and it s awesome. 1. Electric Clothes Physicists at Wake Forest University have developed a fabric that doubles as a spare outlet.
using the heat absorbed from your pants pocket. 2. The New Coffee Soon, coffee isn t going to taste like coffee#at least not the dark,
ashy roasts we drink today. Big producers want uniform taste, and a dark roast makes that easy:
But now the best beans are increasingly being set aside and shipped in vacuum-sealed packs (instead of burlap bags).
Improvements like these have allowed roasters to make coffee that tastes like Seville oranges or toasted almonds or berries,
coffee will lighten, and dark roasts may just become a relic of the past. 3. Analytical Undies Your spandex can now subtly nag you to work out.
and turn a color#orange, say, for E coli. Then you could knock it out with a stronger disinfectant. 27.
Yogurt will be encased in a strawberry pouch, for instance. You could wash and eat the packaging, like the skin of an apple,
or you could toss it, like the peel of an orange, since it s biodegradable.
The newly wrapped ice cream and yogurt will be available later this month at the lab store in Paris,
with juice and tea coming within the next year or two. 30. The Constant Gardner Rather than spray water
fertilizer and pesticides across their fields, many industrial farms are taking a more targeted approach,
Then they ll tell you what to do about it three spritzes of pesticide to the tomato plants, stat. 31.
So researchers at the University of British columbia have created something called smart fur.##It s weird-looking (essentially just a few inches of faux fur)
but its sensors allow it to mimic the reaction of a live animal whether you give it a nervous scratch or a slow, calm rub.
#Cow collar texts ranchers when animals are sick or in heat Even cows can benefit from having a mobile device.
A new collar being developed for cattle ranchers could send cow health updates to farmers cellphones.
The device could help ranchers save money in the long run, monitoring the health of their animals and prevent accidental deaths.
The Silent Herdsman collar will track the movements of the cow using the same type of sensors found in Wii devices.
when cows are in heat The collar is being developed by researchers from the University of Strathclyde, Morrisons, Scottish Agricultural College, Harbro, Well Cow, National Milk Records (NMR) and Embedded Technology Solutions.
director of the Technology Strategy Board s sustainable agriculture and food projects, said, Addressing animal health and welfare challenges and improving animal performance monitoring are vital pieces of the food security jigsaw.
and around the world and we wish the partners every success.#This isn t the first invention to connect cattle to monitoring technology.
and urban farming become more prevalent. Via Mashable Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati r
#Is there any hope for a non-genetically modified future in America, or Africa? It is really only a matter of time before our food crisis becomes crippling.
for farmers, for the planet First, in an excellent and frankly a bit depressing article for Mother Jones, Tom Philpott says that agriculture in the US is at a crossroads.
We (in the form of the USDA) say yes to Dow chemical and Monsanto and their herbicide-drenched#version of intensive agriculture.
Or, if introduction of a new GM corn variety designed to be resistant to herbicide-resistant weeds can be stopped,
This new GM corn variety is a joint project between Dow and Monsanto containing resistance to different varieties of herbicide.
It s hoped it will overcome this resistance by dousing crops with two different herbicides,
each targeting weeds that are resistant to the other, and the corn being resistant to both.
I specifically use the word hope because the hope of Dow and Monsanto is that they will be able to stay one step ahead of the superweeds they hope don t develop,
as plants develop resistance to high doses of herbicide. I ll leave it to Philpott and his eloquent exposition of why, ultimately,
That these proprietary crops will stay where they are planted and not somehow spread beyond the fields they are planted.
Treehugger covered the Gates vision of African agriculture before, so suffice it to say that Gates,
invested in Monsanto, supports a high-tech vision of agriculture, rather than the low-tech, affordable, diverse, climate-resistant,
Loss of the right to save seed through the introduction of patented GE crops could prove disastrous for the 1. 4 billion farmers in developing nations who depend on farm-saved seed.
his focus on high-tech agriculture, and technological development in general#hen clearly a less high-tech approach would be just as or even more effective#s just delusional.
3d Food Printers-As we shop for apples in the grocery store, we find ourselves looking for the perfect apple.#
#Only a small percentage of apples grown on the farm are worthy of making it into the major leagues of food the fresh produce section of our grocery stores.
But what if we could take all of those bruised and damaged apples and turn them all into perfect apples#perfect size,
perfect color, perfect crunch when we bite into them, and the perfect sweet juicy flavor and aroma that makes our mouth water every time we think about them.
Instead, they are devices with the very real potential for turning real apples into perfect apples.
and farm equipment may not be that far off. 19.)Plant Monitors-Urban agriculture is catching on like wildfire,
yet the tech world has glossed over most of the opportunities here. Future plant monitors will give us the ability to communicate#with our plants and produce far more sophisticated forms of food. 20.
Auquaponics Tech For those of you not familiar with the term, aquaponics is a sustainable food production system that combines traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as fish, crayfish,
or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. Panasonic at CES 21.
#Anyone who has an apple tree growing in their yard knows how difficult it is to grow one that is worthy of eating straight off the tree.
or bird damage that leaves most apples somewhat marginalized. They may be perfectly good on the inside,
As we shop for apples in the grocery store, we find ourselves looking for the perfect apple.#
#Only a small percentage of apples grown on the farm are worthy of making it into the major leagues of food the fresh produce section of our grocery stores.
But what if we could take all of those bruised and damaged apples and turn them all into perfect apples#perfect size,
perfect color, perfect crunch when we bite into them, and the perfect sweet juicy flavor and aroma that makes our mouth water every time we think about them.
Instead, they are devices with the very real potential for turning real apples into perfect apples.
Self-lighting trees from California s Glowing Plant Lab illuminate the numerous clean wide promenades.
and Yemen. Reclaimed desert around the capital is a lush green tapestry of farmland and tropical forest,
and robots cultivate fruit and vegetables for home and overseas markets. In a world where technology has replaced people in many roles,
ipad-sized display pieces, including the Chinese-owned Facebook-Apple Corporation s iholo mobile device. Food in Qatar is assembled commonly by nanomachines.
and plow into trees or veer into traffic as they swat at their kids. They have blind spots, leg cramps, seizures, and heart attacks.
spill coffee in their laps, and flip over their cars. Of the ten million accidents that Americans are in every year,
The ride takes him over surface streets and freeways, old salt flats and pine-green foothills, across the gusty blue of San francisco bay,
It may confuse the shadow of a tree for the edge of the road, or reflected headlights for lane markers.
When Apple s new mapping software failed so spectacularly a year ago, he knew exactly why.
a renewable energy source usually made from corn.##oeyou can now build a cell the same way you might build an app for your iphone,
A vanilla flavoring that promises to be significantly cheaper than the costly extract made from beans grown in rain forests is scheduled to hit the markets in 2014.
reducing the cultivation of cash crops in places where that practice hurts the environment, break our dependence on pesticides
and result in the closure of countless industrial factories that pollute the air and water.
including synthetic versions of fragrances extracted from grass, coconut oil and saffron powder, as well as a gas used to make car tires.
goats with spider genes that produce super-strength silk in their milk; and synthetic bacteria that decompose trash
Cultivated in the remote forests of Madagascar, Mexico and the West indies, natural vanilla is one of the world s most revered spices.
What about the hundreds of thousands of small farmers who produce these crops now? Artemisinin is farmed by an estimated 100,000 people in Kenya, Tanzania, Vietnam and China and the vanilla plant by 200,000 in Madagascar, Mexico and beyond.
Evolva officials say they believe there will still be a strong market for artisan ingredients like vanilla from real beans
to put down that coffee or phone, and refocus.##oeit could be 20 seconds; it could be 10 seconds,
the fruit of several years of intensive research for them to taste, even take for themselves.
A grizzled maverick of an engineer named David Hall designed the lidar that Google uses.
They drove teams of horses, herds of goats, drifts of sheep. Animals, Smith argues, are autonomous.
#Advocates like to say that there is no technical reason the new Mercedes needs hands on the wheel to steer through a turn.
self-irrigating crops, and even#oewaterless#cities. The earth s atmosphere is a far more elegant water distribution system than rivers, reservoirs,
Submissions ranged from self-filling water bottles, to extreme dehumidification, to a large-scale water sources for greenhouse drip irrigation, to emergency water for lifeboats, to self-filling canteens for the military,
The winning entry, titled#oethe Aquamist,#presented a simple elegant design for the emerging aquaponics and hydroponics industries.
Fogquest http://www. fogquest. org Fogquest is a Canadian nonprofit that uses modern fog collectors to bring drinking water and water for irrigation and reforestation to rural communities in developing countries
ID=1722 Developed by James Dyson Award winner, Edward Linnacre, the Airdrop irrigation concept was developed for poor agricultural conditions in periods of severe drought.
Airdrop Irrigation works to provide a solution to this problem. 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. A2wh http://a2wh. com/Developed by Joe Ellsworth in Seattle,
the#oewater Gardens#are groupings of water-extracting towers for high volume and high quality water.
Some of the planned uses are for forests camping, fire suppression, agriculture, livestock, and human consumption.
The Self-Filling Water bottle http://www. behance. net/gallery/Atmospheric-Water-Collector/3949181 The Atmospheric Water Collector shown above is still not a functional product,
Everything from pop, to juice, to vegetables, to beer, to soup, and much more. Transporting water is expensive
Is it possible to add a water extracting ground spike next to every plant or tree in our garden?
and weight issues of previous prototypes. 9. Agriculture Robots Agricultural robotics are, somewhat surprisingly, still in their infancy.
there is still talk of a possible general labor shortage in the near future#articularly in agriculture.
A Japanese research company has developed a robot that performs stereo imaging of strawberries to determine their ripeness before picking them,
and MIT has a cherry tomato garden that is managed by a small crew of robots equipped with vision sensors.
It s long been known that alligators are lost able toregrow teeth, for example, but it was assumed to be a cyclical process,
An alligator s tooth will grow back automatically to replace a lost one. This is quite significant
because the structure of alligators teeth is pretty similar to ours. The problem has been that the inner areas of teeth contain living tissue known as#oepulp#that doesn t grow back.
#have created a chip that can support a holographic display of 50 gigapixels per second#nough to simulate real world objects,
but it still required a 45-minute drive through the corn fields and pumpjacks of rural Weld County.
They grew row crops-grain and corn,#oehad a couple of horses, occasionally had some cattle, but not usually,#Oster explained.
Like all farmers, they worked with their hands, fixing, welding and building as things broke.
so he worked for smaller firms#here an autonomous military land vehicle, there a mower for golf course greens.
a maverick who dares to dream about the future and who s just unconventional enough to make it happen.
and large amounts of beetle-killed trees have created#oeperfect storm#conditions for multiple wildfires to rage across the State.
The True Cost of Forest fires In 2012 the U s. Forest Service had a budget of $948 million for fire suppression, a decrease of nearly $500 million from 2011.
Some of this can be attributed to factors such as beetle-kill trees, an increasingly mobile society, urbanization of mountain communities, etc.
A 2010 report titled#oethe True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U s.#published by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition challenged traditional methods for calculating the cost of forest fires.
After a thorough investigation of the fire by the U s. Forestry Service, the true costs were recalculated as follows:
However, this same technology can be modified to work on flying drones to monitor fire activity on forestlands.
In 2012 the U s. Forest Service, which manages over 35 million acres of forests, made a major policy shift,
deciding to intervene on all fires, something environmentalists contend will cause significant long-term damage. As an example, the Northern Rockies have a long history of wilderness fire
and the National park service so far have not followed the Forest Service s lead. So if we have the capability of spotting fires very early
Admittedly, managing a 24/7-drone fleet over our massively huge forestlands will be no small undertaking.
Extinguishing a fire under several layers of tree canopy will also be a challenge. Every kind of tree will likely require a different navigation strategy,
and some densely covered grounds may be entirely unreachable until it s too late. Operating drones day and night through inclement conditions like wind
Starting with only a portion of the combined budgets of the U s. Forest Service bureau of Land Management,
#The Untold Story of Africa s Farming Boom Tens of thousands are returning home with money
but to launch an aquaponics farm, raising organic lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs indoors in nutrient-rich vats.
but it s worth it to help Ghana leapfrog to the forefront of innovative farming.#
a leading expert on agriculture, has declared that#oea green revolution is already under way.##Some readers may find that statement incredible.
Even infamously food-insecure Malawi and Ethiopia now grow record amounts of crops and even export surpluses to their neighbors.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the leading nongovernmental donor to African agriculture reports that 10 African countries are posting annual output increases of 6 percent, more than twice the rate of population growth.
#In short, African agriculture is booming. And that transformation is happening despite the fact that African farmers have a ways to go in adopting new farming technologies
So there s a considerable upside to African agriculture. If farmers adopt proven technologies in the coming years,
I could understand from the ground up the new forces at work in rural Africa and in farming and agribusiness in the region.
I also received research grants from international donors with a keen interest in African agriculture,
who leads the agriculture program at the United kingdom s Overseas Development Institute. Here s why:
grows cassava and a kind of leafy spinach in a field she leases. While she consumes some of the produce,
For example, the Guinea Savannah zone covers around 600 million hectares in West Africa#hrough Uganda and Tanzania and encompassing Malawi, Zambia, Angola,
Of this, 400 million hectares can be used for agriculture, reports the World bank and the Food and agriculture organization.
#oebecause the owner gets a windfall for doing nothing.##2. Farming is now cool Farming in Africa is not only profitable,
it s become popular. Even the educated and well-off, who long shunned getting their hands dirty,
now extol farming as a path to prosperity. Nigeria s former president Olusegun Obasanjo has campaigned for progressive farming practices,
In Uganda, former vice president Gilbert Bukenya has promoted cattle ownership and small-scale production of cash crops that can quickly and easily be sold in urban markets.
The flood of well-educated people going into farming has sped up the absorption of new technology across the board.
Kojo Anku the aquaponics farmer in Accra, says his yields of organic vegetables and herbs are up to eight times those of traditional farms,
and the plants grow faster. More rapid maturation in turn means a faster turnaround on his investment.
Multinational agribusinesses see similar opportunities in Africa, albeit on a grand scale, and have been buying up land in recent years,
an investment fund focused on agriculture in Sub-saharan africa.##oewe could be moronic and not grow anything
First, the existing foreign-owned plantations in Africa have tended to under-perform small-scale family farms on a per-acre basis, partly because of the relatively high costs of mechanized farming and farm labor.
And second, it ignores the fact that much of the available farmland in Africa still consists of small farms that are owned by the families who farm them.
a small farmer in Malawi who often turns down work on a nearby tobacco plantation in favor of his own plot.
Greenhouse operations, packed with Dutch and Israeli technology, have taken root in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
whose goods it then sells at Dutch flower auctions. 3. International demand for Africa s crops is soaring Global prices for African cocoa,
cotton, and even green beans are at or near historic highs. Cocoa, the key ingredient in chocolate, commands double
what it did in the 1990s, which means the farmers in Ghana who grow it are together collecting $2 billion annually.
Europe s surging demand for fresh vegetables and cut flowers has been a windfall for African farmers.
Even ordinary staples, such as maize, have risen markedly in price. High prices have boosted the living standard of millions of African farmers, especially the most enterprising, well-organized ones.
#In Zambia, for instance, one in five cotton farmers and one in 20 vegetable farmers have achieved now#oecommercial success PDF,#reports Steven Haggblade of Michigan State university and his colleagues.
and improving their farms. 4. The#oelost crops#of Africa have been rediscovered Long ignored, Africa s#oeforgotten#crops, including cassava, sunflower seeds,
and cowpeas, have in the last two decades rapidly expanded in production, bringing unexpected benefits.#
#oeoutsiders often miss the real action in African agriculture by ignoring important staples that are grown in the region
but not well-known elsewhere,#says Calestous Juma, of Harvard. Consider cassava, a protein-rich root that in Latin america goes by the name manioc or tapioca and
whose heartiness has earned it the nickname#oethe Rambo of crops.##In Nigeria alone, output tripled from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s to reach 45 million metric tons per year, according to figures from the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations.
Another is the development of more sophisticated postharvest handling that reduces spoilage. Dried cassava is increasingly being turned into an easily stored flour
One project, led by the Donald Danforth Plant science Center, in St louis, is genetically engineering the vegetable to contain more iron and beta-carotene.
Another effort, based at Cornell University, aims to raise cassava productivity through genome-based breeding,
Cowpeas#nutritious crop known as black-eyed peas in the American south#lso show how much can be done with even basic technology.
Weevil infestations caused postharvest losses as high as 50 percent until Purdue University researchers discovered that storing the cowpeas in airtight containers could preserve the crop for up to a year.
They devised the Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage (PICS) bag, made from two inner high-density-polyethylene plastic bags and an outer nylon sack.
1. 7 million cowpea farmers in West and Central africa will increase their annual incomes by an average of $150 PDF#significant increase in a region where most farmers live on about $2 per day. 5
Multinational food broker VP Group regularly buys from about 5000 small farms near Nairobi. Thanks to text messages and the mobile Internet, it can now collect produce from the field,
In the mid-2000s, Uganda s largest cooking oil company, the Mukwano Group, rapidly enlisted 100 000 small farmers to grow sunflower seeds by using text messaging
and when to deliver the harvested crops. In the last decade, sunflower seed production has tripled more than.#
but radio#ore popular than television in Africa#elivers basic information about how to choose crops,
so any uptick in usage could lead to enormous gains Two of the most important technologies in farming are irrigation and fertilizers,
Irrigation schemes, meanwhile, require government support, which has until now been virtually absent. Once these two proven techniques become more widespread,
farmers in central Malawi who had relied previously on rain to water their crops learned the benefits of spooning water directly onto their plants.
In the absence of fixed irrigation such low-cost, improvised irrigation methods are gaining ground and helping to improve yields.
What about more advanced technology? For years African governments opposed the genetic modification of crops,
but recently some have backtracked and now promote its adoption, starting with a nonfood crop#otton.
such as the Gates Foundation, have been reluctant to promote the bioengineering of African crops. Yet because such crops require less water, fertilizer,
and pesticides and reap higher yields, African farmers are interested. The case of cotton in Burkina faso highlights biotechnology s potential.
Breaking ranks with other governments in the region, Burkina approved genetically modified cotton several years ago,
spending on pesticides and fertilizer went down, and total income roughly doubled. Even if cotton remains the only GM crop in Africa,
Most African cotton farmers grow other crops, sometimes planting them between rows of cotton. So if they can spend less to grow more and better cotton
these other crops should benefit, too. 7. Government support for food producers is getting better Everyone agrees that African farmers remain heavily inhibited by poor governance.
Irrigation schemes are practically nonexistent. Transport links are terrible; where proper roads do exist, you ll often see police roadblocks capriciously set up to extract bribes from drivers.
and rice from Thailand can be sold below cost, killing local production. The Italian, Brazilian, and Thai governments subsidize those goods,
Kenya s cows are the top milk producers in Africa, giving 4 billion liters of milk a year,
and marketing of milk that boosted farmers profits, then reinforced those gains by funding research into hardier, higher-output cow breeds.
In Malawi, the government s decision in 2005 to give maize farmers fertilizer and hybrid seeds at a steep discount resulted in record harvests.
its farmers now sell excess corn to neighboring Zimbabwe. To be sure, government remains the source of frustrating, even mind-boggling, difficulties.
expanded production of corn and other staples#nd been rewarded by bumper earnings.##oeuganda is now a food basket for East Africa,
and cowpea farm in eastern Uganda. She gets to keep the money she earns from her fields
Chris Reij, a sustainable land management specialist at VU University Amsterdam, has studied reforestation efforts there,
which the farmers then plant trees. And in the shadows cast by the trees, they grow fruits and vegetables.
Greening projects are also succeeding in Mali Tanzania, and Ethiopia. Reij argues that these limited successes can spread to other#oedrylands#in Africa.
The United nations Food and agriculture organization has caught the spirit, introducing a worldwide campaign around#oeclimate-smart agriculture.##Climate change can also be managed by greater reliance on drought-tolerant crops.
Here, hearty cassava is a natural choice. Indeed, hotter temperatures and and less rain may actually result in higher cassava yields,
according to climate scientist Andy Jarvis, lead author of a 2012 paper in the journaltropical Plant Biology.
Jarvis and fellow researchers at the International Center for Tropical agriculture, headquartered near Cali, Colombia, found that cassava outperformed potatoes, maize, beans, bananas, millet,
and sorghum in tests of 24 climate-prediction and crop-suitability models. The best hedge against potential food shortages created by climate change?
Wheat from Kenya, maize from Zimbabwe, and fruits and vegetables from western and southern Africa adorned European tables.
African farmers prospered, and by the early 1960s, they supplied 8 percent of the world s tradable food.
#Already, evidence is overwhelming that farming in Africa, if less productive than other places, has entered a bountiful new phase.
And a recent World bank report entitled#oegrowing Africa#argues that African agribusiness could be a trillion-dollar market by 2030#riple
what it is today#rovided farmers gain access to things like capital, electricity, and irrigation.
Kenya, for instance, leads East Africa in dairy and wheat production, while neighboring Uganda produces surpluses of maize and other staples;
yet parts of western and northern Kenya face a chronic struggle for food. What Africa needs most#nd is increasingly getting,
when Mrs. Baird became disconsolate at discovering that rats had broken into the family s sole remaining bag of corn.
and production of maize soared. Skeptics of farm subsidies must at least accept that Malawi has followed only the U s. and European example of rewarding farmers with aid.
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