To market: From snorting pig to global product

University research in Kansas and California is providing technical solutions for small farmers to help them compete against large scale farms.

Wolves in western America were once hunted to near-extinction but have now been reintroduced into certain territories with notable success. More wolves often means more attacks on ranchers' livestock, however, so cowboys are working to track wolf packs by computer to reduce conflicts.

After the success of North Carolina pork in Japan, the NC department of agriculture aims to help other local producers try their products in this foreign market to stimulate the state's economy.

One-pill-a-day generic AIDS drugs for poor countries are hard to make because each ingredient is patented by a different pharmaceutical company. The Patent Pool provides a way for companies to donate their intellectual property safely.

In prison, most inmates are alienated from social practices and can be a tax burden for the states. The Colorado Correctional Industries is a program that positions inmates in different forms of labor such as making stuffed toys, farming fish, picking fruit, tending livestock, and creating crafts to be sold at grocery stores. The program makes inmates into taxpayers instead of tax burdens and offers skills that are useful for future employment once they leave prison.

In Colombia, traditional cattle pastures have caused soil degradation, deforestation, and desertification. To reconcile this, several thousand acres of land in Latin America have been transformed into a silvo-pastoral system of grazing and raising cattle with agro-forestry. The Colombia-based Center for Research in Sustainable Systems of Agriculture seeks to reduce pasture land by 26 million acres while increasing cattle numbers by 2019.

The United States can outsource certain kinds of "microwork," such as accurately digitizing large swaths of information, to developing countries without taking jobs from Americans ― if it’s done carefully, and ethically, as some organizations are working to do. As the author Robert Wright has argued, we no longer live in a zero-sum world, where one person’s, or one country’s gain, must be another’s loss.

Colombia’s National Development Plan for cattle ranching seeks to reduce pasture land from 94 million acres to 70 million acres while increasing cattle numbers from 23 million head to 40 million. The program focuses on planting trees on grazing land and the "cut and carry method," whereby farmers grow fields of shrubs and distribute the fresh cuttings to cows in pastures. The result is greater cattle productivity and a more eco-friendly farming system.

When cattle die on ranches in Montana, they can attract grizzly bears that can come dangerously close landowners, ranches, and living livestock. Blackfoot Challenge, a coalition of ranchers and landowners who work with the government, collects and composts dead cattle into odorless woodchips. These woodchips are effective at repurposing carcasses into high-way side revegetation projects.

A farm in North Carolina discovered a new market and revived their business. By focusing on the genetics of their hogs and altering the hogs' diet the farm was able to enter the competitive but lucrative Japanese pork market.