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Category: food – Page 299

There 7.68 billion acres of arable land. if everyone did this and lived one one tenth of an acre then that’s room for 76 billion people just on the arable land where there is actually 36 billion acres of land on the planet.

If farming were turned into vertical farming building with ten floors a piece at 1/10th and acre per level that’s 760 billion. At 100 floors that’d be 7.6 trillion. I would need to review an Isaac Arthur video about the maximum occupancy of the planet, there may be heat problems with trillions of people on the planet.

A tenth of an acre would be a square around 65 × 65 feet, or so.

Continue reading “Learn How This Family Grows 6,000 Lbs Of Food on Just 1/10th Acre – Urban Homestead” | >

Attention all seaweed farmers! US DoE and DARPA wants you.

Did you know that the amount of commercially produced seaweed almost hit the mark of 25 million metric tons last year? China and Indonesia dominate the global seaweed-to-food market, and now the Department of Energy has been casting a hungry eye on the potential for the US to get in on the action, with a particular focus on converting seaweed to biofuel and other high value products.

Of course, there is a problem. Growing seaweed — aka macroalgae — for food is one thing. The algae-to-energy cycle is quite another thing entirely. That’s why the Energy Department has called upon its cutting edge funding division, ARPA-E, to put out a call for the super macroalgae farmer of the future.

Continue reading “Energy Dept. Seeks A Few Good (Really, Really Good) Seaweed Farmers” | >

Food trends change all the time, and not just dependent on where you live, but also when. For example, 100 years ago they were not eating most of the stuff we have today. Pop Tarts, Cheetos, and Gatorade would certainly not have existed, and if you were to go back in time now and try and introduce these things, they would probably get thrown at you. But, the point is that sometimes you just can’t help what food is introduced around you and accepted as the norm, and over the next 30 years, we will see odder but edible manifestations are coming our way. Below are eight future foods that are not a million miles away from being introduced into society and are being worked on now:

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Pretty wild; blood infections in cattle may have a possible link to breast cancer in humans.

Meredith Frie, Michigan State University

Humans began domesticating animals for food over 10,000 years ago, cultivating a close relationship with animals over the following millennia. Like humans, animals can get sick, and sometimes infections pass between humans and animals. Some of these infections, like ringworm, are mostly harmless, while others, like bovine tuberculosis, are extremely serious.

But how do we find out if these infections pose a risk to humans? I study dairy cows infected with bovine leukemia virus (BLV), which is found in most of the dairy herds in the U.S. Scientists are trying to figure out if BLV infects humans and, if it does, whether there is a link between BLV and breast cancer.

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If SANTOSH Ostwal and his wife, Rajashree Otswal, were to calculate the number of electricity units saved or the amount of water conserved in terms of money, thanks to their invention, it would be enough to set up a small power plant or building a small dam. The end to a farmer’s daily drudgery and sleepless nights, though, is hard to convert into currency. But then money is something the Ostwal couple have not seen much of in their long journey of taking technology to the farms.

Much before information and communication technology (ICT) for agriculture and rural development became buzzwords and ‘e’ got hyphenated to everything, the Ostwals, both engineers, ventured into wireless irrigation and mobile-to-mobile (M2M) communication systems for agriculture. A remotely controlled pump using the mobile phone and combing it with some clever electronics was the innovation that has made the lives of farmers easier.

The Ostwals’ invention has impacted the lives of four lakh farmers with 50,000 installations in the last 12 years. A smart and affordable device, Nano Ganesh, saves farmers from making treacherous trips in pitch dark to their farms at midnight to access their water pumps and operate them, a daily reality, especially with erratic power supply. When the tired farmer fails to go out and switch off the water pump, there’s wastage of water and electricity. In addition, the excess water damages the soil and crop, hurting them further. If that is not enough, there is the theft of water pumps and cables to be dealt with. These are the problems that the couple set to solve.

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