Agriculture News
Tyson Foods committed to red meat
Meat + Poultry | Posted on May 20, 2017Tyson Foods Inc.’s value-added chicken business combined with the acquisition of Hillshire Brands has created a prepared foods powerhouse. It has also given the company a diverse portfolio of businesses. On one side is the branded, value-added Chicken and Prepared Foods business units focused on innovation and brand building. On the other side is the more traditional commodity-oriented Beef and Pork businesses, which are committed to adding value to products, but also stocking the fresh meat cases of retailers with traditional cuts of beef and pork.
A peck on the cheek for industrial agriculture
Daily Yonder | Posted on May 20, 2017The US Food and Drug Administration will be spending a few million dollars to ‘inform’ consumers about genetically modified food. It may not be long before Jane Doe from Indianapolis appears on a government funded billboard proclaiming to the world, “I just ate a healthful pork chop produced with patented soybeans genetically modified to withstand at least three non selective herbicides. Mmm-mmm, GOOD!” Tax payers will foot the bill for the $3 million ad campaign after dozens of groups related mostly to corporate agribusiness lobbied for a chunk of the federal budget in the funding resolution recently passed by Congress. Defenders of the expenditure point out that’s not much money in Washington, but here in Langdon it would feed everyone for six lifetimes.Sign me up for the next one.The only resistance by consumers to genetically modified crops has been that, given a choice, a few will always opt for non-gmo or organic labeled food in the grocery store. This must be unsettling for the handful of corporations with their patented seeds that exercise so much control over farmers. But they have had an increasingly difficult time convincing consumers that sole control of the food supply should be theirs.USDA recently announced that organic agriculture, the production of crops and livestock without use of most pesticides, commercial fertilizers, or genetic modification, grew another 15% this year. Undoubtedly, part of what drives that growth is increasing negative publicity about relatively old pesticides like glyphosate or atrazine in our water supply and even in food itself.
Has This Silicon Valley Startup Finally Nailed The Indoor Farming Model?
Fast Company | Posted on May 20, 2017“I like to call this the cathedral.” So says Matt Barnard, CEO and cofounder of the vertical farming startup Plenty. We’re standing in a room at the company’s headquarters in a former electronics distribution center in South San Francisco, staring up at glowing, 20-foot high towers filled with perfectly formed kale and herbs. The company isn’t the first to build an indoor urban farm in a warehouse. Aerofarms, for example, grows greens in a 70,000-square foot former steel factory in Newark, New Jersey. Nearby, Bowery, another tech-filled indoor farm, grows what it calls “post-organic,” pesticide-free produce. But Plenty, which has received $26 million in funding to date from investors such as Bezos Expeditions and Innovation Endeavors, believes that it has the technology to grow food more efficiently–at the same cost or less than crops grown in the field–so it can more easily scale up to supply supermarkets around the world. Unlike most other indoor farming companies, which typically grow food in rows on shelves, Plenty grows food vertically–each plant popping out of the side of a tall, skinny tower. Lights are also arranged vertically rather than pointing down from above. While Aerofarms claims to grow 130 times more produce than conventional farming in a given area, Plenty claims to grow 350 times more than conventional farming.“Shifting to the vertical plane makes us usually four to six times more efficient spatially than a stacked system–[like] someone like Aerofarms or someone like Bowery,” says cofounder and chief science officer Nate Storey, who previously founded another vertical farming company called Bright Agrotech. “Ultimately, we’re able to have a much higher space-use efficiency than we could if we were trying to stack our equipment. So everything in the system serves that end, which is how can we pack more plant production into the space without sacrificing plant health.”
The Solution to Climate Change Might Be Right Under Our Feet
NBCnews.com | Posted on May 20, 2017Every day, power plants and industries across the globe emit nearly 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — an effect that has pushed our climate into a dangerous zone, causing the Arctic to melt at an alarming rate, sea levels to rise, and weather patterns to shift across the world. But change is brewing and our best shot at reducing those emissions might be right under our feet. Projects are now being developed that capture the harmful gas before it's released into the atmosphere and bury it deep in the Earth. With such a massive carbon storage facility beneath our feet, scientists have been tackling various CCS projects for decades. The thought was that CCS could ultimately trap up to 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions — effectively slowing the rate at which we pump out the climate-altering gas.But 2017 might be a pivotal year for CCS technologies. Experts say that the variety of projects coming online now spotlight the possibilities of the field at large and show its promise for the future. One project might even be able to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a crucial step toward the overarching goal of mitigating climate change.
Delaware preserves another 3000 acres of farmland
Dover Post | Posted on May 20, 2017More than 124,000 acres of Delaware farmland are now permanently preserved for future generations, with 3,039 acres of easements selected into the state’s preservation program in the 21st year of selections made by the Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation. The farms in this round would not have been preserved without matching funds from multiple sources, including the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, New Castle County and Kent County Levy Court. The Delaware Agricultural Lands Preservation Foundation approves all applications, using an impartial discounted ranking system that maximizes benefits for taxpayers. The foundation does not own the land, but rather purchases landowners’ development rights and has a permanent agricultural conservation easement placed on the property.
Beekeepers build high-tech storage to improve hive survival
Capital Press | Posted on May 20, 2017Idaho beekeepers are building modern storage facilities to protect their bees during the winter to so they can take full advantage of strong demand for their pollination services. French, with Cox’s Honey, explained he wants as many hives as possible to survive the winter so he can take full advantage of increasing demand for pollination services in California’s almond orchards. He’s noticed a trend of regional beekeepers investing in bee storage lately, rather than leaving hives exposed to the elements or turning to the historic standby among Idaho apiaries — renting space in potato cellars. In the past five years, French estimates almond producers have increased payments for pollinators by $35 to $50 per hive to the $175-$210 range. According to USDA, California’s rapidly growing almond industry produced a crop valued at more than $5 billion in 2015 and stepped up its acreage by 7 percent to 1.24 million acres in 2016.“The incentive is now greater than it’s ever been to have those bees alive in the winter,” French said.For several years, his family has stored up to 10,0000 hives in uninsulated “shell” buildings during the cold months preceding late January, when the bees are needed in California. He’s leased space in a local potato cellar for the surplus hives. Though both options have served him well, French said his storage buildings are outdated, and he can’t always count on finding an available potato cellar.
Why did hunter-gatherers first begin farming?
Science Daily | Posted on May 18, 2017The beginnings of agriculture changed human history and has fascinated scientists for centuries. Researchers have now shed light on how hunter-gatherers first began farming and how crops were domesticated to depend on humans. The University of Sheffield researchers gathered seed size data from a range of crops and found strong evidence for a general enlargement of seeds due to domestication.They discovered domesticated maize seeds are 15 times bigger than the wild form, soybean seeds are seven times bigger. Wheat, barley and other grain crops had more modest increases in size (60 per cent for barley and 15 per cent for emmer wheat) but these changes are important if they translate into yield."We found strong evidence for a general enlargement of seeds due to domestication across seven vegetable species," said Professor Osborne."This is especially stunning in a crop like a sweet potato, where people don't even plant seeds, let alone harvest them. The size of this domestication effect falls completely within the range seen in cereals and pulse grains like lentils and beans, raising the possibility that at least part of the seed enlargement in these crops also evolved during domestication without deliberate foresight from early farmers."
3-D printed ovaries produce healthy offspring
Science Daily | Posted on May 18, 20173-D printed bioprosthetic mouse ovaries restored fertility in infertile mice and produced healthy mouse pups. The mothers also were able to nurse their pups. The research is targeted to women whose cancer treatments impaired their fertility and hormone production. The ovaries are constructed of 3-D printed scaffolds that house immature eggs and were successful in boosting hormone production and restoring fertility.
3-D-printed, soft, four legged robot can walk on sand and stone
Science Daily | Posted on May 18, 2017The breakthrough was possible thanks to a high-end printer that allowed researchers to print soft and rigid materials together within the same components. This made it possible for researchers to design more complex shapes for the robot's legs. The legs are made up of three parallel, connected sealed inflatable chambers, or actuators, 3-D-printed from a rubber-like material. The chambers are hollow on the inside, so they can be inflated. On the outside, the chambers are bellowed, which allows engineers to better control the legs' movements. For example, when one chamber is inflated and the other two aren't, the leg bends. The legs are laid out in the shape of an X and connected to a rigid body.
Today's innovative farmers are getting down to earth
Daily Yonder | Posted on May 18, 2017A global study of land and agricultural methods shows dramatic differences in soil quality between farms that employ some simple management tools and those that don’t. “Clever farmers” show how we can make healthier, more productive soil. The latest trendy capital improvements in farming include items like GPS-guided tractors and aerial photography drones, but a University of Washington scientist says farmers get their biggest return on investment from something much more down to earth: soil improvement.“Soil health is the best infrastructure investment the world has to offer,” said David Montgomery, a professor of geomorphology, which is the study of the earth’s surface. And he’s optimistic about the future of farming, as a result.“Almost all of our food comes from the soil. We see a declining volume of farmland from urbanization and development, a history of losing soil to erosion and weathering. Better farming practices, the kind that build soils, is the direction that responsible public policy would take us.”