A worker shows crickets at a farm belonging to company "Little Food," which prepares and promotes food products made from crickets, in Brussels, Belgium. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
A New Animal Farm
Aspire Food Group is a team of robots and scientists raising crickets and capturing data in hopes of making the cricket rearing process automated for the most efficient yields. Crickets pack more protein than beef, more calcium than milk, more iron than spinach, and as many fatty acids as salmon. As Earth’s population increases by billions in the coming decades, food production must double to feed everyone, and crickets can be an important factor.
Why the Blockchain Is Standardizing What It Means to Be Authentic and Sustainable
There needs to be a set of standards for sustainable foods and goods that can be widely used and trusted by consumers. A blockchain system offers in-depth, convergence capabilities. In the future, true authenticity will be rooted in this record through a secure digital identity for an object—creating a one-to-one link between the object and its identity on the blockchain.
This Farmer Turns Manure into Clean Water and It May Be the Future of Farming
Austin Allred uses a bio-filter to process cows’ byproducts that strips the manure of its 90 percent water content, separates the nutrients for later use, and also traps gases like ammonia. That manure is then clean enough for use around the farm, no longer a byproduct, but an essential contribution to the farm. Allred emphasizes, “In order for us to be successful in the long term, our practices have to be sustainable.”
A Stampede of Meatless Products Overrun Grocery Store Meat Cases
High-tech startups are building burgers from plant proteins and compounds that grill and taste more like the real thing. Other firms are using cell-culture technology to grow meat in stainless steel bioreactor tanks. Stakes are high for the roughly $200 billion US meat market. Sales of alternative meat products account for less than 1 percent of fresh meat sales in the US but are growing at an annual rate of 24.5 percent.
From Craft Breweries to Cows
When Mike Hess Brewing’s craft beer business began to boom, the team needed an efficient and responsible way to dispose of the nearly 20,000 pounds of spent grains produced each week. They found an unlikely partner in the animal agriculture industry. Now Frank Konyn Dairy's trucks pick up the grains from the breweries almost every day. They bring it back to the farm, where a nutritionist mixes it with other grains, leftover bread from local bakeries, fruit pulp from local juice companies, and alfalfa.