Chester County Food Bank agricultural director Bill Shick covers a hydroponic growing bed holding lettuce inside a "tunnel" greenhouse, where the program grows seedlings, in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania November 21, 2013. REUTERS/Tom Mihalek​

The Future of Lettuce Looks a Whole Lot like a Weed Farm
This past year, due to innovations in technology, the cost of LEDs dropped by 85%—making the lights accessible and profitable to indoor farms for the first time. Edenworks is one of several indoor farms that have jumped on the favorable price of LEDs, but unlike most vertical indoor farms, which use carefully curated formulas to provide nutrients to their plants, their fertilizer comes from an adjoining tank of tilapia.
 
Plastic Lumber and Sanitary Pads Made from Bananas Win GIST Boot Camp
A Kenyan company that makes sanitary pads from bananas has won a major technology boot camp in Johannesburg, South Africa. Pad Heaven makes low-cost sanitary pads using the fibers and stems of banana plants. Their technology converts the plant pulps to make pads that are hygienic, affordable, and 95% bio-degradable. Over 900,000 girls in Kenya miss up to four days a month from school due to a lack of affordable sanitary pads.
 
Herdfunding: How the Internet Is Raising Money for Farms
While crowdfunding has long been the provenance of writers, filmmakers, and other creatives, a growing number of farmers are turning to it to support sustainable agriculture projects. While bank loans can bring in funds—assuming farmers can show assets to qualify, which is often challenging for small farms or new farmers—they don’t guarantee customer support. Crowdfunding builds customer support into the model.
 
Farmers Reap New Tools from Their Own High-Tech Tinkering
A technology revolution is sweeping North America’s breadbasket. Farmers, many of them self-taught, are building their own robotic equipment, satellite-navigation networks and mobile applications, moving their tinkering projects out of machine sheds and behind a computer screen. Technology is already firmly rooted in modern farming, allowing a shrinking number of farmers to oversee more acres.
 
Ethiopian Coffee Farmers Full of Beans as Barcodes Promise Better Business
Farmers expect a new hi-tech tagging system to deliver a premium price for their traceable coffee in a global market that favors origin verification. With sights set on dominating the high-end coffee market and improving the livelihood of millions of producers, the ECX, USAID, and the sustainable coffee program—a global initiative including buyers such as Nestle—invested $4.2 million in the new traceability system.