Ellison's Half-Billion-Dollar Quest To Change Farming Has Been a Bust (msn.com) 63
Oracle founder Larry Ellison's agricultural technology venture Sensei Ag has largely failed to deliver on its ambitious goals despite costing more than half a billion dollars, more than he spent to purchase Hawaii's Lanai island itself. Eight years after its founding, little of the revolutionary technology Sensei promised - including AI crop breeding, robotic harvesting, and advanced sensors - is being utilized in its six greenhouses on Lanai, according to WSJ.
The company has faced numerous setbacks, including greenhouses that weren't built to withstand Lanai's strong winds, solar panels that malfunctioned, and executives with limited agricultural experience. Far from its original mission to "feed the world," Sensei currently grows lettuce and cherry tomatoes primarily for Hawaii's local market, while its Canadian operations supply some East Coast supermarkets. The company has pivoted to focus on developing software and robotics at test centers in Southern California, aiming to eventually license technology packages to other indoor farms.
The company has faced numerous setbacks, including greenhouses that weren't built to withstand Lanai's strong winds, solar panels that malfunctioned, and executives with limited agricultural experience. Far from its original mission to "feed the world," Sensei currently grows lettuce and cherry tomatoes primarily for Hawaii's local market, while its Canadian operations supply some East Coast supermarkets. The company has pivoted to focus on developing software and robotics at test centers in Southern California, aiming to eventually license technology packages to other indoor farms.
Tech Billionaire Discovers Farming is Hard (Score:5, Funny)
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Just wait for the moment when tech billionaire bros realize running a government is hard in the same way... And with the same result.
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Just wait for the moment when tech billionaire bros realize running a government is hard in the same way... And with the same result.
Yeah, except in that case, the US population is the "crop".
Re:Tech Billionaire Discovers Farming is Hard (Score:5, Funny)
The difference being, current farmers actually know how to run a far, where current politicians don't know how to run a government either.
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The "current politicians" are the employees of the tech bros. They only know how to run things into the ground.
https://bsky.app/profile/maris... [bsky.app]
Re:Tech Billionaire Discovers Farming is Hard (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, please. You think that just because your preferred politicians are incompetent, that means that all politicians are incompetent?
If someone told you that government is always competent and honest, you'd consider that person the biggest idiot around. And yet, that statement is exactly as accurate as saying that government is always incompetent and corrupt, and believing either statement is equally idiotic.
Somehow, most governments seem to make their people mostly happy. Even the US government does, as is being shown by the economic chaos and human suffering being caused by the current government (as compared to the previous imperfect but not incompetent administration).
To the original subject: I do expect tech to improve farming (and it has!) but the improvements will be slow over time. "We can easily reinvent farming" is exactly as moronic as the statements mentioned before.
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Somehow, most governments seem to make their people mostly happy.
So you are good with making most people happy with a debt of several trillion dollars.....The system is broken and the people in the system have no interest in fixing it so somebody from the outside needs to come in and fix it for them.
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By firing people practically at random?
There couldnt possibly have been enough time to evaluate the importance of any of these positions that have been laid off and we're already seeing what a colossal fuck up this has all been with all the rehires or at least attempts to. This is not at all a responsible way to shrink government.
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So you are good with making most people happy with a debt of several trillion dollars.....The system is broken and the people in the system have no interest in fixing it so somebody from the outside needs to come in and fix it for them.
Unfortunately for us that somebody is only interested in breaking it completely to stop it from throwing him in prison.
Somehow I doubt that you're concerned with "debt of several trillion dollars". The deficit and debt are only important when Democrats are in charge. It's never important when the GOP gets their hands on the credit card, which is why the debt balloons fastest under the GOP.
Democrats are actually pretty competent (Score:2)
So they did a good job taming inflation in the last 4 years despite active sabotage by the opposition party... and then lost the election because they did nothing about widespread [youtube.com] voter suppression [reddit.com], expecting voters to put extra work in that any fool could've told them wasn't gonna happen.
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You are mashing the Federal workforce in the agencies with the pols in an administration and Congress. They are two separate groups of people save for the agency heads. Now, the tech weenies have bought the administration and are going about firing the people who actually do run the agencies. That will not end well except the tech weenies who will claim they've slain the straw horsy they created for themselves along with real horses that do the work.
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Somehow, most governments seem to make their people mostly happy.
BWHAHAHHAHAHHAHA, in what universe u live ?
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You really need to leave your insular social group and your news bubble, and try chatting with folks from around the world. We're all human, so of course we'll all find something to whine about in any situation. But the brainless "baaaa, government bad, four legs good" refrain is not a universal chant.
Remember, one of the DEI hiring programs in any large company is the veterans hiring pipeline. Do your own research, and by that I mean "follow the evidence to a conclusion" not "select evidence that suppor
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Necessity has and always will be the mother of invention. Can it be reinvented? Sure, when the need is so great its required. For example, farming on Luna or Mars would require such a revamp. I remember when pressurized ballpoint pens and memory foam were things only found on the space shuttle.
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Current? Since as long as I have been alive we have had a system where being voted prom queen/king has more effect than knowing anything science or engineering related for the role of elected officials. Even the contest to get the job is based entirely on popularity not qualifications. It isnt much more than prom king.
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And with the same result.
Unfortunately the result won't be the same. When they bankrupt a company they just shut it down and move on. Yeah, it may affect a bunch of people, but certainly not in the same magnitude as when they belly-up a government.
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I meant that it will be a failure. Of course I agree with you that the scale is incomparable.
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To be fair, in government, the farmer's equivalent would be politicians and since they, unfortunately, don't have the same relationship between production of value and salary, it's not like Elon can do all that much worse than the professionals.
Re: Tech Billionaire Discovers Farming is Hard (Score:2)
I do not think that indoor farming would really be that hard. In fact, if not for massive farm subsidies, they might have taken over just due to market forces already.
I do not see this story as a strong test case for indoor farming. Ellison clearly had big dreams of being innovative when he should have just been pragmatic.
If I were to attempt something similar, I would try to leverage abandoned buildings in large cities. It would be easy enough to make them compete with each other to the point where they pr
Re: Tech Billionaire Discovers Farming is Hard (Score:5, Insightful)
> I do not think that indoor farming would really be that hard
You'd be wrong about that. Growing indoors means water where buildings weren't engineered to handle it just to start.
After that not-so-minor issue you have to start worrying about being cost competitive. Your produce has to match or beat something trucked in from a traditional outdoor farm. That means high density growing because urban real estate costs more than rural acreage, which means worrying about the height of your plants so you can have multiple shelves of them growing simultaneously. It means finding efficient harvesting techniques for tight spaces.
There are plenty of other considerations, too. The answer will ultimately be technology, not abandoned buildings, and it's nowhere near 'there' yet.
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That would be true if you were trying to reconfigure abandoned buildings for indoor agriculture, but that's not what Ellison's been doing. He's been using purpose-built greenhouses that have whatever water retention facilities designed in.
Re: Tech Billionaire Discovers Farming is Hard (Score:2)
Per TFA he was using indoor ganja farms that went out of business. There is no shortage of these. As new states legalize, export falls off and markets contract. Dispensaries also contract with specific farms or even run their own. Farmers cannot legally sell to anyone else in many cases and often pay usurious fees. In most cases only large businesses can afford to pay those. Humboldt county CA should have been the poster child for cannabis tourism but instead made itself the poster child for killing the gol
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Unless I'm firing for effect on a specific target, I like to include some context information. It seems to help with the comment scores.
The information about the pot farms was in TFA.
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I think we can file this under "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"
It's almost like they think the entirety of global agribusiness never thought of these pedestrian ideas and disqualified them because they know what they're doing. The sheer arrogance of it is quite stunning.
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I think we can file this under "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"
It's almost like they think the entirety of global agribusiness never thought of these pedestrian ideas and disqualified them because they know what they're doing. The sheer arrogance of it is quite stunning.
That schadenfreude may feel good, but it’s very inefficient. It’s why much of science is going downhill or getting stuck in circles. Calling negative results “stupid” reinforces the problem that poor results often aren’t published, which means future scientists are more likely to head down the exact same garden path.
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Calling negative results âoestupidâ
No one is doing that here. Don't be stupid.
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Drinkypoo is doing that. Ask your alter ego.
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It's been done... (Score:2)
Sounds like they need their own Hank Kimball and Mr. Haney.
And Lisa... can't forget Lisa.
billionaires saving the world (Score:5, Insightful)
"executives with limited agricultural experience"
There's a lot of that going around.
Billionaires are not trying to save humanity, they're looking for revenue streams that are fundamental to human survival.
He's not trying to save the world (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike Gates Ellison doesn't even pretend.
Re: He's not trying to save the world (Score:2)
That's just spectacularly stupid, which is what I expect from that rich asshole. As if climate change were going to spare his island greenhouse.
Re: He's not trying to save the world (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that he's a genius but he's hired people to work this out for him. Now those people might either fuck up or just not particularly care about the results since they're not likely to be protected in all these doomsdays scenarios but time will tell.
One thing is for sure the wealthy believes that they can abandon us all as the world burns whether they can or not is immaterial. They are going to act like they can and continue letting the world burn for short-term profit. We need to keep that in mind as best we can while we navigate all the propaganda they're throwing in our faces and more importantly in our family's faces.
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“Executives with limited __insert_topic_here__ experience”
Fixed that for you. Its not just billionaires btw. If you have never had a shitty idiot boss in your lifetime consider yourself fortunate.
Well duh! (Score:5, Funny)
All the money went to paying licensing fees for the Oracle products that were used to manage the project! ;)
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I have heard, that the CIty of Birmingham, UK, has offered their deepest condolences to all those financially and otherwise affected in Hawaii due to this failed implementation of a plan cooked up by Oracle. "We feel your pain!"
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Automated farming is the future, and inevitable (Score:2)
The idea was good, the implementation sucked. Just because person A fails, doesn't mean person B can't succeed .. OR, even that person A himself can't succeed with lessons learned. How many rockets blew up on the launch pad before we got people in space routinely? How many airplanes crashed before flying became a safe form of transportation? Automated farming is totally doable, even with present day technological capability.
We now know that tougher greenhouses must be made, more robust solar panels, and mor
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"If at first you don't succeed, keep on trying 'til you do suck seed!"
- Curly
Re: Automated farming is the future, and inevitabl (Score:2)
Automating it could make the buildings cheaper, because you can go more vertical. Humans don't usually like to be suspended from gantries.
You must have never grown anything indoors. (Score:2)
High-yield indoor agriculture is the future - high-yield, decentralized agriculture.
Insisting upon "automating" it is nothing more than a thinly-disguising attempt by Parasites(TM) to grab a piece of something that neither wants nor needs them.
If you were right, someone would have done that LONG ago. Plants want to be outside. I plant a garden every year. They HATE it. No amount of grow lights can make up for outdoor sun...indoor environments are only good for festering parasites. EVERY year, I plant seeds on Valentine's Day, indoors to avoid the harsh New England winter...3 months later, when they're ready to go outside, a huge number have died prematurely, often due to obvious parasites. Once they're outdoors?...most thrive...indoors?...y
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https://vegansustainability.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/dutch-1024x682.jpg
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No it didn't. It's right there in the second paragraph:
Sensei currently grows lettuce and cherry tomatoes primarily for Hawaii's local market
Results matter, not ideas + typical SV arrogance (Score:2)
The idea was good, the implementation sucked.
Sorry, buddy, but that's a dumb statement. I have a billion "good ideas". How about a flying car? AI that actually works? Therapeutic treatments that halt aging? If I could make them happen, I'd be the wealthiest man in history.
Farming is arguably our most important endeavor and one of our hardest. As someone with a garden will tell you, it doesn't take long for things to go to shit, quickly. I planned a perfect urban vegetable garden...then we had an unseasonably long 3 weeks of rain in the middle o
Solar Panels that malfunctioned? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ellison said the greenhouses, totaling 120,000 square feet, would be off the grid, powered by solar panels thanks to its partnership with Tesla. But the panels often didnâ(TM)t work. The high winds showered them with dirt and debris, and there were questions on whether they were installed properly, according to one of the people.
The solar panels didn't malfunction. They worked as well as you could expect if you mounted them someplace idiotic.
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who would think giving President Elon an unlimited budget from the federal US treasury to build a colony of greenhouses on planet Mars would end up any differently...
It'd be a small price to pay if he'd actually go.
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Yeah but it's a billionaire, so just take the "takes accountability for design error" space off the board. It will always be someone else's fault because they can't possibly admit not being perfect or the entire illusion collapses.
great plan (Score:2)
Developing new tech on a remote island with limited/inconsistent access to the manufacturing and materials resources you need is the perfect way to start, of course.
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Reeks of total incompetence and inexperience (Score:2)
You'd think a business person would have more sense. But I guess not, thinking they can just toss money at it. Every single problem sounds like they didn't have qualified, experienced people working the problem. Like a bunch of inexperienced, unknowledgeable college grads currently being led by someone who should be old enough to know better yet is showing he really lacks experience, knowledge or even smarts and are all set to destroying this country.
Um too late (Score:2)
Borlaug's Green Revolution was in the '60s (just in time to stave off collapse for a few decades), and since then we have turbo-boosted production to such a level, there's nothing left to optimize.
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Borlaug's Green Revolution was in the '60s (just in time to stave off collapse for a few decades), and since then we have turbo-boosted production to such a level, there's nothing left to optimize.
Oh yes there is. Truly automating the planting and harvesting of crops is the next big revolution needed. Farming is mechanized, but not yet automated. Robotic harvesting for all crops will be a huge deal in the US (no more "seasonal worker" issues), and we may very well in our lifetimes see robots... humanoid or not... picking crops that could previously only be picked by human hands. If Boston Dynamics can make a dog that can navigate minefields and open doors, it can make machines that pick cotton, lettu
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Nothing left to optimize? You didn't even do 1 second of thought on that did you?
Dyson has managed (Score:2)
To do it rather well in Lincolnshire, UK.