The nutrient content of our vegetables is down 40% over the last two decades and our soil health is suffering due to increasingly harsh herbicide use, according to Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell.

We’re among the thousands boycotting the UN food summit – it’s been hijacked by corporate interests while the voices of small-scale farmers go unheard

BOYDTON, Va. (AP) — There was a time when Black farms prospered. Just two generations out of slavery, by 1910 Black farmers had amassed more than 16 million acres of land and made up about 14 percent of farmers.

The announcement is the first step in a programme that will provide a package of over $2bn for the industry.

Artificial intelligence and automation are the new farmhands as growers try to boost productivity amid soaring global demand for food, biofuels and other agricultural products. Why it matters: Farmers one day will be able to manage their fields from their kitchen table, using a smartphone or tablet to drive machinery, inspect plants and irrigate or treat crops with fertilizer or insecticides.

This vertical farm in Pittsburgh, PA uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop a grow recipe for better tasting greens.

The world's first underwater farm, dubbed 'Nemo’s Garden', has just started producing fruit and veg again after a particularly long break. A unique structure consisting of six underwater greenhouses off the coast of Noli, Italy, was created by the Ocean Reef Group in 2012. Step by step, the project started to yield various herbs such as basil different types of salad, tomatoes, courgettes, beans, green peas, aloe vera, mushrooms and strawberries.

A new breed of hydroponic farm, huge and high-tech, is popping up in indoor spaces all over America, drawing celebrity investors and critics.

Tasmanian right-to-information documents have revealed the extent that salmon producers go to protect their harvest against seals, with the use of more than 75,000 seal crackers and almost 4,000 bean bag shots recorded over a three-year period by the industry.

There are well-known types of detectives: narcotics, homicide, cyber. Add "rare apple," thanks to a Washington state retiree who recently rediscovered seven kinds, including the Almota and the Eper.

There are many hard lessons learned from the pandemic; one is that our food system needs a serious reboot. Luckily, we need only look to nature’s cycles for clues on how to fix it.

While the rest of the world continues to tackle the global pandemic, in eastern Australia, waves of mice are flooding farms and towns.

Carbon Robotics’ Autonomous Weeder is a smart farming robot that identifies weeds and then kills them using high-power lasers.

Prize-winning author Richard Flanagan slams the Tasmanian salmon industry, describing it as disastrous for the environment, with overstated health benefits — and alleging the public had not been told the extent of the expansion plans for fish farms around the state.

The vertical farm will contain rows upon rows of crops with the capacity to produce 365 harvests of high quality leafy greens per year. "From day one it's perfectly controlled...We don't use pesticides...there's nothing to wash off, it's usually not touched by human hands ever, and so we have a safe clean product that is ready to eat right out of the package."

Kiran Kaur surveys her family's paltry plot of land in Mansa, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, and gestures dismissively at the three acres of wheat that will soon yield to cotton plants, which bring in little profit. "Cotton is a complete failure for us," she said. Prices are low, and the cost of producing the fibre is far too high.

Legislation backed by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group would require farming equipment manufacturers to make software required for repairs available to consumers for purchase. House Bill 3061, introduced as the "Digital Right to Repair Act" in February by Democratic Rep. Michelle Mussman of Schaumburg, would mandate that manufacturers, by 2022, provide farmers with the same diagnostic materials available to official repair providers.

In the late 1700s, a large percentage of Europeans feared the tomato. A nickname for the fruit was the “poison apple” because it was thought that aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but the truth of the matter was that wealthy Europeans used pewter plates, which were high in lead content. Because tomatoes are so high in acidity, when placed on this particular tableware, the fruit would leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning.

Each year, billions of animals are slaughtered to put food on our plates. The animal welfare and climate change implications of this are well-documented — most animals are factory-farmed, and global meat production accounts for 14.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Amid Congressional investigation and federal, state and private antitrust cases, all eyes are on Big Tech. The step up in antitrust enforcement against the digital technology behemoths and their alleged abuses of market power is, by all accounts, good news. Successful cases could restore competition, which would benefit smaller businesses and American consumers alike.