A woman dries palm seeds in Dabou, around 49 km (30 miles) from Abidjan June 12, 2013. Ivory Coast is seeking to double palm oil production to around 600,000 tonnes by 2020 but must first overcome opposition to the sector and gain access to land, government ministers said. Picture taken June 12, 2013. REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon
Just as information disseminated through social networks has made it easier to decide which flat to rent or movie to watch, rural agriculture stands to gain from a culture of crowdsourcing. Farmers rely on myriad inputs and variables; having reliable, crowdsourced information on those factors could dramatically change the way farmers go about their business.
Annually, Americans eat over a billion pounds of shrimp, making them the nation’s most popular seafood. But the journey from seven seas to cocktail sauce isn’t always the friendliest for the environment—or for the laborers who shell your seafood. So a biotech company is trying to create a sustainable replacement for shrimp by building crustaceans out of red algae.
As a technologist turned restaurateur, Kimbal Musk thinks daily about the future of food. At the World Future Society’s annual summit, the younger brother to tech mogul Elon Musk noted the emerging importance of vertical farming, agriculture in outer space, youth involvement in food production, and vegetarian meat substitutes in the global community’s ongoing fight against food insecurity.
A US startup is breeding and selling larvae as a more sustainable protein and fat source for chickens, pigs, and farmed seafood. Right now, wild-caught fish is a key ingredient in animal feed. The startup’s founders claim that the larvae can help solve some of the planet’s most vexing environmental challenges because producing animal feed based on fish carries a significant environmental impact.