WORDWAR

Food and Farming

Boutique Farming

In North America the family farm has been shrinking for two hundred years. Now the possibility of a renaissance is on the horizon. A new development may increase the number of small farms. With such naturally occurring plants as potatoes, eggplant, celery, corn, and cabbages, anyone who buys the seed can grow and sell the plants. Not so with patented plants developed through biotechnological methods. These plants are protected under patent regulations and may only be grown by private arrangement with the patent holder.
One possibility is that small "boutique" farmers may in future operate similar to owners of McDonald's franchises. They will enter into a contract with the patent holder to handle the "product," the way a car dealer handles Honda or BMW. The boutique farmer will purchase the seed; plant, grow, and market the product; and agree to participate in broad advertising campaigns supported by all growers tied in with this product, which is what happens with a McDonald's franchisee. In return the farmer will have the right to be the only grower of that product in a given area -- perhaps as few as five or ten farmers per state or province.
The real innovation lies in a product developed by manipulating genes into a new plant. It might look like a carrot, but it might be green or red, and it might also offer relief from a particular allergy. The technique of transferring genes from one plant to another is already well established. Imagine the implications of transferring a gene from the insect, animal, or human world across the gene barrier into the plant world. Theoretically, any gene from any living organism can be moved into another living thing. As mentioned, researchers have succeeded in transferring the gene that causes the glow in a firefly into tobacco plants. And the University of Guelph Agricultural Department has hatched chickens -- with the heads of quails!
Along with the possibilities of unusual, nutritional, and perhaps medically potent foods produced in this manner, new methods of growing such products will develop. Many fruits and vegetables will be grown inside, year round, and in vertical rows. Plants can be grown in what appears to be a large, vertical sewer pipe with open "windows" encircling the pipe at regular intervals. The patented seed is planted within these windows and grows out through the openings to reach super-pure sunlight collected on the roof of the "farm" by a device, similar to a satellite dish, that tracks the sun. Fresnel lenses collect and intensify the sunlight and feed it down to the plant through fiber-optic cables. On the way down, a process called a "light shift" removes the infrared band of light, which is redirected to help warm the building. The harmful ultraviolet portion of the light spectrum, which burns tomatoes and people, is discarded; only pure sunlight reaches the plants, allowing them to carry out photosynthesis. Solar panels on the roof collect additional sunlight and turn it into electricity. This is stored until the hours of darkness to provide the additional light required to bring a total of twenty-two hours of "sunshine" each day to each plant.
Irrigation of the plants requires far less water than on flat, open land where much of the water evaporates or runs off. The same applies to fertilizer that runs off in heavy storms or filters through to the water table when the plants do not take in the quantity applied to the soil. The vertical drip system ensures that each plant receives precisely the moisture and fertilizer it requires.
There are other advantages. These farms can operate year round and thus can contract with hotels, restaurants, and grocery stores to provide a known product every day of the year at standardized prices through the seasons. With this type of operation, a ten-hectare indoor farm should be able to produce the equivalent of what is now grown during five or six months on a 400-hectare farm.

Micro-propagation

During the next decade there will be more changes in food production than during the past millennium -- all thanks to biotechnology. One day we may be able to produce vegetables, fruits, flavors, fragrances, drugs, and some industrial chemicals independently of the plants that we now depend on.
In San Carlos, a town on the fringe of California's Silicon Valley, the Escagenetics Corporation is testing various ways to develop the flesh of oranges and cherries without growing the trees. It will do this in vitro: growing the fruit in giant fermentation flasks in an environment that will change the meaning of "hot house" forever. The company is also working on date- and oil palm tissue. This is one of a series of projects based on micro-propagation -- growing tree fruit in vat cultures.
Escagenetics now has United States and overseas patents on its phyto-vanilla process, which it developed by growing a cell culture in polymer beads in a flask in the laboratory. This is not an artificial vanilla flavor. It is identical to the true vanilla flavor. Almost 100 percent of true vanilla comes from the vanilla bean orchids of Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean off the African coast. Obviously, such developments pose social and economic problems for such Third World countries that have depended on one-crop economies for centuries.
The mundane and lowly potato, the fourth major food crop in the world and a staple in North America and elsewhere, is another example of how biotechnology can make a difference. The method used for centuries in potato planting is expensive and time-consuming. It takes about one ton of tubers, used as the "seed," to plant one acre. With the new "true potato seed" (TPS), that same acre can be planted with only five ounces of TPS! Think of the savings in storage and transportation costs. The seeds are virtually disease-free and are less costly to produce than seed potatoes. They could be planted with an air gun.
Such seeds are protected by a coating against bacteriological infection and insect, rodent, and bird depredation. Escagenetics has developed "elite parent" potatoes, many derived from subspecies that originated in the Andean region of South America and in Mexico. These, when crossed in certain combinations, produce vigorous high-yielding hybrids. The company says that from the tests now under way, it will be able to produce more than a million plants within a year through micro-propagation. These potatoes will be uniform in texture, flavor, and color, with improved culinary characteristics.
TPS is now planted in Egypt. Egyptian farmers apparently don't feel right about planting the very small potato seed, nor do they have the required equipment. So Escagenetics plants its own seeds in an extremely dense pattern on a seventy-three-acre farm in that country. When the seeds have grown to the size of a golf ball, they are dug up and sold to Egyptian farmers who apparently have no objections to planting these mini-tubers that look like potatoes. Planted in early February, the potatoes are harvested in early summer.
Escagenetics is also testing its developments in Turkey, Spain, and Pakistan. It is learning to operate globally, while many in this field try to push the sale of traditional products. The moral? Learn to change as the world changes.

Aeroponics

During the early days of the Industrial Age, the big investment opportunities were in mechanical inventions and the modern production lines of automotive and other factories. Today many big opportunities lie in the biological "factory." One fast-moving field has been the perfecting of hydroponic methods of raising food (growing plants in nutrient solutions without soil). While this has created some amazing results with tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and other vegetables, it hasn't yet become consistently profitable.
Now an advanced form of that technique -- aeroponics -- may produce much of our food in the future. Aeroponic plants are grown in air; their roots are not covered by soil or nutrient solutions. New possibilities for producing food this way are emerging from research into methods of feeding those who may one day live in outer space. The Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT) center, a part of the twenty-seven-thousand-acre Disney World near Orlando, Florida, is growing crops in this way. Long conveyors carry the plants around the Kraft Foods "Creative House." During part of the cycle, plant roots pass through a spray box and receive a shower of water and nutrients suitable for that stage of growth. In another technique, lettuce is grown on large A-frames; the roots are sprayed from the inside with hydroponic/aeroponic solutions.
This is similar to a process I observed in 1985 in Tsukuba, Japan. There, during a six-month period, fifteen thousand tomatoes grew from one seed! The plants grew fifteen feet high and thirty feet across, and the seeds were not even genetically altered. Researchers had similar success with cucumbers (seven hundred from one seed) and musk melons. They were growing lettuce in just four days -- practically while you wait! And it was all done inside, in the shade.
Another emerging technology with vast implications is the marriage of computers and genetic engineering. Crops such as strawberries, pineapples, bananas, and sweet potatoes are asexually propagated clones. They are not grown from seeds. Using tissue culture, and a technique that regenerates whole plants from tiny pieces of leaf or even single cells, staff at "The Land" pavilion at EPCOT dissect leaves under a microscope. They place these tiny pieces in a vitamin-laden hydroponic solution, along with sugar and hormones. Thousands of tiny new plantlets quickly spring from this rich nutrient solution. Along the way scientists are incorporating new characteristics into various tissue cultures to improve plant growth; for example, to provide plants with a tolerance of drought and salt and a resistance to pests.
In meat production, attempts to eliminate diseases and pests in cattle, such as the parasitic larva of the heel fly, are being tackled in a new fashion. The heel fly larva causes a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars each year in meat and hide damage in North America. If this can be prevented or even minimized, retail meat costs might be affected. Hoechst Celanese Corp. and the Codon Corp. of San Francisco are working together to develop a vaccine against such cattle grubs. They will attempt to isolate and clone the gene for an immunogenic protein. Again we have a development that uses methods unknown just a few years ago.
At one time 98 percent of the population of North America were farmers. Today farmers make up only 2 percent in the United States and 3 percent in Canada, yet we produce more food than our present North American population of 275 million can eat. The farm of the future will be a highly scientific operation with computers and robots. This has already started to happen -- and the implications will be revolutionary.
Five thousand years ago, an Egyptian farmer had the technology to work a one-acre plot and was able to feed five people. Four thousand years later in England, a farmer could work five acres, but feed only three people. By 1875, with the new horse-drawn machinery, an American farmer plowed 140 acres, feeding his family and six other people. In 1986 the average American farmer worked 435 acres and fed fifty people.The total value of machinery required to do that, for all American farmers, was $111 billion. The trend continues -- larger farms, more capital investment.
Far too often the interest burden from borrowed capital cripples farmers and forces them into bankruptcy. Yet the future will be even more capital-intensive. Tomorrow the costs will appear astronomical, but the results will match the costs.
And what of the implications for farmland? For years we have been hearing dire tales of farmland lost to housing and commercial development. In several countries innovations suggest that the farmland we are spending so much energy to protect may be the last place to grow food in the future. In light of this potential global change, are we being realistic?
In Japan, the Ajinomoto Corporation has produced genetically constructed bacteria that excrete cellulose, the basic component of our forests. Ajinomoto is producing an elastic paper so fine that Sony is already incorporating it into diaphragms for top-of-the-line acoustic headphones. Another potential use for the same product is as artificial skin for burn patients. This production is taking place in a "factory" -- no farmland involved. Since fine paper can be produced to such demanding tolerances, perhaps eventually newsprint will be produced from waste.
Mitsui Industries has moved in on the flower industry. Mitsui has produced virus-free lily bulbs, which previously required a large field, in an antiseptic vat the size of a desk. The Kirin Brewery Company spends just under $100 million each year on research. Roughly 80 percent goes into biotechnology research, mainly on vegetables. Last year Mitsubishi Kasei spent almost $150 million on research, half on such products as genetically improved rice. Meanwhile, Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co. is researching a new approach to wine-making that may be setting a trend for the future. It fused three strains of yeast and produced a rosÇ called Fusion Bio, a much purer bouquet. No vineyards were required because the grapes are grown in vats.
Agricultural changes are happening faster, over a wider global area, and involving more products, than ever before. This trend can only accelerate. Think of what this could mean to the value of farmland. And think of the political implications for governments locked into a fixed agricultural policy.

Farming in Space

The space program has yielded many benefits, the most obvious being communications and remote sensing satellites. The satellite "parking lot," located at an altitude of 22,300 miles over the equator, contains the geostationary satellites that bring the world the nightly news and carry a high percentage of overseas telephone calls. Remote sensing satellites in other orbits are already used extensively in assessing crop potential, disease, plant condition, soil types, water content, insect infestations, and plant stress. Other benefits of the space program are appearing in ceramics, high heat-resistant auto parts, houses, cutlery, robotics, and sensing equipment. Now some of the early work in "space farming" is beginning to look promising.
Dr. Thomas Heppenheimer, an aerospace engineer on the NASA scientific team, suggests that farming in space may be a major benefit of the program.Under the rigid requirements of space, productivity means survival (as it is coming to mean on earth). Dr. Heppenheimer and his colleagues believe that ten thousand people in space could be adequately fed on a mere 151 acres. The reason? Crop yields would be ten times greater than on earth because of the twenty-four-hour-a-day sunlight, continuous year-round growing season, and exact control of water, plant nutrition, temperature, and carbon dioxide for each type of growing organism. All this without such harmful things as storms, hail, drought, frost, rodents, weeds, pests, and diseases, which reduce food production. Such crops as corn could be forty times more productive than on earth.
What may prove even more beneficial is what we have learned from research on food for use in space: that there are more than eighty thousand edible plants in the world, and that worldwide we are eating less than three thousand (or 4 percent) of them. The big three -- wheat, rice, and corn -- together provide half our protein and calories. Twenty-four other cereals supply another 45 percent.
What the potato and the tomato did for the dietary habits of Europeans three hundred years ago will be duplicated and expanded during the late 1990s and the early years of the third millennium as we learn how to use, grow, and distribute widely some of these other seventy-seven thousand edible plants.

A Better Apple Tree

Growing fruit on trees involves some problems: the space necessary for human movement between wide-spreading limbs, the difficulty of reaching fruit on higher branches, and the fact that the fruit doesn't ripen simultaneously. A development now under way in Britain and using an apple tree native to British Columbia may solve some of those problems. What might it mean to produce handlers and consumers? Lower prices, because of more efficient harvesting techniques; better fruit; and a distinctly different look to apple orchards of the future.
The East Malling Research Station, a branch of Britain's Institute of Horticultural Research, is attempting to grow apple trees to resemble flag poles. The advantage? Trees grow closer together -- less than a yard between trees and between rows -- allowing for greater use of robotic pickers, which results in considerable savings at harvest time. The flagpole tree also permits more trees per orchard, producing higher returns per acreage.
The species of apple selected for these experiments is the wijcik, a sort of McIntosh from British Columbia, which grows like a sturdy natural cordon. This species grows limbs more like spurs than normal branches, so the flowers and fruit are borne up the single main stem. Scientists found that when the wijcik was crossed with varieties of other apple trees, half the resulting seedlings were more compact and columnar -- a result of the dominant gene in the wijcik species.
Other features crossed into the wijcik have improved fruit and tree qualities for various horticultural uses; for example, producing easy-to-manage trees for amateur growers and trees that flower at the same time as more conventional orchards, thus acting as space-saving pollinators. Distribution of the new seedlings is probably taking place this year. Test stands have been under way at several assessment centers in Britain since 1986. Municipalities might also someday be planting these trees as compact ornamental highway dividers. Their red flowers, brightly colored fruit, and purple or cut-leaf foliage are highly decorative and would brighten up roadways.
Of course, kids will have more trouble climbing these trees than the apple trees of our youth. Biotechnology, like hard technology, causes unpredictable social change!

Livestock Reproduction

In 1945 North American dairy farmers, with twenty-five million cows, were producing almost all the milk the market required. Today they fill the increased demand with just ten million cows. How do they do it? The "scrub" cow has been turned into a milk factory by improving the breed at a rate far faster than nature could. The technique that makes this possible is artificial insemination, which has been in widespread use for the past thirty-five years. Today 70 percent of those ten million dairy cattle in North America become pregnant through artificial insemination. The bulk of U.S. turkeys are bred through artificial insemination, because -- according to Dr. George Seidel of Colorado State University, an authority in this relatively new field -- breast meat is now such a large portion of male turkeys that they cannot "get close enough to females to mate reliably."
Another popular technique is embryo transfer. The first reported successful embryo transfer involved a horse in Japan in 1974. This nonsurgical method had a 40 percent success rate when first introduced. Today surgically implanted embryos in cows have reached much higher success rates -- up to 72 percent. In this method a high-quality cow is inseminated and a week later technicians recover up to six embryos by irrigating the cow's uterus. These are then placed in surrogate "scrub" cows, which carry the high-quality calves to birth. Dr. Seidel points out that "commercial use of embryo transfer began about fifteen years ago, and today 100,000 calves are produced annually by this means in the United States and Canada."
This is just the beginning. These animal reproduction technologies have moved ahead so fast that the slower, older methods have already been bypassed. Scientists create "new" animals and plants by gene manipulation inside an embryo using the technique of "transgenesis." If an animal or a plant has a desired gene that prevents disease, improves lactic flow, or produces a "jungle pharmaceutical," this gene can be inserted into the "new" animal or plant. The resulting improved trait would then carry on in all the offspring of that animal. Various existing systems, such as gene injection, retrovirus delivery, or incorporating desired genes into undifferentiated embryonic cells, make this relatively simple. A newer technique is the transplantation of cellular nuclei. According to Dr. Seidel, this could yield thousands of identical offspring.
Even more exotic techniques are gynogenesis, birth by female parents, and androgenesis, the production of offspring by two males. "Researchers have already bred poultry, fish, and amphibians from parents of the same sex," says Dr. Seidel, "although not for commercial purposes." Tomorrow will bring animals that never existed before. Animals will not only carry genes from other species but will also deliver offspring that come but from these female/female and male/male parents. There will be cloned animals and plants in the thousands.
And they will be superior animals, more quickly reaching higher levels of breeding and production than those achieved during past decades by artificial insemination. They will be stronger physically and will produce better products for the food market. Because of their increased value, they will be treated like expensive thoroughbred horses. Environmental sensitivity is automatically built in to this increased productivity. Obviously ten million cows consume less food and produce less methane gas and run-off effluent than twenty-five million. Besides helping to keep food prices low and quality high, this puts fewer demands on the environment.
Admittedly, the ethics in patenting such animals are being questioned. But patenting or trademarking has been going on in plants for decades. Roses are a common example. Dr. Seidel comments that "the economic benefits for consumers will be significant. Buyers will see a greater variety of food and fewer food-borne diseases. Even more important, the improved animals will produce larger supplies of food, which will lower prices, since demand for food is relatively inelastic." During the past decade the price of beef, in constant dollars, has dropped by almost 50 percent, and milk in the United States also costs less.
Farmers who do not keep up with such developments will be unable to compete. Farming will be based increasingly on information and intelligence and will be a far higher (and better paid) calling than in the past. If all this sounds dramatic, remember that the improvement process has been going on for centuries. Farmers have always tried to breed better strains. Now biotechnology has set up a moving sidewalk to handle the quickening pace of genetic change. If we don't use these new technologies here, we won't be competitive. You can bet they will soon be used elsewhere.

Improving the Tomato

Scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have done considerable work on the tomato. While researching a relatively unknown Brazilian tomato known as Alcobaca, they found that it contains three times as many desirable biochemicals as an ordinary tomato, which allow it to remain firm and fresh much longer.
Almost all market tomatoes grown today are picked while still green; otherwise they would perish before reaching the grocery shelf. Because farms aren't next door anymore, growers, shippers, and grocery stores have been forced by commercial considerations to transport green tomatoes. The Alcobaca must mature to ripeness fully on the vine, and vine-ripened tomatoes are always tastier. The Brazilian development will enable supermarkets to stock ripe tomatoes for ten to twelve days, extending the current shelf life of four or five days.
The Cornell scientists are also researching other chemicals that may work along with the ingredient known as 1,4 butanediamine, found in the Alcobaca tomato. They are looking for the "shelf-life gene." If they find it, food deterioration may become a thing of the past. Impossible, you say? Right now the United States, Canada, and other countries are working together to decipher the entire human genome or genetic blueprint. Similar work in a plant genome program would tell us how some plants handle pests, drought, high heat, or other stresses. When we discover the plant that does it best and has the ideal gene for the problem, that gene could be transferred to other plants to give them the desired feature. The net result will be superior plants and superior food.
There are also medical applications. Common barley plants may be the biotech "factories" of the future, producing medical compounds at a minute fraction of today's costs. Interferon, insulin, and tissue plasminogen activators are all believed to be suitable for this new technique. At the moment, pounds of animal tissue must be processed to gather a single ounce of interferon. This lengthy process is very, very costly.
Now the breakthrough: ordinary barley seeds are being turned into superseeds that will manufacture such valuable pharmaceutical proteins by the pound! Researchers remove from the seed the genes responsible for the enzyme alpha-amylase. Properly triggered, barley normally can produce large quantities of this substance. But now scientists substitute genes that code for a desired protein. Such "fixed" seeds are then grown into seedlings and plants like ordinary barley. But at harvest time, the superseeds are removed and germinated. They do not grow like their forebears; instead they produce huge quantities of the desired protein. One acre of barley could produce in just three days enough seeds to produce twenty pounds of a particular protein. The process hasn't yet been perfected, but it's just a matter of time.

Foods with a Future

Twenty-five years ago, in the heyday described in John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, the harbor at Monterey, California, was producing up to 250,000 tons of sardines a year. During the early 1970s, the catch dropped precipitously to just sixty tons. By 1978 Cannery Row was a ghost town. Today it is the home of the renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium -- built mainly through the generosity of David Packard of Hewlett-Packard computer fame who donated more than $50 million toward its construction. The aquarium has been a catalyst for an upsurge in tourism on the Monterey peninsula, but another economic catastrophe is taking place. This time the food is abalone.
Landings in California of wild abalone of all species have been dropping steadily from a high of 2.8 million pounds in 1961 to about 300,000 pounds by 1985. The latest figures show further reductions in recent years. With any product that grows scarcer, the price rises. Where once a top price of $4 a pound was big news, today's market commands nearly $30 a pound.
Unlike the sardine industry of Cannery Row, however, the abalone industry has a future. Abalone Resources Inc. of Vancouver is now using intensive aquaculture with the aim of eventually exceeding the natural catches of the past. The company's research and management team has been using technologically advanced systems to produce -- on land -- abalone eggs in huge quantities at their facility at Morro Bay, California, south of Monterey.
Abalone Resources, the largest such facility in North America, now has more than 1.25 million red abalone growing in size from less than a quarter of an inch to more than 1.25 inches. A new "grow out" facility is planned for the mid-California coast west of Guadalupe but the project was not without problems. Clearing environmental regulation hurdles took three years and considerable funding. The pilot plant will be expanding into full-scale production. And who'll buy all this abalone? If North Americans don't want it, the Japanese do. Last year they bought six million pounds of abalone from Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.
Meanwhile, the Japanese are growing a mushroom the size of a hamburger and it tastes like steak. By creating a unique environment with controlled temperatures and watering techniques developed especially for growing this mushroom, the Japanese company Kabushikikaisha Akita Inc. is opening up a new market. According to spokesman Masanao Kubo of Asahi Foods, the company in charge of production in Japan, the mushroom spores are cultured for between forty and forty-five days until they reach full growth. At the precise time that they peak in flavor, aroma, and texture, they are picked. They can then be thrown on the barbecue, providing an instant, low-cholesterol, low-fat "meaty" delight. Such mushroom "steaks" have most of the vitamins and minerals contained in beef but far less protein. They will be available in Tokyo restaurants this fall. The company will also be providing the technological know-how for overseas production to provide fresher mushrooms and low transportation costs.
The reaction from the cattle industry is predictable enough. Janet Williams of the Beef Industry Council says, "For those people who don't have beef available, it [the mushroom] may be of interest, but I would be surprised if it would be a significant product in the United States." Sound like the reaction of the U.S. auto industry in the late 1970s when Japanese autos started to enter the country?

High-Tech Snack Food

Even snack food is going high tech with biotechnology. One eager aspirant in the field is DNA Plant Technology Corp. of Cinnaminson, New Jersey. Food researchers there claim that their first generation of "vegisnax" will be crispier, crunchier, and sweeter than "ordinary" vegetables. They will also be more nutritious with a lower calorie content. This will be the newest in fresh, ready-to-eat vegetables in snack-size packaging. Consumer test panels gave high marks to their original test products and now a second generation of these lines is being developed with even more desirable traits optimally combined.
You will hear more in future about the value-added plant-based products now being developed for both consumer and industrial markets. Basically, the desirable characteristics in a wide range of vegetables, cereal grains, tropical plants, and other crops are being greatly enhanced through variations of clonal and protoplast fusion techniques. Thanks to biotechnology, these characteristics can be made to appear in such crops in a much shorter time than they would with traditional breeding techniques.
Desired traits include increased solid content for processing tomatoes; superior-tasting fresh tomatoes; and crispier, crunchier, and sweeter carrots, celery, and other vegetables. Enhanced flavors and fragrance compounds that naturally occur in various plants are being introduced genetically into other plants. And the oil, starch, and/or protein content in corn, wheat, and rice is being enhanced genetically.
In a joint venture with Koppers Company, DNA Plant Technology is also working on a disease diagnostic kit to detect turf grass diseases. With Campbell Soup Company it has a joint venture to develop improved varieties of processing tomatoes (a $500-million annual market) and fresh market tomatoes (another $500-million annual business). It is also in partnership with Firmenich of Geneva, Switzerland -- one of the major world players in the flavor and fragrance field -- to use biotechnology to develop new, cost-effective, reliable methods for manufacturing various plant-derived raw materials for this industry. A half-dozen other major companies have also turned research contracts over to DNA Plant Technology.

Edible Holography

"Edible holography" is the newest marketing ploy to hit the confectionery counter. The applications are endless. Holography will eventually appear on cookies, cakes, cereals, seasonal chocolates, and child-oriented candies. Hungry entrepreneurs will find a zillion other uses for this innovative idea as soon as the first products hit the marketplace.
Holograms, which you may have seen on magazines, credit cards, and record albums, are about to appear on grocery shelves. The holograms are produced by molding a layer of imperceptible microscopic ridges directly onto a product and incorporating the regular ingredients of the product itself. Light striking these tiny -- one or two microns in depth -- surface ridges is diffracted, creating vivid colors and shapes, which appear to move and float within the food itself.
The process fits in with modern tastes. It uses no dyes, pigments, chemicals, or other additives. Color is not added but is extracted from the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and appears in or over your cake or other product using the technique developed by Dimensional Foods Corp. The technology creates the color from a physical rather than a chemical basis. The same technique allows animation and realistic three-dimensional illusions without affecting the product in any other way. According to Eric Begleiter, founder of Dimensional Foods and a "food imaging inventor" (there's a new occupation), holographing a product does not affect the taste, texture, or "mouthfeel" of the product. Begleiter thinks that "this process could become a widespread replacement for other methods of food coloring and decoration."
It's Mother's Day and your mother is a chocaholic. Why not combine a Black Forest cake with roses? The chocolate surface of the cake will be molded with the microscopic ridges mentioned and presto: when the light is right, a bouquet of roses appears to be hovering just over the cake! Imagine Valentine's Day, the Fourth of July, Halloween, Christmas, and birthdays.
Another process allows colors and images to be encapsulated inside transparent materials. Think of the day you tell your kids they're going to Disneyland and confirm it with lollipops bearing Mickey's logo -- and he moves when held up to the light. One product being developed is "Rainbow Sparkles" -- granulated particles with brilliant highlights that sparkle like diamonds in all the hues of the rainbow. When applied to the surface of foods, the Rainbow Sparkles are invisible, but they cause the food to sparkle in the light. Candy coins that flick from heads to tails are also possible with this process. Talk about virtual reality. Holograms change the color of the product and appear three-dimensional. It gives new meaning to the phrase "playing with your food."
Dimensional Foods is also developing methods for embossing compressed tablets with holographic colors and images. These images would represent a new means of differentiating brand-name products from those of competitors. It could also be a method to prevent product tampering, as any break in the hologram would be vividly apparent.
Dimensional Foods does not manufacture products itself. Its business is licensing this technology for appropriate applications. The North American confection market is in the $8 billion range; cookies are a $3.5 billion business; and the pharmaceutical market is worth $25 billion. Dimensional has obtained a broad, pioneering patent covering ingredients, manufacturing processes, and products used or created in connection with its technology.

Robot Harvesters

In the not-too-distant future, the oranges you eat may be untouched by human hands. Robotic orange pickers now being tested at several locations around the world can analyze a fruit for ripeness by color, determine its location on the tree, and zoom in for the picking. "Robots could revolutionize the harvesting of oranges and other fruits," says Roy C. Harrell, professor at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Many methods of picking oranges have been tried in the past. Some researchers tried to blow them off with jets of air. Others tried tree "shakers" coupled with catcher's gloves or frames. None really did the trick. Now, programmed with super senses, the technically efficient robotic picker will be commercially viable within a few years.
The prototype picker with its camera-equipped picking arm is mounted on a mobile control vehicle. Improved models might have many arms, operating simultaneously and transmitting feedback information to be stored in the robot's computer memory. Automatic recall could remind the robot of oranges, originally green on the first pass, that should now be ripe for picking.
Sonar units, such as those on automatic focus cameras, measure the distance from the orange to the picker and direct the arm to the target. In one model, a rotating lip goes behind the fruit, clips the stem, and lets the fruit drop into the waiting receptacle. The entire operation is completed in seconds, allowing a rapid sweep through rows of ripe fruit. According to Harrell, a multi-armed unit would be able to harvest six oranges per second! The only human involvement would be a single person to position the unit at the start of the row of trees. The same technology could be suitable for apples, peaches, and other fruits.
This particular technology was developed after publicity attracted the attention of an Italian equipment manufacturer, who gave a research grant of $204,000 to the school. The prototype picker, after one final field test in Florida, was shipped to Sicily.

Agnes the Sow

If you still think robots are confined to the factory floor, meet Agnes, the robotic sow. From a prototype developed at the University of Guelph in Ontario by animal psychologist Dr. Frank Hurnik, Agnes was upgraded to commercial production by Farmatic Inc., a Canadian specialty farm equipment company that is changing the whole concept of farm production. Agnes promises to be the greatest development in pork since laser cutting and blast freezing. This robot will go a long way to reducing production costs, minimizing early litter loss, and producing a healthier product. Bacon and ham sales may eventually increase because of lower retail prices.
Agnes has some advantages over nature's model. It's no secret that young piglets have a tough life. Many litters have mortality rates of between 15 and 25 percent. There are various causes. Sows roll over and crush or smother piglets. Almost every litter has a runt who gets pushed out of the feeding line. Often the litter is larger than the number of nipples the sow has available. Sometimes the milk runs out. When that happens, all the piglets could die. Another factor is post-partum separation; after delivery, some sows refuse to feed the litter, or resort to outright killing of piglets.
Agnes has a much pleasanter temperament. Picture this idyllic scene from the robotic-sow-equipped farm: piglets sunning themselves under infrared heat lamps are summoned by "mother" Agnes with a "dinner call" grunt. The light over their resting deck goes out, and the light over the nursing robot, simulating the sow's body warmth, lights up. One minute after dinner call, milk formula containing all the proper ingredients for that stage of life flows by gravity from a refrigerated unit (holding a twenty-four-hour supply) located in the feeding pen. En route the milk passes through a thermal bath that warms it to 102.6F. Immediately another faster-paced feeding grunt signals food is available. Up to sixteen nipples are available, so no one gets left out. Extra space between nipples prevents crowding. Every piglet in the litter obtains the required nourishment. At the end of two busy minutes, the nipples shut off and flush automatically. The nursing light fades as the resting deck light comes back on. The piglets scurry to the new heat source and fall asleep until the hourly feeding cycle is renewed. Other litters can be fed during the intervening fifty-five minutes. Mixture and volume is adjusted from half an ounce for newborns to 1.75 ounces for three-week-old piglets.
Agnes is non-union, performs twenty-four hours a day, needs no rest, eating breaks, or holidays, and can handle several litters simultaneously. She adjusts food, medicine, or growth stimulant content automatically based on the piglets' growth stage, and has a robust body that resists abuse. She also leaves no mess to shovel.
The unit operates on a twelve-volt system and incorporates miniature heat pumps developed by NASA for cooling satellites. They are only one inch square and perform both heating and cooling functions. Grunting sounds are digitally encoded on a microchip and programmed into the cycle by a microprocessor. Piglets raised by Agnes are reported to have better dispositions. Some animal psychologists believe this is because robot-reared piglets never have to compete for milk. Blair Gordon, Farmatic marketing manager, says the only thing the company hasn't incorporated into the units so far is an appropriate sow aroma.

The EnviroCaster

For millennia farmers around the world have planted according to the seasons. Until recently they had no method of precisely predicting the prime time to plant. Weather predictions could only be vague, and even the most accurate forecasts have never applied to a particular farmer's exact acreage. Every farm, big or small, has its own particular environment. What's good for one on Monday may not be suitable for another until Wednesday.
EnviroCaster is a self-contained, computer-driven environmental monitoring instrument that spends twenty-four hours, seven days a week, measuring, recording, analyzing, and remembering all the environmental factors -- good or bad -- that affect a farmer's crops. The unit can tell when apple scab will hit your orchard (not the neighbor's), when downy mildew endangers your onions, or when coddling moths are starting to emerge. No more guessing. It's all based on the fact that scientists know what combination of weather conditions are likely to "turn on" plant diseases or trigger insect infestations. Complex formulas, until recently used only with mainframe computers, are now available through EnviroCaster to forecast high-risk periods.
Plants, like people, are subject to stress. Frost, scorching heat, high winds, and lack of water all exact their toll. The EnviroCaster provides accurate records of frost, temperature, solar intensity, wind velocity, and rainfall on a particular acreage. Using this instrument, you know the best time to fertilize or spray -- not only to improve crops but also to minimize damage to the environment. The same unit with appropriate software handles turf farms, golf courses, and other large lawn areas.
EnviroCaster can precisely monitor air temperature, degree days (from four different dates and eleven base temperatures), dew point, leaf wetness, rainfall, relative humidity, soil temperature (at two depths or locations), solar intensity, wind direction, and average wind speeds. If the farmer is away, the record for the past fourteen days awaits his return. Units come with rechargeable batteries and a solar-powered charger, built-in printer, degree-day accumulators, assorted sensors, daily weather history memory, downloading ports to other computers, and assorted cabling.
Sound like the end of the Farmer's Almanac?