The Van Trump Report

Agriculture

Making “Morel Mushrooms” Available Year-Round

Here at home, everybody has been out and about the past few weeks hunting for mushrooms, particularly the “morel mushrooms” which are coveted by chefs and eaters alike for their intensely nutty, woodsy flavor. The fungi are typically only available during a short timeframe during the spring and only in the wild. Meaning the commercial morel …

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New Tech is Extending Food’s Shelf Life

Approximately one-third of food produced for human consumption, most specifically fruits and vegetables, is wasted each year through their natural process of decay.  A startup called “Hazel Technologies” is hoping to change that with a simple insert placed in the packaging at the warehouse. Hazel believes their solution will provide a more sustainable, healthy, and …

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A Company Making Fake Meat Taste Like the Real Thing

As chefs always say, fat is flavor. It’s also what gives traditional animal proteins their texture, mouthfeel and cooking behavior. That fact has long held alternative proteins back due to the fact that there are limited fats available today that are both plant-based and offer the same properties as their animal-based counterparts.  We need to …

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How American Cheese Created One of Our Greatest Food Empires

American cheese is one of those food items which most people have a very strong opinion about. I’m talking about the highly meltable “pasteurized cheese product” that comes as individually wrapped slices, or gets sliced off a giant orangish cube at the deli counter. As much as the critics might hate it, even the biggest …

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New Autonomous Tractors Coming to U.S. Market

AMOS, the acronym for Autonomous, Modular, Omni-Scalable, is a fully-electric autonomous tractor design recently unveiled by Amos Power. The tractor model started as a design-build project with the engineering and prototyping teams at One3 Design and Redshield Electronics with the aim of fitting tractor-quality power and capabilities onto a relatively small tractor frame. The results, …

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The Strange History of Tomatoes… They Weren’t Always Popular!

Tomatoes are a reliable favorite among chefs and eaters alike. But up until the mid- to late-1800s, they were shunned by many Americans and Europeans due to a long-time belief that they were poisonous. The tomato is native to western South America and Central America. The English word tomato actually originates from the Aztec word …

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How About a NEW Use for Corn… Creating High-Performance Biopolymers

Biopolymers are literally everywhere, in products that we all use every day, and for good reason. They’re inexpensive, naturally produced and have uses in food, healthcare, personal care, the energy industry and more. But, despite these advantages, producing biopolymers at scale has long been challenging and limited their potential use in industry.  A new company …

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