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Musk's involvement in hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. I'm Dr.
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  Russell Sharp, the inventor of gold leaf, or as it's called in the UK,
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  liquid gold, the one-part fertilizer that gets you from seed to harvest with
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  just one bottle of additive.
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  So today we're talking about the Musks, Elon Musk and his younger brother Kimball
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  Musk and their involvement in hydroponics.
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  Now, doesn't get the headlines, that does it, Elon Musk in hydroponics,
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  but he has talked about hydroponics and his younger brother is particularly
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  involved in hydroponic setups.
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  So in 2019 Elon Musk did a couple of interviews about hydroponics and said that
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  they would be critical to any
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  sort of human habitation of Mars which is obviously a big thing for Elon.
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  He thinks that the solar power
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  that would be generated in their sort of habitats on Mars
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  would be used to power underground hydroponic systems
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  now that was 2019 and a
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  lot's happened since then some some south
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  african guys got involved in the government in the
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  u.s and started cutting federal budgets so whether nasa have
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  got the budget to send somebody to mars i don't know
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  maybe elon should talk to that guy who's cutting all the budgets and say
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  maybe you should uh ring fence some some money
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  for nasa and their hydroponics budget one of
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  the other things about the the i'll come back to the underground thing because
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  it does sort of highlight there might have been some chat
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  between Kimball and Elon about certainly
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  when it comes to underground hydroponics well Kimball
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  he's he's much more involved in hydroponics he
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  was social entrepreneur of the year in 2017 for
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  his work in hydroponics and he has set up a company called
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  Square Roots it's got a lot of investment I think
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  it's at 90 at least 90 million dollars of funding and it started in brooklyn
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  and it involves you know standard vertical farming growing in shipping containers
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  nothing i could see that was particularly novel but maybe there's some novel technology in there and.
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  So there was a big boom in lockdown with vertical farming, and Kimball rode
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  that wave with his cowboy hat, yee-haw.
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  And every time you see him, it seems to be with a cowboy hat on.
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  So he loves playing the cowboy, even though Square Roots was set up in Brooklyn.
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  And they set up five indoor farms that were going well.
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  And then in 2023, there were
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  what was described there's massive layoffs and the vast majority
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  of the staff lost their jobs typical musk
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  style there was an email sent out and they
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  they uh they lost it that way so they went from five.
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  Farms down to one i think was down in the south east
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  of the u.s and sort of
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  they pivoted the way they grow and then they
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  uttered the famous line that they will be doing farmers farming
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  as a service and this is
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  a particular thing to look out for in the vertical farming or
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  the hydroponic world especially when it comes to leafy greens whenever a
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  company finds they can't economically grow.
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  Crops they always talk about farming as a service so
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  people who people spend decades trying to
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  get farms on top of supermarkets or lettuce
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  grown hydroponically in restaurants and in the
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  food isles of supermarkets the economics
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  never work out the logistics never work
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  out the food hygiene the regulations it's
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  just impossible so they then talk about farming as a
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  service where really it's about showing kids
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  how to grow crops hydroponically and showing these
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  hydroponic farms a bit like an aquarium you
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  know as an attraction in the area so farming
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  as a service that's a catchphrase you have to look out for square roots
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  have still got a website they've still got one farm it looks
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  like and they've set up square roots japan so japan is really was the forefront
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  of led lighting and hydroponics about 15 years 20 years ago and that was that's
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  where it really massively took off so they're taking their technology back to
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  japan that does happen every now and again and it goes back to the country it came from.
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  My favourite example is katsu curry, which...
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  Is like chinese curry that the british took
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  when they obviously when they they basically control china
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  in the victorian times and they took
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  it back to the uk that became chip shop curry and then
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  the japanese took chip shop curry and
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  turned it into katsu curry so not going straight back
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  to china but going very close going back
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  to japan so so yeah the japanese are retaking led and hydroponics in the form
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  of square roots japan went off a bit of a tangent there and so i said that there
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  is a sort of a nice link up with the mars the elon's work and and kimball's work because,
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  kimball is working with the gates foundation the bill and melinda gates foundation.
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  And they are funding a lot of research into
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  growing crops where you don't
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  need to use any light so in this one they use they
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  feed the crops acetate so acetic
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  acid being vinegar so vinegar type compounds and
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  they use what's called CRISPR so CRISP
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  with an r on the end gene editing technology
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  so it's not quite genetic modification but it is biotechnology and
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  they've gene edited crops to
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  be able to feed and grow in the dark on acetate so
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  the hope is that you could reduce the need for lights at all and grow these
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  crops just on feedstocks from industrial production so some of you will be saying
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  that is just sounds terrible and some of you'll be like yeehaw i'll get on the
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  board of that with kimball i don't know i did a texas accent there should have been south african.
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  With this but he has got a cowboy hat on so yes give the gates foundation
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  they're working on that and so that would
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  be if you could optimize that that
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  might be a way of with basic feedstocks potentially
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  more reliable ways of growing crops
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  in space and underground which is what musk was
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  talking about elon musk was talking about back in 2019 without
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  sunlight so it all comes back around so the
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  the musks have not gone away
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  from hydroponics they're still heavily involved not as
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  much as they were about 2019 to 2020 but
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  you know never write the musks off both kimball
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  kimball was involved in like elon's early software
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  work and you know when he when he was writing computer games and stuff like
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  that so he's not it's not like nepotism and things like that i think i think
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  he has got two brain cells to rub together so that that is an interesting one
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  to look out for so if you if you're interested in that have a look at square
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  roots that's been Hydroponics Daily for today, the Musk Brothers.