Business Unusual

If you had to think about what is needed on a modern farm, you would think ploughs, fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation and the best developed seeds. The advent of industrial farming has seen the items above become central to a successful farm looking to maximise yield.  If you can pay for all the input costs you can get the rewards come harvest time. That is assuming the prices are good and the weather gods were favourable...

Over 1000 MW of renewable energy will be added to the grid in the next year, we need a way to store it.  One major drawback that is often made about renewables is that they don’t work when the sun does not shine or there is no wind. That is true but a greater drawback is that often when they do work, we have enough power but not enough during the peaks.  An age old issue has been how to store enough energy efficiently so we can use everything we generate...

There are many aspects to this subject and I am only mentioning the basic principles rather than the specific benefits or drawbacks of the platforms and companies mentioned.  Consider this as a business bedtime story instead. It has heroes and villains, dramatic events and an ending that while not a fairy tale ending might not be a bad one either. A reference was made about the arrest of John McAfee. The reports of wrongdoing are allegations and have not been proved as yet...

Most plastic was never intended to be recycled, but we have believed the story for decades Guest: Colin Cullis | Business Unusual Correspondent  at Money Show See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The cost and benefits are making home automation easy and affordable There are two parts to this look at what smart homes will look like in the future. The first part relates to making it more convenient for home living the second how our homes can become part of managing the national grid system in a more sustainable way. Image credit: Daniil Peshkov 123rf.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Almost a century after it began the last original stock is removed from the index In 1928, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was expanded to list 30 stocks, 92 years later there are still 30 stocks that make up the index, but on 1 September 2020 the last original stock, ExxonMobil was removed. This is the story of how the index came about, how it helped investors better understand the market and if it still can. Image credit: QuoteInspector See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information...

Minerals are synonymous with wealth but they are finite and we need more 5 000 years of ever increasing mining activity with bigger and bigger mines blasting and digging to incredible depths is starting to make the effort to find minerals too expensive. To find more we have begun investigating where they all came from in the first place - the undersea volcanoes that power the tectonic plates. image credit: Koelle, Wikipedia - a ploy metallic nodule from the ocean floor See omnystudio...

Here are some of the arguments that will form part of the discussion around the upcoming court case to determine if Apple and Google have to change the fees policy or if Epic will be made to take it or leave it. The implications are significant for more than just the three companies involved. Image credit: Yael Weiss See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We made a mistake with rubber that may prove difficult to erase. We make too much of it in the wrong place and don’t appreciate just how big a problem it will be if the industry collapses. Guest: Colin Cullis/ Correspondent at money show  Image credit: Greg Hume - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Despite being one of the few animals that think about the future, we don’t think far enough It seems unlikely that the world will ever forget the disruption of Covid-19, yet most did not think we would see something like this in 2020. Odds are you had not even heard of the Spanish flu of 1918 even though now you know lots about it...