Iceless Freezer?

Doesn’t a freezer create ice? This could be interesting.

Filipino engineer Hernando Decena invented a revolutionary freezer that uses no ice but is capable of keeping the freshness of fishes, meat, fruits and vegetables for days. It not only keeps freshness but also assures that the nutrients of fresh farm products are preserved.

This method is called as Brine Immersion Freezing or BIF; a big help for fish and meat traders or exporters. It uses super-conductive liquid instant freeze in a very short period of time at a very low temperature. The idea of Decena was for the product, subjected to BIF remain the same when unfrozen.

It is also electric power efficient needing only 120 kilowatts to freeze a ton of fish, meat or vegetables. Now that’s saving the planet!

For agricultural dealers and exporters as well as farm cooperatives that experience post harvest losses, BIF could be a big advantage. Likewise, end users of fresh farm products can reduce their losses from food wastes brought about by over stocking.

TECHNOLOGY FOR AGRICULTURE BEING DEVELOPED

These days, we have seen that a lot of things now are getting developed through technology. It is already stored in people’s minds that technology can really help us in our work to make it faster and better. But in agriculture, only few things are being prioritized in using technology which I doubt is right. Maybe this is the reason why the government developed TECA to improve agriculture technology.

WHAT IS TECA?

Technology for Agriculture or TECA aims to let people adopt the technological way of learning agriculture especially in livestock, fisheries and forestry. This will probably be addressed to things in which people are affected like the climate change, sustainable development and of course, food security. Some of its benefits are to respond the need of a well-documented storage of technologies in agriculture, and to be interactive in a way that having a web-based communication tools can help.

TECA AND ITS OBJECTIVES

In the making and planning of TECA, they still saw some main constraints of the project. In this regard they have adopted the following objectives which they believe could use some help for TECA:

ORIGINALITY. Capitalize on available knowledge, and avoid unnecessary contributions and duplications of the project’s relevance.

ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT. In the choice of having technological interventions.

PERSONAL RIGHTS. Aims to have a safeguarded individual and to make sure they have an organized knowledge of how the system works for their farming, fishery, livestock and forestry improvisation.

TECA, as I see is indeed a great help to our agriculturists especially for those who doesn’t have any access to the technology world. Few of their many targets include farmer’s association and non-government organizations which needs a lot of improvement in their ways and techniques of sustaining agricultural development. I am hoping we could get to see more of this group who can really help the development of our agricultural technology.

I hope TECA would continue to support the country’s farmers and the like.

Hatchery improves and supports

Milkfish has grown to be one of the most important aquaculture species in the country. It is widely grown in 7 out of the 16 regions of the country, majority of which are in Central Luzon, Northwestern Luzon, and Western Visayas.

In the Philippine setting, milkfish aquaculture has

expanded from the traditional culture in brackish water ponds and freshwater pens to marine cages and pens. It has also evolved from extensive (low stocking density, no supplemental feeding) to intensive (high stocking density with supplemental feeding) culture.

Fry, one of the farming methods being raised in either sea cages, large saline ponds is mainly done using natural environmental cues. However, there

have been attempts using gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue (GnRH-A) to induce spawning. Some still use the traditional wild stock method; and this involves capturing wild fry using nets.

Since 1993, the back-yard hatcheries have functioned as successful production centers of milkfish fry. The fledgling industry received a substantial boost in 1998 due to profits from increased milkfish prices. The subsequent hatchery investment boom resulted in a pyramid of job opportunities that expanded the horizons and incomes of the local people, and also attracted an estimated 5,000 workers nationwide.

Among the new job titles were hatchery construc

tion worker, technician, fry counter, fish packer, and broker, marketer, trader, and product exporter. Compensation for workers is usually 20% of the sale price, and incomes vary with the price of the product. About 40-50 new, larger hatcheries now produce and sell surplus fertilized eggs to smaller back-yard hatcheries. Presently, local people own approximately 10% of these larger hatcheries.

This industry has strengthened the area and its economy. It embodies the power of combining technology, local enterprise, and sustainable use of natural resources. It increases the options to the milkfish farmers in terms of modification and improvements in production systems, feed formulation, brood stock management and hatchery technology. This could be the start of something great for the country; more jobs, more opportunity.

sources:

https://www.was.org/Main/WasArticle_pf.asp?Article=2

Electricity has become a necessity in this world we’re living. From the biggest of the biggest factory in the world to the smallest toy, energy is needed. Of course we already know that electricity can do to our home, if not here’s a re-cape. Electricity is one of the worst planet-damaging technological developments of Industrial Revolution. It would cause us our lives. But how come we’re still here when we were using electricity long before? I guess the answer lies on how we consume it.

For years, scientists and Earth-saving enthusiasts have been looking for ways to consume energy in an Earth friendly manner. Especially in towns that have insufficient electricity supply like in far off provinces for their farms. How could they provide what is being demanded from the people with a scarce electricity supply? Well, every heard of solar panels? Yes, solar panels are very much a big help on giving out electrical supply on rural areas wherein there is less electricity. Expensive it may be but think about how much it could help in making tasks easier at an eco-friendly manner.

In an article about solar panels used in farms, they referred that solar panels for far

ms are very effective and produce ample amount of energy to power farm appliances like pumps and mills. The energy produced from the solar panels is clean and also keeps the pollution level at zero level. They are great help to the farm owners in the rural areas. We know that rural areas face tremendous energy problem and this problem can be only solved if proper renewable sources to produce energy are installed.

All I can say about this is that, since agriculture is a very very great deal in the world, politicians or anybody with great power for that matter should stop being selfish and give such equipments to rural areas for them to be able to get their job done.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Solar-Panels-For-Farms&id=1485852

http://www.downtownpet.com/blog/uploaded_images/solar-panels-farm-energy-757563.jpg

Veggie Oil

Can you imagine your cooking oil becoming a fuel for your tractor? Maybe not. But scientists form Europe has proven this to be possible. They tested a diesel engine using canola oil and guess what? It worked!

With the desire to reverse the deterioration of the environment especially smog produced by vehicles that run using fossil fuel, scientists all over the world have developed various alternative fuel sources. One of which is vegetable oil. While it is mainly used for cooking, some vehicle companies have developed engines that run on waste vegetable oil (WVO).

In fact, scientists and enthusiasts have been researching this kind of alternative for the past century and it is only recently that they were able to meet the ends and become successful in their study.

Plant Green mentioned in its article that biodiesel is often called a carbon neutral fuel because while it does release carbon dioxide, it is the same carbon absorbed by the plant (or animal) source from which the fuel came.

So now, to further help save the world, and for farmers and stakeholders to participate in this great rediscovery, why not use veggie oil fuel to fuel your tractors and other machineries on the farm, it could probably save you and the world. :)

Source:

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/go-green/green-cars/green-cars-definitions.html

Scientists: Tech to feed the world by 2050

Being aware that poverty is rampant nowadays, scientists say that technology could help in supplying food to the world’s population. Imagine, for a third world country, 80% of its population is experiencing poverty and out of this 80%, 50% of which are children. Doesn’t that sound pitiful?

Good thing there are people who thought of ways on how to eradicate this certain problem. Scientists have seen that artificial meat, nanotechnology and genetic tools are the “tools of science” that maybe needed to help supply food to the world’s population. But the Royal Society published a paper saying that this could also be critical due to the face of enormous technological, climatic and social changes. But if these tools of science could help, more than nine billion people could be fed by 2050. It sounds so very far, but hoping is not limited to our near future.

Meanwhile, water and land for agriculture is also going scarce. This was made worse by climate change and biofuel crops. Many people will get affected by this problem since it will be the cause of too much higher prices for some goods in the market like milk, meat and eggs. This is a report made by Phillip Thornton, an author of the paper by Royal Society.

An alternative for this was also studied and he said that the growing of animal muscle in vats to produce artificial, cultures or “in-vitro” meat is one possible way to help meet the demand. This could also help the environment in such a way that it could also reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by livestock. Isn’t that great?

Well, this could have been done earlier and just wait only a few years from now. But what else can we do but to wait and see what we can help. One lesson here is that, we should not waste our food. Every time we eat our meal, let us make sure we consume enough for ourselves and less leftovers. Imagine there are millions of people around the world who only eat once a day and we are all lucky we at 3-4 times a day. If we could do this to ourselves, why not help to feed the world in our own little ways.

source: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/08/16/technology-food-security-artificial-meat.html

Waste food, Save the world

It’s a fact that the world we live in is consuming energy like never before. The sad part is its consuming non-renewable energy that is damaging our environment. We need to put a stop on this energy consuming pollutants and help save the world, or what’s left of it.

Let us look at it this way, the Philippine energy situation has been a crisis long before we were born. And just recently for the past months we have been experiencing energy breakdowns for the longest hours possible, (and they said it was because of El Nino) while some said that they were saving energy for the upcoming elections. So what really is the truth now? The truth is that we have been really careless about our situation. We consume energy like how we consume water, we waste it. And when we waste it we destroy our world little by little.

Amazingly, science has done great in resolving this problem,

and they called it Bioenergy. It is the new fad for conserving energy as well as understanding the importance of biomass and other organic wastes as alternative sources of energy for the future, and at the same time keeping the balance of food and energy production. Impact on food security is one of the core social factors to be considered in bioenergy development, expressed two participants of the international workshop on Sustainable Utilization of Biomass held in Tagaytay City, Philippines in November 2008.

Wasting food has never been this useful for biomass could be a great source for biofuel that could be used for big industries and big companies. This will promote waste management and help big time in keeping the world clean and green. With the unstable price of fossil fuels and the growing demand for energy, governments must realize the need to invest on alternative clean energy. If P-noy would say he will save the Filipinos, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to include saving the world. :)

source: http://www.agnet.org/library/nc/164c/