How Cleaner Cow Burps Could Help Fight Climate Change
Overall, the livestock supply chain emits 44 percent of the globe’s human caused methane. So anything you could do to cut down on cow belching would, literally, help save the planet. One fundamental way of fixing the problem involves trying to change the chemistry of what’s happening in cows’ rumens. For some time now, the Dutch life sciences and materials company DSM has been pursuing such a solution, which it appropriately calls its “Clean Cow” project.
 
To Feed Billions, Farms Are about Data as Much as Dirt
The world’s largest producer of autonomous four-wheeled vehicles isn’t Tesla or Google, it’s John Deere. And the cab of one of these self-driving tractors is now so full of screens and tablets that it has come to resemble the cockpit of a passenger jet. Data-centric companies with Silicon Valley pedigrees, like 2 1/2-year-old Granular and aerial surveillance startup DroneDeploy, have the ability to tap into all this machinery and run farms as efficiently as Google runs its data centers.
 
In Honduras, a Wellspring of New Tools to Tackle Drought
Gabino López Vargas and Gumersindo Rodriguez think they’ve found a way to counter conditions that threaten more than 2 million people in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. It’s a model based on “harvesting” water, diversifying crops, and avoiding practices like burning farmland between crop cycles. And they’re working to see that their project spreads.
 
Green Pie in the Sky? Vertical Farming Is on the Rise in Newark
From the outside, the AeroFarms headquarters looks like any other rundown building in downtown Newark, NJ. It used to be a store, and more recently a nightclub. Now it's a test farm. The company's products grow under intense LED grow lights, while their roots are bathed in a nutrient-rich mist. Supporters of vertical farming say it uses less energy transporting food to market, while also requiring less water and pesticides than traditional agriculture.