Innovations summarized:
- Accurate, accessible weather forecasts to help optimize planting and harvesting in mid/low-income regions
- Microbial fertilizers to reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers
- Reducing or eliminating methane from livestock, which accounts for about 20% of human greenhouse gas emissions
- Helping farmers and communities implement better rainwater harvesting
- Lowering the cost of digital agriculture that can help farmers use irrigation, fertilizer and pesticides most efficiently
- Encouraging production of alternative proteins to reduce demand for livestock
- Providing insurance and other social protections to help farmers recover from extreme weather events
I would have liked to see more focus on finding ways to avoid monocropping, and a callout to the heavy risks of the steady corporate consolidation of the agriculture industry, but breaking up corporations isn't exactly an innovation so I can see why it wouldn't get a mention. Some of these seem fairly weak as innovations go, and some sound so inexpensive that it's a wonder they aren't already done, but all of them sound like decent steps to take.
Which among this list do you think governments should focus on the most?
This is how empires die. Power and wealth accumulates at the top, until eventually a tipping point is reached, and those with power then use it to frantically loot the rest of the nation and skedaddle to foreign lands with their ill-gotten wealth as the empire balkanizes behind them.
In truth, the looting phase started with Reagan, but in recent times it's begun to accelerate, particularly when Trump is in office.