<story><title>The FarmBot Genesis Brings Precision Agriculture to Your Own Backyard</title><url>http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/farmbot-genesis-brings-precision-agriculture-your-own-backyard-180959603/?no-ist</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mabbo</author><text>&amp;quot;All the food you need&amp;quot; is a bit of a stretch for me. Maybe I&amp;#x27;m mistaken. A human needs around 2000 kcals per day, or a little less than 100 joules&amp;#x2F;second. Easy to remember: we use as much energy as a 100 watt incandescent light bulb.&lt;p&gt;Solar energy has a maximum output of 1120 W&amp;#x2F;m2 at the surface of the earth. So theoretically, a square meter could support 10 people. But there are one or two efficiency losing steps that throw this all off.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s only light for half the day. Plants only are about 3-6% efficient at absorbing solar energy. The plants also are only taking up a fraction of the ground they&amp;#x27;re using, let&amp;#x27;s be liberal and say half. Then there&amp;#x27;s the whole &amp;#x27;how much of the energy the plant used was actually converted to edible calories&amp;#x27; question, which is beyond my ability.&lt;p&gt;Multiplying that together, the best I can imagine is around 12 m^2 per human.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d love someone to show me a mistake in that logic, because I am super excited about things like this. I know I&amp;#x27;m going to own one of these someday in the future.</text></comment>
<story><title>The FarmBot Genesis Brings Precision Agriculture to Your Own Backyard</title><url>http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/farmbot-genesis-brings-precision-agriculture-your-own-backyard-180959603/?no-ist</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mikebelanger</author><text>Like 3d printing, I think this only solves problems for a small subset of the people who will buy this.  In the case of 3d printing, industrial engineers could prototype things much faster, before ultimately sending it to a factory for large scale production.  In the case of FarmBot, I can see some agriculture scientists working in greenhouses benefiting from automating the planting, testing and controlling of certain crops.  Especially if precise timing and its documentation are needed.&lt;p&gt;But for the average consumer, this doesn&amp;#x27;t seem particularly economical.  Automation of this kind of thing only makes sense when you have a significantly larger field.  I still think this is a great idea, but I think its reach is a bit overstated.</text></comment>