Venture Capital's AI-Run Lettuce Farms Start To Go Bust - Slashdot
source link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/06/16/194210/venture-capitals-ai-run-lettuce-farms-start-to-go-bust
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Venture Capital's AI-Run Lettuce Farms Start To Go Bust
The pitch for vertical farming had all the promise of a modern venture capital dream: a new way to grow crops that would use robots and artificial intelligence to conserve water, combat food insecurity and save the environment. But after firms poured billions of dollars into these startups, pushing valuations into the stratosphere, the industry is now facing a harsh new reality: funding is drying up, profits remain elusive, and creditors are circling. From a report: AeroFarms last week became the latest, most high-profile example of the challenges facing the business, filing for bankruptcy after building a massive new facility in Virginia that drained its cash, according to court papers. Its collapse comes on the heels of lettuce grower Kalera seeking court protection in April. And in May, publicly traded AppHarvest, which operates high-tech greenhouses, received a notice of default from one of its investors, according to a regulatory filing. The company contests the default notice, but if it can't reach an agreement with its creditors, the firm warned it could become "bankrupt or insolvent." "We really were in a hype cycle," said Vonnie Estes, vice president of innovation for the International Fresh Produce Association. Venture capitalists entered the scene in a frenzy, likening these companies to software firms, and expecting comparable returns. "There was a lot of money that rushed in without really understanding that this is actually just farming." Industry experts still say that indoor farming is a crucial piece of agriculture's future, especially as climate change spurs more destructive wildfires and floods. Nonetheless, the ability of vertical farms to carve out meaningful market share on a national scale could be years away, they note.
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Stuff like this would make a lot more sense if we paid farm workers (who are keeping us all alive) a decent wage. I suspect as birth rates continue to drop it'll be harder and harder to get the refugees from drug violence that the US relies on and the refugees from war that Europe uses to grow our food though. I know parts of Europe have already started investing in labor saving farming techniques decades ago because they don't get enough of the war refugees.
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Okay, deport the "slave" labor and let the chips fall where they may.
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so that their governor can use "tough" stances to win a primary election. It's admittedly making a complete mess of their economy, but he's not really interested in his state's economy, he's interested in personal wealth & power.
I think the gradual decline in birth rates would make it manageable, but doing it all at once like Florida has is causing chaos. Kinda sucks to be a pawn in some meatball's election scheme. -
Okay, deport the "slave" labor and let the chips fall where they may.
That is exactly what has happened in Florida. After requiring employers verify the status of their workers, construction has ground to a halt [cbsnews.com] along with food rotting in fields [vox.com].
It will be interesting to see who gets the blame for this since obviously DeSantis will disavow everything.-
All the farmers have to do is start offering competitive wages and people will be lined up to take the jobs. Charge more for the food. Why is this so complicated? Don't tell me people are unwilling to do those jobs. I went and picked grapes for two glasses of wine and some lunch for nearly 3 hours, so clearly it's doable.
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I can't talk for US, but the equivalent problem in Europe is producers don't control the prices. If you sell to large distributors / food processors, you sign a contract that saysyou will sell produce for X cents per kilogram, and you have zero negotiation power. With the values they impose, you can't pay wages that will attract local workers for the kind of exhausting work this is. Simpler people ask their grown-up kids or cousins to book vacation time so they can help you hand pick the cherries from the t
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Oh I get that the US government is mucking around and things are made convoluted for a variety of reasons, but none of those reasons should be stopping farmers from following labor laws. We shouldn't have a shadow class of workers that then don't get the benefits that all other worker get.
The government shouldn't be turning a blind eye to abusive labor practices. We have laws and we should be following them. Letting companies continue to hire unauthorized workers is a disservice to the workers and a disserv
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This is true in North America. Farmers do not dictate pricing at all. They can take offers or leave them. Yet the inputs needed to grow crops are also priced in a take it or leave it fashion.
Food prices have risen dramatically over the last three years and have made a lot of people very rich. But farmers aren't among that crowd. Farmers still can make a lot of money but it's spread very thinly and I think most people are quite unaware of how hard farmers actually work to make this money.
Our farm has one
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Are you honestly interested to learn how things actually work?
Unless a farmer has a way of selling directly to consumers, all farmers are price takers. We get bids from the buyers and we can choose to take them or not. That's it. Farmers have financial obligations, including to pay employees, so refusing to sell is not something they can do for long. All I can do is use futures to hedge against falling prices. If I'm not willing to sell at a particular price point that's my prerogative, but there will always be some farmer who needs the cash and is willing to sell. Add to that that farmers individual are competitors of sorts (and it's in the interest of the buyers to keep it that way). By the way this is true of all commodity markets.
There is a lot of money being made in farming and selling commodities but it's spread *extremely* thinly.
It's kind of discouraging how the general public has no concept of how the system works. As food prices have skyrocketed, very little of that money is passed through to farmers. True commodity prices have risen, but not to the same degree as food prices in the store have. And my input costs have about doubled from pre-pandemic until now. commodity prices certainly have not doubled.
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If what you are saying is true, that the take price is so so so much lower than the price in the store, then why not sell direct to consumer by letting people buy directly from you and you ship directly to consumers? You would be cutting out so much over head like warehousing, grocery store, wholesellers, etc. when profits are thin, the usual play is to go vertical integration. Set up with stripe using their nocode solution and sell direct.
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Tried explaining that to a Retrumplican friend a few years ago who was vehement about throwing out all illegals, and farmers should just pay more and good God-fearing Americans would rush in to do the work, and the response I got was essentially "lalalala I'm not listening I'm not listening lalalala". What you're explaining is hard reality, not ideology, and facts can never be allowed to interfere with ideology. While in some cases it's true that people have "no concept of how the system works", in many o
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Heh, doesn't take a lot of training, and political pressure to ensure they will not improve. Poverty is profitable when you live in a society where it is a moral failing and profiting off them is seen as being good.
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It can work for very high margin products in rich fag environments. Wasabi, winter berries, etc.
Competing with low margin products from arable soil not so much.
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Oddly, there's an element of inverted reward when it comes to social value.
People who clean, get paid next to nothing, whilst professional sports people get paid millions. What actual value is there in playing a game, compared to cleaning up?
Farming is similar, we *must* eat, there's no way around it, those who farm for or protect us*, should be the most highly regarded.
* ok, some caveats, GPs, surgeons, they're normally paid reasonably when you don't take insurance or the other out of pocket expenses like
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Pro sports stars earn their employers millions. That's why they get paid. It has nothing to do with "societal value" and everything to do with wealth creation.
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Why though? You'd have thought people would be more interested and invested in food and health, or just things life depends on in general. Not much life depends on tennis.
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There is quite a bit of economic value in professional sports, which supports many jobs, tax revenue, and GDP. There is similar value in concerts and amusement parks. Many will find no inherent value in those activities, and some will. However, the economic impacts are huge.
The reasonableness of one's pay is a deeply philosophical question. Doctors are paid a lot because (1) there is a notion that medical is very important in general, and the belief in that generality allows medicine to be practiced and
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The more critical your job is, the more political pressure there is to ensure you can't walk away from it. The more you make, the more replaceable you generally are since it doesn't really matter if you stop doing it.
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You realize that these high-tech farms are also being massively subsidized to "create jobs", right? There are a lot of tax-funded free lunches with businesses, period.
One thing we can be certain of is that there will never be a shortage of people for those with power to exploit. That's just the way it is - always has been,always will be.
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Uh, your solution is, whether YOU like it or not, to increase food prices. Why else would an IT guy or retail worker quit their job to work on a farm? Do we really need more malnourished people? All your solutions involve reducing supply, and that always means some people are deprived.
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Apparently US citizens literally "can't" do farm labor, clean houses or various other jobs that illegals seem to be perfect for. This is what I'm told by my state Democrats in California anyway.
It's pretty ironic if you ask me. The party that claims to care about workers rights but then they turn a blind eye to big agriculture essentially using undocumented immigrants as their work force. Republicans at least almost admit they don't give a shit about workers rights while they turn a blind eye to undocumente
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I'm sure we can, it's just that the farms haven't accepted the cost in order to do so, and haven't been approaching the problem "smartly". IE they can't just recruit citizens like they did illegals but with a bit more money. The illegals are experienced and used to it.
To wit, they need to offer training, benefits, perks, and such in addition to the pay.
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Yes, we all know you are mad at the Arabs for stealing your water so canâ(TM)t have a pool and garden in the desert? Have you thought of moving.
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