AgTech

It was World War II that permanently took my parents out of the agricultural (or maybe the vice) industry in rural eastern Kentucky where they grew up in families that were tobacco farmers and "distillers" (really): my dad joined the Navy, deployed on the U.S.S. Yorktown in the Pacific theatre, and my mom was literally a riveter at a defense plant in Columbus Ohio. Maybe it was the old family businesses that left me with a latent interest in the "ag" industry. Last week I attended another of the Colorado Technology Association's Insights Series: "Innovations in AgTech: How Technology is Shaping Colorado Agriculture". It was a terrific learning experience.

There were two keynote speakers, one from CoBank and the other from American AgCredit. These are cooperative banks that are part of the member-owned - like a credit union - Farm Credit System, a government-sponsored enterprise established by Congress in 1916 to insure farmers had access to loans. Why are these guys talking to an org like the CTA? Because by law they can only lend money to farmers; they can't lend money to agricultural technology startups trying to develop new technology for farmers, who are often running US$10Ms+ businesses with huge capital investments managed only using spreadsheets. 

So the banks find themselves trying to put venture capitalists together with AgTech startups to solve the problems their members have. Technology is a big deal in agriculture because labor is a huge cost. (Remarkably, land is another big cost, and many of the efficiency drivers provided by technology only scale with more land; a modern tractor can mow 175 acres of hay in four hours, and costs as much as a house.)

The event included a panel discussion with the two bankers (one of whom was formerly a rancher himself - he showed a photograph of him wrestling a steer to the ground), three former founders of successful AgTech startups, and a really interesting faculty member at Colorado State University - a land-grant university that was formerly Colorado Agricultural College - who is the Director of Ag Innovation at CSU.  (I learned that agriculture in Colorado, where I call home, is pretty unique in that the state has many different biomes, so that it lends itself to growing different crops and livestock, unlike, say, states in the Midwest.)

My work with Differential GNSS and Inertial Measurement Units, which I've written about here previously, was inspired by my interest in precision agriculture, used in applications like auto-steer for tractors, a technology which has led to a huge cost savings for farmers.

It's events like this that keep me renewing my membership in the CTA, a professional society I've been a member of since 2018. I'm not there to hire, to find work, to buy, or to sell; mostly just there to learn and to get ideas for my own projects. Although I routinely attend networking events like their upcoming C-Level at Mile High that are relatively expensive to attend, I do so mostly to support the organization, and because, in the case of C-Level, its fun to wander around on the party floor of Empower Field, a part of the Bronco's football stadium fans rarely if ever see. Also, the food is not bad. But when people choose to chat with me, I feel kind of guilty that I'm probably wasting their time. (I admit left the AgTech event as soon as it transitioned to the networking stage.)

Population Implosion

The March 3rd edition of The New Yorker had a long article (it was the only thing I got read this AM during my usual Saturday AM breakfast out) about the global declining birth rate. The whole thing reads like science fiction, not unlike Children of Men.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/03/03/the-population-implosion

The poster child for this issue is South Korea (half of whose population lives in Seoul, BTW), whose birth rate stands at 0.7. (2.1 is considered a "replacement rate"). Each successive generation is a fraction of the size of the previous one. There are schools in the country that had one thousand students at their peak that now have five.

The U.S. rate isn't nearly that low: 1.66, but still well below replacement. But even immigration won't address the issue of who is going to do the work and pay the taxes that fund Social Security, since for the U.S. the nations from which people immigrate also have declining birth rates.

Reasons? Lots of them. But a big part was the deliberate planning on the parts of non-governmental organizations and governments who panicked about population growth, the food supply, and the environment decades ago. If you think about it, NGOs and governments have, at best, very coarse control over the "birth rate" knob, so getting it tuned perfectly to the desired rate - whatever that may be - is almost impossible. Most got it too low. South Korea got it way too low.

I won't live long enough to have to worry much about this. But eventually we'll have to use AI and automation just to do fundamental stuff like farming and distribute basic goods; there won't be anyone to do the work, and the people that do exist will be too old.

This won't really effect the climate change issue, since climate change is happening on the span of decades, while population decline is on the span of generations.

It occurred to me that this would be an interesting SF story: aliens - perhaps "obligate reproducers" (adults have to procreate or they die) - show up and say "Hey, no sweat, we're patient, we'll stick around until you aren't using your planet anymore. It's just a matter of time."

Edit: capitalism seems to depend on an ever growing population of consumers. What it really means when the population explosion trend reverses - as inevitable as this may seem - is anyone's guess... but it can't be good.

Let Them Burn

A recent article in MIT Technology Review (probably paywalled) is about dealing with electric vehicle battery fires.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/24/1111551/ev-lithium-ion-battery-fire-first-responders-firefighters/

It's based on the research by an EV battery pack designer who is also a volunteer firefighter, and who now consults with fire departments on this issue. His conclusion: let them burn, while trying to isolate them from surrounding vehicles and structures. Isolating can mean anything from covering them with a fire blanket, to (as one case study illustrated) moving the EV to a vacant lot with a forklift while it is burning. Wow.

Fires need three things to continue to burn: fuel, oxygen, and heat. Typical firefighting techniques involve interrupting one or more of these constituents. But lithium battery packs provide all three all by themselves, as part of a "thermal runaway" chemical reaction.

Traditional vehicle fires are typically centered around the easily accessible engine compartment, and can usually be put out in minutes with hundreds of gallons of water. EV fires are centered around the huge battery pack often underneath the vehicle, and - if they can be put out at all - may take hours and thousands of gallons of water, and may later spontaneously reignite.

The article has many worrisome case studies, including one where an EV owner accidentally drove his car off a pier in Florida. When the battery pack became saturated with electrically conductive salt water, it shorted and ignited... and continued to burn under thirty feet of water. Wow again. EV batteries igniting when saturated with salt water from flooding in coastal areas due to hurricanes is apparently a growing phenomena.

As a typical homeowner with lots of lithium battery packs - some quite large, for power tools - I've gotten concerned enough about this that I don't leave the packs on chargers when no one is at home (not even phones, laptops, or tablets). And I have a small chest of drawers inside the house just inside the door from the garage in which I store my expensive charged lithium battery packs (which don't like the cold either, but that's more of a longevity issue). I do keep rechargeable gear in both automobiles and on both motorcycles (jumper battery packs, tire inflators), and I worry about that.

Mrs. Overclock recently bought some small fire blankets, one of which is now out in the garage next to the wall mounted fire extinguisher.

Update: another recent article on the same topic from the same source, the gist being preventing EV battery fires is a lot more practical than extinguishing them.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/27/1112556/battery-fire-safety/