Albedo and climate change

plant, grow, and harvest food autonomously, can use as little as 1% of the land that a conventional farm would use to grow the same amount of food. The systems are still at a relatively early stage and expensive, but beginning to prove that they can be profitable. Right now, vertical farm companies focus on leafy greens, which make the most sense financially, but berries and vine crops will soon follow. Other indoor agriculture facilities, like a large, state-of-the-art greenhouse now growing tomatoes in Appalachia, use one-thirtieth of the land used in traditional farming. A new vertical wheat farm grows as much in 850 square feet as could normally grow on 30 to 50 acres. … [Read more...] about Why we need to “rewild” our environment

One of the challenges the company identified was the lack of land: Some land that was originally forested is now covered by cities or used for farming. Other areas might not be available for sale. But there’s a large amount of desertified land that is available. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification reports that around 4.7 billion acres on the planet—about twice the size of China—have been affected by drought or desertification, but could potentially be restored. Finding enough water to grow trees there is a challenge. But the folks at Terraformation believe that if desalinated water is used to irrigate seedlings, a restored forest will eventually be able to sustain itself. … [Read more...] about Reddit’s former CEO is now in the forest-planting business

Appealing to different needs As more consumers hop on the resale bandwagon, Chandra believes that different platforms can cater to different kinds of shoppers. Sites already offer wildly different ways to shop. ThredUp, Depop, and Poshmark tend to offer lower priced items, while Rebag and TheRealReal focus on luxury products. “Each seller on [Poshmark] is effectively building their brand,” Chandra says. “The ambient chatter on the site is the kind of conversation you might have in a store, when you’re asking questions about a product.” … [Read more...] about Poshmark’s explosive IPO bodes well for the resale industry, but how sustainable is secondhand?

The greenhouse can also meet supply better than urban farming, he argues. “I’m a huge fan of hyperlocal, urban farming,” he says. “But the reality is the average American meal travels 1,500 miles by the time it gets to our plate. And we’re not going to go from 1,500 miles to a mile. It’s just unrealistic–you will not feed America that way.” To begin to replace produce imports from Mexico–4 billion pounds in 2018–he thinks production has to happen at a larger scale. … [Read more...] about This startup is going to put one of the world’s largest sustainable greenhouses in coal country