The Future of Food at Quartz

NickOttens

Quartz has a future of food series of articles that our members may be interested in.

Here are a few highlights:

• Plant-based meats sound healthy, but they’re still processed foods
• Artists stopped showing us the truth about farming and it’s hurting the planet
• The artificial bees of our pollinated future
• Is cell-cultured meat ready for the mainstream?

SteveK8

I like this article from Quartz, on "cyber farming," using hydroponics: https://qz.com/1587662/

"They've discovered some interesting details: For instance, the (basil) plants tend to taste better when they have exposure to light all 24 hours of the day."

"The scientists are making their data available to the public at no charge. Right now, there are companies working on similar high-tech hydroponic farming. Toshiba is churning out lettuce, it's happening on rooftops in China, and a company called Farm.One is growing food out of basements in Manhattan. But most of these companies keep their techniques under wraps, making it hard for more people to enter the market or for nonprofit initiatives to get off the ground."

Bringing meaningfully productive, easy to use, sophisticated and straightforward hydroponics to mass markets will empower just about anyone to get in on this kind of research and more. Elementary school children could have discovered that basil tends to taste better with exposure to light 24 hours a day. There's no telling what we will learn next.

By 2050 we will have effectively passed the baton on all of this to the up and coming generations. We would do well by providing them with tools for learning and asking questions and exploring solutions to do with food, nutrition, and related sciences.

Low-cost systems could readily be used to help non-profit, sharing and community based initiatives to get off the ground.