Over 20% of the global Greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to agriculture.
Improper use of pesticides, manure and fertilizers is a global phenomenon that has a direct effect on food security and climate change.
Beyond the direct economic impact, there are several ways in which improper use of agrochemicals affects climate. For example, up to 40% of global yield is lost due to pests and diseases. As a result, more land is needed and carbon footprint increases.
Moreover, when it comes to fertilizers, only 35% of the nitrogen applied by farmers are used by plants. 65% are lost to the environment and contribute to the total greenhouse gas emissions.
On the individual farm level, the farmer faces many uncertainties and everchanging environmental conditions, under which he makes hundreds of complex decisions on a daily basis, such as “what pest is this?” “Which pesticide to use”? “How much fertilizer to apply?” “When?” and more. In practice, to make such decisions, most farmers use traditional methods, trial and error and estimations. Cumulatively, those decisions have a huge impact on carbon footprint.
I’m Guy Sela, CEO and founder at yieldsApp. We have developed the worlds first artificial intelligence agronomist.
But unlike a human agronomist, our AI agronomist is capable of analyzing millions of parameters and different scenarios and provides farmers with optimal pesticide and fertilizer plans of action in addition to predictive insights. This results in significant savings on agrochemicals and in yield increase.
The total global footprint of agrochemicals is approximately 0.6 Gt CO2eq. If we improve the use efficiency of pesticides and fertilizers by 25%, we can decrease global carbon emissions by 150 million tons annually, even before we account for yield increase.
How can we achieve that?
75% of farms are smallholder farmers and the way they farm has a cumulative global effect. Therefore, in order to make an impact, we must address the smallholder farmers. We realized that the key for making an impact is working together with the food companies and local research institutes. yieldsApp empowers farmers to make better decisions, while providing food companies with transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain.