Incite Post | Fields of Change

On the heels of the world’s biggest climate conference, the urgency for climate action is greater than ever. While we can’t deny the necessity of developing new industries and markets, we also see massive opportunities embedded within our current systems to significantly alter the trajectory of climate change. In fact, reengineering key industries and retooling long-standing practices may be the fastest way to create scalable, near-term change. For us that begins with US agriculture sector.

The current agricultural system was created with a single goal: mass produce food. And in pursuit of that objective we churn out more food than we can consume, with over 40% of US food now going to waste. And while the food industry is producing historic volumes and profits, a staggering 17 million households are still facing food insecurity in the US. The promise of abundant food access is simply not being delivered.

Increasingly, data also tells us that other important measures, like human, soil, and planetary health are suffering beneath the current approach. So where are there opportunities to revitalize our existing structures to include these elements in our definition of agricultural success? This isn’t about one company, national organization, or transformational product, it will require a focused effort to reinvent an interconnected set of long-held practices and established industries.

One place to start is reducing our farming system’s dependency on chemicals that are gradually killing our soil, humans, and the planet. There’s ~915M acres of US Farmland and only ~1% of that is organic, where farmers don’t use pesticides to grow crops. The opportunity cost? Soil has the potential to sequester up to 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year — an amount equal to 13% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, the practices most farmers use today strip the natural soil microbial ecosystem of its carbon sequestration ability. This is a massive climate opportunity that doesn’t require an entirely new food production value chain, but rather a shift in the farmer’s relationship with their land, the natural ecosystems that govern it, and their belief in what’s possible, both economically and environmentally.

By combining regenerative practices, farmer-centric incentives and policies, and technologies that simplify the system we can promote chemical-free farming, benefiting both people and the environment. Not to mention sustainable technologies are pivotal in re-centering the farmer, empowering them to capture greater value from their land while adopting more sustainable practices.

Hear from some Incite innovators on how they are changing agriculture and farmers’ lives for the better:

Kenny Lee is a co-founder of Aigen, a start-up that aims to revolutionize agriculture at a planetary scale with a pesticide-free, solar-powered robotics platform.

Andee Wallace is the co-founder and CEO of Robigo, a biotech company that is improving how the world grows its food through pesticide-free microbial treatments to improve plant health, agricultural productivity, and sustainability.

Londyn Marshall serves as Carbon180’s Deputy Director of Government Affairs, and has focused her current efforts on the upcoming farm bill. Find C180’s Soil Carbon Moonshot research report here.