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How Sustainable Farming Stacks Up
A look at the initiatives undertaken across the UAE to promote sustainable agriculture.
Published: December 04, 2018 14:38 Suparna Dutt D’ Cunha, Special to GN Focus
Emirates Flight Catering’s 130,000-sq-ft facility will harvest 2,700kg of herbicide- and pesticide-free leafy greens a day at full production.Image Credit: Supplied
In a country where it’s common to find apples from South Africa, potatoes from India and carrots from Australia — all marked at a price to cover the import costs — in supermarkets, some farming initiatives in recent years are bringing to reality a new breed of green agriculture that seeks to produce more crops in less space and water, and is efficient, easier and kinder on the natural environment.
It is hard not to be dazzled by the current pace of technological change in agriculture in the country. An ambitious manifestation of agricultural technology is coming to fruition next year. Emirates Flight Catering and US-based Crop One Holdings are building what they say will be the world’s largest vertical farm, producing 2,700kg of pesticide-free leafy greens daily, in Dubai.
The greens will be manufactured using hydroponics, a technique in which crops are grown in vertical stacks of plant beds, without soil, sunlight or pesticides. Above each bed of greens will be columns of LED lights, which when plants photosynthesise will convert light of certain wavelengths into chemical energy and store it for future use.
Proponents of new-age farming tout the potential of such technology to address the country’s largely hostile desert landscapes, its reliance on the global food trade, importing more than 80 per cent of its food needs, and food shortages as the population continues to grow.
“It is encouraging to see the initiatives that are underway, including some of the larger scale projects, using highly advanced technologies,” says Nicholas Lodge, Managing Partner at Abu Dhabi-based agriculture consultancy Clarity. “Developing sustainable farming with smart use of water will not only provide improved supplies for the local market but also potentially create viable businesses for export to neighbouring countries. Furthermore, technology and an ecological approach will contribute to food diversity and security as it will enhance crop production and lower its cost.”
For Omar Al Jundi, Founder and CEO of Badia Farms, the Middle East’s first commercial vertical farm in Dubai, sustainable farming is a solution for more pressing and concrete concerns such as land — less than 5 per cent of the total land area being arable in the UAE — and water shortages, meeting the demand for locally grown greens, and climate change. Growing and selling locally means emissions associated with transportation are reduced.
“The only solution is to grow smart. Sustainable farming is the future. It is time for the country and the region to become food producers rather than just consumers, since ensuring food security will be challenging in the future due to impacts of climate change.”
Using hydroponics technology on an 800-square-metre plot of land in Dubai, Badia Farms grows gourmet leafy greens for sale 365 days of the year.
Hydroponics brings some important benefits, explains Amjad Omar, Farm Manager at Emirates Hydroponics Farms (EHF). “Because crops are grown in a controlled environment there is no need for chemicals; it allows farming without soil. Most importantly, [hydroponics] uses 90 per cent less water than traditional open-field farming, although the tech uses water as a medium to grow plants, and the yield is six times more from the same amount of land.”
Situated halfway between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, EHF has adapted modern technology to grow lettuce and other herb crops year-round as well. The produce, which it sells both online and offline, is not only cheaper than imported goods but fresher too, adds Omar.
Meanwhile, to grow tomatoes, Abu Dhabi-based Pure Harvest Smart is using a fully climate-controlled high-tech, water-efficient greenhouse, which is yielding ten times more food per metre using one-seventh the water.
As the movement continues to evolve, some are experimenting with novel ways to make local agriculture an integral part of urban life. At this year’s World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, Maha Al Muhairi displayed her innovative energy-efficient automated system, FreshFridge, which lets you grow a wide range of herbs and microgreens in your kitchen. “The FreshFridge allows users to grow more than 50 varieties of microgreens in 10-15 days. People can grow whatever they want in any season,” says Al Muhairi.
Technology is fundamental to the future of agricultural production in the region, says Lodge. “Whether in the form of vertical farm, or through the research and development work of organisations such as the the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai. The region will not enjoy an increase in water availability in our lifetime, so we must use what we have carefully and intelligently.”
But growing crops sustainably isn’t always easy. “Steep costs of acquiring cutting-edge technologies and unavailability of raw materials locally for production are among the challenges,” says Omar.
While according to Al Jundi, the concept of vertical farming is still in its infancy in the region. “Governments and the private sector need to invest heavily to accelerate learning and development in this sector,” he says.
Although these new-age farming initiatives will not change the UAE’s reliance on food imports drastically, it certainly represents a better way of growing produce and a future of continually increasing food supplies in ever more sophisticated manipulation of agro-ecosystems.
Organic Consumers Association Wins on Motion to Dismiss in Case Against Unilever-Owned Ben & Jerry's for Deceptive Marketing Claims
Photo: benjerry.fr, CC BY-NC 2.0
January 10, 2019
Washington, DC –Organic Consumers Association (OCA) today announced that the District of Columbia Superior Court rejected Ben & Jerry’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit OCA brought against the Unilever-owned brand in July 2018 under the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA).
“We are pleased that the court agrees that Ben & Jerry’s can be held accountable for the claims it makes about its products, and how the production of those products impacts animal welfare and the environment,” said Ronnie Cummins, OCA’s international director. “This is a major victory for millions of consumers who have been deceived by Ben & Jerry’s marketing claims.”
OCA sued Ben & Jerry’s for the deceptive labeling, marketing and sale of its ice cream products as humanely sourced and environmentally responsible, despite the fact that ingredients are sourced from typical factory dairy farms and some of the products contain traces of glyphosate, an environmentally harmful biocide and the key active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup® weedkiller.
In its ruling, the court agreed that consumers may have been misled by Ben & Jerry’s environmental responsibility statements into believing that the company’s ice cream products would be free of glyphosate.
The court also agreed that Ben & Jerry’s general messages about humane treatment of cows in the “Caring Dairy” program and “values-led sourcing” may mislead customers into believing that Ben & Jerry’s uses ingredients only from dairy farms with higher-than-average animal welfare standards, when the evidence may suggest otherwise.
OCA is represented by Richman Law Group.
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit grassroots organization advocating on behalf of millions of consumers for safe, healthful food and a clean environment. Visit: https://www.organicconsumers.org/.
Richman Law Group (RLG) is a collective of lawyers specializing in impact litigation to repair the world. RLG was founded on the idea that what cannot be achieved by way of legislation can sometimes be achieved by way of litigation. This tight-knit cadre of tenacious and diverse professionals is dedicated to fighting for the rights of its clients, and through them, the needs of the community at large. Visit: www.richmanlawgroup.com.
CONTACT: Katherine Paul, Organic Consumers Association, (207) 653-3090, katherine@organicconsumers.org
This Entrepreneur Left Wall Street to Count the World's Calories. Now She's Warning of a Global Food Disaster Equal to the Financial Crisis.
Menker's path to counting the world's calories is a bit unorthodox.
ARIA BENDIXDEC 8, 2018, 09.45 PM
Michael Cohen/Getty Images for The New York TimesSara Menker at the 2018 New York Times Dealbook in November.
Entrepreneur Sara Menker traded in her Wall Street gig to help solve the world's mounting food crisis.
In the next decade, she warned, the world's food shortage could rival the financial crisis or dot-com crash in terms of its threat to government stability and economic safety.
Menker's company, Gro Intelligence, aims to create a universal language that helps companies, countries, and industries earn money and eliminate food shortages.
When it comes to feeding every person on the planet, the world could fall short of demand by 214 trillion calories per year in less than a decade. That's more Big Macs than McDonald's has ever sold, said Sara Menker, the founder and CEO of the software company Gro Intelligence.
Menker often uses this reference to help people understand the extent of the global food crisis - a disaster she believes is imminent.
At Gro, she collects all sorts of data about the world's agricultural system, from what types of coffee beans are most lucrative to the rise of avocado exports in Mexico. Her company then uses that data to uncover major patterns, like the fact that grain prices tend to follow trends in the oil market.
The global food shortage is often defined by the weight of crops needed to feed all citizens. But the words "kilogram" or "ton" haven't done much to convey the threat of food scarcity around the world.
What matters more, according to Menker, is calories - the actual thing that keeps people from going hungry. But even this metric can be confusing.
"It becomes this massive problem that is physically not possible for a human being to process," said Menker.
Menker said her team floated countless comparisons, including the weight of elephants, before landing on the Big Mac. The anecdote made its way into her 2017 TED Talk, which has been viewed nearly 1.5 million times.
From Wall Street to counting calories
Menker's path to counting the world's calories is a bit unorthodox. Before Gro, she was a vice president at Morgan Stanley, where she worked in commodities trading. While there, she went from trading sacks of potatoes for gold to investing in farmland.
Like any good Wall Street exec, she started off looking for the best deal.
She soon realized that the best purchase wasn't a $1 per acre plot in a developing country, but a $15,000 to $20,000 per acre plot in the Midwest. That's because investing in the cheaper farmland required borrowing money, obtaining crop insurance, paying for her own trucking service, building her own roads, and leveling her own land.
Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesA worker dries green coffee beans at a farm in Costa Rica.
The process was inefficient. Governments and investors hadn't taken the time, or devoted the resources, to figure out how to grow smarter in these areas. With Menker's help, they can learn how how to fix the system, and begin investing in it.
At Gro, Menker said, "our greatest challenge is actually getting clients to look at all the data."
Climate data, she said, has been particularly difficult for people to understand, since it "has always sat in the hands of the scientific community."
By presenting information in a way that clients can digest, Gro has created something of a universal language in agriculture.
Food security involves everyone
Gro not only makes it easy for people like Wall Street traders to understand weather patterns and temperature trends, but it also demonstrates why these trends matter, according to Menker.
"You can't really tackle trade without understanding climate risk," she said.
AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, FileA man works at an avocado orchard owned by the Cevallos family in Michoacan, Mexico.
Gro has an altruistic component as well. Consider a grain like quinoa, which has become increasingly popular in Europe and the US. As the global demand for quinoa rises, farmers who grow the crop can no longer afford to purchase it.
Gro allows companies to find areas that yield similar grains, which helps to feed communities. West Africa, for instance, produces a grain called fonio that Menker described as a "quinoa equivalent."
In this way, her company makes the case for emerging markets - and new companies to go along with them.
Traditional agriculture isn't going away
The practice of vertical farming has risen in popularity as Menker's company has grown. Since founding Gro in 2014, Menker has started to anticipate the question: Why care about climate when some farms make it possible to grow massive amounts of crops indoors?
The answer, she said, is that vertical farming is limited to certain crops - mainly leafy greens, which, despite their health benefits, aren't very caloric.
"The economics work to move leafy greens from outdoor to indoor," she said. "But you're not going to solve your rice problem through vertical farming."
PlentyInside Plenty, a Silicon Valley-based urban farming startup that scored the largest ag-tech investment in history.
Menker said the process is also geared toward solving food problems in wealthy communities.
"We're talking about feeding the world the basics, let alone the fanciest lettuce or basil," she said. "Getting a leafy green that's as close to your home as possible is a privileged economic decision."
"There are lots of great impacts," said Menker. "But it won't solve our looming global food crisis."
The most viable solution, she said, isn't to overhaul the world's agricultural system. It's to make it more efficient.
Report Points to 'Difficult and Worrying' 2019 for U.S. Agriculture
Market volatility caused by President Donald Trump's trade disputes, extreme weather and the potential spread of African Swine Fever could threaten the stability of global food commodity prices next year.
The downward trend of U.S. farmers' profitability will only get worse if China continues to ignore American agricultural imports, the report said. | Steve Helber/AP Photo
By SARAH ZIMMERMAN
11/15/2018 11:34 AM EST
Market volatility caused by President Donald Trump's trade disputes, extreme weather and the potential spread of African Swine Fever could threaten the stability of global food commodity prices next year, the agricultural banking company Rabobank warned Thursday in a new report.
“The agri-commodity price environment may be relatively stable currently, but it’s difficult to remember a time [when] there were so many threats to food commodity prices on so many fronts,” Stefan Vogel, Rabobank's head of agricultural commodity markets and a co-author of the report, said in a statement.
In Rabobank's annual Outlook report, the Holland-based company predicted that trade uncertainty remains the largest threat facing U.S. farmers next year. The downward trend of U.S. farmers' profitability will only get worse if China continues to ignore American agricultural imports, the report said. Fiscal 2018 marked the second-worst profitability year for American farmers in nearly the last decade, the report said, despite record-smashing corn and soybean yields and the fact that Chinese retaliatory tariffs only directly affected one-quarter of the 12-month period.
Rabobank anticipates that American soybean farmers will continue to take the biggest hit if Beijing keeps its tariffs in place — and that U.S. soybean stocks "will easily double" under that scenario. USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has said that farmers will not receive additional trade aid for 2019 production, reasoning that Trump's tariff policies have already altered markets and that farmers must now react accordingly.
In many cases, that may be easier said than done. "These measures," the report said, referring to tit-for-tat tariffs, "change the structure of global trade and increase U.S. inventories to new all-time highs, while hurting U.S. farmer margins, and resulting in great uncertainty when it comes to prices and the upcoming 2019 planting season."
Agricultural producers should prepare for other factors beyond trade, according to the report. If African Swine Fever, which has cropped up in places in China's massive pork industry, spreads to become a full-on outbreak, consumer concern could lead to shifts in preferences, in turn affecting global trade flows.
In addition, the report noted that climate experts are forecasting an 80 percent chance of El Niño weather conditions being formally declared "by the end of the northern winter." El Niño-related weather patterns tend to make the U.S. Southern Plains wetter and can also lead to drier conditions in the northern part of the U.S. Midwest.
With El Niño-like effects already being experienced in parts of Australia, Brazil and India, the report said, further weather change holds the potential to hurt crop yields and production, and influence global trade in agricultural commodities.
“Food producers face a melting pot of risks,” Justin Sherrard, a global strategist for animal protein at Rabobank, said in a statement. “Although it’s possible that not all of them will come to pass, they need to be prepared for a difficult and worrying year in 2019.”
The report predicted a hefty surplus in U.S. soybeans next year and a global glut in coffee and, less significantly, in palm oil and sugar. It forecast global deficits in corn, wheat, cocoa and cotton, noting that hurricane-related damage affected the U.S. cotton crop this year.
With Trump expected to talk trade with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of the month, the report was not overly pessimistic about the possibility that the two economic superpowers could strike a deal to ease trade tension.
The report said it "may take very long negotiations" to address America's trade deficit with China "by any significant amount." However, Rabobank said it was "surprising" how quickly the new North American trade agreement came together and that "we can’t rule out a speedy resolution to the U.S.-China trade war."
"Once achieved," the report said of a U.S.-China trade deal, "it will likely result in China buying increasing quantities of American goods. Under a Chinese tariff regime, however, the U.S. will easily double its soybean stocks."
Romaine Is Back, With High Price And Liability Issues
BY TIM LINDEN | NOVEMBER 28, 2018
With the Nov. 26 Food & Drug Administration advisory recommending consumers can feel safe eating Romaine lettuce grown from districts where there was no production when a spate of E. coli illnesses arose in October, grower-shippers were again in their fields this week harvesting the crop, labeling its point of origin and sending it to market.
The return of Romaine in the marketplace after a week-long, FDA-advised hiatus was met with high prices and liability issues surrounding the destruction of hundreds of thousands of pounds of the lettuce variety during that week.
Along with the FDA advisory recommending specific labeling actions be taken throughout the supply chain, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Perishable Agricultural Committees Act division circulated information outlining what party is liable when product is “unmerchantable” because of a consumer advisory.
With regard to the return to production, Mark McBride of Coastline Family Farm, headquartered in Salinas, CA, told The Produce News Nov. 27 that his firm began harvesting new Romaine lettuce fields in the Imperial Valley of California that morning. He emphasized that they were new fields and the first production of the season from that district. Like many grower-shippers, McBride said Coastline typically has very light production during Thanksgiving week, so it had no need to disc any fields during the halt of harvest. He said production from Salinas had ended prior to the initial FDA advisory on Nov. 20 and production had not yet begun in the Imperial Valley.
McBride said the Romaine market price was in flux this week as production was starting to deliberately move toward its destination. He indicated that there was a wide range in pricing with the expectation that the price would be adjusted after the marketplace has an opportunity to react.
McBride did say that even prior to the Nov. 20 advisory, it appeared that Romaine -- and many of the other lettuces and leafy greens -- would fetch a strong market price this winter as many growers reported a reduction in winter plantings because of the poor markets that have prevailed for most of the last 12 months.
On the other side of the country, Florida growers were also getting ready to harvest their Romaine after sitting out the last week because of the advisory. Robby Carter of Hugh H. Branch Inc. in South Bay, FL, also spoke with The Produce News Nov. 27 and said by Thursday (Nov. 29) the company would begin filling Romaine orders.
“By late in the weekend or early next week, there should be Romaine lettuce up Boston, New York and Philly,” he said.
Carter said it was especially bothersome to Florida farmers that they were lumped in with others when the initial FDA advisory recommended that consumers not eat Romaine regardless of its point of origin.
“It was a tough situation for Florida growers,” said Carter. “All Romaine growers were collectively grouped together even though none of us [in Florida] had any product during the time in question. That’s a shame. It is important now that they figure out the source of concern and announce that. I understand they are pretty close to doing so.”
He agreed that the market price was unsettled but anticipated a very strong market once the romaine begins to flow. “I heard some California shippers were quoting $35-$40 this morning,” he said.
He also noted that all the lettuces were receving a bump as retailers and foodservice operators look for alternatives. “I heard some Iceberg lettuce up in the Northeast sold for $60 to $70 [per carton] last week. That’s amazing.”
McBride of Coastline said that on Nov. 27, Iceberg lettuce from California and Arizona had a price tag of $44 to $48 f.o.b., while the leafy greens were in the low $40s and spinach was in the high $20s. But the veteran California vegetable salesman said he was unwilling to predict where the market will go.
“We are in unchartered territory given the advisory, the new labeling requirements and the fact that we are in transition,” said McBride. “This is an unprecedented situation for the lettuce industry.”
Liability questions
As grower-shippers tried to fill the pipeline, there was also many questions about who was liable for the Romaine that was destroyed because of the FDA advisory that effectively saw virtually all product pulled from the shelves two days before Thanksgiving.
Western Growers Association, based in Irvine, CA, reported that it had received “many calls from shipper on sales contract implications, rights, responsibilities and payment of fulfilled shipments.”
WGA Senior Executive Vice President Matt McInerney said several fundamental areas need to be reviewed and assessed as the parties of a contract work through their own agreement and determine a just outcome.
The PACA has weighed in on this in the past and does have guidelines to follow. Basically, the question of liability depends on terms of sale and the disposition of the load when the advisory was issued making the product “unmerchantable.”
Though each situation can have its own nuances, the most important element is when risk of financial loss shifts from the seller to the buyer. If the product is sold but still has not left the shipper’s warehouse, the liability belongs to the shipper. If it has arrived at the buyer’s location and been accepted, the buyer assumes the risk. If it is in transit, the situation turns on the terms of sale. A “delivered” sale is still in the control of the seller, who still has the risk. An f.o.b. sale is in the control of the buyer, who consequently assumes the risk.
WGA relayed this information to its members, but McInerney cautioned that these simplified set of facts do not articulate every imaginable circumstance and noted that “outcomes will depend on your individual set of facts.”
Western Growers Insurance Services, which is the insurance division of the association, offers so-called “recall insurance” from outside insurance companies to its members. WGIS Senior Vice President Jeff Gullickson said each policy is customized so it is impossible to deliver a blanket statement as to the scope of any shipper’s coverage and how it may work in this situation.
However, Gullickson said that while the policies being written recently are much better than previous iterations and offer broader coverage than those in the past, “what’s available [from insurance companies] is still not where we want it to be. They are better than they were a year and half ago [when WGIS launched the new program], but we expect them to continue to evolve.”
In general, he said these lost product policies do not exist that will make everyone whole. He called this situation “a devastating event for the industry” but hoped it would lead to solutions and better offerings by insurance companies who learn by these situations and can better assess risk and develop policies to cover those risks.
Romaine Industry Adopts New Labels, Product To Return To Stores
Chris Koger November 26, 2018
Romaine will be returning to stores and foodservice operators after growers, shippers and processors of the lettuce agreed to put labels alerting customers and consumers where it was grown and when it was packed. ( File photo )
(UPDATED) The Food and Drug Administration says romaine lettuce is now safe to eat following the “purge” of product on the market, and will allow supplies to resume, after grower-shippers agreed to new labeling standards that will include where the lettuce is grown.
The agreement, negotiated by romaine grower-shippers, processors and industry associations, will be the new standard for romaine packed in the U.S. The standards follow an E. coli outbreak linked to 43 illnesses in the U.S. and 22 in Canada, as of Nov. 26.
“A number of produce associations also have agreed to support this initiative and are recommending that all industry members throughout the supply chain follow this same labeling program,” according to the United Fresh Produce Association, in an e-mail alert to members Nov. 26 sent several hours before the FDA released a statement lifting the advisory that virtually banned romaine in the U.S.
According to the FDA statement, the new labels are voluntary, but its updated message to consumers suggests it’s against shippers’ interest to forego the label:
“Based on discussions with major producers and distributors, romaine lettuce entering the market will now be labeled with a harvest location and a harvest date,” according to the FDA. “Romaine lettuce entering the market can also be labeled as being hydroponically or greenhouse grown. If it does not have this information, you should not eat or use it.”
The FDA is advising retailers to display signs about the origin of romaine products when they’re not individually packaged, such as bulk displays of unwrapped heads of romaine.
In their investigation, federal, state and local health agencies focused on Central Coast growing region of Northern and Central California. Since the report of the illnesses, mid-October to early November, harvest has shifted to other areas, including California’s Imperial Valley, the Yuma, Ariz., region and Florida.
The FDA also singled out greenhouse and hydroponically grown romaine in its Nov. 26, growers of which have been critical of the decision to remove all romaine from the market Nov. 20.
“Hydroponically- and greenhouse-grown romaine also does not appear to be related to the current outbreak. There is no recommendation for consumers or retailers to avoid using romaine harvested from these sources,” according to the FDA statement.
United Fresh compiled a list of questions and answers relating to the new labels.
The industry and FDA have agreed to work together to improve tracking romaine through the supply chain, according to the United Fresh alert. The groups that worked on the labeling agreement also include:
Produce Marketing Association;
Western Growers;
Arizona and California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreements;
Grower-Shipper Association of Central California;
Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association;
Yuma Fresh Vegetable Association; and
Yuma Safe Produce Council.
“Our associations are committed to working with FDA in a new effort with experts from within and outside the industry, together with government, to implement improved procedures that enhance the speed and accuracy of investigations,” according to United Fresh. “Moving forward, our efforts to enhance strong traceability systems will be most beneficial for consumers only if coupled with expert epidemiological methodology, accelerated investigations with sufficient resources, and government-industry expert collaboration that allow us all to pinpoint the source of contaminated product resulting in more targeted recalls.”
Post-purge return
Before the FDA released its statement, Commissioner Scott Gottlieb appeared on Fox News’ “The Daily Briefing” to talk with host Dana Perino about a variety of issues, including the E. coli outbreak linked to romaine.
“I understand the impact this has not just on consumers but growers, but we had clear evidence that there was an outbreak and that product that was contaminated was still in the marketplace, so it was important to purge the market of that produce —"
“Has the market been purged now?” Perino asked.
“We think it’s been done now, so we’re going to put out a statement a little later today saying that we think we’ve isolated the problem to produce grown in the coastal regions of California, of Central and Northern California, and that produce that’s grown in other parts of the country … it’s probably safe to put back into commerce now.
“So what we wanted to do was purge the market of the produce that was probably contaminated, which has now been isolated, we think, to California, and now stores can start restocking with produce that’s being harvested from Florida or North Carolina or other parts of the country,” Gottlieb said.
Related Topics: Romaine Outbreak E. coli United Fresh
Seeds&Chips
“We believe that technological innovation can create a better, safer, and more resilient food system to fight hunger for everyone”
ITALY
Marco Gualtieri is an Italian businessman who has used his entrepreneurial skills to put together a coalition of private-sector partners and others focused on innovation in the global food chain.
Gualtieri’s innovative company, Seeds&Chips, concerns itself with a wide variety of issues surrounding the challenges of sustainable food system. Seeds&Chips in fact works with people who are dedicated to transforming the food chain towards a more meaningful future in the belief that the key to sustainability lies in connecting the dots, creating partnerships and fostering collaborations that bring new ideas to life.
“But we can’t do it alone. Collaboration is at the heart of our mission,” Gualtieri says.
Through their Global Food Innovation Summit and other activities, participants look at new ways to improve their roles in food production, processing, distribution, communication and consumption.
In fact, Seeds&Chips has built one of the largest food and ag tech ecosystems in the world, and through this network they engage innovators, investors, companies, institutions and policy makers from every point of the global food chain, and provide a platform for them to connect and work together for a more sustainable future.
They are applying their expertise in agriculture, food distribution, technology, economics, socio-economic development, and other areas to address issues as varied as the promotion of local food crops for better nutrition, improving financing, training and markets for smallholder farmers, reducing the environmental footprint of irrigation, food transportation and packaging, and reducing food loss and waste along the entire supply chain.
China's Scientists Observe Plant Growth in its Space Lab
They are trying to accomplish full-cycle of plant growth under microgravity.
CGTN 2018-09-27 20:13
Astronauts need a lot of food during their space expedition that sometimes takes nearly two years. Carrying dried prepackaged food takes up space in their spacecraft.
One solution is to send seeds that occupy less volume to cultivate them in the space. Recently, scientists have successfully grown vegetables and plants in the space shuttles.
However, microgravity makes it difficult to water the plants as they clump together. Space scientists at NASA started using hydroponics and aeroponics to grow plants in space stations.
While hydroponics delivers water to plant roots, aeroponics ensures misty air conditions for plants' growth.
Chinese scientists have taken this experiment to the next level at Tiangong-2, a space laboratory.
They are trying to accomplish full-cycle of plant growth under microgravity. Boxes containing rice and Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant, are on board the space lab.
"After the seeds arrive in space, they will grow and mature there, and finally yield seeds. This kind of long-term experiment is quite rare in the international community," Zheng Huiqiong, director of Tiangong-2's space biotechnology and the plant cell engineering research team said.
"It is of great importance because it can help solve one of the key problems to providing necessary food, water, and oxygen to humans," Zheng explained.
The research found that under the conditions of microgravity, the flowering of Arabidopsis occurs 22 days later than on the ground.
"If we need to eat leaves in the future, it is better to have plants that flower late. But for rice, late flowering will influence the yields, so we have to adapt it to the environment," said Zheng.
The research also found that rice is more active in guttation under the conditions of microgravity, meaning it exudes more and more significant drops of sap on its leaves.
"This phenomenon has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, bigger sap drops will influence the growth of the plant because it will increase the humidity. On the other hand, it offers us clues to establish an effective life-support system in the future, so we could provide water to humans via plants," said Zheng.
If Farms Are to Survive, We Need to Think About Them as Tech Companies
We’re not experiencing a food shortage—it’s a shortage of people to farm it.
By Brandon Alexander October 3, 2018
CEO of Iron Ox and former engineer at Google X's drone-delivery program, Project Wing
Growing up on my granddad’s farm—he grows cotton, peanuts, and potatoes in Texas—I often heard that technologies like genetically modified crops were required to scale food production. My granddad believed that organic practices do not scale and will not feed the world at an affordable price point. Given the state of technology then, I believe he was right.
But the industry has changed with much more than the seasons, and we need more than an iterative improvement on past technologies. We are reaching a plateau in food production. According to research published in Nature, about one third of the world’s agricultural lands have maxed out the amount of rice, wheat, and corn farmers can grow.
At the same time, the World Resources Institute suggests we will need to double our food production by 2050 to feed nearly 10 billion people. In order to boost yield, we need to systematically improve the entire grow process and maximize the potential of every plant. To enable this next age of agriculture, we will need to rely on two new advances: machine learning and robotics.
The amount of data available to farmers has skyrocketed. In addition to collecting data at a macro level from satellite or drone imagery, we can also capture data at the micro level, thanks to a combination of cheaper, lower-powered sensors. These sensors provide farmers with insights like hyperlocal measurements on soil conditions, for example.
AP PHOTO/RICH PEDRONCELLI
Farmers have already been using drones to spray crops for years—what tech will come next?
But a firehose of data does not equate to insights, and that’s where the newer methods of applied machine learning come in. Companies like Descartes Labs and Farm Logs are applying machine learning and computer vision to glean insights from these new data streams, providing farmers not just pretty graphs, but actionable information to increase yield.
Machine learning and computer vision enables us to scan each plant in acres of land, detecting plant diseases before they spread and significantly minimizing yield loss and the need for pesticides. For example, traditionally a farmer would inspect parts of a plot of land for plant diseases like powdery mildew or signs of pest pressure like aphids. Because it was physically impossible for them to inspect each plant on acres of land, they would have to extrapolate their findings across the entire plot. Now, modern computer-vision techniques can take multiple images of every plant and stitch them together for a full 3D reconstructed model of the produce.
Data may give us the information we need to improve yield, but something still needs to perform the action. And it’s increasingly not humans.
We are experiencing a growing labor-shortage epidemic. According to the US Census, the average farmer is 58.3 years old, and new generations are not inspired to take on the laborious task that their elders did—even those who have generations of farmers in their family, like myself. This issue isn’t a shortage of food: It’s of people. Crops are rotting on bushes and vines because there aren’t enough staff to maintain and pick them. Considering that one in nine people onEarth aren’t getting adequate nutrition every day, it’s devastating.
This means that though there are more mouths to feed than ever, there will be less land to provide them food, and less calloused hands to tend to the crops that will feed them. So what do you do when you have little land to work with and fewer hands to help? You turn to technology.
Automation allows for a more accurate work environment with little human oversight. It will involve hardware that is more agile than the human eye or hand, and it will be able to give each and every plant the unique attention it needs.
Recent advancements in computing power, dexterity, motion planning, and computer vision are enabling a new generation of robotic applications. Robotics excel at rapidly performing repetitive tasks, but combined with computer vision, robots can start making real-time decisions on a per plant basis, from adjusting the nutrients to pruning. Companies like Blue River have successfully automated tasks like weeding (a manual process for non-GMO crops) to great effect, which is why John Deere bought the company for over $300 million last year.
DAVE GERSHGORN/QUARTZ
A sample of Iron Ox’s automated grow operation.
At Iron Ox, we’ve designed the entire grow process with a robotics-first approach. That means not just adding a robot to an existing process, but designing everything, including our own hydroponic grow system, around the robotics. In an indoor farm, tasks like seeding or harvesting are happening thousands of a times a day. These labor intensive, repetitive tasks are perfect for robotics. And by integrating machine learning and computer vision, we’re able to have the robots respond to an individual plant’s needs. For example, our robot can quarantine a plant if it shows early signs of pest pressure before it contaminates others nearby or change the nutrition recipe for a plant based on phenotyping.
And we don’t even need arable land: By creating indoor farmhouses with these technologies, we can open farmhouses in any location. This means we will be able to control the weather and take chance out of the growing process; currently, we’re losing more and more crops every year to drought, extreme heat and cold, and spontaneous weather incidents. We will also be able to grow crops closer to the communities that need them, reducing the amount of miles travelled to consumers’ kitchens and the industry’s carbon footprint writ large—and for much cheaper.
If farms are to survive, we need to think about them as tech companies. And that means they should be taking advantage of what many other industries are already harnessing: automation.
This story is part of What Happens Next, our complete guide to understanding the future. Read more predictions about the Future of Food.
What's The Future of Food?
Scientists And Entrepreneurs Have Been Cooking Up Innovative Ways To Put Food On Our Tables.
What Are They Serving Up Next?
CALEB HARPER This computer will grow your food in the future
What if we could grow delicious, nutrient-dense food, indoors anywhere in the world? Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at the MIT Media Lab, wants to change the food system by connecting growers with technology. Get to know Harper's "food computers" and catch a glimpse of what the future of farming might look like.
SARA MENKERA global food crisis may be less than a decade away
Sara Menker quit a career in commodities trading to figure out how the global value chain of agriculture works. Her discoveries have led to some startling predictions: "We could have a tipping point in global food and agriculture if surging demand surpasses the agricultural system's structural capacity to produce food," she says. "People could starve and governments may fall." Menker's models predict that this scenario could happen in a decade — that the world could be short 214 trillion calories per year by 2027. She offers a vision of this impossible world as well as some steps we can take today to avoid it.
MATILDA HO The future of good food in China
Fresh food free of chemicals and pesticides is hard to come by in China: in 2016, the Chinese government revealed half a million food safety violations in just nine months. In the absence of safe, sustainable food sources, TED Fellow Matilda Ho launched China's first online farmers market, instituting a zero-tolerance test towards pesticides, antibiotics and hormones in food. She shares how she's growing her platform from the ground up and bringing local, organically grown food to the families that need it.
PIERRE THIAM A forgotten ancient grain that could help Africa prosper
Forget quinoa. Meet fonio, an ancient "miracle grain" native to Senegal that's versatile, nutritious and gluten-free. In this passionate talk, chef Pierre Thiam shares his obsession with the hardy crop and explains why he believes that its industrial-scale cultivation could transform societies in Africa.
PAMELA RONALD The case for engineering our food
Pamela Ronald studies the genes that make plants more resistant to disease and stress. In an eye-opening talk, she describes her decade-long quest to isolate a gene that allows rice to survive prolonged flooding. She shows how the genetic improvement of seeds saved the Hawaiian papaya crop in the 1990s — and makes the case that modern genetics is sometimes the most effective method to advance sustainable agriculture and enhance food security for our planet’s growing population.
Tackling the Food Crisis with a Borderless Collaboration
At Omron, opportunities to engage with new challenges are abundant
After graduating from university in London, Kassim Okara joined the largest specialist distributor of control and automation products in the UK, where he worked on numerous large-scale projects. He decided to leave however, to join Omron Electronics as field sales engineer in 2015, as he had always felt that he wanted to contribute to society from a business development standpoint.
At Omron, opportunities to engage with new challenges are abundant; the varying projects involve not only control equipment but also healthcare and mobility as well as initiatives to actively employ disabled persons.
At that time, Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) had begun working on automated vertical farming to optimize crop production. Based at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland a leading crop science and research institute, the opportunity to collaborate was one of the key considerations in this location. To advance the efforts to practical application level, IGS needed an automation solutions provider.
In search of a suitable provider, IGS found Omron. In addition to its solutions, Omron's commitment to social responsibility attracted them into collaboration.
With the addition of Omron's automation technology to the expertise and knowledge of the two organizations, the first-ever UK project for automated vertical farming using IoT was initiated. Kassim was assigned as project leader on Omron's side. His passion for his work increased by the day as he deepened his understanding of his partners' enthusiasm toward the project.
In the beginning, developing an understanding of the project was particularly challenging, as it was unprecedented so that previous case studies could not be found. Despite this, Kassim took on the project, led by his determination to respond to social needs through business.
Publication date : 10/29/2018
Meat Plant That Recalled 7 Million Pounds of Ground Beef Has History of “Egregious” Animal Welfare Practices
iStock / gevende
In 2017, regulators warned JBS over its treatment of sick dairy cattle at its Tolleson, Arizona plant. The resulting documents may help clarify the source of this year's Salmonella outbreak.
October 11, 2018
by Joe Fassler
The JBS meatpacking plant at the center of the recent, 6.9-million-pound beef recall has a history of “egregious” animal welfare practices, documents first reported by The Arizona Republic show. The documents suggest that the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) was concerned about livestock protocols at JBS’s Tolleston, Arizona plant in question as far back as July, 2017—and not just that. The agency also seemed concerned that the company’s approach to cattle might cause it to overlook symptoms that could pose a risk to human health.
The documents also establish that sick dairy cows—a common carrier of Salmonella Newport, and likely the source of the current recall—were present at the plant to be processed for meat, and did not receive timely treatment from JBS.
On July 25, 2017, a year and a day before the first lots of recalled beef were processed at Tolleson, FSIS sent an official “Notice of Intended Enforcement” to JBS leadership, threatening to remove its federal inspectors and halt work at the plant.
Related: Why sick dairy cows may be the culprit in last week’s historic Salmonella beef recall
“This action was initiated due to your firm’s failure to maintain or implement required controls to prevent the inhumane handling and slaughtering of livestock at your establishment,” the letter read.
The letter went on to describe an incident involving two sick dairy cows observed by the plant’s Consumer Safety Inspector (CSI) early in the morning of the 25th. (CSIs are government employees stationed in federally inspected meatpacking plants; they work to ensure that facilities follow their written safety and sanitation plans.)
“The CSI observed one cow in Pen 19 lying on her side and unable to rise, mentally incoherent, having difficulty breathing, and repetitively making a kicking motion with its legs while moaning as if in pain,” according to the notice. “The CSI then observed another cow down in Pen 15, also lying on its side, unable to rise, mentally incoherent, and also struggling to breathe while making kicking motions with its legs.” The official determined that both cows were “in significant distress and [were] suffering.”
Ultimately, it took 15 minutes—and the CSI’s direct intervention—to bring an employee on the scene to euthanize the remaining cow.
An FSIS spokesperson confirmed to The New Food Economy that the cows described were “dairy cows sold to the plant for meat.” (As I reported last week, dairy cow meat is commonly used pad out commodity ground beef from beef cattle. The problem is, they’re often sent to slaughter old and sick.)
The CSI felt both cows needed to be euthanized immediately to prevent further suffering, but had trouble getting JBS staff to address the problem urgently, according to the letter. The Yard Supervisor agreed to summon an employee to euthanize the cows, but he did not immediately appear. One cow died on its own before the employee arrived, and the CSI seemed to feel that calls for prompt treatment were not taken seriously.
“The CSI repeated to the Yard Supervisor that the one remaining suffering cow needed to be knocked promptly. The CSI informed her that the second cow had died and emphatically stated that the other distressed cow needed to be knocked as soon as possible,” according to the notice. “She stated ‘I Know, I Know’ but did not do anything further.”
Ultimately, it took 15 minutes—and the CSI’s direct intervention—to bring an employee on the scene to euthanize the remaining cow. Though it’s hard to say whether the event described was an anomaly, the incident was troubling enough that FSIS sent its formal warning letter later that same day. And a follow-up letter published by FSIS suggests there were multiple issues with the animal welfare plan JBS had in place.
In a letter dated October 19, 2017, FSIS acknowledged that JBS immediately moved to appeal the decision, and ultimately asked the agency to rescind its notice. But FSIS denied JBS’s appeal then and on two subsequent occasions. Specifically, the agency cited the fact that JBS’s existing paperwork did not assure the agency that JBS employees could “identify animals in distress and take appropriate actions in a timely manner.” FSIS also noted its belief that standard operating procedures were not “sufficient to prevent the recurrence of inhumane handling due to failure to identify and verify the need for euthanasia without FSIS intervening.”
The revelation of the FSIS letters makes an emerging picture even clearer.
Multiple rounds of negotiation apparently followed. JBS said it had trained employees “to look for and to determine signs of distress” and had committed to performing a “daily animal welfare audit.” After months of negotiation, FSIS finally noted in the October 19 letter that it was satisfied with improvements and would rescind the notice. But the letter ended with words of admonishment that, considering the recent recall, would prove to be prophetic.
“You are reminded that as an operator of a federally inspected facility, you are expected to comply with the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) and the regulations promulgated thereunder to ensure that livestock at your establishment are handled and slaughtered humanely,” Yudhbir Sharma, the director of FSIS’s Alameda, California office noted.
He went on: “It is also important for you to understand that FSIS has the responsibility to initiate actions if your establishment fails to operate in accordance with FSIS regulations, or conditions occur that may render products unwholesome or adulterated.”
Now, less than a year later, we know that conditions did occur at Tolleson to “render products unwholesome or adulterated.” Almost 7 million pounds of ground beef suspected to be tainted with Salmonella Newport were recalled, meaning that the meat of nearly 13,000 cattle will ultimately end up in landfill. FSIS has not been willing to provide additional details on what led to the outbreak, and JBS has not responded to repeated requests for comment. But the scenario I laid out earlier this week starts to look even more likely.
I’ve already made my speculative case that dairy cows are to blame for JBS’s latest recall, the largest recall of ground beef for Salmonella ever. As I reported previously, we already know that dairy cows, which provide about 20 percent of the nation’s ground beef supply, are the likeliest reservoir of Salmonella Newport. We know that dairy cows usually don’t enter the food supply until they get old, weak, or sick. We know that, in processing plants, dairy cow meat is used as filler in ground beef—a practice that exponentially increases its already significant public health risks, and has the potential to contaminate huge volumes of product.
The revelation of the FSIS letters makes an emerging picture even clearer. We now know that sick dairy cattle, so ill they could barely stand, were present at Tolleson just one year before the recall started. We know, too, that FSIS felt JBS employees were unable to identify excessively suffering animals and disarm problems as they happened.
Now, two other questions remain. When will FSIS provide the public with a full account of what happened at Tolleson? And if dairy cows prove to be the culprit, can we have a conversation about how to treat these animals—often sickened or weakened by the demands of high-volume milk production—as we rethink the role they play in feeding us?
ENVIRONMENT, FARM, HEALTH, HOME FEATURE, ISSUES, SYSTEMS BEEF JBS RECALL SALMONELLA
China Reaches Top of Global Food Safety List
China moved from fourth place to the top of the list. This announcement explained that this development is due to China being a high-income economy with low custom tariffs for agricultural import products, which helps to reduce the import costs.
The Economist Intelligence Unit recently announced the "Global Food Safety Index". It ranks the food safety level of 113 countries based on an investigation of food origin, product quality, and safety. China moved from fourth place to the top of the list. This announcement explained that this development is due to China being a high-income economy with low custom tariffs for agricultural import products, which helps to reduce the import costs.
However, the announcement also stated that China's food supply is easily disturbed by weather conditions and natural disasters. For example, if weather changes, soil quality, and water supply are included in the investigation, then China drops to number 16 on the list.
Apart from this, China's food supply is also vulnerable because the majority is imported from around 180 countries, so that trade and supply chain problems can easily disturb China's food supply.
Source: News and Current Trends
Publication date : 10/22/2018
2018 World Food Prize Laureates: Ending Malnutrition For Mothers And Young Children
By The Washington Times Special Sections Department - Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Alarmed by the vast numbers of malnourished children in the world, two British men have spent their lives working to ensure that mothers and their young children can obtain high-quality foods and vitamins.
This month, the men — economist Dr. Lawrence Haddad and physician Dr. David Nabarro — will be honored with the prestigious 2018 World Food Prize.
The men will split a $250,000 prize as part of an award envisioned decades ago as the “Nobel Prize of Food and Agriculture” by its late founder, legendary agricultural scientist Dr. Norman E. Borlaug.
In a June 25 announcement about the laureates, Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn, president of the World Food Prize, praised Dr. Haddad and Dr. Nabarro for having brought “extraordinary results at national and international levels.”
“Through their leadership, our laureates have inspired efforts that between 2012 and 2017 reduced the number of stunted children in the world by 10 million,” Ambassador Quinn said at the ceremony at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.
Their work also cemented the idea that highly nutritious, healthy foods — not just basic staples — are essential for mothers and their children during the children’s first 1,000 days of life.
“Undernutrition — whether growth failure or micronutrient malnutrition — is falling too slowly,” said Dr. Haddad, a pioneer in food policy research who is now executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN).
Poor diets are associated with diabetes, hypertension and obesity, and one in three people are malnourished — “with no country exempt,” Dr. Haddad said in June. GAIN’s mission, he added, is to make nutritious, safe food more available, affordable and desirable for all, and especially for babies, toddlers, young children and other vulnerable people.
Dr. Nabarro’s career highlights include his leadership of the U.N. High Level Task Force on Global Food Security from 2008 to 2014. During those years, he successfully brought 54 countries and one Indian state into a new, anti-malnutrition U.N. project called the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement. Today, the SUN program involves 60 countries and is working toward ending malnutrition in all its forms by 2030.
There are “thousands of courageous women and men” working in well-functioning, local food systems, said Dr. Nabarro, who is now strategic director of Skills Systems & Synergies for Sustainable Development (4SD). These local leaders “have the wisdom needed to reduce levels of malnutrition or diet-related illness … They are the transformation leaders of the future,” he said.
The Oct. 18 World Food Prize award ceremony is a highlight of this year’s gathering, which is held in Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 15-19 and features events such as the Iowa Hunger Summit, the Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium and Global Youth Institute.
The theme of this year’s symposium is “Rise to the Challenge” — a reference to “the single greatest challenge in human history,” which is “whether we can sustainably feed the 9 billion people who will be on our planet in the year 2050,” Ambassador Quinn said.
The World Food Prize, which recognizes pivotal achievements in improving the quality, quantity and availability of food, was established in 1986 by Dr. Borlaug, an Iowa-born agricultural scientist who participated in the events until his death in 2009 at age 95.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Dr. Borlaug developed many strains of high-yielding, disease-resistant “miracle wheat” in Mexico. He then got these seeds into countries with severe food shortages — like India and Pakistan in the 1960s — and sparked the “Green Revolution” in food production.
In 1970, Dr. Borlaug became the first person from the world of agriculture to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The World Food Prize and its $250,000 award are presented by the World Food Prize Foundation with support from dozens of companies, foundations and individuals, including the family of the late Des Moines businessman and philanthropist John Ruan Sr.
To date, the 48 laureates have come from Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Denmark, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Israel, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States and United Nations.
• Please follow @WorldFoodPrize.
The Changing Ways We Might Grow Food
Published by David Dunning
12th October 2018.
Access to safe and affordable food is something we all take for granted.
However, with more mouths to feed now than ever before, achieving this is no easy task.
To meet our increasing demands, with minimal environmental footprints, the way that we grow crops is changing.
To help drive this change, one of the Government’s four agri-tech Centres CHAP (Crop Health and Protection) has invested, with the support of Innovate UK, in two new ventures based at Stockbridge Technology Centre at Cawood, a leading applied R&D facility based in the heart of North Yorkshire.
Selby and Ainsty MP, Nigel Adams, is the guest of honour at the official opening today.
Vertical Farming Development Centre
Across the UK, hydroponic systems, along with the latest LED lighting technology, are beginning to be combined to produce certain crops in ‘urban farms’.
Operating independently of sunlight and seasons, food can be produced in these facilities 12 months a year, under conditions that have been optimised to grow safe and healthy produce in as shorter time as possible – giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘fast food’.
To operate effectively, these urban farms will need to take advantage of the very latest in modern technology, employing sensors to monitor crops and robots to manage operations such as harvesting. CHAP’s new ‘Vertical Farming Development Centre’ will mean that growers, food producers and researchers will be able to determine how these different technologies will impact the economics of LED vertical farming.
The aim is to develop technologies which will reduce production costs whilst maximising profits, potentially on a large scale.
Advanced Glasshouse Facility
CHAP’s Advanced Glasshouse Facility with a flexible design and multiple ‘bolt-ons’ that will allow new approaches to crop production and crop protection strategies to be tested and demonstrated to farmers.
The modern glasshouse recognises that the future of crop production is likely to be less reliant on synthetic inputs of chemicals and more reliant on combining different techniques, such as plant breeding and use of natural products and beneficial insects, to produce healthy and sustainable food.
These more complex crop protection strategies require more detailed and delicate testing procedures to show that they’re effective; this new facility will allow this work to take place across both field and glasshouse crops, including those now being grown in ‘hydroponic systems’, where plants are produced without soil.
About CHAP
CHAP (Crop Health and Protection) is one of the Government’s four agri-tech centres.
Their aim is to increase crop productivity for future generations through the uptake of new technologies. They work with pioneers to translate and promote these solutions for market adoption and improved crop productivity
Vertical Farms In China Provide Food For 36,000 DAILY
Farmers in Zhejiang Province have designed 'smart' vertical farms which allow vegetables to be grown without much soil or sunlight. Plants are provided with nutrient solutions through an intelligent control system. A shorter growing season and a ban on pesticides also make smart farms more environmentally friendly.
'The Next Evolution Of Farming Has Already Begun'
By Austin Stankus - Wednesday, October 10, 2018
The world population continues to grow with ever-increasing urbanization predicted to reach 80 percent by 2050. The U.N. predicts that human population will reach nearly 10 billion by 2050. This increasing population is also growing richer — and hungrier.
To feed this population using traditional farming practices, much more land would need to be brought under cultivation. But, already much farmland around the world has been degraded from poor management practices, and lands remaining available for food production are decreasing from the effects of erosion, salt buildup and pollution.
As you read this today, tens of millions of children are going to bed hungry, with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimating the number of hungry in 2018 at 812 million or approximately one out of 9 people.
Something needs to change. Food production needs to get more efficient, more equitable and more environmentally minded. Moreover, food production should follow the population to the cities, or as Dickson Despommier, a forerunner of this movement, simply states: “Put the food where the people live.”
Indoor farming through controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) will be an important component towards establishing local food systems that can address this pending crisis in global food insecurity. CEA, simply put, is using smart, sustainable farming practices inside of high-tech greenhouses. This is nothing new, and these modern greenhouses are an established technology and can be found around the world. In fact, much of the lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in the EU come from CEA in the Netherlands and Spain.
These greenhouses have incredible benefits compared to traditional farming: They use less water because they are protected from the sun and wind, they use fewer pesticides because insects and disease can be kept outside, and there is less waste because production can be matched exactly to consumer demands.
If hydroponics or other soil-less practices are used, the farmer does not need to use tractors for tilling, plowing and reaping, so the oil bills and energy consumption are lower. In addition, the fertilizer usage is reduced, and all the fertilizer the farmer uses is consumed by the plants, thereby reducing nutrient-rich runoff that can pollute watersheds. Known as eutrophication, this nutrient pollution is a huge problem for coastal communities in the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico and has impacted fisheries, recreational activities and livelihoods around the world.
However, CEA greenhouses can occupy a lot of space. So, the next logical evolution is stacking these modern greenhouses, one atop the other.
Vertical farming, as greenhouses stacking is called, has additional benefits. Reducing the footprint means that more food can be grown in a smaller area and therefore can be brought closer to the people eating that food. As populations move toward the cities, it makes sense for the food to follow.
Part of the vision of vertical farms is the reconnection of the producer and the consumer plus the restructuring of food value chains to become more transparent and responsive to the needs and wants of the people.
An added benefit of farming inside of skyscrapers is the option of having mixed-use buildings. When combined with a wholesale market, the skyscraper can not only produce the food but get it to the consumer faster. Less time in storage, less transportation and less handling means fresher produce and reduced need for postharvest treatments like irradiation and chemical fumigation.
There are still some daunting challenges as well as some encouraging recent developments.
Unleashing the innovative power of American small businesses has jump-started the transition to modern farming, and the public desire for local, healthy food is an economic engine driving the industry toward change. In fact, there are currently so many vertical farm startups that a shortage of qualified workers is now the main hurdle to accelerating the establishment of new indoor farms. On one hand this is a challenge to the industry, but on the other it presents an enormous opportunity for job creation in urban areas if an inclusive, enabling environment is codeveloped with the vertical farms to provide vocational training and career advancement prospects.
On a technical level, there is a significant energy demand needed for pumping water, maintaining good environmental conditions like temperature and humidity, and powering the grow lights to keep producing year-round. However, with smart buildings wired on intelligent platforms, the energy consumption can be monitored and controlled to maximize efficiency — and by tying into other green enterprises like photovoltaic and biogas generation, this energy demand is decreasing day by day. In fact, with the new innovations in LED lighting technology, the power demand has been reduced tenfold in the last few years.
The next evolution of farming has already begun, and big players are already involved. In fact, the National Grange wrote a letter to Congress with their support to public-private funding mechanisms to accelerate the modernization of agriculture, specifically highlighting the potential of vertical farming. With this type of buy-in from large agribusinesses, national and international agricultural organizations, funded with innovative financial mechanisms, and driven by the innovative spirit and technological power only found in the U.S., vertical farming will feed tomorrow’s children with healthy, safe food; protect the environment while being resistant to environmental shocks; and spur economic growth in the process.
For a detailed look at one such startup, see the centerfold story on Skyscraper Farm • Austin Stankus, an integrated farming specialist, is chief science officer at Skyscraper Farm LLC
Bad Burgers
Bad Burgers
The world’s largest meat packer, JBS Tolleson, is recalling nearly 7 million pounds of beef after an investigation identified JBS as the common supplier of ground beef products sold to people who developed Salmonella Newport, a disease that causes fever and diarrhea, weakness, dyspnea and, potentially, sudden death.
As of October 4, 57 people in 16 states had been sickened by JBS beef.
If that’s not enough to make you swear off industrial factory farm beef, here’s more food for thought: There’s a good chance the JBS beef was contaminated because it contained a combination of cattle raised for beef, and dairy cows sent off for slaughter because they were too sick to produce milk.
According to an article published this week in The New Food Economy, scientists have known since the 1980s that dairy cows are a primary reservoir of Salmonella Newport. The authors say the facts point to an “ongoing food safety crisis hidden in plain sight.”
One way to address that crisis? End industrial dairy farming which creates the conditions that make cows susceptible to a host of painful and debilitating illnesses, including Salmonella Newport.
Read ‘Another Reason to End the ‘Dirty Dairy’ Industry: Contaminated Hamburgers'
CDC Says Parasitic Outbreak Traced To McDonald’s Salad Has Ended
The FDA reports advances in testing helped investigators during an outbreak of cyclospora infections this summer. More than 500 people were confirmed infected, but the outbreak is over according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To view a larger version of this map, please click on the image.
By Coral Beach on September 14, 2018
The FDA reports advances in testing helped investigators during an outbreak of cyclospora infections this summer. More than 500 people were confirmed infected, but the outbreak is over according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Outbreak investigations at state and federal levels showed a link between McDonald’s salads and sick people. Laboratory tests confirmed the microscopic cyclospora parasite in an unused package of salad mix produced for McDonald’s by a Fresh Express processor in Streamwood, IL.
Fresh Express supplies fresh produce to a variety of buyers, including foodservice operations across the country. Company officials told investigators from the Food and Drug Administration that the carrots in the implicated salad mix were used only in products for McDonald’s.
It didn’t determine the specific point in the supply chain where the contamination occurred, but the FDA was able to more quickly determine the presence of Cyclospora in this outbreak than it has been in the past.
“In 2015, FDA set up a multidisciplinary workgroup to prioritize the development, validation and implementation of a method for detecting Cyclospora in fresh produce,” according to the agency’s outbreak report. “In 2018, FDA began using the newly validated Cyclospora method. The availability of this method is a significant advancement in FDA’s ability to investigate outbreaks of cyclosporiasis and identify the parasite in foods.”
Additional outbreak details
Final outbreak statistics, as of Sept. 11, show illnesses onset dates ranged from May 20 through July 23. The infected people were from 14 to 91 years old with a median age of 52. Among ill people, two-thirds were female. No deaths were reported. There can be up to six weeks lag time between when a person becomes ill from the parasite and when their confirmed lab tests are reported to federal officials, the CDC reported.
Illinois and Iowa public health officials were the first to spot the outbreak of cyclosporiasis. The two states were hardest hit, with 271 confirmed patients in Illinois and 99 confirmed in Iowa. Missouri was third with 52 cases. Ultimately 511 people across 16 states were infected. The CDC reported 24 of the 472 patients for whom the information was available required hospitalization.
The Illinois Department of Health posted an alert on July 12 urging consumers who “ate a salad from McDonald’s since mid-May and developed diarrhea and fatigue, contact a health care provider about testing and treatment.” It takes about a week after infection for symptoms to show up, according to the CDC.
On July 13, McDonald’s stopped selling salads at more than 3,000 locations in 14 states. Soon thereafter the multi-national fast food company reported that it had replaced the supplier of salad mix in those states.
As of Sept. 13, neither Fresh Express nor the FDA had revealed the names of the produce company’s other customers that received the implicated salad product. The FDA generally does not release names of so-called trading partners because of Confidential Corporate Information issues.
The FDA finished its final analysis on July 26. It notified Fresh Express officials on July 27 of the confirmation of Cyclospora contamination. Investigators reviewed distribution and supplier information for the romaine and carrot mix, but they did not identify a single source or point of contamination for this outbreak, FDA reported.
“FDA instructed Fresh Express to determine whether potentially contaminated product (could) still be on the market. Fresh Express reported to FDA that the romaine from the same lot as the positive sample was not packaged for direct retail sale by Fresh Express and had already expired. Fresh Express committed to using recall procedures to inform those companies that received this romaine about the sample result,” according to the FDA timeline on the investigation.
In a related public alert, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service issued a public health alert July 30 on beef, pork and poultry salad and wrap products because of potential Cyclospora contamination. Caito Foods LLC of Indianapolis distributed the implicated salads and wraps. Caito Foods had received notification from Fresh Express that the chopped romaine in these products was being recalled.
Additional infections could be confirmed because the symptoms of cyclosporiasis mimic those of common viruses, according to the CDC. That makes it difficult for people to know they need to seek medical attention. The symptoms also complicate diagnosis because doctors need to order specific laboratory tests to find the infection. Specific combinations of antibiotics are necessary to kill the parasite.
“If not treated, the illness may last from a few days to a month or longer. Symptoms may seem to go away and then return one or more times — relapse. It’s common to feel very tired,” according to the CCD.
Cyclospora infects the small intestine and usually causes watery diarrhea, with frequent, sometimes explosive, bowel movements. Other common symptoms include loss of appetite, weight loss, stomach cramps and pain, bloating, increased gas, nausea and fatigue. Vomiting, body aches, headache, fever, and other flu-like symptoms may also develop. Some people who are infected with Cyclospora do not have any symptoms but can infect others.
How Do We Feed 7 Billion People?
We're looking at the technological advancements that allow us to feed our ever-growing population.
Photo: Plastics Europe
10,000 years ago, our ancestors lived a completely different lifestyle. They were nomadic people living in small groups, constantly moving in migratory patterns and hunting and gathering their food. Today, the majority of the seven billion people living on the planet have permanent residences in, or near, major cities. Most of us have easy access to clothing, food, and home goods. While there have been thousands of developments over the past 10,000 years that have bridged the seemingly impenetrable gap between ancient hunters-gatherers and modern consumers, none has been more impactful than the advent of agriculture.
Today, we define agriculture as the practice of cultivating soil, producing crops, raising livestock, and (to some extent) the preparation and marketing of the resulting products. Agriculture represents 20% of the national economy, and is the one of the most compelling reasons that our global population has boomed.
While agriculture has a long history, the greatest leaps in technology were made in the 18th-21st centuries. We decided to look at five main categories of technological development that have made the greatest impact on the global population: animals, crops, soil, labor, and storage.
**Quick disclaimer: these categories focus on the history of agricultural technology in Western Europe and the United States. While we recognize and celebrate the diversity of historical and cultural differences that exist between the Western world and other regions, we’re focusing on these regions for the sake of making this (somewhat) brief and easily digestible!**
Before we get into the technology that changed agriculture, let’s quickly review just some of the major scientific discoveries that made much of this progress possible.
1855 | Theory of Mineral Nutrients
Research performed originally by scientist Carl Sprengel and popularized by Justus von Liebig identified that nitrogen (N), phosphosus (P), and potassium (K) are essential for plant nutrition. They also published findings that plants take carbon, hydrogen, and water out of the atmosphere. Additionally, Liebig popularize the Law of the Minimum, which stated that a plant’s growth is not determined by the total amount of resources available, but by the resource that is least available.
1859 | Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Darwin proposed a theory of evolution by natural selection, where changes that allow an organism better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring, thus creating a lineage with altered and improved characteristics. This theory was made through observations only; Charles Darwin had no knowledge of genetics and the impact of genetic mutations.
1866 | Mendelian Inheritance
Mendelian inheritance is the longest standing theory of genetics that is still applicable today. It was developed by Gregor Mendel after he performed experiments with pea plants, which deduced that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units, one from each parent. This became the basis of our understanding of human, plant, and animal genetics!
Here's a great overview of Mendel's theory!
Now that we know the basics, let’s look at the technology that paved the path to today’s agro-industrial complex. It’s important to understand that all of these advances needed each other to develop, as breakthrough technology in one category created opportunity for the others to expand.
Animals
Most agricultural progress seen in the meat and dairy industries had to do with increasing production. As a result, meat and dairy products became more affordable, and became more prevalent in Western diets.
c. 1760 | Selective Breeding
Robert Bakewell, one of the first agriculturists to breed cows and sheep for meat, was a pioneer of selective breeding methods. Selective breeding involved mating animals to reproduce favorable qualities in the offspring (such as bigger, more muscle, better wool production, etc). Although Bakewell lived before Darwin and Mendel, his practice of selective breeding aligned with both theories of genetic inheritance. Selective breeding later became a cornerstone for the factory meat industry as ways to create animals with higher meat, eggs, or milk outputs.
Photo: Strange Animals
Example: the Belgian Blue Cow
The Belgian Blue cow's genetic make-up makes it more efficient at gaining muscle mass. This gene mutation was maintained through line breeding to make it a fixed property of the breed!
1865 | Pasteurization
Louis Pasteur’s research showed that microorganisms were the reason for food spoilage. He found that heating liquids like milk to between 60 and 100ºC killed most of the bacteria. This process became known as “pasteurization”, and it’s discovery made it possible to preserve and transport dairy goods much longer and further than ever before.
1926 | Penicillin
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic. It was successfully used to treat infection in 1930, and was mass-produced in the late 1940s. As factory animal farming became more prevalent, animals began receiving antibiotics to prevent viruses such as rotavirus, E. coli, pinkeye, and brucellosis. This allowed for animals to adapt to close and often unsanitary living conditions of feedlots that made meat abundant and affordable.
1994 | rBST
Patented by Monsanto, rBST is a synthetic cow hormone. When administered to dairy cows, the hormone increases milk production 14 percent, while consuming less grain and water. This allowed the dairy industry to expand and increase their output.
Crops
Similarly to the meat and dairy industries, advancements in crop production were mainly concerned with increasing crop yields. Thanks to the creation of more resilient breeds of corn and soy, along with long-standing government support for these commodity crops, most farmland moved towards single crop production (also known as monocultures). Furthermore, crop resilience helped create food reserves and drastically reduced famine around the world.
1908 | Hybridized corn produced
George Harrison Shull showed that a hybrid corn plant created from two inbred species would increase the plant’s yields significantly. In 1924, hybrid seeds were sold commercially and by the 1950s the majority of U.S. corn was hybrid. This development allowed corn to become a dependable commodity crop that would later be used as nutritionally dense animal feed (making animals fatter faster) and for producing penicillin (1940), high fructose corn syrup (1970s), ethanol (1970s), and more.
See how corn, watermelons, and peaches have changed thanks to selective hybrid breeding over the past 9,000 years.
Photo: Burpee
1930 | Mutation breeding
A practice started in 1930 and still used today, mutation breeding uses radiation to create random mutations in seeds. Thanks to this practice, scientists have produced thousands of improved plant varieties (rice, wheat, barley, peas, cotton, peanuts, grapefruit, bananas, and cassava to name a few). This is not genetic modification, but a way of nudging species towards useful mutations that make them more productive and resilient.
1937 | Hydroponics
Although principles of hydroponics have been around for centuries, they were popularized by Dr. W.F. Gericke, who displayed enormous tomatoes that were grown without soil. By the 1960s, many hydroponic greenhouses and farms were operating around the U.S. as a first example of alternative farming methods.
Early hydroponic system
Photo: HydroponicAdvantage
1939 | Synthetic Pesticides
Paul Muller discovered DDT, a broad spectrum synthetic pesticide that had a widespread effect on insects, but a seeming low toxic effect on mammals. It was not water soluble and was easy and inexpensive to apply. While it was later proven that DDT was toxic to aquatic animals and had many indirect negative effects on the environment, this was the first widely adopted and inexpensive pesticide which greatly increased food supply and decreased plant disease.
1940s | The Green Revolution
In the 1940s, scientist Norman Borlaug began performing experiments in Mexico to develop disease resistant, high-yield wheat crop varieties in an effort to make Mexico more self-sustainable. He succeeded, and Mexico became a global exporter of wheat. Borlaug and the Ford Foundation replicated this success in India in the 1960s with high performance rice (IR8), which allowed India to become a global rice exporter. The IR8 rice strain was later adopted all over Asia.
Photo: Links
1994 | Flavr Savr tomato
The Flavr Savr tomato was the first commercially produced genetically modified food to be deemed safe for human consumption. It was created by Calgene, a company later acquired by Monsanto. Since 1994, Monsanto has produced several genetically modified products like squash and soy in 1995, corn in 1996, sugar beets in 2006, potatoes in 2016, and, most recently, apples in 2017. Most genetic modifications are designed to make food insect and disease resistant, tolerant to herbicides, and more visually appealing.
Photo: Hi-DF
Soil
Although soil-less methods like hydroponics and aquaponics have become increasingly popular over the past century, most global agriculture is still soil dependent. Historically, advancements in soil technology has been centered around replenishing and extracting as many nutrients as possible to improve plant yields.
1842 | Superphosphate
Patented by Sir John Bennet Lawes, superphosphate was a manure formed by treating phosphate with sulfuric acid, which gave rise to the synthetic fertilizer industry. Once it was adopted, the commercial fertilizer took the agricultural industry by storm: In less than 100 years, annual commercial fertilizer use has gone from 1.8 million tons in the 1890s, to 47.4 million tons in the 1980s.
1910 | Nitrogen fixation
As Liebig determined in his research, nitrogen is essential for plant health. Fritz Haber created a process for pulling N2 out of the atmosphere and turning it into ammonia (i.e. nitrogen fixation) to be used as fertilizer for industrial feedstocks. The process was perfected and scaled to meet industrial needs by Carl Bosch.
Labor
For centuries, agricultural development was limited by time: men and horses could only do so much in one season. The development of farming machinery unlocked huge potential, which technological animal, crop, soil advancements were able to fill.
1793 | Cotton gin
Invented by Eli Whitney, the cotton gin was one of the greatest contributors to the American Industrial Revolution. It greatly simplified the process of removing seeds from picked cotton–previously an extremely slow and tedious process. While the cotton gin inadvertently led to the rise of slavery in the South, it is still considered one of the most influential agricultural inventions of the 20th century.
Image: American Historama
1842 | Grain elevator
Developed by Joseph Dart and Robert Dunbar at the rise of the grain trade. The grain elevator was originally a steam-powered deposit for grain awaiting to be sold. Steam-powered conveyor belts brought the grain to a storage platform at the top of the elevator, where it was kept until offloading. Then, the grain would be brought down using gravity, and loaded onto trains or ships for distribution. Not only did the creation of elevators significantly reduce labor, but they also kept the grain “dry, cool, free from vermin, and safe from pilferage”.
Photo: Kansaspedia
1892 | First gasoline tractor
Invented by John Froelich, the tractor was able to harvest 1,000 bushels of grain using only 26 gallons of gasoline, which far exceeded the harvesting capacity of farmers–it took 40-50 labor hours to harvest just 100 bushels using wagons and horses. By 1954, tractors exceeded the use of horses, and by 1955 the labor needed to harvest 100 bushels was reduced to just 6.5 hours.
Photo: Caesar Rodney
Storage
While decreased labor hours were able to bring an abundance of food to the market, it was pointless without refrigeration. Food cooling and freezing technology expanded food’s lifespan, made it easier to transport long distances, and allowed people to buy for the future.
1856 | First commercial refrigerator
The first refrigerator, built by James Harrison and patented in 1856, was a vapor compression system using ether, alcohol, or ammonia. He introduced the technology to breweries and meat packing houses, and had several systems in operation by 1861.
1867 | Refrigerated shipping
The first refrigerated railway car was patented by J.B. Sutherland. It used heavy insulation, roof hatches, floor drains, ice bunkers, and strategic airflow. As a result of this cold transport system, a huge network of icing stations were developed around the country, and the first transcontinentaltransport of cold goods from California to New York occurred in 1889.
Image: Mid-Continent
1927 | Frozen foods
The birth of the frozen food industry is tied to Clarence Birdseye’s patent for a multi-plate freezing machine, which allowed for food to be quickly frozen without damage. By 1927, his frozen products included fish, meat, poultry, fruit, and vegetables. Birdseye later sold his patent to what eventually became the General Food Corporation to produce the Birdseye Frozen Food Company. By World War II, Americans were encouraged to buy frozen foods, with 800 million poundspurchased between 1945 and 1946. However, it was the invention of the TV dinner that made frozen food an American stable in 1954.
Image: Smithsonian
1930s | At-home fridge
Companies like Electrolux and General Electric began selling refrigerators and freezers for domestic purposes at a commercial scale. Unlike previous models, these units used Freon instead of toxic gases, making it a safer option. This coincided perfectly with the development of frozen foods (as we learned above!). By 1950, more than 90 percent of urban homes had a fridge.
So, where do all of these technological advancements leave us today?
For one, they have made it possible to feed over 7 billion people: From 1820 to 1975, agricultural production across the world doubled four times over and, while in 1940 one farmer could supply an estimated 10.7 people, by 1990, one farmer could supply 100 people. Today, one farmer can feed 155 people. As a result, we have seen a global decline famines and hunger, with a rate of undernourishment at 10.8 percent in 2015 (although this number has risen in recent years as a correlation to rising conflict and instability in many regions).
For most of its history, agricultural technology was focused on creating a more efficient and high-yielding system in order to better feed the world. As we can see, with reductions in labor and hunger worldwide, we were widely successful. Unfortunately, many of the methods used over the past 300 years have created negative effects that we are now only beginning to understand. Issues associated with Big Ag (the entire corn-soy-meat industry combined) include:
Soil nutrient degradation due to planting one type of crop over and over again, leading to a dependence on synthetic fertilizer.
Extreme water usage and waste.
The chemical contamination of groundwater (as a result of fertilizer usage).
The introduction of dangerous pesticides and herbicides into the ecosystem and their widespread repercussions on insect and animal populations.
Introduction of new bacteria and pathogens into the food supply–a result of factory farmed animals living in unsanitary conditions.
The development of antibiotic resistant bacteria as a result of antibiotic overuse in factory farmed animals.
Environmental pollution caused by machinery and animal excretions.
Rising rates of “western” diseases such as obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes as a result of over consumption of readily available corn, soy, and meat products.
As a result, many of today’s newest technologies are focused on creating alternative methods of agriculture that will be more environmentally sustainable, as well as viable options in the face of climate change and increasingly irregular weather patterns.
2010s | Urban farming
While urban farming has existed throughout history, it has recently turned into a full-blown movement: Issues of local food access and healthy eating have made urban solutions necessary in the face of Big Ag. Hydroponic technology is a viable solution–companies like Freight Farms (2010) use repurposed shipping containers to create dense growing environments in small footprints. Similarly, many cities make use of of rooftops to set up greenhouses or even soil farms, like Gotham Greens (2009) or Brooklyn Grange (2010)
![AIAB_Cover+Edited[1].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/57c8695d5016e11e71be1d83/1536806133233-BJJJQTMNQE3A407H5R1N/AIAB_Cover%2BEdited%5B1%5D.jpg)
2010s | Data
Just as urban farming boomed starting in 2009, so did the agricultural data industry. Farm management software such as Spensa Technologies (2009), Mavrx (2012), farmhand (2013) Granular (2014), Trace Genomics (2015), and many others arrived on the market to give farmers more transparency into their farmland using satellite imaging, sensors and IoT technology, robotics, and more! The goal is to increase efficiency, and help farmers implement eco-friendly solutions easily on a large scale.
2013 | BountiGel
Company mOasis has created a hydrophilic gel (“hydro” = water, “phillic” = loving) that can be added to soil to absorb 250 times its weight in water. As a result, farms can use less water and improve their yields by 18 percent across the board. The gel is non-toxic and can break-down safely after several seasons. California approved mOasis’ first product for commercial use in November 2013.
2013 | Cultured Meat
This is perhaps the most extreme solution to many of the problems we see with factory farmed meat today, which requires huge amounts of water, pollutes the environment, and produces 14.5% of global human greenhouse-gas emissions. Lab-grown meat would help address the growing global demand for affordable meat while leaving a less damaging footprint. The world’s first lab-grown burger was introduced in August 2013.
Animation: New Harvest
2013 | Robotic Bees
The first robotic insect took flight in May, 2013 at Harvard University. It was based on the anatomy of a small fly, and inspired more projects in Japan which went on to create a robotic bee. The need to develop this technology is urgent: the U.S. alone has lost 44% of it’s honeybee population in 2016, leading experts to consider what a world without our most essential pollinators might be like. Even industry giants like Walmart are getting involved in developing this technology.
Photo: Wyss Institute