farms

The Biden administration is eyeing chunks of the Gulf of Mexico as new areas to expand its growing offshore wind ambitions. Today, President Joe Biden proposed opening up 700,000 acres off the coasts of Galveston, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana to future wind development. The administration is now looking for public input on developing those locations, after its proposal today to make them official “wind energy areas” where lease sales could be held in the future. Building up an offshore wind energy industry in the…

TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We have a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. Embedded below are the latest from The TechCrunch Podcast from Darrell, who talks to TC writers about their own stories of the week; Chain Reaction, our crypto-focused podcast hosted by Lucas and Anita; Found, a long-form bit of work that goes deep on the real saga of company formation from Jordan and Darrell; and Equity, our long-running,…

When we think of our fellow plant-eating mammals, we tend to picture them just eating whatever they find while foraging. According to new research, however, the pocket gopher actually farms its food … and it's the only non-human mammal to do so.Pocket gophers spend pretty much their entire lives underground, excavating multiple horizontal tunnels that run up to 160 m (525 ft) in length.Their diet consists mainly of plant roots, which they access within those tunnels. Doing all that digging is a lot of work, though –…

A few years ago, a friend said he had spotted river otters just outside of Fairfield, a small town in southeast Iowa where I grew up. This was big news to me. For most of my life, I thought Iowa was boring. It’s the land of cornfields and hog farms. One of the state’s only claims to fame is that it’s home to the world’s largest truck stop (with 900 truck parking spots, 24 private showers, and an onsite chiropractor and dentist). And while my hometown is something of a spiritual paradise — it’s a hub for disciples of…

The makers of wind turbines have, for many decades now, labored to harness one of the mightiest forces in nature. They’ve moved from onshore to offshore sites, building ever larger rotors with huge blades, each one now longer than a row of 10 London buses. And they’ve stacked those rotors atop dizzying towers, constantly reaching for new, blustery heights.In their endless quest to capture the most reliably energetic winds, engineers are now moving further out into the ocean, to areas of deeper water where especially…

The White House and 11 governors from East Coast states forged a new partnership on Thursday to build up domestic supply chains for offshore wind farms and related infrastructure. The new Federal-State Offshore Wind Implementation Partnership includes governors from Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. As part of the announcement, the Biden administration committed to the facilitation of “timely and effective…

The deal takes place as chicken prices have surged, driven by strong consumer demand and rising grain prices. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images…

Written by Aimee Chanthadavong, Senior Journalist…

The sludge that is created through sewage treatment processes is rich in nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen, making it an excellent source of fertilizer for agriculture. But not all that it contains is good for the environment, with a new study demonstrating how the material acts as a vehicle for huge amounts of tiny plastic fragments to enter soils, so much so the authors suggest Europe's farms could be acting as the world's largest reservoir for microplastics pollution.Sewage sludge serves as an appealing and…