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Comment by clomond | Hacker News Reader

Not to be incredibly nit-picky, but the costs of the product right now don’t matter nearly as much as the ability to scale production and variable unit costs.

As a ‘hard tech’, they need to work themselves through the technology readiness framework before the cost of a particular material even tells you anything of value.

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Sure it does. The competition is growing soybeans, which are really cheap. Are they going to beat that?

Most of the high-tech food schemes produce some high-value product. This produces a very low value product. It's Hamburger Helper. Cost dominates.

The competition would be carbon neutral pesticide free soybeans, which I'm not sure are readily available? Soybeans also typically use energy intensive nitrogen fertilizers, which I'm not sure this process requires. (It might, not sure.)

Also, soybeans need to be shipped from fertile areas. This could be produced in situ in infertile areas.

I'm not saying it's a panacea, but it has some benefits over traditional intensive agriculture.

Is it actually standard practice to use nitrogen fertilizers with soybeans? Soy is a nitrogen fixer and I've read that nitrogen fertilizers often reduce yields for soybeans because it interferes with nodulation and undermines that plant's nitrogen fixing capacities.

Oh, great question actually. I mostly know wheat farmers, so that's the model that I have in my head, but yeah it would make sense they fix nitrogen.

Apparently soybeans are often grown in a double-cropping rotation, in which maize is planted first (along with N and P fertilization), and then no additional fertilizer is applied to the following soybean crop.

This seems to be a comprehensive discussion (for South Dakota farmers anyway, pdf):

https://extension.sdstate.edu/sites/default/files/2020-03/S-...

Making use of nitrogen fixing plants alleviates the need of fertilization. An easy one: clover. Bees also love clover. However you can explore other systems of cover cropping (I recall Diakon radishes draw up nitrogen from down low, up to the surface) which you terminate before seeding your main crop.

> The competition would be carbon neutral pesticide free soybeans, which I'm not sure are readily available? Soybeans also typically use energy intensive nitrogen fertilizers, which I'm not sure this process requires. (It might, not sure.)

No it's not. This is the kind of thinking that so many new founders screw up with.

The competition is what users are willing to buy instead of you. That's regular soy beans, not whatever market you decide it should be. Don't think this way.

I'm thinking like a consumer, specifically me as a consumer. I do not know how many consumers are like me, but I'm always looking for vegan, well rounded, non industrially farmed, pesticide free protein sources. So far, the leading candidate is pea protein, and while I love soybeans and tofu, it's hard to find soy that is ethically sourced. (Not encumbered with awful genetic patents, for instance.)

They didn't say the costs don't matter. They said the costs don't matter right now. Those are two very different things.

The only thing I think that matters is the cost. To sell at scale and displace other foods, it is going to have to be as cheap as chicken. There is no point building a large factory that can produce this stuff at quantity at the price of wagu beef, because there is no market for that product. Even to vegans you are competing with tofu. Cost is why Quorn remains a niche product.

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