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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

>...and even individuals who want to start a farm.

As a person who lives in a farming area this seems like putting a computer and a box of red bull in a box and labeling it "computer programmer kit".

I'm not a farmer but things like crop rotation, regulations, WHIMIS (pesticides/herbicides), dangers such as the PTO on the tractor and other farm dangers all needed training. You see at least once per year some farm hand injured by crushing or falling there are so many dangers.

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>We have a three-part training program that comes with the box. One: Covering sustainable farming, making sure everyone knows a little bit in terms of crop rotation, and composting, and intercropping. Two: Covering technology use and maintenance, making sure that the individuals know how to maintain and troubleshoot all of the components of the farm. Three: Farming as an enterprise, making sure that there is a market-based approach to farming.

So it's more like they give you a computer, a box of redbull, and a couple books on putting together a MEAN stack. I think it's a good start for someone who wants to get their feet wet.

That's a lot of investment for someone getting their feet wet. I've been growing food for my family at home for the last four years and while I don't have two acres to farm, I can tell you that equipment has been the least of my problems.

Learning to grow food has been a gradual process for me, learning what works for my soil and my climate. I can't imagine trying to start with a Conex full of equipment and two acres to farm, unless you have a local farmer there to help you along. It's so much easier to start small, a few hundred square feet, and to get the advice of a local gardening club or garden store when it comes to choosing what to plant.

This seems like it's aimed at rural farmers in Africa and other developing nations who may have the know-how, but not the equipment or the means to get it. Presumably, the goal is for these things to be subsidized and then shipped out to establish self-sustaining farming.

In other words, it's probably not for when I get pissed off at my job and decide to move into my parents' house and work their two acres in Texas with no idea of what I'm doing.

I agree, it a good idea if a struggling farmer in a third world country need the help and the kit is available.

I didn't mean to sound dismissive but I pictured some random person ordering a farm kit off Amazon.

We all need to eat but I think farming is seen as a nothing job by many people in urban areas.

There was some internet co-op type company whose name escapes me right now, but they basically did this kind of work for farmers (and would be very helpful for newcomers). The idea was that every farmer who is a member will put in their crop yields along with location, soil quality, exact seed and source, how much fertilizer, etc. All of that data is then available to the other members.

So I could sign up, go on there and decide what to plant and how to do it from that kind of site. Maybe I heard of this on a This Week In Startups podcast?

Edit: I've found it. It's called Farmer's Business Network [1] and I did indeed hear about it on a This Week in Startups podcast [2].

[1] https://www.farmersbusinessnetwork.com/ [2] http://thisweekinstartups.com/amol-deshpande-fbn/

Every state has a university extension system that provides free information for farmers and the general public.

For example, here's Oregon State University's page for small farms: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/sorec/farms

... and will usually host free instructional talks, visits by researchers, etc. And in some cases will come out to your property at no charge to offer advice.

Not everyone has the luxury or desire for a "gradual process", but may have at least a sensible starting fund and the motivation to make it work. Sometimes the window of opportunity is small, and diving in fast is important (say, realize you have to grow your own food and spring is progressing - if you don't plant ASAP you're not getting to harvest).

I've long considered a similar "in a [shipping container] box" for fast-start retail establishments. Have access to retail space? have just days/hours to put up a fast-food shop? won't be perfect, but the box contains what you need to get a functioning restaurant delivered & running in hours. Likewise I can appreciate an "in a box" for a farm; get some cheap land and get what you need to reach harvest before snowfall.

I think if you have $50,000 you probably aren't really worried about what you will be eating in 5 months.

Supply chain and employment aren't guaranteed. Dependents need be fed. For some of us, self-sufficiency is axiomatic and dropping $50k for a starter box might seem sensible.

So the trucks will reliably deliver the $50,000 of valuable agricultural equipment but not $5000 of pasta?

I understand the idea of becoming self sufficient. It's the idea of spending $50,000 to make it happen because it suddenly became urgent that I think is not very realistic.

(of course 10 man-years of pasta is not an exciting nutritional adventure. I'd argue it's far more pragmatic than hoping you figure out how to farm in 8 weeks...)

If you're more than self sufficient you're of inherent value to your self sufficient rural neighbors and can expect a long happy life.

If you have $5K of easily movable commodity dollars, gold, pasta, in your basement, you're of value in another way, and you're probably not going to like that outcome.

So hard. If we end up in a world where neighbors are shooting neighbors for pasta I hope someone gets me quick. I guess I'll make at least 1 tasty meal, even for a big band of brigands.

The post I initially responded to wasn't about self sufficiency, it was about buying it in a box and making it work in 1 season. I replied about the making it work in 1 season not being a particularly likely thing. Hence buying an easily movable commodity probably being a better use of the money, even if you aren't a cold blooded crack shot.

I guess I was looking at it from a long term community perspective rather than just brutality.

If in the long run you're a net positive to the neighbors you'll be "in" and life will be very good. Everyone loves the village blacksmith or brewer or fellow farmer or whatever.

On the other hand if you don't bring something to the table or just have a shopping bag of temporary loot then life will be much harder without the community.

You think the $50,000 kit is relevant in that perspective?

Or is it something like 10 years of practice that is relevant?

A 50K box isn't going to make you self sufficient, especially without a supply chain for the farming supplies. If you want to be self sufficient, you're going to end up being a farmer first, and whatever else you are later.

Speaking as a restaurant owner, the constraint with setting up and running a restaurant is rarely with equipment. I can pretty much just order exactly what I want from Costco/Sysco/US Foods/local restaurant suppliers complete with design consultations and same-day delivery and installation - the limit is the hit that my wallet can take. What would a shipping container change for the audience that most likely has access to much of the same that I do? (Read: pretty much anywhere in first world countries, the difference is likely just a couple more days tacked on for delivery. Beyond that you're probably gonna hit the money wall very quickly - as if it wasn't difficult enough for me to fund restaurant upgrades, forcing me to rely on business credit lines.)

Just gonna get my feet wet with a small two-acre farm, which is supposedly able to feed 150 people.

Anyone remember Sun's "blackbox?"

https://www.engadget.com/2006/10/18/suns-project-blackbox-da...

I can't find the original stuff anymore, the "martian picture" was actually in Sun's collateral on their website though. You can't make stuff like that up. There is a certain magic when a corporation with real money produces that kind of marketing buzz. I vaguely remember a picture of a Katrina-like situation with a black box too, cause you need processing power when the city floods and people are dying, I can't remember if that was part of the official messaging or not, maybe I just dreamed it up..

There is absolutely some appeal to full turn-key looking solutions for things that pretty clearly don't have them. It strikes me a perfect "inside the echochamber" thinking to dream up a farm in a box like this. I'd bet not everyone on the design team even has a home garden. Sometimes they day dream up a new paradigm and a lot of times it's just pretty marketing buzz. 2 acre open field farming doesn't seem like a good fit, I could see some success if this was scaled in to modular green house farming or something like that, maybe more on the gardening scale than the farming one.

The equipment needed depends a lot on the soil. There is no one size fits all solution, especially if you're optimizing for crop yield.

Which is why they mention in the article that they've built it to be modularisable, so it'll be adjusted for whatever is appropriate for your area.

It's a lot more like putting an iPad and MacBook pre-loaded with Xcode, git, other handy software, iTunes U courses, and a list of primary research & resource URLs with step-by-step directions for signing up to free & prepaid services.

While such "in-a-box" products are obviously limited & biased, they are a tremendously useful starting point for people who want to begin an endeavor but don't know where to start, don't want to get bogged down in selecting basic tools/services they don't yet understand, and don't yet know even the "well anyone who knows anything about XYZ knows you need at least a ABC and a PDQ" stuff.

Of course the contents are imperfect. BUT IT'S A START. Give someone what they need for a sensible starting point, then they can soon learn what they need to head in the direction they decide to go (after they know enough to understand what the options really are).

$50,000 is pretty expensive for "a start". That is the price of a decent farmhand in the Midwest (for a year, maybe two if you don't like him so much) and probably a huge plot of land and a few employees in poor countries.

I probably spent $50k in my first two years on my farm.

* 30 HP tractor - $14k

* brushhog, back blade, cone spreader, log splitter - $3k

* 1,000 ft^2 greenhouse - $5k

* water to greenhouse - $5k

* haying equipment (baler, tedder, disk mower, rake) - $5.5k

* buckets, pails, tubs, lights, etc for livestock - $1k

* hoses, hand tools, etc. - $1k

* drip irrigation, raised beds, soil tests, etc. - $1k

* fencing materials - $5k

I could keep going down the list, but even just barely starting, I'm sure that the $50k number is correct.

Obviously, this package doesn't include haying equipment or chicken egg incubators or chicken feather removal machine, but I can easily imagine how you could spend $50k.

(You're hard to find. Contact this old fan if you're inclined.)

The kit is for 2 acres. Probably no brush hog, log splitter, hay equipment or tractor.

I have 2 acres, crops, fowl, livestock. No log splitter. I borrow the hay equipment. The tractor is practically a must. It's easy to own 2 acres. Making it useful requires equipment or many persons of manual labor. a 25-30 hp tractor is very reasonable.

Yeah, I've hand tilled a tiny patch of ground. It's a lot of work. I think my next step would have been begging one of the neighbors to come in with their hobby tractor though.

I'm always sort of resistant to this type of thinking. You're not wrong, but if people are defeated because this kit tries to simplify some aspects of a difficult and experience driven process, then that's sad.

New things are hard. People should still try them. Also when I was a kid my dad basically did give me a box of computer parts, sans red bull, and said have it - and I broke it. I bent pins, I had to format, when I finally got it running I upgraded it and broke it again. Eventually I figured it out and here I am.

The problem is this isn't a PC and a can of Red Bull; it's an entire data center and a case of Red Bull.

That was my read on this, so thanks for confirming it. It seems like the most valuable part of this kit won't be in the box, and that's access to someone who knows the basics (and not so basics) of farming to guide the new box owners. I suppose there's the argument of "no one taught our ancestors to farm and they figured it out," but then how effective is this kit at all if you're winging it?

From the article it sounds like the idea is to distribute these through schools, NGOs, aid groups and the like. Those organizations would presumably provide the guidance on how to use all the stuff in the kit.

I could see that being pretty efficient, since the trainers would know exactly what tools and materials trainees will have on hand to work with, which should make it possible to create generalized training systems rather than having to build up a new curriculum for each trainee they work with.

> all needed training

Absolutely true. I do think though that such a box would be coming with a big manual/e-learning/video course to complete the hardware.

> this seems like putting a computer and a box of red bull in a box and labeling it "computer programmer kit".

Computer programmer kits like this exist and are called "bootcamps."

I could see one peace corp worker supporting two of these in a village. Ideally though he'd have to support two full crop years before there would be a chance that this would be self supporting. Even then a key part would break and the villagers would be unable to fund its replacement.

Also wouldn't the economics of that be pretty sticky? They'd be competing with local farmers.

>dangers such as the PTO on the tractor

Never mind the PTO , watch out for the hydraulics on the tractor...

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