Free Republic

It’s easy to get lost in the idea of FICO Eataly World, dubbed by many in the media as the “Disney World of food.” The park, located 30 minutes east of Bologna, Italy and open to the public today, is less of a Disney World and more of a industrial showroom and souped-up mall food court with contrasting surprises. There’s a dairy plant and outdoor livestock stalls housing more than 200 cows, goats, and chickens. There’s a mini-plot of forest land that’s home to truffle dogs (aka some of the sweetest Labradors around) who show guests how they can sniff...

Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/06/2017 -- The global agriculture robots market features a widely diverse competitive landscape characterized by region-wise dominance of prominent players, notes Transparency Market Research (TMR). For instance, the agriculture robots market in North America was dominated Harvest Automation, Inc., Clearpath Robotics, and PrecisionHawk, Inc., in 2015, while in the same year, Naio Technologies and SenseFly SA led the Europe market. In addition, Shibuya Seiki was one of the leading players in the Asia Pacific market for agriculture robots in 2015. Furthermore, driven by abundant lucrative avenues, the market is witnessing a constant influx of emerging...

Legalizing cannabis doesn't just create jobs involving cultivation of the plant; it also creates businesses that aid those cultivations, infused-product manufacturers and dispensaries. Ancillary businesses to the cannabis industry can be in anything from extraction technology to industry consulting, with many, many things in between. Ancillary businesses represent the largest and broadest sector of the cannabis industry, according to multiple industry reports, and many of the top companies are based in Colorado. Of the top 150 ancillary cannabis businesses on a recent list from Cannabis Business Executive, 41 are headquartered in Colorado. By comparison, California had 35 on the list,...

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University has named two new varieties of tomatoes created by school researchers to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design. West Virginia ’17A and West Virginia ’17B were developed by Mahfuz Rahman and Mannon Gallegly, a professor who in 1963 created a new tomato for the centennial. From ore than 100 submissions, West Virginia 17A was called Mountaineer Pride and 17B was called Mountaineer Delight. “Though we initially considered the idea of releasing only one variety, it became apparent to me that both varieties were very good — each in...

DALLAS (AP) - Drew Demler is digging in a box of dirt in the middle of Fair Park. The Dallas Morning News reports he is harvesting potatoes - big, small, misshapen, one that even looks like a snowman - in a hotter-than-deep-fried parking lot just outside the Cotton Bowl. "I think potatoes and onions are two of the most important crops that we grow," Demler, farm manager at Big Tex Urban Farms , says as he uses his bare hands to search for the tubers. "They're hearty and prolific, and their storage life is long."(continued)

Refrigerators were originally used to store just a few perishable essentials such as meat and milk. In fact, the first electric units of the 1920s were only slightly bigger than modern mini-fridges. Nearly 100 years later, refrigerators are bigger than ever and used to store the bulk of the food consumed by a household. Americans spend anywhere from $130 to just under $300 a week stocking up on food for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But those numbers include dry goods that wouldn't be kept in the refrigerator and leave out fridge such staples...

Least terns. A federal lawsuit. Greenpeace. Vandals. Industrious beavers. Angry homeowners. Bureaucratic delays. These were among the obstacles and setbacks that had to be overcome before the Creek Turnpike was built. At one point, the chairman of the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority declared it a “total disaster” and exclaimed: “The Creek Turnpike in Tulsa, God only knows when that’ll be completed,” John Kilpatrick said, as reported by the Tulsa World’s Wayne Greene on Oct. 19, 1990. “If we had it to do all over again, we wouldn’t do that project,” the exasperated Kilpatrick said after federal bureaucrats held up construction of...

It is unusual enough to see one of nature's biggest, rarest—not to mention smelliest—flowers bloom. But it is extraordinary to see two bloom at once. That is why two seven-foot-tall corpse flowers at the Chicago Botanic Garden have attracted thousands of visitors this week, despite the smell of rotting flesh that the flowers emit to attract pollinating beetles and flies. The rare flowers, officially called titan arum, are naturally occurring in just one place on Earth—the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Media stories about topics such as GMOs and pesticides may convince some consumers that it's not safe to eat certain fruits and vegetables Eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help lower calorie intake, reduce risks for heart disease, obesity and Type 2 diabetes, and protect against certain cancers. With all these benefits, why do some consumers choose to avoid produce? Approximately three-quarters of people in the US don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables.

A company is set to open what Governor Cuomo's office says will be the biggest commercial hydroponic facility in the nation in Rochester. The governor says Clearwater Organic Farms will build a 15 acre, 650,000 square-foot facility at Eastman Business Park, creating 137 new jobs. About half of those positions will be reserved for veterans and the unemployed, the state says. The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year. "The new Clearwater Organic Farms facility will drive innovation, create jobs for New Yorkers who need them most, and bolster economic growth throughout the region," Governor...

Friends, It is time for us to face some facts. The total lack of evidence notwithstanding, there is just too much smoke surrounding the allegations of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia. This is making it impossible for Trump to govern effectively. Moreover, Vice President Pence is equally tainted by his constant contacts, real or imagined, with Russia. Thus, Paul Ryan should assume the Presidench as soon as conveniently possible. I did not reach this conclusion easily. No, it took a bottle of Scotch and a trip to Colorado to smoke some legal weed to get me here. But here...

Invasive Species, Biological Control, Where do Potatoes come from? Yours truly has a preference for spuds over rice as the dietary “carb.” So, you may forgive me for being interested in news about this tuber-kind being potentially feeding the future colonists on planet Mars. Surely now, our venerable Canadian Broadcasting Service (CBC) would not lie! As the report says “The [potato growing] experiment was conducted in soil in the Atacama Desert in Peru, which is most similar to what is found on Mars.”

“sumpin’ to look forward to”: eternal existence with Jesus Christ Following a tour of Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner’s home, I asked students in my creative writing class how the great writer felt about mankind’s capacity for endurance. A student replied, “He summed it up in one line from his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech: ‘I believe man will not merely endure; he will prevail.’”

Home Depot, the home improvement chain, plans to fill more than 80,000 jobs just in time for the spring season. The company will be bringing on a range of employees, from cashiers to freight handlers to customer service representatives. To make it easy to apply, potential workers can simply click apply with a smartphone or tablet. The jobs will consist of permanent and part-time positions as well as seasonal jobs.

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...