I think your overestimating how much money is in charity appearances for an vegan audience(which is something like 1% of the population). Wouldn't be easier to make money from a product that targets the other 99% of the population?

If he wanted to make money, he can make a lot more by simply being a doctor. And a helluva lot more by prescribing statins and all of the other drugs used to counteract the side-effects of statins.

Or if he wanted the blogs and lifestyle thing, he could sell Paleo/Ketosis diets because it's a lot easier to sell books that tell people to eat bacon instead of vegetables.

You'll notice that his blog doesn't make money like other blogs do, as there are no ads, and he's got no industry sponsorship's.

If he's trying to make money, then he's doing a poor job.





As for cherry picking data, yes his opinions are formed by the studies that aren't clearly B.S. industry funded designer studies - The studies that are repeated over and over with small adjustments to make the outcome positive. But I know he reads even the industry funded studies, because he often points out why they are poorly constructed studies, designed purposely to show a specific outcome.


He makes a new video nearly every day, and has been doing so for nearly 10 years. That's some 3000+ videos. He's allowed one mistake.
But it's not even a mistake. This blogger is trying to discredit all of this work because of semantics about a W.H.O. report. (She didn't read the W.H.O report correctly, because it does actually say that poultry *may* be carcinogenic too).

The reason why none of those supplements and things work is because it's usually just one ingredient, and the body doesn't know what to do with a single ingredient.

The body is expecting a particular set of ingredients in fairly specific amounts in order to make use of the "active ingredient".

Luckily for us, the specific sets of ingredients are prepackaged perfectly in fruits, vegetables, spices, legumes, tubers and grains.

So eat your whole-foods - just chop, blend and spice it all however you like - whatever it takes that you eat them as a staple

Like above, imagine wearing a few hundred pound backpack while you're upside down. You couldn't hold it. Same thing, just the other way around. As soon as the chute deployed it would slip right off him.

He'd hit the ground like a Hefty bag full of vegetable soup.

Your video, Now THOSE are some giant vegetables, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

For the same reasons they do it with meat, fruit, vegetables and other foods: control, consistency, easier to mix with other ingredients like sweeteners, stabilizers and preservatives.
Most food companies don't treat food the way households do, but as raw material for creating a product.

If Bernie is eggplant, Hilliary is soylent green.

She may look like a vegetable but voting Hillary is the equivalent cannibalism.

Vote turd sandwich.

As a person who actually grows much of my own produce, I can say definitively that many of their numbers are WAY off. They require one to pay one's self $100 per month for produce shopping to come up with their $1400 per year 'savings', but claim 5 minutes a day for 'harvest time'...good luck with that if you're not living on just lettuce and cauliflower...peas and beans will take 3 times that. They claim $6 for seeds, but the seeds I buy are over $3 per packet, so that's only 2 vegetables at a time...not much variety. I also note they have no cost for soil, the bed, fertilizers, pest control methods/time, disease control, etc. They also arbitrarily put the maintenance time at :30 min per month...that doesn't seem really realistic for an outdoor robot. Keep in mind that a single break down can mean the loss of an entire crop, depending on how it malfunctions. They also don't give an expected lifespan...or guarantee/warranty, so there's little way to know yet if it will last a single season, much less the 4-5 they say it takes to pay off.

It would have made much more sense to me if they had compared it to growing a home garden by hand, as that's what it's replacing, not the grocery store.

Don't get me wrong, I love this idea and would take one in a second if someone offered, I just don't see it as cost effective at $3-4K. Once the bugs are worked out so it lasts 10 years and the DIY cost is down to $1K(+-), then I'll think they have something pretty good that could also save people money. Being totally open source, I have hope that it will evolve quickly and be clearly viable in the near future. The time is coming when I won't be able to do the home farming I do today...it would be great to have a metallic yard slave to take over for me when that time comes.

Mostly correct, but it is a solution to taking control of your own food production methods without using the time it takes to do so normally (and trust me, it takes a LOT of your time, more than most people have to spare). Also, for those not able to farm because of their physical conditions, this could allow them to have the garden they choose and enjoy fresh vegetables they would otherwise not have access to.

That said, if you start off by spending $3000 (on sale) for your "farmer", on top of the normal costs to put together and farm a garden, it's going to take quite a while to pay for itself. A neighborhood kid working for $10 an hour would probably be a better long term investment, and also probably wouldn't require repairs or replacement in a few years.
If I could build it all myself for 1/3 the cost, or got it as a gift, I could put it together with my existing garden and make it pay off in a year (if I count my time as valuable, which I don't). At full price, I doubt it would last long enough to pay off ever.

Good questions. My family operates farms for wheat and corn, and I've been involved in that process, so I can take a stab at answering the last bit:

Corn stalks get quite tall -- 6 feet / 2 meters or so. Each stalk usually has 1 or 2 ears of corn. On our farm, the experience I had suggests that each plant needs quite a lot of healthy leaves for Photosynthesis as well as quite a lot of available ground water. Irrigated corn often produces 2-3 times as many bushels per acre as compared to "dryland" / non-irrigated corn.

So the issues I can see potentially clashing between corn production and vertical farming are:

1) You'd have a greater space requirement for layers of corn since you'd need probably 8-10 feet per layer, as compared to what looks like 2-3 feet per layer for leafy vegetables in the video. Approximately one story per layer wouldn't allow for the massive footprint savings like in leafy plants without getting extremely tall, which would be expensive for water pumping etc.

2) Corn root systems are pretty deep to support a tall and relatively bulky stalk. Getting that to bite into a thin layer of fabric / recycled plastic to provide structural support for the plant would be difficult. I think you'd need to have a thicker bottom layer *and* to manually place further support lines on the stalks as the plants grow, which would get very labor intensive and therefore expensive.

3) The vertical nature of a corn stalk suggests that the overhead motion of the sun might be pretty important for getting light exposure onto all of the leaves. Fixed overhead lights might mean that the top leaves get plenty of light but the ones lower on the stalk would be shaded by those above and get nothing -- which isn't a problem if the sun progresses through low angles at sunrise/set to overhead at noon throughout a day. So you might have to have lighting that hits from all sides to account for that with corn, which would again add expense.

4) To maximize the output, corn needs a LOT of water. Pumping that up the vertical expanse to get lots of levels could easily get problematic. Corn will grow without optimal / abundant watering, and their misting system would likely be more efficient than irrigating to add ground water, but the main benefit of vertical farming seems to be high output in a small land footprint on the ground. So without LOTS of water, you'd be limiting that benefit.


So basically, my guess is that vertical farms are a fantastic idea for squat, spread out plants like lettuce, but a lot of the advantages disappear when you're talking about something tall like corn. I could easily be wrong about any/all of that though.

This looks really promising. So what kind of vegetable can they grow? And what about strawberries? Can that system accommodate for that as well? And corn?

If governments are serious about the obesity epidemic, they need to encourage people to eat real whole foods by any means necessary. It would certainly help stop the spiraling health care costs that many governments(and insurance companies!) pay for.

I'm not sure whether this strategy would work, but since poorer people are now more obese than richer people, it tells me that the price of certain foods has a lot to do with what people consume. So my solution would be to subsidise healthy foods such as brown rice, whole meal bread / pasta, potatoes, corn breads, legumes/beans, and of course vegetables and fruit so much, that they cost almost nothing, while at the same time taxing foods that are clearly associated with obesity and illness. That way people still have a choice to eat unhealthy foods, but they are paying for their healthcare costs upfront, while having easy access to healthful foods.

It kills bacteria and softens the fibers in vegetables...I don't think it actually makes it more nutritious though.

I think I see part of the problem. The other option you wondered at is you are comparing(literally) apples to grains.

If your lucky enough to live in a climate that can support orchards and vegetables that's an entirely different story. Grain farming is a different beast and you can't farm canola and wheat the same way you'd farm apples or tomatoes.

As for out here on the prairies, the average family owned and operated farm is on the 1k acre mark. Of the 20k farms in my province, more then 90% of them will be under 2k acres and virtually none of them hire more than 2 people outside their immediate sons and daughters to work there.

As for over production, the grain vs vegetables thing still hits. Crop rotation matters with grains, over production simply doesn't. Most of the land here has been passed down from parent to child for 100 years and they've always been quick to pick up on the latest innovations from new equipment to man-made fertilizers to round-up ready crops. The only consistent theme has been greater(and more consistent) yields per acre each year and correspondingly better profits for the farmer. Your gloom and doom scenario just isn't the reality for current grain farming techniques.

There are hundreds/thousands of farms in my area. I don't think a single one is >1000 acres. Hundreds of families support themselves relatively well on the income they make from the smaller farms. True, you probably can't send 3 children to college on that money, but hardly anyone could these days...that's around $150k a year for 4+ years JUST for their base education. Be real, mom and pop store owners can't afford that either.

EDIT: Oh, I see, the AVERAGE is about 1000 acres....but that includes the 1000000 acre industrial farms. What is the average acreage for a "family farm" (by which I mean it's owned by the single family that lives and works on the land and supports itself on the product of that work)?

EDIT: Actually, there are thousands of 'family farms' in my area that produce more than enough product to send 3 kids to college on >5 acres with no industrialization at all (and many many more that do over use chemicals and have destroyed many of our watersheds with their toxic runoff)....I live in Humboldt county, it's easy to make a ton of money on a tiny 'farm' here...for now.

My idea of what's sustainable or good practice is based on long term personal (>33 years personally growing vegetables using both chemical and natural fertilizers) and multiple multi generational familial experiences (both mine and neighbors) AND all literature on the subject which is unequivocal that over use of chemical fertilizers damages the land and watersheds and requires more and more chemicals and excess water every year to mitigate that compounding soil damage, or leaving the field fallow long enough to wash it clean of excess salts (which then end up in the watershed).
Fertilizers carry salts. With excessive use, salts build up. Salt buildup harms crops and beneficial bacteria. Bacteria are necessary for healthy plant growth. If you and yours don't know that and act accordingly, it's astonishing your family can still farm the same land at all, you've been incredibly lucky. You either don't over use the normal salt laden chemical fertilizers on that land, or you're lying. There's simply no other option.

EDIT: It is possible that you are getting better yields for numerous reasons...."better" crop genes (both larger crops and more resistant to insects, drought, disease, etc.), better/more fertilizers, better/more pesticides, and seeing as you're in Canada, climate change. Warmer weather would absolutely give YOU better yields of almost any crop, that's not true farther South. Better yields does not mean you aren't destroying the land, BTW. It is possible to use chemicals and insane amounts of water to grow on land that's "dead", but it takes more and more chemicals and water to do, and those chemicals don't evaporate into nothing, they run off.
If you are getting better yields every year using the same methods and amounts of additives and growing the exact same crops, I'm incredibly interested in how you pull that off.

Although it is comedy and my critique is not meant in any serious way, I think some of those pitfalls are not about adulthood, but just being a bit too bourgeois. Vegetable spiralizers probably are not the hallmark of being an adult, but more of having too much disposable income and being part of a consumerist mindset.