As the world population grows and climate change intensifies, how can we transform the food supply chain to be more sustainable and resilient? Mike Zelkind, co-founder and CEO of 80 Acres Farms, is building a network of hyper-efficient, high-tech, indoor farms to provide local communities with fresh, nutritious produce. He joins Azeem Azhar to discuss the challenges of disrupting the farming industry to innovate the future of food.
They also discuss:
- Why fruits and vegetables are now bred for logistics, not for flavor and nutrition.
- How robotics and AI are being used to optimize yield, taste, and growing time.
- Why “stressing” plants is key to making them healthy.
Further resources:
- “Robots are changing the future of farming” (CNET, 2020)
- “Growing higher – New ways to make vertical farming stack up” (The Economist, 2019)
- “Reinventing food: The coming disruption” (Exponential View report, 2020)
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