Those that do will help reduce risks and establish the trust required for AI to become a truly accepted means of spurring innovation and achieving business goals many of which have not yet even been amok, there’s the sunlight thing, but then you get droughts and frosts and plant-munching insects that have to be battled with harmful pesticides. And because outdoor farms need so much acreage, they’re usually far from most of their customers which means that by the time a tomato gets to you in a city, it tastes like a baseball. But now, upstarts Iran Email Address such as Bowery farming, Aero Farms, and Lettuce Networks are doing something different. They’re growing food indoors. They’re using data and artificial intelligence to operate more efficiently than traditional farms.
that use technology to grow food more efficiently.
And they’re staying small and close to population centers. The new generation of farming promises to feed more people while doing less environmental damage. This kind of distributed farming fits with a larger 21st-century movement that venture capitalist Hemant Taneka and I call “unsealing.” We document the economic trend in our book, Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future. Massive scale was the goal throughout the 20th century. Mechanization and technologies such as the truck and gulf email list telephone made it possible. Mass production, mass markets, and economies of scale ruled in every sector. So we ended up with giant companies, huge hospitals, big universities and corporate mega-farms.
The future of agriculture could be small farms, closer to consumers
Today, industry after industry is unsealing. The cloud, mobile devices, big data, AI, and new technologies such as blockchain and 3D printing are making it possible to profitably customize products for smaller and smaller niches. Netflix is an unscaled version of mass-market cable networks like HBO, using data to make programs that appeal to specific types of viewers. Airbnb is a distributed hotel company. In an unscaled era, businesses can operate at smaller, more focused levels and beat giant enterprises. So farms are unsealing, too. Bowery and Aero Farms both operate inside old industrial buildings in New Jersey and are a short drive from New York City. Inside these buildings, LED lights mimic natural sunlight. The crops grow in nutrient-rich water beds on trays stacked floor to ceiling.
