An Underground Farm Delivering Rare Herbs to New York’s Top Chefs | Hacker News Reader

An Underground Farm Delivering Rare Herbs to New York’s Top Chefs

atlasobscura.com

57 pointsIntronExon25 comments

As cool as the operations part of this is, I can't help wishing they were growing food that mattered on scale to make a difference. Lowering the carbon footprint of putting expensive garnishes on the plates of the 1% is a start, I guess.

Isn’t this the same ideology of Tesla? Innovate your product via the dollars of wealthy early adopters; as cost declines, widen your reach.

This is how most technology started out - electricity, cars, jets, trains, refrigerators, air conditioning etc.

Very few technologies have been created by targeting poor or middle-class people first.

Low calorie stuff like herbs or lettuce are essentially the only plants that are practical to grow indoors at scale like this. Which makes perfect sense when you think about it but unfortunately means it will be very difficult to try to scale up to providing 2000 calories to a person, let alone the amount of plant matter chickens and cattle take. Edit: To clarify what I'm getting at here is the fairly linear relationship between how much artificial light is input and calories output. If your indoor farm is getting natural light, such as a greenhouse, then things are different.

You're right! They could absolutely be growing food that matters on a scale to make a difference! There is the minor potential issue that doing so might be cost-prohibitive for all but the wealthiest. And also the minor consideration of what you might do to poor farmers in poorer countries by taking away their access to rich, first-world markets.

That is how all farming started take any fruit, spice or grain it was first grown for the nobles/kings/rich as they learned more about and grew larger quantities they became commodities that everyone uses.

You're completely correct. This applies to basically every technology - very few things are cheap enough to make available to everyone when first introduced.

With that said, it's often difficult to make this point successfully to people who resent that those with greater resources at their disposal have greater access to new, expensive technologies. Telling such people that today's technology that puts expensive herbs on the plates of the 1% today can grow food for the poor tomorrow is of little avail when they have visions dancing in their heads of food for the 99% being grown cheaply in basements today.

If you liked this, Ian Purkayastha is worth a read, all about sourcing exotic foods (truffles, caviar, etc) to top chefs.

Munchies episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sJ6IJZJhUU

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/how-a-texas-teen...

The name of his business is "Regalis Foods": http://www.regalisfoods.com/welcome

This reflects my experience of growing 1-2 herbs at home. It requires little space and you usually only use a tiny amount. Most of all, it's tastier and cheaper over time than the dried stuff.

If there were a simple-to-maintain herb garden hydroponics set, I'd totally be interested!

I grow basil when the temp is right, and its remarkable just how good it is. I agree with your takeaway about a hydro set too.

Our basil always ends up wilting - I almost suspect that we're not eating it fast enough.

It does wilt in a hurry, and that's been sn issue for me too. If I'm making pesto though, it can go surprisingly quickly.

I have a 9 pod aerogarden, It's beautiful, have had it for 45 days. All 9 pods have plans coming out now and love growing basil at home - Doesn't take space, Auto controlled Minimal maintenance

Aerogarden makes a dead simple, self contained 3 herb hydroponics set complete with reservoir and light. You basically just plug it in and eat herbs in a couple weeks. I've been using one for a couple years to grow basil and some other stuff, and I really like it. Not sure if linking to products on HN is discouraged, but should be easy to find with a quick search.

Can I grow "herb" with one of these? Asking for a friend, of course.

Yes: https://www.aeroweed.info/

Another plug for Aerogarden - along with the obvious output, it's been a terrible lot of fun for me.

I've been digging into growing some greens, peppers, or other vegetables for fun. Playing with lights, pumps, and controllers seems pretty fun.

As far as I know Farm.one is using some Fluence Bioengineering LEDs for grow lights: https://fluence.science/innovator-spotlight/farm-one/ However, in the article it looks like they might be using strips of COB leds? Anyone have any thoughts or resources for doing this sorts of stuff?

There's a subreddit: /r/hands_on_complexity which is the absolute best source of real, actual information on lighting for plants that I've found.

Awesome. Thanks for that! I was initialy put off the by the several year old posts, but it looks like SAG has been updating them throughout the years. https://www.reddit.com/r/HandsOnComplexity/

Another company is doing something similar, but using shipping containers to create these farms.

Heard they're still in their early days though, https://www.localrootsfarms.com/

Given that wood sorrel grows wild in every NYC park, I'm failing to see what exactly is rare about it.

well this one probably doesn't have dog pee on it

Or copious car exhaust...

Don't you know? It adds to the flavor. NYC pizza is the best because of the delectable italian sweet-palm-sweat mixed with copious amounts of soot-smog-smoked flavor. You just can't get that kind of cuisine where the air is clarified. I mean, who likes clarified anyways? Clarified butter? Please!! Your ingredients have to marinate, what better way than mixing with the NYC's gastronomous gas molecules?

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