Greening the Desert ~ Alt Perspectives...

Three documentary examples of rehabilitating large-scale damaged ecosystems...

Small Farmer Tools ~ Simple Efficient Solutions

This past few weeks I've discovered both Richard Perkins, Making Small Farms Work, and Curtis Stone, the Urban Farmer. I've been trying to understand the combined notions of (1) smallholder farming, (2) using permaculture & "organic" approaches, all while (3) having a profit-making orientation and these two are really good about pinning things down with numbers, planning their steps and documenting their actions, and analyzing and tuning for moneymaking. Anyways, today I just want to spotlight a couple of simple efficient solutions they're both champions of. First, the Japanese paperpot method of seedling-starting and transplanting into beds (which Stone sells via his Paperpot venture)... Second, the quick-cut and cut-again greens harvester... FYI, Perkins is also getting into the business of selling the solutions with this Farmers Tools venture. Note that neither Stone nor Perkins are the direct inventors of these tools, but they've each been really prolific in using them profitably and especially in demonstrating how they can be amazingly effective! Check out their respective YouTube channels, Ridgedale Permaculture and Urban Farmer.

SproutsIO ~ Smart Microgarden Kickstarting!

Fantastic to see friend and MIT Media Lab alumna Jenny Broutin and team Kickstarting their SproutsIO smart microgarden!

"A [...] system that makes growing Personal Produce™ a pleasure. Grow indoors, year-round, soil-free. [...] SproutsIO was designed to help change our relationship to food by connecting people to the source of their produce and allowing them to experience the joy of growing their own. [...] Start growing in under 5 minutes. Plug in your SproutsIO, and download and launch the SproutsIOGrow mobile app to connect your SproutsIO to WiFi. Place the sIO seed refill in the basin, the camera will recognize the plants you are growing and confirm recommended settings. Just add water and now you are growing."

Excellent advance from when Jenny first brought personalized modern food/ag to the Lab back in 2011! Check out the Kickin' video and rich extra materials on the site...

Origin of Crops ~ Worldmap of Agrisourcing

Cool site with interactive and related worldmaps on Origin of Crops...

Root Capital ~ Growing Agri-Impact Finance...

Check out Root Capital, a financing and connections-making social venture which helps small and growing rural agri-businesses thrive long-term, socially, economically, and sustainably. See especially their Timeline and here's founder Willy Foote sharing how it all started... And a summary of their approach... And a Skoll World Forum Uncommon Heroes mini-docu on Root...

Making Nature Useless ~ Beyond Peak Farmland

Ronald Bailey at Reason asks Can We Save Nature by Making It Economically Useless?

“Decoupling” human economy from ecology could render large areas of pastures, croplands, and managed forests too remote for exploitation. [...] "The way we will save nature is by rendering it economically worthless," declared Ted Nordhaus. Nordhaus, chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, was speaking at "Making Nature Useless," a seminar sponsored by the D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future. With that one sentence, he summed up the entire session’s theme. [...] "Why are we using just half of the planet's ice-free land surface?" he asked the audience. Cropland only occupies about 12 percent; pasture, 24 percent; managed forests, 9 percent; cities, 3 percent. About 12 percent of the world's ice-free land, he noted, has been formally set aside for conservation and preservation. What makes that 12 percent different? His answer is that, for the most part, it is too high, too dry, too steep, and too remote. We have saved what we have saved, he suggested, largely because it is not worth anything economically. Most of the lands that are not legally protected but remain unexploited share the same economically off-putting characteristics. [...] humanity is on the cusp of "peak farmland." If current land-use trends continue, an enormous amount of crop and pasture land will be abandoned and returned to nature. [...] Urbanization contributes to the process of decoupling economy and ecology, since fewer hungry people engaged in low productivity subsistence farming mean more land for nature. [...] Analysts with old-fashioned Malthusian mindsets are again decrying the imminent approach of "peak everything" followed by a collapse of civilization. The data presented at Wednesday's seminar points toward a much happier version of "peak everything," as humanity increasingly withdraws from the natural world during the rest of this century."

Howgrow.org ~ Stories of Food From Field to Fork

Thanks to Kuriositas for spotting How Does it Grow, an ongoing series sharing stories of our food grows and goes from field to fork! First full episode, Mushrooms, which I don't like, but it's cool to see how they're grown! Next, Garlic! Finally (for now), Cauliflower!

Fowl Factories? ~ Yes, Amazing Food Production!

It's fantastic to see the efficiency and scale of chicken-related agribusiness, from hatching to slaughtering, egg sorting through consumption. First, an overview of industrial farming in the German context, including the perspective of both producer and protestor... Hatching Chicks... Processing Eggs... The amazing "Long Egg" process!-) Slaughtering Chickens... Processing Chickens... Serving it up at KFC... Next, check out this piece from Westgate Integrity in Kenya showing how that market is beginning the process of modernizing towards the global state-of-the-art in chicken care and egg production... Finally, be aware that there's a counter-movement to all this efficiency-orientation. Generously speaking, the "free-ranger" assert greater quality of overall product and spin the benefits of so-called "organic" production. And it's certainly believable that factors such as stress and feed indeed make a difference to ultimate meat-taste, so there's room for improvement in the factory approach. On the other end of the spectrum, however, we have criminal "animal liberators" run amok as revealed in this Australian 60 Minutes piece...

CityFarming ~ Open, Fast, Healthy Urban Foods...

TIME's Michael Lester spots MIT Media Lab colleague Caleb Harper and the CityFARM project...

Tree of 40 Fruit ~ Van Aken's Art+Graft+Growth!

Thanks to io9's Ria Misra for spotting the Tree of 40 Fruit...

"An ongoing series of hybridized fruit trees by contemporary artist Sam Van Aken. Each unique Tree of 40 Fruit grows over forty different types of stone fruit including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and almonds. Sculpted through the process of grafting, the Tree of 40 Fruit blossom in variegated tones of pink, crimson and white in spring, and in summer bear a multitude of fruit."

Becky Crew at ScienceAlert spots TEDx talk too!

Ganjapreneurs ~ America's Marijuana Revolution

DerSpiegel's Anne Seith writes about America's Marijuana Revolution: Ganjapreneurs Hit the Jackpot...

"Financial investors are also starting to raise money to enter the giant market at the earliest stage possible. Analysts say there is a potential market for cannabis that could reach $110 billion (€81 billion), four times the revenues generated each year by the cigarette industry. Comparisons are being made to the Dot.Com era, to the 19th century gold rush and even to the end of prohibition in the 1930s, which saw massive growth in the alcohol industry. And everyone is trying to get into the game -- idealists as well as tough-as-nails business realists, charlatans, geniuses and nut jobs."

See also Pot Paradise photogallery;-)

Farm for the Future ~ Sustainable Growth...

UD spots Rebecca Hosking's docu A Farm for the Future exploring...

"How to transform her family’s farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key. With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family’s wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year’s high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is. Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future."

Harvesting Fog ~ Capturing Aerosolized Water!

MIT colleague Karthik spots fog harvesting technologies...

"A system for collecting fresh drinking water from fog that regularly rolls through Chile’s otherwise arid coastal region. [...] A series of suspended mesh structures [...] strategically placed on top of hills and angle toward locations where fog typically blows in from the ocean. As the fog comes through, the webbing in the structures captures small droplets of water and filters them down into a collection silo. [...] There is around 10 billion cubic meters of potential fog water produced every year along the Chilean coast."

Sweet Science ~ Reinventing Maple Harvesting!

The Globe sez in A jolt for the science behind harvesting maple sap...

"Scientists find way to harvest without taps or buckets or, even, what you’d call trees. Cutting-edge maple syrup production experiments at the University of Vermont show that maple sap can be vacuumed from the slashed-off trunks of saplings."

Urban Farming ~ Imagining Future Boston Food...

The Globe's Leon Neyfakh asks If urban farming took off, what would Boston look like?

"Not every farm looks like a farm any more. A new type of agriculture has been sprouting up in urban centers [...] and Boston’s new ordinance opens the city up to a whole range of ideas about how to integrate food production into city life. [...] On the more inventive side, entrepreneurs are trying to reimagine the traditional mechanics of agriculture so that it might be woven into the built landscape of a dense and busy city. Now that Boston has officially signaled its interest, the possibilities are vast -- maybe Boston can even become home to North America’s first skyscraper farm"

Neyfakh goes on to spotlight several specific ideas...

• A-Frame Conveyors ~ Ferris wheels for plants
• High-Rise Farming ~ Greenhouse skyscrapers
• Rooftop Greenhouses ~ Available empty acres
• Hydroponic Trays ~ Stacked veggie growing
• Shipping Container Mini-Farms ~ LED-litups
• Tilapia Ecosystems ~ Fish-fertilized gardens
• Shopping Cart Gardens ~ Guerrilla agriculture
• Corner Fields ~ Using vacant land parcels
• Undersea Edibles ~ Shellfish and seaweed
• Green Basements ~ LED-lit underused areas
• Bees ~ Urban healthy insect husbandry
• Chickens ~ Non-rooster urban coops

Sky Greens ~ Singapore's Vertical Farm on PBS

Singapore Looks Skyward to Take Farming in New Directions on PBS!

Fertile Continent ~ Detailed Soil Atlas of Africa...

Thanks to Emeka Okafor at Africa Unchained for spotting the new Soil Atlas of Africa...

"Using state-of-the-art computer mapping techniques, the Soil Atlas of Africa shows the changing nature of soil across the continent. It explains the origin and functions of soil, describes the different soil types that can be found in Africa and their relevance to both local and global issues. The atlas also discusses the principal threats to soil and the steps being taken to protect soil resources. [...] It presents a new and comprehensive interpretation of an often neglected natural resource."

Harvesting Spider Silk ~ Fritz Vollrath's Threads!

The Guardian Observer spots Fritz Vollrath's Oxford Silk Group research on harvesting spider silk by reeling...

"...silk directly from the spider. At the start of this film a spider is pinned down after being sedated with carbon dioxide gas. The silk being pulled from the spinnerets consists mainly of major ampullate silk which forms the main structure of the web (like scaffolding) and minor ampullate silk, which is used to form the main spiral of the spider's web. The silk thread is pulled over on to the spool and attached with a dab of glue, and the motor is then run to start collection on to the spool. The species of this spider is Nephila edulis. It's possible to harvest between 30-80 metres of silk in one go, after which the spider can be released back to its web to feed ready for reeling another day."

MIT Development Ventures ~ D-Lab Action 2012

My MIT colleague Alex (Sandy) Pentland and I are again hosting our D-Lab Development Ventures class this Fall 2012 at the Media Lab, this time with special focus on frugal, DIY, and ultraffordable technologies as well as exponential innovations including mobiles, big data, and analytics.

As always, we look forward to the latest new venture concepts our students propose -- in domains ranging from Health & Wellness, Energy & Sustainability, Education & Creativity, Commerce & Financial Services, Civic Engagement and beyond -- and we try to help the most motivated teams and promising ideas actually start and thrive!

More How It's Made ~ Insight Into Breakfasts!-)

UniqueDaily reminds me of the great How It's Made family of shows!