regenerative practices Noah Geeves

TRANSITIONING AGRICULTURE FROM EXTRACTIVE TO REGENERATIVE PRACTICES

EDWARD PERELLO

Associate Director for Agriculture, Deep Science Ventures (DSV), United Kingdom

Edward Perello contributed to a panel discussion during IFAMA 2022 Forum concerning the crucial partnerships needed among business, industry and scientists in order to increase food productivity while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact. Perello’s company, Deep Scidence Ventures (DSV) launched its first ag sector program in 2020, called the Food & Agriculture Science Transformer (FAST), and partnered with the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

The initiative was to create companies that could have a global impact on ecosystem services. They have achieved some success in the process helping to start Rhizocore (a forestry and fungal fertilizer startup) and Aquanzo (a sustainable marine feeds company). Both companies are now working on globally relevant issues in forestry and aquaculture.

DSV also investigated a third area, looking at alternative pollinators that would produce native pollinating bee species. While reinforcing pollinator species is a significant area of need, it isn’t well suited to the Scottish Highlands. In order maximize the potential of this undertaking, DSV needed to identify regions with diverse ecologies and agricultural systems, which organically led them to Costa Rica.

Ecologically, Costa Rica is a biologist’s dream, with 12 different climate zones together offering a wealth of ecological zones within the same border and representative of the larger neotropics of Latin America

Deep Science Ventures (DSV) creates ventures to leverage modern techniques to restore soil quality and increase biodiversity, while ensuring scalability through strong commercials and knowledgeable local partners.

and other tropical zones around the world. Agriculturally, the nation outperforms comparably sized countries, with over 4,000 agricultural products grown locally for export, and free trade agreements with two-thirds of the planet’s population, including the USA, China, and the EU.

These factors help position the country as a laboratory for testing new products, crops, farming techniques and agricultural technologies. What can be grown here at altitude, like highland coffee and banana, will also be possible in the mountains of a comparable country across the neotropics - and a novel technology should perform well.

Like many places, Costa Rica faces significant challenges inherent to the dominance of traditional agricultural systems: soil erosion, acidic soils, heavy metals, high pesticide use and mountainous terrain

The fact that Costa Rica has 12 different climate zones and agriculturally outperforms comparably sized countries, positions the country as a prime laboratory for testing new products, crops, farming techniques and agricultural technologies. (which is hard to mechanize and limits the ability to create and maintain highefficiency transport networks). Prolific vegetative growth thanks to the tropical sun and rain offers the advantage of high yields but leads to the intense buildup One DSV venture explores restoring the of agricultural waste underground network of forests residues that collect on farms. Despite recent reforestation successes, non-native trees and legacy deforestation mean monoculture continues to reign supreme in the farmed zones of the country and continues to grow. In a country with the highest density of biodiversity on Earth, the stakes are perhaps higher than anywhere else.

Its plan is to build high-growth agriculture companies that can help deliver restorative cultivation outcomes and the vision of the National Bioeconomy Strategy.

Sequentially, DSV has brought together some prominent partners (EARTH University, CATIE, Fundacion CRUSA, CR BioMed, and CINDE) in Costa Rica, in a new bioregional innovation program called the Tropical Agriculture & Bioeconomy Initiative. (continued)

“There is an opportunity here for founders to work at the intersection of venture creation and international development, to drive global goals relating to climate change, food security and biodiversity—solving big, important problems that are not being sufficiently tackled at the moment. We must emphasize that is very much an action-oriented role; we are not just solving problems theoretically. We are creating ventures in the places where agriculture dominates, where there is great scope to do the greatest good, as fast as possible,” said Edward Perello.

DSV is now recruiting ambitious scientists to join them as Founders, to build companies in the following areas, which they believe can grow rapidly from Costa Rica to the wider region:

Thermal adaptation technologies: Developing and deploying direct and indirect interventions against thermal stress that will cause frontier crop migration (and deforestation) into new areas, with an initial focus on coffee. 21st century plant breeding for circular traits: Developing new crop improvement or biotechnology tools to expedite crop adaptation to future climates, ideally producing “circular economy crops and varieties” that can accelerate bioeconomy transitions. Biomass conversion for the bioeconomy: Convert biomass into substrates that can be processed into valuable products generally sourced from hydrocarbon fractions, e.g. plastics and fertilizers, and increase domestic self-sufficiency. Composite wood materials: Meet the demand for wood materials for use in multiple sectors, notably wood pallets, furniture and construction materials, without the need to cut down trees (instead using other plants and cellular agriculture approaches). Learn more about the Tropical Agriculture & Bioeconomy Initiative (TABI), full job opportunities, and how to apply.

— this article compiled from materials written by Noah Geeves, Deep Science Ventures

FURTHER READING

Design Institute for Regenerating Earth (DIRE) Study Group explores how we might collaborate to regenerate the Earth. Joe Brewer article: The Survivors Will Be Bioregional REGENERATION describes a system of interlocking initiatives that can stem the climate crisis in one generation

The DSV Agriculture Thesis has been inspired by the principles of regenerative agriculture, without being strictly tied to its traditional ideology which eschews technological innovation. Instead, we propose to align and accelerate regenerative outcomes using cutting edge technology and making it highly accessible through venture-scale agribusinesses, a vision we refer to as “Restorative Cultivation.”