⚡Superpowers
Good morning! If you missed yesterday’s update, here it is.
Bob Lonsberry, born in 1959, who is (apparently) part of the “persecuted class of the largest generation in U.S. history,” tweeted, then deleted, the following on Monday:
The responses were great.
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Let’s get into it!
Food Grown Indoors
Indoor farming, the process of “growing greens in large warehouses using artificial light and automated technology,” is on the rise. Companies around the world have been springing up (get it?) as more and more investor money pours in.
The benefits. There are a number of environmental and health benefits:
Water Consumption — A majority of the world’s water is used for traditional agriculture. Indoor farms can reduce water usage by more than 95 percent.
Land Optimization — Indoor farms are supposedly 100 times more productive than a traditional farm on the same amount of land.
Cleaner Food — The crops do not require any pesticides since they are grown in a clean environment, and they also eliminate the risk of contaminated produce.
Localized Agriculture — Locally grown food will have a lower reliance on transportation, helping reduce costs and trucking emissions.
The technology. Indoor farms are heavily reliant on technology — let’s take a look at New York-based Bowery, the nation’s largest indoor farming startup, as an example:
Plant Vision — Cameras take photos of crops, runs them through deep learning algorithms, and analyzes what’s happening with the crops. The system then automatically makes changes today to improve yield and quality
Predictive Analysis — The plant vision system offers insights into what will happen to the crops in the future. Plus, the company can use the data collected to improve each new farm — the produce will only become better over time.
Also, fear not — these algorithms aren’t intended to replace workers. Bowery has designed the systems to support growers, enabling the company to hire people that have no previous agricultural experience.
The business model. Indoor farms plan to win by delivering a better product at a significantly reduced cost. Bowery, for example, sells through 100 retailers for around the same price as traditionally grown produce. Over time, the company expects the cost basis to be at par with any produce — the team is very focused on improving the efficiency of the systems and making sure the unit economics are sound.
The limitations. As is the case with any revolutionary technology, things aren’t moving as fast as people initially predicted. The team at Aerofarms, for example, said in 2015 that they expected to build 25 farms by 2020 — they currently have two. The story is the same with Fresh Box Farms (Boston) and Plenty (SF).
Indoor farming is definitively the future. Even though growth has been slow, we are optimistic about the potential here. However, this will not be possible with the same expectations of quick returns in the traditional venture capital / growth equity game — the technology and unit economics will take time to play out. Indoor farms demand true patient capital to improve the technology and business model over time — but if the funding dries up, so will our hope.
Conservative Justices Go Green
The Supreme Court seemed to question the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act during a major case on Wednesday.
The question. Do polluters need to obtain federal permits for dumping pollutants indirectly into the nation’s oceans and streams via groundwater or whether they must only do so for pollutants that enter such waters directly?
The battle. A collection of environmentalists sued the county of Maui (HI) because a wastewater treatment facility on the island injects millions of gallons of treated water deep into the ground every day.
Business interest groups say permits for indirect pollution would harm agricultural companies, but environmentalists say that it’s more important to keep the country’s water clean.
State rights. Maui would rather this get handled by state regulator. Justice Sonia Sotomayer said that if state regulation were sufficient, what Maui would be doing would not be happening.
Current positions. The court’s liberal judges leaned toward requiring permits and the conservatives were surprising split on the matter. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh indicated they may side with environmentalists because of the loophole precedent this would set in the landmark Clean Water Act.
What about not dumping any waste into our waters?
Superpower Genes to Fight Cancer
Even though this isn’t the next Marvel superhero’s origin story, it’s pretty awesome.
What’s CRISPR? It’s a powerful gene-editing technique, which has raised hope recently for its potential to treat diseases, including cancer. Information about its effectiveness hadn’t been released to the public until now. On Wednesday, researchers revealed data from the first study and while they were preliminary, they are encouraging.
Is this even safe? The goal for the recent study wasn’t to determine if the approach can cure cancer, but rather, if it was safe for the patient to even try.
The test. The study involved three patients — two with multiple myeloma and one with sarcoma. The patients received infusions of about 100 million of their own immune system cells that had been removed and modified.
New studies. Soon, we’re going to see a lot more tests on patients. Doctors have begun testing gene editing on blood disorders and will even attempt to edit cells inside the human body to treat a genetic form of blindness.
It’s just crazy. They’re basically giving our cells superpowers to fight things our body wasn’t able to before. We can only imagine how far we will be in 50 years time.
Short Takes
The US and China announce an anti-opioid partnership to crack down on illegal shipments of opioids. This may even help speed up the trade deal.
New Zealand passed a Zero Carbon bill, setting a net-zero target for almost all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Prada is the first luxury fashion house to pass a sustainability-linked loan, allowing for the interest rates to be adjusted annually if certain sustainability targets are achieved.
The cow is getting disrupted. Scientists estimate that by 2030, the number of cows in the US will have fallen by 50 percent and the beef and dairy industries will have collapsed.
Tomorrow Today
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