agriculture
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Real-life Farmville kills the same amount of time, actually does some good
We knew things were going to get weird once we found out there was a real-world Angry Bird. Now a farm in England is turning itself into live-action Farmville. For a £30 ($49) annual fee, members of MyFarm will get to weigh in on every decision made at Wimpole Estate Farm in Cambridgeshire. They'll vote […]
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I’ve seen the future and I can’t afford it: Marketplace’s botched ‘feed the world’ story
Let’s have a real debate about organic vs. conventional agriculture.Photo: Bio BrothersIn a recent report entitled “The Non-Organic Future,” public radio’s Marketplace program considered the challenge to agriculture of feeding a world population estimated to reach 9 billion by 2050. It was, to be frank, a terrible piece of journalism. Short, virtually fact-free, and weakly […]
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Little piggies, crawling in the dirt: Minnesota reps behind ag-gag bill have factory-farm ties
Now that The New York Times editorial page has come out against what are now known as “Ag-gag” laws (thanks, Mark Bittman!), I think we can say this story has truly gone national. These laws, on the books in a few states already and quickly moving through legislatures in Florida, Iowa, and Minnesota, would attempt […]
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Strawberry grower shows how to make a profit without poisons
Jim Cochran on the farm in 2004.Photo: Swanton Berry FarmThis story was written by Laura Fraser. Along California’s rugged coastal Highway One, just north of Santa Cruz, a yellow vintage pick-up truck and tidy rows of strawberries mark the entrance to the Swanton Berry Farm. Inside the cheerful farm stand, decorated with old photos of […]
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A star Silicon Valley investor puts his money where his mouth is for sustainable ag
Ali Partovi: Investing green in green ag.As antidote to those who argue that the future of food is all about technologies like genetic engineering and new pesticides, I refer you to entrepreneur Ali Partovi (full disclosure: Ali and I are acquaintances) who has an Earth Day post over at Silicon Valley’s Techcrunch, one of the […]
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Like the desert mouse, PepsiCo’s factory to survive on the water in the food it consumes
Some animals don't drink water — and now some factories might not, either. The potatoes that PepsiCo turns into Walker's Crisps — those sinisterly addictive potato chips that people in the UK can't seem to get enough of — arrive at the factory containing as much as 80% water by weight. So why not harvest it […]
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How to solve world hunger by bringing farming indoors
What if the only way to save crops from climate change was taking the climate out of the equation entirely? Researchers in the Netherlands think that artificially lit, carefully irrigated "sunless farming" may have the power to reverse world hunger. With the right crops and the right equipment, researchers think that a space as small […]
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How some Iowa farmers keep the land fertile, while others salt the earth
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has a new study out about the sexiest subject ever — soil erosion! Wait, don't go, this is important: Topsoil takes forever to make, so as it washes off of fields, it's literally taking our ability to feed ourselves with it. Previously, scientists had estimated that Iowa fields were losing […]
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Disappearing American bats are worth up to $53 billion
Bats eat a lot of bugs. Here are some living under a bridge in Austin, Texas that eat millions of pounds of pests every season. What happens if those bats are wiped out in a few years — as it looks like they could be — by a combination of wind turbines and a fungal […]
