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Don’t have a WSJ account so can’t read the article, and the archive link posted doesn’t work for me. It sounds like this was a greenhouse based business? What I
by azinman2 2y ago
Don’t have a WSJ account so can’t read the article, and the archive link posted doesn’t work for me. It sounds like this was a greenhouse based business? What I’m excited by (perhaps naively so) are the startups using robots to zap weeds and do other things to reduce chemical usage. Anyone know the status of these companies, and if there’s anything intrinsically wrong with the approach?
- antasvara 2y agoI think the approaches usually fail because commercial farming with chemical fertilizer is pretty efficient and optimized to work at a large scale. A lot of agtech startups (think vertical farming) just don't get this. They don't understand where the inefficiencies are, or how their approach loses efficiency at commercial-farming scale, or how the approach doesn't integrate with other necessary machinery, etc.
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoVertical farming might be having trouble but a very closely related cousin, the Dutch greenhouse, is doing fantastically. The differences are subtle because Dutch greenhouses have been used to vertically farm crops as well (though not separated in the same way that vertical farms are) and use artificial lighting. The subtle differences matter and that's why iteration in the space is so good. The surface level discussion in this thread griping over Ellison's approach is probably the least interesting aspect of agtech to discuss but is the one that most people have an opinion on and generates the most engagement which is why this thread is filled with it.