79 West: Solutions Toward Sustainable Intensification

Join Innovate Carolina as it hosts RTP AgBio + Agtech Meetup in the brand-new innovation hub, 79 Degrees West. This session will include an intimate discussion with Volker Mittendorf and Jiarui Li on solutions toward sustainable intensification.

As the climate warms and populations increase, Earth is losing the land on which we cultivate crops to forces such as erosion, pollution, desertification and soil health decline. The outcome is stagnating crop yields, food and grain shortages and generally inadequate world access to nutritious food sources. Sustainable intensification describes the concept that crop and food growth needs to increase in a way that preserves and improves existing ecosystems while still providing adequate nutrition for a growing population. There are many different approaches to tuning farming into a more additive process that provides nutritional needs for both a growing population and the ecosystem. Volker and Jiarui will discuss both global and local means toward achieving sustainable intensification and will share their entrepreneurial journeys in improving agricultural systems.