such as the harvest date. here been a very rapid sea change in consumer behavior, said Elliott Grant, the chief marketing officer for Harvestmark. ith very high-profile food recalls, cellphones and iphones,
and tests have demonstrated that even the sensitive honeybee is unaffected, ##Davis said. The two##real reasons##nobody has moved ahead with SBSP,
exciting tech giants like Netflix and inspiring a whole new crop of innovative startups. What is reactive programming?
self-irrigating crops, and even aterlesscities. The earth atmosphere is a far more elegant water distribution system than rivers, reservoirs,
Moisture is harvested out of the air to irrigate crops through an efficient system that produces large amounts of condensation A turbine intake drives air underground through a network of piping that rapidly cools the air to the temperature of the soil where it reaches 100%humidity
and pumped to the roots of crops via sub surface drip irrigation hosing. Developed by Joe Ellsworth in Seattle,
Some of the planned uses are for forests, camping, fire suppression, agriculture, livestock, and human consumption.
Is it possible to add a water extracting ground spike next to every plant or tree in our garden?
So, the The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has joined forces with America beer brewers to change how farmer irrigate their crops.
Humans have practiced a rather crude form of agriculture for millennia: we douse fields to give them as much water
Change in agriculture comes slow. Yet the promise of precision agriculture is to find the right mix of profit
#Robobees will pollinate crops instead of real bees As soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops.
Honeybees pollinate nearlyone-third of the food we eat but they have been dying at unprecedented rates because of a mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder (CCD).
The researchers believe that as soon as 10 years from now these Robobees could artificially pollinate a field of crops,
Honeybees alone contribute more than $15 billion in value to U s. agricultural crops each year. But Robobees are not yet a viable technological solution.
the tiny bots have to be able to fly on their own andtalk to one another to carry out tasks like a real honeybee hive.
and the threat it poses to agriculture were part of the original inspiration for creating a robotic bee,
Will robot bees eventually be able to operate like honeybee hives to pollinate commercial crops? Ma:
You could replace a hive of honeybees that would otherwise be working on a field of flowers.
We need to feed more people with limited agricultural land and resources. We need to make better use of land, light and logistics for an increasingly urban population.
and energy and improve crop yield. It takes advantage of the vertical space of city buildings rather than turning over wide expanses of land to agriculture and uses advanced greenhouse technology:
hydroponics or aeroponics, and environmental controls that regulate temperature, humidity and light to produce vegetables, fruits and other crops year-round.
In large cities such as New york, Chicago, Tokyo and Singapore, these ideas are taking root. Singapore has taken local urban farming to a high level Skygreens has built the world s first commercial vertical farm in large three-story greenhouses, providing a sustainable source of fresh vegetables.
The cost of growing Vertical farming s biggest limitation is energy consumption. Considerable energy is required to power a closed, indoor greenhouse facility s artificial lighting, heating and cooling
Evidence is emerging that specific wavelengths of light have distinct effects on crop yield, quality, and even pest and disease resistance.
long-established industries and they do not come much larger or older than agriculture. Farmers can be terrible managers,
It could be the biggest change to agriculture in rich countries since genetically modified crops. And it is proving nearly as controversial
The seed companies think providing more data to farmers could increase America maize yield from 160 bushels an acre (10 tonnes a hectare) to 200 bushelsiving a terrific boost to growersmeagre margins.
They fear that the stream of detailed data they are providing on their harvests might be misused.
or the companies could use the highly sensitive data on harvests to trade on the commodity markets,
the country largest organisation of farmers and ranchers, is drawing up a code of conduct, saying that farmers own
restaurants and convenience stores, focusing on cities where urban growth often prevents fresh vegetables from being readily available.
#Top 15 emerging agriculture technologies that will change the world Below are 15 emerging technologies related to agricultural and natural manufacturing under four key areas of accelerating change:
Sensors help agriculture by enabling real-time traceability and diagnosis of crop, livestock and farm machine states.
and potentially from producing meat directly in a lab. Automation will help agriculture via large-scale robotic
and maintain crops at the plant level. Engineering involves technologies that extend the reach of agriculture to new means, new places and new areas of the economy.
Of particular interest will be synthetic biology, which allows efficiently reprogramming unicellular life to make fuels, byproducts accessible from organic chemistry and smart devices.
Crop sensors: Instead of prescribing field fertilization before application, high-resolution crop sensors inform application equipment of correct amounts needed.
Optical sensors or drones are able to identify crop health across the field (for example, by using infrared light).
Scientifically viable in 2015; mainstream in 2018; and financially viable in 2019. Infrastructural health sensors:
Further understanding of crop variability, geolocated weather data and precise sensors should allow improved automated decision-making and complementary planting techniques.
predict, cultivate and extract crops from the land with practically no human intervention. Small-scale implementations are already on the horizon.
including year-round crop production, protection from weather, support urban food autonomy and reduced transport costs. Scientifically viable in 2023;
The best configuration, a honeycomb lattice with a 50 nanometer coat of alumina, is less dense than waterthat is,
Reaping the Benefits of Cover crops (Op-Ed) Margaret Mellon is a senior scientist for food and the environment at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS.
Farmers planting crops that can't be sold doesn't sound like a sensible proposition does it?
buying planting and tending to so-called cover crops. No farmers can't sell cover crops but they do reap benefits from them including increased yields of cash crops like corn and soybeans.
Use of cover crops can also help farms survive the droughts expected to become more common in the era of climate change.
Cover crops which can be many species of grains grasses and legumes are planted usually in the interval between the harvesting and planting of cash crops.
Sending their roots down into bare soil cover crops can increase soil carbon provide slow-release nitrogen
and prevent erosion. But a cover-crop/cash crop system is complex. If not managed properly cover crops can deprive cash crops of water
or even reduce yields. Although they make sense in theory many have wondered how cover crops would work in the real world.
Now a new survey of commercial farmers has confirmed that cover crops increase yields in corn and soybeans the most common crops in the U s. Moreover cover crops were especially effective under drought conditions.
The North Central Sustainable agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program and the Conservation Technology Information center conducted the survey of more than 759 commercial farmers from winter 2012 through spring 2013.
Farmers who responded reported average increases of 11.1 bushels of corn per acre and 4. 9 bushels of soybeans per acre over prior harvests.
In percentage terms the extra bushels represent an average 9. 6-percent-greater yield in corn planted after the planting of cover crops compared with crops not preceded by cover crops.
The increase in soybeans was 11.6 percent. That's pretty impressive. The growers reported yield information from fields comparable in conditions and rotation except for the cover crops.
And the advantages for cash crops planted after cover crops were even greater in states hit hard by drought.
The states most affected by the severe 2012 drought were Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Missouri Nebraska and South dakota.
The 141 respondents from those states reported an average corn yield of 11.3 bushels per acre
which represented an 11 percent increase in crops grown after cover crops compared with those grown without them.
Respondents from the drought-affected states reported even greater benefits in soybeans: an average increase of 5. 7 bushels per acre or 14.3 percent higher yields after cover crops.
The farmers responding to the survey grew cover crops on an estimated 218000 acres in 36 states mostly in the Mississippi river basin.
Not surprisingly drought-related impacts varied across the country. But the results were solid: Farmers enjoyed better corn yields after cover crops in all but one of the states hardest hit by the drought.
Farmers expected to pay for the ecosystem services provided by cover crops and were willing to pay median costs of $25 an acre to purchase seeds and $15 an acre for cover-crop establishment (aerial distribution of seed and the eventual killing of the plants at the end of the growing season).
Farmers interested in cover crops need to decide which species to use how and when to plant them
and whether to plant single or multispecies mixes. If the wrong decisions are made cover crops might not deliver on their potential benefits
or may even be detrimental. The survey respondents reported a long list of challenges including cover-crop seed availability increased insect potential
and the risk of cover crops using too much soil moisture. Despite the challenges the surveyed farmers had increased steadily their use of cover crops over the last decade.
Last winter they reported planting cover crops on an average of 42 percent of their acreage
and planned to increase their cover-crop acreage this coming winter. The complexity of the system may explain the correlation between yield increases
and experience using cover crops. Growers with more than three years of experience working with cover crops saw a 9. 6 percent increase in corn yields
whereas growers with one to three years of experience reported a still respectable but lower 6. 1 percent boost in corn.
A complete drought tolerant package would include appropriate crop choices and specially bred varieties of crops as well as a drought tolerant system.
The crop-centered approach to drought was discussed by my colleague Doug Gurian-Sherman in hisrecent report High and Dry.
In addition to highlighting the availability of crops like sorghum and alfalfa that are inherently more drought tolerant
and might be used more often in U s. agriculture Doug also discussed the success of conventional corn breeders who have increased drought tolerance at a steady pace of 1 percent per year over decades.
Genetic engineering has yet to play an important role in drought tolerance. Only this year did agricultural biotech company Monsanto introduce its first drought tolerant seed variety Droughtgard.
According to the Monsanto website the variety has produced a five-bushel (or about 4 percent) yield advantage in field tests against competitor hybrids.
However successful crop genetics might be new plant varieties cannot compensate for the deficiencies in systems.
The fundamental requirement for combating drought is to keep moisture in the soil. Cover crops can do that and so much more.
This article was adapted from Cover crops Dramatically Increase Corn Yields specially In Drought Conditionson the UCS blog The Equation.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
This article was published originally on Livescience. com S
#Precision farming Gains Global Foothold (Op-Ed) Lloyd Treinish leads the environmental science team in the Industry Solutions Department at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research center.
A co-developer of IBM's Deep Thunder precision agriculture system he contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
Unfortunately about half of the world's food is consumed never due to inefficiencies in the harvesting storage and delivery of crops.
Certainly weather-related events like the current and long-lasting drought in portions of the U s. add further complexity to the science of farming as resultant crop damage food supply shortages
While collecting real-time data on weather soil health of crops and air quality is important as is the availability of equipment
Precision agriculture can help farmers from Brunei to Brazil pinpoint the best time for harvesting to mitigate crop damage and loss;
and show how and when to deploy delivery trucks to ensure immediate shipment an especially important factor in farmlands where the lack of paved roads can paralyze distribution.
Those and other smarter farming methods including techniques used early in the growing cycle are reducing weather-related crop damage by as much as 25 percent in some areas ensuring that fewer crops are wasted
According to the U s. Department of agriculture weather-related incidents cause 90 percent of all crop losses. Precision agriculture helps address that problem by improving weather forecasting
With 70 percent of the world's freshwater supply already going to agriculture every drop counts.
Getting more crop per drop not only improves farm productivity but provides enough return on investment to fund additional high-tech solutions.
While the days of farmers using the divining rod to find water are passed long since many farmers especially in developing countries still rely too much on guesswork in making planting irrigation and harvesting decisions.
According to the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations global animal agriculture produces vast amounts of crops to feed billions of farm animals long before they are consumed themselves.
The scope of animal agriculture s impact on climate change has for decades been underestimated. The raising and slaughtering of farm animals is just one component.
Raising animals for food also includes feed-crop production which requires extensive water energy and chemical use as well as energy for transporting that feed live animals and animal products.
As a result of animal agriculture's impact on climate change organizations like the Natural resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club support eating more plant-based meals.
About a half-billion fewer animals are now being raised for food than just several years ago reducing animal agriculture's global impact.
#Could bacteria from honeybees replace antibiotics? Bacteria are increasingly outsmarting our most overused antibiotics creating a boom of drug-resistant diseases.
Could honey's secret weapon against bacteria be other bacteria? Researchers in Sweden recently discovered a unique group of lactic acid bacteria living inside honeybees'honey stomachs an enlarged section of esophagus where the insects store nectar while foraging.
According to a newly published study those 13 bacteria are experts at stifling other bacterial infections including dangerous superbug strains such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Pseudomonas aeruginosa and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE.
These bacteria represent one of the greatest symbiotic flora ever found in a single organism the researchers write protecting all honeybee species
It seems to have worked well for millions of years of protecting bees'health and honey against other harmful microorganisms.
However since store-bought honey doesn't contain the living lactic acid bacteria many of its unique properties have been lost in recent times.
Each of the 13 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) plays a role in turning nectar into honey according to the study
and microbial threats that varies with season and honeybee health. This study bodes well for developing countries given the availability of fresh honey
but also for many developed nations where antibiotic resistance is on the rise. The researchers say their next step is to investigate wider use of these bacteria against topical infections in more animals including humans n
but sterile ash that can be used to fertilize crops. Referring to the Omniprocessor as a lean repository for human waste,
and by cooling the sample quickly after the reaction the researchers could produce up to ten single-atom layers of carbon in graphene's signature honeycomb pattern.
and policymakers to improve degraded soils and increase crop production. The map will be made from satellite measurements of soil nutrients, moisture and organic matter.
These data will be combined with samples taken over the next four years at 60 randomly chosen sites across Sub-saharan africa,
"This project will benefit farming families in Africa by showing how they can reverse declining soil fertility,
a major reason for slow growth in the region's agricultural productivity during recent decades,"says Namanga Ngongi,
The institute is part of the International Centre for Tropical agriculture, a nonprofit research body funded by international organizations and private foundations.
On the Tibetan plateau, for instance, the fungus harvest per unit area has dropped by 10-30%compared with three decades ago.
and management plans for sustainable harvest of the fungus. The harvest season, for instance, should be shortened to allow enough fungi to mature
and spread their spores. A rotational system for the harvest should also be implemented, so that the meadow has the chance to recover from human impact,
he says. Without such regulations,"we will soon see the end of the fungus boom,
but the Institute of Coffee of Costa rica estimates that the latest outbreak may halve the 2013-14 harvest in the worst affected areas of the nation.
the Nicaraguan government reportedly declared that it would include coffee rust on a list of special research projects designed to safeguard the country s agriculture.
and more than 90%of coffee crops were wiped out in those regions. Faced with an economic catastrophe
They have developed a catalyst that harvests the gas from methanol, a liquid fuel that#unlike hydrogen itself#can be transported easily
which still blights the lives of millions of people in the developing world.""Viruses are all very different from each other,
Jalas and the way he works represent a new and mostly untapped market for a new crop of genetics interpretation and analysis firms,
) Craig Smith, a deep-sea biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will lead an initial assessment of seafloor life for Lockheed s project, gathering baseline data for the potential harvest zone
They want everyone to have the chance to use space imagery to settle legal disputes from homeowners disputing garden boundaries to businesses fighting vehicle theft.
As honey is poured from a jar, it can resemble rope or thread, drizzling onto a surface in wavelike patterns.
Today, hundreds of companies worldwide are making drones for infrastructure inspection, crop-and livestock-monitoring,
If a company decides to use a surveillance drone for crop management, for instance, it can easily add software that stitches together different images to determine which areas of a field are overwatered
viewing companies that monitor crops and infrastructure with drones that require specific cameras and sensors as potential early customers.
and other crop problems mean income can be quite irregular for millions of Kenyans; as a result, they don know how much money they will make,
a bike-mounted maize sheller. Easily attached to a bike and powered by pedaling, the low-cost,
The startup still sells maize shellers upon request, but doesn advertise them.)The solar lamps, Wu says,
the $6 in margin they earn from selling a single lamp during non-harvest months is feed enough to their family for a few days. t really about creating a win-win-win situation,
and use the new maize sheller: Farmers need only change a sprocket on the wheel
Now not only could farmers process all their maize in one day, but they also retained their bikes for other uses.
The current iteration of the 6-horsepower thresher which has evolved extensively after years of field-testing is wheeled a cylinder thresher that can both be adjusted to handle a variety of crops.
Sometimes maize wasn ejecting properly, and the machine would jam, coming to a sudden halt and putting stress on the threads,
and used longer bolts with springs to secure the sheller so when the maize jammed,
Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology And circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it
and harvest hydrogen is one of the most intriguing ways to achieve clean energy. Automakers have started introducing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
Graphene a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice is increasingly being used in new electronic and mechanical applications such as transistors switches
because when light is absorbed by the electrons suspended in the honeycomb lattice of the graphene they do not lose their heat to the lattice
Collaborators from the electron microscopy center at the University of Warwick in England found that all the atoms in both materials formed a single honeycomb lattice structure, without any distortions or discontinuities.
which is a single-layer sheet of carbon atoms in a honeycomb lattice that was made first in 2004 by Andre Geim
graphene is a 2d sheet of carbon just one atom Thick with a'honeycomb'structure the'wonder material'is 100 times stronger than steel, highly conductive and flexible.
Within the honeycomb-like lattices of monolayers like graphene boron nitride and graphane the atoms rapidly vibrate in place.
that could harvest energy from light much more efficiently than traditional thin-film solar cells s
#So to give them a leg up the group Open Tech Forever has developed a beehive that can track the health of#bees
The Open source Beehives project is a collaborative response to the threat faced by bee populations in industrialised nations around the world.
The project proposes to design hives that can support bee colonies in a sustainable way to monitor
If you're a professional beekeeper or hobbyist and handy with electronics you get a double-whammy:
a free design for a high-tech beehive that can monitor your bees'environment and#a chance to contribute to citizen science.#
The flies are a major pest to olive crops. The idea is that the flies all male will mate with wild olive fruit flies.
#Device Could Harvest Wasted Energy From Wi-fi, Satellite Signals A wireless device developed by researchers at Duke university that converts microwaves into electricity could eventually harvest Wi-fi or satellite signals for power according to its creators.
but#it will also require existing farmland to be far more productive. If current trends continue to 2050#farmland will grow by only 20 percent
but fertilizer and pesticide use will more than double. To feed a hungry growing world agricultural ecologists need to know who will be eating more meat and where.#
An associate professor of food safety and plant biosecurity at Virgina Tech Schmale sends drones armed with petri dishes into the atmosphere to capture airborne crop pathogens.
He's planning to adapt his model to predict the movement of plant pathogens which could help farmers preemptively protect their crops by describing where to strategically deploy pesticides.
#Something Is Killing Up to Half Of America's Bees There's some kind of environmental issue/plague/apocalypse killing America's honeybees
Before about 2005 beekeepers might lose 5 to 10 percent of their hives when winter rolled around.
Now some beekeepers are losing more than 50 percent to what's called colony collapse disorder. New pesticides called neonicotinoids which are implanted directly into plants might be to blame but nothing's definitive the New york times reports.
That means a poor yield for beekeepers and ultimately problems for consumers. Bees don't just make honey remember
but pollinate a ton of what we eat--as much as a fourth of it. That could lead to less food and higher food prices.
Capitalism is a failure Marxism is the outcome capitalism has lead to this democracy becoming a corptocracy. telegraph Mobile phones responsible for disappearance of honey bee and many others just google ithailey.
Bee (mythology) en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Bee %28mythology%29bee-keeping www. reshafim. org. il/ad/egypt/timelines/topics/beekeeping. htmthe
First Beekeepers ferrebeekeeper. wordpress. com/2012/05/18/the-first-beekeepers/Scientists? Huh the scientists debate on popsci forum that is how you reason?
and mapping their frequencies and power outputs one is able to see a correlation within a set radius of bee populations affected by theses sources of non-iodizing radiation.
or none RF radiation would be places of high bee population. I wonder if this has been looked at to give validity to the above theory.
Since the lunar environment has none of the resources needed for agriculture (except for sunlight) just how would this take some of the strain off earth's resources?
That's the case for crops, which are plentifully regrown. On the other hand fossil fuel-produced carbon dioxide is considered different
Covering manufacturing agriculture health transport civil security and households the initiative#calledâ SPARCÂ#is the EU#s industrial policy effort to strengthen Europe#s position in the global
It could be used for small package delivery or vertical takeoff and landing, long endurance surveillance for agriculture, mapping and other applications."
and corral more user activity into the social network's streamlined walled garden rather than directing users off into the messy outside web.
When ants came, crop yields often improved, the team concludes online today in the Journal of Applied Ecology.
which could have applications such as spraying on crops or disinfecting food, as well as treating human disease.
#Bacterial raincoat discovery paves way to better crop protection Researchers have discovered how communities of beneficial bacteria form a waterproof coating on the roots of plants,
which could help curb the risk of unwanted infections in agricultural or garden plants, the team says.
#Tablet for 2 waiting at an Olive Garden near you soon Olive Garden, owned by Florida's Darden Restaurants Inc,
Olive Garden president, said in a statement. Tablets have made appearances in airports, where travelers can have delivered food to where they sit,
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