7 ms·

This looks fun but not really useful. My hope would be that in 20 years everyone has a little bot that 24/7 runs a garden for you and provides every family wit

This looks fun but not really useful. My hope would be that in 20 years everyone has a little bot that 24/7 runs a garden for you and provides every family with 80% of their vegetable need. Imagine the amount of acreage we could return to nature / co2 sinking.

Waterluvian 2y ago
Every family having to have a robot instead of a handful of tractors for every ten thousand families or so. And that is likely a less optimal use of acreage. I think what you might actually be advocating for is “people should convert more residential land into gardens” which is always fun. I love my garden as a hobby. We keep trying to un-invent the division of labour. Edited for unnecessary pre-coffee poor behaviour. Sorry.
- siffin 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - agumonkey 2y ago
    you know good sites / books about this ? or active groups
  - ecocentrik 2y ago
    Just imagine all the packaging material that would be required to get everyone a new farm bot every few years.
    - siffin 2y ago
      I am, it's not very much, and compared with the packaging for food in every market, it's just a rounding error. The thing about growing food locally, is that you don't need individually package your apples in plastic. You just harvest it, then eat it, in it's healthiest possible form, while also not doing insane polluting.
  - dang 2y ago
    Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how provocative another comment is or you feel it is. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Your comment would be fine without the first (and I would also say the last) sentence.
- redeux 2y ago
  I did some quick math on this 10,000 number and I think it’s off by at least an order of magnitude. You have to assume everyone needs the tractors at roughly the same time and the cost/time of transporting, loading, unloading, etc severely limits the efficiency in a suburban environment.
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    It’s probably wrong, yeah. I made a wild guess at magnitude just to make a rhetorical point. Are you saying it’s more like 1,000 or 100,000? I’m not a farmer but I live in a farming city, and one thing I notice is that the crops around here are definitely not all harvested at the same time. Some are harvested months before others. Even the same crops like corn or various beans are harvested weeks apart. For corn sometimes months. Farms also share a lot of equipment. Though a lot of farms are just absolutely massive corporate farms so it’s not really “sharing” but has the same effect.
WillAdams 2y ago
For a while I was considering something similar, where instead a couple of windows at a home would be miniature greenhouses/aquariums with openings arranged so that if the interior access was latched it would be impossible to gain access from the outside, but it would be possible to fill up consumables and drop off additional items (think tilapia for a scheduled dinner, but the usual protein product would be shrimp). That said, I think making room for something like: https://ogardengroup.com/ https://ogardengroup.com/ is perhaps a bit more marketable (though they missed out by not sizing it to fit next to a refrigerator).
James_K 2y ago
Each person owning their own farm is orders of magnitude less efficient that one large farm serving many people.
- lukas099 2y ago
  I agree with you overall, but some vegetables were found in a recent study to be more efficiently grown at home. Also, a lot of people already have turfgrass farms and converting those to veggie farms would be a huge net win. Finally, if you think that people have a fairly static amount of time/energy to spend on hobbies, hobby farming would likely be a net benefit because some hobbies have much greater negative externalities.
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago
  Home gardens are cheaper than stores, since seeds are cheaper than finished fruits/veggies. Of course it depends on free labor of The Gardener which this may address.
- locococo 2y ago
  For homeowners with a garden it's not necessarily about efficiency. I have a little garden and the food quality is just way better in terms of freshness and taste.
- apexalpha 2y ago
  Yes but most people already own a plot of land that is not in use for anything except growing grass.
- pydry 2y ago
  This is probably not true for a lot of produce with a limited shelf life. If you factor in wastage and the expensive supply chain logistics for things that spoil quickly it's probably cheaper to grow them closer to the point of use, especially if you can keep down labor costs with automation. Tastier and more nutritious too.
  - bagels 2y ago
    Farmers get their inputs much cheaper than I do, especially water. Water is essentially free compared to residential rates at about 100x cheaper.
lukas099 2y ago
I would love a drone or robot that selectively kills invasive weeds and leaves native ones.
- airstrike 2y ago
  Preferably with the use of a high-powered laser
  - mlyle 2y ago
    Sounds like a good way to burn down your yard but leave the weed alive .:p
quijoteuniv 2y ago
Is this not the best way to start on that path, an open source project yhat shares all the info so others can join branch and improve. Yiu cannot climb the mountastarting at the top !
- lancesells 2y ago
  For the complexity and materials in this project coupled with the fairly small coverage I think the best way to start is to garden by hand. It makes more sense in a laboratory environment but this just seems like overkill for a regular person.
riiii 2y ago
As an open source project it's tremendously useful. This is a start of new era in human history.
asdf6969 2y ago
In 20 years most people won’t be able to afford a yard
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  In that case, who cares what the bank says about whose yard is whose? Find a patch of ground and grow your food there. We only uphold property rights because enough of us see a benefit in doing so. If that changes, so can we.
  - asdf6969 2y ago
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/matthew-clarke-youtube-cabin-ensley-creek-1.6389899 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/matthew-clarke-youtube-...
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      Supposing the locals enforce this, that would be evidence that property rights in the Yukon still have the consent of the people. Will they in 20 years? We'll see.
elric 2y ago
I would love to grow some of my own food, the way I did when I was a kid. But alas, I will never be able to afford a garden, and the soil here is heavily contaminated with PFAS, heavy metals, and goodness knows what else.

Waterluvian 2y ago

Every family having to have a robot instead of a handful of tractors for every ten thousand families or so. And that is likely a less optimal use of acreage. I think what you might actually be advocating for is “people should convert more residential land into gardens” which is always fun. I love my garden as a hobby. We keep trying to un-invent the division of labour. Edited for unnecessary pre-coffee poor behaviour. Sorry.

siffin 2y ago
[flagged]
- agumonkey 2y ago
  you know good sites / books about this ? or active groups
- ecocentrik 2y ago
  Just imagine all the packaging material that would be required to get everyone a new farm bot every few years.
  - siffin 2y ago
    I am, it's not very much, and compared with the packaging for food in every market, it's just a rounding error. The thing about growing food locally, is that you don't need individually package your apples in plastic. You just harvest it, then eat it, in it's healthiest possible form, while also not doing insane polluting.
- dang 2y ago
  Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how provocative another comment is or you feel it is. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Your comment would be fine without the first (and I would also say the last) sentence.
redeux 2y ago
I did some quick math on this 10,000 number and I think it’s off by at least an order of magnitude. You have to assume everyone needs the tractors at roughly the same time and the cost/time of transporting, loading, unloading, etc severely limits the efficiency in a suburban environment.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  It’s probably wrong, yeah. I made a wild guess at magnitude just to make a rhetorical point. Are you saying it’s more like 1,000 or 100,000? I’m not a farmer but I live in a farming city, and one thing I notice is that the crops around here are definitely not all harvested at the same time. Some are harvested months before others. Even the same crops like corn or various beans are harvested weeks apart. For corn sometimes months. Farms also share a lot of equipment. Though a lot of farms are just absolutely massive corporate farms so it’s not really “sharing” but has the same effect.

WillAdams 2y ago

For a while I was considering something similar, where instead a couple of windows at a home would be miniature greenhouses/aquariums with openings arranged so that if the interior access was latched it would be impossible to gain access from the outside, but it would be possible to fill up consumables and drop off additional items (think tilapia for a scheduled dinner, but the usual protein product would be shrimp). That said, I think making room for something like: https://ogardengroup.com/ https://ogardengroup.com/ is perhaps a bit more marketable (though they missed out by not sizing it to fit next to a refrigerator).

James_K 2y ago

Each person owning their own farm is orders of magnitude less efficient that one large farm serving many people.

lukas099 2y ago
I agree with you overall, but some vegetables were found in a recent study to be more efficiently grown at home. Also, a lot of people already have turfgrass farms and converting those to veggie farms would be a huge net win. Finally, if you think that people have a fairly static amount of time/energy to spend on hobbies, hobby farming would likely be a net benefit because some hobbies have much greater negative externalities.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
Home gardens are cheaper than stores, since seeds are cheaper than finished fruits/veggies. Of course it depends on free labor of The Gardener which this may address.
locococo 2y ago
For homeowners with a garden it's not necessarily about efficiency. I have a little garden and the food quality is just way better in terms of freshness and taste.
apexalpha 2y ago
Yes but most people already own a plot of land that is not in use for anything except growing grass.
pydry 2y ago
This is probably not true for a lot of produce with a limited shelf life. If you factor in wastage and the expensive supply chain logistics for things that spoil quickly it's probably cheaper to grow them closer to the point of use, especially if you can keep down labor costs with automation. Tastier and more nutritious too.
- bagels 2y ago
  Farmers get their inputs much cheaper than I do, especially water. Water is essentially free compared to residential rates at about 100x cheaper.

lukas099 2y ago

I would love a drone or robot that selectively kills invasive weeds and leaves native ones.

airstrike 2y ago
Preferably with the use of a high-powered laser
- mlyle 2y ago
  Sounds like a good way to burn down your yard but leave the weed alive .:p

quijoteuniv 2y ago

Is this not the best way to start on that path, an open source project yhat shares all the info so others can join branch and improve. Yiu cannot climb the mountastarting at the top !

lancesells 2y ago
For the complexity and materials in this project coupled with the fairly small coverage I think the best way to start is to garden by hand. It makes more sense in a laboratory environment but this just seems like overkill for a regular person.

riiii 2y ago

As an open source project it's tremendously useful. This is a start of new era in human history.

asdf6969 2y ago

In 20 years most people won’t be able to afford a yard

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
In that case, who cares what the bank says about whose yard is whose? Find a patch of ground and grow your food there. We only uphold property rights because enough of us see a benefit in doing so. If that changes, so can we.
- asdf6969 2y ago
  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/matthew-clarke-youtube-cabin-ensley-creek-1.6389899 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/matthew-clarke-youtube-...
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    Supposing the locals enforce this, that would be evidence that property rights in the Yukon still have the consent of the people. Will they in 20 years? We'll see.

elric 2y ago

I would love to grow some of my own food, the way I did when I was a kid. But alas, I will never be able to afford a garden, and the soil here is heavily contaminated with PFAS, heavy metals, and goodness knows what else.