io9: farming

Nanofarm Your Body for Fun and Profit

Lauren Davis — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:00:00 PDT

If you've ever thought that selling your kidney, ova, or sperm sounded like a handy way to make some cash, it's time to consider body farming. Michael Burton's photographs show how advances in biotech will change the way humans treat and relate to their bodies. After all, if we can sell our organs, gametes, and hair, what's to stop us from growing extra ones all over our bodies?

Burton notes that, while there are certain taboos against the commodification of the human body, there are places in the world that permit the sale of organs, spawning a transplant tourism industry. And some people already treat their bodies as farms, growing out and lopping off their hair for sale. But if nanotechnology gives us the ability to grow body parts and pharmaceuticals directly on our skin, more humans would be able, and perhaps encouraged, to participate in that commodification:

Do we really have a choice in our future?

How will future technologies indirectly influence the evolution of the body in certain social-economic extremes?

What circumstances would it take to reconsider your body as a source of income?

A subset of pictures, entitled “Stem,” was inspired at recent advances in harvesting stem cell from adipose fat, supposing that it could be an early form of body farming. It also calls to mind a more fantastical scenario from recent science fiction:

[Michael Burton via Next Nature]

Kibera's "Instant Farm" System Is the Future of Urban Agriculture

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:00:00 PDT

Kibera, a dense, 2.5 square km shantytown outside Nairobi, is the largest slum in Kenya. It's estimated that possibly a million people live its maze of houses and outdoor markets. Now a group there has figured out a fast, efficient way to convert piles of trash into compost — and to convert areas that were once trash heaps into instant organic farms using just recycled PVC piping and other easily-accessible materials. One farm, which now feeds 30 people, was operational in just 3 months. This low-tech form of land reclamation could be a model for rapidly-growing urban populations.

This is a before picture of what the area was like that locals chose for their farm. Working with a group called Green Dreams, the locals set up a plan to clear the garbage, start a vermiculture with the worms they found under the garbage, and plant vegetables in the cleared area. Trash became compost.

They planted seeds after using PVC pipes to create perfectly round holes that they could drop the seeds in.

And three months later, they had this farm, complete with a lot of worm goo (tasty for plants) from the vermiculture to use as fertilizer.

Obviously this farm was helped along with outside help from Green Dreams, but now the people they trained are selling their services to other parts of Kibera, teaching other groups to grow their own food. Another thing that was unique about this farm was that many of the people who worked on it were ex-cons who apparently helped guard the area — so future farms in other cities might consider incorporating some element of security too.

Farming Innovations in a Slum [via AfriGadget]

Top image of Kibera via Frances Woodhams.

First Proof that Evolution Can Work Faster Than Genetic Engineering

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:00:03 PST

For years, farmers have been growing genetically-engineered cotton plants that exude an insecticide known as Bt. But now, a pest called the bollworm moth has evolved a resistance to Bt — and the altered bugs have already spread across part of the southern United States. This is the first-known example of bugs evolving resistance to an insecticide in the wild. It proves that natural selection can outrun genetic engineering in terms of its ability to transform a species quickly.

University of Arizona researcher Bruce Tabashnik said:

What we're seeing is evolution in action. This is the first documented case of field-evolved resistance to a Bt crop.

According to a University of Arizona release:

The researchers write in their report that Bt cotton and Bt corn have been grown on more than 162 million hectares (400 million acres) worldwide since 1996, "generating one of the largest selections for insect resistance ever known."

Tabashnik and his colleagues hasten to add that most bollworms have not become resistant, and that resistance has been known to happen in pest populations exposed to Bt spray. But this is the first time any creature has evolved a resistance to genetically-engineered crops containing Bt.

Another example of natural selection working this fast can be seen among elephants, who were hunted for their ivory tusks in the ninteenth and twentieth centuries. Over the course of a century, a "tuskless" mutation in a few elephants spread across the population like wildfire. While only 1% of elephants were born without tusks in 1930, in 1998 15% of female and 9% of male elephants were. Image via USDA-Agricultural Research Service.

First documented case of pest resistence to biotech cotton [Eurekalert]