Post Tagged with: "urban agriculture"
BrightFarms’ Business Model: How Tech & Efficiency Could Help Farmers & Consumers [Video]
![BrightFarms’ Business Model: How Tech & Efficiency Could Help Farmers & Consumers [Video]](http://www.foodandtechconnect.com/site/wp-content/themes/yamidoo/scripts/timthumb.php?src=http://www.foodandtechconnect.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BrightFarms.jpg&w=190&h=115&zc=1)
Food and agriculture know are low margin industries. Paul Lightfoot, Chief Executive Officer of BrightFarms, a company that designs, finances, builds and operates greenhouse farms at grocery retailers, is attempting to capitalize on what he sees as inefficiently produced fresh vegetables. And he recently secured a $4.3 million Series A equity financing round to do so
Food Meets Technology at TEDxManhattan Changing the Way We Eat
“Changing the way we eat” means a lot more than simply cutting fat and calories from our diets.
Beekeeping 101: Online Classes Help Pay the Bills
The tech industry has brought about many recent innovations in business, but perhaps one of the most important for those in food+tech is the trend toward monetizing knowledge. No longer are entrepreneurs solely hoping low paying ads and internet product sales will pay the rent. Technology like webinars, ebooks and apps are helping innovative food
Windowfarms Raises $223K+ on Kickstarter to Manufacture New System Locally
Windowfarms, the open source hydroponic farming system and social network, has raised over $257,307 dollars on Kickstarter. The Windowfarms Project’s success is a clear indication that increasingly more people care about buying and growing their food locally. But, do they care about local manufacturing?
Nevin Cohen on Hacking the Food System: The Networked Future of Urban Agriculture
The future of urban agriculture is not vertical, nor even simply horizontal. It is distributed and networked throughout the city. In a growing number of cities, suburbs,and small towns, community groups and entrepreneurs have discovered innovative ways to harvest and grow food, using interconnected networks of relatively small plots of public and private land and shared resources. In the process, they are forging novel relationships among producers and consumers
Dickson Despommier on Hacking the Food System
The construction of the world’s first vertical farms have amply demonstrated to even the most outspoken critics that indoor farming in tall buildings is not only feasible but entirely doable. A fifth VF in Seattle, a modest two story facility operated by Cevsca, Inc., opened in June, 2011. Vertical farming has now moved from the “crazy idea” stage, to conceptualization, to construction of functional prototypes in just eleven short years.
IBM Helps City Leaders Explore Feasibility of Aquaponics Initiative in Milwaukee
According to the Smarter Planet Blog, “In June, a team of five IBMers spent three weeks in Milwaukee as part of the company’s Smarter City Challenge grant program with the goal of helping city leaders explore the feasibility of their urban farming initiative.”
Growing Food & Innovation in a Window
Windowfarms alone will not save the world. But even in the big picture, every little piece counts. That’s the thinking of The Windowfarms Project founder Britta Riley, a technology designer with myriad interests ranging from product development to social media to agriculture. Riley, along with Rebecca Bray, started Windowfarms in February 2009 as a way to foster
iTools: i got. you got-The Backyard Food Garden Exchange.
You are growing, growing, growing. But alas, you have 80 plums, and no lettuce. What do you do? Well, you can set them outside of your apartment and hope they magically get traded for a bowl of greens, or you can log on to igotugot.org and trade them with another urban gardner for a nice batch of arugula. The premise behind this site is easy – it’s social networking for urban farmers hoping to move their bounties. I love the concept, but most of all love the simplicity. Go to the site, enter your zip code, and you will see listings from within 100 miles
Manhattan Borough President & AgSquared at Slow Money NYC Showcase
Slow Money NYC’s inaugural Entrepreneur Showcase and Resource Exchange featured ten entrepreneurs, including AgSquared, a farm management and planning platform. Watch their presentation, including open remarks from Manhattan Borough president Scott Stringer
Digital Platform Helps a Garden Grow in the South Bronx
Meet Ying Guo founder of Growing Gardens Growing Kids, a pilot project in the South Bronx aimed at teaching kids how to grow fresh produce. Ying is currently leveraging a customizable website and social media support provided to her by Pando Projects to bring her idea to fruition.
Polyculture+Tech Part I: The Permaculture Information Web- Growing Guilds
What would a design tool for curating meaningful ecological relationships look like? A decade ago, inspired by this question, I conceived of a web-based application for designing Permaculture guilds.
iTools: Building a System; Part 3- Connecting to the Data
In yesterday’s installment, I spoke of how we decided to store our data, what freeing the data means for us and for others, and how we found a simpler data solution that worked for the software developer (me) and the layman (John and many other people out there). Today, I want to talk about how we got this data to an interface that is useable for people to analyze, gather, and use
Eggzy: Using Tech To Build a Local & Transparent Egg Economy
Meet Sharleen and Mark Thompson, co-founders of Eggzy, a flock management platform for backyard chicken farmers that allows you to manage egg production, record expenses, calculate and project costs, and promote your flock. Through the “Egg Stands,” friends and neighbors are able to keep informed about egg availability, pricing, description of flocks, and other statistics. According to the site, they have tracked 74 flocks (956 hens in total) that have laid 2226 eggs over the last 30 days. They estimate that this could meet the daily protein requirements of 267 people
