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EartherTinted Solar Panels Can Help Farms Generate Clean Energy While Growing Food
In a future world, leafy vegetables may not be grown in rows of crops under the sun. Instead, they may be grown indoors beneath tinted semi-transparent solar panels that will allow farmers to grow food and produce energy. That’s the future imagined in a recent study that shows how the use of this technology can … Continued
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ScienceHealthKids Raised on Farms Are Healthier in Two Important Ways
Scientists have long speculated that the “dirtier” the environment we grow up in—with lots of germs from different people and even animals—the better off our immune system and physical health ultimately will be. A new study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science provides early evidence that a dirty world might even … Continued
By Ed Cara -
EartherClimate Change
Where We Will Grow Food After We Scorch the Earth
A relatively small number of crops make up a lot of the world’s diet. But, as the world gets hotter, the places that we’re able to grow these crops is moving. A new study published in Nature Communications by researchers at the University of Birmingham looks into whether the places where we currently grow our … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
The Global Coffee Shortage Is Already a Huge Headache
Hope you’re ready to face the day with nothing but your own unsharpened wits about you. Soon, they will be all you have left. A new report from Australia’s Climate Institute predicts that by 2050, global warming will make at least half of the land currently used for coffee production unable to produce quality beans. … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Something Is Killing Off Australia’s Chillies
Chili peppers in Australia have been turning black and rotting on the vine, seemingly without explanation. Now researchers have finally identified just what’s been killing these poor chillies. Initially the ailment looked a lot like a disease called anthracnose, which manifests itself as a series of black, sunken spots that frequently result in death. But … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech NewsThe World’s Largest Vertical Farm Is Being Built in New Jersey
A huge vertical farm—where crops are planted, grown, and harvested all with neither sun nor soil—is being built in New Jersey. When it’s finished, it will be the largest one in the world. You can see one of the (smaller) existing factories from AeroFarm, on which the new one will be modeled, above in this … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Why World Hunger Is Going to Fall to Its Lowest Levels Ever This Decade
By 2026, there’s going to be a lot less hunger worldwide—and that’s something to celebrate. The reason is not that we’re growing more food, however. Food is just getting cheaper. The USDA just crunched the numbers on food costs in the world’s low- and middle-income countries, which also have the majority of the world’s hungry … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
These Two Crops Use More of the World’s Water Than All Other Crops Combined
The world is drying up all around us, but which crops can we use to shift the blame away from our cars, pools, and cartons of almond milk? Cast your eyes hard on these two culprits, right in your very own kitchen cabinet. A new report from Oxfam identifies the crops that are using up … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech NewsThe Real Reason People Are Still So Confused About Genetically Modified Crops
Amidst the clamor over genetically modified crops, there’s an underlying point that’s still being missed: Nobody really knows what constitutes a genetically modified crop. A new report from the National Academies of Sciences attempts to synthesize more than 900 existing research studies on GM crops into a single analysis. The salient finding of the report … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Researchers Just Solved One of the Biggest Problems for World Hunger
Planet Earth is doomed with a fast growing global population and a limited amount of farmland to produce food for everyone. That means that we’re going to need to figure out how to maximize what we’ve got—and researchers just made a major breakthrough in getting the most from our crops. Biologists from Cold Spring Harbor … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
This Mysterious 46,000 Year Old Object Is the World’s Oldest Axe
The world’s oldest axe—dating back at least 46,000 years—has been uncovered in Australia. And, already, there’s a mystery surrounding it. The axe—by this time reduced to mere flakes, which you can see below—was originally found in a dig during the ’90s. But researchers from Australian National University only recently managed to identify and date the … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
Chernobyl’s Milk Is Still Radioactive, Thirty Years After the Meltdown
It’s been thirty years since the Chernobyl disaster and radiation levels in plants seemed to have died down. So why are levels of radiation in milk still peaking? A new AP investigation found that radiation levels in milk from dairies along the border of the 1986 Chernobyl exclusion zone were 10 times higher than accepted … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
These Three New GM Crops Will Change How We Farm
Scientists have created three new genetically modified crops to combat three of the world’s most troubling crop diseases. Each was tweaked in a slightly different way to be resistant to those specific diseases. The details appear in three new papers out today in Nature Biotechnology. For wheat stem rust, researchers in the UK’s John Innes … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
The Number of GMOs Worldwide Just Dropped For the First Time in Two Decades
For the past two decades, the number of genetically-modified crops has been steadily skyrocketing around the globe. Until 2015, when the number saw its first recorded drop. What’s going on? The numbers come from a report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications looking at the span of data for worldwide biotech … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
How To Tell If a Drought Is Going To Kill Off Your Trees
Droughts are hitting us harder, and they’re only going to keep on coming. But how do you know if your trees can make it through a severe drought? Now there’s a way to find out before the drought hits. Obviously, some species of trees need more (or less) water than others. But scientists didn’t know … Continued
By Ria Misra -
EartherClimate Change
El Niño Is Causing a Worldwide Sugar Shortage
El Niño is almost over, but the wreckage of things it knocked over in its wake continues—and one of those things is your sugar supply. Eat your desserts while you still can, friends. The Independent got a look at a new report from analytics firm Green Pool warning that a sugar shortage is headed our … Continued
By Ria Misra -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Botanists Just Answered One of the Biggest Questions About Farming on Mars
Researchers have successfully grown a crop of tomatoes, peas, and radishes harvested in Martian soil—and with those comes an answer to one of the big questions we have about how to farm in space. Since 2014, researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, led by ecologist Wieger Wamelink, have been experimenting with growing vegetables in … Continued
By Ria Misra -
EartherClimate Change
If You Don’t Think a One-Degree Temperature Rise Matters, Read This
It’s just one-degree, right? So, how big a difference can it really make? There’s a place in the world where we can already look at for an answer. A new study in Nature Climate Change looks at Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, a rising agricultural powerhouse in the country and in the world. (Ten percent of … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
The Real Reason a Million Acres of America’s Farmland Disappeared Last Year
One million acres of farmland basically vanished from the United States last year alone. Was it due to the weird weather, condo uberplexes, a blip in the space-time continuum? Nope, it’s something else entirely: the fundamental realities of farming. A new federal report out this week pinned the loss of American farmland in 2015 over … Continued
By Ria Misra -
Tech News
The Crop That Will Skyrocket Most This Century Isn’t Really a Food at All
The world at the end of this century won’t look the same as it does today. It will be hotter and drier, with far less available space in which to grow food—and the crop that will be doing the best under that new system won’t be a food crop at all. The USDA put out … Continued
By Ria Misra