The Farmer Trying to Save Italy's Ancient Olive Trees

After remote Indigenous communities in Papau New Guinea set aside some of their land as conservation areas, they wanted to know if it was working. With the help from scientists and The Nature Conservancy, they were able to use bioacoustics or audio recordings of the rainforests to map out the biodiversity. Using 34 recording devices, they were able to record the forest, listen to them, analyze the sounds, and determine that these areas had a healthy biodiversity.

Seaweed aquaculture is a growing field that scientists are investigating for a number of climate-related uses, from reducing methane emissions in livestock to replacing plastic in packaging. Governments, startups, and researchers around the world are getting into the algae business that is also helping to create new jobs. There are challenges with scaling many of these products, but recent research for many of these initiatives have shown signs of early success.

With the growing trend in regenerative agriculture, Propagate Ventures is working with farmers to transition them from conventional agriculture to agroforestry. This technique focuses on incorporating trees into farmland which can improve soil health and crop production, and reduce carbon emissions. The company offers farmers help to build the system and connections to investor financing. While implementing an agroforestry system can take time, Propagate Ventures is seeing the interest grow: They’ve expanded to eight states and recently received $1.5 million in capital funding.

Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley are participating in a study to find out if cover cropping is a viable method to improve yields or reduce costs in a region harried by unpredictable weather and water scarcity. In some cases, the cover crops they’ve planted between growing seasons improved soil health and prevented wind erosion.

A Nigerian agricultural entrepreneur is embracing hydroponics — a method that grows crops with water and no soil — as an alternative to farming methods that have led to land degradation. Because of Adebowale Onafowora’s knowledge, he has trained more than 20,000 people; and helped set up over 200 hydroponic centers. His inspiration led to the establishment of the Landmark University Greenhouse and Hydroponic Technology Centre, a place for research and training in the technique.

Mangrove forests are known to be excellent storers of carbon and hosts of biodiversity, but they are also able to protect communities on coastlines from storm surge. However, many of the projects to restore these forests fail because they are rushed or planted in the wrong places. Scientists argue that organizers should focus on natural regrowth or “ecological mangrove restoration,” a science-based approach, which has been used in Indonesia and Guinea-Bissau.

Researchers at University of California, Davis found that cows that were fed a small amount of seaweed in their diet drastically reduced the amount of methane they emitted, which could be a low-cost climate solution for farmers. They saw an 82 percent reduction in methane in beef cows and there was also no detectable difference in the taste of the beef. More research is needed to be done to see how these results apply in other settings.

As a way to combat climate change, scientists are experimenting with genetically modified trees as a way to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to store in its leaves, roots, and trunk. The startup Living Carbon has genetically modified poplar and pine seeds in the ground and expect them to be ready by the end of the year. Some scientists are worried about how these trees can impact forest ecosystems, but they grow faster than normal trees, allowing them to study and assess the risks quicker.

Symbrosia, a clean-tech startup in Hawaii, is taking seaweed from the ocean and turning it into a powder that can be used to feed livestock to reduce the amount of methane they produce — a key contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The company worked with an organic farm in Upstate New York to test the product and found that sheep given a high dosage of the supplement had up to 70 percent reduction in methane emission. Creating the powder takes weeks and a lot of steps, but the startup is hopeful the product can become a mass-produced commodity.

More and more farmers are turning to regenerative agriculture techniques as a way to cut down on costs, increase crop yields, and sequester carbon into soil as a way to reverse the effects of climate change. One farming family in Minnesota switched to no tillage farming and also planted cover crops and used animals to fertilize their land. Some people question their methods, but these farmers saw their cost of production decrease and increased the amount of organic matter in their soil compared with their neighbors.