in order to conserve energy, creating a complication.""If everything goes to sleep, the system will never wake up,
which two different metals react with the food to create an electric potential difference that causes a current to flow."
and it wouldn't interfere with food supplies, company officials said. Coskata, which is backed by General motors and other investors, uses bacteria to convert almost any organic material, from corn husks (but not the corn itself) to municipal trash, into ethanol."
It wouldn't impact the food supply, and its net energy balance is high because the technique works almost anywhere using almost anything with great efficiency.
say, two bales of hay into five gallons of ethanol for less than $1 a gallon,
Florida has sugar. The Midwest has corn. Each region has been blessed with the ability to grow its own biomass."
Animal Welfare Drives Changes on US Farmsin an unlikely alliance, egg producers are teaming up with animal rights activists to back a plan requiring larger cages on chicken farms.
Under pressure from animal welfare groups, fast-food giant Mcdonald, major meat-processor Hormel and others recently agreed to end the use of tightly-confining pens at their suppliers pig farms.
Battery cage battle Nearly all eggs in the United states come from large facilities where hens are kept in small pens called battery cages.
Animal welfare groups say chickens in battery cages are given not enough room to move or raise their wings.
In 2008, the groups collected enough signatures for a California state ballot initiative to ban the battery cages.
Farm-group ads said the law would raise food prices, increase the risk of diseases and put farmers out of business.
a major California egg producer, campaigned against the proposal. oeat the end of the day, the voters made it clear that they wanted changes in the hen habitat,
and nesting boxes where the hens lay their eggs. Jill Benson company, JS West, became the first in the United states to install enriched cages.
Benson she says they definitely like the new cages. oewhat was a surprise is that the hens are producing just as many eggs, if not more,
Benson believes since eggs are shipped nationwide, the rules for how they are produced need to be uniform.
Egg farmers worried they would lose those battles, says Gene Gregory, president of United Egg Producers (UEP),
the biggest egg-farmers group in the country. oeso what we did reached, we out to the Humane Society of the United states
and said, Let have a discussion about this and see if we can t resolve this conflict,"
they push up the cost of eggs. Ludlum says consumers should be able to choose whether or not to spend more. oebut
The National Pork Producers Council also opposes the bill. It says the industry is responding to its customers,
Then they realized they had a contribution to make to the world food shortage with urban agriculture.
600 tons of food must be imported each day. With the global alarm clock going off over water shortages,
the United nations Food and Agriculture Association (FAO) has predicted that feeding the world, expected to rise to nine billion by 2050,
In addition to land degradation, there also increasing competition for land and water between urban and industrial users and within the agricultural industry itself between livestock, staple crops, non-food crops and biofuel production.
So reclaimed space in an urban area or non-arable land where food can be grown is smart business.
nutrients and light a crop needs so they are able to reduce energy consumption which further brings down the cost to grow the crop.
Starting today, thousands of new confectionery and snack foods will be revealed May 8 10 during the 2012 SWEETS & SNACKS EXPOÂ in Chicago.
before and after receiving a small"Happiness"bag filled with a few pieces of candy. One hundred percent of those surveyed reported that even the small bag of candy brought happiness to their day,
increasing their happiness quotient by an average of 22 percent. Additionally, the survey revealed that consumers choose to snack because they like the taste (29 percent),
*"Trends in confectionery and snacks for 2012 are pushing new boundaries. As consumer palates become more complex,
This year there are a variety of new products with this flavor coupling, from milk chocolate-covered raisins and peanuts to cinnamon sugar popcorn, chocolate-covered pretzels, potato chips and more!
coconut and strawberry to create new confectionery flavors is gaining popularity, but the tropical fruit is also making its way to the snack aisle,
from freeze dried fruits to mouth-watering salsas and more. Packing a Healthy Punch Healthy snacking continues to gain momentum this year.
The top growing snack item is nutritional health bars *and many new snacks provide a variety of health advantages.
Whether gluten-free, all-natural, made from whole grains, or including B vitamins and antioxidants, there's no doubt consumers can find a snack packing the healthy punch they want
Researchers say new agriculture methods and crops could halve food price inflationresource conservation technologies in agriculture could potentially halve the staggering increases in food prices in the face of climate change,
the International Food Policy Research Institute has found. IFPRI will release key findings on agriculture and soil degradation at this month's Rio+20 conference on sustainable development in Rio de janeiro.
The institute, one of the many centers affiliated with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research,
will hold a side event at the conference to unveil preliminary results in scientific and economic research work from food policy experts."
director of environment and production and project leader for IFPRI's"How to Achieve Food security in a World of Growing Scarcity"program."
and I think that we're at a point where it will be very good to see how these resource-conserving technologies can perform to help solve food insecurity issues."
But full adoption of these improvements could cut food price inflation almost in half, he said.
a plant-powered personal air filter (Idea#10 and#16), breathable chocolate bars (Idea#15), and, the latest, an edible food packaging called Wikicells (Idea#31).
It been in development for a long time, but Edwards finally unveiled the project last week in Paris. Now that it public,
he believes it will transform the future of food. More than a decade after publishing a study in Science and selling a promising idea for an inhaled drug delivery system, Edwards,
Electrostatic charges can transform a sugar processing bi-product called bagasse, mixed with chitosan and alginate, into an edible shell membrane.
Now any food you might find wrapped in plastic in the store can come in a shell made just using this technology.
You ll be able to peel the shell off and compost the skin like a banana peel
if edible packaging were succeed to, the public was prepared not to learn entirely novel ways of eating or drinking.
Edible water bottles required a cognitive transformation, whereas orange juice inside an orange-like membrane might be slightly more familiar.
Indeed, Edwards released an ice cream wrapped in a fudge membrane, an almost too-recognizable treat. oeyou may say, Dave,
that sounds a lot like chocolate-covered ice cream, he says. oewell, if you took the chocolate-covered ice cream into your hand,
it would melt all over your hand. If you take the Wiki ice cream in your hand,
the ice cream may melt inside the fudge. You can then stick a straw into it
and drink it like a milkshake. And there it is, another idea one step closer to fruition
The world food crisis: what is behind it and what we can do (October 23, 2008) The World Food Program's description of the global food crisis raises the specter of a natural disaster surging over an unaware populace that is helpless in the face of massive destruction.
With billions of people at risk of hunger, the current food crisis is certainly massive and destructive.
But the reasons so many people have limited access to food are anything but"natural.""On the contrary, decades of skewed agricultural policies, inequitable trade,
and unsustainable development have thrown the world's food systems into a volatile boom and bust cycle
and widened the gap between affluence and poverty. Though hunger is coming in waves, not everyone will"drown"in famine.
In fact, the world's recurrent food crises are making a handful of investors and multinational corporations very rich even as they devastate the poor and put the rest of the planet at severe environmental and economic risk.
The surge of so-called food"riots"not only in poor countries like Haiti but in resource-rich countries like Brazil and even in the industrialized nations of Europe and the United states reflects the fact that people are not just hungry,
they are rebelling against a dangerous and unjust global food system. The food crisis is anything but silent,
and as long as we are aware of its true causes we are not helpless The World bank, the World trade organization, the World Food Program, the Millennium Challenge, The Alliance for a Green revolution in Africa, the U s. Department of agriculture,
and industrial giants like Yara Fertilizer, Cargill, Archer daniels midland, Syngenta, Dupont, and Monsanto, carefully avoid addressing the root causes of the food crisis.
The"solutions"they prescribe are rooted in the same policies and technologies that created the problem in the first place:
increased food aid, deregulated global trade in agricultural commodities, and more technological and genetic fixes. These measures only strengthen the corporate status quo controlling the world's food.
For this reason, thus far, there has been little official leadership in the face of the crisis. Nor has there been informed any public debate about the real reasons the numbers of hungry people are growing,
or what we can do about it. The future of our food and fuel systems are being decided de facto by unregulated global markets, financial speculators,
and global monopolies. For decades family farmers and communities around the world have resisted the destruction of their native seeds.
They have worked hard to diversify their crops, protect their soil, conserve their water and forests,
and establish local gardens, markets, businesses, and community-based food systems. There are tens of thousands of highly-productive, equitable,
and sustainable alternatives to the present industrial practices and corporate monopolies holding the world's food hostage,
and literally millions of people working to advance these alternatives in this time of need. What is missing is the political will on the part of government, industry
The food crisis is affecting over three billion people half the world's population. The trigger for the present crisis was food price inflation.
The World bank reported that global food prices rose 83%over the last three years and the FAO cited a 45%increase in their world food price index over just nine months.
The Economist's food price index stands at its highest point since it was formulated originally in 1845.
As of March 2008, average world wheat prices were 130%above their level a year earlier
soy prices were 87%higher, rice had climbed 74, %and maize was up 31%.%While grain prices have come down slightly,
food prices are still high, and because low-income and poor families are faced with higher fuel and housing costs,
they are still unable to buy sufficient food
Alternative method for farmsan antibacterial product manufactured by a Malaysian company has become a reliable substitute for antibiotics for many farmers in China.
THE imminent ban on antibiotics in agricultural and livestock farming has prompted Chinese farmers to use other alternatives to ensure the safety of their produce and poultry.
Qingdao Tianrui Poultry Technology Co Ltd general manager Li Chao said chicken egg production in his farm in Qingdao,
we used 100%antibiotics in our animal feed for the chickens. But now, we have reduced it to only 30%and mixed the feed with others like Orgacids
and locally-made probiotics, he told representatives from Sunzen Biotech and Malaysia ambassador to China Datuk Iskandar Sarudin who visited the farm recently to see for himself how the green product fared in China.
probiotics, acidifiers and other green products in animal feed as part of their efforts to phase out the harmful antibiotics. oeafter using Orgacids and probiotics,
we managed to save about 5%the volume of animal feed. We will continue using them and
Another egg farmer, Zeng Xiaoyong, said he blended Orgacids with other ingredients like palm kernel extracts in his animal feed to improve absorptivity by the chickens.
He said he saved about 700 yuan (RM350) a day on his feed cost after switching from soy bean to the cheaper palm kernel extract for its mixture with animal feed.
Not only is the Orgacids product being used in chicken egg farms it is used also in feed for pigs, fish, prawns and cattle in China.
whose family runs a pig farm in Yantai in Shandong said he was happy with the results yielded using Orgacids as they managed to save about 4%on the volume of feed for the pigs. oewe have reduced the use of antibiotics
starting of with three chicken and pig farms in Shanxi recommended by China Agricultural University.
Sunzen Lifesciences research and development director Dr P. C. Kok said Orgacids could be added to animal feed
It is unlike antibiotics where you have to stop using it during the withdrawal period to let the body system clear. oethe recommended dose is 1. 5kg of Orgacids to a tonne of animal feed.
E coli and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus in the livestock digestive system. oesalmonella will be cured within two to three weeks after the chicken is fed with Orgacids
The first lab-grown hamburger will cost $345, 000how much would you pay for a hamburger?
How about US$345, 000? No, it's not wrapped in edible gold leaf and held together with a skewer made out of a diamond stick pin that you get to keep.
It's an ordinary burger that doesn't include the bun, lettuce, pickles or onions.
That's because even though it is a real hamburger made from real meat, it doesn't come from a cow at all.
is one of a handful of scientists around the world working on the problem of cultivating meat artificially in a laboratory.
The idea is to find a way to create the meat without the animal by growing it directly.
and make lab-grown beef (or pork or chicken or fish) as cheap, if not cheaper,
He also believes that the advantages of in vitro meat as it is called, are such that it will go a long way toward alleviating world hunger
A long predicted dish The idea of growing meat in a vat without the animal middle-creature has been around longer than many people realize.
The most famous prediction of the coming of in vitro meat was from none other than Winston churchill.
In this he wrote-"We shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing,
by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.""Chicken heart Growing a chicken leg bone and all wasn't even a remote possibility in the real 1982,
but Churchill did have some basis for his prediction that this would come about within a half century.
and is serviced by butchers who trim off steaks from it with great flensing knives like those used by whalers.
Radio author Arch Oebler took this a step further in his short radio play"Chicken Heart"where Carrel's experiment breaks loose
so frightening as a child that he smeared Jell-o on the floor and set fire to the couch to keep the monster at bay.
"So why didn't Carrel's experiment lead to a world of chicken heart fast food franchises?
the conclusion was that cultivating meat wasn't as simple as first thought. Still, the idea remained.
and ethically-challenged DREADCO corporation that allegedly experimented on new ways to cultivate meat, such as genetically engineering alligators with salamander DNA so their huge,
The growing trunk would then be wrapped automatically in pastry and passed through an oven to produce a continuous stream of fresh, delicious elephant trunk pie.
Meanwhile, on a more practical tack, food scientists in the wake of the food shortages after the Second world war often speculated on the possibility of manufacturing meat
and NASA showed periodic interest in the idea as a way of feeding astronauts on extremely long space missions.
In recent years, the animal rights organization PETA offered a $1 million prize for anyone who could come up with a commercially successful way of cultivating meat as a way to reduce livestock farming,
Fortunately, in response to the mounting demand for better accessibility, convenience stores, restaurants and markets are finding new ways to bring farm fresh food to anyone, anywhere.
vegetables and dry goods. The mobile market was conceived as a solution for oefood deserts, those densely populated, often low-income, neighborhoods that lack pedestrian access to healthy, affordable food.
where more than 300 essential grocery items are available in just 160 square feet of space.
enabling everyone to have access to food that makes them feel good. FARM: shop: With chickens on the roof, pigs roaming the yard,
and mushrooms growing in the basement, FARM: shop environs are a dramatic departure from the typical cafã.
More than just a place to grab a sandwich, Farm: shop is an experiment in food cultivation within a constrained urban environment
whose goal is to grow the maximum amount of food in the most efficient way possible.
The London-based project was launched by eco-social design group Something & Son. Every inch of the space is built for agriculture,
or an outdoor greenhouse planted with tomatoes, peppers, herbs and greenery. Brightfarms: Solar panels are one way for grocery stores to optimize their otherwise unused rooftops
and reduce their carbon footprint, but Brightfarms has another idea: hydroponic greenhouses. Often, the high cost of organic produce is fueled by cross-continent shipping and distribution.
To date, ten grocery store chains have hired Brightfarms, with three more expected in 2012
The Internet Gets Physicalthe Internet likes you, really likes you. It offers you so much, just a mouse click or finger tap away.
find restaurants, locate partying friends, tell the world what you re up to. Some of the finest minds in computer science, working at start-ups and big companies, are obsessed with tracking your online habits to offer targeted ads and coupons, just for you.
Low-cost sensors, clever software and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution.
using computing intelligence to create more efficient systems for utility grids, traffic management, food distribution, water conservation and health care.
£200, 000 test-tube burger marks milestone in future meat-eatinglab-grown burgers will be served up in October Link to video:
Lab-grown burger to be served up in October Lurking in a petri dish in a laboratory in The netherlands is an unlikely contender for the future of food.
The yellow-pink sliver the size of a corn plaster is the state-of-the-art in lab-grown meat,
He hopes Heston Blumenthal, the chef and owner of the three Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire
The project, funded by a wealthy, anonymous, individual aims to slash the number of cattle farmed for food,
"Meat demand is going to double in the next 40 years and right now we are using 70%of all our agricultural capacity to grow meat through livestock,
"Post said.""You can easily calculate that we need alternatives. If you don't do anything meat will become a luxury food
and be very, very expensive.""Livestock contribute to global warming through unchecked releases of methane, a gas 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
and feels and hopefully tastes like meat"."Post is focusing on making beef burgers from stem cells
because cows are among the least efficient animals at converting the food they eat into food for humans."
"Cows and pigs have an efficiency rate of about 15, %which is pretty inefficient. Chickens are more efficient
and fish even more,"Post said.""If we can raise the efficiency from 15%to 50%it would be a tremendous leap forward."
that will be minced together and pressed into a patty. Each piece of muscle is made by extracting stem cells from cow muscle tissue
which contains scores of nutrients the cells need to grow. The slivers of muscle grow between pieces of Velcro
If lab-grown meat mimics farmed meat perfectly and Post admits it may not the meat could become a premium product
just as free range and organic items have. He said that in conversations with the Dutch Society of Vegetarians,
the chairman estimated half its members would start to eat meat if he could guarantee that it cost fewer animal lives.
Meat grown in the laboratory could have several advantages, because its manufacture is controlled at each step.
The tissue could be grown to produce high levels of healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids or to have a particular texture.
"We could make panda meat, I'm sure we could, "Post said. He believes it will be a relatively simple matter to scale up the operation,
In the future, You Will Eat Your Food Packaging, And It Will be Delicioushere a solution to our ever-growing plastic problem:
package food and beverage items in edible packaging that actually good enough to eat. Dr. David Edwards, a professor at Harvard, is working on it.
After creating Breathable Foods and an energy capsule, Edwards moved on to Wikicells, an edible packaging technology.
foam, or something else in a soft membrane held together by food particles that are being connected by electrostatic charges to each other and to a small amount of natural polymer."
"The soft membrane could be surrounded by a harder egg-like shell if necessary--something made out of chocolate, rock candy,
or even algae. If that hard to imagine, think of it this way: a tomato and basil membrane that houses gazpacho, a chocolate membrane holding hot chocolate,
or an orange membrane containing orange juice.""You can imagine that the yogurt will have a fruity kind of membrane.
It could be raspberry, cherry, blueberry. We make something that looks like mozzarella cheese, but when you cut it with a spoon it all yogurt inside,
"he says. The professor has constructed all of these creations, and some of them are available for adventurous souls to try at the Lab Store Paris,
Edwards storefront where people can eat his food experiments. Based on reports from Lab Store visitors, he believes that the membrane taste is satisfactory;
which also makes an edible --though currently flavorless--packaging was featured recently in Fast Company. The hygiene of edible packaging is, of course, also an issue.
(and at the W Hotel in Paris). Ultimately he hopes to design a Wikicell production machine that could be sold to restaurants, companies,
Rising Asian middle-class likely to change U s. agriculture The sophisticated food demands of newly affluent consumers in China
and other developing nations are likely to cause major change in U s. farming and food production, Asian food policy and world trade, according to Food 2040, a new study of emerging
food trends in Asia by the U s. Grains Council (USGC). USGC President and Chief executive officer Thomas C. Dorr presented a preview of Food 2040 at the U s. Department of agriculture annual Agricultural Outlook Forum. oegrowing affluence in China could change people diets
and the global food system. Consumers will expect more choice, quality, convenience and safety in their food purchases,
Dorr said. Food 2040 also reveals important implications for agricultural trade policy between the United states and Asian nations. oewe are seeing China become more open to acceptance of new technology,
such as agricultural biotechnology, which can help meet the needs of the Asian middle class in a sustainable manner through trade,
Dorr said. U s. attitudes about feeding the world are likely to change too. oemany of the agribusinesses
technology and policy reform to meet changing food demands and capture the economic potential of new Asian consumers
Google and Facebook are just a few of the companies that feed their employees for free and it seems to work well.
This way they don t have to leave work to get food and they ll be more productive.
If you are starting out you may not be able to provide the level of food services that Google
but this doesn t mean you can t treat your employees to a nice meal once a month.
Or you can tie meals to specific company objectives, such as buying lunch on Fridays for employees after you know they have achieved their weekly goals.
When feeding your employees you don t have to pick the fanciest restaurants. Just pick a unique place that has a fun vibe.
I have found that those type of places are appreciated much more than the stuffy restaurants that you have to dress up to eat at.
Tactic#4: Spontaneity One of the easiest ways to make your employees more productive is to change up the environment they are working in.
Joachim loves the possibilities of cellular engineering, pointing out the similarities between the structure of a building's wall and the exterior skin of a piece of meat.
He even proposes a theoretical"meat house, "grown in a lab--a throbbing piece of meat that could function as a building.
These biopolymers often have comparable (if not superior) strength to conventional building materials like concrete. The emphasis there is heavily on the theoretical, of course."
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