VCs bet on ‘indoor farming,’ lasers that monitor crops and Soylent drinks
wsj.com
wsj.com
We have more people asking us to build tools than we could ever build, and most of the tools are basic management level. We haven't even scratched the surface of applying algorithms to the loads of data being created. I think over the next few years data + machine learning will make things like pesticide application, irrigation, fertilizer, and planting incredibly more efficient. The cool part is the growers have the tools to apply these algorithms as they're produced (tractors, combines, planters are almost all able to support variable rate applications). All we need is the ability to capture, analyze, and start applying the data.
Feel free to ask if you're more interested in what the industry looks like from the inside.
For example, a few months ago my co-founders and I built a computer vision system that could count fruit (predicting yield is important because produce spoils quickly). The growers we've shared it with love it but most don't have the infrastructure to use the data in their operations. It's hard to respond quickly when everyone is emailing spreadsheets.
Adoption of tech in ag has been slow, in part, because farmers are already very good at their jobs. Many of them have been working the same crop on the same land for decades so there has been some skepticism about what new information can be learned from "just another sensor."
But change is in the air. The water is running out, there's a huge labor shortage, and every farm employee now has a smartphone.
If we can spend the next year or two getting farm operational data online then there is a huge amount of value that can be unlocked with even relatively simple algorithms (not to mention deep learning etc.)
In fact, we don't really have any other choice. Software can bring in the next green revolution and that makes this a really exciting time.
> There's a lot of groundwork to lay before we can start applying state of the art algorithms to ag.
We have experts in algorithms, embedded systems engineering, computer vision, software engineering, sensor technology, and robotics at our company (along with a few other specializations). But before we can utilize that talent to its fullest, we have to build the foundation. So that's what we, and a whole bunch of other really talented companies, are doing: building the foundation. Hopefully in a few growing seasons we can start to really apply what we've learned.
If you had said something like "fund the work" it would have sounded more acceptable. There is a large space between "extracting maximum profit" and "doing work for free".
I personally wouldn't want my work code online, as its always rushed and there is a fair bit of technical debt I would like to to refactor, rather than having potential employers thinking that I always write shit code. Feature requests are valued more than code quality.
I say, let it all hang out. Code can be continually improved.
What are a few examples?
The first addresses one market. The second addresses the entire market at a high-level. Most individual markets (such as seeds, fertilizer, pesticide, etc.) need specialized solutions.
For instance, fertilizer companies and growers would love a tool that lets them take in all of their data and using known models (which exist in theory in academia) apply that information to allow them to apply correctly across a field. A myriad of individualized solutions for locales, crops, and the ilk are just begging to be built. And that's just fertilizer, one of the many cycles in crop production.
Large and small corporations are asking us to do work on various pieces of that huge pie, but we have to specialize or our fairly small team would be impossibly overloaded.
Who owns the data?
We shall see.
In order to do that, we started by building a hardware tool to deploy in fields to monitor moth population. That's how incredibly specialized this industry requires: one part of the cycle and for one pest merits an entire company being started.
Because hardware is really hard to get right, and then to scale, we've started developing software products in parallel. What that means is like just about every other provider in the space, we had to develop a general purpose platform to allow growers to even see their data (farm, field level management and visualization). Luckily, we have a contract with a regional company to build that tool while maintaining the IP. We're just now starting to get that right, so that we can move on to solving interesting problems in the space (we just released our first product built on the platform for scouting companies, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9331917).
Thankfully the data problem is in the slow progress of being solved thanks to http://openag.io/. Hopefully in the future, new companies only need to develop awesome solutions to particular problems and allow those to be integrated with a variety of data storehouses. Unfortunately, that's a long way off.
"Freight Farms’s repurposed shipping containers, packed with LED lights, sensors and hydroponic systems and producing lettuce and herbs, are appearing in vacant lots and alleys. The sealed containers can yield about 500 full heads of lettuce a week, year-round—even in Minnesota and Canada, where some of the 25 units sold so far by Freight Farms now operate. Co-founder and Chief Executive Brad McNamara said the units sell for $76,000 each and require no pesticides."
- locally, a head of lettuce is $1.25 (Tucson, Arizona close to lettuce growing areas) - 500 a week makes $625 a week, or $32,500 a year in revenue - average $2706.25 per month revenue. - a 5 year lease with $1 buyout on $76,000 would be $1580.80 a month based on terms I used to sell capital equipment for.
$2706.25 - $ 1580.80 = $1125.45 per month, before paying employees, electricity, and cost of location.
What does lettuce cost in other areas?
A 40' container probably shouldn't even require one full time staff to harvest, it could be feasible for a grocery store to operate one of these. Dedicate a few staff hours per day, sacrifice a few parking spaces.
If it makes half of that in profit per month, the interest rate on it would be better than a lot of offerings on the market. Also, the no pesticides might add a market premium.
[1] eg http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/most-profitable-plants...
You can't make claims like this without context. There's 85th-percentile health, and then there's 99th-percentile health. Plenty of foods, including Soylent, can help people attain or maintain that more modest level of health. Now, if you were an Olympic athlete requiring 99th-percentile health, I agree you'd be insane to make Soylent more than 30% of your daily calories. But if you're an average person eating the Standard American Diet, you are currently insane from a health standpoint, and switching to Soylent would make you a lot less so. And among all the options you might have for improving your diet, it is among the cheapest and lowest-effort.
It amazes me how people can fail to recognize that nutrition is a part of a larger economic problem of time and resource allocation. There are real tradeoffs to be made! Perfection is rarely attainable or even desirable except in special cases!
Rob Rhinehart, for his part, has always been honest about this. The Soylent team has looked at including things like antioxidants and digestive enzymes--things you'd get from whole foods but not from Soylent's processed ingredients--but they concluded that there's just not enough information to determine the types and quantities of these substances that are necessary to improve health. I think this lack of information is no accident. It's easier to research core nutrients whose deficiency will cause clear symptoms than it is to research nice-to-haves like antioxidants whose presence may cause slight performance improvements at the margin. Soylent is designed to reflect the state of nutritional knowledge. As that knowledge improves, so will Soylent. While I have bought MealSquares and enjoy their product, I prefer Soylent's approach to one that pretends our knowledge is more complete than it really is.
I have been skeptical of Soylent's claims, and I'm often troubled by the concept that we need to somehow "fix" food, but this comment makes quite a bit of sense. I would rather a person suck down Soylent instead of Twinkies, Doritos, and other highly-processed, barely-food stuff that is sold these days.
I question what definition of 'perfection' you are using if you believe that it is only desirable in 'special cases'.
If you can attain '99th-percentile health', why would you settle for '85th-percentile health', even if it is marginally (or substantially) better than your current health.
E.g. I lift weights. I'm stronger than 95% or so of people around. It's been a decade long commitment of 3-5 hours a week of exercise. Lets say 4 weeks for 50 weeks a year on average. In addition comes meal planning and a substantial additional cost in supplements. Lets say it cost me $1k/year extra (almost certainly an underestimate). That's $10k+interest excluding things like the gym membership which would add up to almost as much, and about 2000 hours of time investment over a decade. I'll need to continue to invest about as much to maintain it over the next several decades to maintain the maximum viable strength for my age as I get older.
I doubt I've got 99th-percentile health. I have no idea how many additional hours I would need to get there by e.g. improving my endurance, tweaking my diet, improving my flexibility, reducing my stress, increasing my sleep and many more. That time investment starts to add up, and quickly take away from your ability to actually live life.
Do we even know that 99th-percentile health even is? What it costs, what the benefits are, or how to achieve it?
We probably don't know what 99th-percentile health is. But we do know that e.g. a variety of indicators of physical fitness affects a long list of lifestyle related illnesses. As does diet.
While narrowing down "99th-percentile" health precisely would be hard, it is clear that for a number of these indicators, for someone to even reach 95th-percentile or even 90th-percentile is going to involve more effort than they will consider worthwhile.
Perhaps they can achieve 99th-percentile health through some other combination of more moderate effort, but it seems reasonable to question your flippant rhetorical question of why someone would settle for 85th-percentile health on this basis:
Because it's hard.
That's what my argument boiled down to, with some examples as to why I believe it is hard. You've not given any counter arguments of any substance.
My "unsubstantiated and anecdotal data points" are not evidence, but it beats "nothing" when it comes to providing a starting point for discussing what 99th-percentile health is, and why it may (or may not) be hard any day.
Eating fully nutritious food should just be a given.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Silicon+Valley+Firms+Plant+R...
Click the first link.
AGERPoint was also one of the companies mentioned in the article. Their campaign is also currently listed on our site.