The future of food doesn’t have to involve animals.
Category: food – Page 318
A satellite that’s scheduled to launch later this year will conduct plant-growth experiments in both lunar and Martian gravity, as a way to help prepare for future human settlement of these worlds.
The Eu: CROPIS spacecraft will rotate around its own axis in low-Earth orbit, at an altitude of over 370 miles (600 kilometers). The satellite will initially produce the gravitational force of the moon on its inside for six months, and will then replicate Martian gravity for another six months.
During this time, tomato seeds will germinate and grow into small space tomatoes; 16 onboard cameras will document the plants’ progress. [Plants in Space: Photos by Gardening Astronauts].
What do the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush, about a thousand musical compositions and even a few recent food recipes all have in common?
They were invented by computers, but you won’t find a nonhuman credited with any of these creations on U.S. patents. One patent attorney would like to see that changed.
Ryan Abbott is petitioning to address what he sees as more than a quirk in current laws but a fundamental flaw in policy that could have wide-ranging implications in areas of patent jurisprudence, economics and beyond if his proposals are adopted.
Scientists, have identified a brain hormone that can trigger fat burning in the gut.
Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in the US found a brain hormone that specifically and selectively stimulates f at metabolism, without any effect on food intake.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, in animal models could have implications for future pharmaceutical development.
Most of us probably don’t think too much about the foodstuffs we buy in the supermarket. But behind the scenes, today’s food production system relies on a centralized, industrial-scale supply chain that’s still dependent upon soil-based agriculture for the majority of our food crops.
In many instances, that means that food has to travel long distances from farm to table, meaning that food has lost much of its freshness and nutritional value by the time it reaches your table. There’s also a growing awareness that this model isn’t sustainable: the pressures of increasing urbanization and loss of arable land, rising populations and the increased frequency of extreme weather events like droughts and floods — brought on by climate change — means that slowly but surely, we are going to have to change the way we grow our food.
There are some indications of this shift: the appearance of urban rooftop farms, an explosion of interest in automated hydroponic systems. The problem with all these systems is that their platforms are proprietary, and the lack of a common platform between them means these won’t necessarily scale up.
Choosing a New System Architecture
Posted in business, food, sustainability
The food retail, foodservice and industrial cooling industries are in the midst of a momentous transition in refrigeration system architectures. Regulations are driving the need to implement sustainable systems with options growing exponentially. Emerson’s natural refrigerant expert, Andre Patenaude, provides advice on the best alternatives to future proof your system.
To get to what many call the “end game” of achieving compliance and meeting corporate sustainability objectives, more businesses are looking at systems based on natural refrigerants to help them achieve these goals.
The term “natural refrigerant” refers to substances that naturally occur in the environment. Unlike the synthetic refrigerants that have commonly been used in refrigeration applications — including hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — ammonia (NH3 or refrigerant name R-717), propane (refrigerant name R-290) and carbon dioxide (CO2 or refrigerant name R-744) are three naturally occurring refrigerants that pose very little threat to the environment.
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.
Over 6,000 pounds of food per year, on 1/10 acre located just 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. The Dervaes family grows over 400 species of plants, 4,300 pounds of vegetable food, 900 chicken and 1,000 duck eggs, 25 lbs of honey, plus seasonal fruits throughout the year.
From 1/10th of an acre, four people manage to get over 90% of their daily food and the family reports earnings of $20,000 per year (AFTER they eat from what is produced). This is done without the use of the expensive & destructive synthetic chemicals associated with industrial mono-cropping, while simultaneously improving the fertility and overall condition of the land being used to grow this food on. Scaled up to an acre, that would equal $200,000 per year!