Indoor Gardening is Looking Up The world’s largest indoor farm, in Japan, covers 25,000 square feet, with 15 tiers of stacked growing trays that produce 10,000 heads of lettuce per day, or about 100 times more per square foot than traditional methods. It uses 99 percent less water and 40 percent less power than outdoor fields, while producing 80 percent less food waste. Customized LED lighting helps plants grow up to two-and-a-half times faster than normal, one of the many innovations co-developed by Shigeharu Shimamura. He says the overall process is only half automated so far. “Machines do some work, but the picking is done manually. In the future, though, I expect an emergence of harvesting robots.” These may help transplant seedlings, harvest produce or transport product to packaging areas. Meanwhile, Singapore’s Sky Farms, the world’s first low-carbon, hydraulically driven, urban vertical farm, runs on a Sky Urban Vertical Farming System, making the most of rainwater and gravity. Using a water pulley system, 38 growing troughs rotate around a 30-foot-tall aluminum tower. A much bigger project, a 69,000-square-foot vertical indoor garden under construction at AeroFarms headquarters, in Newark, New Jersey, will be capable of producing up to 2 million pounds of vegetables and herbs annually.
Critter Cuisine
Edible Insects Can Help Feed the Planet
Consumer goods giant Unilever has pledged to eliminate coal from its energy usage within five years and derive all of its energy worldwide solely from renewable sources by 2030. The company will become carbon-positive through the use of renewable resources and by investing in generating more renewable energy than it needs, selling the surplus and making it available to local communities in areas where it operates. About 40 percent of the company’s energy use currently comes from green sources. Paul Polman, company chairman, says the goal is “really doable.” He cites a new factory in China powered by wind and solar energy and a Paris office building that already contributes green electricity to the power grid.
Insect expert and bug farmer Sarah Beynon, Ph.D., a research associate for England’s University of Oxford, reports, “Two billion people eat insects every day, and not just in the West. In fact, insects are extremely good for you and eating them is good for the planet, too.” Western governments are enthusiastic about the potential of entomophagy—the human practice of eating insects— for feeding growing numbers of people sustainably. By 2050, humans will require 70 percent more food, 120 percent more water and 42 percent more cropland. Meat production is predicted to double, and conventional production consumes extraordinary volumes of land and water resources. A recent British Food and Agriculture Organisation report suggests that there are more than 1,000 known species of edible insects. Insects are extremely nutritious, containing lots of calcium, zinc and omega-3 fatty acids, and are low in cholesterol. They’re also packed with protein; by weight, crickets can contain more protein than beef.
Source: The Guardian
Source: TheConversation.com
Source: Tinyurl.com/JapaneseIndoorFarm
Corporate Conscience
Unilever Reduces its Carbon Footprint
natural awakenings
March 2016
NATURAL LIVING DIRECTORY
High Harvest
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