Travel

New Zealand startup BioLumic is producing radically healthier and more productive crops, simply by exposing them to novel “recipes” of UV light PALMERSTON NORTH, New Zealand— On four narrow shelves in a windowless room in a nondescript building in the New Zealand city of Palmerston North, eight dozen little cannabis clones are quietly and invisibly revolutionizing agriculture. Banks of LEDs sit above each row of plants, bathing them in purple light. Some of the tiny diodes are blue, some are red—standard grow lights that mimic sunlight and enable crops to be grown indoors. But other LEDs are ultraviolet, producing various wavelengths that can’t be seen by human eyes. They’ve been electronically programmed at certain intensities and frequencies, and to turn on and off at particular interval...

A Nigerian start-up takes on the problem of food spoilage at all steps of the production chain, one solar-powered cold room at a time. OBINZE, Nigeria— In the courtyard of Obinze Fruit & Vegetable market, haggling has peaked for the  morning. Retailers, drawn from far-flung villages and suburbs of Imo state, southeast Nigeria and neighboring city of Port Harcourt, crowd the contours of the market hunting for bargains and fresh fruits. On a wood-framed table, under a trading booth made of stilts, rusty zinc, and leaky tarpaulin, dozens of vendors display lettuce, Chinese cabbage, purple cabbage, green beans, onions, cauliflower, strawberries, broccoli, and cauliflower.  Three women form a semicircle—their waists draped in multicolored Ankara fabric with tiny square patterns—in...

Starting with the state’s beloved avocado, the California-based Apeel Sciences has found a natural way to extend the life of produce and reduce food waste. GOLETA, California — Balancing precariously on the 41st rung of a ladder propped on the bough of an avocado tree, an avocado picker extends a 12-foot (3.6 meter) pole and deftly strips the branches of their fruit. His right leg wrapped around two rungs, torso twisted 180 degrees, he works from branch to branch, filling the navy canvas pouch slung across his chest. He nimbly descends the ladder, which wobbles in the breeze providing fresh relief on the scorching mountainside, tugs on the cord to collapse the ladder, and maneuvers it to the next branch. He repeats the process again, and again, day after day, zigzagging across San Diego’s ...

The WonderBag is a slow-cooker designed to reduce cooking time, fuel use, and carbon emissions. It also lightens the load for women in countries where open-fire cooking and hours of unpaid labor daily falls to them. TONGAAT, SOUTH AFRICA— Maita Usai was asleep when the floods came.  “Maita,” her husband Cuthbert whispered, shaking her awake. “There’s water coming into the house.” It was around 11 p.m. on April 12, and the couple had gone to bed to the sound of rain falling thick and fast against their tiled roof.  Presenters on the evening news had warned of the worst flooding in four decades in KwaZulu Natal, the province of lush green rolling hills that hugs South Africa’s eastern Indian Ocean coastline. The rains were being made worse, experts were saying, by climate change, w...

How a 141-year old waste management company is pioneering the recycling—rather than mining–of phosphorus and other resources we need to keep feeding the world. UPPSALA, Sweden— The person who discovered phosphorus was hoping to find something else. In Hamburg in 1669, the self-styled chemist Hennig Brand was, like many of his peers at the time, trying to turn base metals into gold. Believing that the human body was the key, he boiled large amounts of urine and heated the residue, eventually producing a white, waxy substance that glowed in the dark. Brand called his discovery phosphorus, from the Greek for “light-bearer.” (He later sold his supply for 200 thalers—about $13,300 in today’s money—when he needed some cash.) For more than a century phosphorus was made through this method, for ex...