Digital technology, agricultural technology, AI, and biotechnology applications in food and farming.
“Save our rice!” “IRRI, get out!” In October 2023, these angry chants echoed across multiple farmers’ protests in the Philippines. The protests targeted the 6th International Rice Congress, hosted by the International Rice Research Institute (hereafter IRRI). Against the backdrop of climate change and the push for agricultural emission reductions,…
Imagine the vegetables on your plate didn’t come from a farmer with mud-stained hands working in a field, but were instead a technological marvel grown inside a vertical farming tower made of metal and plastic. How would you react? While in Berlin in 2018, I was captivated by the vertical…
At the start of this year, four years after moving to the Netherlands, my partner and I finally rented a hectare of land in the province of Utrecht to begin cultivating my own farm. Before deciding to commit to farming, I had interned at several small organic farms across the…
I. Xiao Tang and Xiao Wen’s home is nestled in a valley. The stream there is small, barely half a metre deep, yet it flows year-round and can be found on a map. Flowing south, it joins other waterways several times before feeding into the Ohio River, which runs from…
Author’s Note My husband, Mr Panghu, and I live in a small town in the Great Lakes region of the American Midwest. The local farmers’ market has been running for nearly thirty years, and we have witnessed more than a decade of its history. This series of short pieces aims…
Vertical farm lighting accounts for 70 per cent of operating costs, and lab-grown meat is still backed by big capital — Bill Gates, Cargill and others. Changing the food system takes more than technology: it needs collective action in farmers’ markets, CSA and urban community gardens.
Deployed as the Bracero Programme ended, the UC Davis harvester saw 4,428 of California’s 5,000 tomato farms collapse, displaced 32,000 workers, and replaced hand-picked fruit with a bland, machine-friendly variety still in most American ketchup.
