Free Republic

Indoor farming is a popular subject in the media, and a booming industry with new farmers joining the game every day. In fact, there are growing conferences held solely for indoor farmers, their suppliers, influencers, and resources. But many are still left with questions about the indoor farm. •Just what makes an indoor farm an indoor farm? •What makes indoor farming so popular? •What potential does indoor farming really have in the future? •How will I interact with indoor farms? Dr. Nate has an overview for you. What is indoor farming all about?(VIDEO-AT-LINK) What is indoor farming? Indoor farms take...

According to ganjapreneur Rick Byrd, the future of farming is tall, dirtless and local. Byrd’s vision of skyscraper farms to feed city dwellers begins with a much different kind of crop: marijuana. The 45-year-old is chief executive officer and founder of Pure Agrobusiness Inc., a company that sells equipment to grow legal cannabis, a market worth $6 billion in 2016 and expected to reach $50 billion by 2026, according to Cowen & Co. Because cannabis has higher profit margins than food, and pot is mostly grown inside, Byrd said he hopes the innovations perfected by PureAgro, with the help of...

For Randy King, the argument for indoor farming in Canada is just common sense. For one, Canada is a northern country with long winters. Two, during those long winters almost all fruit and vegetables in Canadian grocery stores are imported from Central America, Mexico or California. Three, wouldn’t it be better if Canadians grew their own fruits and veggies? “I think this is the way of the future for growing produce in northern regions,” said King, co-owner of West Grow Farms, a company with plans to build an indoor farm near Edmonton. “In order to gain food sovereignty, we need...

Sharyl Attkisson's Full Measure News has a feature about how vulnerable the electrical grid is to disruption. It didn't take an EMP over Kansas to convince me, my family was left huddling in sleeping bags during the day time for 4 days by a tree branch shorting out a transformer at the end of my block.In 2013 some people didn't see the Bosnian War Survivor's list of 101 things you need to survive. #1 on my list is 'anything pertaining to 'How to eat' without electricity--a generator is a white elephant. Somewhere in the top 5 is going to be...

This piece was originally posted on November 20, 2013 on the Freedom Outpost website. If this expose of voter fraud was presented as a stage play, it would be characterized as a Greek Tragedy; "a drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances." Such is where we find ourselves. The main character(s) would be all those who fought and died to provide for us a form of government whose very foundation is the right to free and unencumbered elections....

You might have seen this article The Island Where People Forget to Die a few years ago. I recently re-read this exploration of "blue zones" where people habitually live long, productive lives, and read a companion piece on the "blue zone" author's discoveries about food and diet: My Dinner With Longevity Expert Dan Buettner. What really struck me in this re-reading was the centrality of purposeful work and a robust social ecosystem in the lives of the productive/active elderly. This mechanical mindset leads us to conclude that doing time on a treadmill and being hyper-vigilant about sticking to a strict...

Presenting YAUGU (yet another urban grow unit). We've highlighted many variations of indoor gardening systems over the years, some of them simple and low tech and some of them with decidedly 'smart' features, and all of them with the same goal: to help people grow some of their own food inside their homes. You don't necessarily need one of these purpose-built growing units to start an indoor garden, as DIY versions can be much cheaper to build (although perhaps lacking some of the automated features), but for those who aren't into making their own indoor planters, there are certainly many...

If you grew up during the era of big wheels, horrid hair styles, and the Reagan administration, you probably grew up thinking that green plant you see above you was a really dangerous item. This is especially true if you grew up a Christian during that era. I mean, it was the lowest level “drug” on the list of drugs, but it was the gateway drug. This gateway drug was to be especially feared, because it represented the slippery slope to every other drug or form of immorality. Even trying it once could result in you no longer wanting to...

FARMING will need to shift towards indoor vertical farms and precision techniques that could make use of drones. Just as important will be the planting of drought-resistant crops and even printing meat to secure food production globally. This is according to Ernst Janovsky, senior agricultural economist at Absa, who emphasised that technology will need to be incorporated into farming practices in order to keep up with costs and supply. Speaking at an Absa Agribusiness roundtable in Centurion on Tuesday, Janovsky said population growth would create more demand for food, water and land. By 2050, the global population is expected to...

Maryrose Littler, who is committed to organic farming and permaculture, picks fresh onions from her grandmother Barbara Keyes’ raised vegetable beds near McArthur.        Two Class of 2016 graduates — organic farmer-in-the making Maryrose Littler, and Kayla Cline, raised on an historic farm in Albany — represent the future of farming in southeastern Ohio. Littler recently graduated from Athens High School and Cline from Alexander High School. Littler enjoys living an organic lifestyle on her parents’ five-acre homestead near Morrison-Gordon Elementary School, where she helps raise honeybees, homegrown vegetables, chickens and beef. She...

Two guys from Canada have come up with a new way for everyone from small indoor growers to large-scale vertical farmers to easily automate their operations. Their system's called Motorleaf and it collects data about your plants and then instructs your existing grow equipment to adjust to the crop’s needs. Think of it as the Nest for your indoor farm. In the summer of 2015, Ramen Dutta began tinkering around with a way to more easily care for his small indoor hobby farm. Although he had a degree in agricultural engineering, he had been working in IT and created an...

We’ve failed again. It’s less than eight months into 2016 and the ominous day is already nearly upon us: Earth Overshoot Day, previously known as Ecological Debt Day, is a reminder of the enormous toll we take on the Earth. The day marks the juncture when humanity’s demand for ecological resources exceeds what the planet can replenish annually. In 2016, it falls on Monday, which means people have already consumed an entire year’s worth of the world’s resources ― and we still have four months to go until the year’s end. For the rest of 2016, we’ll be “living on...

Greetings Everyone; I do hope everyone is doin fairly well. I do know & understand that I should be posting here more, but life gets in the way [a lot around here] Anyway, we have talked in the past about reading,reference & entertainment, when things get real ugly & bad out there. Well Providence has "smiled" upon me [again]. I have been fortunate to meet [on line for now] a Mr. Ron Foster. He is a "Prepper" novelist. He has written a lot of books about different aspects of prepping & dealing with disasters. This is from his Amazon page;...

In an old warehouse in Newark, New Jersey, that once housed the state's biggest indoor paint ball arena, leafy green plants such as kale, arugula and watercress sprout from tall metal towers under bright lights. A local company named AeroFarms has built what it says is the world's largest indoor vertical farm, without the use of soil or sunlight. Its ambitious goal is to grow high-yielding crops via economical methods to provide locally sourced food to the community, protect the environment and ultimately even combat hunger worldwide. "We use about 95 percent less water to grow the plants, about 50...

Greetings All; Here is another thought provoking discussion on what we can do when the world we know & love falls apart. Last week I had posted some thoughts on using an air rifle to remove garden raiders/pests. So after talking to a friend of mine [Jim Chapman], he recommended this article from the mag. Outdoor Life. [www.outdoorlife.com] He goes through a very long list of air rifles & their different uses. Air guns have come a very long way since the days of the Daisy Red Ryder's. There are some rifles that can hit a target out to over...

Piss Christ? Piss Koran! — Part 3: Crisis (This is the third installment of a story by Matthew Bracken, which is being serialized here in four parts.) As the two SWAT commandos slid down their ropes, the chopper lifted for a moment, and one of them was dragged against the crane’s guy wire. He was flicked from his descent line, but he managed to grab hold of the thick steel cable. The helicopter dropped again, its rotors nearly intersecting the cable, but it banked away, dipped its nose, shot forward and corkscrewed downward, the other commando swinging out below its...

Europe’s last primeval forest is facing what campaigners call its last stand as loggers prepare to start clear-cutting trees, following the dismissal of dozens of scientists and conservation experts opposed to the plan. Poland’s new far right government says logging is needed because more than 10% of spruce trees in the Unesco world heritage site of Białowieża are suffering from a bark beetle outbreak. But nearly half the logging will be of other species, according to its only published inventory. Oak trees as high as 150 feet that have grown for 450 years could be reduced to stumps under the...

Peggy Noonan, one of the first neo-cons to turn on Sarah Palin, is forecasting that Hillary should pick Bernie for her Veep. Right. So Hillary dies of her hematoma, and now we have Bernie for President of the United States. Who would Bernie have in his Geezercratic cabinet? We could naturalize Fidel Castro, to become Bernie's Vice-President. Havana could become our new national capital; the Cuban flag would have to be altered a bit to show the US as a minor province. Henry Kissinger would be the Secretary of State. (Hillary would have liked that.) George Soros' head could be...

On the CBS3 health watch, its vertical farming. Philadelphia aims to become an international hub for indoor growing, according to a resolution passed today by city council. When growing produce we usually think of acres of farmland. Some say the next generation of farming will be in urban centers like Philadelphia, and you won’t need soil or the sun, just an old warehouse. Welcome to vertical farming, where produce is grown inside, in specialized shelves that are stacked up vertically....

The debate over a California initiative to legalize recreational marijuana sparked heated rejoinders from both sides this week. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R) suggested that legalization "will better deploy law enforcement resources. Energy that is now put into harassing inoffensive users of marijuana can be redirected toward suppressing more serious crimes like rape and murder." Leading opponent of legalization, Ventura Police Chief Ken Corney, president of the California Police Chiefs Association, challenged the Congressman "to name one so-called rape or murder victim who might otherwise have been spared if police officers weren't occupied enforcing our drug laws." "Potheads like to portray...