helpful for farming. I lived in Seattle for a few years and that climate would have been much harder to work with. I don't particularly like the task of preserving foods, here we don't need to do nearly as much of that.
  - zamfi 2y ago
    > We live in the southeast US now, the climate is helpful for farming. I lived in Seattle for a few years and that climate would have been much harder to work with. Because of (a lack of) winter sunlight? Or something else?

jamilton 2y ago

To summarize the analysis: you would need 100-200 square meters of farmbotting to get 2000 daily calories from farmbots alone. If you're just trying to get your daily recommended servings of veggies, you instead target volume of veggies, because that's how the recommendations work, and it's a much smaller quantity. It ends up being 3-7 square meters per person for that. A small farmbot covers 4.5 m^2 and costs $3,000, an XL covers 18 m^2 and costs $4,500. I think 3-7 sq m makes sense as a practical range, maybe round up to 10 to have some wiggle room.

defrost 2y ago

In all seriousness, from a real life feeding people farming perspective, it's well short of sufficient unto itself. It's a lightweight gantry system for seeding, watering, and (chemical spray) weeding. Handy for big seeding greenhouses and some leafy greens. It's not going to significantly help with you apple, lemon, orange, fig, grapefruit and etc. trees. It's not going to significantly help with your potatoes and other root vegetables. It's not going to tend to and protect your lambs, goats, chickens, etc. FWiW I do have one spry old chap born n 1935 who can do all that already, has a few decades of experience, and can feed an easy magnitude more than just four. Fun project, needs a wee bit of work. And, there are scaled up Farm bots for farms, not just for oversized regular garden beds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqqOQdDBUwQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqqOQdDBUwQ https://www.sydney.edu.au/engineering/news-and-events/news/2017/01/06/the-future-of-farming-agribots-leading-the-revolution.html https://www.sydney.edu.au/engineering/news-and-events/news/2... https://www.agricultural-robotics.com/news/connectivity-in-australia-how-it-applies-to-ag-robots-and-autonomous-tractors https://www.agricultural-robotics.com/news/connectivity-in-a...

NilMostChill 2y ago

This page has a section titled "Cups, Not Calories". It hurts my soul that anybody producing a table such as that is using something as vague as a "cup" in their calculations.

nilsherzig 2y ago
I think "cup" is one of these American units, it's about 236ml
- NilMostChill 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_(unit). American legal cup ? metric cup ? Canadian cup ? or one of the other ones. Even if you narrow it to just the roughly the US you still have 4 + metric , so 5 different options. and that doesn't even account for people just using the cup they have to hand. It's not a rant at you, it's frustration with non-specific, arbitrary units.
  - jannyfer 2y ago
    WAIT. US cups and metric cups are different?
    - NilMostChill 2y ago
      Technically yes and that confusion is exactly my point.
  - collinmanderson 2y ago
    Cups are 236.6 ml. 8 fluid ounces. But, wow apparently the FDA rounds cups in nutrition labeling to be exactly 240ml “legal cup”, which I agree is super annoying. It’s 1.4% more. “For purposes of nutrition labeling, 1 cup means 240 mL, 1 tablespoon means 15 mL, 1 teaspoon means 5 mL, 1 fluid ounce means 30 mL, and 1 ounce means 28 g (21 CFR 101.9(b)(5)(viii))”
TheDong 2y ago

j_timberlake 2y ago

At about $110k for 8000 daily calories, you might as well just wait for android robots to be capable of farming and then buy one from a company like Figure, though you'd then have to worry about it getting hacked and trying to knife you in your sleep.

James_K 2y ago

It would take 31 of their largest model, the Genesis XL to cover that area as each robot covers 18 square meters. So for the low low cost of 31 × $4,295 = $133,145 you could buy enough farm bots to feed yourself. Then you'd just have to worry about the cost of repairs, land, processing, and harvesting.