Category: Agriculture

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Agriculture, Automation, Farming, Farms, Food, Science & Technology News

MIT’s food computer is changing the future of the way we eat

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When was the last time you ate something you grew? For many of us, the answer might well be “never.” Farming, increasingly, is something that happens in distant states or even distant lands, with the results flown or trucked in for us to pick over. But how we eat is straining the environment, and as our demand to live in cities pushes their boundaries ever outward, cropland disappears, raising the distinct possibility of a food crisis.

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Agriculture, Ecological Products, Engineering, Green Friendly, Plant Life, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Tarzan the swinging robot could be the future of farming

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Some farmers already use drones to monitor their crops, but a team of researchers from Georgia Tech have created a far more interesting alternative. Instead of designing yet another drone, they created a robot inspired by Kristen Bell’s favorite animal: the sloth. However, they named it “Tarzan” after the most recognizable character who moves by swinging from vine to vine.

Their machine was designed to move like the fictional jungle dweller. Tarzan will be able to swing over crops using its 3D-printed claws and parallel guy-wires stretched over fields. It will then take measurements and pictures of each plant with its built-in camera while suspended.
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Agriculture, Biotech, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine, Plant Life, Science & Technology News

Researchers grow heart tissue on spinach leaves

In this sequence, a spinach leaf is stripped of its plant cells, a process called decellularization, using a detergent. The process leaves behind the leaf’s vasculature. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) were able to culture beating human heart cells on such decelluralized leaves. Credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Researchers face a fundamental challenge as they seek to scale up human tissue regeneration from small lab samples to full-size tissues, bones, even whole organs to implant in people to treat disease or traumatic injuries: how to establish a vascular system that delivers blood deep into the developing tissue.

Current bioengineering techniques, including 3-D printing, can’t fabricate the branching network of blood vessels down to the capillary scale that are required to deliver the oxygen, nutrients and essential molecules required for proper tissue growth. To solve this problem, a multidisciplinary research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Arkansas State University-Jonesboro have successfully turned to plants. They report their initial findings in the paper “Crossing kingdoms: Using decelluralized plants as perfusable tissue engineering scaffolds” published online in advance of the May 2017 issue of the journal Biomaterials.

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Agriculture, Finance, Money Talk, People Making a Difference, Science & Technology News

This Kenyan Startup Uses Mobile Phones To Build Credit For Farmers

If you want to help the world’s poorest, help them to farm. So says Bill Gates, and it makes sense. More than three-quarters of the poorest live in rural areas and most are smallholder farmers working less than two acres. They often lack the seeds, machinery, livestock, and finance they need to grow, so they struggle to emerge from poverty.

Two young entrepreneurs from Kenya have an idea to help: FarmDrive develops credit histories for farmers, so they become more attractive to financial institutions offering loans. So far, they’ve signed up more than 3,000 farmers on their mobile-based platform. In 2016, working with a financial partner, they helped disburse about $130,000 in loans to 400 farmers.

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Agriculture, Animals, Farming, Food, Genetics, Science & Technology News

Lab grown meat prices have dropped 30,000 times in less than four years and are about 3-4 times more expensive than regular ground beef

Lab-grown meat could be on your plate within the next five years. For the past few years, the barrier to getting test-tube meat into the hands of consumers has been the cost of production. In 2013, it was around $325,000 to make this stuff in a lab, but the process has been refined, and the cost now is just $11.36.

In 2015, the cost was $44 per pound.

Continue reading… “Lab grown meat prices have dropped 30,000 times in less than four years and are about 3-4 times more expensive than regular ground beef”

Agriculture, Ecological Products, Farming, Food, Great New Product, Green Friendly, Plant Life, Science & Technology News

Ikea just launched a DIY flat-pack indoor garden that can feed a whole lot of people at once

Swedish architects Mads-Ulrik Husum and Sine Lindholm collaborated with Space10, Ikea’s innovation lab, to design a piece of living furniture that can feed quite a few people, from the looks of it.

Called the Growroom, it’s a flat-pack spherical garden that grows plants, veggies, and herbs.

“Standing tall as a spherical garden, it empowers people to grow their own food much more locally in a beautiful and sustainable way,” its designers write on Medium.

Though Space10 launched the Growroom in late 2016, the designers just made the plans open-source. You can download the instruction manual on Space10’s site.

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Agriculture, Farming, Farms, Food

The indoor farming compound founded by Kimbal Musk is now delivering greens

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The word “farm” usually conjures up images of lush greenery, animals and Midwestern amber waves of grain. Yet rarely, if ever, does the word invoke a Brooklyn, New York, parking lot.

It may sound unreal, but one team of entrepreneurs has set up farms — in shipping containers, no less — to bring fresh produce to urban residents. Even more surprising, the food is grown without natural sunlight or soil.

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Agriculture, Alternative Transportation, Apple, Automobiles, Ecological Products, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, Farms, Food, Future, Green Friendly, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

The 10 biggest things that will be less expensive in 2017

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In 2017, the list of predictions for what will cost more is long. You’ll even spend more without even leaving home, as rent and house prices are expected to increase.

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Agriculture, Automobiles, Big Data, Big Problems, Business, Economy, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, Energy, Engineering, Farming, Farms, Future, Science & Technology News

Will farming be fully automated in the future?

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Driverless tractors that can follow pre-programmed routes are already being deployed at large farms around the world. Drones are buzzing over fields assessing crop health and soil conditions. Ground sensors are monitoring the amount of water and nutrients in the soil, triggering irrigation and fertiliser applications.

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Agriculture, Machine Learning, Science & Technology News, Virtual Reality, VR

Mixed reality and machine learning drive innovative farming

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Farming is, by far, the most mature industry mankind has created. Dating back to the dawn of civilization, farming has been refined, adjusted and adapted — but never perfected. We, as a society, always worry over the future of farming. Today, we even apply terms usually reserved for the tech sector — digital, IoT, AI and so on. So why are we worrying?

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