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Sigmetnow

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New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« on: July 23, 2020, 07:42:06 PM »
Culture, habits, and availability drive what foods we eat and how we produce them.  But AGW and new technologies are inspiring new options.

This article is more to the point in this topic than the Vegan thread.

KFC has teamed up with a Russian biotech company to 3D-print chicken nuggets
Quote
According to a recent press release, KFC wants to become a "restaurant of the future" by "crafting the 'meat of the future,'" with help from a Russian company called 3D Bioprinting Solutions. This initiative, "arose among partners in response to the growing popularity of a healthy lifestyle and nutrition, the annual increase in demand for alternatives to traditional meat and the need to develop more environmentally friendly methods of food production."

If all goes to plan — which is definitely a thing that happens in the Hell Year 2020 — KFC will begin to sell the world's first lab-grown chicken nuggets in Moscow in the fall.

These lab-grown nuggies will of course still feature the same blend of 11 spices and herbs that made them famous, while combining chicken cells with plant material, "allowing it to reproduce the taste and texture of chicken meat almost without involving animals in the process." It's not clear if they'll be vegan friendly, or if they're meant to vaguely compete with fully plant-based meats like the Beyond or Impossible Burger.

The press releases — shared verbatim across companies — includes some thoughts on the project's environmental sustainability as well:

Biomeat has exactly the same microelements as the original product, while excluding various additives that are used in traditional farming and animal husbandry, creating a cleaner final product. Cell-based meat products are also more ethical – the production process does not cause any harm to animals. Along with that, KFC remains committed to continuous improvement in animal welfare from the farm and through all aspects of our supply chain, including raising, handling, transportation and processing.

Also, according to a study by the American Environmental Science & Technology Journal, the technology of growing meat from cells has minimal negative impact on the environment, allowing energy consumption to be cut by more than half, greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced 25 fold and 100 times less land to be used than traditional farm-based meat production. ...
https://boingboing.net/2020/07/20/kfc-has-teamed-up-with-a-russi.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2020, 09:03:38 PM »
“Beef is clearly declining as a percentage of total meat production, from 39% in 1961 to only 20% in 2018. Pork is exactly the same percentage of total meat production now as it was in 1961: 35%. All of the growth has come from chicken, which has more than tripled from 11% to 34% of total meat production.”

The World Is Finally Losing Its Taste for Meat
Production is projected to dip for the second year in a row, and there’s reason to believe we’re already falling out of love with beef.
August 8, 2020
Quote
Global consumption of animal proteins has been rising, apparently inexorably, for the past six decades. The coronavirus pandemic has finally changed that trajectory.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that meat production—a decent proxy for consumption—dropped in 2019, and it forecasts a decline again this year. Last year was only the second since 1961 in which production fell; two consecutive years of decline is unprecedented and could be the start of something durable. We’re already at peak pasture as far as demand is concerned, and it looks like we’re also approaching peak beef, even in places like steak-crazed Brazil.
...
But by any number of measures, beef consumption looks very near its peak, and the investors betting more than $1 billion on alternative proteins this year are hoping that their portfolio companies can drive meat demand down further. For now though, the easiest and the nearest-term solution for reducing land use emissions is simply to use less land. Substituting chicken for beef does this already on the margin; a measurable shift away from beef consumption could take that trend much further. …
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2020-07-30/good-news-for-climate-change-as-world-loses-its-taste-for-meat
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2021, 09:33:36 PM »
Quote
ESA Technology
How #SpaceBurgers could be on the menu for future astronauts, thanks to the use of celluar agriculture to produce #CulturedMeat esa.int/ESA_Multimedia…
https://twitter.com/esa_tech/status/1399769002394722316
6/1/21
⬇️ Image below. Click to embiggen.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #3 on: June 20, 2021, 08:44:30 PM »
Space agencies are learning how to make food on Mars and the moon
Quote
Space agencies from various countries have spent decades developing the technologies necessary to bring farming indoors, and now the German space agency and NASA are pushing the state-of-the-art of soil-free gardening to its limits with a greenhouse in Antarctica and laying the groundwork for their next act: farming systems where the farmers are optional.

Building on Soviet research, NASA funded a variety of agricultural programs in the 1980s and 1990s. In a collaboration with the University of Wisconsin, researchers discovered that they could replace hot and cumbersome incandescent grow lights with a particular blend of LED lights. Red LEDs, which were more energy efficient, let plants photosynthesize. But plants also needed blue light, or they would grow too tall and spindly. The work led to a patent, and today’s indoor farms often feed plants on a similar diet of red and blue photons — which is why indoor farms often appear bathed in purple light.

Focusing on ways to sustainably meet the ever-growing demand for food, companies around indoor vertical farming has seen a boom in recent years. New York-based start-up Bowery Farming announced a $300 million funding round in June, the largest in the industry thus far, valuing the company at $2.3 billion. Kimbal Musk, brother of Elon Musk, is the co-founder of Square Roots. Newark-based AeroFarms in April broke ground on a 136,000-square-foot-farm in Virginia set to open in 2022 that it says will be the largest aeroponic indoor vertical farm in the world.

The EDEN-ISS Antarctic greenhouse, now entering its fourth growing season, continues to prove that you do not need fertile ground or even sunlight to produce vegetables. It builds upon the LED blend pioneered by the early NASA experiments to deliver “recipes” tuned to the needs of each specific vegetable with programmable arrays of red and blue lights.

Roots poke through beds of fibrous minerals and dangle into empty trays below, where automated nozzles spray them with a nutrient-rich mist every few seconds. Water is largely recycled, except when the nutrient solution gets depleted and needs to be dumped and replaced every few months. The entire system plugs into the neighboring German Neumeyer III research station, from which it continuously draws about 10 kilowatts of power — comparable to eight U.S. households.

The first year, a DLR researcher named Paul Zabel ran the 135-square-foot greenhouse and collected nearly 600 pounds of veggies including cucumbers, lettuces, other leafy greens, tomatoes, radishes and herbs.

And developing the ability to farm in space isn’t purely about going to Mars. A two-way street has always connected space agriculture with industrial agriculture. As climate change makes many areas of the globe less suitable for farming, the technology to split food production from weather and natural resources will likely become more essential.

“My dream would be that we all live in ecological biospheres on our own,” Schubert says. “We would be completely independent from the planet Earth, and we would leave Earth to its own so it can recover.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/20/space-agencies-are-learning-how-to-farm-on-mars-and-the-moon.html
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vox_mundi

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #4 on: June 20, 2021, 09:14:33 PM »
Producing Milk from Yeast That Looks and Tastes Like Cow's Milk
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-yeast-cow.amp

The initiators of the development believe that in the not-too-distant future we will be able to buy dairy products in the supermarket that are identical in taste and color to the ordinary dairy products that we consume today, but with one small difference: the dairy products will be produced from yeast rather than from cow.

This product is not a milk substitute like almond or soymilk. We plan to produce dairy products that will be identical to products that come from animals by introducing the yeast genome the genes that code for milk development in cows"

https://perfectdayfoods.com/process/

https://perfectdayfoods.com/find-us/
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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2021, 12:31:29 AM »
Real Cheese, No Animals: More Than 70% of Consumers Want Breakthrough Cheese
https://phys.org/news/2021-06-real-cheese-animals-consumers-breakthrough.html

Precision-fermentation company Formo and the University of Bath have co-published the first large-scale study of consumer acceptance for animal-free dairy products.

Researchers surveyed 5,054 individuals from Brazil, Germany, India, the UK, and the US to understand what consumers think of animal-free dairy products.

Precision fermentation is a process that allows specific proteins to be produced via microorganisms. By inserting a copied stretch of cow DNA, microorganisms produce milk proteins. The process is more efficient than using animals to make proteins, and avoids the negative side effects of industrial animal agriculture, which is responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

The findings of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, show that consumers around the world are ready for cheese made from real milk proteins produced by microorganisms.

... "Just as we have seen plant-based milk taking an increasing share of the milk market in recent years, we now see that consumers are ready for a new kind of animal-free dairy cheese product." Christopher Bryant, Ph.D., of the University of Bath, said.

Oscar Zollman Thomas et al, Don't Have a Cow, Man: Consumer Acceptance of Animal-Free Dairy Products in Five Countries, Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems (2021)
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.678491
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Bruce Steele

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2021, 02:42:04 AM »
Voxmundi, Protein from microbes is like all things food ,dependent on price. Protein alone doesn’t make cheese. I don’t know where the microbe cheese will get it’s fat or calcium but how those are obtained will also affect nutrition and costs of the final product.
 If they can make cheap microbe protein then pigs will get it in their diets too.
 I saw where DHA could be enhanced in pigs fed mackerel or tuna. Feeding natural products like passed date canned mackerel , barley not up to beer barley standards, pea culls, or field gleaned squash is all feeding products after humans rejected them for some reason. The quality of the feed does affect the quality of the meat produced as well as the nutritive value for the end consumer. But IMO natural sources are healthier because there is a lot we don’t know as much as we should about how food choices affect disease or health.
 So just because you can make microbe cheese doesn’t mean it will deliver the same nutritive value of real cheese. Just because you can raise a pig on a high protein soy diet and mineral, vitamins, and corn doesn’t mean the quality or food value is the same as Belota Jamon.
 You can get your DHA from fish or Cultured DHA but culture is expensive.

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2021, 06:51:04 AM »
Regarding Sigmetnow's article, I just want to say that I don't believe that an experiment in Antartica can be repeated in other parts of the world. In Antartica, there is just nothing that could interfere with the growing process. When I see how many problems I have to grow my own vegetables in a real life environment, I feel that creating similar condition to the Antartica greenhouse would require a very high level of intervention (chemical, mechanical...) to get a world with just the right components and life.
Same thing when producing milk with yeast. I wonder how easily the production site could get out of balance and which chemicals would have to be used to make sure the product is clean. A cow is a self regulated factory, maintenance is quite easy compared to a food producing factory.

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #8 on: June 25, 2021, 08:21:51 AM »
<snip>
The quality of the feed does affect the quality of the meat produced as well as the nutritive value for the end consumer. But IMO natural sources are healthier because there is a lot we don’t know as much as we should about how food choices affect disease or health.

Thank you Bruce for this.
Protein isn't everything. Bring on the trace minerals and metals and all the other trace nutritional elements.
The same goes for healthy soil (not the protein of course). Artificial fertilisers don't add these.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #9 on: June 25, 2021, 03:24:53 PM »
Bruce wrote:
Quote
I don’t know where the microbe cheese will get it’s fat or calcium but how those are obtained will also affect nutrition and costs of the final product.

That’s a good point.  However, for example: pizza is generally not sought out for its high nutritional value — and lower-fat pizza would be a good thing.  In impoverished countries, people are desperate to get maintenance calories in any form.  So I would say a system that increases the supply of tasty food protein, without increasing animal suffering and carbon footprint, could be very beneficial.
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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #10 on: August 18, 2021, 02:23:32 AM »
As always, in-door/year-round hydroponic growing not only protects crops from insects (near zero pesticides), weather extremes but uses 95% less water... Every apartment tower, to me, should have at least the top floor dedicated to this if not the entire south side: https://newsus.cgtn.com/news/2021-08-15/The-Next-Solutions-Episode-1-Farm-is-the-new-lab-12JAB2Pihl6/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2c5j8MGKYZZxNv0AtLi5-2V9MNtgSstxXSSadLaFiHKgk6OFXt1E14x-s
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #11 on: August 22, 2021, 05:52:00 PM »
Vertical farming in the heart of Kentucky coal country. 

“We know AppHarvest is the future of farming for Rowan County because we’re all hills and not a lot of flat land.” …
AppHarvest claims to produce up to 30 times the yields of conventional agriculture. …
“AppHarvest isn’t farming. It’s industrial food production.” …


Is This Giant Greenhouse in Kentucky the Future of Farming?
Inside AppHarvest's quest to be the world's biggest ag-tech company, save the Appalachian economy, and ensure the global food supply
August 22, 2021. Jon Cherry for Rolling Stone
Quote
AppHarvest’s glass design uses sunlight and has lower energy costs than typical indoor farms, which rely entirely on lighting in enclosed factories. “The Dutch perfected these things over the years, and AppHarvest has collaborated with Dutch companies for these greenhouses,” Stein says, who himself has bought a couple hundred shares in AppHarvest. “Eventually most tomato greenhouses are profitable, otherwise they wouldn’t be replicated around the world. It’s just going to take a while to recoup the capital costs. They’re not insignificant.”

Webb’s goal is to lower domestic dependence on pesticide-laden foreign imports, which provide 70 percent of U.S. vine crops at the grocery store (tomatoes, berries, cucumbers, peppers). And Webb, a Kentuckian himself, wants to provide jobs to Appalachia. But his motivation goes beyond that, he says, to the same obsessive anxiety many in his generation are facing: the screeching freight train of climate change.

“We want to make it clear our competition is not the American farmer,” Webb says, adding that they began with tomatoes to compete with Mexico’s number-one import that relies on chemical pesticides AppHarvest doesn’t use. “The dirty stuff, that’s our competition, and we will ruthlessly go after them. Our goal is to put them into bankruptcy. The food and agriculture companies of today are the cigarette companies that existed in the 1970s.”

Kentucky is also optimal because the location cuts down on shipping distances, AppHarvest says. Seventy percent of the U.S. is within a day’s drive of Kentucky, reducing transportation emissions by 80 percent.


AppHarvest claims to produce up to 30 times the yields of conventional agriculture. “This 60-acre under-glass facility can do the equivalent of 1,500-2,000 [open-field] acres in California or Mexico.” …

AppHarvest says they’ve also reduced water consumption by 90 percent compared to traditional open-field agriculture by using a closed loop irrigation system that’s 100 percent reliant on rainwater, which makes Kentucky an optimal location — the state has had its wettest decade on record, and in 2020 was the wettest state in the U.S.

The long-term goal is “minimal carbon emissions,” … but until then, she says, the benefits of AppHarvest’s net ecological footprint outweigh the adverse effects of its energy consumption, including its ability to conserve water and avoid agricultural runoff from fertilizers and pesticides.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/appharvest-hydroponic-greenhouses-kentucky-future-of-farming-1214262/
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Eco-Author

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #12 on: August 22, 2021, 08:23:49 PM »
Just WOW: "AppHarvest claims to produce up to 30 times the yields of conventional agriculture. “This 60-acre under-glass facility can do the equivalent of 1,500-2,000 [open-field] acres in California or Mexico.” …

24/7/365... perfect conditions... Can see this vary quite a bit depending on crop.  Most people even with 'a back yard' don't even garden any more.  Economy of scale of larger buildings with one of these on the roof would also not require Any transport and likely no heat, as the heat rises from the tower below.  No/far less bacteria contamination of crops must be considered too. 

Usually I like to think about these on the rooftop and simply have a clear thick glass flat roof to let in sun light which may not help all the plants in a stacked arrangement, but should help a good bit.  Entire south Side of a 10-story tower would also shorten the distance light has to travel to get to all trays... 

Last I recall there were fiber optic sun light collectors that could channel sunlight anywhere into the home--even with a parabolic collector to gather more, so this is another way to use more sunlight less energy?!  From what I've heard 20 years of talking on this is that some plants don't taste as well if not actual sunlight...

Self-sufficiency and Durability to disasters are the absolute keys to nearly any disaster you can think of such as War, economic collapse, pandemics, Global warming, quakes, volcanoes, Hurricanes... all of which put solar farms etc. and power grids at risk!

Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #13 on: September 23, 2021, 03:40:54 AM »
Impossible Latest Faux-Meat Maker to Try and Sway Pork Lovers
Quote
Impossible Foods Inc. is launching a new plant-based pork product in the U.S., Singapore and Hong Kong, joining a crowded field trying to replicate the world’s most-consumed meat by targeting consumers in Asia.

Impossible pork will debut at celebrity chef David Chang’s Momofuku Ssäm Bar in New York on Thursday, and restaurants across the U.S. and Hong Kong will be able to order it from food distributors. The product will be available in more than 120 restaurants in Hong Kong in early October, and enter Singaporean eateries the following month, with a focus on those serving regional cuisine, which is traditionally heavy on pork, the company said.

“People who prefer Asian cuisine are absolutely the consumers who are going to migrate to this product,” Impossible President Dennis Woodside told Bloomberg News in an interview.

The rollout comes less than a month after the Redwood City, California-based company started selling faux-chicken nuggets, expanding from its core line of burger patties and sausages. The acceleration of product development at Impossible underscores the fierce competition between food companies as they try to corner the growing market for imitation meat.

Woodside said “whole muscle products” were next. “Think of chicken breast, steak, or pork loin. That muscle is typically denser, chewier, and stringier. That’s a different technical challenge that we’re very focused on solving.”

Still, in its quest to win over Asia, Impossible faces a significant hurdle: a lack of access to consumers in mainland China, where roughly half the pork eaten worldwide is consumed. Global rival Beyond Meat Inc. started selling its faux-pork in China in November, while Chinese startup Zhenmeat started offering it in mid-2020 and Hong Kong’s Green Monday was hawking its OmniPork even before Covid-19. But China’s government hasn’t allowed Impossible to enter the market as the majority of its products use heme -- an ingredient made from genetically-modified yeast -- which requires regulatory approval.

Woodside said there were “no updates” yet on whether its pork would be approved by Chinese authorities, saying Impossible wanted to build a production center in the mainland if it was allowed in.

Faux meat also faces an uphill battle with consumers who still prefer real pork, as plant-based versions generally cost more and versions of popular cuts and dishes -- including pork chops and barbecued pork -- aren’t widely available.

Impossible aims to bring its prices down to closer to that of real meat by scaling up production capacity, Woodside said.

Its U.S. production “has increased by about 14 times in the last 30 months or so,” he said. “As our business grows, we have to constantly be about evaluating new ways of scaling production, whether that’s in the U.S. or overseas.”


Impossible eventually wants to sell packaged pork in grocery stores for cooking at home, he added, and it will be available in ready-to-eat meals in some Hong Kong supermarkets from October.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-22/impossible-latest-faux-meat-maker-to-try-and-sway-pork-lovers
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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #14 on: October 07, 2021, 07:43:51 PM »
Nestle to Trial Plant-Based Eggs and Shrimp
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-10-nestle-trial-plant-based-eggs-shrimp.html

Nestle is offering plant-based alternatives to eggs and shrimp as the Swiss food giant expands its menu in the growing vegan market, the company said Thursday.

The Swiss company has among other things been making a major push in vegetarian and vegan products.

Its latest offerings are the "vEGGie" and "Vrimp".

The egg substitute is made from soy protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

The product "can be scrambled like real eggs, used in a frittata and pancakes or even as an ingredient when baking cakes or cookies," the company said in a statement.

The "Vrimp" is made from mixing seaweed, peas and konjac root, and "has the authentic texture and flavor of succulent shrimps," according to Nestle.

The two products will be offered in a "test-and-learn" launch at a limited number of stores in Switzerland and Germany.

More than 600 companies, from startups to the biggest food companies, are developing such alternative foods, Credit Suisse said.
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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #15 on: October 17, 2021, 08:40:05 PM »
Canada's prehistoric shoreline fish traps and mussle gardens

"The abundance of even long-abandoned gardens found on British Columbia's coast is staggering. Research shows that the terraced gardens, which Indigenous people have been building for at least 3,500 years, are 150 to 300% more productive than wild beaches in producing littleneck and butter clams, as well as other marine organisms."

"In our tradition when you are learning something, you start with the oldest way possible," said Norris. So on the first gathering at a clam garden just off of Salt Spring Island, she told everyone to put their science away, asked for guidance from the ancestors and started at the beginning: "This is how far you put your rake in. This is how wind or salinity or time of year affects the clams."

The moment Indigenous people returned to their sea gardens and fish traps was the moment the technology stopped being about the past and became about the future."

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20211013-an-underwater-mystery-on-canadas-coast

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #16 on: October 20, 2021, 08:18:36 PM »
Alternatives to MREs in disasters, and new methods of food production for resource-scarce regions.

NASA Announces Winners of Deep Space Food Challenge
Quote
NASA, in coordination with CSA, opened the Deep Space Food Challenge in January. The competition asked innovators to design food production technologies or systems that met specific requirements: They would need to use minimal resources and produce minimal waste. The meals they produced would have to be safe, nutritious, and delicious for long-duration human exploration missions.

For the U.S. teams, NASA’s judges grouped submissions based on the food they envisioned producing. Among the designs were systems that used ingredients to create ready-to-eat foods such as bread, as well as dehydrated powders that could be processed into more complex food products. Others involved cultivated plants and fungi or engineered or cultured food such as cultured meat cells.

“These types of food systems could offer benefits on our home planet,” said Robyn Gatens, director of the International Space Station Program at NASA and challenge judge. “Solutions from this challenge could enable new avenues for worldwide food production in resource-scarce regions and locations where disasters disrupt critical infrastructure.”

NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website will air a show on the Deep Space Food Challenge at 11 a.m. EST Nov. 9 with details about the competition, winning solutions, and what could be next for the teams.

Special guests during the show will include celebrity chef Martha Stewart and retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who will announce the winners of two awards honoring international teams that demonstrated exceptional innovation. Other participants will include retired CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield and celebrity chef Lynn Crawford. …
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-announces-winners-of-deep-space-food-challenge

Details about the winning submissions and teams can be found on the challenge website:
https://www.deepspacefoodchallenge.org
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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #17 on: October 28, 2021, 01:14:15 PM »
#0 ... "Our results indeed suggest... "

Wondering to what conclusionsuggestion researchers who eat more vegies might come  ;)

https://twitter.com/landgeist/status/1448990036548984851   Vegetable consumption in #Europe - by Landgeist Maps @landgeist



https://twitter.com/landgeist/status/1452991654584012810   Vegetable consumption in Asia.

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #18 on: October 28, 2021, 06:04:31 PM »
Merged insect farming into this general thread.

It could be a cheap and efficient way of protein which is better then soy from what formerly was a rainforest.
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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #19 on: October 28, 2021, 09:15:37 PM »
Around 1968 my dad and I were walking across a field of young plants (30 or 40 cm tall) in North Texas with the farmer.  He asked my day if he knew what he was growing and my dad didn't.  I remember the farmer saying, "It's called soybeans. It's a new plant; it's no good for eating but makes great cattle forage."

First you claim the idea is actually new (when it isn't, just new to 'you').
Then you claim it's only good for animals (when it isn't, just strange and different to 'you').
Finally it becomes a mainstay of the diet.

Soybeans then, insects today.  Progress!
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ivica

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #20 on: October 29, 2021, 03:41:23 AM »
Had some thoughts similar to Tor's yesterday,

an european meat eater visiting buffet in one of China's poorest provinces: Is this heaven on Earth?

there is alot of food new to me and feeling a bit jealous not being able to try some as my alternate one ;)

<

Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #21 on: November 25, 2021, 10:56:26 PM »
NASA Spinoff
NASA built the first "vertical farm" in the United States to test methods for keeping astronauts fed and healthy during long-duration space missions. Now that same NASA Technology is putting vegetables on your dining room table.
 
NASA Research Launches a New Generation of Indoor Farming
Quote
… One way Plenty Unlimited maintains plant health is by using robotics in nearly every step of the farming process. Proprietary technology grows the company’s Spicy Mizuna Mix… and relies on data to optimize growing conditions. The growing environment mimics the closed-loop environment developed by NASA in the Biomass Production Chamber that demonstrated how to grow plants without sunlight or open air.

Plenty uses less than 1% of the water of traditional farming, and the company's two-acre farm produces similar yields to a 720-acre outdoor farm.

Currently a global market worth $2.9 billion, some estimates project the vertical farming market could reach $7.3 billion by 2025.

“The entire industry is built on NASA research,” said Storey. Since its early days, NASA has explored bioregenerative life-support systems, with plants recycling waste, producing food and oxygen, and eliminating carbon dioxide.

From that work, Plenty adopted a type of “nutrient film technique” that the agency pioneered. This soil-free hydroponic system circulates a constant, minimal film of water around seedlings, containing all the necessary nutrients.

The approach produces fresher, healthier, more flavorful plants. Uniformity of lighting along with data-driven controls over all other variables tied to a plant community makes growth rates and output predictable, according to Storey. Harvesting young plants while they’re more tender and flavorful means the produce tastes better than plants that are allowed to fully mature. And because the time from farm to table is dramatically shorter, the plants retain the freshness and nutritive value typically lost during long-haul transportation.

By controlling every element of the environment, Plenty can avoid using harmful chemicals like pesticides and herbicides that also impact plant health.

Bowery’s system uses artificial intelligence to make sense of crop data and manage growth cycles. Just as a person can learn to identify tip burn on a leaf of butter lettuce, computers can be taught the same kind of recognition. Using thousands of photographs, computers learn to identify problems and automatically adjust parts of the system, said Sztul.

Vertical farms aren’t the only CEA businesses benefiting from NASA research. Potato farmers now use nutrient film technique in greenhouses. The agency first pioneered this method for root zone crops like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, said Wheeler, and it’s proven itself with record-breaking potato yields.

CSS Farms uses this technique to grow seed potatoes called minitubers in greenhouses. Unlike plants grown from seed, potatoes are grown from either cut potatoes or minitubers. These can be shipped and planted in fields, where they grow into plants that produce large potatoes for consumption.

Soil-growing methods typically yield five or six minitubers per plant. “We’ll harvest two or three times a week for a 12-week harvest period in three crops per year. In a nutrient film system, you can get 30 to 50 minitubers per plant,” said Matt Barrow, greenhouse manager with CSS Farms.

As NASA continues to advance life-support systems in preparation for missions to the Moon and Mars, these will support the further growth of the CEA industry. …
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/spinoff/NASA_Research_Launches_a_New_Generation_of_Indoor_Farming
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morganism

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #22 on: December 20, 2021, 11:13:57 AM »
Playing Zeus
Catching Lightning in a Bottle with ARPA-E Awardee Nitricity

"Nitricity may have found a way to sidestep Haber-Bosch altogether using artificial lightning, developing a non-thermal plasma reactor that runs on renewable electricity which could almost completely decarbonize the production of nitrogen fertilizer.

Nitricity has built a novel power supply and reactor to generate plasma. Their plasma generator can take electricity from an adjacent solar panel array and essentially containerize lightning. This artificial lightning is then used to produce fixed nitrogen in solution with water which can then be injected it into an irrigation system. Where Haber can emit ~1.96 lb of CO2 per 1 lb of nitrogen fixed, Nitricity’s fully realized plasma process will emit only ~0.026 lb of CO2 for every lb of nitrogen fixed.

An added bonus of Nitricity’s technology is that it can be located on or near individual farms themselves. Whereas large-scale Haber plants are often located hundreds or thousands of miles away from the farms their products serve, Nitricity can deploy their system in a shipping container hooked up to an irrigation pump, allowing farmers to produce their own fertilizer on site, or at a local facility to provide tanks of nitrogen fertilizer. Nitricity could enable better fertilizer products for farmers using renewable electricity with dramatically lower CO2 emissions and alleviate supply chain issues and safety concerns associated with storing and shipping large amounts of nitrogen.

The plasma reactor and present-day efficiencies allow this technology to work in high value, irrigable fertilizer markets. Nitricity has installed two solar-fertilizer pilots on a farm in California’s Central Valley that have provided fertilizer for tomato, pepper, and broccoli crops."

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/news-and-media/blog-posts/playing-zeus

Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #23 on: July 01, 2022, 10:01:21 PM »
Goats released in New York City park to eat invasive weeds
June 29, 2022
Quote
NEW YORK (Reuters) - More than a dozen goats journeyed to Riverside Park in New York City on Wednesday to feast on weeds, a chemical-free way to remove invasive species while adding to the joys of nature.

The furry visitors arrived in Manhattan from Green Goats farm in Rhinebeck, New York, earlier in the day to gobble up overgrown brush - even species dangerous to humans, like poison ivy.

"Have you seen this slope over here? I am told it is the steepest river bank east of the Palisades," said John Herrold, interim president and chief executive of the Riverside Park Conservancy.

"Imagine trying to keep your balance while you're pulling out invasive plants so that you can plant native species that will better hold the soil and provide better habitat for the wildlife."

Goats are an ingenious approach to weed removal, harnessing their natural hunger for leafy greens as the primary mechanism behind the task, which traditionally involves pollutant chemicals.

"They love this stuff," said Herrold. "They eat poison ivy, they eat the porcelain berry, they eat the multiflora rose and that's what we're trying to get rid of."

Of the 20 goats, four will call Riverside Park home through the end of summer, eating their way through two acres of the park.
https://news.yahoo.com/goats-released-york-city-park-220230779.html
 
Video at the link.
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NeilT

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #24 on: July 01, 2022, 10:25:51 PM »
Goats might eat the top of the plant but pigs tear the roots out and eat them.... 8)
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Tor Bejnar

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #25 on: July 02, 2022, 12:10:25 AM »
About 20 years ago in Tallahassee, Florida the 'authorities' brought in a couple dozen goats, a 'goat'dog and a human minder.  They ate lots of kudzu, and were around for 2 or 3 years.  An internet search suggests they aren't around anymore.
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vox_mundi

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #26 on: August 02, 2022, 12:04:26 PM »
Researchers Add Second Copy of Gene to Give Rice a 40% Yield Boost
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-gene-rice-yield-boost.html

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China, working with a colleague from Germany, has boosted the yield of rice by 40% by giving test plants a second copy of a certain gene. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their work in improving rice yields to meet growing food demands in light of a continuing rise in global population. Steven Kelly with the University of Oxford, has published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team in China.

In this new effort, the researchers took a different approach. Their work began, as Kelly notes, by asking how rice responds to challenges such as depleted nutrition. They found that expression of OxDREBIC, a transcription factor, was upregulated when the plants were growing in nitrogen-poor soil. They then found that they could push the plants to overexpress OxDREBIC by adding a second copy of a gene from another plant to its DNA. They found plants with the second copy produced from 12% to 40% more rice compared to a control group. They also found that doing the same with wheat plants resulted in yield increases up to 10%. The researchers found that their altered rice plants were able to increase their yields by pulling nitrogen more efficiently from the soil and also by speeding up flowering.

The researchers note that their technique could be done equally well using gene editing techniques that do not involve using a gene from another plant, which could reduce resistance to its use in commercial products.

Shaobo Wei et al, A transcriptional regulator that boosts grain yields and shortens the growth duration of rice, Science (2022)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abi8455

Steven Kelly, The quest for more food, Science (2022)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.add3882
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #27 on: August 06, 2022, 09:05:19 PM »
U.S. Restaurant
Cracker Barrel faces blowback after adding Impossible sausage to menu
August 3, 2022
Quote
The Cracker Barrel is a place where you can feast on meatloaf, with three “country” sides and a buttermilk biscuit, while seated next to a stone hearth or with an oil lamp silently flickering on your table. It’s a place where you can, after your meal, buy a glass angel, a peacock fountain or cow-hide pillow in the attached gift store. It’s the kind of place that presents itself as America’s front porch, a rural refuge far from the cultural strife of our cities.

Cracker Barrel’s country tranquility was apparently shattered on Monday, when the chain announced on Facebook that customers could customize their breakfast plate with a plant-based protein as a replacement for their traditional bacon or smoked sausage.

“Discover new meat frontiers,” Cracker Barrel wrote in its post. “Experience the out of this world flavor of Impossible™ Sausage Made From Plants next time you Build Your Own Breakfast.”

The blowback was immediate and intense. Comments, hundreds and hundreds of them, were split along ideological, generational and political lines.

The more conservative takes:
“All the more reason to stop eating at Cracker Barrel. This is not what Cracker Barrel was to be all about,” one person wrote.


The more liberal viewpoints:

“Thank you Cracker Barrel Old Country Store you understand the direction the world is going. Whether you are doing it for marketing, profit or personal reasons, the vegans appreciate that there will be less suffering in the world because of your choice to offer cruelty free food,” wrote one animal lover.

“Lone star tick disease is spreading and some of you yayhoos are gonna have to eat some metaphorical crow with your vegan sausages after the ticks make you allergic to meat,” one person wrote, referring to the bite of a Lone Star tick, which can cause some to become allergic to red meat.


“How can the US possibly survive with *checks notes* more menu options at Cracker Barrell?”

“Some of y’all are working on your third Cracker Barrel heart attack, being so upset about something you don’t even have to eat.” …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/08/03/cracker-barrel-impossible-sausage/
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #28 on: August 13, 2022, 09:05:47 PM »
Raising your own chickens, to avoid store-bought eggs?  Study in Australia ties high lead levels in backyard hens’ eggs to lead in the soil.
 
Backyard hens’ eggs contain 40 times more lead on average than shop eggs
Research has implications for urban gardening and food production.
8/11/2022
Quote
The average level of lead in eggs from the backyard chickens in our study was 301µg/kg. By comparison, it was 7.2µg/kg in the nine commercial free-range eggs we analyzed.

International research indicates that eating one egg a day with a lead level of less than 100µg/kg would result in an estimated blood lead increase of less than 1μg/dL in children. That’s around the level found in Australian children not living in areas affected by lead mines or smelters. The level of concern used in Australia for investigating exposure sources is 5µg/dL.


Some 51 percent of the eggs we analyzed exceeded the 100µg/kg “food safety” threshold. To keep egg lead below 100μg/kg, our modeling of the relationship between lead in soil, chickens and eggs showed soil lead needs to be under 117 mg/kg. This is much lower than the Australian residential guideline for soils of 300 mg/kg.

To protect chicken health and keep their blood lead below 20µg/kg, soil concentrations need to be under 166mg/kg. Again, this is much lower than the guideline.


Deeper analysis of the data showed older homes were much more likely to have high lead levels across soils, chickens and their eggs. This finding matches other studies that found older homes are most at risk of legacy contamination from the former use of lead-based paints, leaded petrol and lead pipes.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/backyard-hens-eggs-contain-40-times-more-lead-on-average-than-shop-eggs/
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vox_mundi

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #29 on: August 24, 2022, 02:45:11 PM »
Cooking Up Mealworms Into a Tasty, Healthful, 'Meat-Like' Seasoning
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-cooking-mealworms-tasty-healthful-meat-like.html



The global population is expected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050 and nearly 11 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. And feeding them all with animal meat—especially cows, pigs and sheep—will require larger amounts of food, water and land resources. In addition, cows are a substantial contributor to climate change, releasing copious amounts of methane in their burps. So, more sustainable sources of protein are needed.

"Insects are a nutritious and healthy food source with high amounts of fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, fiber and high-quality protein, which is like that of meat," says Cho, whose team is at Wonkwang University (South Korea).

But mealworms suffer from an image problem, she says. ... Cho says that to get more people to regularly eat mealworms, a sneakier approach might be in order—hiding insects in the form of seasonings inside easy-to-cook and other convenience products.

The research team's first step was to understand this insect's flavor profile. They compared mealworm aromas throughout its lifecycle, from egg to larva to pupa to adult. While there were some differences in the individual compounds, all of the stages primarily contained volatile hydrocarbons, which evaporate and give off scents. For example, raw larvae had wet soil-like, shrimp-like and sweet corn-like aromas.

Then Hojun Seo, a graduate student on Cho's team, compared the flavors that developed as larvae were cooked with different methods. Steamed mealworms developed even stronger sweet corn-like aromas, whereas roasted and deep-fried versions had shrimp-like and fried oil-like attributes. According to Seo, the flavor compounds from roasting and frying included pyrazines, alcohols and aldehydes, and were similar to the compounds formed when meat and seafood are cooked.

Based on these results, the team expected that additional reaction flavors could be produced from the protein-rich mealworms if they were heated with sugar. Reaction flavors, sometimes called process flavors, are produced when proteins and sugars are heated together and interact, for instance, through Maillard, Strecker and caramelization reactions and fatty acid oxidation, says Cho. The result is usually a suite of "meat-like" and savory flavors.

Hyeyoung Park, a graduate student in Cho's lab and the presenter at the meeting, tested different manufacturing conditions and ratios of powdered mealworm and sugars, producing multiple versions of reaction flavors. She identified a total of 98 volatile compounds in the samples. The team then took the samples to a panel of volunteers to provide feedback about which had the most favorable "meat-like" odor. "As a result of this study, 10 of the reaction flavors were optimized based on consumer preferences," says Park.

They hope that these results will contribute to the commercial development of meat-like and savory flavorings and seasonings, and will encourage the convenience food industry to include edible insects in their products, says Cho. The team's next step is to further optimize cooking processes to reduce any potentially undesirable or off-flavors in the final flavoring material made from mealworms.

Comparison of aroma profiles from mealworm (Tenebrio molitor)-based reaction flavors optimized by consumer preferences, ACS Fall 2022,
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/meetings/acs-meetings/fall-2022.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #30 on: September 17, 2022, 08:30:28 PM »
A new, genetically modified purple tomato may hit the grocery market stands
The USDA has approved a genetically modified purple tomato that boasts health benefits and a greater shelf life than standard red tomatoes.
Quote
(CNN) — It tastes like a tomato, smells like a tomato, and even looks (mostly) like a tomato. There's just one catch: It's purple.

The USDA has approved a genetically modified purple tomato, clearing the path for the unique fruit to be sold in American stores next year.

"From a plant pest risk perspective, this plant may be safely grown and used in breeding," the agency said in a September 7 news release.

The approval moves the purple tomato one step closer to widespread distribution. In addition to its unique color, the purple tomato also has health benefits and a longer shelf life than garden variety red tomatoes, scientists say.

The tomato was developed by a team of scientists, including British biochemist Cathie Martin, who is a professor at the University of East Anglia and a project leader at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England.

Martin worked on pigment production in flowers for over 20 years, she told CNN. "I wanted to start projects where we could look and see whether there were health benefits for this particular group of pigments," she said.

The pigments that drew Martin's interest are anthocyanins, which give blueberries, blackberries and eggplants their rich blue-purple hues. With funding from a German consortium, she decided to engineer tomatoes that were rich in anthocyanins, hoping to "increase the antioxidant capacity" of the fruits. By comparing regular tomatoes to the engineered purple tomatoes, she would be able to easily identify whether the anthocyanins were linked to any specific health benefits.

To engineer the purple tomatoes, the scientists used transcription factors from snapdragons to trigger the tomatoes to produce more anthocyanin, creating a vibrant purple color.

Martin and her colleagues published the first results of their research in 2008 in an article in Nature Biotechnology.

The results were "stunning," she said. Cancer-prone mice that ate the purple tomatoes lived around 30% longer than those that ate normal tomatoes, according to the study.

Martin said there are "many explanations" as to why anthocyanin-rich tomatoes may have health benefits. There are "probably multiple mechanisms involved," she said. "It's not like a drug, where there's a single target. It's about them having antioxidant capacity. It also may influence the composition of the microbiome, so it's better able to deal with digestion of other nutrients."

And in 2013, Martin and colleagues released a study that found the purple tomatoes had double the shelf life of their red cousins.

Martin established a spinout company, Norfolk Plant Sciences, to bring the purple tomatoes to market. Nathan Pumplin, the CEO of Norfolk's US-based commercial business, told CNN that the purple tomato "strikes a cord with people in this very basic way."

The distinctive purple color means that "it takes no imagination to see that it's different," Pumplin said. "It really allows people to make a choice."

The next steps for the purple tomato are FDA approval and commercialization, Pumplin said.

Norfolk will begin to launch limited test markets in 2023 to identify which consumers are most interested in purple tomatoes.

As for the taste? The purple tomato is indistinguishable from your standard red tomato, Pumplin said.

"It tastes like a great tomato," he said.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/17/business-food/purple-tomato-gmo-scn-trnd/index.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #31 on: November 27, 2022, 04:02:22 AM »
Cutting-edge tech made this tiny country a major exporter of food
The Netherlands has used advances in vertical farming, seed technology and robotics to become a global model
Nov. 21, 2022
Quote
The rallying cry in the Netherlands started two decades ago, as concern mounted about its ability to feed its 17 million people: Produce twice as much food using half as many resources.

The country, which is a bit bigger than Maryland, not only accomplished this feat but also has become the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States. Perhaps even more significant in the face of a warming planet: It is among the largest exporters of agricultural and food technology. The Dutch have pioneered cell-cultured meat, vertical farming, seed technology and robotics in milking and harvesting — spearheading innovations that focus on decreased water usage as well as reduced carbon and methane emissions.

The Netherlands produces 4 million cows, 13 million pigs and 104 million chickens annually and is Europe’s biggest meat exporter. But it also provides vegetables to much of Western Europe. The country has nearly 24,000 acres — almost twice the size of Manhattan — of crops growing in greenhouses. These greenhouses, with less fertilizer and water, can grow in a single acre what would take 10 acres of traditional dirt farming to achieve. Dutch farms use only a half-gallon of water to grow about a pound of tomatoes, while the global average is more than 28 gallons.

More than half of the land in the Netherlands is used for agriculture. The Dutch often say their singular focus on food production is born of the harrowing famine the country experienced during World War II. But it could be argued that the preoccupation with food began in the 17th century, when the Dutch were at the center of the global spice trade.

“We have our own indoor farm here where we develop the varieties of the future, crops that can grow quickly and be harvested quickly: lettuce, herbs, leafy crops. The genetics can be improved, as well as the whole technology — indoor farming will only become cheaper. It’s still early days for the industry,” Mazereeuw said.

More than 12 billion heads of lettuce are grown each year from Enza Zaden’s seeds, but it was a tomato in the early 1960s that really put the company on the map — and perhaps what, in turn, put the Netherlands on the map for tomatoes. The country’s greenhouses produce nearly a million tons of tomatoes a year, with exports totaling around $2 billion annually.

“There’s a new tomato virus and we recently found the resistance to that virus in our seed bank,” Mazereeuw said. The company stores its seeds in a temperature-controlled vault — called a seed bank — to preserve genetic diversity, but because seeds don’t stay viable forever, each stored variety must be grown out and those seeds, in turn, saved. It is all of vital importance, Mazereeuw said: “If we talk about food or clothes or energy or animal husbandry — everything starts with plants.”

Nature is brutal. There can be too much sun. Or not enough. Bugs maraud. Rain washes seeds away.
“We believe we can do much better than nature,” said Eelco Ockers, chief executive of PlantLab, which develops and operates custom-built indoor farms worldwide — systems they call “plant production units.” Indoor vertical farmers trade in the free power of the sun for much more expensive electric light, but the benefit is they can much more easily control every variable to get consistent and reliable yield, Ockers said.

The three founders put together their first prototype in 2008 and launched the company in 2010, helping Dutch greenhouse and indoor farmers increase yields with LED lights even when the technology was in its infancy. They have a system whereby enough crops to supply 100,000 residents daily with nearly half a pound of fresh vegetables each can be grown in an area no larger than two football fields.

Earlier this year PlantLab received 50 million euros (about $51.6 million) in investment capital to open more production sites outside the Netherlands to grow vegetables without pesticides or herbicides on a large scale very close to its consumers. The company’s goal is to expand more broadly in the United States, Asia and Latin America in the next five years, with the aim of having 250 acres of its vertical farms worldwide in the next 10 years.

PlantLab’s research and development center in Den Bosch is the largest such center for vertical farming in the world, and it uses limited light spectrum LEDs and plastic stacked production trays, and the plants grow in vermiculite with their roots in water. “Nothing is hand-harvested, nothing is touched by human hands,” Ockers said. The water is recirculated, meaning no water is lost in the growing process. For now, the system is most effective for growing leafy greens, herbs and tomatoes, but he said cucumbers, zucchinis and all types of berries are suited to this growing system. And by limiting the time between harvest and consumption, he said, food waste is minimized and nutrient density is much higher than traditionally grown crops.


Because of intensive electricity needs, Agro Care started its own small energy company. The carbon dioxide generated is used as a nutrient for the crop, piped into the greenhouses via huge ventilators, where it is turned into oxygen by the plants. The upshot is 99 percent efficiency and much less carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.


Boxtel, a town in the southern Netherlands, is home to Vion’s largest pig slaughter facility, dispatching 20,000 pigs per day. Vion uses artificial intelligence to detect and flag signs of animal cruelty and to minimize animal stress.

Egg company Kipster brands itself as a revolutionary chicken farm. It says it is almost climate neutral, and the chickens have more space to roam than many other farms. …
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/netherlands-agriculture-technology/
« Last Edit: November 27, 2022, 04:09:35 AM by Sigmetnow »
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kassy

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #32 on: November 27, 2022, 12:48:14 PM »
Cool to see the countries on the same map.

It all does come at a cost. the resources needed to make all that food equate to the use of about three earths so it is not sustainable. Some of the animal feed is soy from the Amazon etc.

There is also a problem with nitrification of the environment and a problem with pollution in our waterways which we need to fix so that value of exports will go down somewhat.

While technologies help to increase output none so far have helped against pollution of various types.

The greenhouses now also have a problem with the prize of energy shooting up.

The plant lab story is new to me but it will be something we will do in many places.
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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #33 on: November 27, 2022, 01:36:38 PM »
I see (at least) two problems with these indoor growing models.

1) They grow lettuce and tomato, etc, which are very nice products but in my experience totally tasteless and give you no calories. So they are profitable but probably do not really   help in feeding the world. Or do they grow potatoes, grains, etc as well??

2) The cost of plastic and other pollution which comes with these is never counted. If it were you would soon see how sustainable these really are.

The basic problem is too many people. Globally and in the Netherlands as weill. That country is so densely populated...it's terrible


Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #34 on: November 27, 2022, 04:54:46 PM »
From the article:
Quote
The company’s significant achievement is changing the reputation of Dutch tomatoes — they’ve historically been known for hard, flavorless tomatoes harvested green. In 2000, Agro Care started with lights above the tomatoes and began harvesting them on the vine fully ripe.

From the post above:
Quote
For now, the system is most effective for growing leafy greens, herbs and tomatoes, but he said cucumbers, zucchinis and all types of berries are suited to this growing system. And by limiting the time between harvest and consumption, he said, food waste is minimized and nutrient density is much higher than traditionally grown crops.

Dwarf wheat and rice variants (which grow faster and produce less waste than other grains) are being developed in LED-lit plant experiments, including aboard the Chinese Space Station and the International Space Station.  Making more types of food available in less space.  No plastic wrap required. ;)
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #35 on: November 27, 2022, 11:40:40 PM »
My main reason for posting the above article was to show that vertical and indoor farming are not weird, implausible or rare food-growing techniques, as some here have suggested.  As you can see, they are real solutions, being used at scale today in the real world — needing less water, and no herbicides or pesticides, while using LED light (instead of free sunlight in a field at risk of storms and temperature extremes) to assure ample, nutritious food production.
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kassy

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #36 on: November 28, 2022, 01:19:19 PM »
I see (at least) two problems with these indoor growing models.

1) They grow lettuce and tomato, etc, which are very nice products but in my experience totally tasteless and give you no calories. So they are profitable but probably do not really   help in feeding the world. Or do they grow potatoes, grains, etc as well??

2) The cost of plastic and other pollution which comes with these is never counted. If it were you would soon see how sustainable these really are.

The basic problem is too many people. Globally and in the Netherlands as weill. That country is so densely populated...it's terrible

To 1... it is possible to make them not tasteless. Some markets demand that too. With pure hydroponics i am more suspect but even there they claim to fix the micronutrient content.

With indoor growing there are other options too. You can do indoor indoor huegelcultur although that would not be the preferred option (because that would probably be more factory like) we can make indoor soil.

Indoor potatoes should be easy. Grains would be more complicated.

This solution is best for places which are mostly too hot or cold to grow a lot of foods outside while people still want the products. Now they are flown or trucked in so what you produce locally reduces that.

2) Not sure it would need more plastic per se. If you use existing structures that further limits input it just needs good isolation. And some solar and possibly a battery but that also helps outdoors...

And yeah it is crowded here.
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Bruce Steele

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #37 on: November 28, 2022, 04:56:56 PM »
That greenhouse is made from glass and steel which both were produced by fossil fuels, not the sun.
That greenhouse is heated in the winter by natural gas, not renewable and can’t be replaced by any renewable sources.
Insects like whiteflies love greenhouses and because the whiteflies don’t have any natural predators in a greenhouse , your only option is pesticides.
The article says no humans used in production so we can replace more humans with fossil fuel dependent industries.
There are still transportation costs for anything produced because all production not likely sold within one city.
 
As a small farmer I can grow crops in season without any glass or steel.
I can grow crops without any pesticides.
The sun is still a reliable renewable resource and humans should learn to live with what is locally available when it is in season as opposed to rationalizing a structure that excludes nature or carbon sequestration of soils while displacing human labor. You should be comparing organic and locally supplied food with the vertical LED farm not fruit from Africa, Israel or Argentina. Of course there are huge transport costs to long distance perishable food transport but that doesn’t mean giant greenhouses are the solution , it means we need to live with what nature can reasonably supply without shit piles of fossil fuel inputs.
Same with Sigmetnows adaption curves for rubber replaced with fossil fuel synthetic .
Or any number of other human industries displaced by fossil fuel replacements.
So I don’t think these greenhouses or similar efforts to replace nature are technically impossible I just think it is the same bullshit reasoning that has got us into this mess in the first place. Just stupid people who could give a shit about the rest of our living planet so long as their life is comfortable.




« Last Edit: November 28, 2022, 08:38:33 PM by Bruce Steele »

Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #38 on: November 28, 2022, 08:00:44 PM »
Bruce,
How many people will you support with your little farm when the Sacramento Valley turns back to desert, the Colorado River can no longer irrigate the Plains states, and the Midwest crops die in the fields due to heat, drought, floods, storms and insects?

Indoor crops can easily be harvested using solar electricity and robots.  Field crops are the ones currently more dependent of fossil fuels and back-breaking manual labor.
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vox_mundi

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #39 on: November 28, 2022, 08:38:47 PM »
Sig.

The vertical farm won't "support" anybody either. Just produce a lot of salad greens.

Some basic nutritional facts

An adult needs 2400-3000 calories/day (if you plan on doing any physical labor)

An adult needs 30-60 grams of protein/day to sustain a healthy body

One cup of shredded iceberg lettuce (72g) provides 10 calories, 71% of which come from carbs (7 calories), 24% from protein (2 calories), and 6% from fat (1 calorie)

One cup of shredded iceberg lettuce (72g) provides 0.5 grams of protein (while missing essential amino acids)

That means 120 portions of lettuce/day to meet protein requirements (8.6 kilograms - 19 lb)

That's means 300 portions of lettuce/day to meet calorie requirements (21.6 kilograms - 47.6 lb)

Unless you're built like a hippo, 47 lbs of lettuce is a lot to swallow.

And when the power goes out (like in Ukraine) you lose your whole crop.

At least Bruce can provide an entire meal from his land.
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Bruce Steele

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #40 on: November 28, 2022, 09:01:11 PM »
I think more people should take responsibility for their basic necessities , food, water, clothing and shelter. When trying to meet some of these human needs they should take upmost concern to not crush habitats for wild plants and animals. Corporate agriculture whether that be cheap mono crops or expensive specialty foods both displace virtually all other life forms. It doesn’t matter how many people truly sustainable farming techniques that preserve wildlife ( at least partially ) will support . What matters is sustaining life forms and ecosystems that support All life on this planet. Humans are just
another life form , not special and honestly rather pathogenic in its current form. Fossil fuels have enabled our pathological tendencies and when they are gone and most of us with them some humans will find someplace still to live and with some time a lot of other life forms will flourish.
IMO , a better world.

Sublime_Rime

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #41 on: November 28, 2022, 09:08:25 PM »
Sig.

The vertical farm won't "support" anybody either. Just produce a lot of salad greens.


You can't seriously believe some of the most innovative agricultural technology could only be applied to iceberg lettuce? Sure, it doesn't work for taller staple crops, but it is far more efficient for energy dense foods like certain types of beans and root vegetables.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2022/netherlands-agriculture-technology/

https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-vertical-farming/

With widespread water shortages and limits on land available for farming, especially if we need to increase carbon sinks through rewilding, the water and space efficiency of vertical farming, not to mention the carbon savings on transporting food from rural areas, will be crucial.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #42 on: November 28, 2022, 09:26:39 PM »
Sig.

The vertical farm won't "support" anybody either. Just produce a lot of salad greens. …

Please see my post just above:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,3209.msg352358.html#msg352358
 
Many different types of food, including vegetables, fruit, wheat and rice are currently being developed to be grown in limited-space, indoor environments.

See also the Tony Seba thread on proteins being grown from scratch to make foods like those we are used to today, and even more nutritious than today’s food-types tomorrow. 
 
Bruce will say, “But it’s not home grown!”  But if you are hungry and there’s no arable land to plant on — or your crop has just been destroyed by fire/flood/drought — such substitutes will be welcome.  And the fewer commercial animal production facilities and fields of grains grown solely to feed them, the better.
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kassy

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #43 on: November 28, 2022, 09:40:11 PM »
The indoor harvesting can be done by people and not robots which makes it easier to start.

It is a complementary solution. If you can grow things locally which outcompete things that are flown in from far away that is already a win. You can save on water for many crops and the selection goes far beyond ice berg lettuce Which is boring as lettuces go.

Don´t think of it as direct competition for normal farm food but a complementary production line.





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zenith

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #44 on: November 28, 2022, 09:56:51 PM »
Sig.

The vertical farm won't "support" anybody either. Just produce a lot of salad greens. …

Please see my post just above:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,3209.msg352358.html#msg352358
 
Many different types of food, including vegetables, fruit, wheat and rice are currently being developed to be grown in limited-space, indoor environments.

See also the Tony Seba thread on proteins being grown from scratch to make foods like those we are used to today, and even more nutritious than today’s food-types tomorrow. 
 
Bruce will say, “But it’s not home grown!”  But if you are hungry and there’s no arable land to plant on — or your crop has just been destroyed by fire/flood/drought — such substitutes will be welcome.  And the fewer commercial animal production facilities and fields of grains grown solely to feed them, the better.

every molecule that makes up those indoor environments is the direct result of burning fossil fuels during every stage of production, never mind all the constant inputs that are required. i really don't understand how people can't comprehend this at this late stage.
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wrong.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #45 on: November 28, 2022, 10:24:02 PM »
every molecule that makes up those indoor environments is the direct result of burning fossil fuels during every stage of production, never mind all the constant inputs that are required. i really don't understand how people can't comprehend this at this late stage.
"the hand of man perfects nature" - francis bacon
wrong.

So, no different than any other warehouse, then?  ::)
Except that the “constant inputs” in these indoor farming warehouses will be from clean solar energy, not the fossil fuels that are needed to operate a farm at these volumes.
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Sublime_Rime

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #46 on: November 28, 2022, 10:44:05 PM »
every molecule that makes up those indoor environments is the direct result of burning fossil fuels during every stage of production

This assumes that the entire energy sector will be completely fossil fuel dominated in perpetuity, but an ever larger share of this will come from renewables, which are taking over the global energy market at an exponential rate.

This also does not factor in the enormous contribution of land use change to carbon emissions, equivalent to about 6 Gt CO2/year, or 14% of total CO2 annual emissions, which would be greatly reduced by increasing food production from vertical farming.
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Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #47 on: November 28, 2022, 11:02:28 PM »
It’s the same specious argument the climate naysayers have been using for years.  “You can’t use fossil fuels to make a clean energy future!”
 
Why the hell not?  Of course you can use fossil fuels to make progress, if that’s the only energy there is.  Once the clean energy is up and running, it will take the place of the dirty energy going forward, which otherwise you would not have.  Making some arbitrary argument that FF can’t be used to make clean energy happen is just a ridiculous BAU mindset that can’t envision change.
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El Cid

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #48 on: November 29, 2022, 08:28:11 AM »
Techno-dreamers believe that once CO2 is out of the picture , it's all fine and dandy. However, our production methods are not at all circular and we keep producing ever greater amounts of "garbage" which keeps polluting our ecosystems and our own bodies. Even if you replaced all fossil fuels with windturbines and solar panels, those panels and turbines will be polluting at the end of their lifecycles just like the millions of tons of plastic used in these greenhouses. What happens to your LED lights after 10 years? Do you recycle your indoor-robots when they break down or just dispose of them in a landfill? What happens to those landfills? These questions are just as important in not even more important than Co2

Sigmetnow

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Re: New or Alternate Foods & Agricultural Methods
« Reply #49 on: November 29, 2022, 01:43:51 PM »
Techno-dreamers believe that once CO2 is out of the picture , it's all fine and dandy. However, our production methods are not at all circular and we keep producing ever greater amounts of "garbage" which keeps polluting our ecosystems and our own bodies. Even if you replaced all fossil fuels with windturbines and solar panels, those panels and turbines will be polluting at the end of their lifecycles just like the millions of tons of plastic used in these greenhouses. What happens to your LED lights after 10 years? Do you recycle your indoor-robots when they break down or just dispose of them in a landfill? What happens to those landfills? These questions are just as important in not even more important than Co2

You want to go back to living in a cave with a horse and candles?  Cool. 
Step 1:  Responsibly recycle the toxic and radiation-producing device you are using to read this.
Good luck with that victory garden!
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