Innovations summarized:
- Accurate, accessible weather forecasts to help optimize planting and harvesting in mid/low-income regions
- Microbial fertilizers to reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers
- Reducing or eliminating methane from livestock, which accounts for about 20% of human greenhouse gas emissions
- Helping farmers and communities implement better rainwater harvesting
- Lowering the cost of digital agriculture that can help farmers use irrigation, fertilizer and pesticides most efficiently
- Encouraging production of alternative proteins to reduce demand for livestock
- Providing insurance and other social protections to help farmers recover from extreme weather events
I would have liked to see more focus on finding ways to avoid monocropping, and a callout to the heavy risks of the steady corporate consolidation of the agriculture industry, but breaking up corporations isn’t exactly an innovation so I can see why it wouldn’t get a mention. Some of these seem fairly weak as innovations go, and some sound so inexpensive that it’s a wonder they aren’t already done, but all of them sound like decent steps to take.
Which among this list do you think governments should focus on the most?
I see COP28, and I know that it’s just the oligarchs placing the blame and the future work on the citizens and not on the fossil fuels.