The Future of Farming? No Sun, No Soil, but Lots of Data
fortune.com
fortune.com
"Rosenberg said that farmers usually apply fertilizer once, water the crop and hope it grows. AeroFarms, meanwhile, applies fertilizers many times, adjusting along the way to optimize plant growth"
Not true. Most farmers I grew up around follow the recommended fertilization guidelines provided by their local coop, it's not a one time and "hope it grows" thing.
“I’ve learned how ignorant we are about how to make plants grow.”
Who is we? People who use "we" like this always use it to assume and judge things they feel.
“A plant doesn’t necessarily need 10 hours of darkness,” said Rosenberg. “Maybe it needs 10 minutes.”
Yes it does if the plant is photoperiodic. Many are.
“When you can really play with those environmental factors and all these tools in a big data way in a farm the size of [a] building, it really becomes illuminating of how plants react in different ways.”
Indoor and greenhouse growers have already been doing this forever. Welcome to the club.
Multiple times a month I have to endure a pitch or presentation from some upstart tech company assuming that all farmers are toothless hicks who just need to be shown the light. I've had hundreds of conversations with growers about every single one of the topics he thinks he's going to fix. The only people swayed by his arguments are those who know even less than he does.
In reality, instead of trying to balance two biological systems (hydroponic plants and integrated pest management biocontrols) you now have to balance 4: plants, insects, fish, and algae/bacteria.
Suddenly the farmers potential for very costly cascade failures increases exponentially. If your algae dies, your plants die. If you fish die, your algae dies. If any of your solutions to dying fish/algae/insects impacts another biological system the whole farm collapses and you need to sterilize and start over.
And yet, so many of the people pitching this idea wonder why there is so little commercial interest in pursuing such an integrated system.
Aquaponics is an infinitely better system as it can be truly organic. It has to be tackled entirely differently..lots of AI/automation for constant monitoring and systems control.
Major expense in traditional Ag is labour. This can be optimized and minimized with indoor Ag.
As an outdoor farmer, the control of variable factors in indoor systems is appealing to me but I can also see how being risk averse is better. Small indoor farms are better than the broad acre mind set we have with outdoor Ag. Taking everything indoor except fruit and grains and fiber and spices etc is very attractive to me. But a new supply chain and control of markets has to be in place.
I am not even worried about energy long term as we would go nuclear at some point eventually. Impending climate change should require us be mindful of alternative Ag systems. I am particularly interested in saline agriculture. I think it would be useful research.
40% of all food crops is wasted somewhere along the supply chain. It’s a damn shame! I really hope our Ag and food systems change to reforest and rewind existing land for carbon sequestration as we take a much larger percent of food production indoors.
Plants have evolved over millions of years under sun/soil constraints, and I predict there will be 2nd order effects they‘ll soon become aware of. Not to speak of the fact that artificial light will never be cost competitive with the free thing.
Generating specific taste profiles of fruits and vegetables based on inputs is fascinating and very real. What is being completely glossed over is the difficulty in creating a branded customer experience that permits any additional value to be extracted from the effort.
For example, it's great you can make a tomato that has a unique taste, but most customers who purchase a tomato want it to taste like a traditional tomato, and those that don't really like the traditional taste of tomatoes aren't going to try it because they already dislike tomatoes.
EDIT:not only does sunlight provide energy for photosynthesis but it also provides free heat for the growing facility, and in many locations heat is not an insignificant expense. Even the choice of lighting (i.e. sodium vs LED) impacts the need for supplemental heating and/or cooling as traditional highouput bulbs are very hot, whereas LED is cool. In winter, that lack of heat must be augmented by supplementary sources. But, on the flip side, LEDs permit closer placement to the plants, offering additional lighting regime options and don't add to the temperature when the facility gets too hot.
Obviously the issue is most pressing for sun-loving crops like corn, but I think it applies even to leaf crops like lettuce.