A San Francisco agritech start-up has created a vertical farm that is run by AI and robots. Plenty’s upright facility grows as much produce as 720 acres of typical farmland, but with a footprint of just two acres. AI monitors water usage, light, and environmental conditions and it learns how to grow crops faster and … Read more
How can insect farming contribute to food security? One British firm believes it has the answer. With the global population set to top nine billion by 2050, it’s estimated that food production needs to increase by around 70 per cent to meet demand, and do so sustainably. Some 820 million people go hungry globally, yet a … Read more
Plants grown in space could feed astronauts, but might new strains contribute to ending a food crisis here on Earth, too? American commercial space services company Nanoracks has ambitious plans to operate orbital greenhouses where it would create mutant crops that could save the Earth from famine amid progressing climate change. The plan seems to … Read more
A new way to create ‘food inks’ from fresh and frozen vegetables that enables 3D-printed food has been developed by Singapore researchers. The research team claims their method preserves the nutrition and flavour better than existing methods. Food inks are usually made from pureed foods in liquid or semi-solid form, then 3D-printed by extrusion from … Read more
A new type of soil created by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin can pull water from the air and distribute it to plants, potentially expanding the map of farmable land around the globe to previously inhospitable places and reducing water use in agriculture at a time of growing droughts. The team’s atmospheric … Read more