FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT Jaime Jennings, 202-232-7933x44
[email protected]
Julie Greene, 202-232-7933x43
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Washington, DC (September 23, 2021) — You may have eaten a burger made from plants or even stem cells, strawberries picked by robots, lettuce grown in urban warehouses, or a pastry created with a 3-D printer. Such innovations might just save your health and the planet’s, and they reveal how creative entrepreneurs are challenging Big Ag’s legacy of pollution, malnutrition, and animal cruelty.

In Tech to Table: 25 Innovators Reimagining Food (Publication Date: September 23, 2021), Richard Munson introduces readers to twenty-five innovators driving solutions to the biggest problems created by industrialized food. With short, deftly crafted profiles, he presents a fascinating preview of the future of food and highlights the stories of the entrepreneurs at the forefront of this revolution. While they come from diverse identities, backgrounds, places, and professions, they all share an outsider’s perspective and an ambition to rethink the food system.

Tech to Table highlights five overarching challenges facing farms and food: rethinking how we deliver proteins, from cultured meats to ‘tuna’ from tomatoes; cutting food waste with produce grown near consumers in urban warehouses and crops tracked by blockchain; decreasing pesticides through robotic weed pickers; finding better ways to nourish plants and soil, from precision watering to soil probiotics; and reducing greenhouse gas emissions with carbon negative vodka as well as animal-feed supplements that block a cow’s methane burps.

Under Big Ag, toxins and hunger have festered, while organic farming, despite decades of appeals, accounts for less than one percent of US croplands. Entrepreneurial innovators present a third path forward, one where new technologies help farmers, consumers, rural communities, and the environment. With agricultural-technology startups soaring by 80% annually since 2012 and attracting $30 billion in direct investment in 2020, Munson argues that the global agriculture industry is poised for disruption.

While not every invention will succeed long-term, each marks a fundamental change in our approach to sustainably feeding the world. Munson’s profiles offer an inspiring look at the coming food revolution.

Richard Munson is the author of several books, most recently Tesla: Inventor of the Modern. He also has written a biography of Jacques Cousteau, the undersea explorer and filmmaker; a history of electricity; and a behind-the-scenes look at how congressional appropriators spend taxpayer money. Now based near Chicago, he has worked on environmental and clean-energy issues at non-profits, within universities, in the private sector, and on Capitol Hill.

Tech to Table

Island Press Hardcover | Publication Date: September 23, 2021

296 pages | 6 x 9 | Price: $32.00
ISBN: 978-1-64283-190-0

Book Page: https://islandpress.org/books/tech-table

Founded in 1984, Island Press works to stimulate, shape, and communicate the information that is essential for solving environmental problems. Today, with more than 1,000 titles in print and some 30 new releases each year, it is the nation’s leading publisher of books on environmental issues. Island Press is driving change by moving ideas from the printed page to public discourse and practice. Island Press’s emphasis is, and will continue to be, on transforming objective information into understanding and action. For more information and further updates be sure to visit www.islandpress.org.

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