The Price Is Right

[yogi]

I think there was some kind of song about how to keep the old gal down on the farm after she had seen the big city. That idea pretty much sums up how we became what we are today. We were an agrarian kind of place in the beginning with the entire family working on the farm. It was a means of survival and this land could not be settled any other way. Thus family values permeated the work day and even when factories started to appear they were run like a family unit. That's all the old timers knew because that's how it was back home in Europe. And then the cities came into being, at which point I believe that song was invented. Back on the farm you either worked very hard for little to no pay or you were absolutely idle with nothing to do and nowhere to go. City life was not like that and quite alluring to many farm folks' progeny.

My parents would talk about the Great Depression because they lived through it. I understood what they were describing but it really didn't mean much to me. We were on the edge of poverty when I grew up, but nothing like what was going on in the 20's - 30's. Mom and dad didn't have full time jobs, but they did find work. We never were without food. Out of all those bad economic times came what we know as Social Security. Today, a hundred years after the Depression, I am very grateful for the safety net that was invented way back when. It's looking like the next generation of farmers will be harvesting crops on the moon, or planet mars. They are already growing wheat on the International Space Station. I can't imagine what kind of family farm those are going to be like.

[Kellemora]

How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree!

When I was growing up, we worked in every single phase of the family business, it was required if you were the eldest like I was.
But expected of the younger brothers also, and in rare cases the girls for some aspects of the business. But they didn't have to learn every single department like the boys did.
Also, technology changes affected us as well. Our old coal fired boilers eventually gave way to new oil fired boilers, which were later converted to natural gas.
Things to help insulate our single pane glass greenhouses also became necessary due to the climbing prices for heating them.
But by then, it was almost too late for us to build new thermal greenhouses, although we did build a couple.
However, we did start putting Exolite on some of the greenhouse roofs, using the existing Cypress rails for glass by adding an aluminum T-cap over the rails.

Almost all of the hybridization technology we had developed was totally lost when we closed down.
Most of the originating plants to use in the steps to develop the end product no longer existed. Or if they did, nobody knew what plants we used for step one. And it is a very complicated process that only years of experimentation gave us the end results. Of course in today's high tech world, they can now do almost anything, and much easier too. Plant DNA can tell them what will and what will not work without doing the experiments to figure it out the hard way of waiting for plants to grow.

[yogi]

Feeding all earth's people is going to become a huge problem if climate change gets too drastic. There are already droughts in what were fertile parts of the world and people are migrating out of them causing other problems. There are places that do things such as irrigate desert land and grow stuff, but that doesn't seem efficient or cost effective. Farming without the use of soil, pretty much what you have a lot of experience doing, seems to be the likely future for our food supply. For one thing it can be portable; crops are being grown inside semi tractor trailers, for example. You and I have heard a lot of discussion about GMO's and I think genetics is going to prove critical for farming in the not too distant future. The biodiversity once freely distributed across the earth's surface is gradually disappearing. About the only true source these days is the Amazon rain forests, and they too are dwindling. Without all that help from Mother Nature, we we need to be experts at manipulating genes in order to survive the next hundred years. As I see it, the family farm of the future will be a family of android robots. The good news there is that we won't have to feed them.

[Kellemora]

Around 40 years ago, I was installing hydroponic greenhouses on the roofs of some flat building down in the city.
Finding suitable buildings was easy, getting the permits and finding someone who wanted to invest in one was very hard.
In most cases, the owners of the buildings were all for it, and even paid for some of the modifications required, such as a secure railing around the perimeter of the roof.
Designing a greenhouse around existing obstructions, such as their air-conditioning systems sometimes posed a challenge, unless we could build the greenhouse with them sorta inside the structure but open, more like a courtyard inside the greenhouses. Doing it this way cost more than placing greenhouses on either side. Plus there were exhaust fans, skylights, furnace flues, and of course several sewer vents. We just extended the sewer vents to outside the roof of the greenhouse. Regardless of what we were doing up there, we still had to cover the roof itself with a thick rubber roofing sheet. We only needed this under the greenhouse, but it was usually cheaper just to do the entire roof all at once.
At one location, we had to build a floor for the greenhouse 41 inches above the existing roof to get it approved. But that turned out to be an OK project, because the permit only required a grating type of floor, which was basically the cheapest type of elevated floor one could install. However it still had to be insulated since it gets so cold in St. Louis, and the insulation had to be moisture and fireproof. Even so, I'm glad we only had to do one that way because it required much larger heating units.

Although our hydroculture facility was indoors, it still required a lot of electricity for the lighting.
As far as raising vegetables and produce, the lighting has to be ten times higher than for tropical plants, so I don't see how using tractor trailer trailers would be cost effective, unless perhaps you installed clear Exolite roofs on them, which would only help a little.

The indoor growing facility I made for the zoo required very little light in comparison. All we were raising were greens for animal feed. Temperature is what made the seed sprout, and the way my system worked, as they neared maturity, the trays were up closest to the fluorescent lamps so they greened up well before using for feed.
Although it saved the zoo a considerable amount of money in feed, they chose to convert it to a hatchery for rare birds after a few years of usage.

[yogi]

One day, in a relatively recent lifetime, I was watching the public television network while waiting for the sun to rise. There happened to be a documentary show that dealt with hydroculture/hydroponics. It was pretty interesting in that a lot of things were automated in the traditional greenhouse style structure. But then they showed what looked like the trailer of a truck with racks along the inside walls. There was lighting above each shelf on the rack but I don't recall anything about distance. This could have been used simply for sprouting purposes, but I'm pretty sure they made a claim something to the effect that the concept could replace traditional farming techniques, and was portable. Since I'm just a curious old guy I knew nothing of the technicalities and took their word for it. LOL It could have been one of those "made for television" shows for all I know.

[Kellemora]

Over the years I have made and used nearly every type of hydroponic system out there.
None of them can be used for every type of crop, so it takes a while to learn just which type to use for which crop.
And of course, there are a LOT of Snake Oil salesmen out there selling hydroponic systems that aren't worth the plastic they are made from, but do to advertising and fake claims, they sell for big bucks, when in reality, they are junk of poor design.

I set up a guy who raised only head lettuce with a system that was fast, simple, low maintenance, and low work.
The best part of the whole system was it was super cheap to build also, even though this guy had the bucks to go fancy.
It was a major improvement over some experimental units I made to test a theory, and then improved on that.
But when it came to production a lot had to be changed to accommodate doing so many on an ongoing and continuing basis.
I got the kinks worked out before submitting it to the guy, and since it was so low cost to build, he let me give it a go. But he always said, if it works out he might switch to stainless steel instead of the plastic troughs.
Once they were in full production and things were running smoothly, he was happy the way it was and never changed the design. However, he did automate a few of the operations just because he could, hi hi.
The main growing system was nothing more than a flat bottom plastic channel about 3 inches wide, with 2 inch high sides.
Inside the channel were disposable boxes about the size of school milk cartons, but with a flat notched top like a star in the center. The bottom perimeter was like a screen from so many holes around the bottom edge.
The idea was to ship to the stores with the box still attached, but the roots cleaned from it, and then slipped into a decorative box that fit snug so it looked nice on the store shelves. But no, they decided to cut the head of lettuce off the box so it looked like what folks were used to buying. But he was frugal too, he ran them through a shredder and sent them to a compost pile to be reused much later. But I think he just ended up selling the compost as compost, hi hi.

I held three Patents for my Hydroculture System! Finally abandoned them.

[yogi]

I don't see a good reason for objecting to produce that is sold with it's roots in tact. In fact I can see an advantage for the seller in that the roots would add to the weight of the product much in the same way as fat adds to the meat content in the butcher shop. They charge by the pound and all that waste would be pure profit for the seller. Not only that, but some roots are edible, such as celery root. But, at the end of the day, it all has to look appealing regardless of how it tastes. Roots tend to be ugly and hide things like worms and bugs. It isn't too unusual to get celery or lettuce from Schnuxcks that still has some dirt on it. The mushrooms are almost always contaminated with the growing medium, and I don't want to even speculate what that might be. I think hydroponic products would get around most of the ugliness and bug problems.

Patents are a good thing in that they inspire people to be creative and inventive. Unfortunately they are only good for a certain amount of time after which everyone else figures out how to clone what you patented. Unless you are collecting royalties, I don't see a reason to keep a patent when you are no longer in the associated business.

[Kellemora]

You know how big a head of lettuce is. Having a small 2-1/2 inch square box on the bottom, especially with the decorative cover over the used growing box, it would be attractive. However, it would take up more space in the sales bin with them on.
There is no dirt in hydroponics, and these were raised basically in the NFT (Nutrient Film Technique). The growing media was more like a block of Oasis foam, only much less dense. But this block of foam was only a 1/2 inch cube that fell apart and got washed away as the lettuce head grew. It was only there to hold the seed in the top of the carton. Lettuce has a lot of roots, but they grow out of the box and down the nutrient channels, and are cut off and disposed of in the compost piles.

Patents are only for the very rich. Which is why although I had three of them, they were fairly useless to me.
You have to go after each infringement yourself, and that usually costs around 150 grand to do so. And if you don't go after all the small infringements, the big guys come along and claim you abandoned your patent by not enforcing it. And they have the money to win that case easily.
This is why my AZ-NO3 product was never patented. But I do have about 22 Copyrights on things regarding it. Makes it pretty hard for someone to advertise a product without violating at least one or more of them.
Also, if I did get a Patent, it would have had to disclose how I got it to work the way it does. Then anyone could make it for themselves.

[yogi]

Plants grown without the benefit of soil will likely be the norm some day given all the toxins we are putting into the dirt and water supplies. It might be more expensive and certainly not be chemical free, but the growing environment is much easier to control on a hydroponic farm than it is in nature. Plus, if you don't need soil to grow things, you can do the farming in places that don't have agricultural quality dirt. That might help abate some of the migration problems due to loss of food supply.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of patents is that they give you a path to be the first to market. That alone has an advantage regardless of the patent status. It takes time for things to be reverse engineered and infringements to appear. You should fight for your rights, but you can instead direct your energies to developing the next patent that will give you sole market space for a relatively short period of time. You got the right idea with copyrighting and trademarking. Once you get to market first and establish an identity, it's a lot easier to defend your preeminence than it is to fight off the competition one by one.

[Kellemora]

Even farmers in dirt have to use a lot of chemicals to replace what the plants take out of the ground.
The only couple things is they have to use ten times more and stronger chemicals, and beware, some of those come back up again and cause problems with the plants.
In hydroponics, you only use a fraction of the nutrients than is required in soil, because it is readily available to the plants.

You may not know that plants build different types of root systems, depending on what they are raised in.
When they can get all the nutrients they need easily, as in hydroponics, they don't build those elaborate root systems with thousands of branches reaching out to find nutrients as they do in soil or other growing media.

With a Patent, someone does not need to reverse engineer the item, because the patent must disclose how anyone familiar with the field of concern can duplicate it with ease.
This is why my AZ-NO3 product is not patented.
And yes, a couple of large companies have tried to reverse engineer it. But thankfully, even knowing the ingredients, which are on my label, doesn't tell them what I did with those ingredients to cause them to do what they do.
But mainly they can't figure out why my product does not leave dissolved or undissolved organic carbon when used, which is a bad thing in a closed environment like an aquarium, would cause massive algae blooms.
One thing about this is, the common names, and chemical names, and mainly the chemical formula, is exactly the same for all types of the same chemical name. But this doesn't mean they are exactly the same. They all have the same CAS Number, but can be from different derivatives to get there. And that alone can make a really big difference.

A large aquarium pharmaceutical company, after I became a dominant product in the industry, tried to duplicate it.
There product had all the same ingredients as mine, but theirs did not work, and was nothing more than snake oil.
Aquarists figured this out right away, and since the ingredients were the same, they thought mine wouldn't work either.
But those who knew mine did work, kept buying it and posting their excellent results.
It took about 3 years to recover the loss in sales after the Big Guns hoodwinked everyone.
But I'm still out there, 25 years later, and sold worldwide. Trouble is, the market niche is now much tinier than it used to be.

[yogi]

I hear you loud and clear about patent disclosures. Some of the hundreds of accounts I follow on Twitter are high tech oriented companies. Hardly a week will go by without some article saying ... according to patent filings by such and such company ... followed by a ton of speculation. There must be people hired just to review what goes on in the patent office. The thing about these disclosure reviews is that not all of them amount to anything. Some of those brilliant patents are just that and never get put into a salable product. It kind of makes me wonder why the patent was applied for in that case. I suppose it's just to stop anybody else from doing it, which immediately leads me to ask why? If it's so good that you don't want your competition to do it first, why are you not doing it yourself? I'm thinking there are a lot of Red Herrings out there in the patent office.

There are a lot of talented people in the business world, and you certainly rank high among them. You did the right thing by withholding the methods and processes for producing AZ-NO3, but I don't think you could stop anybody who really wanted in on that market from finding out the secret to your success, or coming up with an alternate method. The reason why it has not happened is because the investment would not be capable of generating the kind of returns needed to support such research. You can get away with relatively small time sales because you are working for yourself and all the research and development was done many years ago. The small profit you make would not be attractive to any other companies. I guess if it's easy enough to home brew you would want to preserve your secret formula so that your customers do not get into the DIY mode. I doubt a lot of folks would do it. Take wine for example. There are tons of home brewing wine kits, but none of the vineyards are worried about it.

[Kellemora]

One of my products, I did publish how to make it at home, for those who wanted to do so. The directions are still on my website on how to do it, and how to blend the chemicals required, which are easily obtainable. At the time I published, both were available at larger grocery stores, or if not there, any hardware store.

My AZ-NO3 product took many years of trial and error to get it to work, then a few more years of testing and tweaking, before it was something I could make and sell. And even then, I kept working on it and improving it as many of my ongoing experiments were showing the results I had always hoped for. The one final step was to reduce the clouding that happened in some aquaria, and it became the 4th generation for the product. It was basically still the same formula as the beginning, but with more highly refined ingredients that were carefully selected for their specific properties.

For several years, I also manufactured a super product called AZ-NO+, but the cost to make it got way out of hand, for what folks were willing to spend for it. So I had to discontinue it. Now, I couldn't buy all those chemicals to make it again anyhow.
Many of them, their costs have quadrupled or more. In fact, one of the ingredients that was like 18 bucks, now costs 465 dollars. This is why you have seen so many aquarium additives disappear from store shelves. Too costly to make, and folks won't pay the price to get them either. Not even if they were sold at cost.

[yogi]

There is no doubt in my mind that the people who use your AZ-NO3 product are dealing in a high cost hobby. I would think if you are going to specialize in something exotic for entertainment, you would be prepared to pay the price. I know a guy, for example, who collects vintage Cadillacs. He has somewhere near 3 dozen of them with none being younger than 1969 models. The thing about these cars are that most of them have never been driven. He found a few old and abandoned dealerships with a few unsold cars still on the property. Such things are not easy to find nor is it easy to keep them in good shape. Collecting such things, needless to say, is a very expensive hobby. Maintaining a salt water aquarium is above average cost too, and should be approached with the same attitude that the Cadillac collector has. If your are going to do something unique, you should expect to pay the price. Unfortunately, that's not the reality of it all and your livelihood would disappear if you were down to a few dozen customers paying a fair price for your product. So, I understand the position you are in, but I am not to sure why exotic hobbyists refuse to pay the price.

Then, too, would it be possible to do what those amateur wine makers do? Instead of selling a finished product, and given that people can manufacture this stuff on their own, would it not be possible to sell DIY kits with instructions to these hobbyists? That might necessitate you buying expensive raw materials, but taking your manufacturing costs out of the product could possibly increase your profits per unit. Then again, maybe not.

[Kellemora]

Well, the technology for reef aquaria has grown, just as all electronic gizmo's have.
They can now constantly monitor their water 24/7 and machines tell them what to add, or actually add certain nutrients as needed. Live rock was the main way to keep nitrates at bay, but everyone overstocked other things in their aquarium and didn't notice things were out of what until they were really out of whack, and that is where my product comes in. To get things back down to normal so they can figure out where to go from there.
But the high-tech stuff is affordable by most folks who have the money to even own a reef aquarium these days.

We have a beer and wine making equipment store real close to me here, and they do a bang up business.

Oh, I see what you are saying. No, not with my product, because it requires the culturing of specific enzymes a certain way to give me what I need to make my product.
When I lived in Creve Coeur, I had a lab in Kirkwood doing this part for me. When they were getting ready to close down, they introduced me to another company to make my enzymes. This was actually a good move, because they could make and encapsulate them for me, so I didn't have to use them all within a day. I had a weeks leeway then, but the cost was higher.
But they were good to me, taught me how to make a few of the ingredients I was buying for big bucks myself, which saved me a ton of money, so I didn't mind paying them to make my enzymes. But they got tired of doing my small orders, because it tied up their culturing station for 3 days, which is how long it takes for the starter culture to mature. So they showed me how to do it myself, which did require buying some equipment that was not as expensive as I thought it would be.
After learning how it was done, then it was just a matter of making it work better for me, and I built my own culturing station and sold the commercial one I had, after the one I made seemed to work better for me, and didn't take up so much room.

Over the years of making and packaging the product, how I fill each bottle has changed every 5 years or so to more and more automated methods. Now I have bottle filling machines that fill the bottles for me. And although I did have labeling machines also, after we switched from roll labels to flat sheet labels, and I didn't really like the commercial banjo I bought, I made one out of a sheet of leather, a piece of plywood, and a carton box, which I have now used for over 20 years without a problem. You would laugh if you saw it, much like you probably would with other things I use to make my product, hi hi.

[yogi]

OK on the enzymes being required to manufacture your product. Apparently they have a short shelf life and would not lend themselves to a mail order business timeline. Also, the way you describe it, not just anybody can actually make these enzymes in their basement kitchen. An investment in expensive equipment would be required not to mention expertise in the special techniques. All of which makes me wonder why you think just about anybody with an interest can do this. That is selling yourself short. You have skills the ordinary reef aquarium owner only knows about in theory. LOL The more we talk about this the more interesting it is becoming. Perhaps some day after I win the lottery I'll try to manage a reef aquarium. You better still be around at that time. I'm going to need a few pointers from an expert.

[Kellemora]

A 100 watt light bulb inside a foil lined box could hold the temp for culturing, heck maybe even a 60 watt bulb.
Plus you can always use a double boiler on the stove instead of a steam kettle for getting the product temp to kill pathogens that might be in it before bottling.
My very first bottling system was nothing more than an aquarium water pump and a J shaped rigid vinyl hose.
After that I used Wine Bottle fillers for years. Had a dozen of them all mounted so I could do a dozen bottles at once.
Then as I ordered replacement filler heads, they quit making the one I was using, and the new design required modifications for my purpose.
This is when I finally bit the bullet and bought a commercial bottle filling machine that only does one bottle at a time. But very fast, so it goes as fast as you can flip bottles under the filler head.
After a while I bought a second one, it is not used, I have it as a back-up filler. Got it for a good price else I wouldn't have it.

And as you know, with my brain being erased like four or five times since I developed this product. Looking at my original formula notes is like trying to read hieroglyphics to me. Good thing I made an English 3rd grade level set of instructions, hi hi.

Reef Aquaria are way to expensive and way to time consuming to mess with. Unless you have all the fancy automated equipment, they take a minimum of one hour per day in maintenance chores. Sometimes two or more hours if things are not just right.

[yogi]

I take note of your advice regarding the reef aquarium hobby. However, your comments are the exact reason I'm putting off this pursuit until after I win the lottery. And, not just the piddly $10 won in that last drawing. LOL I guess it's pretty much the same with every hobby. You can't get into it seriously if you don't have the time or the money. A long long time ago I spent much time trying to come up with an interest that would be time consuming and free of cost, or very inexpensive. After much deliberation that is how I became interested in astrology. I only had to buy one book at first. Every other hobby I tried ended up being too expensive for me to maintain. Astrology was the only paying hobby I ever got involved with. Even if I decided to make my own AZ-NO3 I don't see how dealing with aquatic live would ever be profitable.

[Kellemora]

I've had a lot of seemingly odd hobbies over the years.
I still have a 40 year old collection of flower seed packets, still filled and sealed, although none of the seeds would still be viable. That is one thing I got out of my office downtown, but it was only because I needed to clear that wall to install some new bookcases I bought, else I would have lost those too.
That collection almost became like a game between me and salesmen who would stop in. They would all bring seed packs and look to see if they got something I didn't have on my racks. Rarely did they find something I didn't have, but when they did, I tossed an order their way, hi hi.

I collected stamps when I was really young, then switched to coins for a number of years.
Got one of my step-kids interested in stamp collecting and ended up giving him most of my collection.
But not the book with the really rare ones in it, because I needed to sell it through a dealer to buy another truck.
Never made money from my coin collections, not after my son got into them and used them in vending machines, hi hi.
I could have killed that kid. He used up my entire Liberty V nickels collection for something long ago forgotten now.
Gave what was left of my coin collection to my son, and he turned around and sold them the first time he moved.

All of the other hobbies I've tried, I never stayed in them for very long. Either because of no time, or mainly because of not enough money to keep up with them. Heck, I used to build black powder pistols and rifles from kits and spend two afternoons per month shooting them out at a cap n ball range just for black powder enthusiasts. Ended up selling most of the ones I made to folks there. Archery was also a short lived hobby because got into competition slingshots instead at the same place. Now that I did good at, so good in fact I reached the level of Saunders Senior Falcon, their highest level. Once I was at that level, I became an instructor for about a year, and then got bored with it and moved on to something else.

[yogi]

You are the first person I met, or even heard of, who built black powder pistols as a hobby. I suppose if it's a legitimate hobby there certainly would be a pistol range just for such things. LOL You are not the first person I know who collected seed packets. Way back in the last century I met a woman with a similar collection. She also had thousands upon thousands of buttons in a collection. This lady was a farm gal and did her share of planting and sewing so that it's not surprising that she had such collections.

[Kellemora]

Down south here, there are many more black powder ranges than there were back home. In fact, I only knew of one back home in a 30 mile radius of my house, while down there, I think there are like 6 of them within only about 5 miles.
Southerners are big on reenactment of the civil war. Seems odd they would keep practicing in a way that lost, hi hi.
There are two stores close to me that sell only black powder stuff, including uniforms for both Union and Rebel armies, hi hi.
They do more business than the paint-ball store ever did, and the paint-ball place went out of business.
Probably because of a Laser Tag place opening up down the road about 4 miles.
They have teams and leagues, sorta like a bowling alley, which is probably what has kept them going.
Ironically, there are lots of older folks and seniors that go there too. But not to the part where you have to run around and hide like you are seeking out the enemy. Instead of shooting each other, the senior course is just pop-ups that you either shoot or don't shoot, depending on whether they are friend or foe, sorta like a police shooting course in a way.
I've only been in the place one time, and chose a singles shooting booth and stationary target. Don't know why they call it stationary though, it moves back and forth really fast, and you never know when it is going to reverse. It's not like just back and forth between each side, it can start to go, then stop, then go, then back up. I ended up spending about 25 bucks there that day since I wasn't a member. I did get high scores though which made me proud, hi hi.