Prototyping tomorrow's breakfast solutions, and the future of farming
Our partnership with Arla continues, with an autumn of new projects and experiences coming up!
Just before the summer, you may recall that the future-facing Rethinking Breakfast Hackathon took place. We're excited to share that the work didn't stop there! We are currently deep in planning and prototyping together, with the hope of rolling out the first functional prototypes to youth during October. The details are all hush-hush for now, but be sure that we will tell you all about it as it goes live.
In other news, we are also preparing for Arla's internal Learning Day come end of september. Over 250 of their staff will gather to learn, be inspired, and engage around multiple themes concerning the future of farming. We're happy to have partnered with an organisation who takes these questions and their own role in them seriously, with the agenda for the day focused on biodiversity and climate change, the future of health, and modern farming. We look forward to facilitating the interactive parts of the day, gathering ideas and input for how to build a better future together!
So why is the future of farming such a hot topic? Well, research suggests that better farming techniques across the world could lead to storage of 31 gigatonnes of CO2 a year. Even marginal improvements to agricultural soils around the world could store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating.
According to the article, implementing better farming techniques that enhance soil fertility and carbon storage is essential to this, as current intensive practices with artificial fertilisers contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
The study in question was conducted by Jacqueline McGlade, former chief scientist at the UN Environment Programme and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. “Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”
“Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”
McGlade now leads a commercial organisation that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images, and lidar to assess, down to the level of individual fields, how much carbon is stored in soils.
Farmers may face a short-term cost while they changing methods, but after a transition period of two to three years their yields would improve and their soils would be much healthier. Downforce data could also allow farmers to sell carbon credits based on how much additional carbon dioxide their fields are absorbing.
Increasing soil carbon storage in about half of the world's agricultural soils by just 1% could absorb a significant amount of carbon dioxide, narrowing the gap between current emissions reduction plans and the required reductions to meet climate goals.
Read the full article on how improving soil could keep world within 1.5C heating target here.