Climate Action Requires Agricultural Innovation

“Right now, extreme weather events are jeopardizing global crops, resulting in crop shortages and price spikes. And in the long run, unchecked climate change threatens a third of the world’s food production, which could completely destabilize global food security and disrupt livelihoods.”

–Richani says.

For the first time in its 28-year history, COP28 put the world’s food systems in sharp focus. An entire day was dedicated to food, and at least 22 major events highlighted issues related to food; agriculture and water were highlighted throughout the two-week conference. Changing the way we eat has become a main course in climate talks.

Right now, extreme weather events are jeopardizing global crops, resulting in crop shortages and price spikes. And in the long run, unchecked climate change threatens a third of the world’s food production, which could completely destabilize global food security and disrupt livelihoods.

There exists a desperate need for innovation in agriculture. But what does innovation look like when it comes to what we eat?

For us at my company, Alpine Bio, it means transforming the soybean into the world’s most powerful protein factory to make delicious cheese.

For activists, it might look like creating non-profit strategies for tackling food waste. For policymakers, it comes down to supporting game-changing R&D investment. And for a farmer, it means striking a balance between sustaining traditional practices and embracing cutting-edge technologies that improve crop yields, reduce environmental impact and enhance crop resilience.

Collaboration needs to start at the soil.

The key to implementing truly transformative innovation lies in uniting all these stakeholders to create a shared commitment toward more sustainable methods of growing our food. And the critical truth that I’ve learned from talking to growers across the country is that the most effective collaboration comes when we stop trying to impose top-down solutions and begin thinking from the soil up.

Luckily, the soil is precisely where we can find a blueprint for action that connects the need for change to the realities faced by those who will actually implement it: farmers.

Consider the reemergence of sustainable agriculture. This shift has improved soil health, cut cropland erosion and advanced the ability of soil to act as a crucial carbon sink. Another powerful example is the increased adoption of cover crops, which have the potential to offset the emissions from 12.8 million cars. What has made these two initiatives so successful is that they benefit both the planet and the farmers growing our food.

Farmers provide food and raw materials to humans and animals all over the world. They know that agriculture must be part of the solution. In a 2021 report, the agriculture interest group Field to Market expressed as much: “It is clear that a certain amount of change is already unavoidable. Therefore, action by agricultural stakeholders is necessary for both climate mitigation and to enhance the resiliency of U.S. cropland to extreme weather events.”

What could this innovation look like?

Much of today’s agricultural industry already shares the same ideals as those fighting to address our climate crisis. Stewards of the land care deeply about their soil and some of the biggest agricultural groups in the world do too.

Many innovations that preserve global food supplies and farmer livelihoods are innovations that also preserve the planet. On a farm, it’s sustainable practices such as no-till and cover crops. It looks like heat-resistant varieties. It looks like crops that can outcompete weeds, fungus and pests. It looks like drones, satellites and AI that can both track conditions on a farm and control agricultural operations precisely. Take for example InnerPlant, a company developing a new type of seed technology that harnesses plant physiology and unlocks data to improve global agricultural yields and sustainability.

In a blog post with the United Soybean Board, one farmer attributed high yields to both conservation practices and improved technologies like soybean genetics: “20 years ago, yields would have been a lot less with the conditions we experienced this year,” he wrote. I believe that we’ll look back 10 or 20 years from now and say the same.

Embrace and repurpose our current agricultural framework.

What the most successful farming innovations all have in common is that they demonstrate how embracing and repurposing our current agricultural framework is key to climate action.

Listen to farmers, get out of “the valley” and talk to the people whose hands grow our food.

My advice is work with the system, not against it. Listen to farmers, get out of “the valley” and talk to the people whose hands grow our food. Understand their world, their needs. They have been stewarding the lands longer than any modern-day company. Their deep passion for the health of their land motivates their insatiable desire for new innovations that ultimately can benefit our climate. Because, after all, their soil health is our planet’s health.

As a CEO of a company that works with soybean farmers, I also believe there is tremendous value in the pre-established decades in making global infrastructure of soybeans for our food system. Downstream infrastructure has scaled up in tandem to make vegetable oil, fuel, soy milk and tofu. The soybean explosion is a sign that the industry can handle the wave of food innovation that we need today. And the growers that we work with take pride in being early adopters.

Farmers are ready for industry leaders to give them the proper tools to tackle the climate crisis. To develop those tools, we just need to think from the soil up and put the farmer at the center of the solution. If we can do that, we can transform our food system to become more sustainable and resilient.

Featured Articles

5 Articles