Vancouver’s Terramera has unveiled a bold plan to turn economic and climate crises into an opportunity.
As a global agritech leader fusing science, nature and artificial intelligence to transform how food is grown and the economics of agriculture, Terramera is proposing a Global Centre for Regenerative Agriculture.
Powered by Microsoft Azure, Terrameras’s Global Centre will bring clean technology to farmers and ranchers in an initiative to fight climate change and ensure Canada’s prosperity by scaling regenerative agriculture – a set of practices that pull carbon from the air and sequester it in the soil, improving plant and soil health and resulting in higher farm profits, reduced pesticide and fertilizer use and a dramatic reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
By incentivizing regenerative farming practices, the Global Centre will enable Canadian farms and ranches to pull 78 gigatonnes of CO2e out of the atmosphere by 2050. By modelling farm efficiencies achieved through agritech innovation in the Netherlands and incentivizing regenerative practices, Canada can stimulate 2.5 million new jobs over the coming decades, generating over $8.7 trillion in new economic activity – a win for farmers, the environment, the economy and Canadians.
“Canada has the opportunity to lead the world in regenerative agriculture, build Canadian innovation, technology and our economy and turn back the clock on climate change to set a new course for our planet,” said Karn Manhas, Founder and CEO, Terramera.
“This is a historic proposal for Canada that builds an economic engine around two of our key industries, agriculture and technology, ultimately stimulating millions of quality new jobs, generating trillions for the economy and getting Canada to net zero emissions before 2050.”
Microsoft will help play a central role in bringing the Global Centre to life, with Microsoft Azure storage and compute services providing the computational horsepower behind Terramera’s industry-leading platform of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and Microsoft FarmBeats serving as the data collection platform for integrating field data from IoT sensors, drones and many other sources.
“Microsoft Azure is perfectly suited to enable our AI/ML platform to perform at the national and global scale the Global Centre will entail,” said Travis Good, Chief Technology Officer, Terramera. “With Azure, we can deliver impactful, human-centric solutions to farmers and provide Canadian leadership in technology, climate change and agriculture.”
The $730 million plan will combine private investment along with applications for federal and provincial support to build and scale the technology needed to reliably quantify soil carbon sequestration and compensate farmers by establishing a sustainable carbon credit market.
The funding will create the world’s largest regenerative agriculture initiative, building multi-purpose facilities including labs, greenhouses, offices and classrooms in B.C. and integrate field testing sites across Canada. With funding, the plan is shovel-ready and ready to staff in 2021, with sensing studies and facility construction extending through 2025.