RegenerAtIve Agriculture
Plants have been around since the beginning of time. But, with the increasing carbon emission, we have 10 years left until we can’t take back the damage that society is doing. That’s why it’s becoming all the more important to reverse climate change. But, we can’t just say that we’re planting organic plants, and that this will help us. We need to take more action. Enter regenerative agriculture.
The Problem
Climate change. Society’s advancements have also inadvertently made it worse in the long run. With one passenger vehicle giving off 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, and with the number of registered vehicles in 2018 being 273.8 million, that means that, per year, America gives off 1.02 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide. This number is scarily growing. The fact is, society can’t advance without speeding up climate change. That’s the root of the problem. Get it? Root? Plants? Anyways, I digress.
What can be done?
If we want to advance upcoming moonshot technology, in the most literal sense, we need to implement our only solution. Regenerative Agriculture.
The prospect of flying to the moon again, and going to Mars all sounds amazing, but the unfortunate reality is that we can’t allow this continue. Not until we drastically change the way we plant crops and agriculture.
Yes, I know how it sounds.
How will plants help us?
Agriculture, as we have been taught in school, sucks out carbon dioxide from the air and returns oxygen.
But regular agriculture just won’t cut it. Neither will the cliché “non-GMO” organic product. We need mass scale planting. And fast.
So…what is it?
Regenerative agriculture is a system of farming principles and practices that fortifies biodiversity, enriches soils, improves watersheds, and enhances ecosystem services.
Put in simple terms, regenerative agriculture allows us to suck up all the carbon from the environment and return oxygen. However, this carbon also gets put back into the soil, completely eliminating the need for fertilization and pesticides.
General Mills, a consumer food company, aims for net-zero by 2050. They claim that the only way they have a shot of accomplishing this is by using regenerative agriculture.
How can we implement this?
If we use solely human brainpower, it will be too late before we can successfully implement regenerative agriculture. If only we had a second brain!
Oh wait…we do
Artificial Intelligence is already shaping the future. We use it every day, from Instagram to Amazon. If we would be able to transfer this technology into finding the ideal planting locations, we would literally be transforming the way we eat, sleep, breathe, and of course innovate.
This picture summarizes it perfectly.
A.I. is already shaping to be smarter than humans. We could write a program that analyzes, builds, and deploys seeds into the exact spots that this is vitally necessary, with the hopes that of expanding to the entirety of the world.
All in due time, of course.
