Founded in 2001 by a pair of Stanford grads, Blue River Technology is using that money to develop an alternative to chemical-intensive agriculture, which is both labor intensive (even with all that spraying fields still need to be weeded) and environmentally toxic.

FORBES: The Robots Are Coming (and they seem to be revolutionizing healthcare, agriculture and education along the way)!

Agriculture and chemical companies like DuPont , Dow Chemical and BASF are all ridding themselves of their drug divisions.

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Likewise, although Dow Chemical and DuPont have strong agriculture divisions, companies specializing in agrochemicals and biotech crops increasingly stand alone: look at Monsanto and Syngenta , both of which were spun off from pharmaceuticals firms.

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In any case, the world-class agriculture in the delta employs advanced seed technology and chemical fertilisers, and does not depend on river-borne sediment of negligible nutrient value.

ECONOMIST: Letters

When teachers guide students in gaining awareness that industrial agriculture writ large, for example, results in chemical runoff from nitrogen-based fertiliers in the Mississippi River that in turn creates a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico so large that it is visible to the human eye through satellite distant imaging, students are able to grasp the basis for sustainable agriculture.

FORBES: Daniel Goleman on the Importance of Ecological Intelligence

The 210-year-old company, known once primarily for its chemical business, is trying to roots its business more firmly in agriculture products.

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At the other end of the spectrum, two-thirds of the companies in food processing, government services, farming or agriculture, health care and education, and half of the companies in chemical processing or manufacturing, construction, the oil industry, power, gas and water utilities, and the legal industry are expected to have one major mission-critical failure owing to year-2000 problems.

CNN: Gartner's year-2000 survey finds widespread disruptions likely