
Vanilla Production in Geodesic Domes - angrygoat
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-10/high-tech-dome-grows-vanilla-from-smartphone/12218902
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mark-r
As I understand it, the reason Madagascar is by far the leading producer of
vanilla is because it's the only place where labor is cheap enough to do hand
pollination economically. Good luck doing that anyplace else, particularly
Australia.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
Madagascar is number 132 in the ranking of GDP of 196 countries.
[https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/madagascar](https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/madagascar)

Surely there must be other countries where labor is cheap enough (not that GDP
really will tell you what labor cost is, but still)

~~~
mark-r
I think GDP per person might be more informative. I found a couple of
references stating it was $400 or $500.

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airstrike
> "I've patented the design, the greenhouse and the trellises, but what I'd
> like to be able to do is reduce the production costs, make it very much
> available to a lot of people to actually buy these greenhouses and grow them
> for themselves."

Hmmm..

~~~
Reelin
I'm not understanding what about this is patentable? Greenhouse as a geodesic
dome surely isn't (and isn't a particularly important design detail anyway).
The trellises just look like standard hydroponics to me - is there something
novel about their design that I'm missing?

This doesn't seem any different from growing <arbitrary crop> in a greenhouse
using hydroponics and automated climate controls. Not novel, just not
previously economically viable (as far as I know).

Is it the fact that the trellises rotate?

~~~
joshvm
It's apparently a partnership with a big industrial automation company [1].
Perhaps they filed the patent? It sounds like the sort of thing a big corp
would try. There is another group doing this, but seem to be unrelated [2].

If there is a patent, I can't find it anywhere (I tried the US and Aus).
Nothing obvious under the author's name, or "vanilla" or "geodesic" in the
Australian repository. Quite annoying, this is one of those stories that looks
really interesting, but all you can find is the regurgitated press release
from all the news companies that picked it up.

[1] [https://www.se.com/au/en/about-
us/press/news/2019/newcastle-...](https://www.se.com/au/en/about-
us/press/news/2019/newcastle-vanilla-dome.jsp) [2]
[http://vanillaaustralia.com/about-us/](http://vanillaaustralia.com/about-us/)

~~~
vikramkr
I feel like I wasted a lot of time figuring out how to search Australian
patents to come to the same conclusion you did, but I guess it at least taught
me something new? Just trying to find _anything_ to understand what makes this
so special. I don't know why I felt inclined to spend so much time on it, but
I'm a bit of a gardening nut, and really wanted to see what was patentable
that could help in food production like that. Can't find anything beyond the
marketing fluff, unfortunately.

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dejv
Cool concept, trellis system seems interesting, but getting one tonne out of
200 vines sounds quite optimistic, also as far as I know each flower had to be
hand pollinated and window to do that is very short.

I am a farmer and there is one saying to never count the beans until you have
them in the barn.

~~~
mattlondon
Is there any reason why they have to be hand pollinated?

Could you not just stick a beehive in there and let the bees do it (for
example)?

~~~
colechristensen
Apparently there's only one species of endangered bee which can pollinate it.

~~~
phkahler
IANABK (I am not a bee keeper) but I suspect there are other bees that would
love to pollinate a greenhouse full of flowers with easy access at all
heights. I'm thinking that in nature only one species shares the same space
and prefers vanilla flowers but that's not the same an having only one that
CAN do it.

~~~
Finnucane
In the wild, in Mexico, vanilla is pollinated by one particular species of
bee, that only lives in Mexico. Even there, commercial producers rely on hand-
pollination.

~~~
julienchastang
Interestingly vanilla originates from Mexico and not Madagascar. The plant was
introduced to Madagascar for cultivation in the 19th century.

~~~
gboss
It's amazing really all of the plants that originated from indigenous Mexican
cultivation. Corn, tomatoes, chili peppers, squash, chocolate, vanilla,
avocado, and more! The fact that Italians didn't have peppers nor the Irish
having potatoes until after columbus always blows my mind.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Crops_originating_f...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Crops_originating_from_Mexico)

~~~
julienchastang
Indeed. Read "The Columbian Exchange" book by Alfred W. Crosby. Imagine
Hungarians without paprika and Indian cuisine without peppers. :-)

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zaroth
> _The vines in the pilot farm are yet to flower, which is when pollination
> occurs._

I think it's premature to declare success before this important milestone...
as I recall from reading about many historical attempts to cultivate vanilla
crop, once we figured out to pollinate them by hand, getting the plants to
flower in a greenhouse is the truly elusive step isn't it?

~~~
tnjm
Vanilla orchids will flower quite readily in a greenhouse -- at least mine do,
when they get tall enough. As others have pointed out, the real problem is
more prosaic: getting cheap enough labour to hand-pollinate them.

As a commodity, vanilla prices are highly volatile, and while you could
perhaps make this work in some years, it's hard to see it being viable in the
long term.

As the cured beans keep well and are easy to transport, it's not entirely
clear to me what the value proposition for greenhouse growing near to the
final market really is.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The plants are already mobile and constrained to a regular structure. A
robotic pollinator wouldn't be much of a stretch.

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qplex
How are the geodesic domes supposed to help in comparison to regular
greenhouses?

Commercial orchids and greenhouses already grow vanilla and plenty of other
stuff in automated hydroponic and aeroponic systems

I fail to see what is so special about this.

~~~
Valgrim
To be fair the author did talk to another unbiased source than the inventor-
businessman. He contacted agricultural scientist Dr. John Troughton, visited
the greenhouse with him and asked his opinion on the subject. He asked very
specific questions to the author about the advantages of his design (vertical
rotating soil-filled trellises). He was transparent about the production
costs, the business model of the inventor and the yet-to-be-flowered vines.

The problem I see is that the headline is definitely click-baity compared to
the article. The author doesn't particularly emphasize the use of a smartphone
app, the shape of the greenhouse or the value of the beans (600 000 is much
more theorical in the article than in the title), so I'm thinking the title
was written by someone else.

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peter_d_sherman
>"Mr Soo discovered that vanilla was in hot demand.

 _It sells for about $600 a kilogram and is the second-most lucrative spice
crop in the world behind saffron._

"A lot of the big food processors or manufacturers, such as Nestle, are now
moving or mandating that they only want naturally grown vanilla, they don't
want synthetic vanilla," he said.

"I thought, 'Well there's an inelastic demand curve there'."

Discovering a voracious market was one thing; the challenge was developing a
commercially viable way to grow the sometimes tricky and labour-intensive
crop."

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chongli
So bizarre. Super Mario World has an area called Vanilla Dome. Who would have
thought a classic 90s video game would predict a revolution in agriculture?

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1_over_n
A whole article and thread about Geodesic domes and not even a nod to
buckminster fuller

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller#Geodesic_do...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller#Geodesic_domes)

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Pfhreak
The dome doesn't appear to be particularly special, but the trellis is
interesting - a soil filled, rotating column that sorta simulates a tree.

It'll be interesting to see if he can get the plants to reliably flower and
pollinate. Best of luck on that front!

~~~
Tossrock
Looks like a 16' radius 4v conduit dome, pretty standard as that size is the
most material efficient when using 10' stock. They cost around two thousand
USD in materials (depending on the price of steel).

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neural_thing
Synthetic biology can make vanillin at scale cheaply. I believe it's one of
the molecules Amyris is developing.

Going to be difficult to compete with that in the long run.

~~~
CydeWeys
Per the linked article, people don't want the fake stuff; they want the
genuine article. And fake vanillin is already widespread at less cost than the
real bean anyway, so the demand for the real bean already has this competition
priced in.

~~~
patentatt
Yup. And anyone who’s tasted both can tell you they’re not the same. At all.

~~~
userbinator
That just means they need to put more effort into fine-tuning the synthesis.

~~~
discreteevent
I think it's likely that, given the financial incentives, someone already has
"just put more effort in".

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cma
Artificial vanilla tastes about the same in blinded taste tests.

