Our Pitch for a New Product Suggestion to Mr. Elon Musk to Resolve World Hunger by Harnessing Recycled Plastic and Metal using 3D Printing Technology to Create Family Food Security Farms
Dear Mr. Elon Musk,
The world knows that you are not only an entrepreneurial genius but also a societal benefactor on a large scale, and that the attributes which have made you so, and the understanding of the environment in which those attributes can be applied to maximum societal benefit, are concepts what we at Youth Entrepreneur Success Education (Yes Education) are teaching to our students both on an intellectual and a practical level.
Our Yes Education nonprofit team is excited about the potential of our collaboration with you on creating a family food security garden that can help address 3 major global issues - hunger, poverty & waste. There are still a few mass production issues that still need answers before we can roll out our final product to the public but we would appreciate it very much if you could take time out from your busy schedule to help us resolve them.
To be clear, our goal is not funding, patents or any recognition, we simply want to help as many people that are unable to access nutritious food by overcoming manufacturing, societal, environmental challenges.
Dr. Thomas J. McQuade, a New York University economics researcher and scholar, stated:
“... the difficulty in all this is that the attributes that make for success in small communities – the sort of environment in which humans have lived since well before the dawn of history – are centered around sharing and conforming and helping and group solidarity (on the positive side) and suspicion and intolerance of strangers (on the negative side). But that doesn’t work on anything but a small scale, because a group doesn’t have to get very large before you don’t know a large proportion of the people and there is much more diversity in belief and opinion, some of which may not be to your taste. What does work on a large scale, and works spectacularly, is free exchange between strangers, whose beliefs and opinions and needs you don’t have to worry about, and with whom you don’t have to engage unless you want to.”
The virtues of tolerance, integrity, and entrepreneurship which Yes Education espouses, and our admiration for you, Mr. Musk, can give us the basis for taking the step of teaching the realistic, and proven successful, way of ending world hunger.
There are over 7 billion people on Earth, and that number is only going to grow. That's a lot of mouths to feed! So how are we going to feed all these people? Hunger has been an unresolved issue since the beginning of humanity and even with the advent of technology, the solution has been hampered with greed, unsuitable growing environments, lack of clean water, training and scaling issues, etc. Just this week we have learned that 25 million residents in Shanghai have been locked inside their homes for 12 days without food due to a recent COVID lockdown.
One solution is providing food security gardens that can provide fresh, local organic produce to everyone on earth and future settlement on Mars. We have built some functional food security garden prototypes that are able to grow almost an acre of fresh, organic, local produce within an area of 400 square feet. Our goal is to provide enough produce to feed to families of 4 for less than $80 a year. We have developed a system that we believe can help resolve world hunger using recycled plastic and metal through mass 3D printing technology. This technology could also be used for your future Mars settlement program.
We are rolling out our family gardens with the help of small grants for each farm and with the help of volunteers willing to assemble them. We constantly ask the advice and collaboration of master gardeners, farming officials, agriculture teachers, Civil Defence advisors, and community-supported agriculture officials to test, adopt and train families to grow food in their backyards or patios.
“This project entails providing the logistics and know-how to expand the enterprise beyond Hawai’i. The technology which is being developed has immediate applicability and value in the rural environment in which we are working in which a lower food budget would be very welcome, and also for people who are willing to go to some length to supplement their diets with a few home-grown items. There must be many similar such environments in the world in which it could be deployed profitably. While you might be sympathetic to our vision to resolve hunger, you may consider it a vague and distant one, and unless you discover the more realistic practical possibilities for our products in markets where we can make a case that the value added is obvious.
You may notice a contradiction between our emphasis on entrepreneurship and our emphasis on “non-profit”, the latter being espoused as not just a tax dodge but an ethos. Entrepreneurship and positive profit are intimately connected, for the realization of profit is how an entrepreneur knows that what he is producing actually has value. And, if the return is negative, that tells him that he was mistaken, and needs to go back to the drawing board. Profit is an essential element in the process by which society generates knowledge about what has, and what has not, useful value. The possibility to gain profit is also one of the incentives (not necessarily the only one, of course) for people to engage in entrepreneurial activity in the first place. To disparage profit, then, is to disparage entrepreneurship and to inadvertently promote anti-virtues such as envy and misplaced resentment. It has been estimated that the amount of profit that successful entrepreneurs are able to keep from themselves is about 2% of the value they create in society (which sometimes does result in great wealth). And yet, as you must know, people are envious and critical and disparaging of the personal wealth that that 2% produces, while ignoring the exceptionally generous 98% that is provided to others.
The emergence of modern science is one of the critical developments that made the emergence possible was a change in societal attitudes about people engaging in research, resulting in a bit more tolerance shown, and a bit more prestige ascribed, to scientific activity. There was a similar development around the same time involving people engaged in market entrepreneurship, resulting in a bit more tolerance shown, and a bit more prestige ascribed, to people who made profits by economic activity. And what was the result? For all of human history up to that point, most people lived on the equivalent of less than $2 per day. Poverty was the normal human condition. But, starting in the 1700s and continuing unabated since then, this uptick in tolerance for profitable entrepreneurship has enabled living standards to be increased by a factor of 100 or more, has reduced $2-per-day poverty to a very small fraction of what it was, and has allowed billions more people to live much better lives. We have seen more recently, on a smaller scale, the result of a small increase in tolerance for market activity by the regime in China.
That’s how you end world hunger! You increase tolerance toward people who get rich by providing marketable value. And yet, both good people like you (with the best of intentions) and envious and grasping people to whom politicians pander, not only do not embrace and teach that attitude but increasingly (probably unintentionally, in our case) deride it. Although much of our food does have to travel 1,000 miles to get to us, when it in fact it is something of a miracle that faraway people you don’t know, and who don’t know (or even particularly care about) you, work hard to produce and ship food to you that have been unable to produce yourself, allowing you to concentrate on other things than food production at which you may be more productive. This is not to say that you shouldn’t try to find more cost-effective ways to produce food locally – of course you should, as this is the essence of entrepreneurship – but that you should appreciate the awesome power of market activity for human betterment.
The difficulty in all this is that the attributes that make for success in small communities – the sort of environment in which humans have lived since well before the dawn of history – are centered around sharing and conforming and helping and group solidarity (on the positive side) and suspicion and intolerance of strangers (on the negative side). But that doesn’t work on anything but a small scale, because a group doesn’t have to get very large before you don’t know a large proportion of the people and there is much more diversity in belief and opinion, some of which may not be to your taste. What does work on a large scale, and works spectacularly, is free exchange between strangers, whose beliefs and opinions and needs you don’t have to worry about, and with whom you don’t have to engage unless you want to. The virtues of tolerance, integrity, and entrepreneurship which our group espouses, give you the basis for taking the step of teaching the realistic, and proven successful, way of ending world hunger.” - Dr. Thomas J. McQuade
Food security is an issue that touches the lives of everyone. With this new invention, food will no longer be scarce in any area--even if you have just 400 sq ft of space! The idea behind it is simple: use 512 stacked planters to form almost 1 acre worth of crops which then produce more than enough for your entire family's needs with very little water usage and weeding required. This prototype costs $3 900 but can easily be assembled within 8 hours when done by 4 unskilled people using only a hammer and screwdriver.
By using recycled plastic and metal for 3D printing machines, the cost could be potentially reduced to less than $1,000. The stacked garden system is durable and can last 50 years. If you divide $3,900 by 50 years, the annual cost is less than $80 a year. If you divide $1,000 by 50 years, the cost is only $20 per year. The entire $1,000 cost will pay for itself in a matter of a few months in terms of food cost savings.
How many miles do you think it is for the average fruit or vegetable to travel from a farm to our plates? Over 1,000!! That's a lot of travel for just one meal. But if we grow all types and flavors ourselves at home or on our patios this summer--from zucchini flowers straight into green smoothies with fresh fruit—then no matter where in town they're coming from as long as there are nutrients left over then everyone will be able stay healthy without any need whatsoever towards supplements.
How would you like to save money on food costs? Why not grow your own! With inflation and transportation increasing all over, it's time for us consumers to embrace self-sufficiency. There are so many ways that one can go about this: from growing the vegetables in a greenhouse or using solar power with LED lights - whatever works best according to your climate conditions (and wallet).
There are many options to optimize the soil by using coconut coir, perlite, vermiculite, water crystals, bokashi, etc. The coconut coir reduces the need for soil and prevents root rot. It can also provide additional income for impoverished farmers that grow coconut trees in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia.
There are many options to upgrade a food growing garden: such as hydroponic options: natural fertilizers, macronutrients, micronutrients, Epsom salt, calcium nitrate, magnesium sulfate, worm tea, aeroponic/hydroponic mixers, fans, heat controls, etc. For those living in cold climatesm, a glass greenhouse may be required.
A basic family food growing system can be shipped on one 4' x 4’ wood pallet. The plants are irrigated using a timed drip system which limits water waste. Other options for the system include micro greens, aquaponics, (raising tilapia), chickens, goats, and rabbits.
We endeavor to grow our partnerships and collaboration with master gardener volunteers from the Urban Farming Center (University of Hawai'i College of Tropical Agriculture), Brigham Young University Sustainability Farm, Kokua Hawai’i Foundation, Kahuku Farms, Ma’o Organic Farms, Olomana Gardens, Facebook Groups-How Does Your Garden Grow?, Yes Education, Mr. Stacky Support Group, Growing Your Greens, Dr. Gundry MD, Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, etc. We are very grateful for their dedicated support and vision to end world hunger.
We are influenced and inspired by a nonprofit called charitywater.org where donations are carefully tracked with promised results through analytics.
Why not start growing high-quality produce, herbs, and flowers for your own use and sell the excess for profit or share with other farmers or needy families? You can start with just one or two items, like herbs and flowers to get the process going before deciding on expanding your horizons further down the road when you are sure that this is something which interests/ fascinates not only yourself but also others too!
A Japanese farmer found a way to sell very high-quality single strawberries for $500 each. What if you could find a way to sell a vegetable for $1 each? That would generate $512 a month if one vegetable was harvested from one planter each month. Certain cut flowers such as anthuriums sell for as much as $5 each, which would generate over $2,500 per month. That’s sure worth looking into if you want some extra cash flow coming through your door (or planter).
https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1750517/would-you-pay-hk3500-one-strawberry-japan-they-do
Again, we don’t intend to make a profit from this project or seek any patent, this is a free gift for humanity inspired by Elon Musk and Nikola Tesla, the two most brilliant innovators of the last two centuries.
“Don’t ever attach yourself to a Person, a Place, a Company, an Organization, or a Project. Attach yourself to a mission, a calling, a purpose only. That’s how you keep your power and your peace. It’s worked pretty well for me this far.” - Elon Musk
REFERENCES
McQuade, Thomas J. 2022. On the emergence of the system of modern science. Cosmos + Taxis, Volume 10 Issue 3+4 2022: 1-22.
New Product Evaluation Checklist
General Criteria
- Is your idea legal? Yes
- What is its environmental impact? Reduces the need for land, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and reduces water waste and transportation costs.
- Is it safe? Yes
- Is it high quality? Yes
- Will it have wide social acceptance? Yes
- Will it have any negative impact? No
Industry Criteria
- Who is your competition? Some stacked garden companies
- Does your product require the assistance of existing products? Some such as standard garden hoses, irrigation timers, natural chemicals.
- Is there just one product or a line of products? There will be optional add-ons
- Will pricing be competitive? Yes, especially if it is 3D printed and mass produced.
Market Criteria
- Does your idea fit into a trend? Yes, there is a growing number of hungry people world-wide.
- Is there a need for it? Yes
- Is it seasonal? No
- Is it a fad, or does it have long-term value? Long-term value
- Who will buy it? Every family or individual
- Does it need instructions? Yes (online, with step-by-step printed and video instructions)
Product Criteria
- How much will it cost to get your idea to market? Over $50,000
- Does it require service or maintenance? Yes, but very little.
- Is there a warranty? No. It’s a DIY project.
- Does it need packaging? Yes. The basic system can fit on a 4x4 pallet.
- Is it the simplest and most attractive it can be? No, to reduce cost we need most components 3D printed on a massive scale.
Reasons to have a Family Food Security Garden
- Food distribution is decentralized, eliminating transportation costs, the most expensive component of food.
- Food should be grown for free, which decreases the need to pay taxes for food.
- SNAP can be replaced by growing your own food, eliminating the need to pay taxes for other people’s food.
- There is less food waste in food-produce warehouses and during transportation.
- Food growing in your garden is picked fresh. There is no need to use harmful chemicals such as herbicides, pesticides, GMO’s to kill pests or to artificially extend shelf life.
- It solves many problems caused by massive mono-crop production.
- You can also grow food as feed for chickens, rabbits, goats, and fish for protein. You can use the waste of animals as compost to fertilize the garden.
- If you can eliminate food costs, you will also eliminate much of your transportation costs, since you are growing food where you live. You could live in a trailer or box truck next to your farm and live on Ag land as a “goat herder’ to comply with city ordinances.
- You can also grow your own herbs and medicine to reduce health care costs. One will get plenty of exercise while taking care of your garden.
- You can make money by selling excess produce and selling flowers.
- For education and job training, you can learn everything online and sell your knowledge as a specialized farmer on a patreon, amazon associate, amazon influencer, youtube channel producer, skillshare accounts.
Hosting or Sponsoring a Worldwide X Hunger Competition
We feel that an X Hunger competition will help Corporations, Universities, High Schools, as well as individuals to contribute and collaborate to innovate solutions to end world hunger. You could follow the same format used in the Hyperloop Pod competition.
Perhaps we could say the minimum system would need to be contained within 400 sq ft and fit on a standard 4’ x 4’ shipping pallet. Bonus points would be given for using recycled materials. More points will be awarded for the lowest cost and ease of setup and maintenance.
Sincerely,
Your #1 Fan
Christian Wilson
(Sesimani L Dulaki-Project Director (wearing red shirt) in front of a second prototype of Family Food Security System, surrounded by Brigham Young University Hawai'i Sustainability Farm Volunteers)
