Taking hyper-local agriculture global – Freight Farms CEO on Growing Business

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Taking hyper-local agriculture global – Freight Farms CEO on Growing Business

Brad McNamara, CEO and Founder of Freight Farms is on Growing Business radio.  

Freight Farms is a critically acclaimed startup that reuses shipping containers, to offer a sustainable alternative to agriculture, as we know it.  Freight Farms takes up-cycled shipping containers and retrofits them into fully automated hydroponic farms. Their goals are to provide you with farming infrastructure to empower you to enter the local food system and offer a new platform to grow your business. Each container can provide about an acre worth of vegetation, and because it’s a soil-less system there are no herbicides or pesticides involved in the growth process.  

There are a number of benefits to operating a freight farms. For one, because of it’s fully automated system and human-centered design, labor requirements are significantly reduced and it only requires about 15-20 hours of work per week. Also, it’s possible to grow leafy greens year round because everything is operating inside a fully-insulated shipping container with extensive climate controls. This allows people to grow anywhere regardless of the outside environment.  

Bourdain Lining Up ‘Mind Blowing People’ for NY Food Hall

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Bourdain Lining Up ‘Mind Blowing People’ for NY Food Hall

Anthony Bourdain is a very busy guy. In a new interview with Toqueland’s Andrew Friedman, the author/TV star/former line cook explains that he’s working on some revolutionary thing, including a new definition of food hall.

Here’s what Bourdain says about the upcoming market:

I’m working hard on the food hall, the hawker center, which is looking to be pretty big. Can’t really tell you more about it but we’re getting some very, very, very interesting people involved. I mean, really mind‑blowing people. This will not be just another food hall. Not even close. It’ll be, “Holy shit.”

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High finance as cannabis fund pitches global Ag investing superpowers 

It was high times at a high society hotel on Wednesday when a new cannabis-focused private equity fund took its fundraising pitch to a big agricultural conference at New York’s Waldorf Astoria.

Addressing a ballroom of investors at the Global AgInvesting conference amid presentations from Macquarie and Deloitte, Jordan Lewis, another partner, said: “Hopefully this is the beginning of a change in acceptance of cannabis in the agriculture industry and elsewhere.”  

More food trucks take to the streets of Boston

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More food trucks take to the streets of Boston

Lined up like a ring of mushrooms after a spring rain, a handful of food trucks encircle Dewey Square Plaza waiting for hungry customers to arrive. April marks the launch of the 2014 spring season for Mobile Eats on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, introducing 15 new trucks to the line-up and four to the Boston food truck scene. Before the lunch rush begins, vendors walk around greeting one another with fist bumps and handshakes or cheers of hello while leaning out of the truck windows. Here is a sampling of the new ones.

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How to:  Plant & maintain a garden on a budget

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Gardening can be a therapeutic and relaxing activity, but it can also put a little extra money in your pocket if you grow the right things (and grow them well). A seedling might cost you just a dollar or two but yield vegetables and fruit throughout the season that would otherwise cost you many dollars a pound.   Like anything else, gardening can be done on a budget, or you can get carried away and spend far too much.  Here are just a few ways you can save on your garden this year.

Cancer & Sugar – time to know the facts!

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Cancer & Sugar – time to know the facts!

Whereas many within the mainstream medical community insist on promoting the belief that the link between certain types of food with an increased risk of cancer is “weak” or only “nominally significant,” the scientific evidence continues to accumulate indicating sugar feeds cancer.

According to researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, sugar poses a health risk—contributing to around 35 million deaths globally each year. So high is sugar’s toxicity that it should now be considered a potentially toxic substance like alcohol and tobacco. Its link with the onset of diabetes is such that punitive regulations, such as a tax on all foods and drinks that contain “added” sugar, are now warranted, the researchers concluded. They also recommend banning sales in or near schools, as well as placing age limits on the sale of such products.

Study: Fad diets work (actually, only the Paleo)

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Study: Fad diets work (actually, only the Paleo)

Yale researchers look at all the fad diets and find one that works.

But what about the Paleo diet, which encourages meat eating? The authors conclude the “aggregation of evidence” supports meat eating, as long as the “animal foods are themselves the products, directly or ultimately, of pure plant foods—the composition of animal flesh and milk is as much influenced by diet as we are.” That’s entirely consistent with the Paleo push for meat from pasture-raised animals, and brought to mind a study I wrote about late last year finding that cows fed on grass deliver milk with healthier fat profile than their industrially raised peers.

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20% of China’s farmland polluted

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A fifth of China’s farmland is polluted, according to an offical report based on the results of an extensive survey.  Soil pollution has long been a concern in China due to the country’s rapid industrialization and the report carried on the website of theMinistry of Environmental Protection confirms the extent of the problem. The report states that pollutants in more than 16% of Chinese soil exceeds national standards and that figure rises to 20% for arable land.

It describes the situation as “not optimistic” and said said that the quality of farmland is worrying while deserted industrial and mining land is seriously polluted. The main causes of soil pollution are industry and agriculture, according to the report. Cadmium, nickel and arsenic are the top three pollutants found.

http://nyti.ms/QG9cJE