6 ms·

VCs bet on ‘indoor farming,’ lasers that monitor crops and Soylent drinks

70 points by drussell 11y ago

timdorr 11y ago
Non paywall link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fsilicon-valley-firms-plant-roots-in-farm-belt-1428348765&ei=sDEjVayzCoq8sAWizoDoDQ&usg=AFQjCNFsmD4843njn2h84mUn76k6U5c-Zg&sig2=kwhwn01DwYpC05D2TE6p_A https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- thangalin 11y ago
  Still pay-walled. https://www.google.com/search?q=Silicon+Valley+Firms+Plant+Roots+in+Farm+Belt https://www.google.com/search?q=Silicon+Valley+Firms+Plant+R... Click the first link.
eyeareque 11y ago
Can we have a no paywall link rule?
- xeromal 11y ago
  It's a bit of a quandry because WSJ is a good publication and not a pay wall in some cases. If you google the article title and click the link, it works!
gregpilling 11y ago
From the article (thanks @timdoor) : "Freight Farms’s repurposed shipping containers, packed with LED lights, sensors and hydroponic systems and producing lettuce and herbs, are appearing in vacant lots and alleys. The sealed containers can yield about 500 full heads of lettuce a week, year-round—even in Minnesota and Canada, where some of the 25 units sold so far by Freight Farms now operate. Co-founder and Chief Executive Brad McNamara said the units sell for $76,000 each and require no pesticides." - locally, a head of lettuce is $1.25 (Tucson, Arizona close to lettuce growing areas) - 500 a week makes $625 a week, or $32,500 a year in revenue - average $2706.25 per month revenue. - a 5 year lease with $1 buyout on $76,000 would be $1580.80 a month based on terms I used to sell capital equipment for. $2706.25 - $ 1580.80 = $1125.45 per month, before paying employees, electricity, and cost of location. What does lettuce cost in other areas?
- mcpherrinm 11y ago
  In parts of remote northern Canada where food needs to be flown in, a head of lettuce might cost $5. But land is essentially free. It might make a lot of sense in a situation like that, especially if it's owned by a local nonprofit who just want some food for the locals.
- dshanahan 11y ago
  Lettuce is about that in farmers markets in Vancouver, certain places in SF. I think the nuances of micro-markets make it hard to make any blanket statements but these types of food production innovations are starting to change the game.
- IndianAstronaut 11y ago
  >$2706.25 - $ 1580.80 = $1125.45 per month, before paying employees, electricity, and cost of location. If it makes half of that in profit per month, the interest rate on it would be better than a lot of offerings on the market. Also, the no pesticides might add a market premium.
- brianbreslin 11y ago
  Wholesale or retail? A head of organic lettuce (which is what you're comparing to) is about $3 in florida. MAYBE $4 if its a fancy looking variety other than iceberg.
- notatoad 11y ago
  Locally, a head of lettuce ranges from $1.25-ish in the summer for a good full crisp head of lettuce to $4 in the winter for a little wilted tasteless thing, and the lettuce from the "eat locally" CSA program is even more. If they can do good fresh lettuce for a couple dollars year round, they should be able to make some money. A 40' container probably shouldn't even require one full time staff to harvest, it could be feasible for a grocery store to operate one of these. Dedicate a few staff hours per day, sacrifice a few parking spaces.
- cloudwalking 11y ago
  $1.25 isn't wholesale though. I wonder what the supermarket is paying.
lukeqsee 11y ago
I work at a precision ag startup in the Midwest. I can speak from inside the industry: it's an incredibly exciting time. We have more people asking us to build tools than we could ever build, and most of the tools are basic management level. We haven't even scratched the surface of applying algorithms to the loads of data being created. I think over the next few years data + machine learning will make things like pesticide application, irrigation, fertilizer, and planting incredibly more efficient. The cool part is the growers have the tools to apply these algorithms as they're produced (tractors, combines, planters are almost all able to support variable rate applications). All we need is the ability to capture, analyze, and start applying the data. Feel free to ask if you're more interested in what the industry looks like from the inside.
- mycroft-holmes 11y ago
  > We have more people asking us to build tools than we could ever build What are a few examples?
  - lukeqsee 11y ago
    Our current product was just released to address the needs of one market (scouting companies, if you aren't familiar with the term: http://www.farms.com/precision-agriculture/crop-scouting/ http://www.farms.com/precision-agriculture/crop-scouting/). We are also building a general-purpose platform for handling the data (and partial visualization) of the farmer, e.g., field geolocation data, various data layers, etc. The first addresses one market. The second addresses the entire market at a high-level. Most individual markets (such as seeds, fertilizer, pesticide, etc.) need specialized solutions. For instance, fertilizer companies and growers would love a tool that lets them take in all of their data and using known models (which exist in theory in academia) apply that information to allow them to apply correctly across a field. A myriad of individualized solutions for locales, crops, and the ilk are just begging to be built. And that's just fertilizer, one of the many cycles in crop production. Large and small corporations are asking us to do work on various pieces of that huge pie, but we have to specialize or our fairly small team would be impossibly overloaded.
- 11y ago
nether 11y ago
I drink Soylent regularly but I think you'd be insane to make it more than 30% of your daily calories. As Michael Pollan said, we've got decades of research behind baby formula but it is still inferior to breast milk. Soylent also still naively follows FDA daily reference intakes. Not saying that they're totally off the wall, just that they contain many deficiencies as pointed out by the MealSquares team: http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html
- sowhatquestion 11y ago
  > I think you'd be insane to make [Soylent] more than 30% of your daily calories You can't make claims like this without context. There's 85th-percentile health, and then there's 99th-percentile health. Plenty of foods, including Soylent, can help people attain or maintain that more modest level of health. Now, if you were an Olympic athlete requiring 99th-percentile health, I agree you'd be insane to make Soylent more than 30% of your daily calories. But if you're an average person eating the Standard American Diet, you are currently insane from a health standpoint, and switching to Soylent would make you a lot less so. And among all the options you might have for improving your diet, it is among the cheapest and lowest-effort. It amazes me how people can fail to recognize that nutrition is a part of a larger economic problem of time and resource allocation. There are real tradeoffs to be made! Perfection is rarely attainable or even desirable except in special cases! Rob Rhinehart, for his part, has always been honest about this. The Soylent team has looked at including things like antioxidants and digestive enzymes--things you'd get from whole foods but not from Soylent's processed ingredients--but they concluded that there's just not enough information to determine the types and quantities of these substances that are necessary to improve health. I think this lack of information is no accident. It's easier to research core nutrients whose deficiency will cause clear symptoms than it is to research nice-to-haves like antioxidants whose presence may cause slight performance improvements at the margin. Soylent is designed to reflect the state of nutritional knowledge. As that knowledge improves, so will Soylent. While I have bought MealSquares and enjoy their product, I prefer Soylent's approach to one that pretends our knowledge is more complete than it really is.
  - 11y ago
rdlecler1 11y ago
The Dow Jones data they site is way off. We calculated a lower bound of $2.36B from a compilation of 264 financings in 2014. You can access the (free) report here: http://agfunder.com/reports/agtech-investing-report-2014 http://agfunder.com/reports/agtech-investing-report-2014 AGERPoint was also one of the companies mentioned in the article. Their campaign is also currently listed on our site.

70 points by drussell 11y ago

Non paywall link: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fsilicon-valley-firms-plant-roots-in-farm-belt-1428348765&ei=sDEjVayzCoq8sAWizoDoDQ&usg=AFQjCNFsmD4843njn2h84mUn76k6U5c-Zg&sig2=kwhwn01DwYpC05D2TE6p_A https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

thangalin 11y ago
Still pay-walled. https://www.google.com/search?q=Silicon+Valley+Firms+Plant+Roots+in+Farm+Belt https://www.google.com/search?q=Silicon+Valley+Firms+Plant+R... Click the first link.

eyeareque 11y ago

Can we have a no paywall link rule?

xeromal 11y ago
It's a bit of a quandry because WSJ is a good publication and not a pay wall in some cases. If you google the article title and click the link, it works!

gregpilling 11y ago

From the article (thanks @timdoor) : "Freight Farms’s repurposed shipping containers, packed with LED lights, sensors and hydroponic systems and producing lettuce and herbs, are appearing in vacant lots and alleys. The sealed containers can yield about 500 full heads of lettuce a week, year-round—even in Minnesota and Canada, where some of the 25 units sold so far by Freight Farms now operate. Co-founder and Chief Executive Brad McNamara said the units sell for $76,000 each and require no pesticides." - locally, a head of lettuce is $1.25 (Tucson, Arizona close to lettuce growing areas) - 500 a week makes $625 a week, or $32,500 a year in revenue - average $2706.25 per month revenue. - a 5 year lease with $1 buyout on $76,000 would be $1580.80 a month based on terms I used to sell capital equipment for. $2706.25 - $ 1580.80 = $1125.45 per month, before paying employees, electricity, and cost of location. What does lettuce cost in other areas?

mcpherrinm 11y ago
In parts of remote northern Canada where food needs to be flown in, a head of lettuce might cost $5. But land is essentially free. It might make a lot of sense in a situation like that, especially if it's owned by a local nonprofit who just want some food for the locals.
dshanahan 11y ago
Lettuce is about that in farmers markets in Vancouver, certain places in SF. I think the nuances of micro-markets make it hard to make any blanket statements but these types of food production innovations are starting to change the game.
IndianAstronaut 11y ago
>$2706.25 - $ 1580.80 = $1125.45 per month, before paying employees, electricity, and cost of location. If it makes half of that in profit per month, the interest rate on it would be better than a lot of offerings on the market. Also, the no pesticides might add a market premium.
brianbreslin 11y ago
Wholesale or retail? A head of organic lettuce (which is what you're comparing to) is about $3 in florida. MAYBE $4 if its a fancy looking variety other than iceberg.
notatoad 11y ago
Locally, a head of lettuce ranges from $1.25-ish in the summer for a good full crisp head of lettuce to $4 in the winter for a little wilted tasteless thing, and the lettuce from the "eat locally" CSA program is even more. If they can do good fresh lettuce for a couple dollars year round, they should be able to make some money. A 40' container probably shouldn't even require one full time staff to harvest, it could be feasible for a grocery store to operate one of these. Dedicate a few staff hours per day, sacrifice a few parking spaces.
cloudwalking 11y ago
$1.25 isn't wholesale though. I wonder what the supermarket is paying.

lukeqsee 11y ago

I work at a precision ag startup in the Midwest. I can speak from inside the industry: it's an incredibly exciting time. We have more people asking us to build tools than we could ever build, and most of the tools are basic management level. We haven't even scratched the surface of applying algorithms to the loads of data being created. I think over the next few years data + machine learning will make things like pesticide application, irrigation, fertilizer, and planting incredibly more efficient. The cool part is the growers have the tools to apply these algorithms as they're produced (tractors, combines, planters are almost all able to support variable rate applications). All we need is the ability to capture, analyze, and start applying the data. Feel free to ask if you're more interested in what the industry looks like from the inside.

mycroft-holmes 11y ago
> We have more people asking us to build tools than we could ever build What are a few examples?
- lukeqsee 11y ago
  Our current product was just released to address the needs of one market (scouting companies, if you aren't familiar with the term: http://www.farms.com/precision-agriculture/crop-scouting/ http://www.farms.com/precision-agriculture/crop-scouting/). We are also building a general-purpose platform for handling the data (and partial visualization) of the farmer, e.g., field geolocation data, various data layers, etc. The first addresses one market. The second addresses the entire market at a high-level. Most individual markets (such as seeds, fertilizer, pesticide, etc.) need specialized solutions. For instance, fertilizer companies and growers would love a tool that lets them take in all of their data and using known models (which exist in theory in academia) apply that information to allow them to apply correctly across a field. A myriad of individualized solutions for locales, crops, and the ilk are just begging to be built. And that's just fertilizer, one of the many cycles in crop production. Large and small corporations are asking us to do work on various pieces of that huge pie, but we have to specialize or our fairly small team would be impossibly overloaded.
11y ago

nether 11y ago

I drink Soylent regularly but I think you'd be insane to make it more than 30% of your daily calories. As Michael Pollan said, we've got decades of research behind baby formula but it is still inferior to breast milk. Soylent also still naively follows FDA daily reference intakes. Not saying that they're totally off the wall, just that they contain many deficiencies as pointed out by the MealSquares team: http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html http://www.mealsquares.com/nutrition-facts.html

sowhatquestion 11y ago
> I think you'd be insane to make [Soylent] more than 30% of your daily calories You can't make claims like this without context. There's 85th-percentile health, and then there's 99th-percentile health. Plenty of foods, including Soylent, can help people attain or maintain that more modest level of health. Now, if you were an Olympic athlete requiring 99th-percentile health, I agree you'd be insane to make Soylent more than 30% of your daily calories. But if you're an average person eating the Standard American Diet, you are currently insane from a health standpoint, and switching to Soylent would make you a lot less so. And among all the options you might have for improving your diet, it is among the cheapest and lowest-effort. It amazes me how people can fail to recognize that nutrition is a part of a larger economic problem of time and resource allocation. There are real tradeoffs to be made! Perfection is rarely attainable or even desirable except in special cases! Rob Rhinehart, for his part, has always been honest about this. The Soylent team has looked at including things like antioxidants and digestive enzymes--things you'd get from whole foods but not from Soylent's processed ingredients--but they concluded that there's just not enough information to determine the types and quantities of these substances that are necessary to improve health. I think this lack of information is no accident. It's easier to research core nutrients whose deficiency will cause clear symptoms than it is to research nice-to-haves like antioxidants whose presence may cause slight performance improvements at the margin. Soylent is designed to reflect the state of nutritional knowledge. As that knowledge improves, so will Soylent. While I have bought MealSquares and enjoy their product, I prefer Soylent's approach to one that pretends our knowledge is more complete than it really is.
- 11y ago

rdlecler1 11y ago

The Dow Jones data they site is way off. We calculated a lower bound of $2.36B from a compilation of 264 financings in 2014. You can access the (free) report here: http://agfunder.com/reports/agtech-investing-report-2014 http://agfunder.com/reports/agtech-investing-report-2014 AGERPoint was also one of the companies mentioned in the article. Their campaign is also currently listed on our site.