Vertical farming is not new, but it is if you are growing in a soil medium. Future Crops operates an 8,000 square meter indoor vertical farm (roughly 86,000 square feet or 2 acres). The goal is to create foods that are kosher, hence a chemical free environment in a soil medium (https://www.future-crops.com/). You can read…
Vegetable Oils – An Emerging Food Tremor
Touch the Soil News #1801 (Feature Photo – Palm Oil Plantation in Indonesia – CCA 2.0, Generic, Achmad Taim) In a world of global trade, it is in the best interests of nations with excess agricultural capacity to export to nations with insufficient agricultural capacity. Or so the reasoning goes. Enter Indonesia, an equatorial nation…
Where has All the Farmland Gone? Long Time Passing.
Competition for Corn – A Driver of Food Price Hikes
Positive Future News #914 (Feature Photo – Corn – CCA SA 3.0 Unported) The global trade of food commodities is like a game of dominoes. For example, escalating production of wheat and soybeans, from problems in Ukraine and Russia, pushes some acres from corn into wheat and soybeans. As a result corn acres are less…
U.S. Water Usage – 378 billion Gallons a Day
Positive Future News #913 (Feature Photo – Singapore – CCA 2.0 Generic, Ray in Manila) Water awareness is as essential as political awareness, if not more. Politics can change, access to water can’t. The story of water in the United States is simple. Water sources, from rivers and from pumping out of the ground, have…
Growing Food – In a Nation That Is All City
Positive Future News #912 (Feature Photo – Singapore – CCA 2.0 Generic, Ray in Manila) Singapore, a nation established by the British Empire 200 years ago, has an urban population of 5.5 million. Only 1 percent of the nation’s 283 square miles is farmland. Having to import 95 percent of its food, the nation is…
Another View on Alternative Proteins as Meat
Touch the Soil News #1800 (Feature Photo – Soybean – CCA 2.0 Generic, United Soybean Board) FoodTank – a think tank for food – recently posted an interesting article on fake meat. Seems not all is well with the re-manufacture of plant proteins into products that mimic meat. You can read the full story here:…
What Do Population Numbers Tell Farmers?
Touch the Soil News #1798 (Feature Photo – Baling Hay for Livestock Feed – NRCS Public Domain) Worldometer (https://www.worldometers.info/) presents population growth numbers in a variety of different formats. So an interesting way to look at the numbers are the milestones at which the world adds a billion people: 1804 – 1 billion people (1…
BRDG Park – If You Want to be Educated on the Nation’s Top Plant-Science Center
Touch the Soil News #1799 (Feature Photo – Danforth Plant Science Center – CCA SA 4.0 International Generic) Called the Silicon Valley of agtech, the BRDG Park in St. Louis Missouri, is located on the campus of the Danforth Plant Science Center (https://brdgpark.com/) All of this together is attracting national and global companies and talent…
An International Story – Water Gives Land its Value
Touch the Soil News #1797 (Feature Photo Worrall Creek Aggregation – Courtesy of JLL Agribusiness) Queensland Country Life news, brings us the unusual story of the coming sale of a one of Australia’s largest farms – 66,000 acres. Called the Worral Creek Aggregation, the farm is in Australia, where few farms have adequate water. This…