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.

Your video, Farm of the Future Uses No Soil and 95% Less Water, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Farm of the Future Uses No Soil and 95% Less Water has been added as a related post - related requested by blacklotus90 on that post.

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.

@newtboy,

1000 acre farms do not count as "family farms" in my eyes, even if they are owned by a single family.

Your entitled to that opinion, but you are also flat wrong. If you want to support a family of 2 or 3 children and do something as outrageous as send them off for post secondary education it isn't happening by running a subsistence farm. I'm in Manitoba, Canada and we've got about 20 thousand farms and the average size is right around 1000 acres. Those guys are in exactly the same financial class as the mom and pop corner convenience stores. They've got about the same money for raising their families and retire with about the same kind of savings. I really don't care whether you agree with me on that or not, it is a reality of farming today.

BUT....overuse of equipment either over packs the soil, making it produce far less, or over plows the soil, making it run off and blow away (see the dust bowl).
...
No, actually overproducing on a piece of land like that makes it unusable quickly and new farm land is needed to replace it while it recuperates (if it ever can). Chemical fertilizers add salts that kill beneficial bacteria, "killing" the soil, sometimes permanently. producing double or triple the amount of food on the same land is beneficial in the extreme short term, and disastrous in the barely long term.


I've got family that's been farming this same land for better then 100 years and still getting better yields per acre ever year. Your idea's about what is sustainable or good practice is disconnected from reality.

In first world countries....yes, or close to that much. Agreed. Not world wide.

Mechanized harvest is accepted in "natural" old school farming. Agreed, it would fall under the "industrial farming" methods, but is one of the least damaging.
>1000 acre farms do not count as "family farms" in my eyes, even if they are owned by a single family. So is Walmart, but it's not a mom and pop or family store.

Again, mechanization is not the same as industrialization, but does still do damage by over plowing, etc. I'm talking about monoculture crops, over application of man made fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Grain was farmed "by hand" since farming existed with few problems, but more work involved. The work it takes to rehab a river system because industrial farming runoff contaminated and killed it is FAR more work than the extra work involved in farming using old school methods (which does not mean everything is done with hands, tools and machines have been in use for eons).

Roundup doesn't "break down" completely, and doesn't break down at all if it's washed into river systems and out of the UV light.

Once again, machines aren't all of "industrial farming", they are one of the least damaging facets, and they are not unknown in old school, smaller farming techniques. BUT....overuse of heavy equipment either over packs the soil, making it produce far less, or over plows the soil, making it run off and blow away (see the dust bowl). If it was ONLY about machinery, and ONLY industrial farming used machines, you would have a point, but neither is true.

No, actually overproducing on a piece of land like that makes it unusable quickly and new farm land is needed to replace it while it recuperates (if it ever can). Chemical fertilizers add salts that kill beneficial bacteria, "killing" the soil, sometimes permanently. producing double or triple the amount of food on the same land is beneficial in the extreme short term, and disastrous in the barely long term. (See 'dust bowl')

Man power is far less damaging to the environment than fossil fuels for the same amount of energy. Also, the people would use no more resources because they're in the field than they would anywhere else, so there's NO net gain to the energy used or demand on the environment if they farm instead of sit at a desk, but machines don't use energy when idle, so there is a net loss to the energy required if you replace them with pre-existing people.

Yes, you quoted it directly, buy your characterization of what that meant was insane. You claim they said Monsanto worked on the project (and other things) because they're evil and want to do evil and harm. The video actually said they do these things without much care for the negative consequences to others, and that makes them evil. I hope you can comprehend the distinct difference in those statements, and that your portrayal of what they said is not honest.

Twice what my family eats...but yes, a small subsistence farm could also be called a garden, just as my orchard of 30+ apple trees could be called a back yard. That doesn't make it produce any less.

Not true. Some, (very few) still grow grain using old school methods, some even using old school grains (thank goodness, we will have them to thank for still having grains when/if the Monsanto grains fail). It's not even 99%, but it is 'most'.

Industrial farming describes a methodology, not a size, not an incorporation. The fact that a single person or two might farm thousands of acres means they are using the same industrial methods, because non industrial farming takes more people.

Clearly, natural farming takes more effort, and costs the consumer more, but does not require major ecological mitigation, so if you count ALL costs involved, it's not that much more expensive. You act like it's impossible, but it's how ALL farms operated prior to the mid century. If it wouldn't scale, please explain how it worked for thousands of years before industrial agriculture started, or how it continues to work in other countries.

It may not work for WEAK shallow root grain crops that can't compete for water and nutrients, like the one's Monsanto sells. It worked fine for thousands of years with more natural, long root crops that also held the soil together.

I didn't hear that in the video, but fine. Don't just repeat known BS and lies then. Roundup is only a pesticide in that it allows GMO crops that have modified genes to be pesticides themselves to grow without competition....and that doesn't count, and I think you know it.

No, I'm not trying to say the video is perfectly honest, it's clearly highly biased...I didn't say that. They do HINT that Monsanto's actions are "evil", but extrapolating and exaggerating from their already somewhat overboard, clearly biased but careful statements to make them insanely more overboard and biased is not helpful to anyone.

You mean this characterization..."You know, on account of them being evil and wanting to see millions of people dead because it gives their corporate heads joy. Just like it wanted to invent pesticides as a means of convincing the public to poison each other for giggles, and getting the state department to experiment on people."
Um...yeah....that's completely insane. I already explained why it's wrong in so many ways, and defy you to show where they said anything resembling that. You have to listen with quite a biased ear to hear that in between the lines of what they actually said, and one must be incredibly, clinically paranoid to believe any public company does things just to be evil rather than purely for profit. The evil they do is an accepted result of their business methods, not the intent of their business, and I think the video was fairly clear about that.

You may stand by that, as I stand by my summation of your comment...that it's insane and exaggerated hyperbole that ridicules an extreme paranoid stance no one actually took.

Plants take up only a tiny percentage of their nutrients from the soil. Most of the mass of a plant is from absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.

Its much simpler actually: The circle of violence. It started when the west thought it could bring their ideology to those countries. But Sunnis didnt want to live together with Shiites (the forming of Iraq and others). They didnt want to have foreign soldiers on their soil and adapt western lifestyle (especially Saudi Arabia). They didnt want Jews to get Israel, they didnt like to get invaded (Iraq and others), they didnt like the western coup detats (Iran and others), they didnt like to be afraid of being struck by a drone or cruise missile strike any minute (pretty much the whole region), and they didnt have the means to defend against their corrupt governments established or supported by the west or the attacks by the west.
Before this they were living at relative peace. Much more peaceful than we did live together in Europe in the last 600 years for sure.
Its pretty much desperation and has turned into normality now. They are also filled with hate due to their way of life, which puts honor very high and which the west doesnt understand. But you would be too if you have seen your culture get destroyed by other completely different cultures and seen your family and friends die by their hands for hundreds of years.
ISIS only struck that nerve better than any before. And thats why so many people are leaving to join them who are even living in Europe. Yet the west created them with their despicable foreign policy. And instead of learning from it, they are only making it worse by using these people for their own goals in Syria (that includes Turkey) and not changing their foreign policy.

A smart man once said: We shouldnt be wondering why they bomb us, we should be wondering why they dont bomb us much more.

It is in some ways far more terrifying to have these type of individuals around and even the REMOTE possibility that they will implement any of their "solutions", rather than the threat ISIS poses to us.

For example, the one individual who thought it was getting to the point (which is absolutely mind-blowing since this person has a better chance of knowing a victim of one of the many gun-massacre assholes, rather than any ISIS encounter) were we needed to re-use the VERY badly implemented and all-around bad idea internment of Japanese U.S. Citizens during WWII. But, like Trump and all of his gaffs and mistakes, he's doubling down and telling everyone that this is definitely something that needs to be looked at.

I'm actually amazed these people can walk through their house at night while it's dark! The amount of phobia and absolute paranoia is amazing. It is RAMPANT amongst the republican candidates; you simply don't hear the same "type" of rhetoric from the left (not yet, anyway).

ISIS is winning without EVER setting a foot on U.S. soil and even if they HAVE, they STILL have achieved more in some ways than Al Queda did. Al Queda was only the boogyman in the closet after 9/11 (except to those of us paying attention and knew damn well who it was on that day because they already tried it once) was carried out and time went by (after all it needed to be "confirmed"; THEN they were terrifying...).

ISIS could commit to ONE crime and the amount of absolute hysteria on our news cycle and amongst our own people will probably make sure we see to it that an NEW federal organization is created to protect whatever they target; if they target a Hostess factory, we'll have a federal agency in one year to protect our precious and vital Twinkies from the harm that may come to them...

This is the craziness John is speaking of. I have NO idea what to do to make Americans dial it down to five rather than eleven for every negative event to happen, including the way they think they need to react to said event.

Hopefully, we have leaders that can react to these events in a much more balanced approach (like, well, Obama).

Bernie said that climate change will limit resources like water and turn fertile soil to dust causing more struggle for what's left, which leads to more terrorism. Think Mad Max. He's right.

And no I don't mean social arts, I mean humans use social behavior to survive, and when civilization began around 10k years ago it allowed for proper division of labor, everyone pitches in and everyone reaps the rewards, symbiotic. Not a scary thing.

And when I said ignorant, I didn't mean it as an empty insult, only that anyone afraid of socialism is ignoring the facts.

"The reason behind the phenomena isn’t very mystical. The movement is actually caused by root systems just barely underneath the soil. When a tree sways in high wind, it also moves the land around it."

“As I entered a patch of trees spared from clear cutting, I noticed the ground moving,” Brian Nuttall, who uploaded the video, wrote in a Facebook post. “I believe the larger trees are doomed to blow down but are currently spared, the smaller trees around them help hold each other up, as the wind pushes the trees into one another.”
http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2015/11/11/video-creepy-video-forest-floor-breathing/

From what ive found on the internets, seems the woods had been clear cut up to these trees, and without their protection, the winds, wreak havoc, uplifting the root system which grew more shallow, as (i assume)they never had to anchor themselves any deeper. Anyway thats what i took from the few things i could find on this video. Would love to hear anything else others might know about this.

You do realize the people who have the whole world as their oyster are in an entirely different form of isolation, right? You're oversimplifying the concept of isolation in an effort to push your Jesus drug.

I understand this because I have lived that life; being both the life of the parties at fortune 500 companies and a solitary hermit, addicted and lonely in a world that no one else fully understands. Not because of a lack of Jesus drug, my friend. I tried the Jesus drug and it is the cause of much of my cognitive dissonance.

The love of a God didn't save me from trauma, sexual and gender identity issues, clinical depression, and the ever looming bipolar disorder. Living is hard, even if it's also simultaneously fun and easy for me to succeed; because the concept of my personal identity isn't flush with the expectations that society and my family have. Being myself almost always gets me in trouble and is misunderstood with sometimes violent repercussions. This forms further cognitive dissonance which is a psychological isolation that has physical isolation as a matter of course. Depression runs in my family, despite all of their love and adoration of Jesus. Southern Baptists, bless their hearts.

There are so many other factors you're ignoring just so that you can present the lamest of analogies of seeds on dry soil and sin cages.

Sin cages. Ignorant science versus the logical sin cage. Nuff said.

There's almost nothing logical about anything you say. The only logic is that you make things make sense according to the Bible. If it's scientifically logical but goes against the teachings Christ or God, it's wrong. If the Bible can support the science, it's good!

But that's not how science works. Scientists do not make stupid excuses in order to support prior written works which lack evidence. If something doesn't make sense, a scientist no longer uses it as a basis to explain the world around them.

You, on the other hand, make every excuse to prove your stupid philosophy is true and that science is wrong for not agreeing upon the truth of your hippy God love cult. Prove me to be objectively incorrect in my perspective and I will give up on my convictions. Because what is a conviction if it's a false one based upon circular logic and feel good analogies? Oh, them feels. Them Jesus feels. Jesus hippy love.

OK, his studies beat my anecdotal bias.

...That being said, I will continue to eat breakfast cereal with milk pretty much every day (as I have since I was very very young), and be strongly tempted to attribute my own lack of having ever broken a bone to that.

The other anecdote I have in my favor is coming from a farm family that raised chickens. I grew up in a prairie grassland area (converted to irrigated farmland thanks to aquifer access), while my cousins lived a couple hours away in limestone hills ranchland. Both of our families raised free range chickens.

Our chickens produced very thin-shelled eggs, and displayed behavior to suggest they were calcium-deprived. For example, our chickens wouldn't cannibalize their own viable eggs, but if we threw empty shells to them they would fight to eat the shells. Same but to a lesser extent for leftover bones, etc. (I assume they fought less over these because bones are harder to near impossible to break down with a beak). On the other side of the table, we sometimes exchanged eggs with my cousins, and their chicken's eggs were always extremely thick-shelled and hard to crack open.

When I asked about that, my folks told me (and later my Biology teacher confirmed) that was because the sod/soil around my home and flora and fauna growing from it contained very little natural calcium. Chickens raised in our area would often be supplemented with commercial feed that contained extra calcium, but we let ours range for food and eat table scraps; almost never supplementing their food with any commercial stuff. But the limestone (aka calcium carbonate) around my cousin's house contained very high amounts of natural calcium, which was naturally infused into the plants / grains / insects that their chickens ate, giving them incredibly thick shells.

So, I guess that while calcium intake apparently doesn't have a very statistically significant impact on human bone growth, I think that it must have a much more significant role to play in egg thickness if you happen to be a chicken... At least if you compare extremes of low natural calcium diet versus extremely high natural calcium diet.