The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

Hog Farming Has a Massive Poop Problem
by Laura Bult
January 4, 2022

https://www.vox.com/videos/2022/1/4/228 ... ed-farming

Introduction:
(Vox) When large-scale farms confine thousands of animals, it creates a problem that doesn’t exist for farms where animals graze: managing all the animal waste produced in confined spaces. This problem is especially acute for pigs. They produce so much manure that farmers end up using what’s known as a “lagoon and sprayfield system” to manage it.

For this third episode (see below) of our video series with Vox’s Future Perfect team, we went to North Carolina, a state that’s been battling the public health and environmental impact of hog lagoons for decades. The issue is especially grave in this state due to the vulnerable populations who bear the brunt of this pollution, and because hog facilities are so concentrated in such a small area.

Another feature of North Carolina that makes it more vulnerable to water contamination is its permeable, sandy soil in hog farming areas. Experts told me this area used to be swampland and was drained to make way for agriculture. This was a common land management practice in the US and is covered in this Vox video about Lake Erie, produced by my colleague Liz Scheltens.

The location of hog farms in North Carolina is related to the history of tobacco farming in the state. North Carolina is still the biggest tobacco-producing state in the US, but it used to be a much more common cash crop in eastern North Carolina. When the public health effects of smoking became clear and government programs stopped supporting it, many North Carolina farmers started to diversify their practices, including raising hogs. That’s how one of the people we interviewed for this piece, farmer Tom Butler, got into raising pigs — he used to be a tobacco farmer.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

FarmSense Uses Sensors and Machine Learning to Bug-proof Crops
by Matt Marcure
January 7, 2022

https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/07/farms ... ing-crops/

Introduction:
(TechCrunch) Gnawing, burrowing, infecting: The damages caused to agriculture by insect pests like the Japanese beetle (pictured in linked article) exceed $100 billion every year, according to the Agricultural Research Service of the USDA. And along with plant diseases, which the exoskeleton buggers can also transmit, arthropods account for the annual 40% loss of agricultural production worldwide.

Enter FarmSense, a Riverside, California-based agtech startup attempting to solve the insect pest problem. The company creates optical sensors and novel classification systems based on machine learning algorithms to identify and track insects in real time. The key here: real-time information.

They claim real-time information provided by their sensors allows for early detection and thus the timely deployment of pest-management tools, such as insecticide or biocontrols. The current mechanical traps used for monitoring may only yield important intel 10 to 14 days after the bugs’ arrival.
Conclusion:
Looking at how non-native insect invasions are expected to increase by 36% by 2050 and how growing population numbers are going to put greater pressure on food production, innovative tech like the FlightSensor that advances our capacity to understand and thoughtfully respond to threats is more than welcome.

As Carter said about all of the possible ways in which agtech still stands to benefit agriculture, “we need to be creative at those margins.”
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

Veganuary is a Tough Sell
by Jennifer A. Kingson
January 8, 2022

https://www.axios.com/veganuary-is-a-to ... ed9bf.html

Introduction:
(Axios) Veganuary, a campaign that started in the U.K. to get people to give up meat and dairy for the month, is in its third year in the U.S., where it's catching on slowly.
  • About 500,000 people have enrolled globally so far, and a trickle of restaurant chains and food brands in the U.S. are signing on. (More people sign up over time, as the campaign progresses, which brought the number to 582,000 last year.)
Why it matters: While food and drink companies are racing to introduce plant-based products, most people want to pare back their consumption of animal-based foods rather than eliminate them altogether.
  • People like the idea of eschewing animal products, but tend to find the diet inconvenient, expensive and hard to stick to.
  • Veganism is particularly hard to swallow for men, with survey after survey showing that about 80% of people who adopt the diet are female.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

Can Synthetic Palm Oil Help Save the World’s Tropical Forests?
by James Dineen
January 5, 2022

https://e360.yale.edu/features/can-synt ... al-forests

Introduction:
(Yale Environment 360) Tom Jeffries and Tom Kelleher met at Rutgers University in the 1970s while studying industrially useful microbes. Jeffries went on to run a yeast genomics program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Kelleher spent decades in the biomedical industry, working with biologics like insulin, which are produced by genetically modified microbes in giant, fermenting vats. In 2007, the two reunited to build a company on the back of a grant from the National Science Foundation. Called Xylome, the Wisconsin-based startup aimed to find better methods to produce low-carbon fuel by feeding yeast agricultural waste.

Yet it was by accident that Jeffries and Kelleher turned their efforts a few years later to a different global environmental problem: palm oil.

The world’s cheapest and most widely used vegetable oil, palm oil production is a primary driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss in the tropics. These and other problems with the palm oil industry, such as exploitative labor practices, have for years driven interest in more sustainable options. But good alternatives have proven difficult to come by: Other vegetable oils have similar drawbacks to palm oil, and sustainable forestry practices are not always effective in the face of rising demand. Today, the world consumes nearly 70 million metric tons of palm oil each year, used in everything from toothpaste and oat milk to biodiesel and laundry detergent. Demand is expected to more than double by 2050.

But with advances in bioengineering and increasing concerns about sustainability, a number of companies like Xylome have developed microbial oils they say could offer an alternative to palm oil while avoiding its most destructive impacts. They join numerous other synthetic biology companies — from ventures hawking new biofuels and fertilizer to lab-grown meat — that aspire to solve environmental problems but share similar challenges scaling up production and demonstrating their approach is in fact more sustainable than the problem they’re trying to solve.
Image
Forest cleared for a palm oil plantation in Papua, Indonesia.
Greenpeace
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

Nearly Half of Countries' Shared Fish Stocks are on the Move Due to Climate Change, Prompting Dispute Concerns
January 18, 2022

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/940298

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Climate change will force 45 per cent of the fish stocks that cross through two or more exclusive economic zones to shift significantly from their historical habitats and migration paths by 2100, a challenge that may lead to international conflict, according to a new UBC study.

By 2030, when United Nations Sustainable Development Goals should be met, 23 per cent of these ‘transboundary’ fish stocks will have changed their historical habitat range. The modeling study also projected 78 per cent of exclusive economic zones (EEZs)—where most fishing occurs—will see at least one shifting fish stock. By 2100, this climbs to 45 per cent of stocks, with 81 per cent of EEZs seeing at least one stock shift if nothing is done to halt greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is not only an issue of stocks leaving or arriving to new EEZs, but of stocks that are shared between countries, completely changing their dynamics,” said lead author Dr. Juliano Palacios-Abrantes, who conducted the study while at UBC’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF). Now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he said the study provides a timeline suggesting these shifts had already been underway since the beginning of the 21st century. “We will see even more dramatic changes by 2030 and onwards, given current emissions rates. Many of the fisheries management agreements made to regulate shared stocks were established in past decades, with rules that apply to a world situation that is not the same as today.”

The study tracked the shifting ranges of 9,132 transboundary fish stocks, which account for 80 per cent of catch taken from the world’s EEZs, starting in 2006 and projecting to the year 2100.

Changes in stocks’ distribution will affect catches. By 2030, 85 per cent of the world’s EEZs will have seen a change in the amount of their transboundary catch that exceeds normal yearly variation. It is a shift that Dr. Palacios-Abrantes expects will raise tensions over which countries can claim majority ownership of certain stocks, particularly given that between 2005 and 2010, fishing of transboundary species in total netted an estimated US$76 billion in revenue.
Here is a link to published results of the study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epd ... /gcb.16058
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

Gassy Cows are Warming the Planet, and Scientists are Turning to the Sea for Answers
January 20, 2022

https://caseagrant.ucsd.edu/news/gassy- ... or-answers

Introduction:
(Sea Grant California) California might be able to meet ambitious methane reduction goals by making cows less gassy.

Luke Gardner is a California Sea Grant aquaculture extension specialist at the Moss Landing Marine Lab with a creative solution to the growing problem of cow burps, which release the potent greenhouse gas, methane. Previous research has shown that certain seaweeds can alter cow digestion in lab experiments and reduce the production of methane gas by 99%, but will native California seaweeds have the same effect?

Gardner seems well suited to lead the Ocean Protection Council funded research project, which is administered by California Sea Grant. He spends his weekends raising beef cattle in the rolling hills of Carmel Valley, just east of Monterey Bay. This status as scientist-who-moonlights-as-rancher gives him perspective on the issue from multiple angles. As a scientist, he recognizes the importance of reducing greenhouse gasses, but as a cattle rancher, he sees the gassy digestion as lost energy which leads to lower productivity for the rancher. Soothing a cow’s digestion could not only reduce methane emissions, but also help them metabolize their food more efficiently.

“There might be an opportunity here where we can stop the release of the methane but also improve the bottom line of the actual dairy and beef producers,” says Gardner.

Although methane is short-lived in the atmosphere, it’s a greenhouse gas 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide. This is a problem worldwide, but the issue is acute in California, which aims to reduce methane 40% by 2030. The majority of this methane now comes from the more than 1.4 million dairy cows and 1 million beef cattle in the state.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by wjfox »

UK could grow up to 40% of its own fruit and vegetables by using urban green spaces

Mon 24 Jan 2022 10.52 GMT

Britain could grow up to eight times its current production of fruit and vegetables if all available urban and under-used green space were turned to cultivation, new research has shown.

Only about 1% of urban green space is made up of allotments, but if gardens were used, along with parks, playing fields, watersides and other overlooked open spaces, the area would add up to enough to grow nearly 40% of the UK’s fresh fruit and vegetable consumption, most of which comes from overseas, according to the study.

While researchers were not seriously suggesting ploughing up parks and recreation areas, the first nationwide study of urban growing potential, by Lancaster University, demonstrated how much potential lies in areas that are often undervalued and overlooked. Using just a fraction of the nation’s scraps of urban green land for communal growing could provide a useful amount of fresh fruit and vegetables that would improve people’s diets, help vulnerable people and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/j ... een-spaces
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

A Bioelectronic Tongue ‘Tastes’ Sweetness

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/941256

Introduction:
(American Chemical Society via EurekAlert) Candy, cookies, juices. Just about everyone likes sweet treats, but what one person thinks tastes too sugary, another might think is just right. This variability makes it challenging to develop new foods and beverages, so companies have sought a more objective method. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have developed an ultrasensitive bioelectronic tongue that measures sweetness by mimicking human taste buds.

Although human sensory panels are the most common way to analyze a substance’s taste, there can be a lot of differences in how people perceive flavors. To get more objective data, researchers have made bioelectronic tongues in the lab, but they either are complicated to manufacture or can’t fully replicate the way the human tongue works. Human tongues have sweet taste receptors with two large, complex structures that bind to compounds such as sugars. The outermost portion of one of these structures is called the Venus flytrap domain because its hinged, two-lobed molecular structure resembles the leaves of the insectivorous plant that close around its prey. This domain interacts with most of the sweet substances a person consumes. In a previous study, Tai Hyun Park, Seunghun Hong and colleagues made an umami sensor with human-like performance by using just the protein at the end of the umami taste receptor. So, these researchers wanted to apply the same concept to make a sweet-sensing bioelectronic tongue, using the Venus flytrap domain as electronic taste buds.

The researchers attached copies of the Venus flytrap domain that were made by bacteria in a thin layer on a gold electrode. They then connected multiple gold electrodes together with carbon nanotubes, making a field-effect transistor device. When solutions of naturally sweet sucrose or of the artificial sweetener saccharin were applied to the device, the current decreased. The sensor responded to these solutions down to the 0.1 femtomolar level, which is 10 million times more sensitive than previous bioelectronic sweet sensors, the researchers say. The device could also consistently measure the sweetness of real drinks, such as apple juice and sucrose-sweetened chamomile tea, but it did not show a response when cellobiose (a tasteless sugar) or monosodium glutamate (a salt known as MSG) were introduced. Because the bioelectronic tongue was both sensitive and selective for sweet-tasting compounds, the researchers say this could be a powerful tool for the health care, pharmaceutical, and food and drink industries.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

To better understand the future of agriculture in the United States, perhaps an economic snapshot of the industry as it currently stands is in order.

Image
In 2020, most of the values of cotton (62 percent), dairy (73 percent), and specialty crops (57 percent) were produced on large-scale family farms. USDA defines a family farm as one in which the principal operator and related family own the majority of the assets used in the operation. Large-scale family farms are those with an annual gross cash farm income of $1 million or more. However, small family farms produced the bulk of hay production (59 percent) and poultry and egg output (49 percent) in 2020. Poultry operations are often classified as “small” because most output is under a production contract arrangement, with a contractor paying a fee to a farmer who raises poultry to maturity. Additionally, more than one-quarter of beef production occurred on small family farms that generally have cow/calf operations. Another 42 percent of beef production occurred on large-scale family farms, which are more likely to operate feedlots. Midsize family farms production ranges from 8 to almost 30 percent of value of production. Nonfamily farms produce the smallest share of the value of production for most commodities. Of all the commodities, nonfamily farms contribute the most to specialty crop production at 27 percent. This chart is found in the Economic Research Service report, America’s Diverse Family Farms: 2021 Edition, released December 2021.
Source: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ ... tId=102991
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6509
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: The Future of Food, Agriculture, and Aquaculture

Post by caltrek »

Billions of Animals are Slaughtered Every Year — Just to be Wasted
by Kenny Torrella
January 30, 2022

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2289 ... al-welfare

Introduction:
(Vox) You may have heard the grim statistic by now: Around one-third of food produced in the US is never consumed, ending up in landfills as waste.

The biggest benefit of reducing food waste is self-evident — over 10 percent of US households experience food insecurity, and diverting food that’s safe and edible but destined for those landfills to those in need could help millions lead healthier, better lives.

But there’s another benefit of reducing food waste that’s starting to get more attention, and the EPA recently shined a spotlight on it in a new report: “Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste.”

“This uneaten food results in a ‘waste’ of resources—including agricultural land, water, pesticides, fertilizers, and energy—and the generation of environmental impacts—including greenhouse gas emissions and climate change,” the authors write in the report.

According to the EPA, food waste accounts for 2 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions — about half that of aviation. While meat, dairy, and eggs compose just a little over a quarter of US food waste by weight, the EPA report authors argue that there are disproportionate environmental benefits to reducing animal product waste. That’s because animal products typically require much more land, water, and energy — and emit more of the greenhouse gases carbon and methane — than plant-based foods
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
Post Reply