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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

I am a software engineer, and a I live on a small hobby farm where we trying to sustainably raise our own food.

My concern with the startup world getting into agriculture is that unless small-scale agriculture becomes pervasive, then we are also dependent on the transportation infrastructure to ship food around the world. Suddenly we live in a more complex system with more moving parts (literally). It has more potential for failure.

I disagree 100% with the people who say that only large scale operations have the potential to feed the world. It just isn't true, as any of us who produce tons of food on small plots of land can show you.

But getting millions or billions of people to start growing food instead of lawns. That is a challenge.

I hope there are some startups thinking about efficient small-scale operations. I just haven't heard of/from them.

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"I hope there are some startups thinking about efficient small-scale operations. I just haven't heard of/from them."

A startup would have to be crazy to go that route. There isn't a lot of money to be made in fleeing from economies of scale and increasing the amount of maintenance people have to do in their lives. (That is, however easy you may think it is to "just" run a garden, I assure you that that is entirely your temperament, and it is far from universally shared. I find it loathsome, partially for brute physical reasons only partially under my control and partially due to my own temperament, which is quite suited to many things and quite ill-suited for others... just like everybody else's.)

There isn't a lot of money to be made in fleeing from economies of scale

Unless people flee economies of scale in large numbers, which can create its own economy of scale. That's how you have viable interesting business in things like 3d printing, or things craft/DIY oriented.

You are halfway proving my point and halfway showing that you don't get what can be done.

In the proving my point camp -- If your goal is to make money, please do not go into agriculture. Go into this arena if you goal is to improve the world. Money can be made elsewhere. Decisions that will impact the ability of people to live or die should NOT be based on the cash it will bring back into the hands of a startup.

And in the not getting it camp - 8 billion people each doing small tasks IS scale. Helping them do those tasks easier decreases the maintenance in their lives. Maybe it is a content-based app to see what has worked for other people. Maybe it is training materials to which people can subscribe. Maybe someone will sell modular garden box kits, with built-in drip irrigation, so you just plug in your hose and you have a system that can work in an arid climate. Or a set of 3D printer designs to print out your own hand tools for gardening.

All of those ideas can scale to be a profitable startup, and they are just off the top of my head. Who knows what could be developed if people really sat down and worked on it?

Finally, as far as gardening not making your life easier, I cannot help you with that. It isn't for everyone. But that is also the reason that communities work better than individuals. In our family, I do little of the farm work, but I make all of the money. It balances out. Find the right people to live with.

This something I've been curious about for a while now. I don't have a lot of experience, but I've worked on a farm and with a research team looking at agricultural water management. It seems like there is a lot of potential in distributed small-scale farming, and later, small-scale automation. I just don't know what would be the most viable route to get into the business of... I guess I'd call it small-scale decentralized farming? But these kinds of ideas are getting me thinking about it again.

I'd guess the greatest interest comes from educated young Western homeowners. But I would rather dream of it breaking into the mainstream and becoming the new pattern of food production. I want to do the math and find out if it's a feasible future, because I suspect it will be, but the question is when. But I'm not sure where to start, or if the data to answer that even exists yet.

The first step is probably gathering a group of like-minded folk and just starting to work the ideas, do the research, crunch the numbers, etc. I don't know what the best product to start with would be, but I'd certainly be up for at least getting some discussion going.

These kinds of ideas are one of the few things that would get me to leave my cushy stable coding job and go back to the startup world.

A startup has to make money, Silicon Valley bubble puffery notwithstanding. If you want to spec this out as a money loosing proposition for a charity, fine, bit then don't go wondering "why aren't the startups not flooding into a market I just said they can't make money in?"

My objection is not necessarily to your ideas, but to the absurd idea that startups should be piling in.

> growing food instead of lawns.

I've occasionally attempted to grow vegetables in my yard. They won't even sprout.

My apple tree is over 10 years old and still is little more than a stick with a few leaves.

I appreciate this comment. I think people hand-wave away the difficulties of running a small garden. Yes, sometimes things go great but often you are dealing with pests and diseases that require time, knowledge, and capital to resolve. If you can't make that commitment, then you just won't have any yield for that crop that year.

Self-sustainable living is an interest of mine, and one of my peeves is seeing folks on YouTube or Reddit posting tutorials on how to build a home hydroponic garden when it's clear that they have just finished building it. If you can keep it running for a couple of years, then that's when I would be interested in hearing more about it.

Have you tried something simpler, like tomatoes?

I have to weed them out of my compost pile because they grow so fast and heavy they eventually collapse on themselves. In my small, Paris garden I've managed to grow tomatoes, sweet peppers, and potatoes.

Not enough to be sustainable but it does create interesting conversation when friends are over and they see me reach out the window and grab a few veggies for the salad.

Yup. Never even showed a leaf!

Around here, there are also lots of mice, wabbits, squirrels, deer, etc. A successful garden would likely need to be completely enclosed.

Build a greenhouse, grow chillis, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, grapes,

One can buy a whole lot of mass produced tomatoes from Mexico for the price of building a greenhouse.

Never mind all the work. Until food becomes a lot more expensive, most people probably won't take up growing it.

(Not disagreeing that the tomatoes aren't better and it wouldn't be all around the healthy thing to do...)

Once you've exported all your tasks you Mexico, you won't have to do anything!

Learning to produce food takes more time and energy than people realize. Every piece of land has a different mix of nutrients in the soil, water, sun, wind, insects, you name it. It takes most new folks a few years of work just to figure out how to use their own soil properly, and you often need to build up the proper nutrients to make it work, via composting, growing some cover crops to replenish nitrogen, or good old animal poo.

As far as fruit trees go, how they were planted has a lot to do with their success, as a poor root system will create a poor tree. Likewise, a few years of bad trimming will create a tree that spends more energy on wood production and not fruit production.

Frankly, I could type a lot of random stuff that needs to be thought about, but the truth is that growing food takes research, learning, and practice. We have spent years learning about gardening and homesteading, finding the right land and home for ourselves, and working it to start producing for our family. Years. And we still feel like raw beginners. It is not as simple as just throwing a few seeds in a garden box and watering them, although that is a good start.

To bring this back to startups, one very helpful product may simply be a training program to help people through the learning process and guide them on how to figure things out for their own land.

Does hydroponics simplify this process?

No. Hydroponics is generally worse for beginners.

Having something planted in an outside soil plot generally means that you have more leeway for making mistakes. You can be a little over or underwatered and things won't die. You can miss the nutrient mix a bit, and things will still grow even if they aren't optimal. You generally don't have to worry about micronutrients and the like until you've been growing in the same plot for some number of years.

Hydroponics tends to be higher maintenance. You may have to water every day. You may have to feed and fertilize more often. You probably have to be more vigilant about pests and disease since you probably don't get help from the local environment.

Hydroponics would seem to be more amenable to automation though. So much of it (including the plants) can be standardized and monitored.

While it probably doesn't make sense for everyone to have their own, manually maintained hydroponic garden, it might make sense to have large-scale, but local, highly automated gardens that produce food for the surrounding community.

>To bring this back to startups, one very helpful product may simply be a training program to help people through the learning process and guide them on how to figure things out for their own land.

Great idea.

>Learning to produce food takes more time and energy than people realize. Every piece of land has a different mix of nutrients in the soil, water, sun, wind, insects, you name it. It takes most new folks a few years of work just to figure out how to use their own soil properly, and you often need to build up the proper nutrients to make it work, via composting, growing some cover crops to replenish nitrogen, or good old animal poo.

>Frankly, I could type a lot of random stuff that needs to be thought about, but the truth is that growing food takes research, learning, and practice. We have spent years learning about gardening and homesteading, finding the right land and home for ourselves, and working it to start producing for our family.

Totally agree.

Could be some issue with the soil in your yard, or even chemicals in the water supply. E.g. do your neighbors (if you have any, and if they have yards) have the same problem? Although codingdave says, in a sibling comment to mine:

>Learning to produce food takes more time and energy than people realize.

, I can say that learning enough of the basics to be moderately successful in growing vegetables, or other plant food, does not take a lot of time (except for trees) or effort - unless there are some exceptional negative conditions, e.g. the soil possibility I mentioned, about your yard. To elaborate on that, it could be that the soil was brought in from somewhere and has some chemicals in it that are not good for plants.

Source: Done a good amount of organic gardening in my teens - grew many different kinds of vegetables and stuff in our home garden.

But in general, codingdave's comment is right, that it takes time to learn to do it well - as for any area or skill.

>But getting millions or billions of people to start growing food instead of lawns. That is a challenge.

I have a feeling it's likely an intractable one, at least in Western society.

People like convenient, simple, self-contained, magic solutions that don't involve compromise.

My guess is residential agriculture might take off upon the advent of a device analogous to the personal 3D printer. Grow whatever you want at the click of a mouse.

On the other hand, if things take a turn for the worse, I suppose we could see a phenomenon similar to victory gardens arise out of necessity.

I don't think it's a 'western' thing. I think it's more an 'urban' thing. Once people move to cities, they mentally leave behind the 'agrarian' aspect for more 'modern' living.

Urban farming will be a 'thing' for mostly upwardly mobile professionals who have time to spend in their vegetable garden in lieu of a flower garden. however, most people will not have the patience to watch over their vegetable gardens --it's not as though plants just take care of themselves to be productive.

it's not as though plants just take care of themselves to be productive

Some do and some don't. Whoever built the house we are renting planted persimmon, pomegranate, tangerine, orange, and lemon trees in the front and backyard. We do nothing for them: trim, water, or fertilize. And this is California, so no water during the drought for the last few years. Yet our biggest problem is the mess the fruit makes when it drops, and the rats and squirrels and raccoons that are rooting around eating the fruit. We probably have to throw away around 100 pounds of fruit a year. I'm sure experiences vary depending what and where you grow.

While I agree that 8 billion people performing tasks is technically "scale", in that there will be a significant output coming from the entire population, the crux of the idea return to scale is that fixed costs (time and training it takes to learn how to farm, equipment, and land- I'm probably missing a few components) will be amortized across an entire population of individuals, rather than accrued for each individual.

If one person specializes as a farmer, rather than the entire population, that individual will be able to produce a greater number of crops than if every individual spent a small portion of their time working on farming. I believe you are trying to state that large scale operations are not necessary in order to feed the human population in your statement against "only large scale operations have the potential," which I disagree with on the basis of lost economic efficiency.

While I am unaware of the parameters of how much food is necessary to feed the world, and how what proportion of this quantity can be produced by large scale farming as opposed to small scale farming, I can definitively say that large scale farming will produce more food overall than distributed small scale farming. Because we want to advance as a population and free up time and energy to do other things, as well as overproduce rather than underproduce food, it does not make sense to substitute a distributed small-scale model for a large scale model, due to the inherent efficiencies associated with scale and specialization. The price one must pay for those efficiencies is distribution, and I would argue that the gains created by return to scale outweigh the losses associated with distribution of food.

However, I must give you kudos for living on a small farm and raising your own crops; I think hands-on production and creation of value for oneself and one's community gives an enormous sense of pride and it feeds a psychological "sense of hunger" in a sustainable way.

This introductory chapter from Small is Beautiful - mentioned above - may interest you:

http://www.ditext.com/schumacher/small/intro.html

>I disagree 100% with the people who say that only large scale operations have the potential to feed the world. It just isn't true, as any of us who produce tons of food on small plots of land can show you.

I agree, large scale operation are not the only way (though they can be one way - if done right, i.e. taking care of things like sustainability, environment, etc.).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

BTW, if anyone is interested, I just saw - from the Wikipedia article I linked to above - that the full text of Schumacher's book Small is Beautiful is available here:

http://www.ditext.com/schumacher/small/small.html

+1 I totally agree.

Small-scale very local farming saves energy, and provides for some level of a safety net if society shuts down for a short while. (I base this on experiences people had relying on local gardens in the collapse of USSR, financial collapses in Argentina, etc.)

I have a small 1200 square plot where I grow food, and the process of dealing with weeds, pests, irrigation has really been fun and interesting.

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