Technology is shaping the future of food but practices rooted in tradition could still have a role to play

Published

4 years ago

August 6, 2021

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Fruit and vegetable allotments on the outskirts of Henley-on-Thames, England.

David Goddard | Getty Images News | Getty Images

From oranges and lemons grown in Spain to fish caught in the wilds of the Atlantic, many are spoiled for choice when it comes to picking the ingredients that go on our plate.

Yet, as concerns about the environment and sustainability mount, discussions about how — and where — we grow our food have become increasingly pressing.

Last month, the debate made headlines in the U.K. when the second part of The National Food Strategy, an independent review commissioned by the U.K. government, was released.

The wide-ranging report was headed up by restaurateur and entrepreneur Henry Dimbleby and mainly focused on England’s food system. It came to some sobering conclusions.

Its executive summary said the food we consume — and the way we produce it — was “doing terrible damage to our planet and to our health.”

The publication said the global food system was “the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss, deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution and the collapse of aquatic wildlife.” It was also, the report claimed, “the second-biggest contributor to climate change, after the energy industry.”

Dimbleby’s report is one example of how the alarm is being sounded when it comes to food systems, a term the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN says encompasses everything from production and processing to distribution, consumption and disposal.

According to the FAO, food systems consume 30% of the planet’s available energy. It adds that “modern food systems are heavily dependent on fossil fuels.”

All the above certainly provides food for thought. Below, CNBC’s Sustainable Future takes a look at some of the ideas and concepts that could change the way we think about agriculture.

Growing in cities

Around the world, a number of interesting ideas and techniques related to urban food production are beginning to gain traction and generate interest, albeit on a far smaller scale compared to more established methods.

Take hydroponics, which the Royal Horticultural Society describes as “the science of growing plants without using soil, by feeding them on mineral nutrient salts dissolved in water.”

In London, firms like Growing Underground are using LED technology and hydroponic systems to produce greens 33-meters below the surface. The company says its crops are grown throughout the year in a pesticide free, controlled environment using renewable energy.

With a focus on the “hyper-local”, Growing Underground claims its leaves “can be in your kitchen within 4 hours of being picked and packed.”

Another business attempting to make its mark in the sector is Crate to Plate, whose operations are centered around growing lettuces, herbs and leafy greens vertically. The process takes place in containers that are 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8.5 feet tall.

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Like Growing Underground, Crate to Plate’s facilities are based in London and use hydroponics. A key idea behind the business is that, by growing vertically, space can be maximized and resource use minimized.

On the tech front, everything from humidity and temperature to water delivery and air flow is monitored and regulated. Speed is also crucial to the company’s business model.

“We aim to deliver everything that we harvest in under 24 hours,” Sebastien Sainsbury, the company’s CEO, told CNBC recently.

“The restaurants tend to get it within 12, the retailers get it within 18 and the home delivery is guaranteed within 24 hours,” he said, explaining that deliveries were made using electric vehicles. “All the energy that the farms consume is renewable.”

Grow your own

While there is a sense of excitement regarding the potential of tech-driven, soilless operations such as the ones above, there’s also an argument to be had for going back to basics.

In the U.K., where a large chunk of the population have been working from home due to the coronavirus pandemic, the popularity of allotments — pockets of land that are leased out and used to grow plants, fruits and vegetables — appears to have increased.

In September 2020 the Association for Public Service Excellence carried out an online survey of local authorities in the U.K. Among other things it asked respondents if, as a result of Covid-19, they had “experienced a noticeable increase in demand” for allotment plots. Nearly 90% said they had.

“This alone shows the public value and desire to reconnect with nature through the ownership of an allotment plot,” the APSE said. “It may also reflect the renewed interest in the public being more self-sustainable, using allotments to grow their own fruit and vegetables.”

In comments sent to CNBC via email, a spokesperson for the National Allotment Society said renting an allotment offered plot holders “the opportunity to take healthy exercise, relax, have contact with nature, and grow their own seasonal food.”

The NAS was of the belief that British allotments supported “public health, enhance social cohesion and could make a significant contribution to food security,” the spokesperson said.

A broad church

Nicole Kennard is a PhD researcher at the University of Sheffield’s Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures.

In a phone interview with CNBC, she noted how the term “urban agriculture” could refer to everything from allotments and home gardens to community gardens and urban farms.

“Obviously, not all food is going to be produced by urban agriculture, but it can play a big role in feeding local communities,” she said.

There were other positives, too, including flood and heat mitigation. “It’s … all those benefits that come with having green spaces in general but then there’s the added plus, [which] is that you’re producing food for local consumption.”

On urban farming specifically, Kennard said it provided “the opportunity to make a localized food system” that could be supported by consumers.

“You can support farms that you know, farmers that you know, that are also doing things that contribute to your community,” she said, acknowledging that these types of relationships could also be forged with other types of farms.

Looking ahead

Discussions about how and where we produce food are set to continue for a long time to come as businesses, governments and citizens try to find ways to create a sustainable system that meets the needs of everyone.

It’s perhaps no surprise then that some of the topics covered above are starting to generate interest among the investment community.

Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in June, Morgan Stanley’s global head of sustainability research, Jessica Alsford, highlighted this shift.

“There’s certainly an argument for looking beyond the most obvious … ways to play the green theme, as you say, further down the value and the supply chain,” she said.

“I would say as well though, you need to remember that sustainability covers a number of different topics,” Alsford said. “And we’ve been getting a lot of questions from investors that want to branch out beyond the pure green theme and look at connected topics like the future of food, for example, or biodiversity.”

For Crate to Plate’s Sainsbury, knowledge sharing and collaboration will most likely have a big role to play going forward. In his interview with CNBC, he emphasized the importance of “coexisting with existing farming traditions.”

“Oddly enough, we’ve had farmers come and visit the site because farmers are quite interested in installing this kind of technology … in their farm yards … because it can supplement their income.”

“We’re not here to compete with farmers, take business away from farmers. We want to supplement what farmers grow.”

Environment

An Oregon cattle ranch just added solar without losing grazing land

Published

11 hours ago

December 19, 2025

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An Oregon cattle ranch just added solar without losing grazing land

An Angus ranch in southern Oregon has become the test case for a new kind of cattle-friendly solar, hosting RUTE SunTracker’s first commercial project.

The one‑acre, 120‑kilowatt array is the first real‑world installation of RUTE’s patented, cable‑stayed solar tracker designed specifically to coexist with grazing cattle. RUTE supplies the hardware and is also acting as the developer for its first regional cattle‑plus‑solar demonstrations.

What makes the setup different is the clearance. The tracker system provides about 10 feet of headroom, with panel heights reaching up to 16 feet across the array. That gives cattle full access to the pasture underneath while allowing ranchers to keep managing the land as usual. The project is interconnected to Pacific Power’s grid in Jackson County, Oregon.

Projects like this are getting more attention as the solar industry runs into land‑use limits. In the US alone, about 30 gigawatts of new solar capacity installed last year covered roughly 150,000 acres. Meanwhile, the country has close to 120 million acres of cattle pasture, much of it facing rising heat and water stress.

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That’s where agrivoltaics come in. By adding solar to working pastureland, ranchers can create a second revenue stream while improving growing conditions for forage through partial shade.

“Within weeks of installing the RUTE canopy, the crew observed leafier forage and increased legume presence inside the array compared to outside,” RUTE president Doug Krause said. “Even on irrigated pasture, direct summer sun can be too intense.”

RUTE’s work has been supported by grants from the US Department of Energy’s American‑Made Solar Prize and the US Department of Agriculture. In October, Oregon State University’s Agrivoltaics Program began quantitative studies at the site to measure pasture production, adding hard data to what ranchers are already seeing on the ground.

Next, RUTE plans to take the project on the road. This winter, the company will present at cattlemen’s association meetings as it looks for ranch partners with onsite electric loads, such as irrigation pivot systems.

“In the near term, our focus is on regional, behind‑the‑meter installations so ranchers and power producers can see the equipment operating in real conditions,” Krause said. “While interconnection timelines are long, these projects allow us to build momentum as we connect with developers and ranches on utility‑scale pipeline.”

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Environment

Tesla rental fleet that bought into Elon Musk’s self-driving lies goes bankrupt due to depreciation

Published

13 hours ago

December 19, 2025

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Tesla rental fleet that bought into Elon Musk's self-driving lies goes bankrupt due to depreciation

Dutch leasing company Mistergreen, known for its “Tesla only” fleet and bold bets on a future of autonomous robotaxis, is reportedly facing bankruptcy. The company’s financial collapse highlights the danger of buying into Elon Musk’s claims that Tesla vehicles would become “appreciating assets”—a prediction that has faced a harsh reality check in the used EV market.

According to reports from Europe, the Dutch Tesla-only car rental firm Mistergreen has wiped out its bondholders and is selling off its operations.

Mistergreen had built its entire business model around the premise of operating a fleet of Tesla vehicles that would not only hold their value but eventually generate revenue as robotaxis.

Instead, the company has been forced to write down millions in fleet value as Tesla aggressively cut new car prices over the last two years, pulling the rug out from under used EV prices, and never delivered on its promise of consumer vehicles becoming robotaxis.

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Back in 2019, Elon Musk famously claimed that Tesla vehicles were now “appreciating assets” because of their Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability. He stated:

“I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset – not a depreciating asset.”

He even went so far as to suggest that a Tesla Model 3 could be worth $100,000 to $200,000 as a revenue-generating robotaxi. Mistergreen bought into that claim and was essentially a leveraged bet on this exact scenario.

They wrote their annual report in 2022:

Our focus is driven by the fact that Tesla’s electric vehicles are currently the highest quality electric vehicles on the market (in terms of battery quality, software updates, efficiency and range, charging network and speed), their hardware and software are prepared for future self-driving cars, and the quality and range of the Tesla (supercharger) charging network is superior. As a result, there is a significant market demand for Tesla’s and we anticipate that Tesla’s will have better residual value in the future due to the good quality of the Tesla’s currently on the market.

However, as we discussed in an article earlier this year about Elon Musk’s biggest lie, the reality has been the exact opposite. Tesla vehicles have depreciated faster than the industry average, exacerbated by Tesla’s own decision to slash prices to maintain demand and by the fact that it never delivered on its promise that software updates would make its consumer vehicles autonomous without supervision.

At its peak, Mistergreen had a fleet of over 4,000 Tesla vehicles, which is impressive, but it meant that it was hit even harder by the depreciation.

For buyers, a cheaper Tesla is great news. For owners or leasing companies holding thousands of them on their books, with high residual-value guarantees, it’s a death sentence.

Mistergreen had issued bonds to buy the Tesla vehicles, but it hasn’t been able to repay them since last year. It’s unclear how much of investors’ money has been wiped out by the bet, but it is in the tens of millions of dollars.

A couple of Dutch, Belgian, and German leasing companies will purchase the remaining fleet.

Electrek reached out to CEO Florian Minderop and co-founder Mark Schreurs for comments, but we didn’t hear back by the time of publishing.

Electrek’s Take

They believed Elon and they lost tens of millions of dollars worth of investors’ money for it.

We have been saying for years that while FSD is impressive, there’s no evidence that it can reach level 4 autonomy in consumer vehicles. Banking on it turning cars into appreciating robotaxis in the near term is financial suicide.

Musk has been promising “1 million robotaxis by the end of the year” since 2020. It’s now late 2025, and while we have seen progress, we only have a small pilot program in a geo-fenced area in Texas under constant supervision, and certainly don’t have a fleet of appreciating assets.

If you bought a Tesla for $50,000 in 2022 expecting it to be worth $100,000 today, you are likely disappointed. If you bought 4,000 of them with borrowed money, you are Mistergreen.

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Environment

Kia cuts EV prices with new deals across its full lineup

Published

13 hours ago

December 19, 2025

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Kia cuts EV prices with new deals across its full lineup

Kia is offering generous discounts on its EVs with low finance rates and thousands in savings across its entire lineup.

What deals is Kia currently running on its EVs?

After launching a promotion in the US offering over $10,000 off the EV6, EV9, and Niro EV this month, Kia is now extending the savings overseas.

Kia introduced a New Year’s offer in the UK on Tuesday, offering savings across its entire range, including electric vehicles.

The new deal offers generous finance deposit contributions (FDC) of up to £3,000 ($4,000) toward all EV3 models, plus the EV4 GT-Line and GT-Line S trims. A £1,500 ($2,000) FDC is available toward the EV4 Fastback (sedan), EV5, EV6, EV6 GT, EV9, and EV9 GT. The EV4 Air grade is available with a £1,000 ($1,300) FDC.

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Kia is also offering a low 3.9% APR across its entire EV lineup, considerably lower than the 5.9% APR for the new Sportage and the 7.9% APR for the Picanto, K4, Niro PHEV, and Sorento.

And that’s not all. Current Kia drivers looking to upgrade can save an extra £1,000 ($1,300) with the “Kia EV Finance Upgrade” loyalty incentive.

The New Year’s EV deals run from December 17, 2025, to March 31, 2026. Kia is also offering two years of free service on all electric models through its “Discover Your Kia EV” campaign, available on all EV3, EV4, EV4 Fastback, EV5, EV6, EV9, and PV5 Passenger grades and variants.

On Friday, the EV4 and PV5 Passenger became the brand’s first vehicle eligible for the UK’s Electric Car Grant. Buyers can now earn £1,500 ($2,000) off the on-the-road purchase price for the EV4 Air and PV5 Passenger Essential and Plus trims.

Although not exactly a promotion, Kia launched the EV4 as Canada’s most affordable EV this week. Starting at under $40,000, Kia’s electric sedan (fastback) is even cheaper than the tiny Fiat 500e.

Kia-most-affordable-EV-Canada — 2026 Kia EV4 for the North American market (Source: Kia)

For those in the US, don’t worry, Kia is offering some pretty great year-end deals, including over $10,000 in savings across its entire EV lineup.

The 2025 Kia EV6 and Niro EV are available with up to $11,000 in customer cash, while the larger EV9 is listed with $10,500 in customer cash.

Kia-EV9-interior-2026 — The interior of the 2026 Kia EV9 GT-Line (Source: Kia)

If you’re looking to finance, Kia is offering 0% APR for up to 72 months, plus $3,500 APR Bonus Cash on the EV6 and Niro EV. The three-row Kia EV9 is available with 0% APR for up to 60 months and a $3,000 APR Bonus Cash offer. In the US, Kia’s “New Traditions” sales event runs until January 2, 2026.

Kia’s deals are generous, but its sister company, Hyundai, may have it beat. You can lease a Hyundai IONIQ 5 right now for as low as $189 per month. That’s about as cheap as EV leases get right now.

If you’re wondering what deals are available in your area, you can find local offers using the links below.

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