This sounds the “why Tesla will never work argument.” Selling rich people what they want as a starting place to pioneer new technology is a good strategy even if it doesn’t feel good to you.
At first glance. I challenge you to find a technique (Being executed commercially, demonstrated in a paper, or clearly described) where high-calorie foods are grown indoors.
I'm not trying to be snarky; I'd love to see something like this, but the comment you reply to is my conclusion as well. I used to be very excited about this stuff, but the only viable crops are leafy greens sold at a high price.
I own a business selling sensors for use in hydroponics. I started because I wanted to make an impact in food availability. I've abandoned that, and continue because hobbyists, and companies like this have a use.
> I challenge you to find a technique...where high-calorie foods are grown indoors.
The GP isn't saying this is happening, though. They're saying that selling rich people overpriced kale and strawberries can fund further research and innovation. Maybe the next step is corn. Maybe it's bankruptcy. But it has cash flow to invest in the research to see which one it is, in part from growing and selling the less impactful stuff now.
> The GP isn't saying this is happening, though. They're saying that selling rich people overpriced kale and strawberries can fund further research and innovation. Maybe the next step is corn. Maybe it's bankruptcy. But it has cash flow to invest in the research to see which one it is, in part from growing and selling the less impactful stuff now.
Something about vertical farms for staple foods just doesn't pass the smell test. One big aspect of farming is the conversion of solar energy to edible chemical energy. Assuming natural plants and some efficient way of using natural light, stacking farmland vertically just means less energy per acre. And barring some new kind of clean energy like fusion, using artificial light will just introduce conversion inefficiencies and expense, at best.
> Assuming natural plants and some efficient way of using natural light
That’s the surprising result of "closed" greenhouses: standard solar panels convert to electricity that convert to LEDs at the right frequency that offer more yield. Plants only absorb very narrow bands of light. Then you have more gains because the plants don’t have to maintain temperature, fight pests, dig deep roots for water; day/night cycle can be optimised. It is leafy greens for now, but there’s no strong reason that other high-energy crops (like sugar cane, carrots, beetroot) wouldn’t work.
Source: Friends working at the Umeå university grow house.
Right. Would it go too far to say that the conversion of solar to chemical energy is the biggest aspect of farming?
I’d like to see the accounting for how much of the “100% renewable” energy is actual production and how much is an accounting practice that involves offsets somewhere. Maybe it is, plants don’t need lighting at night so you could use solar. But the efficiency of sun -> cell -> transmission -> LED -> plant is much less than sun -> plant, it’s not a winner there. Are they attached to the grid and push more electricity to it than they draw?
Balancing production costs vs the carbon chain of transport is good to look at. Our springtime apples come from Chile, New Zealand, and other far-flung places. How many joules of energy went into getting that kale to your Boston store from California vs from Worcester in January? If the energy to grow to harvest is less than the energy to transport, and people really really need that fresh-picked kale in January, it’s a niche win. I’m doubtful you can make much of a dent in New England’s produce needs using New England’s available renewable energy during wintertime. But gathering evidence is better than listening to my doubt.
Vertical orchards- I don’t see that happening. So my apples will still be imported from across the globe.
From what I understand about chicken and pig feed, soy meal is typically used, and it's from the part of the bean that humans don't use, since the oil is the key ingredient in so many foods consumed by people. Is cricket farming more efficient than soy farming? Seems like the economies of scale for soy are so much greater.
Yeah, the cricket protein thing is a fad. Anything that can be produced by an animal, can be produced by a (potentially genetically-modified) plant or yeast more efficiently. Animals are above plants trophic-level-wise, and their feed conversion efficiency can't be more than 100%.
That said, insects are way more efficient than mammals at converting plants into human-edible calories thanks in part to their lack of internal temperature control and growth rate.[0] If you had to choose an animal to use as a protein-constructor, crickets would be a great choice.
>> So your saying that I have to decide that all of a sudden I can't wait to eat crickets because they are more efficient?
No no, not you. All the poor people. They're the ones who will be fed "efficiently". You and I and most people on HN will retain our privilege to eat what we want.
If your idea of "privilege" is fighting heroin addiction [and currently very much winning that battle, thankfully] and living on the streets of West Palm Beach because due to felony drug possession charges over 15 years ago I can't get hired anywhere, than yes, "you and I" are most definitely that.
I'm happy to hear that you're winning the battle and I hope you continue to do so.
My comment stands. You would be forced to eat crickets and I wouldn't (be forced to eat them). That's the whole idea with feeding people "efficiently". Piss-poor people who can't get a living wage are already fed the most unhealthy food because it's cheap and easy to mass-produce, whereas those who are well-off can eat whatever we want, whatever we think is healthy and nutritious, or just pleasant to eat. And all this talk of efficiency means is that more cheaply produced, low-quality food can keep being sold to those who need to watch their wallet more than they care to watch their waistline.
Yeah the more I think about it, it's probably just a cultural thing and not a "whole humanity" thing.
As it's been discussed here, in some cultures crickets are sold as a snack on streetcorners and people grow up eating them.
And I think the whole "piss-poor people" thing might just be eating unhealthy garbage because, just maybe, the cheap high-sugar high-carb stuff releases endorphins in most humans, and they are just trying to get a small reprieve in their desperate lives.
Roasted crickets are actually very tasty. I’d compare them to Cheetos. To each their own, sure, and I won’t tease you for refusing, but I can completely see then as something you wouldn’t be surprised to find in a corner deli, as complementary snacks in a bar, or while gaming at a friend’s. I prefer peanuts but many people are allergic. You want alternatives.
They're everywhere here in Thailand. You can buy a bag from a street vendor or find them in many supermarkets along with worms and other things we wouldn't consider eating in the West.
I think you're going to have a lot easier time getting people to eat lentils than crickets, but sure, if it has to be cows or crickets then go for the crickets.
It may be easier to grow and great for humans, but reducing it to just that is like the people who want to subsist only on Soylent; it's missing the bigger picture about food.
Some people like eating things beyond just basic nutritional subsistence. It's why meat is so popular. We've also been eating it since time immemorial. The demand for meat isn't going away no matter how many cricket/insect ads you shove in people's faces. If anything, it just breeds resentment for sustainable food practices, because the rich and powerful will always still have access to meat products.
Making meat into a luxury product like the days of yore will not work. The monkey's out of the bottle on that one. We need to work with this fact, not around it.
Climate change is going to necessitate a lot of uncomfortable changes, including not eating whatever you want whenever you want. Selfishness at that level doesn't work with 8 billion people.
That said I think lab grown meats look pretty promising.
It’s common for chickens and other poultry or even cows to be grown indoors. Animals don’t need direct sunlight, but they still need food grown somewhere.
Yes - likely growing lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, maybe some simple berries... That’s the same stuff that’s been growing in hothouses for over a century.
I think GPs point is that those aren’t the high-calorie, high value crops needed to make this a real revolution in food production.
Show me vertical vineyards, maize, grains, stone fruits, apples etc.
It seems to me that vineyards should be the easiest thing to 'verticalize' since you're growing vines anyway. You should be able to cover the entire sunward side of a skyscraper with vines and harvest the grapes using a robot hanging off a crane.
> It seems to me that vineyards should be the easiest thing to 'verticalize' since you're growing vines anyway. You should be able to cover the entire sunward side of a skyscraper with vines and harvest the grapes using a robot hanging off a crane.
Except when you realize that the most highly valued added product (wine) relies on soil/region specific soil (terroir). No one buying table grapes, even at Whole Foods, is going to spend the kind of money to make something like that at scale. I've worked in a vineyard for a Summer in Croatia, it's how I got run my own Kitchen in Italy soon after as it crated a good 'marketing hook' for a chef, and I can go into why that skyscraper idea is impractical for anything fruit bearing but suffice it to say: it won't work unless you want a small, low yield plaything that can be outperformed from anything in most common grape growing regions even if hyper-local expenses are removed. Hell, even using them as a cover crop/ornament on a trellis in a backyard garden may yield better results.
Cash crops, as specified, are based on economies of scale for a reason and are actually very efficient when properly done and have 10,000+ years of refinement behind them--crop rotation, efficient irrigation, cover crops in the off season, livestock grazing for fertility and micro-organism replenishment. With the advent of more automation, and no till methods we are seeing increases in yield, despite global climate change. Water scarcity, irrigation and water table replenishment and growing organically is something I wished we placed a greater focus on and would do more good for us and our Ecosystem as a whole than anything else hindering cash crop modality if I'm honest.
I sincerely wish people were forced to have to farm as part of their formal education, and continued gardening as their is so much deadly ignorance in regards to where our food comes from and the maladies it creates as a result of being so far from it: obesity and heart disease kills more in the West than anything else.
With that said, I see this as very good data for Mars colonization and food production; but for terrestrial purposes its absurd for anything but Hype/Marketing an expensive and impractical bridge with fanciful ideas of 'closing the gap between food deserts' when urban farming is the real answer in the US (see: Detroit). This model only semi-worked when they were aligned to expensive fine dining restaurants, now that those have been systemically destroyed and may never come back, I don't see it having much if any potential as I've eaten greenhouse stuff that aren't herbs or salad from Holland and its awful!
We could honestly make more headway in solving hunger, food scarcity if they just allotted community gardens in vacant land not in use and mandated fruit bearing trees be used instead of ornamental ones in urban landscaping and reinstated gleaning as a form Community Supported Agriculture.
I've worked in a vineyard for a Summer in Croatia
Which region of Croatia if you don't mind me asking?
My family has a vineyard (800 liters, for our personal consumption) so I know the hassle you are talking about. From what I can tell there has been some advancement regarding automation in the area of vine making over the past years with tractor attachments that allow automatic and precise spraying of fungicides as well as machines that automatically pick the grapes (shake,comb and vacuum). By that I mean, that it has become available even to smaller-medium producers as I see people using it.
As you probably know, a lot of what a winemaker does is adaption of the vineyard to seasonal conditions by adjusting variety and quantity of spraying with (usually) fungicides, reducing the leaves and reducing the grapes (in order to increase overall sugar and quality). This variation would be something that would be reduced using greenhouse/indoor growing.
> a Which region of Croatia if you don't mind me asking?
Bok, dobro dan:
Umag professionally, and then the countryside in Zagreb to help a friend and her village harvest later that year and begin the wine and olive oil pressing.
It took a whole village of maybe 25 rotating of various ages people to do both orchards and it was rather small, maybe 2 heactres each? But we were casual and stopped to eat and dink, chat and nap.
Whereas the one in Umag was back breaking slave labour as it was way larger ~20 hectares broken up into various fields depending on cultivar, as they mainly focused on white wine based grapes we sold by the bottle at the nearby campsite and at bio markets/stores, they had some other fruit for rakija. But it was me and an another guy who were the only apprentices in a staff of 4 plus the 3 owners who mainly focused on sales and very light field work in the mornings so me and the other guy each worked 13-16 hour days back then 6 days a week and a lot of that was just pruning leaves and unripened grapes and adjusting the vineyards to the trellis which is what made that farm most of its money. I'm glad I made the pivot to Italy when I did as I preferred to work in gardens and develop a menu and then run the kitchen for an Agrotourism in Maranello! Those 16-18 hour days were much more better spent in my opinion.
One day in Croatia the other guy in Umag was out taking care of the tomato fields and I was actually spraying the copper and Organic/Bio fungicide mixture with the blower machine in the red field and making my way to the white when I saw the plume of a bomb go off that contained sulfide in a neighbors much larger field nearby, which typically was used for low-end wines that give you headaches or were used for gemišt, and I had to run like hell to avoid getting sprayed on as that stuff hurts when you inhale it. I actually left the blower behind until the sky air cleared.
> As you probably know, a lot of what a winemaker does is adaption of the vineyard to seasonal conditions by adjusting variety and quantity of spraying with (usually) fungicides, reducing the leaves and reducing the grapes (in order to increase overall sugar and quality).
I know the farm-hands (like me back then) do that, the winemaker is usually the owner who seldom does much of the labour in my experience besides occasionally walk the fields and prepare the barrels and bottles in my experience during harvest. And he usually has an apprentice(s) do much of that as they're usually much older.
> This variation would be something that would be reduced using greenhouse/indoor growing.
How so? The vines are permanent once planted and are dormant in the Fall-late Spring in most wine making regions, so that is money you're losing because you cannot grow other crops, moreover from my limited experience on those farms the roots underneath need to have be really established before you're able to get any reasonable yield as the first years/decade is always going to be so-so vintages as the soil and microbiology underneath creates the taste you're looking for and is altered with time--different types of compost, more sand-soil ratios etc... These are all losses if greenhouse spaces is built for that end alone instead of fast-growing, low input things like salads and herbs in the winter and early planted nightshades in the early Spring to capture the higher premium on being first to Market.
Again, I don't know how the lack of restaurants is going to alter all of this, to be honest.
Cool. My family has a vineyard in the central part of Istria. In our case we do everything ourselves, but I know that professionals use hired hands, both documented and undocumented ones.
We stooped using the copper sulfate for the exactly reasons you describe. My dad (who does most of the work) has a somewhat allergic reaction to it so he tries to compensate with other stuff.
BTW, it seems that you have quite a nice success story there although the begging of it is quite familiar to many of us from Croatia. (low wage, s*ity bosses, shady working conditions)
I see your point with the greenhouse. You are right, thinking in terms of output per square meter, it doesn't makes sense to have anything that is dormant and doesn't produce a stable revenue, unless it's something very specific for which the market (customer) is prepared to pay a huge amount. Considering the region we are talking about, the thing that pops in my mind and falls in the super-high return category is the truffle. (and they are trying!)
> BTW, it seems that you have quite a nice success story there although the begging of it is quite familiar to many of us from Croatia. (low wage, s*ity bosses, shady working conditions)
It made me who I am today, and I'm very thankful; but I still have friends in Croatia and I understand the plight well, such that I do want to move back to Dalamatia but only on the basis that I have secured remote work as I refuse to ever work locally again. Croatia is lovely place to live provided you don't have to work there, or at least depend on it as you major source of income, that's for sure.
> Considering the region we are talking about, the thing that pops in my mind and falls in the super-high return category is the truffle. (and they are trying!)
It's funny, I ran a kitchen in Lovran overlooking the Adriatic before I worked in those farms/agrotourisms and used to buy black truffles at a discount since there were so many and most restaurants in the area were closed for the season by November especially if I didn't need them to be fresh to garnish/finish a dish: and were used soups, stocks, bases etc...
The thing about truffles is that it really depends on how well you can make them travel to get into the hands of chefs in as short of time as possible, but again after COVID the culinary Industry may never be the same. And I don't care who you are and what kitchen you came from but I can't think of a single professional chef/cook who would buy black truffles, let alone white, on a weekly/monthly basis for cooking at home so the lack of demand would vastly reduce the price even if it could be actively cultivated instead of foraged in the Forest as it is now.
Personally speaking, I'm not that big of a fan as the black ones always tasted like very good garlic to me, I never got to use white truffles as I missed the season and only made rissoto from the rice they use to carry them in which was good but not worth the price, in my opinion.
> we are seeing increases in yield, despite global climate change
I'm ignorant about this. I want to learn more.
I've read that increasing CO2 %, increasing temperature, and increasing water availability will improve plant yields. Is this true?
I also understood that one of the positive feedbacks for the climate response is the increased amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, water vapour being a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. I'm confused about how we can have more water vapour in the atmosphere and yet less water availability, presumably because less rain - these things appear to be conflicting.
I understand that the change in climate will change the established weather patterns that we're used to now, and create drought in areas that are currently wet. I don't understand why we can't adapt to this and move our farms to where the water is.
In short: I keep hearing this, that global climate change will reduce our ability to grow plants, and I don't understand why this is true or how the science for it works. Can anyone shed some light on it, please?
> I've read that increasing CO2 %, increasing temperature, and increasing water availability will improve plant yields. Is this true?
Depends on the crop/cultivar and where and when it is being grown, but I distinctly recall 2019's Peach bumper crop in Colorado as I made a peach salad on my station that sold like crazy which was used as a sauteed fruit with our pork chop entree!, too and we still had more come in than we could use And this was sold alongside a melon and heirloom tomato salad that also sold well, but was always constantly running out sooner into service because of the immense surplus of peaches we had that year [0]. Looking deeper into that later in the Fall after we looked over the (record breaking) numbers I looked back at the reasons why which included the weather in the Western Slope: no snap frosts, very little hail and warmer/balmier albeit wetter weather in the Summer in Colorado.
This was true for almost all stone-fruit that year, too. Whereas the heirloom tomatoes were limited in the early Summer hit a snag because they kept bursting due to the extra rain or had to be grown in lower elevation counties in Boulder, Weld, Ft Collins and in the Southern Counties. This would get better, as one who has farmed/gardened would predict, in the later Summer to Fall despite the rain as more plants were planted and were maturing to uptake the water.
> I understand that the change in climate will change the established weather patterns that we're used to now, and create drought in areas that are currently wet. I don't understand why we can't adapt to this and move our farms to where the water is.
This is my biggest concern (one that I understand well) as our prediction models and the Ag supply chains and distribution models we've created and been reliant on and how fragile they are under simple variable changes as proven by COVID this year. We could, should and WILL HAVE TO adapt but the issue is that we have such a centralized food system that its so monolithic with massive labour shortages and is hard to correct that without a local system to meet the demand (which is the case for most city dwellers) is exactly how Society breaks down.
> I keep hearing this, that global climate change will reduce our ability to grow plants, and I don't understand why this is true or how the science for it works. Can anyone shed some light on it, please?
Its way more complex than that, and is really impossible to give a complete answer as countless books are written on specific topics that range from: water depletion due to lack of rain and drought, soil erosion, bee/pollinator collapse etc... I can help if you narrow down what specific aspect you're asking, but essentially what you're describing is the fear of ecological collapse as much of Man's intervention and actions have led to immense consequences we never took into account.
I also think that the Sun's activity is playing a bigger part in weather, specifically the role cloud formation has on rising temperature as a result of cosmic ray ejection, that we do not speak about enough.
> is really impossible to give a complete answer as countless books are written on specific topics
And it seems the story keeps getting worse.
My latest terror is the analysis showing how warming is drying plant life due to "vapor pressure deficit". While this article is about forest fires, I can't help but wonder what's happening to fruit trees, perennials, vines, etc.
> farm as part of their formal education, and continued gardening
Enthusiastic agreement.
Maybe even get credits (and maybe even some cash) working in the school cafeteria.
My father had a veggie garden. Including heirloom seeds from the family's farming past. My siblings and I had a completely different relationship to food, compared to my school mates.
I'm glad you do, given your background, because while I'm a massive proponent of UBI it still doesn't solve a critical issue in the Human Condition: Purpose and the lack thereof.
I learned so much during my apprenticeship and I was honored to be taken in by some the most renown artisans in their fields that spanned: pecorino cheese makers, aceto and lambrusco brewers in Italy to a multi-genrational legacy Emnentaler cheese maker that allowed me apprentice for a day and even let me use the stick his great grandfather used in the Bernese Alps 100s of years ago to make a very rural and basic cheese.
This helped me not only further appreciate their artisan craftmanship, but it also gave greater insight that I would use in my career(s) later on in 3 separate Industries and allowed me to get opportunities to work under Michelin star chefs and get offers to work in Jame Beard award restaurants as a cook that simply cannot be gained in culinary school, which I completely bypassed to my complete benefit.
I think having community based works program alongside UBI would help solve local food insecurity and could be a critical part in solving so many more ecological issues, especially for disenfranchised and disillusioned younger millennials and Gen Z kids who we have to admit have really limited options in the traditional labour market with ever diminishing returns to be had rom their mandated 'formal education.' At least a program like that could pay for itself in the long with the work experience they gain as it could give them insight to prepare them to take on massive issues like carbon sequestration, soil erroison and water reclamation and basic survival skills for Mars colonization that will be CRITICAL in their lifetime and those to come and may be give them motivation to take their UBI with their neighbors/family and create a seed-round for a startup like Boyan Slat did to pull the plastic out of the Pacific Ocean.
I know that would help a lot of the kids who follow and are motivated by Greta Thunberg's activism and help give the younger crowds from Extinction Rebellion (all amazing movements) a productive outlet to let them utilize their anxiety to desirable ends. Because I know I felt that anxiety about our Environment since the 2008 financial crisis but didn't have any options due to student debt until I could afford to quit my Industry altogether and undertook a series of massive risks to pay it back that propelled me to flee to the other side of the World and put all of my skill-set to the test.
I now know in hindsight that I couldn't have done even a fraction of the amazing things I've done in Life if it weren't for those years of apprenticeship and how lucky I was that it even worked at all. My only wish is that the youth have a more structured path to that end as they will need it.
And to be honest after accumulating these skills I'd really like to be able pass this knowledge on to help instruct these kids to help them solve these very dire Environmental situations and if I can give them a craft in the process as I can no longer do it myself anymore I'd be glad to do so at no cost--but I wouldn't say no to reducing my tax liability.
One of the most rewarding things about going from an ignorant apprentice making a ton of mistakes along the way and learning a skill or craft well enough to then have apprentices of your own is this sort of legacy transfer of knowledge that I think is what parenthood must feel like when you see your child be able to undertake a project or task by themselves for the first time.
I've only had 3 but it was pretty cool experience that I think could scale with limited resources if the right incentives allowed to tap into the collective will and desire of the youth as I think it's Human Capital issue more than it is a lack of resources.
That was long, but I'm sure you're one of the few that would probably fully appreciate that sentiment and need given what you've written about your past.
I feel like a lot of people would find their passion a lot easier if they didn't have to worry about supporting themselves. I'm incredibly lucky to be able to build cool tech for a living (and honestly I'd do it for free if I didn't have to pay the bills) but not everyone's passion pays so well.
Also, thanks for all your replies in this thread, about farming and otherwise. Some great posts!
Agree on all counts. I think about apprenticeship, coaching, mentoring all the time. Most of my own efforts to date have failed. Doing better would be nice.
Please continue posting on HN. I treat it as batting practice. Writing stuff out helps me refine my thinking. And the moderation (u/dang) keeps me civil.
“Terroir” is just marketing gobbledygook, just like they once said that California wines would never compete with French wines. Get a plant the right climate and nutrients and the fruit will produce well. No mysticism to it.
A lot of it is definitely blatant Marketing, but having been in the culinary Industry and tasted countless wines from various regions their is definitely a reason why that phrase to describe a certain experience has persisted. Certain Pinot Noirs from various regions taste, smell and feel unique in your mouth and accentuate a dish differently than others.
And I'm not a wine snob by any means; I usually just drink whatever is Organic or preferably Biodynamic or leave it the the sommelier if I know them and is really just matching the right amount of tannins (or lack thereof) that matches the dish I'm eating or making, and I saw the leap that you're describing in California happen in my lifetime.
Back then as a kid I saw wine as that horrible tasting stuff from a box we were forced to drink at church/school in the US, in direct contrast with my Summers in Southern Europe where I had small glass at dinner which was remarkably smoother but something I personally didn't enjoy at all and told it was because American/Californian junk was inherently inferior. Only to turn the tables around in about a decade or so and created World class products from Sonoma and Napa that commanded a premium in Europe.
Which was also a phenomenon with olive oil by the way.
Personal anecdote: I can enjoy a $35 bottle of wine from Rioja just as much as a $200 bottle from Bordeaux depending on what I'm eating and I think food plays the bigger role in if I enjoy a wine or not than the wine itself. Also my Ag focuses just as much of not more on soil microbiology than the type of cultivar that is grown with remarkably different results, so the same should apply to grapes.
Terrior is marketing gobbledygook on top of the genuine flavor differences which actually make the product taste like something interesting and worth drinking. (Even outside of wine — my New Zealand oolong tea was grown somewhere rocky, and tastes nothing like what's grown in Taiwan.) I'm sure in principle you can find some way to wedge that flavor in artificially, but it's a massive hurdle to add on the path to a respectable product.
I would be fascinated to see a scientific approach to mimicking the effects of terroir. I don't believe for one minute that it's magic, but I also don't think it's fully understood.
Some aspects are explainable, e.g. limestone-rich soil increases the acidity of grapes, which can impart notes of citrus on the wine. But what about notes of chocolate, or berries, or stone fruit? In some cases, this is totally because the winemaker actually conditions with those things, but in plenty of cases, this is actually imparted by the growing conditions.
For what it's worth, the impression I get is that Americans place a lot of stock in the varietal of grape, e.g. Pinot noir or Chardonnay, whereas the French place a lot more emphasis in the region, e.g. Bordeaux or Burgundy. Both impart different qualities (e.g. it's going to be a lot easier to find notes of pepper in a Tempranillo than in a Chardonnay).
You are correct that American wines are much more likely to be labeled with their varietal, and European wines with their place of origin. However, those places of origin are so closely tied to specific wine styles that it’s really one and the same. Red Burgundy is always going to be Pinot Noir- unless it’s labeled Beaujolais, which is always Gamay. Sure, there are some outliers (white Burgundy is almost always Chardonnay, but there are some bottling a of Aligote and Pinot Blanc) but generally you know what grape/blend you’re going to get from each of these places. New Word winemakers aren’t as tied to tradition (and hundreds of years of trial and error) in what they plant, so you’re more likely to see unusual choices.
Not going to get into terroir other than to say that to reduce it solely to the soil type is the wrong way to look at it. It’s more of a holistic view of the entire growing microclimate, including soil, topography, water table, general climate conditions, etc.
I’m a sommelier and own a wine shop, for what it’s worth.
> Not going to get into terroir other than to say that to reduce it solely to the soil type is the wrong way to look at it.
We're agreed on that front. My comment about limestone was to present one scientific aspect of terroir as _I_ understand it (which is to say, as a casual wine drinker recalling something I'd heard from a winemaker some years back).
That's a fair point about a lot of varietals being very heavily coupled to places of origin, and that's especially true for the big names that we've been discussing. But a white wine from the Alsace region (for instance!) could be a Gewurztraminer, or a Riesling, or something else entirely. (That said, I wouldn't expect an Alsatian white to be an Italian varietal...)
Alsatian wines would typically be labeled with the varietal on the bottle, for just that reason- Alsace is known for a variety of world class white wines.
> Not going to get into terroir other than to say that to reduce it solely to the soil type is the wrong way to look at it. It’s more of a holistic view of the entire growing microclimate, including soil, topography, water table, general climate conditions, etc.
All of these things sound like something a tightly controlled vertical farm could reproduce at will, once they figure out the mechanics. They could even come up with new, even more preferred, "terroirs", by adjusting settings.
No doubt that they would come up with “new” terroir- every spot has its own “terroir.” My point was that it’s not something that can be quantified, so there’s no point trying to game it.
The big one would be soy beans or potatoes in vertical farms. I've seen some buzz about startups attempting it, but I am unable to find anyone who actually succeeded.
But on the other hand, vertical farming could possibly increase yields for traditional greenhouse owners, and cheap lettuce and tomatoes are definitely not a bad thing.
Same here (Netherlands) but it’s important to realize that greenhouses make a lot of use of natural light and soil and are therefore not entirely the same as indoor/vertical farming.
Nothin wrong with greenhouses at that scale, for obvious reasons more often than not these vegetables are what I eat. You can taste the difference so between greenhouse stuff that never saw true dirt to grow in and things from your own garden or that grew in actual soil I was quite amused when i saw tomatoes and so on grow in soil and small plantations in fron tof a farm house in the Netherlands surrounded by greenhouses.
And still, this industrial style of grwing food is what enables our high living standard. if we now could just figure out how not have too much food in Europe and not enough in other places...
Certainly in any remote or isolated community. Definitely in Hawaii - and in Northern Canada (where fresh produce is flown in by air every day, and a head of lettuce goes for over $7 and a thing of orange juice for $26 [1]).
I think a lot of it is based on locale. Many of the foods may not be easy or possible to grow local, imports are expensive, food grows faster in greenhouses, additionally you can have many grow cycles over the entire year including winter, where that may not be possible with just typical land. They are growing greenhouse operations exponentially, it is a multi-billion dollar business in our locale.
I should have clarified re indoors: My comment was about setups like in the article, which are reliant on electric lights. One of the biggest limitations they have is electricity cost.
I think a comparison to tesla is a red herring, the analogy doesn't hold up to food.
Where I suspect this kind of growing technique would work is probably the spices aisle of the grocery store, and they have always been pretty high margin.
It's a good strategy only if you can take the same technology downmarket eventually. It's not yet clear how downmarket Tesla can be even in the car market, and the car market is very different than food, in that only 18% of people globally, mostly the richest, have cars, but 100% of them need to eat. Another important difference is that cars don't grow out of the ground.
Right now there's a flood of capital available, so it's very hard to tell a priori which ideas have legs and which are just mirages that look good in a slide deck. This could be amazing. But it could be another Juicero or WeWork, where the unit economics just don't make any sense.
You're kidding, right? The model 3 rivals competitors in price and will only drop in price and it's a perfectly serviceable car for most people. Well as long as you don't get it "loaded"
For comparison the best selling new car was Toyota Corolla for 80 000 zł.
But the real bestselling cars are for over a decade the same - 5-10 year old VW Passat Combi from western Europe for 10-50 000 zł.
For 200 000 zł you can have a single-room flat in a big city and rent it out for considerable passive income. 2 such flats and you can live out of that (not very luxuriously but still).
That's why Tesla is considered a luxury car here. Most people drive cars worth less than 10% of a new Model 3.
It's also important to note that a lot of car purchasers buy used cars, because the low end of the new market is too expensive for them.
And really the appropriate comparison versus food is the transport sector, not cars alone. Cars are, as I said, the rich end of the market. In many places, cars are less popular than motorcycles, scooters, and bikes. I don't see any reason to think Tesla has an advantage going downmarket there. Indeed, as a luxury brand, there are significant brand barriers to them going lower in the car market, let alone down to scooters.
The model 3 is way too large for any market that isn't the US. (which is most people). Over last year alone in Europe the M3 market share fell from 33% to 13% IIRC. In China I think the loss of market share was even larger.
In some markets, or overall, it's my impression the model 3 and the BMW 3 series compete head to head and the BMW is losing dramatically. I don't want a Tesla, but I drove a new 3-series loaner and definitely came away thinking this is why people are getting Teslas. But I decided for me, a Honda hybrid at half the price would be better.
It's not a question of pioneering, it's a question of base resource inputs. Tesla can promise an electric car but they can't promise one that costs less than the lithium and metals required to manufacture it, let alone the cost of labor. Just like Tesla, a farmer can't promise to produce vegetables for less than the cost of fertilizer. Based on the foods that the world prefers to eat, it's just not feasible.
Take a look at the scale of fertilizer manufacturing and use in agriculture. The amount of power required to make that fertilizer is likely an order of magnitude or two less than the amount of power that the sun feeds into photosynthetic systems. Classical agriculture gets that massive power input for free by trading off land use, which also has important follow on effects for fertilizer use, compounding the advantage in fertile areas like California.
It's not like it's impossible if climate change gets really bad and we have to move underground with plentiful nuclear power, but it's so far from economically viable at scale as to be a pipe dream.
Speaking of base resource inputs, I would be concerned with the soil erosion inherent in intensive farming methods. By every estimate I've seen of the rate of topsoil depletion[0], we'll reach a crisis point in agriculture within half a century. Could vertical farming, perhaps paired with a less pollutative energy source like nuclear power, stave off that eventuality? I know a lot of people push organic farming as the solution, but it doesn't appear to be productive enough to feed a growing global population.
You still have the problem that you need to be able to grow plants beyond lettuce and strawberries. No one is growing cereal grains or root crops vertically. It’s not economical viable.
Quite simply, the energy and capital costs of growing bushel of wheat are more than the bushel price of wheat. This difference isn’t just a little, but a lot. If I’m reading the table right in page 19 of the appendix linked, it’s as bad as 37x in 2019, and only projected to fall to 4.6x by 2050.
This might be a stupid question, but could a vertical farm use systems of mirrors to direct sunlight to the crops? That way the vertical farms can collect sunlight from a wide area. Maybe the mirrors could be positioned in such a way as to take up less ground space overall than an equivalent flat farm.
That doesn't seem very plausible: fundamentally all accessible sunlight hits the ground somewhere or other (until we start talking about space mirrors and things like that), so while you can use mirrors to concentrate sunlight (as solar thermal plants do) you can't really beat collecting x amount of solar radiation from y square meters of ground. You can build a tall structure that collect the sunlight hitting the side of it, but obviously that's going to block said sunlight from a correspondingly large area of ground in its shadow; at extreme latitudes where the sunlight mostly comes in sideways you get more concentrated sunlight that way (at the cost of an even bigger shadow), but I doubt it'd be worth the overhead.
Mirrors can neither increase photosynthetic efficiency nor reflect more light than they receive, so to get an equivalent amount of light you'd need a massive structure of mirrors the size of the fields you replace. There might be some clever optimizations possible, but between cooling to keep the plants from burning and occlusion from nutrient delivery systems, it'd be a very large net loss once capital costs are figured in
> Just like Tesla, a farmer can't promise to produce vegetables for less than the cost of fertilizer. Based on the foods that the world prefers to eat, it's just not feasible.
Actually, they do: subsidies distort the hell of out the price discovery mechanisms in Markets. At no point in time can a farmer sell a 1lb(~1/2Kg) of tomatoes at the hieght of season for for $1 or less, much less in the off-season. And yet they do because of the distortions in correctly pricing the inputs, transport and labour as a result of wanting to remain on the crop insurance and subsidy program.
This is seen the World over in various ways too, in the EU farmers are paid to let their fields go fallow and orchids entirely neglected for seasons; it's one of the biggest reason why Farming as a profession has an average age of 60+ World wide as any younger person not born into the Lifestyle or from a Legacy Farming family will quickly see how impractical it is to operate with this system in what amounts to near subsistence levels of poverty. As an outsider going into the Industry for culinary and ecological activist reasons it's incredibly daunting when you realize that in 100 years we created a system in which less than ~2% of the World's population feeds the ~98% and how fragile this system is and how much of a miracle it hasn't blown up in our faces long ago.
It's maintained by fanciful economic machinations and make-believe accounting created by Nation-states to essentially keep a slave labour class in place and avoid peasant revolts due to mass hunger to the detriment of everyone--and that often breaks down, see EU dairy farmer protests in 2012/13/20, and the widespread Indian suicides in the early 2000s and now the farmer revolts happening in New Dehli. Not to mention the amount of subsidies there are for multinationals to sell processed junk into the Market and sold to children school programs at an inflated prices that have resulted in lots of disease and have actually made the average population shorter: a possible inference and consequence of undernourishment due to consuming nutrient deficient food.
The Tesla model, while only slightly relevant due to State and Federal subsidies for EVs, is not painting as good as a picture as an analogy for the reasons you think if you have an understanding of either or both Industries: I happen to have worked in both.
But suffice it to say that up until recently (Federal subsidy of $7500 expired in 2019) in the US where most Tesla deliveries take place--specifically CA-- and where most of the fruit in the US is grown in (Central Valley) it is safe to say that EXACTLY both of those things happened to a certain degree.
Farming works at scale. Back the day when i was a kind, there were a hell of a lot of part-time farmers in bavaria. Working a day job in a factory and running a farm, usually an old family farm, as a side business. That changed, now most of those I know rented out their farmable land to larger full-time farming neighbors. none of these people were necessariyl poor, so. At least going by their equipment and cars, even back when cars were bought and not leased. It still is a hell of a job, with basically no free time.
I think it is different for others regions, were soil is less well suited and getting the necessary scale is difficult.
That’s not how the Tesla subsidies works and that is a naive interpretation of what I said. The tax credits were a transaction between the Federal government and Tesla’s customers. Tesla still got paid the $7,500 and there was no fanciful economics there.
> That’s not how the Tesla subsidies works and that is a naive interpretation of what I said. The tax credits were a transaction between the Federal government and Tesla’s customers. Tesla still got paid the $7,500 and there was no fanciful economics there.
Actually it isn't, and you are only focusing on the Federal Tax credit whereas I purposely mentioned California's EV program in my statement (but didn't elaborate for brevity's sake) that deducts the sticker price for the end consumer in various ways [0] with State/Local Government based subsidies that make Tesla's product (and other EVs for that matter) more accessible to the end consumer.
In the end I think its one of the few examples of a good use of taxes, unlike the Ag based subsidy model; but to deny it isn't a direct benefit to Tesla is to deny reality as most EV and Hybrid deliveries take place in California by a significant margin and thus proves my actual claim that you see these practices in Ag as well.
Not Tesla, but aquaculture. Aquaculture works and reasonably well for a few decades. Here's what we know now.
1. Aquaculture works
2. It's successful with only a handful of species
3. It can't replace marine caught wildlife
4. Flavor-wise it is frequently inferior.
It doesn't mean we shouldn't grow salmon, tipalia, shripm or oysters, we just shouldn't make a claim or claims that aren't reasonable (i.e. aquaculture can feed the world or aquaculture will revolutionize modern food production).
Vertical farming is great for greens, microgreens, strawberries, herbs and that's about it.
Nothing wrong with starting there as long as there is a path to profitability with a mass market product! Do you think there is one for vertically grown potatoes? Or corn? Both are 10-100x less valuable per pound and both take 10-100x longer to grow, 10-100x more water, and 10-100x more energy. I am not sure Tesla was battling the same order of magnitude of order of magnitudes.
Wow, I wrote a three paragraph argument in response to the parent comment that is not nearly as explanatory or elegant as yours, but essentially says the same thing. I think the parent commenter is looking at this problem from the MBA perspective, not an engineering one.
You're convoluting a quantitative argument with a qualitative one. The parent comment pointed out some hard facts about nutrient density and farming logistics, and how the current model for vertical farming won't solve world hunger, on a nutritional level.
You respond with a qualitative argument that you can grow a business and/or industry and maje better technologies if you have profit.
The issue isn't that the technology isn't good enough, it's that there isn't as many nutrients (as in soil) in a city or apartment to grow highly nutritional food. You'd have to truck in bags of soil to do this, which isn't nearly as efficient as leaving the soil where it is and growing it there.
The problem isn't at all soil or nutrients: those are cheap and make up a very small fraction of the final mass of food. Instead, it's energy required to power photosynthesis, turning them into delicious calories.
I think the point is that yes, this technology as it exists today is only commercially viable for some products which are only appetizing to a wealthy elite market. But that's an advantage, it provides a stepping stone. The profits from that can be pumped into R&D to further commercialize the technology, and build a commercial ecosystem. Perhaps at some point in the future the technology will be applicable beyond the simple crops planted today.
In Tesla, the roadster not only proved that electric cars can be good, but that they can be better. Though not everyone can afford a roadster, enough people could and that car was a launch pad for R&D of electric car technology, manufacturing (which it turns out is truely the hard problem in building a car company) and consumer desire.
I absolutley agree regarding the development of EV tech. The main reason I have my doubts about tesla fulfilling all the visions people seem to have about them is manufacturing. This is a well solved problem for existing car makers, so tesla's real value would be as a brand. I dont see batteries being the USP, same as I don't see engines right now, no matter what certain engine fanboys say. Also, Panasonic is usually not getting the credit it deserves when people talk about Tesla's battery tech. As long as Elon is at the helm and manages to sell the vision peopl what to hear, tesla should be fine so. the last two years taught me as much.
But isnt that the contrary of what Christensen postulates, starting at non-competitive down-market nieche and work upwards?
I'm rather bearish on Tesla for various reasons. I also believe current stock prices for Tesla and Amazon are mainly driven by general uncertainty and too much liquid cash with nowhere to go.
That being said, vertical farming doesn't realy solve any problems, food nd water are distribution and not availability problems. None of which are solved by vertical farming. Obviously that doesn't prevent people from raising a shit load of VC money. If anything, the wetern world is producing too much food, incl. meat, in hyper industrialized farms already.
Tesla had a direct path to drop the price by using economies of scale. If you just can't grow a crop, it just won't work. This is more akin to saying that battery density is low enough that it only works up to scooters.
Tesla obviously works today as well as do these vertical farms, but only in the niche they are operating in. The point being made is that they both could remain as a very niche product for looooong time.
