Kenya's mobile controlled greenhouses

In Africa, despite many slogans and proverbs making references to farming, young people are increasingly attracted to big city living, leading to a wave of urbanisation on the continent.
However, in Kenya, there is a band of young entrepreneurs who believe that when agriculture is paired with high-tech solutions on mobile phones, young people are seeing the benefits of staying in the villages to farm.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and anwswer the questions below.



1. What is the Silicon Savannah?
2. Who is Illuminum Greenhouses trying to help?
3. How do farmers farmers connect to their greenhouse, monitor the temperature and programme the sprinkler system?
4. When did Millicent Rutere start farming?
5. Who worked the land in Millicen's family? Who got the money?
6. What is the percentage of Kenyan population that still live in rural areas?


Skyscrapers, traffic jams and throngs of people. Kenya's capital is a typical African city except that here mobile phones and digital systems are taking over. Nairobi is known as the Silicon Savannah. People often think that the Silicon Savannah is an area in Africa. In fact, it’s a building, this very building, where take-on entrepreneurs take advantage of the cheap rents and the free software that allows them to focus on the various functions and applications that they’re building. And it's something that Illuminum Greenhouses has taken advantage of as they develop the hardware that will help Kenya's smallholder farmers.
It's also from here that Taita Ngetich and his team design green houses that have inbuilt sensors controlled via mobile phone. The technology has taken off, but not without difficulties.
We're building hardware and it’s not called hard for anything and I think it's really hard, and it's very difficult to develop that in Kenya because we have a very small pool of skilled developers to work with and secondly to get anyone nice today is costly, therefore the problem of access to capital exists.
This effusion of talents here as developers, agricultural experts and investors from America partner to create this product. Through a simple text message, farmers connect to their greenhouse, monitor the temperature and programme the sprinkler system. Remotely, the water is pumped onto the crops at this farm, 20 kilometers away. The co-owner is Millicent Rutere, who has 13 green houses on her plot. She grows herbs such as basil and chives. She began farming as a child and feels strongly about the plight of women who are the majority of Kenya’s smallholders.
I grew up in the village and when I was eight years old I started seeing the challenges that my mother faced when she was raising us up because there's no other source of income apart from farming. When my mother tried to work in the field, my father would take all the money and misused the money, and I could not see the sense of women working in the field and men taking the yields in selling.
It's for this reason that Millicent farms cash crops destined for Europe and Dubai. Even though Kenya is moving towards a modern economy, more than seventy percent of the population still live in rural areas. The younger generation, who are exposed to different opportunities, have found a way to match the old Kenya with the new.

Key:
1 a building in Nairobi
2 Kenya's farmers
3 through a text message 
4 as a child
5 her mom; her dad
6 over 70%

Sheep farm available to rent for just £1 a year

A farm is available to rent for £1 a year in Great Orme in Wales as long as the tenant is prepared to look after its sheep and landscape.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below.



1 What kind of farmer is Park Farm looking for?
2 What techniques will the farmer have to use?
3 What flying insect is exclusively living around Park Farm?
4 How many visitors does the site have each year?
5 What does the contract include?
 

Yours for a pound a year. One of the UK's most spectacular views but, there is a catch. Great Orme in Wales has stunning scenery, acres of land and accommodation on a large farm. The only requirement for the opportunity is that you need to be good with sheep. Park Farm is looking for a special farmer who is willing to restore the health of the landscape by working with a very large flock of sheep. 
It would require using traditional grazing techniques; moving the flock regularly from pasture to pasture so that the sheep keep the grass and thick vegetation in check. This offer comes from the National Trust who own Park Farm.
We are looking for a really special farmer because, as you can see, it’s a really special farm. We’re looking for someone who’s got a real passion for nature because their job will be to actually restore the health of this landscape so the wildlife can thrive here again.
There is good reason for taking care of this significant site for nature. A sub species of the silver studded blue butterfly lives only here and if it is lost from this unique ecological site, it will be lost to the whole world forever. 
600,000 people visit here each year and it is no wonder with views like this. The offer stands at one pound a year for ten years. With this, you get the farm, the sheep and the cottage thrown in. A farm of this size would normally cost more than £1 million to purchase on the open market, so it's unlikely prospective farmers will be sheepish about applying!

Key:
1 One is willing to restore the health of the landscape 
2 Traditional ones
3 The (silver studded) blue butterfly
4 600,000
5 the farm, the sheep and the cottage

Heather Sandford: Farmer Brings Home The Bacon

Heather Sandford is growing a sustainable business that raises and "harvests" animals respectfully.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1 Heather Sandford has loved meat all her life.
2 Animal raising runs in the blood for Heather.
3 Heather has a degree in biotechnology.
4 Heather and her husband have been an item since college days.
5 Heather gave up smoking when she started growing things in San Francisco.
6 Heather compares animal raising to vegetable growing.
7 Heather and her husband have expanded their business.
8 Paperwork is an ordeal.
9 The good thing about the business is that they are making a fortune.

Are you being a rock star, huh? You showing everyone how cute you are?
I was a vegetarian for 17 years and I was vegan for a while. So it’s been kind of a full circle process for me, but I know that my animals have a good and positive, like, life cycle. And I know people are gonna eat meat, regardless if I close shop tomorrow. And I at least would like people to have the option to buy, you know, meat that was well respected and well cared for.
We are self-taught farmers and we're self-taught butchers. We made a lot of mistakes. It's interesting 'cause we know exactly how to farm now. And we also know, like, how we can get better and we're always working on it.
Yeah? Where are they?
When I was growing up, I did not wanna be a farmer at all. I did go to Cornell and I graduated with a bioengineering degree. And at that time, I still didn't have any inclination that I was gonna be a farmer. I was actually really interested in music.
What I really need is Andrew to give us more beans.
I met my husband Brad my senior year at college. We were friends for a very long time before we started dating. And we're still good friends now.
Brad and I started going to the farmers’ markets. We started growing things in the back of this little cottage we rented outside of San Francisco. We started smoking our own meat. We started like, breaking down our own animals.
We were truly just interested in moving back here and homesteading. In that process in the first two years, we found out that we loved pigs. They're smart. They're cute, you know, we can pet 'em.
This is really nice. This is the stuff that Brad found on Craigslist.
We all fit together in this like, little ecosystem on the farm. You know, I care for these animals, we grow them up just like you plant corn, just like you plant vegetables and at some point you're harvesting it for nutrition. We can talk about they go to slaughter, we kill them, but you know, we are harvesting them for — for protein.
This turkey I’m really excited about. I think that’s coming really well.
Me too. GreenStar wants some yesterday.
GreenStar wants it yesterday?
The margins in farming and meat cutting are just whisper thin so we had to work really hard to try to figure out how to cut the carcass every week.
The Irish bacon turned out really well.
The Irish bacon looks nice.
It’s not just the tenderloin, it’s not just the porkchop, and if you’re gonna sell the animal you have to sell the rendered lard, you have to sell the pork cheeks if you can.
Uh, this is our, our, our ham, our deli slice ham we make, and on the far side is actually our bologna, um, and our pâté over there.
Ooh, that looks nice.
We wanted to look at building our business out a little bit further for higher volume and to go into the wholesale market so we could stay in business long term and be a sustainable business.
That was quite a big change. A lot of refrigeration. A lot of new equipment that we needed to enter the marketplace and stuff and also build out our new retail room. So there’s so many challenges, so many late nights, so many long hours.
It feels really good now that we've kinda re-launched, and we just got our USDA license. That is a gigantic deal. It's very dense, the amount of, like, paperwork and things that you do need to do to keep your license active. So I have an inspector at my shop every single day, you know. He looks at our facility, to control any possible contaminations or issues. It's very, very intense. We have to be good every day. Every day we have to be good.
Farmers have so many challenges against them and to overcome them over — all the time is — kind of remarkable. All of us joke like, why do we do this? This is crazy. It's hard, it's long hours, none of us make any money. You know. But it's a labor of love.
Hi! Thank you so much for letting us come and see you. I really appreciate it.

Key:
1F 2F 3F 4F 5F 6T 7T 8T 9F

What’s the buzz with wild bees

Mark Bittman visits the organic Full Belly Farm in Guinda, CA with UC Berkeley's Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist and faculty co-director of the Berkeley Food Institute. She is an expert in pollination and diversified farming techniques.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.



1 Bees are essential for farming.
2 Bees load the pollen on their head.
3 In the pollination process, pollen is transferred from the female parts to the male parts of the flower.
4 Bees are the only pollinators.
5 Californian farmers have enough native bees for their farming industry.
6 Farming techniques are harmful for bees.
7 Wild bees are beneficial for farming.

I don't get to see many bees walking the streets of Manhattan. But out here in California, I've had the opportunity to see many of these hardworking insects up close. Without bees, our grocery stores, farmer's markets, and dinner tables would be pretty barren.
UC Berkeley conservation biologists Claire Kremen and I take a trip to Full Belly Farm in Guinda to see what they're doing to bees and other pollinators happy.  This is a very…
So this is…
…pretty field, obviously.
Yeah, really gorgeous.
It's really quite varied compared to…
Yes, it's so varied.
…1,000 acres of hay. You're going to catch us some bees?
Yeah, I'll catch some bees.
That's pretty exciting.
And you can see them kind of buzzing around.
There's a couple little ones in here.
Bumblebees are social. Isn't that a handsome creature? And you can see the large pollen loads on the back of its leg.
Oh, yeah. I can.
Isn't that cool?
Yeah.
I think of this farm as native pollinator central.  And it's really because of the way they farm that they grow so may different types of crops to attract the pollinators out here.
Let's define a pollinator. And let's talk about why they're important.
A pollinator is any animal that visits a flower and transfers the pollen from the male parts to the female parts of the flower, or from one flower to another. And by doing that, fertilizes the plant and allows the plant to reproduce, and create a seed or fruit. And why they're so important to us is because about 75% of the crops that we enjoy and rely on benefit from animal pollinators visiting them.
So pollinators doesn't just mean bees? Or are there other pollinators too? Do moths pollinate?
Yeah. All kinds of organisms pollinate. Bees are the ones we think about the most when we think about crop pollination, because in general, they are the most important.
In California, farmers have enough bees to pollinate apples, avocados, cherries, and other produce every year. But they import nearly 1.5 million honey bee hives to pollinate the state's biggest export, almonds.
The critical thing is to think about the honey bee as one species that we brought to this country from Europe. And it has a number of health issues. And it's been termed colony collapse disorder. We now rely practically exclusively on honey bees. But it's kind of crazy. You know, we have to transport our pollination service for 3,000 miles when we have 100, 150 native bee species that visit crops and pollinate them.
Obviously, colony collapse disorder is a big deal. But it sounds like it's more of a big deal because just as we've become dependent on monoculture, we've become dependent on this sort of mono-pollinator.
When they transport these bees across the country, there's large numbers of hives that are interacting with one another. That's a great place for them to transmit diseases from one to another. They're being exposed to pesticides on the fields where their foraging. And often, there are a few other form of resources for them. So they're also experiencing sort of a very simplified diet. I mean, you wouldn't want to just eat almonds all day long.
We're using bees in the same way that we use soil, and in the same way that you use fertilizer. It's all very one dimensional.
Yeah. So simplified. Studying pollinators kind of opened my eyes to our whole farming system. Why do we have this farming system when we can see…, you know, this is beautiful. I love being here. You being here. It's a healthy environment. You know, why do we have so much monoculture? We have created the government and economic structures that seem to have made it a necessity.
Right.
This is fundamentally unsustainable. And the only way to maintain your livelihood is to start using techniques of sustainable agriculture. That requires that fundamental understanding. And to do it before the environmental catastrophe.
Will farms take the necessary steps to support bees? Some start out simply and plant hedgerows-- an assortment of plants that flower at different times and provide a rich source of food for pollinators year round. Farmers that welcome wild bees through diversified farming techniques will gain a valuable and natural ally in growing their crops.
We have some fresh egg pasta from eggs from our farm, and then a little salad as well. So yeah, enjoy.
Thank you.

Key:
1T 2F 3F 4F 5F 6T 7T

Ireland mulls Aran Islands salmon farm plan

Controversial plans to build a huge salmon farm off the west coast of Ireland are being considered by the government in Dublin.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.

The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 students.



1 The Aran Islands have been chosen as the site for the farm because of the protection they offer.
2 The Aran Islands are quite close to the main Irish islands.
3 People who oppose the plan fear the farm will scare visitors off.
4 The salmon industry in Ireland is on a par with the Scandinavian countries.
5 Most of the Irish fish is eaten in Asia.
6 Locals fear the fish farm will be harmful to the wildlife in the area.
7 Forty per cent of salmon return to the ocean after spawning.

Europe’s western edge, and it’s in these waters where an Irish state agency wants to build the country’s biggest salmon farm.  The location’s been chosen for the shelter offered by the remote Aran Islands from the open Atlantic beyond. Ireland is in deep economic water, in recession five years after a banking crisis sent the country’s economy on the rocks.
Less than a thousand people live on the remote Irish-speaking islands, with money against the plan to harvest a new bounty from the sea fearing it will change the islands forever.
People come out here for the peace and quiet, for our clean waters, for our beautiful beach. If that’s filthy, if that’s polluted they won’t be coming here, they’ll be going elsewhere.
There’s already salmon farming in Ireland, but on a smaller scale compared to countries like Norway and Scotland. The government in Dublin wants to develop it from the 85 million € is worth today, hoping more jobs and money will flow from the waters around Ireland’s coast.
90% of the fish here are destined for dinner tables in Switzerland and Germany, but with huge growing demand in India and China, those behind the salmon farm project off the Aran Islands say that it’s a huge opportunity for Ireland.
As a government agency, we’re not going to make any profits from this. No individual involved in promoting the project is going to get paid a penny extra or a penny less as a result. So we’re in this to… to help bring about the recovery of Ireland.
The economic crisis hit remote rural areas hard. Unemployment has sent money packing to emigrate, so the prospect of new jobs that salmon farming might bring is welcomed by some.
I have people coming down here and… looking for work. Their parents have come down here after and asked me ‘have I any job that will give their son a reason to get out of bed in the morning?’ I think that is very sad and I think them people deserve a chance.
In the heart of the capital of the west of Ireland lies one of the country’s top wild salmon fisheries. Fish return to spawn, migrating from the seas for the proposed fish farm will lie.  Scientist here fear the farm will bring huge numbers of lice and parasites, which will devastate the wild fish stocks.
Well, for every hundred small salmon, juvenile salmon that leave, you would expect about five per cent back, so that’s five in a hundred. And we have researched that show that if the farm was built and had the impact that we’ve seen previously in other experiments we’ve done, you could lose forty per cent of those returning fish.
Those behind the scheme to double the size of Ireland’s salmon farming industries say it won’t damage the environment. It will be for the Irish government to choose between the conflicting scientific arguments and what the future is to be for Galway Bay and its communities.
Diarmad Fleming BBC News the Aran Islands.

Key:
1T 2F 3T 4F 5F 6F 7F

How to milk a cow

This National Geographic video explains the process of milking a cow in this day and age.

Self-study activity:
Watch the five-minute video and answer the questions below.

The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 students.



1 What substance makes finish off the cow's digestion in the fourth stomach?
2 What does '18' refer to?
3 How safe is it to drink milk straight from the cow?
4 How much time does an Automated Milk Harvester operate during the week?
5 How are the cows identify once they walk into the box of the Automated Milk Harvester?
6 Will the machine milk a cow that has 8 litres of milk?
7 What does '10,000 pounds' refer to?
8 How beneficial is for the cow's health this milking system?
9 What three elements are necessary for Neil Rowe to fix whatever problem in the Milk Harvester from anywhere in the world?

You can check the answers by reading the transcript.

This time, we're looking at something which has been consumed by mankind for thousands of years. We're talking about milk.
But first, how is milk created?  Well, in fact a cow has four stomachs.  The first stomach begins to break down the grass before it passes through the second and third stomachs where nutrient absorption begins.  Eventually, in stomach number four, gastric juices (1) finish off the digestion process and nutrients extracted from the food are absorbed into the blood stream.  In the udder, the blood passes through very small blood vessels, surrounding groups of secreting cells called Alveoli.  It's these that actually produce the milk using the nutrients carried in the bloodstream.  Aside from the food they eat, cows must also drink plenty of water. 18 litres of it produce just 4.5 litres of milk (2).
And the traditional way of milking a cow was of course by hand using a stool and a bucket, and I'm gonna give it a go.
Farmers going back to the Iron Age milked cows in this way.
Jonny is that the first time you've done that?
Yeah.  She's obviously very full because that's coming out without much encouragement, but, it's not as easy as it might seem.
There you go, girls.
The average cow produces about 27 liters of milk a day, but it has been known for cows to produce more than a 100 liters in a day.  And you can drink the milk straight from the udder (3), as I am about to demonstrate.  There we go whisky. There we go. That is absolutely delicious.
Technology has entered the world of the Moo Cow.  Richard and Jonny have come to one of the most modern dairy farms in Britain where a laser-guided robot milks the cows.  It's called an Automated Milk Harvester and it operates 24/7 (4), allowing the cows to enter of their own free will.
So talk us through the process, how does it work?
Okay, the cows walk on from this side.  Come into the box and stand there.  They're identified by a microchip (5), which they have in a collar on their necks.  The computer will then decide whether it wants to milk this cow or whether to let this one go and take the next one.  So it's trying to be as efficient as it can.  It's always looking to harvest the maximum amount of milk every 24 hours.
Why would it let a cow go then, why would it not milk one?
If she doesn't have enough milk in her udder, it won't invest six and a half minutes of its time for a small amount of milk, it's looking for a cow with about 10 litres of milk (6).
And sorry, just explain Neil, how does it know whether it's worth milking her?
It keeps a running total on every cow in the herd.  It can then calculate to within half a liter how much milk is in the cow before it starts to milk her.
And how many cows a day is it milking?
It'll milk 70 cows, 3 times a day.  It can do about 200 milkings over the 24 hour period.
And what's the most say, a cow can yield?
We've had cows on here that have given 100 liters in a 24 hour period.
Goodness me.
Which is extraordinary isn't it.
That's massive.
Once the robot has committed to milking a cow, a brush system first cleans and sterilizes the teats with hydrogen peroxide to prevent any infection being passed on.  The orange brush then massages the cow's udder to encourage the production of the hormone oxitocin, which is needed to stimulate the milk flow.
The milk comes down through these tubes, goes through this electronic box and there's 10,000 pounds worth of sensors in there which monitor the quality of the milk (7).  It can see watery substances, cow muck, dirt, blood.  Anything which isn't normal in the milk, it will see it, and then it separates that milk out into these buckets and then when the process is finished, it takes about uh, 4 seconds to chill the milk down from 37 degrees down to 2 degrees.
Goodness me.
And it's not just the milk that's chilled.  This system can prove much less stressful for the cows.  In fact on this farm they're actually living an average of 30% longer than those on farms where they use more traditional milking methods (8).  But what happens if something goes wrong with milking when the farmer is not around?  Well, this technology is so advanced the robot just contacts him over the phone (9)!
The system actually automatically contacts you if there's a problem?
It does, yeah.  It will ring me immediately, within seconds of identifying a problem.  There are about 100 sensors on here that can all detect whether it's working correctly or not.  Any one of those finds a problem, rings me straightaway, gives me a message to tell me what the problem is.  I can then text back codes to try and fix the problem from where I am, or even if I've got my laptop (9) and a wireless broadband connection (9), I can connect on anywhere in the world, using the cameras I can see what's going on and I can use my keyboard to sort the problems out.
Wow!