Glad to see they are having some success. What surprised me the most about growing my own fruits and vegetables in my back yard is that many of the cultivars for standard things like tomatoes, strawberries, etc. are bred to survive transport at the expense of flavor. Basically things like rock hard tomatoes when they are picked that become soft (but not very much more flavorful) after traveling to the produce market.
When you grow your own, you can grow berries that are "too delicate" to grow economically on big farms because too many berries don't survive transit. As a result it opens up different berries (and other produce) that you might not otherwise have access too.
That said, getting seeds can be a challenge, I'm super blessed to live within driving distance of an excellent Ag college (UC Davis) but reaching out to the heirloom seeds community is another strategy some have pursued.
Berries are the obvious example, as they're fragile & fiddly, typically need to be picked when ripe (plenty of other fruit will ripen after being picked), and have a short shelf life -- but there's other surprising items that home gardeners discover.
Sweet corn, for example, starts converting sugars to starch soon after it's picked. Many people don't really understand why it's called sweet corn, as they've only ever eaten corn that was picked a few days ago. Asparagus I believe is very similar, with significant flavour changes happening rapidly after harvest.
We've enjoyed dozens of varieties of cherries straight off the trees all with wonderfully distinct flavours, but a day or two after picking, they're all merely 'cherry-flavoured'.
William Alexander wrote, somewhat humorously, about the dollar & effort costs of growing produce at home [1] but in addition to unique / superior flavours, advocates will often assert the intangible benefits (a new problem domain to engage the brain, a tighter connection with your food, the near-meditative aspects of some repetitive gardening activities).
Oh, and for seed acquisition, in AU we've got a few really good options - Green Harvest, Diggers, Edens etc - that maintain many of the
heirloom varieties that found there way here, but I thought stateside you'd have way more options? Check the Seed Savers Network[2] if you haven't found them already.
I have noticed that this preference for superior produce is lacking in America. That’s mostly because there is no food culture or habit of dining together.
In Asia and even in parts of Europe, people will wait for seasonal produce and appreciate certain varieties. (White asparagus dipped in melted butter..yum. Don’t get me started about mango season in India)
The National dish of USA is the cheeseburger. And we import most of our produce. So there is no appreciation for seasonality and food is always from elsewhere. And often picked unripe and have travelled a lot of food miles. There is no anticipation or excitement for food. Everything is available in massive quantities and on demand. At some point, the law of diminishing returns kicks in.
We export commodities like nuts and fodder. We have billions of sales in worthless tasteless leafy greens like kale and lettuce. Nobody ever enjoyed a bowl of ‘yummy’ lettuce. Nobody.
As a farmer, this is very depressing to me. As a chef, I feel almost suicidal. For cooks and chefs, if there are no one enjoying or appreciating our skills, we might as well not exist.
As an immigrant who grew up in a food culture before America, it’s wretchedly depressing. The grocery stores here are designed like warehouses and farms are like factories. The goods are standardized and optimized for efficient supply chain. All the joy of food shopping is sucked dry from these sterile environments.
As a small acreage farmer who wants to automate and improve tech, the options are minimal to nil. There are some companies that try to help small farmers but I am not sure how it will pan out. Time will tell. Everything in America has to scale. Economies of scale is the killer. Must scale is the mantra.
While Europe has at least close to a dozen small acreage ag bots in the work, you don’t even hear about the handful that is working to help us small acreage farmer out..many have died out even before they can get started because of lack of funding. But that’s another topic for another day.
California is better than most places, tbh with varieties. The weather is the saving grace.
Also: There is California rare fruits association and scion exchange.
fresh dino kale (not the curly kale type) sauteed in olive oil with a bit of salt is heavenly. and various fresh lettuces are wonderful, so you should tone down your blanket condemnations
I grew up near some small farms in MD and we’d turn our nose up at yesterday’s Silver Queen (corn). It really does change over the course of just a few days.
One of the best methods for getting seeds for good tasting fruits (that breed true) is to just purchase the fruit of something you like and plant the seeds inside. I do this with tomatoes all the time, just go to the market, pick up the a few pounds of heirlooms and squish out the seeds before I eat them at home. I get so many tomato starts this way, that I generally have to transplant or kill off a few.
With other plants, it's also easy and advisable just to let some go to seed instead of harvesting them. You'll have plenty for the next round.
I think 'breed true' is the key here, for example you can't plant the seeds out of that tasty Gala apple and get a tree covered with Gala apples (in 10yr - another challenge with some food crops)[1]. But for perennials like tomatoes and chiles, it's great!
> What surprised me the most about growing my own fruits and vegetables in my back yard is that many of the cultivars for standard things like tomatoes, strawberries, etc. are bred to survive transport at the expense of flavor.
I might be in a bubble, but I would have thought this to have been common knowledge for ages?
I got gut feeling that it is even bit outdated info at this point, and the trend is swinging back towards improving flavor instead of so solely focused on yields and transportability (etc).
It’s seasonal. In North America it’s very easy to get locally grown fruits during spring and summer. But once the fruit season is over you have to import those fruits from Mexico and South America. And they will require being transportable and we’re back to flavorless.
Now I’ve seen the vegetable farms in Europe that are equipped with plastic greenhouses to extend the growing season. Which is lacking in the US. Farmers prefer GMO, hardier fruit that can stand the cold rather than expensive bubbles.
The amazing flavors you get from some varieties! No wonder people think they don't like vegetables...
The ones we have in Swedish stores are high quality, organic, but taste pretty terrible to be honest.
One thing about growing your own veggies is you realize how much work it takes to get a single tomato, carrot or potato.
Most people can't even imagine the amazing sweetness of a tomato freshly brought from the garden while it is still full of sunlight. One can have an entire meal with two tomatoes, a pinch of salt and half a loaf of bread.
1. provide ample habitat for predators of said insects
2. grow a surplus so there's enough for you and the bugs
3. use the partly-eaten produce in sauces, jams, stews and other meals where presentation doesn't matter
UC Davis grad and still live in the area. I believe almost all strawberries grown commercial come from UC Davis. Was the whole big issue with this strawberry commission thing that a few professors ran and tired to take the IP when they left. Was interesting. I love being able to grow really delicious tomatoes with almost no effort. Always look forward to tomatoes season. I cure my own homemade bacon and make sourdough bread. Best BLT sandwich even use lettuce I grow sometimes. UC Davis has some great online resources for gardening. I have even thought about starting a beehive but I am not sure I want to go through the effort.
I'm normally a 'fan' of mass produced stuff or at least the benefits of economies of scale, see home growing as an awful (to me) hobby and yet have to admit that homegrown vegetables taste much better to me even though my prior was that it should be the opposite.
Not optimizing for looks, transit and spending more resources per unit of produce are the main factors I suspect for the difference but I'm curious if there are others.
The main factor (in my considered opinion) is the life of the soil. The "secret" of getting the best taste and (I assume but have not measured) nutrition is to treat the soil itself as a kind of organism, feed it things like diluted milk, oatmeal, wood chips, kitchen scraps, etc. and it becomes "inwardly alive ... akin to the vegetative":
> Then the earth itself will have the tendency to come inwardly alive
and become akin to the vegetative.
~ Herrman Andrä, 1962, in re: Hügelkultur; (ah, he's quoting Rudolf Steiner from a "1924 lecture on biodynamics" but it's still evocative and descriptive prose despite biodynamics being pretty "woo-woo".) https://web.archive.org/web/20190715152357/http://pubs.cahnr...
When soil is healthy plants grow vigorously with minimal pest problems and no fertilizers nor pesticides, and yield and quality go up. E.g. I have lots of slugs in my garden, but almost no slug damage. You also do things to encourage the local mini-ecosystem. For example I have these plastic panels that serve as flagstones but also function as habitat for centipedes. Every couple of weeks I lift them up and throw some cuttings under there to keep it from getting too compacted. Centipedes are apex predators at their scale, like wolves or lions, so having a healthy population of them is both a indicator of ecosystem health and a crucial factor keeping other bugs from growing out of control. They cannot regulate their own moisture levels so they need a perpetually moist environment to survive. By providing that in my otherwise pretty dry micro-climate I get free pest control.
I'd be curious if home gardening is actually more resource intensive -- especially if your time & labor is considered free (whether donated or a sunk cost).
There is a huge range of output/resource ratios for home gardens...even for home gardeners who say they're trying to achieve a high ratio. (Vs. love puttering with a garden, or want small quantities of perfect-in-their-eyes baby vegetables for salads, or ...).
Note that for many modern folks, "regularly gets you outside and exercising a bit and perhaps interacting with neighbors" is a valuable output. And you should also consider the vast processing, handling, & transportation wastes (including your or a delivery driver's time at the wheel) of the alternative.
- Peace of mind
- Sense of accomplishment
- Food independece
- Giving the gift of veggies
If you don't (veg) garden, this is the most inspiring piece of content I've seen on the subject. I'm generally not a TED fan, but this one is seriously inspiring.
I remember reading a decade or more ago that high-density home gardening was a popular hobby in Russia, with a lot of competition to produce maximum output from minimal land area. But even with all that enthusiasm, home gardeners couldn't produce for less total cost than industrial farm output sold in supermarkets.
They must be factoring in labor costs of working in the garden at home. To me (small scale) gardening is a mostly relaxing activity that I can do early or in spare moments that basically has a zero opportunity costs and negligible supply costs of less that $100 a year.
Purchase fruit from the farmer's market and collect the seeds before eating them. For fruit that breed true (not apples!) you should get something similar enough.
There is a high-end market for utmost-quality, expensive food in small quantities.
Remember how Tesla started as a ridiculously expensive muscle electric car. Now they have much more affordable models, and it's increasingly hard to walk down a street a in NYC and not spot at least one Tesla. Entering a market from its most premium segment is a common strategy, before you can polish your processes, achieve economies of scale, and lower the prices.
"Making the berries more affordable was “the whole purpose” of expanding operations and focusing on efficiencies, Oishii co-founder and CEO Hiroki Koga said."
More affordable? Rather "less expensive". Affordable they are not.
Can't vouch for their taste or anything like that, but, based on the marketing, they seem to be positioning these as a high-quality species of strawberry and are also marketing it is a modern, cutting-edge alternative to standard farms. So not exactly surprised by the price, even if I do find it ridiculous and would never pay it.
I am assuming they are going for a japanese fruit pricing strategy, making, some, apparently really good fruit, for crazy high prices. (I doubt many of them are actually worth the price, but I think it is mostly a gift giving thing over there). Kinda doubt that strategy is gonna work out in america.
There was a YouTube video linked in this thread showing how there is a strong market in Japan for ultra high quality strawberries where they are seen as a small quantity special treat to celebrate a big event rather than just a mass produced food.
I've tried these, and they are by far the most delicious strawberries I've ever tasted. My wife is extremely picky about fruit, and she agrees.
That said...they are also extremely expensive.
For a slightly cheaper alternative, you can find strawberries imported from Japan that are probably 95% as good, albeit not as pretty looking. I've seen these going for about $30 for 10.
For a slightly more cheaper alternative, you can find strawberries imported from Korea that are probably about 90% as good, albeit not as pretty looking. These seem to go for about $15-20 for 10.
They're all significantly more expensive than the North American berries you find at the local supermarket, but they're also significantly better IMHO.
Wild strawberries - no.
Straight from the farm, both sold from a stand or pick-your-own - yes.
Also whatever premium strawberries that sometimes show up at Whole Foods or the local premium/gourmet markets.
The Japanese and Korean berries are much better. I wouldn't buy them at whim without any thought. They're definitely a treat to indulge in.
Edit: One thing to bear in mind - the main characteristics of these Asian berries is sweetness. They're incredibly sweet, with a hint of tartness. I have not encountered this level of sweet in any North American berry, though I have once in the UK. The Korean berries are also slightly less sweet and slightly more tart than the Japanese ones.
If your preferred strawberry taste note is tart/sour, not sweet, then you might not like them. My wife's cousin prefers her berries tart, so she prefers the cheap berries you can find at any grocery over these Asian ones.
It's hit and miss even with freshly picked on a farm yourself strawberries I find. We regularly go pick strawberries in summer at local farms. It depends a lot on what variety you get to pick that day and whether the weather was favourable or not. There are some strawberries that are basically like the supermarket ones. I tend to ignore those rows. Not much in the taste department, either just watery or just sweet. They might smell a bit like strawberries but not really much. Those usually are the easiest to pick though and get home in one piece.
But then there are also some that just have an actual strawberry flavor. It's like an explosion of flavor in your mouth. Like the smell of a bucket full of strawberries but you can actually taste that when biting into the strawberry. I could stay there all day and just pick those and eat them right away. But then I wouldn't ever be able to make strawberry jam from them.
> The Jersey City facility consumes 60% less energy and 40% less water than the first-gen technology created and used at Oishii’s R&D facility in Kearny.
So, how much more energy than growing the fruit in a traditional way ?
Depends how you measure that. With traditional farming, you are using solar energy by virtue of the sun illuminating the land. But you don't really measure it because you don't pay for that. Nor is it particularly efficient because you don't capture all of the light hitting the area and yields for a given area are lot lower than vertical farms because of that (and a few other reasons). But you do pay for land of course. That's why there are not a lot of farms in urban areas. The land is simply too expensive and scarce for that and the low yields and efficiencies mean that there are more lucrative ways to monetize the land. There are also other forms of energy involved with traditional farming that you do need to pay for including working the land and tilling it (typically with equipment burning diesel), water use (takes energy to clean up and pump around), transporting the produce (more diesel), etc. The further away your food is grown the bigger the energy cost. With the extreme case for things that we ship, or even fly, in from other continents.
With vertical farming, energy is a an important cost component; along with water, some nutrients, etc. You might even argue it's probably the biggest cost component next to perhaps manual labor. However, havesting produce in a vertical farm is probably a bit easier and efficient than in a field. So that leaves energy as the main cost difference. Water is quite easy to source, and effectively just takes more energy to clean and pump around and recycle. So, energy cost is really the key thing. Saving water saves energy. Because of the better yields per area you can farm in areas where it previously would have been too expensive and much closer to where the produce is consumed. Which means a lot of energy savings in transport, tilling, etc.
So, it's probably more energy efficient overall. Whether it is cost effective depends mainly on the price of energy and how efficient you are with that. The cheaper and more efficient that gets the better it is. And of course the environmental impact is pretty minimal if you use clean renewable energy. Very unlike traditional farming which is comparatively dirty. So, 60% efficiency gain sounds like pretty nice cost optimization. Further cost reductions are going to come from lower cost per kwh. There probably is a cross over point where growing strawberries in a field becomes an expensive hobby.
I don't understand where do they take the electricity, but I suppose it could come completely from solar panels on the roof. Let's suppose they buy it locally. If my own electric bill (about 10 miles from them in Brooklyn) is any indication, the energy is > 50% renewable (hydro, nuclear, wind).
Traditionally-grown berries would need to be transported, likely hundreds of miles. These berries apparently go to NYC area within 20 miles. This saves on transportation and refrigeration.
So they had been selling them for $50 per strawberry and they’re only 13 - 14 brix? For $50 I can plant a tree that will yield 30 - 40 lbs of fruit per year at 26 - 28 brix.
This is perhaps a good real world example of the marshmallow test.
Less than you need to rent in Manhattan, which is presumably their target market. I have a little less than 0.2 acres, and I've got 11 in-ground trees and another ten container trees. And I'm purposely keeping the property looking like any other house in our HOA, rather than planting things super close and dwarfing or espaliering them so that it looks like an experimental farm.
Granted some of the trees are actually on our neighbor's property (with their blessing), but still.
Other kinds of fruit have higher sugar content; jujube is reportedly highest, reaching thirties or even forties. For a strawberry 13-14 is quite good, though. Here's a sophisticated amateur who managed to hit 14.5 (with lower average):
Also that price is for "11 medium berries or eight large berries", and has now dropped to $20. That's still a bit ridiculous, though it's not clear to me what fraction of their harvest is actually saleable at the high price.
Parent was suggesting that for sugar-per-unit-of-land, a tree will bear larger volumes. I'd observe it will take less effort to maintain, be much more resilient to drought and pests, and have several other benefits, and it's why permaculturists prefer trees to annuals.
While I suspect you're being snarky about strawberries not being trees, there actually is a strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo. I'm growing one, as it happens. They're a good looking tree, dark leaves, good canopy, lovely white bell-shaped flowers, but the fruit being reminiscent of strawberries more in the visuals than the flavour. This species appears on Madrid's coat of arms.
I was curious about this so call "strawberry" tree, the Arbutus unedo has nothing to do with strawberries. The fruits are delicious but if someone is expecting a strawberry, they will be highly disappointed.
Being prepared for disappointment is perpetually sage advice to the young.
Lots of things don't taste as you'd expect from their names -- monkfish is the first that springs to mind. I mean, sure, they're fish-flavoured, but ...
Mangosteens (my favourite fruit) are not at all like mangoes, kiwifruit taste more like a gooseberry than a chicken, dragonfruits are pleasantly delicate but way more bland than the fiery name suggests, and so on.
If you don't like the surprise of the fruit from strawberry tree not tasting like a strawberry, then the tree tomato (tamarillo) will really annoy you. : )
I learned about them a few years ago when a bought a house and was trying to identify the plants in the yard. Prior to that I had seen them in San Francisco and wondered if they were edible.
I snack on the fruits when ripe, but haven’t made anything out of them yet. Hummingbirds seem to love them and they’re evergreen, so they’re nice to have around aside from them fruit.
That's a fascinating tidbit about the tree. So the fruit is edible, just not delicious? I suppose it could theoretically be bred to produce a more sweet variety of fruit?
Louis Glowinski, a Melbourne resident, published a spectacular book about growing fruit in Australia back in 2008 [1] -- it's a marvellous read, especially for the domestic geographical references, as well as the proper alignment of months to seasons (obviously most other works are from the northern hemisphere, and the prevalence of things like 'pick these in late July' which need to be mentally rot-6'd, gets tiring real fast).
Anyway, there's a couple of probably unintended running jokes in that book -- the phrases 'highly variable' and 'good for jams' are frequently used when it feels like he's trying to be polite about good, but often far from great, fruit.
I recall he used both phrases for this species.
I think with a lot of these kinds of fruit trees that haven't been carefully selected over centuries, you don't have lots of named varieties, and consequently they're usually grown from seed rather than grafted, so in turn, combined with climate and soil variations, it's a bit of a pot-luck on whether you have great, or merely edible, fruit.
So, yes, you're right, we could start breeding better varieties, but this is an expensive pursuit for tree crops, and few are engaged in it these days.
Apples get a bit of attention (look at the Cosmic Crisp f.e.) and citrus too, but realistically most of humanity's diet today is based around species selected by hunter-gatherers ~11k years ago.
Isn't there a big economic problem to vertical farming? You're using relatively high value real estate and fairly energy and tech intensive methods to produce something that's relatively low value. Seems like willfully ignoring competitive advantage and trade.
Is the hope that people are going to pay premium for vertically farmed produce because of the brand or is this actually cheaper?
In the video for the farm they explain that the aim is to produce extremely high end strawberries that taste much better but aren’t as tough and able to be transported. I can imagine places like restaurants paying 4 to 5 times as much to get the absolute best taste.
> In the video for the farm they explain that the aim is to produce extremely high end strawberries that taste much better but aren’t as tough and able to be transported.
Most things people claim can’t be transported can be transported just fine. Maybe not on a six week boat trip from Panama, but certainly on a refrigerated truck from an extra hour upstate.
When people say that something can’t be stored, they usually mean that it only keeps for a few weeks, rather than over a year like commercial apples.
I live in an area where strawberries are grown commercially. Strawberries are sold at local farmers markets which were picked earlier that day. I have learned that strawberries are much better if eaten the same day that they are picked. I thought that I didn't like strawberries because the ones you get at the grocery store have a bit of a rotten fruit flavor. The fresh berries do not. Even day old strawberries have a noticeable rotten fruit flavor.
Even if you have lower standards, strawberries rot quickly. Even refrigerated, they don't last more than a week or so.
An extra hour is fine, but a Spain-to-Czechia truck trip (two days at least) is not. A lot of produce is grown in Almería, in the south of Spain, up to the point that all the hothouses are seen from the orbit as one huge pale blob on the surface. This agricultural powerhouse supplies almost entire Europe, but transportability is a key issue. Spain is located very peripherally in the EU.
This is an under-appreciated point. Most vegetables sold in supermarkets are varieties bred for durability (both physical and temporal).
If you grow the produce at point-of-sale and don’t transport it, you can make it feasible to sell more heirloom varieties (and many species like huckleberries) that just don’t travel/scale well in modern mechanized agriculture.
You’re not going to compete on price, but you can potentially get a far superior product.
Yes. Growing anything but very shade loving plants requires about 1.5 million watts in LEDs per acre. That is why most demos use lettuce, it will grow in abyssal lighting conditions and only requires a tiny amount of nutrients since it is all leaf with a like 90% water content.
These vertical farms will require dedicated nuclear and fusion reactors if they ever catch on. After all they are ditching the free fusion reactor we call sun.
There’s a definite economic niche for high value low shelf life produce. It’s just a question of local economics. Fresh strawberries in a large market like this might be able to pay for themselves even with the costs of real estate and energy usage by way of being able to sell at a higher price due to selling extremely fresh produce to customers prepared to pay that higher cost for the quality difference.
This does all assume the end result is a higher quality product of course.
Strawberries also have a bad reputation for pesticide usage. Indoor strawberries could potentially be marketed as zero pesticide for another premium angle.
I imagine it's a bit of both, premium and that it has been getting cheaper to pull off.
On a more societal level, I think it is a skill we are going to need as time goes on, as things get denser, more populated, less arible and more insecure. So it's a worthwhile investment in technology, and I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't some government grants and research grants funding a portion of the endeavor.
With indoor farming, you save on transportation and refrigeration, which is also energy intensive. Gotham Greens is doing something similar with salad mix, and they're supposedly profitable. That said, lettuce is a lot less calorie dense than strawberries, so I'd imagine that indoor strawberries will always be a luxury product.
I've eaten their strawberries and they're pretty good! The berries are held in a plastic tray with the berries individually floating on plastic wrap so they don't get squished from their own weight.
While I don't think the berries are worth the price tag, I'd definitely be interested in trying some of the new products they mention in the article (tomatoes, melons).
There's a lot of income in NYC and the greater NYC area.
That said, we're all looking at the retail price, but the actual cost could be much lower. But it's more profitable to sprinkle some magic marketing dust on it and go higher end.
Hi long time jersey city resident here . There never was an abandoned or old “ Anheuser-Busch factory in Jersey City” . AB has operated a massive brewery/factory in Newark 10mins away . In terms of abandoned factories most of not all of the jersey city abandoned property like this would have been retrofitted into something else years ago . Newark on the other hand has loads of abandoned stuff . Also it was home to Balentine’s , Pabst and at one point a sclitz plant .
The title suggests it's going to be a cool ecomodernist story about efficient agricultural use of land, and it turns out it's a luxury strawberry grower selling berries a dozen at a time for $2 each in a giant plastic tray. Ick.
Presumably growing indoors gives them a 365 day/yr operation, which wouldnt be possible otherwise in New Jersey. Most outdoor grown strawberries in the US come from California, and even there, the season isnt all year.
thats the idea. you grow local high quality things tha are prime time for consumption. no time to store them in logistics centers or long distance transortation.
When you grow your own, you can grow berries that are "too delicate" to grow economically on big farms because too many berries don't survive transit. As a result it opens up different berries (and other produce) that you might not otherwise have access too.
That said, getting seeds can be a challenge, I'm super blessed to live within driving distance of an excellent Ag college (UC Davis) but reaching out to the heirloom seeds community is another strategy some have pursued.