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Though many of us have an instinctual fear of them, bees have been playing a vital role in human civilization since ancient times. Even today bees are an absolutely crucial part of our agricultural practices. Flower pollination is essential to maintaining the high crop yields needed to ensure that…
Edward Linacre's Airdeop
Thanks to the inventive spirit of young Australian inventor Edward Linacre, there may one day be no such thing as a water shortage.
He recently won the £10,000 international James Dyson Award for a “low-tech” device – the Airdrop – that can draw water from the air, besting the work of 500 other inventors.
Linacre, a graduate of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, wanted to solve the drought problem afflicting farmers in parts of Australia suffering from drought conditions. His solution, Airdrop, can harvest 11.5 milliliters of water for every cubic meter of air in the driest deserts such as the Negev in Israel, which has an average relative air humidity of 64 percent. A small-scale prototype Linacre installed at his parents’ house created about a liter of water a day. Linacre will use his prize money for further testing on increasing the yield.
As reported in The Sidney Morning Herald, instead of using complex, energy-intensive methods such as desalination, Airdrop’s source of water is abundant – the air – and so it can be used anywhere in the world.
Linacre’s Airdrop can deliver water to the roots of crops in dry areas by pushing air through a network of underground pipes, cooling it down to the point where water condenses. The water can then be pumped to the roots of plants using drip irrigation methods.
This video interview posted by gizmag helps explain the invention and the sound reasoning behind it.
Linacre said he was inspired by the Namib beetle, which survives in landscapes that get just half an inch of rain per year by consuming the dew it collects on the hydrophilic skin of its back. Similarly, the desert rhubarb can harvest 16 times the amount of water than other plants in its region by using deep water channeling cavities in its leaves.
“Biomimicry is a powerful weapon in an engineer’s armory,” said James Dyson, whose charity sponsors the award. “We chose Edward’s project because it was a very good and original solution to what has become a real problem.”
He said the device was a low-tech solution that could be installed and maintained by the farmers themselves. It powers itself using solar panels.
In addition to Linacre’s cash prize, a further £10,000 has been awarded to Swinburne University. Linacre said without the university’s help he would never have got his idea off the ground.
The James Dyson Award is run by the James Dyson Foundation and each year students of product design, industrial design or design engineering from around the world are invited to enter.
Photo: Arsineh Houspian, The Sidney Morning Herald
Biofuels developer, ZeaChem
Make another mark for alternative fuels and chemicals.
ZeaChem, a Colorado developer of biorefinery technologies that can convert renewable materials into sustainable fuels and chemicals, has signed an agreement with Procter & Gamble (P&G) for commercializing bio-based chemicals and other products.
The agreement was made public June 1. Under the multi-year agreement, the two companies will research, develop and commercialize ZeaChem’s latest biorefinery technology, a process that uses renewable feedstocks like poplar trees and agricultural residues to produce high-yield, low carbon fuel emissions.
The deal fits well with P&G’s environmental sustainability vision. The company has indicated it intends to use 100 percent sustainably sourced renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging.
“Novel innovations from our suppliers, such as ZeaChem’s unique process to create bio-based chemicals, are critical to us achieving this vision,” said Len Sauers, P&G vice president for global sustainability.
The two companies will utilize ZeaChem’s existing infrastructure at its lab in Menlo Park, Calif., pilot facility at Hazen Research in Golden, CO, and a demonstration-scale biorefinery in Boardman, OR.
ZeaChem has developed a cellulose-based biorefinery platform capable of producing advanced fuels and intermediate chemicals. ZeaChem’s indirect approach leapfrogs the yield and carbon dioxide (CO2) problems associated with traditional and cellulosic-based biorefinery processes.
ZeaChem has begun fermentation work on this new product platform using the same processes and equipment that the company used to prove and scale up its C2 product platform. The company says the new platform will enable it to ultimately deploy its technology for the production of a variety of bio-based chemicals and fuels.
According to Biofuels Digest, the companies have not described the nature of the target molecules. However, ZeaChem has already stated it will initiate research and development of its three-carbon (C3) product platform.
“Nature has generally dictated that odd numbers like C3 provide more opportunities to make money,” ZeaChem CEO Jim Imbler said in the interview.
ZeaChem’s technology involves a parallel hybrid system of fermentation and gasification. ZeaChem reports this hybrid process can achieve a 40 percent higher yield than other cellulosic processes.
The main contenders for fuel substitutes are biomass fuels, derived from organic plant matter. Ethanol-based bio fuels are extracted from corn. Biodiesel is made up primarily of used vegetable oil and grease. Jatropha oil is also being used to make biofuels. Now added to the list is cellulosic biofuel – a new concept in biofuels because it is not plant specific and can be generated from both living and dead organic plant matter.
Mike Yohay is the founder and CEO of Cityscape Farms. Photo: Cityscape Farms
While a city may be dense with population, it is generally regarded as sparse with agricultural space, unless you hear Mike Yohay, the founder and CEO of Cityscape Farms, which specializes in creating urban farms wherever there happens to be growing space, from vacant lots to rooftops.
These smart solutions come from entrepreneurial sustainability companies like Cityscape Farms, which provide urban greenhouse systems for agricultural production with low water use.
“By growing fresh food within just a few miles of where it will be eaten, we will have healthier, better tasting produce and make our cities cleaner and more self-sufficient,” says Yohay.
Important for city farming, the system for growing food has no soil because it uses an aquaponics system. Aquaponics is a method combining aquaculture (fish cultivation) with hydroponics. This approach to growing uses natural fertilizer from filtered fish effluent, creating a closed-loop, pesticide-free organic system:
Yohay says the aquaponics process works this way:
One perspective of rooftop farming from Cityscape Farms. Sourcwe: Cityscape
Yohay says he also offers a program to owners of commercial rooftops to monetize their roof by leasing it to Cityscape Farms. A Cityscape team of architects and engineers will develop “site-specific greenhouse systems that are consistent with local building codes and zoning laws. We address every liability concern to assure a safe, structurally sound installation that will earn you income that didn’t exist before.”
Other benefits: helping the environment and the local food economy. The systems that are used created their own nutrients for plant growth and require less water.
On his website, Yohay cites two influences in the development of Cityscape Farms:
“Attending college in Iowa, where I witnessed topsoil depletion and environmental pollution from large-scale corn, soy, and livestock agribusiness. The second was living in La Amistad rainforest in Costa Rica, where for a year I managed an eco-lodge and participated in low impact organic farming that supported our local community.
“Looking critically at these two extremes, I became determined to find a happy medium: a modern way to feed people on a large scale without spoiling the land, air and water.”
Buckminster Fuller, designer of the geodesic dome Source: BFI
For those still considering creating one of this world’s next great solutions, there are but 15 days left to prepare and submit applications for the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Those standing on the sidelines should run onto the plying field; our world needs the help.
This important global event is considered by some to be one of socially responsible design’s highest awards. This premier international prize program awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a solution that, broadly stated, “has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.”
According to the BFI Challenge, entering creates “an opportunity to become part of a network that is advancing and accelerating the practice of whole systems thinking and design to develop the kind of high impact global solutions we so desperately need.”
The Buckminster Fuller Institute, named after Buckminster Fuller, creator of the geodesic dome, was created to share and advance imaginative work that might lead the way to solving problems for global housing and infrastructure requirements.
We received this uplifting correspondence from Maxine Mitchell, working at communications outreach for Steven Apfelbaum’s Applied Ecological Services (AES).
Steven Apfelbaum, founder of AES Photo: AES
Mitchell writes, “For more than three decades, Steve, and the AES team have developed land-use solutions to help farmers, companies, landowners, and communities around the world strike a balance between cost and ecology. From transforming dismal landfills and dusty iron mines into pristine preserves and prairies, Steve continues to show how ecosystem services result in healthy wild, rural, and urban landscapes while boosting the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.”
She included an article for Green Streets to share that Mr. Apfelbaum recently wrote concerning the Gulf of Mexico and its unhealthy status even before the oil drilling disaster caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident. What he proposes here should be seriously considered by all communities, landowners, businesses and farmers wanting to help turn overwhelming problems into solutions. And while this post is longer than usual, it is very much worth reading and sharing.
Apfelbaum’s article follows (our emphasis marks provided):
Mohammed Bin Abubakar, explains nursery to writer, Glenn Meyers. Photo: Oteng Foster
As gardeners go, Mohammed Bin Abubakar holds a unique position. He has built a forest where once there were only rushed rocks and the unsightly remnants of an old gold mine.
He serves as the reclamation coordinator at Newmont Mining Corporation’s Brong Ahafo Gold Mine in Ghana which started production a few years ago. One Newmont employee, Gloria Dwummah-Adu, says Abubakar has made a beautiful forest out of this mining wasteland and that many should follow this model.
Fondly, she refers to this 75-acre site as “Bin’s garden.” Now birds sing and the shade from the rapidly growing forest is a welcome relief to all who enter these woods.
Abubakar’s reclamation work began some time ago when Australian-based Normandy Mining employed him. When Normandy was sold to Newmont in 2002, he began working for Newmont Ghana Gold, Ltd. This is a green, well-designed forest that invites exploration.
Of the many species of grasses, bamboo provides many uses. Source: Master Garden Products
Who knows? Perhaps one gateway out of America’s economic doldrums will come from a boom. There are plenty of people looking at what was once just regarded as a tropical and oriental product, bamboo.
As writer Harry Sawyers noted over a year ago in Popular Mechanics, “Bamboo has come into vogue as a green, sustainable resource that’s used for everything from cutting boards to clothing to wood floors. But until now, almost all of the bamboo in products sold here has come from overseas. That could change soon, as new planting techniques may lead to millions of new acres of bamboo shoots in the American South.” Some wonder if a plant like bamboo can revitalize farmland on the Mississippi Delta.
The American Bamboo Society (ABS) was formed in 1979. Today it counts over 1,400 members living throughout the U.S. and in 37 other countries. For those who are interested, the ABS issues a bimonthly Magazine and the Journal to disseminate information about the use, care, propagation and beauty of bamboo.
Land monitoring
This June the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI), founded after the man who made the geodesic dome a household word, awarded its 2010 Buckminster Fuller Challenge prize of $110,000 to African-based Operation Hope for its promising work to transform degraded Zimbabwe grasslands and savannas into a sustainable environment.
The grand prize was well deserved. Here’s why: smart land management work like this can foster water and food security for millions of impoverished people that have suffered for years without such living basics. Read more of this >>
It is high time to begin learning more about the benefits biochar might provide to all of us living on this planet, especially when considering the agricultural practice from South America is over twenty centuries old.
According to the Internationasl Biochar Initiative, sustainable biochar is a “powerfully simple tool fight global warming.”
“Sustainable biochar is one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable, and quickly scalable. IBI focuses on the need for quality and sustainability standards and assurances in the emerging biochar industry,” the website reports.
South America: students with biochar stoves Source: Biochar Initiative
For those wondering what kind of new invention bichar might be, it is not new at all. The practice has been around for almost 2,000 years, where it was practiced in South America. The product, called terra preta, or “dark earth” that converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer, or fertilizing agent. But beyond acting as a soil enhancer, proponents claim biochar has the capacity to hold carbon. It is being produced in the United States, South America, and Australia, to name a few producing locations.
Biochar is a charcoal produced under high temperatures, using crop waste, animal manure, and other organic waste.
According to Kelsi Bracmort, an analyst in agricultural conservation and natural resources policy, “The combined production and use of biochar is considered a carbon-negative process, meaning that it removes carbon from the atmosphere.”
Take a thorough look, we shall be reporting far more on this product.
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