sapote

This is a terrible idea. Growing plants sustainably requires soil and sun. And good tasting produce requires both. Two minutes thought about it from a whole-systems perspective, and maybe a bit of common sense, would have told them that this was a terrible idea.

A few reasons to get things started:

* Pests go nuts in indoor farming operations like this. You have to spray to stay on top of them. There's no natural ecosystem present, so natural predators don't take care of your pest problems. Also, plant metabolism changes to adapt to pest problems, and such systems are typically "precision" agriculture oriented, where the plants' needs are reduced to a small set of easy to distribute soluble elements.

* Soil composition and biology influences produce flavor. There's a reason vineyards care a lot about soil.

* Energy efficiency of such an operation is far below that of an outdoor farm -- just think about the number of energy conversions and the infrastructure needs (and its embodied energy) of this sort of operation.

* The most local basil is one that you put in a flowerbed next to your kitchen window.

Michael Pollan's less known book, The Botany of Desire, is an excellent read and examines four crops -- one of them the Apple -- that have shaped human history.

Not sure I understand.

One might think that if one were to read a wikipedia entry on it. But it's not true -- that's only a property of eating the leaves or seeds, not the fruit.

Sure...but if they want Apples, at least they could plant some interesting Apples. Instead of Granny Smith, maybe some Brushy Mountain Limbertwig or Hawaii or Fukunishiki or ...?

None of the fruit trees they are planting are native to California.

If they wanted to plant native edibles they'd be stuck with a pretty limited selection of berries and nuts.

Edited to add: White Sapote and Avocado are about as close to native fruit trees as you can get in California. Apples, on the other hand, are native to Kazakhstan.

"Muffly, who had been sensitive to the native growth of the region for years, got it immediately. “That’s what I’ve been doing — planting fruit trees, oak trees,” he said."

The thing that's funny about it is that the pre-silicon valley landscape that Jobs was familiar with was not native at all. None of the fruits that they are planting are native to the region (though sure, the oaks are). Most of the old growth forests in the region had already been completely logged by the the 1950s (well before that, actually). This article talks about how the redwood forests that covered the local hillsides were all clearcut in the 1800s:

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/cover/1996_Nov_...

Just on the other side of the bay (in the East Bay hills) there used to be a stand of some of the largest redwoods ever known to have existed, that were used for navigation by ships through the golden gate because they were so large.

I get it -- the building is really a monument to Jobs, and so creating his childhood vision of the valley is fine. And it's a private company -- they can do what they want. I just guess I see this tree planting as a missed opportunity, one that is being given far more credit than it deserves.

By the way, for those who are curious, here's a list of fruit trees that they planted at the new Apple campus:

http://www.cityfarmer.org/treesapple.jpg

(Edit: the list is from several years ago, so no idea if this is a complete list and/or accurate -- I've seen other lists that include a few more trees than are listed here.)

Disappointed by your response given that I've been reading here for ages and figured I'd weigh in on something I know a lot about...but ok.

To respond to your point: I think there's probably a good reason he chose what he did -- it's what Jobs was used to (given that the fruits they planted were the commercial fruit varieties that were commonly grown in the area when Jobs was a kid). That doesn't make it an interesting orchard worthy of the press it's gotten. And I'm sure he put lots of effort into the aesthetics of it, but he didn't in the actual selection of fruits. Also, the climate of 2050 won't be the climate of 1950 (both due to climate change and the urban heat island) -- it's possible to successfully grow many fruits that only did well in Southern CA 50 years ago. (Just to highlight the lack of forward thinking: the orchard includes many citrus fruit trees, which are going to be toast in a matter of just a few years due to HLB.)

There have been so many articles about the trees planted in the new Apple campus, and how this was somehow groundbreaking, but it's actually been pretty disappointing. I've seen some lists of trees, especially fruit trees, that they've planted, and it's pretty uninspired -- they didn't Think Different. Lots of pomes (Apples, Pears, etc.) and stone fruit (Plums, Cherries, etc.) -- conventional varieties too. And they talk about drought tolerance, but I haven't seen a single mention of them planting White Sapote, a fruit perfectly adapted to the local climate, delicious, and very productive (not to mention, rare). Or various Guava relatives (Lemon / Strawberry Guava, Guabiju, Pineapple Guava, etc.). And that's just scratching the surface...

I wish they would have talked to the local chapter of California Rare Fruit Growers to plan an orchard with a true diversity of interesting fruit. They had an opportunity to include a huge diversity of fruits and cultivars with the space they have, but it seems like they're not going to.