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Pitch

This tool will use artificial technology to identify and mitigate the risk of climate change in agriculture and introduce restorative crops


Description

Summary

In this century, many agricultural systems around the world will be faced with serious challenges related to climate change. Floods, droughts, salinization, pests and increased temperatures will put the systems’ ability to feed an ever growing world population at risk.

The RAC tool is an open source platform aimed at reducing climate change induced agricultural risks.

It will enable organizations and individuals to enhance the resilience of their farms and restore their lands by diversifying or substituting current crop cultures with restorative crops. The type of alternative crops will be determined based on the type of farm and its predicted risk score.

The process will follow these steps:

1. Identifying climate change induced risk for the specific location through data processing technologies.

2. Using artificial intelligence to suggest one or more suitable crops to diversify the farming operations.

3. Creating a restorative and management plan for introducing the restorative crop.

4. Monitoring and measuring results.


Is this proposal for a practice or a project?

Project


What actions do you propose?

The climate change effects like droughts, pests, floods and increased temperatures will affect the Earth’s crop lands and agricultural systems and with this potentially jeopardize the future of the human civilization.

Are we ready to face the challenges posed by environmental damage and to restore our natural environment with the help of technology?

- Use artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for data mining in order to identify level and type of potential climate change risk in crop lands.  

- Use crop diversification and land management techniques to mitigate climate change risks by increasing resilience of agricultural systems globally.

- Use machine learning technologies to identify climate change patterns and suitable crops and farming practices for increasing agricultural resilience.


Who will take these actions?

Farming and agriculture are the riskiest industries in the capitalist system and the RAC platform should be available to everyone and at the lowest cost possible.

We decided to make RAC a free, open source tool in order to reach more producers and make it available to the small farmers who bear the highest risk of losing their lands. Additionally, we would like to make the platform accessible for people in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as they are most vulnerable to climate change disasters. Supporting this initiative will help balance the climate injustice in the world and reduce forced migration caused by natural disasters and starvation.

Major funding is expected in agriculture climate change mitigation with the Green Climate Fund and private investors for resilience systems.

In order to operate RAC will rely on annual funding from potential stakeholders

such as:

- Governments of developed countries

- The Food and Agriculture Organization

- United Nations

- Environmental investors

- Environmental funds

These organizations will also be a key partner in implementing and evaluating the efficiency of the RAC design and land management in the more vulnerable areas of the world.

The implementation of the crop diversification design is expected to create a number of jobs in the local communities, improve their economies and reduce the levels of emigration to more developed countries.


Where will these actions be taken?

RAC will be used globally with a particular focus on vulnerable agricultural regions.

-  A pilot farm project with Mesquite crops is being implemented in Mexico drylands and expected to produce initial results in 2019

 

 


In addition, specify the country or countries where these actions will be taken.

Mexico


Country 2

Haiti


Country 3

India


Country 4

Yemen


Country 5

No country selected


Impact/Benefits


What impact will these actions have on greenhouse gas emissions and/or adapting to climate change?

Conventional agriculture accounts for up to 40% of the emissions responsible for climate change. Applying crop diversification and restorative land management techniques will allow the agricultural systems to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and introducing it into the soil.

RAC has the potential to change depleted land to a more healthy and productive land. Additionally many resilient crops that RAC is likely to suggest are perennial plants which reverse the carbon emissions by sequestering CO2 and fixing it in the soil building healthy and nutritious soil to plant more crops.

In his paper ‘Health, environmental and economic benefits of biodiesel production in Mexico’ 2011, Sanchez states that changing bare-land or depleted agricultural land to a healthier farmland can increase the carbon capture potential to 50 ton of CO2eq per hectare. Additionally, if perennial plants are introduced, the capture potential can increase with up to 95 ton of CO2eq per hectare. The average plant size in the United States is 175 hectares, suggesting that the carbon capture potential of a farm which has undergone restoration can reach up to 16,625 tons of CO2eq per hectare.


What are other key benefits?

 

- Carbon sequestration in soil

- Increase soil health

- mitigate risks of farm failing due to precipitation pattern change, increased temperatures, etc. 

- Increase community and economical resilience.

- Create local jobs and prevent mass migration due to climate change and starvation.


Costs/Challenges


What are the proposal’s projected costs?

For the development of the platform (3 years) funds will be capitalised from Venture Philantropists around. After three years of development and iteration the platform will be launched and continuous funding from key actors (governments, FAO, etc) will be agreed in a long term. Venture Philantropy will get their money back with interests with an additional huge impact on social and environmental return.

Rough estimation of three year development cost before launching the open source platform:

INVESTMENT                                       ---   USD/YEAR

Management                                          -      $250,000

Programmers                                         -      $200,000

Data gathering (10 onsite consultants)  -      $500,000

Data processing infrastructure              -       $10,000

Platform design outsourcing                 -      $350,000

Machine learning mechanisms infr       -      $300,000

          TOTAL                                           $1, 810, 000 YEAR 1

                                                                 $ 950,000     YEAR 2

                                                                 $ 950, 000     YEAR 3

         DEVELOPMENT TOTAL                $ 3,720,000 

YEAR 4. Launching and long term agreement of continuous funding. 


Timeline


About the author(s)

Plantum is a mexican start up that has been working with agroforestry and climate change mitigation measures for 4 years in Mexico and Latin America 

Ana Gonzalez: Environmentalist with chemical engineer background focused on restorative agriculture (specifically dryland perennial agriculture) to increase food production systems resilience. (Mexico, Boston)

Hristiana Dichevska: Business development leader with broad intercultural business background and expertise in technology sales, negotiations and project co-ordination. A data science enthusiast. (Germany)

 


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References