Agriculture
"Hands-free" smart farm will replace laborers with robots
At a smart farm in Australia, robots and AI will do all the manual labor, potentially foreshadowing agriculture’s "hands-free" future.
Microfarm startup brings fresh produce to food desert
California startup Crop Swap LA has planted a “microfarm” in an LA resident’s front yard and is now distributing the crops throughout the local community.
CRISPR could save billions of baby chicks before they hatch
Male chicks are killed as soon as they hatch, in a gruesome process called chick culling. Gene editing could save them.
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Hard Reset
Vertical farms could take over the world
Vertical farming saves water, land, and energy — and it could be how we grow food on Mars.
The world’s first fully electric, self-driving tractor
Monarch Tractor’s all-electric, self-driving tractor could save farmers money, while also benefiting the environment.
“Phytomining” trees can extract metal from the Earth
Phytomining, a technique that uses trees to soak the metals out of contaminated soil, could offer new ways to mine for metals that are more sustainable than the existing, environmentally destructive methods.
Is death by pee our next pesticide?
It may not be your number one idea, but having beetles pee themselves to death could be the next pesticide.
A seaweed diet could eliminate most of cows’ greenhouse emissions
Researchers found that feeding dairy cows just a touch of seaweed dramatically lowered the amount of methane emissions they released.
We don’t have to eat insects. But feeding them to animals could save the planet
Edible insects could more than make up for the world's protein deficiency while cleaning up waste and using fewer resources. But we don't have to eat them. We can use them in animal feed instead.
How tech helped beat back locust swarms in East Africa
Billions of locusts descended on East Africa in 2020, where new technology helped stop their spread.