Author Topic: [DAC Proposal] Future Tech Farm  (Read 12424 times)

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Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

I know nothing about farming so please bear with me. I see what you trying to achieve that will be great !! I still don't understand the mechanics of the system and the use of blockchain.
 

  • Farmers will need hardware systems to autonomously grow food (FTF is working on engineering these initial systems and they most definitely will be "application specific" ;) )

Can you expand on that. Can you give a example what that system will look like ?

Here is a concept we developed based on the Omega Volksgarden:
 

In reality - the way I believe it will really look like will be something like a rectangular room that is ~10'x10'x10' with a 3 axis gantry robot (or several) that will plant and harvest the food in a completely controlled environment, akin to a clean room. 


  • The first tier integration of a blockchain - I'm hypothesizing - would be to track and secure (through a public ledger) the production of every plant grown in the network (what an upgrade from farming today right?).  By "secure" I would define as the anonymous (or not) validation that: "this particular plant has been grown to standards as agreed upon by the consensus of the platform" (i.e. no detection of harmful chemicals founds (pesticides, fungicides, etc.); no disease witnessed during production cycle; etc.) 

How you gonna track all that ? I mean  how you gonna validate and how you gonna input it  on the blockchain ?  How could we prevent fraud ?

The tracking would occur through integrated sensory systems using pH sensors, C02 sensors, optical sensors, etc. - Let me be clear, this is going to be the toughest part of the project and I don't claim to know how it will work yet.  There is a lot of research that needs to occur.

I have no idea how this information would be input on a blockchain (OR if it's even necessary) - not my core competency and looking to the community for thoughts and ideas on this one...

What kind of fraud are you thinking about?

In my mind - with regards to fraud - who's going to mess with their own food supply?  If the data the nodes is providing is useful, it will help the rest of the network.  If not - the information will not be utilized by very many nodes, or any at all.  The goal is to create an objective platform.


  • The second tier integration of a blockchain would be with regards to monetization and incentive structure for the farmer's themselves.  As this would operate in the form factor of a decentralized neural network - there will inevitably nodes in the platform that are more efficient due to the input effort and knowledge of the corresponding farmer (THIS is where I believe the potential of a DAC TRULY exists.  It's a network that can operate incorruptibly, but enables the input of human resources that can be capitalized.)  I believe the network should objectively reward the most efficient farming systems as these are what the rest of the network nodes will strive to replicate and pull information from.

    How do we incentivize a structure that rewards farmers for sharing information to make food production orders of magnitude more efficient, orders of magnitude less expensive, orders of magnitude safer for consumption & the environment, and completely incorruptible? 

Don't understand the second tier at all. I don't see where is  the incentive  for a farmer to share any information.

I don't see the link between the two tier [/list]

Very good & difficult questions to answer - part of the reason behind starting this thread is to collect and organize my thoughts and get community feedback to help shape this project to the point of putting the idea into action.  Keep the questions coming! ;)

I'll start with regards to the multi-tier blockchain thoery:
It may not be the right approach - but I envision the process of growing to be on a separate blockchain because of the "Proof Of Growth" (POG) concept, similar to POW.  It would comparable to the mining process for bitcoin in which all mining rigs were useful in a way that all the energy pumped into the network were actually producing something useful; My thought process here is what if the POG algorithm were used for manufacturing (growing fresh food); and the DPOS algorithm were used for the payment system.  The variable I'm unsure about right now is which would be used to track & log the growth of each plant?

With regards to incentivizing farmers to share information:
oco101 - I'm going to assume you and I probably don't live very close to each other.  If we're both growing food - wouldn't it make sense for both of us to do that as efficiently as possible?  Utilizing a similar personal home grow system - if you're growing with a 50% reduction in growth cycle times (let's say you can grow in 30 days and I'm growing in 45 days) AND you have a higher yield compared to how my system is growing - I'm undoubtedly going to want my grow system to learn about whatever information your system is collecting to improve the production of food for myself and my family to save resources (namely time and money).  My hypothesis is the most efficient nodes are going to be those who's human input resources (via knowledge, testing, research, etc.) are greater than those of the less efficient nodes.  I believe those who produce most efficiently should be paid dividends at a proportional rate of efficiency with respect to the rest of the network.  Therefore, the farmers who inject more resources into the network (share more information) - will see a greater return proportional to how much of the rest of the network uses that information.  As a whole - the entire autonomous food production platform will always strive in real time to grow as efficiently as physics allow.  Does that make sense?

I *think* the constraining factor that must be met for this to occur is: the price of food for the least efficient nodes will still have to be less than what they would currently pay at the store today.

Offline oco101

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I know nothing about farming so please bear with me. I see what you trying to achieve that will be great !! I still don't understand the mechanics of the system and the use of blockchain.
 

  • Farmers will need hardware systems to autonomously grow food (FTF is working on engineering these initial systems and they most definitely will be "application specific" ;) )

Can you expand on that. Can you give a example what that system will look like ? 


  • The first tier integration of a blockchain - I'm hypothesizing - would be to track and secure (through a public ledger) the production of every plant grown in the network (what an upgrade from farming today right?).  By "secure" I would define as the anonymous (or not) validation that: "this particular plant has been grown to standards as agreed upon by the consensus of the platform" (i.e. no detection of harmful chemicals founds (pesticides, fungicides, etc.); no disease witnessed during production cycle; etc.) 

How you gonna track all that ? I mean  how you gonna validate and how you gonna input it  on the blockchain ?  How could we prevent fraud ?


  • The second tier integration of a blockchain would be with regards to monetization and incentive structure for the farmer's themselves.  As this would operate in the form factor of a decentralized neural network - there will inevitably nodes in the platform that are more efficient due to the input effort and knowledge of the corresponding farmer (THIS is where I believe the potential of a DAC TRULY exists.  It's a network that can operate incorruptibly, but enables the input of human resources that can be capitalized.)  I believe the network should objectively reward the most efficient farming systems as these are what the rest of the network nodes will strive to replicate and pull information from.

    How do we incentivize a structure that rewards farmers for sharing information to make food production orders of magnitude more efficient, orders of magnitude less expensive, orders of magnitude safer for consumption & the environment, and completely incorruptible? 

Don't understand the second tier at all. I don't see where is  the incentive  for a farmer to share any information.

I don't see the link between the two tier [/list]

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

So delulo asked me a question in a PM - I'm posting it here for others to think about (with his permission) and my response below.  I would love to generate conversation around the need, or not, for the production of physical items (specifically food) to have integrated blockchains.

Hey, can it be said (in short) why a DAC (decentralized ledger) is required for the robot food production idea you have?


Hey Delulo!

I *think* a DAC would be best suited for the monetization of a distributed food production platform and for securing the integrity (health safety) of the food produced. 

Looking for people who can help me prove whether its necessary or not.  I believe it is and I'm willing to put in the research to find out ;)


I may have missed the part where  you explain how exactly you intend to use the blockchain, is sound interesting but is  is still vague. Can you please explains the details a bit more ?

Definitely!

I think an easier way of describing what I'm thinking is to attempt to draw similarities between food production and bitcoin (specifically thinking about the mining process and the problem of centralization) in which Growing food = "mining". There are only a few companies that basically control the global food production (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, BASF, Bayer, DOW, etc..) 

(Green = seed companies, White = chemical companies)

I envision the platform as a whole may operate in something like a 2 tier multi-chain blockchain implementation; whereas in similar fashion as currently applies to bitcoin through POW, I would call "Proof of Growth" POG (shout out to robrigo for coining the term during one of our chats on G+) for food production.  This first tier (POG) would be responsible for the tracking of the production and the physical output of food.  The second tier would be utilized for the monetization of the network in a profitable way utilizing BitShares as the backbone a la DPOS.

Breaking it down in further detail:
  • Farmers will need hardware systems to autonomously grow food (FTF is working on engineering these initial systems and they most definitely will be "application specific" ;) )
  • The first tier integration of a blockchain - I'm hypothesizing - would be to track and secure (through a public ledger) the production of every plant grown in the network (what an upgrade from farming today right?).  By "secure" I would define as the anonymous (or not) validation that: "this particular plant has been grown to standards as agreed upon by the consensus of the platform" (i.e. no detection of harmful chemicals founds (pesticides, fungicides, etc.); no disease witnessed during production cycle; etc.) 
  • The second tier integration of a blockchain would be with regards to monetization and incentive structure for the farmer's themselves.  As this would operate in the form factor of a decentralized neural network - there will inevitably nodes in the platform that are more efficient due to the input effort and knowledge of the corresponding farmer (THIS is where I believe the potential of a DAC TRULY exists.  It's a network that can operate incorruptibly, but enables the input of human resources that can be capitalized.)  I believe the network should objectively reward the most efficient farming systems as these are what the rest of the network nodes will strive to replicate and pull information from.
The problem I'm striving to solve is: 
Food production is controlled by only a handful of companies (called an Agropoly - Here is GREAT resource I just found: http://www.econexus.info/sites/econexus/files/Agropoly_Econexus_BerneDeclaration_wide-format.pdf). 

How do we incentivize a structure that rewards farmers for sharing information to make food production orders of magnitude more efficient, orders of magnitude less expensive, orders of magnitude safer for consumption & the environment, and completely incorruptible? 

I believe, the answer is in blockchains.  Thoughts?

Offline oco101

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So delulo asked me a question in a PM - I'm posting it here for others to think about (with his permission) and my response below.  I would love to generate conversation around the need, or not, for the production of physical items (specifically food) to have integrated blockchains.

Hey, can it be said (in short) why a DAC (decentralized ledger) is required for the robot food production idea you have?


Hey Delulo!

I *think* a DAC would be best suited for the monetization of a distributed food production platform and for securing the integrity (health safety) of the food produced. 

Looking for people who can help me prove whether its necessary or not.  I believe it is and I'm willing to put in the research to find out ;)


I may have missed the part where  you explain how exactly you intend to use the blockchain, is sound interesting but is  is still vague. Can you please explains the details a bit more ? 

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

So delulo asked me a question in a PM - I'm posting it here for others to think about (with his permission) and my response below.  I would love to generate conversation around the need, or not, for the production of physical items (specifically food) to have integrated blockchains.

Hey, can it be said (in short) why a DAC (decentralized ledger) is required for the robot food production idea you have?


Hey Delulo!

I *think* a DAC would be best suited for the monetization of a distributed food production platform and for securing the integrity (health safety) of the food produced. 

Looking for people who can help me prove whether its necessary or not.  I believe it is and I'm willing to put in the research to find out ;)


Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

Brian- I cannot wait to see this vision come to life. You guys have been working hard on Future Tech Farm for years now and it is great to see the tools needed to develop the "technical backbone" for such an autonomous food production system starting to come into existence with the rapid and continuing innovations happening in the blockchain space. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the Adept platform looks like and how it simplifies distributed IoT systems.

And man, talk about "big fish"! I will definitely support your crowd funding for the mastermind group, not only because introducing a bunch of forward thinking entrepreneurs to the DAC metaphor is never a bad thing; but also because I think both of these systems is a HUGE step towards equalization of standards of living across the globe. Let's change the world!

Thanks robrigo! 
I can't wait to introduce the DAC metaphor and get people even more excited about BitShares

Just met with a videographer/designer yesterday - we're aiming to put together a video by the end of Oct (hopefully sooner) to launch via Kickstarter or Indiegogo. 

Do you guys think we should focus on raising funds for the sponsorship to the summit alone or just a general pitch for FTF (with the potential to raise additional funds)?  What kind of incentives would you be interested in if you were to support?


Offline GaltReport

What about a more "efficient" robot wife and/or mistress?  How about more obedient manufactured children? 

Do you want to re-engineer just food or people as well?  Oh, I forgot, soylent green is made from PEOPLE!! LOL

You joke, but there will almost certainly be sex robots and robotic pets in the future (and lots of demand for them). But those tools aren't going to replace the love of a real family, just like efficient nutrient delivery won't replace the desire for humans to at least have some of their meals be natural foods (caveat: that is not necessarily true but let's just pretend that is the case to avoid getting too sci-fi). These technologies only create more options for people not less.

I think I will stop continuing the discussion along this path at the risk of derailing this topic as well. I don't even want to get into topics of transhumanism and artificial intelligence. If you are this bothered by Soylent, I can only imagine your reaction to those topics.

I'm not against all such things as it might sound.  I'm a sucker for tech...(that's how they'll lure me into the camps I'm sure...promises of high-speed internet, big screen tv, personal robot...lol).  I just know it can be  a slippery slope and can be used to serve malevolent agendas....so I'm cautious. :) 

In a way you could say I already take a version of "soylent".  I'm a big supplement taker and belong to the Life Extension Foundation.  I'm half way there!!  ;D

For a maybe contrary view on transhumanism this is an interesting article someone wrote on my site sometime ago.  He was very concerned about the roots of and potential misuses of this technology:

http://www.galtreport.com/index.php/politics/commentary/item/653-you-will-be-assimilated

Okay, I'm out for now. 
« Last Edit: September 17, 2014, 01:35:29 am by GaltReport »

Offline arhag

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What about a more "efficient" robot wife and/or mistress?  How about more obedient manufactured children? 

Do you want to re-engineer just food or people as well?  Oh, I forgot, soylent green is made from PEOPLE!! LOL

You joke, but there will almost certainly be sex robots and robotic pets in the future (and lots of demand for them). But those tools aren't going to replace the love of a real family, just like efficient nutrient delivery won't replace the desire for humans to at least have some of their meals be natural foods (caveat: that is not necessarily true but let's just pretend that is the case to avoid getting too sci-fi). These technologies only create more options for people not less.

I think I will stop continuing the discussion along this path at the risk of derailing this topic as well. I don't even want to get into topics of transhumanism and artificial intelligence. If you are this bothered by Soylent, I can only imagine your reaction to those topics.

Offline GaltReport

This is a joke right?  You will have to pry my grass fed steak from my cold dead hands!!

Well, this is all voluntary. No one is going to grab it from your cold dead hands. You can keep eating the grass fed steak as long as you can afford it. In fact, I would imagine more people would afford to switch from the cheaper steaks they eat today to grass fed steaks since the cost of the rest of their meals could drop significantly.

Oh, that's good.  It's always voluntary...in the begining...:) 

Offline GaltReport

What about a more "efficient" robot wife and/or mistress?  How about more obedient manufactured children? 

Do you want to re-engineer just food or people as well?  Oh, I forgot, soylent green is made from PEOPLE!! LOL


Offline arhag

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This is a joke right?  You will have to pry my grass fed steak from my cold dead hands!!

Well, this is all voluntary. No one is going to grab it from your cold dead hands. You can keep eating the grass fed steak as long as you can afford it. In fact, I would imagine more people would afford to switch from the cheaper steaks they eat today to grass fed steaks since the cost of the rest of their meals could drop significantly.

Offline arhag

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I really like the concept and execution of Soylent!  My first hypothesis would be perhaps it could work supplementary to fresh food.  I can envision that at some point in the future, we'll be wearing sensors that can notify us of missing nutrients and can relay to a robotic mixer that will prepare a final meal for the day that "fills in all the nutritional gaps" from your otherwise normal diet.  I think we all have days where we don't eat an ideal concentration or amount of nutrients and are, or are not, aware of the physiological performance deficits.   

I believe there's a certain psychological connection people have developed with the form factor and tastes of particular foods.  I believe Soylent has the potential to replace meals for those who want, or aren't bother by, the user experience drinking all their nutrients.  Personally, I just love the first bite of a freshly picked spinach leaf - something I don't believe will be replicable in a way that would make sense to replace the real thing.

I agree. Mostly because I don't think people could stand going on it 100% (perhaps that would be acceptable for some military operations though). Food is very pleasurable. But I can envision a future where people have less of their meals as the typical foods they currently eat and instead bifurcate to fresh gourmet high-quality meals for some of the meals of the week and fill in the rest of their nutritional gaps with something like Soylent (perhaps like you said custom tuned to your particular needs for that day based on internal bio-sensors that communicate your needs to the robotic mixer).

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

I am not claiming we know everything about nutrition. My only claim is that we cannot learn more without scientific experimentation. To the extent people are voluntarily willing to try these sorts of diets that have very precise measurements of the nutrients contained within, we can learn a lot about what we still do not know about the human body's needs. That is after all how we learned about so many vitamins (people suffered from malnutrition because their diet wasn't giving them the essential vitamins they needed, and it was only after investigating the reason behind their suffering that we were able to learn that fact and improve our understanding of the biology).

I agree with this perspective.

Offline GaltReport

... still big farms have a WAY higher *efficiency* .. just consider the big machines they can use .. and efficiency is an important issue when it comes to energy supply and the second law of thermodynamics (i.e. global warming)

Good point Xeroc - I agree energy supply is an important factor, but I don't believe its isolated on just the farms.  In the U.S. food is shipped, on average, about 1900 miles from the source of production. 

Going off on a tangent here, but there are also a lot of REALLY big issues I have with the sheer volume of pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides being dumped over the plants that are inevitably accelerating climate change and damaging ecosystems.  I don't have issues with GMO's (again, technologically objective perspective); what I do have an issue with is why GMO's are developed, enabling monopolies to force the ever increasing usage of harmful chemicals.

I also believe this goes beyond efficiencies.  I was catching drinks with my boss last night and he brought up a really good point; do we really know what we're putting into our bodies?  Like really??  I would love to know 100% exactly what inorganic materials and what ratios of those materials make up the plant matter I'm ingesting.  I would also like to have the assurance that I'm not ingesting chemicals "known to the state of California" to cause cancer.  And I'd like fresh strawberries when there's a foot of snow outside.  Or heirloom tomatoes.  Or arugula where the flavor profile is dialed in just right.

This is just the tip of the ice berg with what's possible and I say we bring back the flavor first and foremost. :-D

My intention is not at all to diminish what you are doing. It sounds really cool. But I am interested to see what your thoughts are on something like Soylent? I mean in some sense it is a very depressing way forward for humanity. People enjoy eating fresh natural food. But there is a lot of efficiency to be gained by taking advantage of economies of scale to farm nutrients and then convert the nutrition into a form that can travel really well over long distances without spoiling. And I don't even think it would need to travel that far. Someday in the future, it could be possible to grow the nutrients in well-controlled, large bio-factories powered by nuclear power located not too far away from major population centers.

And I am confident there will always be ample demand for fresh, natural foods for the purpose of luxury and pleasure. But if that becomes something more like a twice a week thing, people could afford to pay higher prices for the better-quality (compared to what most people eat today that is) natural foods. And it is still not clear to me why the economies of scale provided by centralization wouldn't make the high quality foods cheaper than the decentralized alternative. Or is the case that the decentralization is worth the cost for the security it provides families, since food is essential to living? But then you also need to decentralize the other dependencies necessary to grow the food and keep people alive and satisfied: power, water, waste management, mesh networks. Otherwise, not being dependent on centralized institutions for food is kind of meaningless when you are still dependent on them for your electricity/gas and water supply.

Arhag, that's a very good question - I really like the concept and execution of Soylent!  My first hypothesis would be perhaps it could work supplementary to fresh food.  I believe there's a certain psychological connection people have developed with the form factor and tastes of particular foods.  I believe Soylent has the potential to replace meals for those who want, or aren't bother by, the user experience drinking all their nutrients.  Personally, I just love the first bite of a freshly picked spinach leaf - something I don't believe will be replicable in a way that would make sense to replace the real thing.

If somebody would like to fund it - I will publicly try Soylent for 30 days and comment on my own experience.

This is a joke right?  You will have to pry my grass fed steak from my cold dead hands!!

Offline G1ng3rBr34dM4n

... still big farms have a WAY higher *efficiency* .. just consider the big machines they can use .. and efficiency is an important issue when it comes to energy supply and the second law of thermodynamics (i.e. global warming)

Good point Xeroc - I agree energy supply is an important factor, but I don't believe its isolated on just the farms.  In the U.S. food is shipped, on average, about 1900 miles from the source of production. 

Going off on a tangent here, but there are also a lot of REALLY big issues I have with the sheer volume of pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides being dumped over the plants that are inevitably accelerating climate change and damaging ecosystems.  I don't have issues with GMO's (again, technologically objective perspective); what I do have an issue with is why GMO's are developed, enabling monopolies to force the ever increasing usage of harmful chemicals.

I also believe this goes beyond efficiencies.  I was catching drinks with my boss last night and he brought up a really good point; do we really know what we're putting into our bodies?  Like really??  I would love to know 100% exactly what inorganic materials and what ratios of those materials make up the plant matter I'm ingesting.  I would also like to have the assurance that I'm not ingesting chemicals "known to the state of California" to cause cancer.  And I'd like fresh strawberries when there's a foot of snow outside.  Or heirloom tomatoes.  Or arugula where the flavor profile is dialed in just right.

This is just the tip of the ice berg with what's possible and I say we bring back the flavor first and foremost. :-D

My intention is not at all to diminish what you are doing. It sounds really cool. But I am interested to see what your thoughts are on something like Soylent? I mean in some sense it is a very depressing way forward for humanity. People enjoy eating fresh natural food. But there is a lot of efficiency to be gained by taking advantage of economies of scale to farm nutrients and then convert the nutrition into a form that can travel really well over long distances without spoiling. And I don't even think it would need to travel that far. Someday in the future, it could be possible to grow the nutrients in well-controlled, large bio-factories powered by nuclear power located not too far away from major population centers.

And I am confident there will always be ample demand for fresh, natural foods for the purpose of luxury and pleasure. But if that becomes something more like a twice a week thing, people could afford to pay higher prices for the better-quality (compared to what most people eat today that is) natural foods. And it is still not clear to me why the economies of scale provided by centralization wouldn't make the high quality foods cheaper than the decentralized alternative. Or is the case that the decentralization is worth the cost for the security it provides families, since food is essential to living? But then you also need to decentralize the other dependencies necessary to grow the food and keep people alive and satisfied: power, water, waste management, mesh networks. Otherwise, not being dependent on centralized institutions for food is kind of meaningless when you are still dependent on them for your electricity/gas and water supply.

Arhag, that's a very good question - I really like the concept and execution of Soylent!  My first hypothesis would be perhaps it could work supplementary to fresh food.  I can envision that at some point in the future, we'll be wearing sensors that can notify us of missing nutrients and can relay to a robotic mixer that will prepare a final meal for the day that "fills in all the nutritional gaps" from your otherwise normal diet.  I think we all have days where we don't eat an ideal concentration or amount of nutrients and are, or are not, aware of the physiological performance deficits.   

I believe there's a certain psychological connection people have developed with the form factor and tastes of particular foods.  I believe Soylent has the potential to replace meals for those who want, or aren't bother by, the user experience drinking all their nutrients.  Personally, I just love the first bite of a freshly picked spinach leaf - something I don't believe will be replicable in a way that would make sense to replace the real thing.

If somebody would like to fund it - I will publicly try Soylent for 30 days and comment on my own experience.



« Last Edit: September 17, 2014, 12:29:10 am by G1ng3rBr34dM4n »