Techdirt. Stories filed under "farming"

Techdirt. Stories filed under "farming" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "farming"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 3 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Antibiotic Abuse In The Food Industry Joyce Hung http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090527/1600115036/dailydirt-antibiotic-abuse-food-industry.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090527/1600115036/dailydirt-antibiotic-abuse-food-industry.shtml data from the FDA, the livestock industry now uses almost 80% of all the antibiotics used in the U.S. The main concern is that the practice of dosing healthy farm animals daily with antibiotics will create drug-resistant bacteria. About three-quarters of Salmonella found on ground turkey and chicken breast are now resistant to at least one antibiotic, and almost half of the Campylobacter found on chicken products are resistant to tetracyclines. Here are some other examples of antibiotic abuse in the food industry.

Researchers have found 149 different drug-resistant genes in bacteria on antibiotic-intensive pig farms in China. These antibiotic-resistant genes can spread to the environment and end up in many different kinds of human pathogens. [url]
Did you know that organic apple and pear orchards are treated with tetracycline to prevent a disease called fire blight? While this may be surprising, tetracycline has actually been allowed for use in organic farming in the U.S. since the mid-'90s (with the understanding that their use would eventually be phased out). Fire blight has already become resistant to streptomycin -- how long will it be before tetracycline stops working, too? [url]
If you use logic "borrowed from the anti-GMO crowd," you could argue that antibiotic abuse in the meat industry causes autism and diabetes... because both antibiotic use and the number of autistic children and diabetics have been increasing over the years. Right? Right?? [url]

Organic farming is great, but it often produces lower yields of crops compared to conventional farming techniques. Organic farming yields are actually comparable for some fruits, but for vegetables and cereals, conventional farming has the upper hand. The score isn't settled yet; organic farmers might be able to increase their productivity if they can find better sources of organic nitrogen. [url]

Singapore has a commercial vertical farm in operation that could bring back more agriculture to the tiny nation-city. Sky Green Farms is selling its crops in Singapore supermarkets, and it's looking to license its technology to other countries that might also need small-footprint farming. [url]

VertiCrop is another vertical farming technology company based in Canada which grows vegetables hydroponically with a fraction of the water and land usages of a standard farm. The mechanized farming can be managed by as little as 3 people and still process 10,000 plants every 3 days. [url]

Some architects are creating "farmscrapers" -- super tall buildings that contain agricultural features. Growing trees on the sides of a skyscraper probably has a few problems, but the designs look cool. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101227/00021312420 Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Robot Farmers Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120730/07111819882/dailydirt-robot-farmers.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120730/07111819882/dailydirt-robot-farmers.shtml farmers face the global economy, armed with technological advances and innovative strategies to target customers. If farmers don't invest in new tools and learning skills like genetics and marketing, they risk falling behind their competition. Robots are already a pretty significant part of modern farming nowadays, and here are just a few interesting links on robots doing our agricultural bidding.

Robots are good at tasks that are dull, dirty or dangerous -- so they can be useful for all kinds of farming. Robots are helping dairy farmers to milk cows, and robots can plant and harvest fields -- but human farmers won't be completely replaced just yet. [url]
Flying, lightweight agricultural robots could help monitor crops and spray herbicides more intelligently. Zapping bugs from a remote-controlled quadcopter sounds like it could be a better game than Farmville. [url]
Japan's Ministry of Agriculture is experimenting with a robot farm project in a 600 acre that was devastated by a tsunami. Over 59,000 acres farmland were damaged by the earthquake, flooding and nuclear fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, but robots could help clean up and revive agriculture in northeast Japan. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120730/07111819882 Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:00:38 PDT High Tech Cows & Open Source Farm Equipment: Yes, The Economics Of Farming Is Relevant Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120320/04562818170/high-tech-cows-open-source-farm-equipment-yes-economics-farming-is-relevant.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120320/04562818170/high-tech-cows-open-source-farm-equipment-yes-economics-farming-is-relevant.shtml not to respond, perhaps we can help lots of other industries move more smoothly into the future. So I'm always interested and intrigued by parallels in totally unexpected industries. Just recently, the good folks over at NPR's Planet Money put together a fascinating episode about modern farm economics (and host Adam Davidson also wrote a NY Times piece on the same subject). While it mainly focuses on Claudia, the high-tech cow, it also has some key economic points that will likely sound familiar to regular readers (unfortunately, these key economic points are only in the audio version of the podcast, and were left out of the transcript). Near the beginning, host Adam Davidson lays out his "four clear lessons about how to have a shot at thriving in the current global economy."

Stay on top of technological change.
Focus. Specialize on the things you can do best.
Find some way to buffer yourself against unexpected changes that are definitely coming.
Find something that you can sell that your customers are willing to pay a premium for because you've given them something they want which no one else can give them.

All of those sound familiar to one degree or another, but clearly number one and number four are ones that we hit on frequently. They then use the example of Fulper Farms to show how it can work. They talk about the technological change and innovation not just in process, but in the breeding of better cows, which leads to the "bleeding edge high tech cow." They then talk about specialization, where the Fulper's don't do everything that a farmer used to do, but instead focus on raising and milking cows, and rely on other experts to handle the breeding of cows (to get those high tech cows) and even cow nutrition (letting this other person stay up on the latest in cow nutrition science).

To some extent, it's like the differences we've talked about between gatekeepers and enablers. The gatekeepers wanted to be at the center of things and control all aspects of production, distribution, etc. But in a world of enablers there's much more specialization. So, for example, in the music world, musicians can pick and choose from best-of-breed solutions to help create, distribute, promote and monetize their work, rather than just relying on a single provider.

Not much time is spent on the third point, but there's a brief discussion about financial tools to help buffer the swings in the market -- things like grain futures and such, which are really just forms of insurance to protect in a volatile market. I'm a little less interested in this particular point. I think it can be important in some industries but is less of a key point long term.

But the fourth point was what I found the most interesting, and obviously fits most closely with some of the theories and business models I've espoused for years: sell something scarce which people want to buy. But, in a commoditized world such as farming, how is that even possible? Well, we hear the same thing in the music world all the time, where people insist that there's nothing to sell but the music, but then we see lots of folks get creative and do amazingly creative things. And the same thing is clearly happening on the Fulper Farm as well -- thanks in part to the youngest generation, who attended my own alma mater (Go Big Red!), and is applying some of what she learned about being more entrepreneurial back to the farm.

She's trying out a few things to take some special facets of what the farm has available, for which they can charge a premium:

Breanna realized they kept talking about this "problem" they had. They're really close to New York City. Land is really expensive in Northern New Jersey. There's not an agricultural world there, so they have to travel really far to buy ag equipment. There's all these problems being so close to New York City. And she realized, by using her farm as a case study in college, that being so close to the City might be the best way to make money. It might be their secret to being a successful farm. I looked and I couldn't find any farm closer to New York City. I think this is the closest one to Brooklyn... And people in Brooklyn are kind of obsessed with farming....

Breanna has figured out that there's money in that. She's working with a cheese maker who's going to help them make a premium Fulper-branded cheese. You and I, some time soon, can go to our local shop and buy really, really local... this is "the closest cheese to Brooklyn."...

Breanna had this other idea. Did you know that you could send your two daughters for a week to summer camp at Fulper Farms?.... Families pay a few hundred bucks, their kids have an awesome week experiencing agriculture.... You know what's amazing? A few weeks of summer camp that Breanna did as a college project? Brings in almost as much money as a whole year of milking cows.

Hello alternative revenue streams. I'm sure the purists will insist that just like a musician should only sell music, a dairy farmer should only sell dairy products. But a smart business person finds ways to capitalize on real scarcities, and that's exactly what Breanna appears to have done with the Fulper Farms.

The report concludes with another key point that we've definitely seen in the music business as well. Davidson notes that there's a lot more opportunity, and the average farm is now making more money than in the past, but it's a lot more volatile, and lots of the old guard simply don't make the transition well. Once again, this sounds mighty familiar.

It's kind of neat to see the parallels between such different industries when it comes down to the basic economics of progress and technological change.

Along those lines, perhaps there are even more parallels moving into the future. As I was working on this post, Leigh passed along a TED talk from about a year ago by Marcin Jakubowski, who is taking the concepts of the maker culture and the open source ethos and applying it to farming. It seems like an appropriate thing to end this post with, so check it out:

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]]> innovation-impacts-lots-of-industries http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120320/04562818170 Fri, 16 Dec 2011 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Growing Food Safely Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111112/01464716748/dailydirt-growing-food-safely.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111112/01464716748/dailydirt-growing-food-safely.shtml

A study of over 200 pregnant women indicates that there is a possible link between eating rice (grown in the US!) and consuming potentially harmful levels of arsenic. Apparently, the arsenic comes from years of pesticide use where rice is grown, and unfortunately, there aren't any legal limits for arsenic in most foods sold in the US. [url]

Farmers are looking to kill off stink bugs without pesticides using parasitic wasps. But first, researchers need to determine if releasing the wasps won't cause even more problems with farm crops and the environment. [url]

Strains of Escherichia coli on bean sprouts that caused food poisonings and deaths in Germany may have come from human sources. Japanese researchers suggest a remedy of soaking the veggies in strong vinegar to kill off these nasty bugs. [url]

To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111112/01464716748 Tue, 5 Jul 2011 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Robots To Help Feed Everyone Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110608/17371714618/dailydirt-robots-to-help-feed-everyone.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110608/17371714618/dailydirt-robots-to-help-feed-everyone.shtml

What could be more fun than a pancake-making robot made out of Lego... A Disney lawsuit story over the Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes? [url]

Autonomous robot farmers will help harvest and cultivate all sorts of crops. As long as humans aren't turned into Coppertops... [url]

Maybe grocery stores could just be giant vending machines. But somebody still needs to mind the store because it looks like roughly half of the population might try to walk out without paying. [url]

To discover more interesting robotics-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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]]> urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110608/17371714618 Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:00:00 PDT DailyDirt: Open Source Hardware For Fun... And For The Preservation Of Civilization? Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110520/16061514364/dailydirt-open-source-hardware-fun-preservation-civilization.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110520/16061514364/dailydirt-open-source-hardware-fun-preservation-civilization.shtml

The HexBright is an open source flashlight that lets users recharge and reprogram this flashlight over USB. It ain't cheap to pre-order one from Kickstarter, but you could always build your own.... [url]

TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski has been working to create 50 open source blueprints for farm machinery -- aiming to help build self-sustaining villages for about $10,000. Pretty soon, they'll probably need to open source the seeds they'll plant, too. [url]

The 2nd Annual Open Hardware Summit is accepting submissions for its gathering on September 15th, 2011 in New York City. The deadline for submissions is coming up soon -- June 24th. [url]

To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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