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posted by on Wednesday January 04 2017, @06:40PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-add-land dept.

It all started with shipping containers. Brandi DeCarli and Scott Thompson were working in Kisumu, Kenya on a youth center meant to provide basic resources like education, health and sport. It was to be built from shipping containers, set around a soccer field, but after some transparency issues with that nonprofit, DeCarli and Thompson decided they needed to follow a different idea, based on a company within their control. In the process, they'd noticed that access to food was still an issue, with a lack of the infrastructure needed for reliable crop production, especially in drought conditions.

"There's a bit of a missing infrastructure that occurs in a lot of underdeveloped areas, and even here within the U.S," says DeCarli. "So we thought, let's provide communities with the tools they need to be able to grow and sustain their own crop so that the resilience is actually built up from the ground itself."

Business partners who have worked in international development and nonprofits, they stuffed a whole two-acre farm capable of feeding 150 people into a shipping container, partnered with irrigation and solar companies, and founded Farm From a Box. I sat down with DeCarli in San Francisco, where the for-profit benefit corporation is based, to hear about the $50,000 kit, what makes it special, and how it could be useful to governments, NGOs, schools, and even individuals who want to start a farm.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @08:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @08:12PM (#449497)

    Nice bio page for all the board members, but I have some doubts. For example, are the customers all vegan? No sign of any animals on the web pages, not even chickens for eggs. No fish tanks or ponds either (see New Alchemy Institute).

    Also, are there any farmers here that know about yields? Seems like feeding 150 people from 2 acres is more than a little optimistic. Maybe vegetables for 150 if the climate supports more than one growing season?

    Somehow I sense a scam here, a scam that well funded NGOs might be suckered into buying...

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by CZB on Wednesday January 04 2017, @08:36PM

    by CZB (6457) on Wednesday January 04 2017, @08:36PM (#449508)

    Good point about animals, a proper symbiotic crop system ideal will have poultry at least.

    In ideal conditions wheat (the one crop I'm an expert in) can yield 120 bushels per acre, but 40 bu/a is the national average in the US. With some quick math two acres could produce 10,000 loaves of whole wheat bread, or maybe 3600.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @09:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @09:06PM (#449529)

      Taking your numbers one step further, 10000 loaves of bread over 150 people = 66 loaves of bread per year per person. So on the high end with everything optimized, the 2 acres can grow enough wheat to make enough bread (I might eat a full loaf in a week).

      But nothing else except a lot of chaff. No mentions of milling and baking (space, equipment, energy). Likelihood of a scam seems to be increasing!

      • (Score: 1) by tbuskey on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:10PM

        by tbuskey (6127) on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:10PM (#449752)

        Wheat doesn't produce as many calories/acre as potato. Potato can grow in poorer soil. That's why the Irish grew potato.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by anotherblackhat on Wednesday January 04 2017, @09:31PM

    by anotherblackhat (4722) on Wednesday January 04 2017, @09:31PM (#449537)

    General rule of thumb is with good soil and irrigation, an acre can grow food for four people, but it varies a lot based on local conditions.

    John Jeavons (Author of How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine) believes you can do twice that (food for 8 people per acre)

    Food for 75 people per acre? I'd be skeptical of 7.5 per acre.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @10:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @10:28PM (#449566)

    Especially ones sending them up to Siberia, Greenland, Canada and Alaska for Inuits to use...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @11:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @11:57PM (#449588)

    > a whole two-acre farm capable of feeding 150 people

    I had a good chuckle at that.

  • (Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:41AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:41AM (#449698) Journal

    Seems like feeding 150 people from 2 acres is more than a little optimistic.

    Read again:
    capable of feeding 150 people into a shipping container


    So the people are fed into the container. Is this a production facility for Soylent Green?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.