Seasteading: utopian floating cities or safe haven for western pirates?
The Seastead Institute and its branch projects aim to build a new society free of government ties, on the water.
hydroponics
Infarm raises $170 million to add “farm” to cities
Infarm, a company that grows fresh produce inside supermarkets, has recently announced a $170 million USD funding round to help the company expand across Europe. Their environment-controlled and automated growing chambers grow food such as leafy greens inside the supermarket, so it's fresh, without your food accumulating food miles.
Moshe Safdie’s skywalk garden puts nature in China’s sky (VIDEO)
Moshe Safdie does it again: a stunning urban jungle and green tube high in the sky of a Chinese city.
New Yorkers go hard against fossil fuels, divest $215.5 billion pension funds from fossil fuels
You got to love New Yorkers. They are real, and they are often serious. And they like to walk the walk. So New Yorkers have a lot to celebrate now that their elected mayor Mayor Bill de Blasio declared that he will stop all new fossil fuel projects within and serving the city. Great talk, but what are locals doing really?
Tips for giving the ultimate kind of charity
Hydroponics farming is a good solution for growing food in countries where water is scarce. A USAID program gives training to local farmers so they can grow their own food and livelihood. This couple are from Jordan.
Want to live on Mars? Gala dinner in LA unveils first opportunities to eat like a Martian
If you could move to Mars, what would your house look like? Would you eat from your local hydroponic Martian farm, drink wine from the Martian vineyard and eat meat cultured by vegetarian butchers? Mars architect Vera Mulyani is building the first Mars City, on Earth, and is pretty sure your future home on Mars, […]
This growbot can help you grow food and cannabis, on earth and in space
If you’ve been following Green Prophet you’ll know that our founder Karin Kloosterman has been working on a super cool technology to help people like me and you take our food destiny into our own hands. That means the ability to grow super tasty, fresh and local food right from home. She’s built Eddy, a […]
New ways of growing plants
As urban sprawl continues, we are seeing less and less green space. Farmland is sprouting with subdivisions, city parks are being crowded out, and ever-smaller residential lots feature more residence and less lot. People are becoming less and less familiar with the wonders of nature, and they are craving access to it. Of course, from […]
Could hydroponics save Yemen from starving?
The number of food insecure people in Yemen has risen by 3 million in seven months, with an estimated 17.1 million people now struggling to feed themselves, according to a joint assessment by three UN agencies. Of the 17.1 million food insecure people, about 7.3 million are considered to be in need of emergency food […]
World’s first hydroponic community garden for refugees
A new project in a troubled neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, Neve Sha'anan, is attempting to connect people to their food traditions using hydroponics, a novel and sustainable way for community gardening.
Sundrop Farms grows tomatoes with seawater
Saltwater greenhouses can save the Middle East and humanity from drought and climate change. Three cheers to Sundrop Farms in Australia for pioneering saltwater greenhouses in Australia: they are now harvesting tomatoes for a leading grocery store called Coles. And Sundrop is producing what they say is a “better product, better for the people, better for […]
Gazan farmer is a role model for urban agriculture
Palestinian Said Salim Abu Nasser is on a mission to make urban farming more sustainable. He transformed a derelict lot in Gaza City into a 200 square meter micro-farm that produces safe and affordable food in a maximally sustainable way.
City mapping for refugees locked in a concrete jungle
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have been living in a concrete jungle for decades. Unlike the tents and temporary conditions of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have put down roots. More than 400,000 refugees live in a labyrinth of concrete structures, built one on top of the other. It’s a mess, but volunteers now plan […]
Growing your own food in America is now a criminal act?
Last week in Florida, a judge ruled on an ordinance banning front yard vegetable gardens. This allowed the upscale village of Miami Shores to take legal action against residents who to grow food in their yards on the grounds that vegetable patches are “ugly.” Seems, in at least one part of America, that growing your […]
Build an ecological homestead for 1/10th the cost of a trad home!
It’s coming up on two years since Cameron Sinclair announced the shutdown of Architecture for Humanity, probably the best thing to ever emerge from an architect’s imagination. That San Francisco-based nonprofit brought pro-bono architecture to the world’s neediest communities. Now a young husband/wife team have stepped into the void, launching a venture to make affordable, ecological housing accessible to […]
Chicago’s urban farming produces fresh veggies all year, 24/7
Hydroponics and new, high-tech urban agricultural techniques are now growing fresh food in the middle of Manhattan and other large metropolitan centers globally. People are catching onto the taste and business opportunities of urban agriculture: find it growing in Middle Eastern cities such as Cairo, Egypt too! Urban farming in midwestern American cities like Chicago has had its […]
Gaza produce on the menu at swanky American event in Jerusalem
Gaza’s ever-increasing population growth, combined with severe fresh water shortages is resulting in constant challenges to provide enough food for the enclave’s 1.8 million inhabitants. Due to lack of available agricultural space, various methods used to produce food supplies have included planting roof top gardens of herbs and vegetables and small aquacultural projects to grow their own fish. […]
Pesticides may increase nervous system diseases like ALS
I don’t care about spots on my apples, leave me the birds and the bees… this was the Joni Mitchell song in the 70s when DDT was a common pesticide. It may be banned in America but its effects linger on. Then there are entire classes of pesticides that are believed to be killing us in […]
Plants give biofeedback to optimize their own light levels in hydroponics
Controlled environment agriculture is rapidly becoming an important part of the global food system. For example, there has been much interest in the potential of large-scale, indoor agricultural production – often referred to as vertical farming – as a means to produce high quantities of produce. These “plant factories” are expensive to operate, however, in […]
Landmark study: other people’s drugs enter our bodies through veggies and fruits
Reclaimed or grey water is touted as a great means to save and reuse water where water resources are thin. A new study from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem makes us want to think twice about saving precious water: researchers studied the vegetables grown in reclaimed water and found traces of human pharmaceuticals used for treating […]
Brooklyn’s Gotham Greens builds world’s largest urban rooftop farm
Growing green roofs is now mandatory for new buildings being built in Canada and France. Middle Eastern countries facing dire food and water insecurity know that farming close to home can cut down greenhouse emissions and if farmed hydroponically can drastically cut the water bill –– in some cases by 90%! Puttings its money where […]
Eat New York City farm feast from city-grown fish and veggies
It’s the middle of NYC AgTech Week. It’s a time where futurists growing hyperlocal food and technologies in New York City open their labs for urban food week. Tonight there will be a fish taco dinner prepared with fish raised on a roof in the city; the rest of the food was grown in urban […]
Martian technology on Earth in trillion-dollar opportunity
Look to Techcrunch any day of the week and see how investment opportunities abound in Agtech. Then go see Matt Damon in The Martian to get a sense for the future of your food. Combine trillion dollar opportunities with a market sprouting in the United States. It’s called “distributed agriculture” on Wall Street, or Controlled […]
Verizon selects 12 Internet of Things startups that may change your world
Verizon (NYSE: VZ) is America’s #1 mobile provider and the company just announced finalists for their international Powerful Answers Award which will grant $1 million, $500,000 and $250,000 to the top 3 winning companies in the category Internet of Things (IoT). To break things up Verizon has created 3 categories: the two other categories in […]
Saving our food and planet requires bubbles
Somewhere in the middle of Ontario is a company hidden from view. Sitting on 5 acres of reforested farmland is Blue Planet Environmental. I guess you can call them innovative scientists, who are using patented aeration technology and what they call “nano-bubbles” or really, really small bubbles of air, to make big changes in industries […]