Category: Ana Feeds Our World
Ana Feeds Our World — Introduction
Ana Feeds our World describes the adoption and diffusion of sustainable, healthy and affordable algae-based food for plants, animals and people. Ana identifies and celebrates the many miracles algae has contributed to our planet and our society. Does Ana suggest that algae alone will feed…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 1
By 2040, Ana’s world will have over 9 billion hungry people competing for nourishment on our increasingly hot, dry and crowded planet. What will Ana’s children do for food? To provide abundant affordable and sustainable food for everyone, we need a plant that works miracles…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 2
Ana knows that tiny single-celled organisms have extraordinary properties. Her favorite, algae, is the mother of all land plants. Terrestrial plants, with roots, evolved from algae about 500 million years ago. Algae comes in all shapes and sizes from tiny to macro. Some algae species group and form…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 3
Algae can be such lively little critters that some scientists consider them animals. Many can swim, such as dinoflagellates that have little whip-like structures called flagella which pull or push them through the water. Some algae squish part of their body forwards and crawl along solid surfaces…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 4
Tiny Mighty Al shares the story of how this 3.5-billion-year-old single-celled alga saved our planet not once, but twice. First, Al ate the predominately CO2 atmosphere and burped enough O2 to support life on earth. After supplying the oxygen, our planet lacked food. Al became the favored food…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 5
Algae are aquatic microscopic plants with chlorophyll-a and a single-cell body not differentiated into roots, stems or leaves. Algae include some photosynthetic bacteria, the cyanobacteria. Algae’s photosynthetic mechanism is similar to land-based plants, except they are far more efficient in converting …
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 6
Algae typically do not have to move, since the nutrients flow naturally in the water to them. Algae do not need rigid structures since they are supported by water. Amazingly, algae developed the ability to swim. Sometimes single-celled algae grow whip-like appendages called flagella, which coordinate …
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 7
Algae evolved in so many different competitive environments that the organisms built incredibly sophisticated defensive shields. Imagine each algae cell trying to survive and grow surrounded by a milieu of predators trying to eat it and trillions of bacteria, viruses, molds and other microorganisms…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 8
No, Ana cannot save modern industrial agriculture (MIA), from itself. MIA consumes far too many nonrenewable resources, uses them very inefficiently, and only once. The residuals leak to create massive waste streams that erode, degrade and pollute not only its own ecosystems…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 9
Farmers have to make a full investment in their crop and pray that severe weather events, drought or pest invasions do not destroy it. A single storm, such as hurricane Harvey or Irma, a temperature spike or pest invasion can devastate crops. Modern Industrial Agriculture (MIA) ignores…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 10
Producing food grains to feed animals for meat requires 100 times more water than producing food for vegetarians. Meat production consumes 1,000 times more freshwater than using protein from algae. Algae do not require freshwater or arable land to grow, maximizing resources that…
Read MoreAna Feeds Our World, Part 11
The most critical contribution algae can make to MIA is to transform fossil agriculture, based on extracted resources, to abundant agriculture, based on biocycled resources. Fossil agriculture is not sustainable, because fossil resources are limited and becoming increasingly scarce…
Read More