Still, it got them noticed. In October 2018, CO2 Revolution was named one of the 100 best start-ups in the world in a competition organized by the innovation platform, South Summit.

Soon after, CO2 Revolution landed its first big client, the multinational corporation, LG Electronics Iberia, which hired them to sow trees on burned land outside Madrid. An agreement was also signed to use LG’s screen technology for improved drone flight precision.

The client list began to grow and investors, such as the Regional Government of Navarra, were attracted.

Mr. Sesma and Mr. Sánchez brought on board a handpicked group of microbiologists, engineers and software programmers.

On a recent morning, in his sun-drenched lab in central Spain, a forestry engineer, Jaime Olaizola, gestured toward a stack of plastic dishes containing samples of pine and cedar seeds.

Dr. Olaizola, 47, who specializes in researching micro-organisms in the soil, explained that the seeds, which he calls iseeds, are designed to anticipate problems they will encounter when dropped into the wild. Their clay coating is the key. It contains a potent mix: plant extracts to dissuade rodents; dried hydrogel to retain humidity; fungi to boost defenses; and Bohemian truffle to capture nutrients and stimulate root development.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/31/climate/deforestation-seeds-environment.html

Dave Pollack and his wife, Alex, opened the Diamond in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 2007. Their quirky bar featured bathrooms decorated with cassette tapes, seating in a backyard ski gondola and good beer, drawing on Mr. Pollack’s experience working for a beer importer. At first, the diverse selection, from imported German kölsch to up-and-coming American I.P.A.s, drew customers, but the owners eventually had to add cocktails to the menu in 2018 to compete with other bars in the area, which also had deep beer lists.

With an affordable renewal of their lease seeming improbable, the couple shuttered the Diamond in January.

***

Closings can leave longtime customers at a loss. Mariangela Lopez, a teacher and choreographer, lives near the Diamond, which she visited “almost daily” for years. She often brought her son to do homework, and even worked the bar in a pinch. Without a beer bar to call home, “the quality of my life is not the same,” she said.

Some beer bar owners are doubling down on renovations and reinvention. During the pandemic, Brick Store Pub in Decatur, Ga., near Atlanta, which specializes in Belgian and vintage beers, remodeled its kitchen and turned a dumpster-filled parking lot into an 80-seat beer garden featuring a food truck.

Dave Blanchard, an owner, also revamped an underused mezzanine into the “coziest little English pub” with a hidden TV unveiled for soccer matches and four beer engines serving unfiltered, naturally carbonated cask ale. Mr. Blanchard stocks the Cask Bar, as it’s called, with popular American beers like Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, an I.P.A., and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that he special-orders from the breweries. “We’re almost selling it too fast,” Mr. Blanchard said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/dining/drinks/craft-beer-bars.html

“Sometimes I’m like, ‘Wow, I birthed this thing out of my garage,’” Mr. Guerra said, laughing. “Look how many cool things came out of garages: Steve Jobs, the Ramones. In other places — for example, Mexico — man, you’re a legend if you can kit your house out and you have a little storefront on the side. That person is really respected.”

In 2016, after eight years in the garage, Mr. Guerra opened his current location in a small 1960s-era shopping mall. The prep area is almost exactly the same size as his old garage; the dimensions make him feel most like himself, he said.

Mr. Guerra and his wife separated three years ago, in part because of disagreements over his early hours and a punishing workload. (She is still the co-owner of Barrio Bread and manages its human resources and its finances.) This year, Mr. Guerra oversaw the opening of Barrio Charro, a daytime spot in Tucson that serves sandwiches and baked goods, a collaboration with the Si Charro! restaurant group. And he started Barrio Grains, a packaged line of the whole grains and flour mixes that go into Barrio’s breads, produced by Hayden Flour Mills of Queen Creek, Ariz.

Mr. Guerra also has a new obsession. He is figuring out how to get a 50-pound sack of organic heritage wheat north across the border at Nogales, in Arizona. He has reached out to small farmers in Sonora, including Jose Luis Lámbarri, a farmer near Ciudad Obregón, 400 miles south of Tucson. Mr. Lámbarri grows Yaqui-50, a soft wheat reputed to taste sweet and nutty.

Despite encountering countless bureaucratic hurdles, Mr. Guerra seemed energized, buzzing with hope about the prospect of getting his hands on it, grinding it in his tabletop mill, mixing it into his doughs.

“Crossing borders, feeding this grain to my people in the form of bread,” he said. “To me, that’s power.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/25/dining/don-guerra-barrio-bread-tucson.html

Andre Scott, one of four partners who opened the restaurant in July, doesn’t consider himself a horror fan. “I’d watch a documentary before I’d watch a horror movie,” he said. But when it came time to pick a theme, the partners’ vote was unanimous.

“Horror movies bring everybody together,” Mr. Scott said. “It doesn’t matter your race or anything else. I love more than anything, especially with all the hatred going on in the world, to see people enjoy the concept.”

The look of an old horror author’s dark study inspired the design for Cloak Dagger, a cocktail lounge that opened a year ago just outside downtown Cleveland. The walls are painted pitch-black, and, as at Terror Tacos, the menu is vegan.

The ornate menus read like books, with ghoulish mini-stories for each cocktail. One of the featured drinks is You Can Still See the Red, a mix of cask-strength Sagamore rye, Punt e Mes (a sweet vermouth), housemade mulled wine syrup, beet powder and lemon.

“It looks like blood,” said Cory Hajde, an owner.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/dining/new-horror-restaurants.html

On m’a déjà proposé d’être le propriétaire de certaines de ces équipes, et puis j’ai décliné ces offres. Mais encore une fois, j’aime tellement ce sport. Je connais ce sport. Je connais les joueurs. Je connais les agents. Ce qui est bien avec moi, c’est que je suis là où je sais ce qui marche. Je sais à quoi ressemble une équipe gagnante qui a sa place dans le championnat. Donc je sais comment parler aux joueurs — vous n’avez qu’à demander à Julius Randle et à Lonzon Ball et tous ceux-là, parce que j’aime les voir avancer et réussir si bien, et donc les aider à atteindre leur meilleur potentiel. C’était ça mon rôle, et après tu les vois y arriver. C’était vraiment bien de voir ça.

Rétrospectivement, y a-t-il des choses que vous auriez fait différemment à la direction des Lakers?

Non, j’avais un plan en tête. On était au dessus du plafond salarial. Mon plan était de nous faire passer ce plafond. On y est arrivé. J’ai dû faire des choix difficiles. Julius était en train de monter. Je sais que Larry Nance Jr. était en train de monter, donc on a dû prendre des décisions difficiles qui leur allaient, mais qui allaient aussi aux autres Lakers. Donc je ne pouvais pas leur signer ces rallonges parce que je savais que LeBron était en train de monter, et Kawhi Leonard et tous ces gars-là, donc j’essayais de réserver un peu de ce plafond, pour pouvoir signer une de ces superstars, parce qu’on ne peut pas gagner un championnat sans superstar. Au final, on a fait les choses comme il fallait.

La seule chose que j’aurais peut-être dû faire, c’était peut-être de parler à LeBron avant de démissionner, parce que je sentais que je lui devais ça, donc je dirais que c’est peut–être la seule erreur que j’aie faite, de ne pas avoir parlé à Jeanie ni parlé à LeBron avant les faits. Oui, ça je ne le referais pas pareil.

LeBron James est arrivé à Los Angeles tard dans sa carrière. Qu’est-ce qu’il peut faire pour gravir les échelons et devenir un des plus grands Lakers de l’histoire?

La réponse, vous la connaissez: gagner, c’est tout. Il faut qu’il en gagne un autre. Les fans des Lakers l’adorent déjà. Il nous en déjà gagné un. Il a déjà son maillot, qui sera accroché, mais la plupart des gars qui sont chez les Lakers ont gagné plusieurs championnats. C’est tout ce qu’il a à faire. En gagner un autre, c’est tout. Parce qu’après, il ne s’agit pas juste des Lakers. Il s’agit de l’héritage qu’il laisse ici, et c’est pas seulement ici — c’est à Hollywood aussi. LeBron, il est tellement extraordinaire, et pas uniquement comme joueur de basketball: c’est la plus grande célébrité dans la ville de la célébrité. Il faut lui reconnaître ça, aussi.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/fr/2021/10/21/sports/basketball/magic-johnson-nba-lakers-knicks.html

I had offers before to own some of those teams and then I turned those offers down. But again, I love the game so much. I know the game. I know players. I know agents. The great thing about me, I’m set up where I know what works. I know what a winning and championship team looks like. So I know how to talk to the players — you can ask Julius Randle and Lonzo Ball and all those guys, because I’m happy to see them thriving and doing so well, and so just trying to help those guys reach their full potential. That was my role, and then you see them reaching it. So it was really good to see that.

Is there anything you would have done differently during your time running the Lakers?

No, I had a plan. We were over the salary cap. I had a plan to get us up out of the salary cap. We did that. I had to make tough decisions. Julius was coming up. I know Larry Nance Jr. was coming up, so we had to make tough decisions that worked out for them, but also worked out for the Lakers. So I couldn’t sign them to those extensions because I knew LeBron was coming up and Kawhi Leonard and all these guys, so I was trying to save enough of that cap space, so I could sign one of those superstars, because you have to have a superstar to win a championship. So, we did it right.

The only thing I probably would’ve did was probably talked to LeBron before I stepped down, because I felt that I owed him that, so that’s probably the only mistake I made was not talking to Jeanie and talking to LeBron before I actually did it. So, yes, I would do that different.

LeBron James came to Los Angeles late in his career. What can he do to climb the ranks of as one of the greatest Lakers?

You know the answer to that: Just win. He’s got to win another one. The Laker fans already love him. He’s already brought us one. He’s already got his jersey, it’ll be hanging up, but most of the guys who’ve been with the Lakers have won multiple championships. So, that’s all he has to do. Just win another one. Then it’s not just about the Lakers. It’s all about his legacy here, and it’s not just here — it’s in Hollywood. LeBron, he’s so amazing, not just as a basketball player, but he’s the biggest celebrity in a celebrity-driven town. So you got to give him credit for that too, as well.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/sports/basketball/magic-johnson-lakers-lebron.html

Ms. Muret Béguin, who proudly hails from a farming family and cultivates about 500 acres of cereal grains, said that French farming had already evolved toward greater ecological sustainability, but that the general public wasn’t aware.

Members of her group question the need for a campus like Hectar when, they say, state-certified agricultural schools that already teach farm management and technology are severely underfunded. The way to draw more people into agriculture, Ms. Muret Béguin added, is for consumers “to recognize and value the hard work farmers are already doing.”

Yet for people like Esther Hermouet, 31, who hails from a winegrowing family near Bordeaux, Hectar is answering a need that other agricultural institutions aren’t offering.

That afternoon, Ms. Hermouet mingled with a diverse group of young students, including an unemployed audiovisual producer, a Muslim entrepreneur and an artisanal cider maker.

Ms. Hermouet and her two siblings were on the verge of abandoning the vineyard run by their retiring parents, fearing that taking over would be more trouble than it was worth. Some of their neighbors had already seen their children leave the vineyards for easier jobs that didn’t require waking at the crack of dawn.

But she said her experience at Hectar had made her more optimistic that the vineyard could be made viable, both commercially and from a lifestyle perspective. She learned about business pitches, carbon capture credits to help maximize profit and soil management techniques to reduce climate change. There were suggestions about working smarter in fewer hours, for instance by using technology to identify only isolated vines that need treatment.

“If my brother, sister and I are going to work the earth, we want to have a proper life,” she said. “We want to find a new economic model and make the vineyard profitable — and also make it sustainable for the environment for decades to come.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/business/france-farming-tech.html

“Cuando no estás en este sector es muy fácil decir: ‘Voy a volverlo sexi con la tecnología’”, dijo Amandine Muret Béguin, de 33 años, directora de la Unión de Jóvenes Agricultores de la región de Île-de-France, donde se encuentra el campus de 607 hectáreas de Hectar. “Puedes tener las mejores escuelas y los mejores robots, pero eso no significa que tengas una vida mejor”.

Muret Béguin, que procede con orgullo de una familia de agricultores y cultiva unas 200 hectáreas de cereales, afirma que la agricultura francesa ya ha evolucionado hacia una mayor sostenibilidad ecológica, pero que el público en general no es consciente de ello.

Los miembros de su grupo cuestionan la necesidad de un campus como el de Hectar cuando, dicen, las escuelas agrícolas certificadas por el Estado que ya enseñan gestión y tecnología de las explotaciones agrícolas están muy mal financiadas. La forma de atraer a más gente a la agricultura, añadió Muret Béguin, es que los consumidores “reconozcan y valoren el duro trabajo que ya hacen los agricultores”.

Aun así, para personas como Esther Hermouet, de 31 años, procedente de una familia de viticultores cerca de Burdeos, Hectar responde a una necesidad que otras instituciones agrícolas no ofrecen.

Esa tarde, Hermouet convivió con un grupo diverso de jóvenes estudiantes, entre ellos un productor audiovisual desempleado, un empresario musulmán y un fabricante de sidra artesanal.

Hermouet y sus dos hermanos estaban a punto de abandonar el viñedo que administraban sus padres, ya jubilados, pues temían que tomar el relevo supusiera más problemas de los que merecía la pena. Algunos de sus vecinos ya habían visto a sus hijos dejar los viñedos por trabajos más fáciles que no requerían despertarse al amanecer.

No obstante, señaló que su experiencia en Hectar la había hecho más optimista en cuanto a la viabilidad del viñedo, tanto desde el punto de vista comercial como del estilo de vida. Aprendió sobre lanzamientos comerciales, créditos por captura de carbono para ayudar a aprovechar al máximo los réditos y técnicas de gestión del suelo para reducir el cambio climático. Hubo sugerencias sobre cómo trabajar de manera más inteligente en menos horas, por ejemplo, utilizando la tecnología para identificar solo las viñas aisladas que necesitan tratamiento.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2021/10/11/espanol/francia-agricultores.html

Les membres de son syndicat sont sceptiques quant à l’utilité d’un campus comme Hectar quand, selon eux, les écoles agricoles reconnues par l’État, qui enseignent déjà le management et les techniques agricoles, manquent cruellement de moyens. Pour attirer davantage de candidats vers l’agriculture, estime Amandine Muret Béguin, il faut que les consommateurs “reconnaissent et valorisent le dur travail que font déjà les agriculteurs.”

Pour d’autres à l’inverse, comme Esther Hermouet, 31 ans, qui vient d’une famille de vignerons près de Bordeaux, Hectar répond à une demande que les autres institutions agricoles ne satisfont pas.

Cet après-midi-là, Mme Hermouet discute avec un groupe d’étudiants de milieux très différents : un producteur audiovisuel au chômage, une entrepreneuse musulmanne et un producteur de cidre artisanal.

Mme Hermouet, son frère et sa sœur, étaient à deux doigts d’abandonner le vignoble de leurs parents, proches de la retraite. Ils craignaient que leur reprise de l’exploitation soit davantage une source de problèmes qu’autre chose. Certains de leurs voisins avaient déjà vu leurs propres enfants quitter les vignobles pour des emplois plus faciles qui ne nécessitaient pas de se lever à l’aube.

Mais son expérience à Hectar, dit-elle, la rend plus optimiste quant à la viabilité du vignoble, tant du point commercial que de celui de son mode de vie. Elle y apprend les rudiments de la présentation d’entreprise, les crédits d’impôts pour la capture du carbone pour aider à maximiser les profits, et les techniques de gestion du sol pour réduire l’impact climatique. Elle y découvre des moyens de travailler moins mais de façon plus intelligente, par exemple en se servant de la technologie pour n’identifier que les vignes qui nécessitent d’être traitées.

“Si mon frère, ma sœur et moi allons travailler la terre, on veut avoir une vie décente”, explique-t-elle. “On veut trouver un nouveau modèle économique, pour que le vignoble devienne rentable et durable pour l’environnement pour les décennies à venir.”

Pour Xavier Niel, qui a fait fortune en bouleversant le marché français des télécoms, faire partie d’un mouvement qui veut moderniser la façon dont la France se nourrit, c’est un peu comme viser la lune.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/fr/2021/10/08/business/hectar-niel-agriculture-technologie.html

Members of her group question the need for a campus like Hectar when, they say, state-certified agricultural schools that already teach farm management and technology are severely underfunded. The way to draw more people into agriculture, Ms. Muret Béguin added, is for consumers “to recognize and value the hard work farmers are already doing.”

Yet for people like Esther Hermouet, 31, who hails from a winegrowing family near Bordeaux, Hectar is answering a need that other agricultural institutions aren’t offering.

That afternoon, Ms. Hermouet mingled with a diverse group of young students, including an unemployed audiovisual producer, a Muslim entrepreneur and an artisanal cider maker.

Ms. Hermouet and her two siblings were on the verge of abandoning the vineyard run by their retiring parents, fearing that taking over would be more trouble than it was worth. Some of their neighbors had already seen their children leave the vineyards for easier jobs that didn’t require waking at the crack of dawn.

But she said her experience at Hectar had made her more optimistic that the vineyard could be made viable, both commercially and from a lifestyle perspective. She learned about business pitches, carbon capture credits to help maximize profit and soil management techniques to reduce climate change. There were suggestions about working smarter in fewer hours, for instance by using technology to identify only isolated vines that need treatment.

“If my brother, sister and I are going to work the earth, we want to have a proper life,” she said. “We want to find a new economic model and make the vineyard profitable — and also make it sustainable for the environment for decades to come.”

For Mr. Niel, who made his fortune disrupting the French telecom market, joining a movement to modernize the way France is fed is the equivalent of taking a moonshot.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/business/france-farming-tech.html