Speedbox Production vs. Open Land Farming

Some very important and relevant comparisons between irrigated open land farming and Speedbox production.

Speedbox production uses a tenth the water of open land farming with irrigation, but this will be ignored here, and the costs assumed to be equal.

One acre of land, containing a 1000 place Speedbox array.

This size comparison is to accurate scale.

This Speedbox spacing requires the gantry type overhead Speedbox combine
which travels over the tops of the Speedboxes.

One acre of prime cropland in Iowa: $25,000
One acre of wasteland in New Mexico: $300

The boxes cost $400 each, made of epoxied foam.

One hundred 10 place Speedboxes @ $400 each = $40,000.

Pallets: 1000 @ $60 each = $60,000.

Open land farming: 3 tractors, combine, trucks, 20 other implements, in all totaling a minimum of $1,500,000.

Speedbox production: Speedbox combine, trucks, totaling $500,000. The extra Speedbox costs are nullified.

Given these numbers, Speedbox production would be more profitable then irrigated open land farming if the production was only equal to that of irrigated open land farming.

Nevertheless, Speedbox production is (15) 10 to 30 times that of open land farming per acre.

Open land farming: averages 15 times the distance traveled per trip to get the same amount of crop.

6 to 8 (7) complete trips (aeration, cultivation, spraying, planting, spraying, cultivation, harvest) per crop in open land farming.

1.5 trips per crop for Speedbox production assuming two crops per year: plant, harvest and replant, harvest.

Open land farming therefore requires (7*15) 75 times as much fuel per unit of crop as Speedbox production.

Banks create money out of thin air in our Keynesian banking system of fiat currency.

If the Speedbox production factories and Speedbox combine production factories, and seed carpet production facilities exist, then banks will no longer give agricultural loans for open land farming. Open land farming is a negative production proposition that requires government subsidies and requires 2000 calories to produce 1 food calorie. It cannot compete with Speedbox production.

Part of the current economic problem is that banks are loathe to give agricultural loans, because the odds of return on investment are low, and the higher fuel prices go, the lower these odds go. Government subsidies are required, but anymore, even with these subsidies banks refrain from issuing many agricultural loans on what is an almost certain loss. For the last 20 years, farm foreclosures have spread across the face of the countryside like an unstoppable plague. The low fuel prices that inefficient and incapable open land farming depended upon for profitability disappeared in the early 1970's never to return, at least not via the vehicle of crude oil.

The Speedbox economics are a positive gain, not a certain loss and negative gain proposition like open land farming is. (This is true so long as a minimum of somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of total worldwide Speedbox production is sugar cane or sugar beets for ethanol production. This ethanol then "subsidizes" the Speedbox food production. Because of the demand for ethanol fuel, ethanol production will easily account for upwards of 90 percent of the total worldwide production.)

Because of ethanol production 400 times that of Iowa's, or 10 times that of Brazil's per square foot, the Speedbox is a positive production proposition, which produces more calories than it consumes. It allows for the production of immense quantities of cheap ethanol production.

The very foundation of a modern industrialized technologically advanced civilization is the availability of limitless quantities of cheap fuel and/or electricity. The destruction of this foundation began in the early 1970s with the end of cheap fuel and electricity. The Speedbox can eliminate the need for crude oil, restore cheap fuel and electricity prices, and thereby restore this destroyed foundation.

Brazil gets all of of its fuel from ethanol, a country of 200 million people. The Speedbox produces 10 times as much ethanol for the same or less production costs.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Aeroponic
• speedbox