A Vision, and an Opportunity
Agriculture that leaves rivers dry cannot benefit from the natural fertilizer of salmon that spawn and die in those rivers. All across California, soils are measurably less fertile because of the loss of salmon killed by dams built to irrigate farms. We must bring Agriculture back into balance with nature.
At a fundamental level global agriculture is brittle.
The world relies on only 174 commercial food crops, and 12 dominate 80% of croplands. All are adapted to the climate we HAD. To make matters worse, genetic erosion has crippled climate adaptation efforts with those existing species. Since 1900, 75% of food crop varieties and 93% of genetic diversity in common food crops has been lost. This is the most rapid extinction of agricultural genetics in human history. That lost genetic diversity was the toolkit we needed to adapt our food systems to the climate of the future.
US Crop failures from climate change have grown at 15%+ each year since 2020 and were $22B in 2023. There have already been global shortages of key crops caused by climate change.This is one of the key reasons US food prices have increased more than 30% since 2020. At 2 degrees of warming, scientists estimate half of global farmlands will no longer be suitable for their current crops, and yields of staple crops like soy, corn, and rice are projected to plummet. A recently published peer reviewed study concluded that the majority of the world's population will face "severe food insecurity." Global famines.
Fortunately, there are still options.
More than 90% of the known wild food plant species with agricultural potential have never been domesticated and there are also hundreds of forgotten or "orphaned" crops with unique adaptations. By hybridizing domesticated crops with wild relatives, we can replace lost biodiversity and incorporate their climate adaptations into our food systems. In cases where hybridization is not possible, rapid domestication of entirely new species can help fill the gap.
This new approach is potentially transformative.
All varieties of wheat in the entire world are members of a single species, so are all varieties of corn. But there are hundreds of species of wild grasses with edible seeds available, and many of them have dramatically superior adaptations to heat, fire, floods, droughts, and so on. By subjecting these wild species to our proprietary gene informed rapid domestication process, we can drive dramatic improvements to size, flavor, and yield in years - instead of the decades or centuries required by past domestication efforts.
Today the whole world relies on farms that replace native ecosystems with industrial monocultures, destroying biodiversity and natural water systems while burning topsoil and releasing carbon. Even the movement for regenerative farming falls short because it still relies on a tiny number of species and replaces local biodiversity with non-native crops and requires irrigation. With roughly 44% of the world’s land mass outside the frozen arctic and antarctic used for agriculture, it’s hard to overstate the impact. From the Brazilian rainforests to California’s salmon fisheries, natural systems are collapsing as a result.
It doesn't have to be this way. We envision a world where farms grow crops derived from locally native species that support habitat and are adapted to local water systems so they need minimal irrigation. Crops that can be grown in diverse polycultures that mitigate risk for farmers and ecosystems alike while rebuilding topsoil and sequestering carbon at scale. Farms that fit seamlessly into natural systems because they are derived from those systems.
If crisis is opportunity, humanity is facing one of the biggest opportunities in our species’ history. We can choose to bring our food systems into balance with natural systems and make a better future for everyone. It's possible. We have the tools to make it happen. We’ve already taken the first steps.
Join us.
