Miscellaneous
Growing Greens in the Spare Room as ‘Vertical Farm’ Start-Ups Flourish
They include City-Hydro, a farm built in a spare bedroom on the second floor of Larry and Zhanna Hountz’s three-story rowhouse in Baltimore. Mr. Hountz came to urban farming out of necessity. After a serious car accident, he was unable to leave his house for two years and had trouble Read More...
Want power? Fire up the tomatoes and potatoes
Summer is high season for composting food waste—and, at large scale operations, for generating power by burning the biogas it generates. But scientists around the globe are figuring out new ways to turn decomposing food into power beyond the trash heap, and they’re finding that some Read More...
Farmers have modified our food for at least 10,000 years, why does it matter all of a sudden?
In the past week you’ve probably eaten crops that wouldn’t exist in nature, or that have evolved extra genes to reach freakish sizes. You’ve probably eaten “cloned” food and you may have even eaten plants whose ancestors were once deliberately blasted with radiation. Read More...
This startup is turning leftover beer into delicious snacks
When you're looking for dinner ingredients at the supermarket, you probably wince at the bruised pears, skip over those oddly shaped carrots, and reach past ugly red peppers. This preference for pretty produce means the ugly fruits and vegetables are tossed out, filling landfills with otherwise Read More...
3 plant-based recipes you need to try this World Meat Free Day
Next Monday is World Meat Free Day, a great time for all of us to stop and think about the impact of our eating habits on our health – and the health of the planet. Animal agriculture in particular leaves a huge mark on the environment: from water pollution to deforestation to climate change. Read More...
Why Chicago is becoming the urban farming capital of the U.S.
When you walk into Farmed Here’s 90,000-square-foot warehouse in Bedford Park, a sleepy industrial outpost about 15 miles southwest of Chicago, you might not immediately register that you're standing in the second coming of the locavore movement. But then you get inside and smell Read More...
Why your new favorite backyard burger may soon be plant-based
For the roster of companies producing plant-based meat alternatives, the burger is the end-all-be-all. And one company thinks they’ve got the burger that will push the meat-eating industry as we know it to the tipping point. Beyond Meat, a company based in El Segundo, just unveiled a Read More...
Urban gardens improve food security
Growing food in community and home gardens can provide people with more access to fresh vegetables for a healthier food supply, according to a new study. University of California and Santa Clara University researchers surveyed people in San Jose who maintained a garden in their yard or a community Read More...
How to feed 9.7bn people? Startups take on the global food problem
The raw numbers make for daunting reading. One in 10 people out of the current global population of 7.4 billion already goes hungry. Crop yields that soared in the decades after the second world war are flatlining, and the UN predicts there will be 2.3 billion more mouths to feed by 2050. So how to Read More...
OkCupid for unwanted fruits and veg: tech joins the fight against food waste
When Zoe Wong moved to the San Francisco Bay Area three years ago, she fell in love with the fresh and abundant produce from surrounding farmers’ markets. Wong grew up in Hong Kong, where fruits and vegetables were scarce and imported. After attending college in upstate New York, she moved to Read More...