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Interesting TEDx Talk from Toby Cumberbatch from Social Lite lanterns. They are building a business which sells led lights far beyond the bottom of the pyramid. Very low cost, high quality, partly DIY solar lanterns. Bringing light and business opportunities to the hundrerds of thousands rural villages in the middle of nowhere. They are quite small at the moment, but a concept like this can have a huge impact when it scales. If it’s open source anyone can download it and start building a business. 

Check out more here

Will Allen and others have created a very interesting system to grow food inside along with fish. As you can see here in another post. Some friends of Will have taken this system and really scaled inside an old factory: 

YouTube part 1 (6 minutes)

YouTube part 2 (6 minutes)

But what would happen if you take this indoor farming one step (or a few steps) further? The people at the Dutch PlantLab did just that. They are growing food inside without the need of sunlight (they use LEDs). They have created PlantParadise to make the plant as happy as possible. With the perfect amount of food, light (LED), water, CO2, moisture etc. Their plants use far less water than plants outside and the yields are multiple times that of a greenhouse. When the plants are happy they grow very fast and also don’t need pesticides etc. At PlantLab they never had a sick plant. (oh and in case you’re wandering there’s no GMO involved).

They are now in the process starting a full scale city farm in an old IBM building in Amsterdam. To sell fresh vegetables to the city without the need to transport anything across the country. Just imagine what this means to the local food movement. Now it’s going to be possible to produce fresh, healthy food everywhere. From abandoned office buildings to parking lots under a supermarket. 

Due to the high costs of the LEDs it will take a few years before the system is ready for big markets. 

Find out more in this article.

(Source: plantlab.nl)