
Ask HN: What's happening in agricultural technology? - tabeth
Not sure if there are any experts here, but if there are, I&#x27;m quite curious about the following:<p>1. Do we have any technology (independent of cost) existing today to have a fully automated farm? Meaning, set everything up and it&#x27;ll just spit out yield? This would include taking into account weather, planting, removing weeds, etc. The input into this &quot;system&quot; of course would be the &quot;ingredients&quot; such as soil, soil, and of course, sunlight.  [1]<p>2. What&#x27;s the maximum yield we can get out of an acre these days? If I wanted to buy, say, an acre (for food) and start a small town in southern United States and feed 1000 people easily, is that possible? For simplicity let&#x27;s say everyone is vegan.<p>[1] Here&#x27;s a snippet of research I&#x27;ve done that may be of interest to readers.<p>Air and soil: There&#x27;s been some advancements in sensors which is an obvious requisite towards the auto-farm. However I haven&#x27;t read anything recently about this. Most recent was (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;swarms-of-soil-sensors-may-help-farmers-water-smarter-d-1713098054)<p>Robotics: I know they (farm bots) exist (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;modernfarmer.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;08&#x2F;5-robots-on-the-farm&#x2F;), but I haven&#x27;t heard of them actually being more productive than existing high-yield solutions. I do think in the end they&#x27;ll be superior.<p>The single most advanced modern farm I&#x27;ve heard of is: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;seedstock.com&#x2F;2013&#x2F;01&#x2F;24&#x2F;indoor-grower&#x2F;. Anyone know of anything that surpasses this? Just making farming (perhaps one of the most labor intensive things you can do these days) less of a burden will prove to be a game changer (e.g. you may find a single person willing and able to maintain an entire one acre farm).
======
subtenante
Agriculture in our age must shift from productivity first to sustainability
first, because we are running out of fossil energy allowing to produce most of
the fertilizers, and we have already killed our soil with it. A farm involving
a lot of machines (i.e. a lot of need for energy) might not be the way to go
in order to keep the agricultural system stable. The most you ask from the
soil, the poorer it gets, and then you have to dump fertilizer to keep some
level productivity.

We have created flawed models of what was good for productivity. I work with a
guy very invested in research on olive growing (here in the south of France),
he's achieving results believed to be impossible by many agricultural
researchers. His method is entirely organic, shifted towards correct use of
pollination, cross breeding and a lot of care, the kind of which automated
sensors remain lacking of. From what he told me, he's able to develop the root
system of an olive tree ~4 times as fast as researchers using what is believed
to be optimal conditions.

We already have excellent robots able to take care of farms, they're called
humans. Farming is a very noble activity and instead of less farmers, we need
more, with more time to study the impact of pollinizers on their crops, how to
deal with the new pollinizers they'll get due to climate change, etc. All of
which can't be done unless we re-humanize farm work.

~~~
hueving
I don't see any justification though for why humans need to do the labor. This
guy found a nice pollination technique. Great, teach it to the robots or spend
time teaching the robots how to analyze different techniques for
effectiveness.

Humans are not great at farming, that's why we have entire industries
producing tools to help them do better. It's silly to think that riding around
in a tractor all day is a better long term solution than checking up on a
robot doing it.

~~~
Loic
The reality is that you are not going to feed a town with a tractor or a robot
acting as a tractor. This is because with your robot, you are producing
cereals. If you want to feed the town, you need fruits and vegetables.

Now, if you want high density, sustainable fruits and vegetables production,
you need to pay extremely attention to your soil. Practically it means, try to
never walk on it and produce multiple species on the same area to use the
different patterns of root networks, shadow and cross protection effects.

If you do that, you end up being highly productive on a small surface but it
is also very hard to see opportunities in using robots. Take a look at a very
smart people running a small farm[0], he is relentless in using and building
the right tools to save work and improve output etc.

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/Market-Gardener-Successful-
Handbook-S...](https://www.amazon.com/Market-Gardener-Successful-Handbook-
Small-scale/dp/0865717656)

~~~
lawless123
People can survive on cereals.

~~~
CuriouslyC
And primitive hunter-gatherer people tend to be taller, more intelligent and
healthier than primitive agricultural people.

------
rmason
The fully automated farm is a few years off. Here in Michigan large families
with one or two employees farm 5-10,000 acres.

With good Iowa or Illinois farmland you can expect 200 bushels of corn per
acre or 60 bushels of soybeans. This land by the way will cost you
approximately $7,183 per acre.

If you're interested in this topic you might consider attending the precision
ag conference, the next one will be in 2018

[http://www.precisionagvision.com/](http://www.precisionagvision.com/)

Or your vegan community could move to downtown Detroit. Cheap fixer upper
houses going for $1,000 with plenty of inexpensive land nearby. City brings
the water right to you and with drip irrigation you can water your crop
inexpensively. Lots of restaurants that want your produce and the largest
farmers market in the country.
[http://www.easternmarket.com/](http://www.easternmarket.com/)

Lots of inexpensive, though untrained, help for minimum wage. Wide lightly
travelled city streets and they just rewired the entire city with LED
streetlights. Five million people live in the greater Detroit metropolitan
area. You will have be proactive on crime, lots of web cams would be a wise
investment. It wouldn't hurt to be armed, in fact the police chief recommends
it! But without risks there wouldn't be the immense opportunities.

~~~
randomdata
_> This land by the way will cost you approximately $7,183 per acre._

That's surprisingly cheap. A farm near me, with similar production
capabilities, recently sold for $25,000/acre. Around here, you won't find
anything really worth farming for much under $15,000/acre on the low end these
days.

~~~
rmason
That's an average price of Iowa farmland statewide. But as you know there's a
wide variety. I have no problem believing the price of $10,000 to $15,000 per
acre for the premier land.

However as you probably are aware sometimes competition among neighbors boosts
those prices into the stratosphere.

Then there's Detroit where you can buy city lots for $50. Assuming an average
size of 50 by 100 ft or 5000 sq feet that is $435 an acre and it comes with
water!

[http://auctions.buildingdetroit.org/sidelots](http://auctions.buildingdetroit.org/sidelots)

~~~
logfromblammo
That $50 also comes with obligations to pay back property taxes, renovate
existing buildings to meet current code standards, and improve the street-
visible appearance of the lot. You're paying $50 for a property that has a
$50000 debt stapled to it.

Also, urban soil frequently has chemical contamination. If nothing else, it
often has high levels of lead contamination from mere proximity to the streets
used by cars that burned leaded gasoline before it was banned.

Buying multiple distressed urban lots to use as farmland is a horrible,
horrible idea. If you want to buy land for traditional farm, do it in a rural
area. Urban land does not make sense unless you are experimenting with
vertical farming, where the grid power and piped potable water is already
available, and the local soil (if any) is not going to be used anyway.

~~~
rmason
You are wrong. If you're buying a house it might have taxes attached but not
side lots if you read the site I referenced. The city is literally giving side
lots away so that they are added back to the tax rolls.

Also absolutely no one is going to buy a house with $50,000 of taxes attached!
Instead you wait until the land bank owns it and either buy it directly from
them or wait for the yearly auction.

Rarely do housing sites have chemical contamination. There are however former
industrial sites that do. But if you look at who is doing urban farming in
Detroit it is exclusively on former residential land.

Urban farming does make sense economically. Lots of young people don't have
the capital to buy good rural farmland. If you're in the city you're also near
great markets but the key is growing high value, labor intensive crops like
fruits and vegetables.

Unless you're an experienced farmer operating at scale you can almost always
buy corn, wheat and soybeans cheaper from the farmer than you can grow them
yourself.

~~~
logfromblammo
I encourage you to explore the difference between property taxes within the
Detroit metropolis and in rural Michigan. Whether the back taxes have been
forgiven or not does not obviate the future tax bills to the new owner.

The $50000 bill is the average code to bring buildings up to code. You are
correct that this would not apply for side lots. But people can and have
purchased houses for "$50" that included a ~$50000 obligation, for use as low-
income rental properties. Such houses can be made profitable by leaning
heavily on the federal Section 8 voucher program. And that's why those
properties sell.

As for lead contamination in urban soil...

[http://modernfarmer.com/2014/07/lead-urban-
gardens/](http://modernfarmer.com/2014/07/lead-urban-gardens/)

[https://soils.org/discover-soils/soils-in-the-city/soil-
cont...](https://soils.org/discover-soils/soils-in-the-city/soil-
contaminants/lead)

Urban gardening only makes sense for the most lucrative of cash crops, and
those intended for consumption by rich humans. You could certainly feed
yourself and your family with a well-managed plot, but you're going to have
some trouble selling to anyone else, unless you serve an incredibly specific
niche _and_ have some loyal friends in the restaurant industry. The business
simply doesn't scale. After the restaurant buys all it needs, you're back to
the farmer's market, where even the top-shelf local CSA group can match your
quality and your price, at 100 times your volume. Your only advantage is that
you can deliver fragile-but-unbruised produce by hand with a bicycle fifteen
minutes after harvest, rather than after an hour on a delivery truck. But in
practice, hardly anyone needs that enough to pay the extra cost for it.

The guy growing fingerling potatoes on a 10 acre plot just past the suburbs is
going to pay off their loan and then enjoy the profits, as the urban gardener
works their ass off barely doing better than break-even.

------
uuilly
Relative to HN I'm probably an expert in ag. Relative to people who grow
things I'm far from an expert. I was employee 3 at Blue River Technology and
I've been there for four years:
[http://www.bluerivert.com](http://www.bluerivert.com)

The way the Valley generally thinks of ag is completely broken and I highly
recommend avoiding Valley people if you want to learn about it. "Fully
automated" is a thing people who've never farmed before assume is possible and
assume people who farm want.

There is a lot of value on the table in ag tech. Depending on what your
objectives are, I recommend having as many face to face / dirty boots meetings
w/ growers as you can. Understand the realities and nuance of their day to day
and find a place where you can make their lives better. Ignore the sensational
articles. Most "ag-tech" companies are comically detached from the realities
of their intended customers.

If your goal is to grow things then follow the above advice w/ 10x the
emphasis. Happy to help further. Contact in profile.

~~~
hoschicz
Why is fully automated agriculture impossible?

~~~
brootstrap
I'll take a quick stab. First off it's not a software computer system. Their
are so many different elements in play. Your robot needs to know about soil
science, agronomy, pests, weather predictions, stock markets, machinery, the
list goes on.

Farmers have to wear many different hats. You are a seed scientists for part
of year when you figure out which seed you should plant for next season. This
choice involves many other factors (weather predictions, personal yield goals
etc). During planting season you have to make human decisions of when to
plant/not plant. Training a robot to make this decision would be very
complicated and most likely involve many 'failed' attempts that cost tons of
$$$.

Lets say you did get the robot to choose a good seed, then you hired a fleet
of robots to plant corn on 5000 acres and they successfully chose the correct
times, right plant depths, row spacing, seeding rates, and managed to get the
crop fully planted without any hiccups.. At this point you would then need to
be scouting the fields, most likely putting down some N after planting. Robots
have to decide which fertilizer goes where, how much to put on, is each field
the same or does field X get higher N on one side but less N on other??

THEN lets assume all your crops grow fine, weather behaves (never does)and
your robot fleet has scouted all fields. Then the robots must go out and
harvest the grain. The combine picks up grain which then gets dumped into a
semi on side of the road. Again maybe there is a 'harvest semi for Uber' kind
of service where automated semis drive around between combine and elevator at
will.

Another decision to be made is selling the grain or storing it...

In short, there are way too many decisions and farmers (i'm thinking midwest
corn/beans guys) have to make across many disciplines. These guys have an
intrinsic knowledge about their land that has been accumulating for 10s or
100s of years!

~~~
mattferderer
Growing up on a family farm & surrounded by farmers, most of them are not
great at any of that. I do think there is a lot of potential for automation
for each one of the things you mentioned. At first it can help farmers make
better decisions. Slowly it can grow to make those decisions on its own.

A 'huge' part farmers struggle with is trying to guess when to purchase & sell
their products. That's everything from the end product to the seed &
fertilizers. Also, tech could help farmers get a heads up on if there might be
global surplus or shortage on certain crops. Sensor based tools can do a much
better job on how much & where to put fertilizer. I've even seen demos of not
using pesticides but friggen laser beams to shoot only certain types of
insects.

My prediction is future farms will look like giant JavaScript projects with
crazy long package.json files!! There are so many possible tools that could
improve a farmer's life. I can even see "Tool Fatigue" being discussed at the
local gas & coffee shops.

------
kozikow
There are lots of interesting agriculture use case being enabled by drones.
"Ground" robots are still too expensive and unreliable, so they are not widely
used yet. On the other hand, there are estimates claiming that 5-10% of
farmers are using drones[1]. In addition to providing analytics, some drones
already perform active tasks. E.g. take a look at spraying drone from DJI[2].
As another example, there is a startup that produces a drone that shoots weed
in your field with the laser ;).

1\. [http://bestdroneforthejob.com/drone-buying-
guides/agricultur...](http://bestdroneforthejob.com/drone-buying-
guides/agriculture-drone-buyers-guide/)

2\. [https://www.dji.com/mg-1](https://www.dji.com/mg-1)

Shameless plug: I am a co-founder of the startup working on deep learning from
drone imagery - [http://tensorflight.com](http://tensorflight.com). We
primarily work with agriculture. Please get in touch!

------
stan_sf
What are your goals for you research or project? Many ideas stumble not on the
technology, but on the people aspects of the project.

If your goal is a single family sustainable farm, I've read reports of 2 or 3
acres being plenty for a family of four if you are in an area with enough
rainfall (Ohio, for example). However, they needed to have outside income
since their land did not produce everything the needed.

If you are thinking of a larger group like commune of 25 people, or a town
like you mention, you will to look into the issues present in those
communities, and getting food is usually not the biggest issue. For example,
several co-housing projects fail due to the families involved not being able
to raise enough money to purchase the land the need. Other small groups buy
farmland but don't have the capital or expertise to actually farm and produce
enough to be economically viable. Useful farmland is not cheap, and the
economics get in the way quickly.

Farming is a complex business. It won't be "fully automated" anytime soon,
particularly for the variety of crops people like to have. For example, my
parent's potato farm also had a vegetable garden for carrots and onions, and
they raised chickens. They ate a lot of soup, since that is what they grew
without needing to spend money, meat was expensive. Economically they sold
potatoes to have money to buy everything things they needed (gas for tractor,
salt, tools, etc.).

Note: I am a cofounder at www.powwowenergy.com, a data mining company based in
San Mateo CA where we help farmers be more efficient. If you are a data
scientist or developer looking to help the world feed more people, drop me a
note, we are hiring.

~~~
tabeth
This is just a tiny part of a much broader goal, which is to create a
completely self sustaining town of 100 to 1000 people within my lifetime. My
intention is with 100k that could get you 10 acres. 1 acre for food, 5 for
solar/energy production and 4 for housing/community. Of course, with the
comments in this thread, I'd need more land, haha.

As far as the economics goes: I've been doing reading but haven't formed a
good conclusion yet. Initially I thought a communalist approach would work. I
thought of too many ways that would fail and then opted more for a
centralized, socialist approach, but that seems like it would fail as well.
Capitalism, of course, would just result in what we have now, defeating the
purpose. Personally I think communities where each person knows everyone else
have unique advantages not present in large cities.

Disclaimer: I haven't done a ton of due diligence on these things yet. When I
get closer to actually doing this I'll start doing more serious research.

~~~
hueving
How will this town get medicine and technologies like replacement solar
panels? Will people pay with USD into a general fund that would be used to buy
from the outside world? What happens if people can't pay?

Sorry about all the questions, but a community that small can hardly be self
sustaining in a real sense without lots of imports or a massive step down in
quality of life.

~~~
tabeth
Indeed. Ideally (need to do more research) the community would self sustaining
with a low quality of life, however, all of the usual amenities would be
provided. The difficulty is setting it up so that they don't necessarily
become entitled or dependent on the advanced amenities.

------
makeapoint
Regarding your second question, you imply that it would be easier to automate
the vegetable production than to automate livestock production. In fact,
current dairy farms are in many ways more automated than crop farms.

Modern dairy farms feed, milk, vaccinate, etc. automatically--without any
human intervention. The automated systems alert humans if an animal does not
show up for food after some threshhold of time. Otherwise, it can even supply
custom rations per animal, detect various ailments, track weight gain, monitor
milk quality all by itself.

For the more general gist of your question--complete self-sufficiency on a
single acre, that is more problematic to automate. Industrial farmers already
automate a lot. They have automated machinery to re-level fields, plow fields,
plant fields, and harvest fields, and irrigate. but those systems are largely
practical only for large parcels. They operate on fields of, for example, 40
acres. And they are sufficiently expensive as to require many hundreds of
acres to justify their cost. Also, they tend to be single purpose. They can
only harvest corn, or only wheat. Planting a variety of crops within an acre
would require a variety of automated tools. Think how different your equipment
would have to be to harvest carrots as compared to barley.

I don't mean to say that it can't be done. But it would take a lot of work
from where we are now.

Incidentally, your seedstock.com link is not impressive because it is
"advanced." It's most impressive feature is its size. Hydroponic greenhouses
tend to be more labor intensive (but have higher yields), although you could
put the same attention into earth-grown crops if you chose.

------
planteen
I don't know what the maximum number of people you could sustain on an acre
is, but my guess is way less than 1000. Like an order of magnitude less,
perhaps closer to two orders less.

The world record corn yield is 500 bu/ac. 1 bushel of corn is about 1500
calories. EDIT: 1500*56=84,000 calories

If you could do 1000 people per acre, you would have enough food for 36
billion people from the state of Iowa.

~~~
synaesthesisx
A bushel of corn weighs 56 pounds (shelled) or 70 pounds (still on the ear).
Using the shelled bushel in this case, 1 pound of corn = 1,656 calories so
each bushel is roughly 92,000 calories. With the record yield of 500
bushels/acre that can feed 60+ people for a year!

I can't think of anything else that can come close to that kind of yield. No
wonder corn syrup is in everything...

~~~
logfromblammo
500 bushels/acre is probably not scalable. For corn, if you get 150
bushels/acre, you are doing well.

I think the grand champion of caloric yield per unit area is actually the
sweet potato. But potato is second place, has more protein, and a better sale
price. Also, sweet potato contains raffinose, meaning that it will give you
gas.

Browse fao.org for a bit for more information on the nutritional yields of
various crops. Though last time I checked, there was no comparison with
perennial tree crops like oil palm, neem, and jackfruit.

------
sampl
If you want to learn more, come work with us at FarmLogs (YC12). We've got
about a third of the US farmland in our system, and we use satellite imagery,
agronomy, machine telematics, and more remote sensing to help farmers
precisely manage every acre.

~~~
wikibob
Is there is a SF office in your future? If not, is the entire team in Des
Moines and Ann Arbor, or do you have folks working remote as well?

~~~
whalesalad
An SF office is probably not in our future. We do have some remote folks and
are working towards becoming a more remote-friendly company.

~~~
sampl
We're actively hiring remote people for many of these positions:
[https://farmlogs.com/jobs/#current-
openings](https://farmlogs.com/jobs/#current-openings)

------
dejv
As a wine grape farmer I have to say that there is not much going on.

There are people using drones, but I don't see much actionable data going out
of them (especialy as you check each individual plan few times a week anyway).
There are reports about some robots being developed, but nothing much being
deployed.

State of art technology is optical sorting machine, which check each berry,
after being destemed, and discard those which are unripe, molded or damaged.
It is kind of cool and I hope to be able to afford it some day.

~~~
ju-st
Isn't there at least some buzz around optimizing water usage? Fine grained
monitoring of individual plants using cheap sensors for example.

~~~
dejv
It might be case in California: grapes are ok without any irrigation, unless
you are farming in couple of really hot places, or you really want to boost
your quantity instead of quality.

------
wessorh
Hi, Bay area Farmer here. Aquaponics is a fantastic solution for greens (fast
growing stuff like lettuce) and the systems can be highly automated. Demands
for electricity are significant but offset with solar.

I enjoy using rpi computers all over the farm to automate things. The best
thing I learned is that ally youf folks that live in clickville need to get
ousstide and take your hands and get them in the soil. Leave your keyboard for
some sunshine and give up your phone for the day and talk to people while you
work.

While your question is about technology in agriculture what humans need is a
better connection to reality and that begins outside.

------
drc37
I am currently working for a fertilizer company. First off, I have never
worked in the Ag industry until a few years ago. It's an interesting business
plagued by snake oil salesmen who try to push every whacky idea they can dream
up.

Our company is very focused on the science of the plants and the soil and have
developed products that do some amazing things with plants. We have seen
potato fields go without pesticides by using one of our products that uses an
extract from another plant. It doesn't kill the bugs, but makes the plants not
desirable to the bugs.

Plant physiology is still in its infancy. Plants are very much like the human
body and so many respects (immune system, nutrient requirements, cell
structures, growth needs, disease prevention) and there are so many things we
don't know about the plants. For example, plants need zinc to process calcium,
yet we don't know why.

In terms of technology,

1) our Phosphorous product allows a grower to reduce their phosphorous inputs
by 20-50X. Another one of our products allow for water reduction by up 25%.

2) Hyper-spectral imaging is in its infancy but possibly being used to
diagnose problems in plants before they are visible with the naked eye.

3) Drones is a big one right now being used for imaging, spot treatments of
fertilizers. I can definitely envision a day when they will use these for
picking crops.

4) For every crop, there is an inventor who has created a gizmo to make their
jobs easier. For the most part, these are all designed to reduce labor costs
(usually their #1 expense). Almonds -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0UAbuUW2Lw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0UAbuUW2Lw)
Cherries -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX_t1hkqTVQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UX_t1hkqTVQ)
Blueberries -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt73GOk4JRY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt73GOk4JRY)

------
brootstrap
IMO a lot of companies are trying to put more sensors on things which seems
kinda dumb to me. Ok you can put 100 soil moisture sensors in my one field for
'precision ag' but what happens when i drive a big ass tractor over the field
and smash the sensors?

There is a push for being more 'data-driven' and many farmers are adopting
these technologies now. Some companies are more of a book-keeping type thing
where you can put in your activites, they will show you some satellite imagery
etc. There is also a big push for sustainability now. One of these companies
is [http://www.agrible.com/](http://www.agrible.com/)

~~~
beat
I would assume that they're building sensors that can handle a tractor driving
over them.

------
randomdata
_> Do we have any technology (independent of cost) existing today to have a
fully automated farm?_

From a grain farmer's perspective, the modern equipment you get nowadays is
practically fully automated already. However, that's the fun part of the job!
While I do get excited about the automation, I am also in no huge rush to take
away the human touch completely. After all, I farm because I want to be out in
the field.

But keep in mind that the field work is also just a small part of the farm
operation. Much of the work happens back in the office. I don't see that being
automated any time soon, at least no more than any other business could be
completely automated.

------
yellowapple
One thing I've heard rumblings about here in California (especially around
Sacramento, where I grew up) is running wells in reverse in order to pump
floodwater back into the now-depleted aquifers and "recharge" them. This way,
restoration of the water tables in the Central Valley can happen over a scale
of years or decades rather than centuries or millennia.

That's really the big push around here, I reckon. California's in a
relatively-unique position of having very fertile and nutrient-rich farmland
(to the point where it's responsible for the vast majority of the world's
supply of various fruits and vegetables), but current water use practices run
the risk of turning the Central Valley into a barren desert. It's becoming
clear that we can't rely on precipitation alone to sustain the current state
of agricultural water usage; we need to get way more efficient when it comes
to water usage and/or we need to start seriously investigating other water
sources (in particular: California's long coastline could be hosting a long
line of desalinization plants, bringing our water production v. consumption
back into the positive and even paving the way for California to export to
more arid states like Nevada and Arizona).

In other words: it's not that we need more farms, at least here. It's that we
need to make those farms more water-efficient and/or produce more water for
those farms to use.

------
habitat84
We are working on a sort of "AWS for farming" concept here
([http://www.habitat84.com/](http://www.habitat84.com/)). The goal is not to
make fully automated robot controlled farms, but rather to reach an
appropriate level of abstraction such that farming systems can be controlled
and scaled easily by users (who might be farmers, but also others). The goal
is to develop a platform on which to ultimately solve the problems of food
production in space.

------
hutzlibu
Since you are interest in self sustainable communities in general, you might
want to read about walden3 (
[http://www.walden3.org:80/index.htm](http://www.walden3.org:80/index.htm))
Lets just say, it is not easy - but there are more people working on that. In
the case of walden3 also some with good financial background. But they still
didnt get far.

I also did some research on my own and visited some communities who tried to
live self sustaining ... The problem is, if you need technology you cant make
yourself (allmost everything advanced) you are not really self sustainable.
(neither computers nor simple tools last forever) And if you do all by hand
... well, it is possible in some areas even without working >12 h a day, if
you happen to find he right land and are skilled and strong enough ... but
still without much comfort. Some like that. I also from time to time. But not
in general and not for life.

So in general, good luck, but better find a compromise to live with the rest
of the world. You cant close yourself of completely (from all the crazy
things) and just have the nice things the world has to offer. So you will need
constantly money. And that has to come from somewhere .... so join the club,
if you don't like that ;)

------
ChrisjayHenn
I do think permaculture is the most advanced method of farming in that (when
done right) it produces increasing yields year-over-year. If high-yield
monoculture farming is an industrial approach to farming, permaculture is an
information-age approach. But nobody's tried to automate the design work, and
for good reason. It's not that that would be impossible - I think a
sufficiently advanced sensor drone coupled with a sufficiently advanced
machine learning algorithm could design a permaculture installation as well as
a human. But then the question becomes, are the supply chain costs of creating
the drone and the algorithm cheaper than educating the human and having them
do the work, especially given the health benefits of light exercise like
gardening? Nobody with the money to do it has tried that yet.

Some friends and I have been thinking that an ideal setting to advance this
technology would be on a semitraditional farm, where the researchers spent a
few hours a day working on the farm and a few hours thinking about how to
automate their most time-consuming tasks. If we do manage that we'll be sure
to put our results out there.

------
DiamondFox
The New Yorker did a story about indoor vertical farms – whether or not they
can be scaled to feed entire urban populations, etc. Really interesting read
and it might provide a spring board for some ideas

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/the-vertical-
fa...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/the-vertical-farm)

------
abakker
Two observations: 1\. Drones are currently offering good heuristic tools for
farmers to be better aware of what their fields really look like. Multi
spectral cameras, cheap drones, and rudimentary tool sets have really opened
the door to optimize. However, not enough is currently being done to turn
those visual heuristics into data that can be acted upon. (No double blinds,
poor color calibration, limited software platforms that don't allow time-
series data to be used well.) We are still in the observation phase, no
measurement, statistics, or predictions are really happening yet.

2\. I've heard from several farmers that they desperately want a good sensor
that indicates free carbon in the soil so they have a proxy for microbial
content. Just as gut bacteria has been a major topic of research on humans,
soil microbial content serves that same purpose on farms. Significant effort
is going into adding organics and microbes back to specialty farms, however,
the measurements to observe how this is done are very limited.

------
Roelven
Happy to see there is an increased interest in this topic. I've been reading a
bit about hydroponics lately which was sparked by IKEA's indoor gardening
product line [1].

I think there are definitely technological advancements being used to make
this more accessible, although most of it seems heavily focused on hydro- or
aeroponics.

While Grovegrown is a super exciting product [2] it doesn't fit the yield you
are looking for.

Perhaps Farmfromabox [3] is an interesting pointer, which seems closest to
what you described.

[1] [http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/indoor-
gardening/](http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/indoor-gardening/) [2]
[https://grovegrown.com/products/the-
garden](https://grovegrown.com/products/the-garden) [3]
[http://www.farmfromabox.com](http://www.farmfromabox.com)

------
agentultra
Vertical farms are going to be huge. They're almost fully isolated from the
outside environment save for taking in local air and removing carbon from it.
They require magnitudes less water than traditional agriculture and no
fertilizers. You can build them in the middle of a downtown core if you need
to. And you could optimize power consumption so that the majority of your
energy comes from renewable sources.

See Aerofarms[0] for an example. I've heard of companies in Japan developing
similar technology. If I meet the right people I might take the plunge and
build one myself.

Traditional farming needs to go. It requires huge amounts of land to be
cleared, fertilizers, and a large amount of fresh water. Most of what goes
into such farms is wasted. Then you have to ship the output over large
distances. Better to go vertical in my opinion.

[0] [http://aerofarms.com/](http://aerofarms.com/)

~~~
lambdadmitry
Please note that vertical farming is mostly about producing leafy greens and
other low-footprint, high-value goods. Purely from the energy standpoint there
is no sense in using vertical farming for the bulk of calorie consumption.
Compare traditional farming:

sunshine -> green parts of the plant -> seeds -> food -> people

with vertical farming:

sunshine -> [... -> electricity -> LED light] -> green parts of the plant ->
seeds -> food -> people

The part in brackets will inevitably reduce overall efficiency by at least one
order of magnitude. This means you will need to cover x10+ of land area with
solar panels if you want to use them for electricity for vertical agriculture.

~~~
agentultra
They're mostly about producing leafy greens right now for two reasons: _proof
of concept_ and _profitability_. I look forward to the technology expanding to
other plant types: tubers, legumes, and the like.

The efficiency of solar panels is improving but not ideal. The advantage is
that the energy can be stored in batteries and the light from specialized LEDs
only emit the spectrum of light that is useful to the photosynthesis process
without generating excess heat. In a controlled environment you're protected
from storms and pests. Using aerosolized nutrient delivery eliminates soil
management. A good part of your energy profile is likely going to come from
traditional sources but the cost of not having to manage acres of land and
ship the final product hundreds of kilometres is a big savings.

~~~
lambdadmitry
An argument from the market: do you realize that current vertical farms should
demonstrate _crazy_ margins to justify the move to less profitable crops?
According to [1], you can sell a cup of micro greens for $5. You will likely
need a few times more space (and likely ten times more time) to grow a single
soybean plant. The plant will produce a few soy beans that you can sell for
less than a cent. How can this be profitable even in a distant future?

The theoretical maximum efficiency of solar panel is around 30%. So 70% of
solar energy is already wasted compared to growing stuff in a field, which
means that even if the batteries, transmission lines and LEDs are perfect
(they are not), you have to cover three times as much land with solar panels
as you would have covered with plants. It also seems that you would prefer
growing stuff 24/7, for this one needs to compensate for the time when sun
isn't shining, which means 9x land. It seems to me that vertical farming will
be even more disastrous for the nature than "traditional" one.

[1]: [https://www.foodcoop.com/produce](https://www.foodcoop.com/produce)

~~~
logfromblammo
The obvious counter to this is to _not_ use solar panels and LEDs, and just
pipe the light with pure optics--mirrors, prisms, light-pipes, etc. Split off
the green light for some other use, and direct the rest onto the plants. When
the sun isn't shining, feed the optics system with a large, efficient plasma
lamp.

Of course, you still need to occupy surface area to collect the free solar
light, but you don't need to do it over fertile soil. And you're still going
to have efficiency losses, no matter what. The primary benefit of growing
indoors is not in the lighting, though. It's in the other factors, like water
conservation, pest management, climate control, and pollination control.

------
ShirsenduK
I have lately been exploring agricultural technology as I plan to start
farming myself. Here is what I have learnt so far.

1\. Yes, its possible but its not as simple as ordering stuff off Amazon. The
farmhack.org community is a great place to start. Most of them are existing
tools which have been redesigned by farm hackers.
[http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1446](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1446)
is an interesting proposition too. But in my interviews with farmers from
rural India they said, cost/benefit isn't much for the such aerial reports.

2\. One Million Dollars!!! Thats what Jean-Martin Fortier says in his book;
The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-Scale Organic
Farming. Its a great read as its not just about tech but also market.

------
na85
>an entire one acre farm

The way you wrote this reads as if you consider one acre to be a very large
tract of land.

I have family that farm and I can tell you that one acre is actually quite
petite as farms go. The average size of a farm in North America is something
like 400 acres.

~~~
randomdata
One of the farms I run has a small 2.5 acre section of the main farm divided
by a ditch. If that chunk were much smaller, I'm not sure it would be even
worth pulling the equipment into it. If it were any smaller, some of these
large implements you can buy nowadays wouldn't even fit.

But perhaps what he means is that with more automation, the new tools would
make utilizing small pieces of land up to 1 acre more attractive. I'm not so
sure, but there's always the idea thrown around of automation allowing
equipment to get smaller (and large operations would buy many of them).

~~~
tabeth
Indeed. What I imagined was that if a single acre could produce a high yield,
balanced diet, then they could simply be placed in places where it before
wouldn't make sense: e.g. interspersed within the suburban sprawl. And since
it's just an acre, a few people or a single person could take care of it, no
heavy machinery required.

~~~
loafa
But an acre of land in the suburbs costs hundreds of thousands or millions of
dollars, whereas an acre of land in a normal agricultural area far from a city
costs a few thousand dollars.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
maybe there has to be a certain chunk of land set aside in urban areas for
green and open spaces? concentrating massive food production centers is a
terrible idea. not just because its an easy target for bio hacking but also
because of the impact on environment and water especially. small distributed
food production centers makes much more sense.

~~~
randomdata
In the US, 40% of all its land is in active agriculture production. Most of
the remaining 60% is not in production because it is not productive. I suggest
production has already spread to everywhere that is viable to do so.

Even if you can find and allocate several thousand acres of productive
farmland in every city for growing food, what are you really accomplishing?
That's but a tiny little drop in the bucket of all the land needed to sustain
the population. Not to mention that many cities rose out of agrarian pasts, so
it is quite likely that active farmland is already found on the outskirts.

------
OliverJones
I've a cousin who teaches large-animal veterinary medicine at Purdue. THAT's
about as far away from Sili Valley as you can get while staying in the US.
Build a robot to help cows give birth. I double-dare ya! :-)

She told me they're doing interesting things at their Open Ag Technology and
Systems lab.
[https://engineering.purdue.edu/oatsgroup/](https://engineering.purdue.edu/oatsgroup/)
Check it out. Their contact with farmers is helping them focus on solvable and
meaningful problems.

------
marak830
I was looking into this a while ago, i do remember there being a farm bot
being kick started(1). I was wondering about doing something like that myself,
but for a hydro solution for indoors - i am about to start at a new
restaurant, so that has to go on hold at the moment though :)

Note: That farmbot i linked is open sourced, so i will personally be looking
more into that when i have more free time.

(1) [https://farmbot.io/](https://farmbot.io/) (seems to be about to ship the
first batch)

~~~
jelliclesfarm
thats a raised bed bot. not a farm bot.

------
ydrol
There was a great BBC doc a few years ago (2009) called "A Farm for the
Future". It was about someone from a traditional farming family
discovering/researching/interviewing around permaculture. In one of the
interviews she mentions that traditionally she can feed 5 people an acre,
whilst the interviewee was claiming 10+. I believe permaculture has come along
in leaps and bounds since, so it is well worth reading up on.

------
chicob
Hello. I'm a physicist working in agriculture, in Portugal (olive oil, malt
cereal, legumes).

There are a lot of things to say about this subject, but I'll stick to the two
points that were originally raised.

1\. Fully automated farms are possible in theory for a small range of
applications (like greenhouses). Human supervision and operation is usually
necessary, mainly because of the elements and wildlife (e.g. humidity damages
machines/sensors, animals chew wires/irrigation tubes, underground rocks are
still invisible to surface dwelling tractors), so failure is a constant. GPS
guided machines are now being widely used for sowing and pesticide
application, with benefits in terms of both cost and time (fuel) reduction.

Automation in irrigation is now everywhere. One can easily find fully-
automated center pivot irrigation systems.

Some fields have been adapted to allow for automation, like olive orchards.
Olives can now be harvested in a fraction of the time it used to take, with a
single machine and operator (a ~30 ha orchard will take 1-2 days with 1
machine and operator vs. 5-7 days for 2 or 3 machines and a team of 10; in the
recent past there would be no machines and a team of 20).

There are some clear benefits in using drones that scan crops for detection of
spots where irrigation fails or some fungus is starting to spread in advance,
and also allow for better sampling for analysis. Besides any farmer can afford
a drone nowadays.

Automation is usually expensive (for the first investment at least), and as
such only large scale (corporate) farms can afford it. Cooperative family-
scale farming can reduce the cost/acre (e.g. time sharing one single harvest
machine) but there are pros and cons.

1.2 IoT in agriculture: please don't.

1.3 There are still fewer people in farming. I don't know if automation is the
only one to blame, because either way farming is tough. Perhaps the wages may
not be the most interesting for some one not already in the business, as well
as the overall lifestyle. The lowest wages correspond to jobs being replaced
by automation, so those salaries are dropping even more.

2\. Crop yield largely depends on soil quality, proper irrigation and seed
variety. Seasonal factors also play an important role, such as unpredicted
disease surges. Technology already has the means to improve here, and part of
what the future will be resumes to the dissemination of these already known
practices.

2.1) One cannot avoid mentioning OGM seeds OGM seeds are not that impressive
for me. Predicted yields from OGM seeds are said to be greater that non-OGM
seeds, but the difference can be achieved alone with proper agricultural
practices and cheaper non-OGM seeds. I have never tried it, but I suspect that
OGM seeds yield in those ideal conditions will converge with non-OGM yields
because OGM seeds are not the incredible Hulk, and non-OGM cultivars are
pretty great as well. Also, pesticide resistance is not a good thing in
itself, allowing for wasteful and unhealthy over-the-top usage, for example.
There are many gimmicks in this area, and the possibility for patenting is the
major responsible (I think).

2.2) Plasma physics Plasmas have been used to treat seeds before sowing,
apparently with some good results. Still in research, I will not say it works
or that it is feasible.

-

The future of agriculture can take two distinct directions from now on, in my
opinion. It either moves towards scaling up the current technology (corporate
agriculture is already doing this) or it will start to incorporate some rather
new practices that, although not opposed to machine/chemistry based
technology, just do not need them as much. The latter works for both small
scale and, to some extent, big scale farming.

In the particular case of olive trees, the dynamics of its auxiliary species
is well known. Maintaining the top 4 or 5 species in the local ecosystem can
reduce the usage of fungicides, insecticides, as well as erosion and soil
correction needs. This is not "new age farming" but mainstream hard science
that has been coming out of Universities in the field. But plain old Chemistry
is still the farmers' closest friend, unfortunately.

Global warming will change (and to some scale already is changing) everything
to the worse. Some bad days are coming.

------
Quarrelsome
All I know of is Clean Seed (TSX.V: CSX) which is a company that produces an
"intelligent" planter, you can set it up to vary the depth and seed type
planted depending on your map of your fields and varying soil conditions.
They're trialling this year and the big question will soon be answered about
how much it impacts yields.

Its in that direction but obviously still a bit off what you're asking.

------
blt
For robotics, try the search term "precision agriculture". This application of
robotics is not so much about using the robots to replace manual labor, but
rather to gather more detailed information about crops. An example application
is yield prediction, which is really valuable as a predictor of the amount of
laborers needed to harvest the crop within the window of time opportunity.

------
bluebeard
Seems to be a lot of people in this thread who know nothing about agriculture
and aren't answering OP's questions. Therefore it's safe to assume a lot of
people on HN have no idea what they're talking about and comment anyway.
Readers be aware.

------
mastazi
There is this Australian company which is building autonomous robots for
farming, you might find it interesting
[http://www.swarmfarm.com/](http://www.swarmfarm.com/)

------
wes-k
Check out [https://farmbot.io](https://farmbot.io) which is a smart automated
bot for raised beds.

Also read up on permaculture which attempts to create better efficiencies
through smart design.

------
antoniuschan99
I'm focusing my product for indoor growers and my research has brought me to
some players that have solved some of the automation issues. The two larger
names are Dimlux Lighting and Smart Bee Controllers.

------
Sephr
Algae-based bioreactors are pretty recent and are a great way to produce
healthy fats. Sucks that one of the best suppliers of this, Solazyme, has cut
off supply to Soylent.

------
beat
This sounds like a farm that raises perfectly spherical cows of uniform
density. :)

As others have pointed out, "productive" in terms of sheer foodstuff mass is
not necessarily the optimal measure of a farm's effectiveness, or even a good
one. More broadly, the phrasing of your question is an attempt to apply
reductionist, scientific method thinking to what desperately needs to be a
holistic question.

First, let's consider some of the things we might measure. We could measure
resilence - how well the farm can handle changes in, say, weather in the short
term and climate in the long term. We can measure diversity - how many
different kinds of products are grown/raised there? We could measure quality -
are the foods raised there as delicious as possible? (Another way to think of
it - can they fetch maximum price at market?) We can measure profitability. We
can measure chemical consumption. Soil depletion and erosion. Etc.

Now, what can we "yield"? Are we raising corn, cows, Christmas trees? Lots of
farming is devoted to non-edible things. The #1 consumer of insecticide for
farming isn't food at all - it's cotton. These questions spill over into
macroeconomic factors that extend beyond the farm. For example, high density
animal farming is the primary consumer of antibiotics, and the primary reason
we are seeing a rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria globally. So the farming
practice of "maximizing yield per acre" leads to human health problems that
may wind up killing millions.

So basic to questions about robotics and automation. First, automation has
been changing farms not just for years, but for centuries. 200 years ago, 90%
of all Americans were farmers. Now, it's like 3%, while yield has grown
drastically. That's automation at work. A tractor is a form of robot, if you
think about it.

Now, automation can be used to improve some of the factors other than yield.
For example, a weed-picking robot (or an army of them) could be far more
effective than herbicides, with less environmental impact. And a lot of what's
going on now in ag tech isn't active, but passive - sensors and measurements.
For example, if you can analyze the soil on a per-foot basis rather than a
per-acre or per-lot basis, and feed that data into chemical spreading
machinery, you can both reduce chemical consumption and increase yield
simultaneously.

Fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides are expensive. Reducing their
consumption makes farms more profitable. And honestly, we're more interested
in making farms more profitable than more "productive" in terms of yield
alone.

Just some food for thought.

------
nnn1234
Here is a low tech solution, a multivariate best practices guide for farmers
free of cost. What does the HN community think about this idea

------
Confusion
jregehr recently wrote an interesting article about just this subject:
[http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1446](http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1446)

------
hive_mind
interesting looking automatic carrot harvester:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06MAiRaKC6M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06MAiRaKC6M)

------
whitneyricketts
This place is pretty cool, based in Boston: indigoag.com

------
jelliclesfarm
we need sustainable systems. a system that exploits cheap labour or one that
destroys soil/environment or is overly dependent on fossil fuels will fail the
sustainability test. i see swarms of robots in the future doing automated
tasks. having said that, all tasks cannot be automated. harvest automation,
for example..is very tricky.

the age of farmers is going up and very few young people get into farming.
they are farming. there are smaller sustainable farms, but the burn out rate
is going to be very high.

land is getting scarce and we have a need for urban farms. it will be easier
to automate many small urban farms because of connectivity.
also..concentration of large farms in some areas will cause leaching, soil
degradation, environmental pollution etc. when you distribute these, the
damage is easily managed and can be rectified. already, central valley and
gilroy/salinas areas in northern california have very compromised water
tables. the sacramento politics is very subtle, but powerful.

at some point, we might have robots that are connected to the cloud and will
be able to make decisions based on weather or soil conditions or even demand.
but right now, making small manual tasks automated and create robots that will
work with smaller farms is better than automating 1000 acre farms.

eventually, we must form grids and the entire food system will have to be
local.of course, exotic produce can be flown in, but they are that..and should
be priced as such. designing agriculture systems need a paradigm shift.

to take care of all the needs of 1000 people, i would say about 50 acres.
Maybe even less, but sustainable agriculture would mean leaving some parts of
the land fallow for a season and rotate crops. it wouldnt be possible to grow
all the grains and cereals you need. you cant farm every inch of the soil
every day. water management is also important. even if the customer is vegan,
it would be good to have some animals in the farm for grazing. it is an
effective weed management system and the manure can be used to feed the soil.
it should also include an orchard. in my farm(which some people who are not
from california call a large 'garden'), i grow food, medicine, herbs, flowers,
lavender and i have an orchard. i could easily do a 30 person CSA from just 1
acre, but i didnt because the sheer labour was overwhelming for a single
worker-farmer. i keep bees and would like to have some chicken or goats. (but
cant currently because i lease some fo it). in the last two years, my only
inputs are kelp and fish solution that i use in the greenhouse. the farm is
mostly reduced-till. i am a big believer in mulching. i do buy compost, but
eventually i hope to create my own compost and make it a closed loop farm with
all the inputs being created at the farm itself.

------
loafa
The most land-efficient crop you can grow in the US is corn, at 15 million
calories per acre. (In warmer climates sugar cane edges it out with about 17
million calories per acre). Your one-acre farm could feed about fifteen
people, not one thousand, and that's if people could live on corn alone.

If you want to improve agricultural technology I'd suggest finding and talking
to some farmers and finding out what they want, rather than starting from a
clean sheet and an idea of what a science fictiony farm ought to look like.

