5 minute read
How satellites can help to eliminate food insecurity
The global human population is growing at a rate of one percent a year. In November 2022, it hit eight billion. This poses challenges, including to our ability to feed the planet. Technologies enabled by a flexible satellite infrastructure can help but we need to embrace those developments and support innovators with generous and sustained funding. This starts with trusting in the power of technology to help us grapple not only our current problems, but also the problems that will inevitably arise in the future.
Bogdan Gogulan, CEO and Managing Partner at NewSpace Capital
In his 1978 essay, An Essay on the Principle of Population, the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus argued that since population growth was exponential, and the growth of the food supply and other resources were linear, human living standards would eventually decrease to a point where there would be a population decline. This event, known as a ‘Malthusian catastrophe’, would follow a period of instability and usher in a time of mass poverty, inequality, famine, social unrest, revolution and/or war.
MALTHUS WAS RIGHT
Malthusianism has been attacked a lot since then for being excessively pessimistic, which, of course, it is. But there are nonetheless many people who say that its central point – that population growth could outstrip food supply – is fundamentally sound and even commonsensical. It’s generally taken as true that, at the moment, there is enough food globally to feed everyone, but that waste, inequality and distribution differences mean different populations consume different quantities of food. According to the World Health Organization, there were around 2.3 billion people, amounting to 29.3 percent of the world’s population, who were moderately or severely food insecure in 2010. The situation is expected to get worse, with a 56 percent shortfall projected between current food production and what will be needed by 2050. In short: we urgently need to find a way to feed the planet sustainably.
THE CLIMATE CONUNDRUM
Complicating this is the changing climate, which makes farming more arduous and less productive. Agrifood – a US$7.8 trillion global market that employs 40 percent of the world’s workforce – is also a massive contributor to climate change. In fact, human agricultural activities in general, and livestock rearing in particular, account for 96 percent of the mass of all the Earth’s mammals. According to current projections, agriculture will eat up 70 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions ‘budget’ by 2050. Meanwhile, current agricultural practices lead to widespread soil erosion, representing about 24 billion tons – which comes to a loss of about US$480 billion – a year, while stripping some 60 percent of organic carbon from the soil.
TACKLING WASTE
Space-enabled technologies, specifically Earth observation, global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), and the various means of satellite communication and connectivity, can help. First, they can address the problem of massive food waste across the supply chain, enabling yield estimation and optimization while also optimizing the transportation of agricultural products, reducing delays to a minimum and eliminating spoilage by providing real-time information on the weather and conditions on the road.
IMPROVING THE SOIL AND WATER
Technologies enabled by a flexible satellite infrastructure can also assess the health and fertility of the soil by analyzing it according to parameters such as its moisture, organic matter content, and degree of erosion. This helps to maintain the sustainability of the soil over time as it’s farmed. Moreover, these technologies can help to monitor bodies of water, and the water requirements of different crops, which supports irrigation management. According to the World Economic Forum, by improving irrigation, space-enabled technologies could cut water usage by up to 50 percent – which is about the same as saving up to 2.8 billion liters of freshwater. By tracking precipitation and soil moisture levels, these technologies can also provide early warnings of oncoming droughts, allowing for timely interventions that mitigate the impact of those droughts on agriculture.
MORE PRODUCTIVITY, FEWER PESTS
Technologies enabled by a flexible satellite infrastructure can also boost raw agricultural productivity through the kind of digital agronomy technology that enables precision farming and natural capital management. And they have a role to play in pest control as well: hyperspectral and optical satellite imagery can detect pests way ahead of time and alert those who can stop them from destroying crops.
In fact, satellite-enabled pest control could save up to 0.8 billion tons of crops every year, WEF has said.
WORKING AROUND THE WEATHER
Technologies enabled by a flexible satellite infrastructure also provide accurate and timely weather forecasts yearround, which help farmers plan their planting and harvesting activities. This reduces the risk that crops will be damaged by extreme weather events. Over the long term, data from these technologies help track patterns in how the climate changes which not only allows farmers to adjust but gives policymakers the quality information they need if they’re to design effective climate legislation. The companies that own these technologies or process their data can also inform the authorities about the risk or development of natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, thus enabling the protection of crops and livestock.
After a disaster, space-enabled technologies can help to assess the extent of damage to agricultural lands which supports recovery efforts and planning for future resilience.
THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS
Downstream from this are meaningful economic benefits. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has said that just cutting food waste, for instance, could add about US$175 billion to the coffers of producers. Just a 5 percent cost reduction would amount to US$7 to US$8 billion in input savings for growers. Thanks to increasing adoption of Earth Observation technology in agriculture, according to McKinsey & Company, the market for spaceenabled insights in agriculture is projected to double by 2030, reaching nearly US$1 billion.
