Urbana Vita

23/06/2023

"The Future of Food"
35min Talk - ENG/DEU
[pro bono 4 kids & teens]

15/06/2023

- URBAN HORTICULTURE CONSULTATION -

We are a small R&D company (pre-seeding phase), aiming to develop sustainable technology and methods for urban food production - our lofty goal is to find better ways to feed the world.

To make use of over 20 years of experience, and to partially fund our R&D projects, we offer consultation and education service for urban horticulture; a mix of workshops, educational presentations, and direct consumer consulting - off and online.
We currently have a 35 to 2 hour presentation/talk on the future of food, ready for you to book.

23/07/2022

We don't like fearmongering and we understand that our posts seem gloom. But we need to be honest and acknowledge the food crisis we are currently in!
The worldwide food scarcity is growing, due to the climate crisis, the Ukraine war, the droughts that get more frequent and various economic crisis everywhere.
But with urban farming and microgreens we can contribute to the solutions we need to avert what might be coming!

The war in Ukraine threatens the world with unprecedented hunger. Even with a deal in place to get Ukraine's food exports moving, serious weaknesses in the ...

14/07/2022

The Netherlands is struggling to reconcile their environmental efforts with their economical status quo; and it is hurting the agricultural industry harder than most.
There are ways to make food production more effective and sustainable without having to compromise on either. Microgreens are one of them. Many other urban food production methods could help to mitigate some of the agricultural emissions.
We need to use new strategies to face the climate crisis - especially when it comes to food.

Sign up to Brilliant (the first 200 sign ups get 20% off an annual premium subscription): https://brilliant.org/tldrglobal/For the last few weeks, farmers in...

05/07/2022

While we hope Italy can overcome this calamity, it is a stark reminder why we have to do what we are setting out to do. It's the reason and cause to why we want Urbana Vita to exist.
Microgreen use up to 98% less water than fully grown crop. It is not a fab, it is not a gimmick, it is a necessity!

Italy on Monday declared a state of emergency for areas surrounding the river Po, which accounts for roughly a third of the country's agricultural production and is suffering its worst drought for 70 years.

02/07/2022

Cybernetics:

The philosopher Plato developed the study of self-governance. He called it Kubernḗtēs. Today, we understand Cybernetics as “the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things.”

The future is based on interconnected live data exchange, run by self-governing and adaptive systems. Artificial intelligences controlling production systems based on sensory feedback and external requirements, adapting, evolving, and continuously optimising itself and the production process. That is how we think, build, and boldly grow…

[image source: wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics]

19/06/2022

When you start a company that aims for 100% sustainability, even the little things can get really complicated. Take disposable gloves for example.
With our production method the handling of our produce is reduced to an absolute minimum. The only time we have direct contact with our product is when we package it for consumer sales.
But when we do get in touch with our crop, we want to do so safely of course. Alas, finding disposable gloves that are compostable is near impossible.

Nitrile gloves will degrade, but it takes decades and it releases various nasty chemicals while it does. There are untreated natural latex gloves - latex being natural rubber from rubber trees - but they too take a really long time and they often cause allergic reactions. And Vinyl is the worst of the lot, as it is entirely synthetic and can not biodegrade whatsoever.

EBT, a new kind of material designed by Showa, a Japanese company that has been an innovator in the disposable glove business for the last seventy years, just came out not too long ago. It is meant to solve the problem of slow degradation by adding materials to the gloves that attracts microbials to consume and break down the gloves faster, reducing the degradation time in a landfill to about 5 years!

While very impressive, we are not convinced that's good enough. And as always, our approach is to find a different solution to these kind of problems. Instead of using disposable gloves will figure out a way how to handle our produce without touching it if we have to. After all, we grow boldly...

https://info.showagloves.com/biodegradable-nitrile-glove

15/06/2022

We don't like to seed negativity, but this is one of many reasons why we are doing what we do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZHpJ5TZ1A0

09/06/2022

Make sure you follow us on your favourite platforms!
- content will follow soon -

09/06/2022

We are soon opening a new urban farm, with the goal to produce over 2000 trays of healthy and nutritional Micro Greens per week, in less than two years.
To help us get to there faster, you can now help us, and make some money doing so!

We are offering a crowd-investment option, in form of a patronage. For €500,- you sponsor one of our growing racks (the largest portion of our investments), and you will get back double in a year (paid out quarterly or after a year)!

[picture: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microgreens_.jpg]