#climate change Archives

From Dirt to Dish: Rethinking Food Production and Consumption 🍽🔥

Written by Marcus Parade on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐮𝐬 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐞 have over 8 billion gorilla’s 🦍🦍 living on our planet – would you say we have an overpopulation of gorillas?

As I find overpopulation very visible on our planet, the question arises, how can we feed all our people more sustainable, if our population worldwide is estimated by the UNO to be around 10 billion by the year 2050?

𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐝:

𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 dear 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 strolling through endless acres of golden cornfields stretching as far as the eye can see 🌽🌽

He said: “Oh Marcus, it feels so nice to be outside here in lovely nature?!”

I also love walking along golden cornfields and yet the fields feel to me only partly being in nature. Putting it baldly, we were also walking in simple production fields for farming products. We didn’t see animals nor insects.

🌲🌴 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐞𝐧 going on steadily since the last 10.000 years and an end is not in sight. The crazy race for more farmland, driven by climate change and an ever-growing population, is a ticking time bomb that is likely to trigger ecological collapse on a global scale.

1st. circle is from 10.000 years ago. 2nd. circle from 300 years ago. 3rd. circle from 5 years ago.

The question is, how do we feed all people, as further deforestation for more farmlands can in my opinion not be the solution.

In turn, around 1/3 of all food produced for human consumption in the world is lost or wasted every year. Where does it all go?

It is lost during production or wasted at the consumer level. At the same time around 10 % of our world population are starving.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐰𝐞 𝐝𝐨 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫?

We can change our consumer behaviour, as the production such as for meat needs 𝐄𝐍𝐎𝐑𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐒 amounts of more energy, water, space as well as emissions into our atmosphere. AND, less than only 20% of our worldwide farmlands are used for the direct consumption by us humans.

A staggering 80% of our planet’s farmland is devoted to livestock feed, biofuels, and other non-food crops, leaving precious little for direct human consumption.

𝐖𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬.

New agricultural technologies can be game changers such as:

1.💦💧 More precise watering solutions directly reaching the roots

2. 🚜🛰 Better efficient machines with more precision farming

3. 🌱☣ Biotechnology with genetic modification of plants to protect them better and produce more. 𝐈𝐧 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 bacteria can be created producing nutrients like proteins.

4. 💡🎲 Use of AI (artificial intelligence):

AI-powered 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐬 🤖 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐛𝐞 your farm’s new best friends – they collect real-time data on crop yields, plant health, and soil moisture levels. It’s like having a personal assistant who knows everything about your plants.

Self-driving tractors 🚜 and drones can be equipped with 𝐀𝐈-𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 optimize crop planting, fertilizing, and harvesting. With their precision and efficiency, they can help reduce labour costs and increase productivity.

AI can be like the ultimate 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 🕵. It can analyse all data from the very beginning up to table to help optimize logistics and reduce waste. It’s like having a personal assistant who knows everything about your plants and how they travel to us.

When it comes to crop monitoring, AI has a 𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞 👁👁 that even most farmers can’t beat.. AI peering deep into the heart 💚 of crops to detect even the slightest signs of disease or pests, empowering farmers to take proactive measures and safeguard their precious yields.

Around 70% of our freshwater is frozen, around 29% is groundwater and the rest is surface water. Source of chart: Netafim

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡?

Improving the production of food on our planet Earth 🌏 is a complex issue that involves various stakeholders including farmers, governments, researchers, and consumers.

While overpopulation remains one of our main challenges is the production of our food a central challenges for our common future of our climate and us humans.

Let’s embrace our future and change for better sustainability and life. 💛🌹🌞

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Energy Tech startups need more support

Written by Beth Henderson on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

“You believed in us and completely changed the trajectory of our startup” A startup that I’d been working with once told me this after they’d come through an accelerator program I was involved with. This startup almost didn’t make it onto the program because they couldn’t clearly articulate their business model or value proposition. But I took a chance on them even though I didn’t really understand their solution, because I had a gut feeling the founding team were something special.

This got me thinking, how many start-ups in the past have invented complex hardware technology with the potential to solve some of the biggest problems we face today, but never succeeded to commercialise? There are a multitude of reasons why startups fail, but it pains me to think that incredible technology is out there sitting dormant because its technical founder couldn’t quite pitch it right, or understand the right market to target or the angle for the value proposition.

More support is needed for early stage technical founders who are struggling to get the business side right. Particularly for climate and energy tech, where the technology can be highly complex and it’s higher risk for investors and industry to get commercially engaged without demonstrated traction.

So what can the startup support ecosystem do more of to help these founders succeed?

Over my past 5 years of being involved with energy-tech startup accelerator programs, below are the top three responses on the things that had the biggest impact on accelerating their growth:

Learning a structured method for customer discovery and sharpening the value proposition: This was the number one most impactful outcome for startups. It’s traditionally been an area only taught in marketing degrees but education in this space is highly needed for technical startup founders. Early stage founders have often told me hiring a marketing person is something they can only afford once they start getting decent revenue, but getting to that point is so hard without the skills to talk to customers in a way to understand their pain points, then frame your value proposition in a way that directly addresses those. I’ve seen so many ‘aha’ moments from founders who started out overloading on jargon and buzzwords when trying to sell, then swap to a message that clearly addresses a customer problem in simple terms.
Relentless pitch practice and feedback: During our programs, founders deliver their pitch to different audiences 10-15 times, each time getting valuable feedback from our pitch coaches and adding new learnings. The main takeaway is that they should be able to go into any investor or customer meeting and have a clear and compelling story that they know back-to-front and can deliver with confidence. Early stage founders can’t outsource sales, so it’s critical for them to learn this skill as they will continue to struggle to make a business out of their technology if they can’t sell the vision for it.
Connections for mentorship: There are a lot of intelligent and successful people out there who are willing to help founders, they just need the right channels to find each other. More dedicated channels to aggregate mentors and startups in specific verticals, and oversee the success of mentor matching are needed. Having access to corporate industry experts to help validate assumptions in a no-pressure environment has been instrumental to helping accelerate the startups’ growth.

The elements I’ve described above don’t take millions of dollars to implement but can make a huge difference in helping to accelerate getting game-changing technology to market. So, if you’re in any capacity to support startups, consider these areas to focus your efforts.

And where is that startup from the start of the story now? They’ve done over 30 customer interviews, completely overhauled their value proposition messaging, their pitch is unrecognisable from the first version and they’ve just been awarded the ‘Most Disruptive Renewable Energy Startup in South East Asia’ by a major publication.