This CEO Is Using AI To Help Farmers Be More Sustainable

Forbes

This conversation from Davos with Indigo Ag Inc CEO Ron Hovsepian touches on Indigo’s mission to help farmers address climate change and how AI could play a role.   Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Ron, you're a very, um, you're like a hired gun to be a CEO of an important company.

00:08Why are you working in agriculture? Why is this important? And is this the pinnacle of your career?

00:16Like, like, is this, is this, are you proud to be doing this? And what are you doing?

00:21Yeah, uh, we're on. Yep. Thank you. Uh, very excited to be here and why I came to Indigo

00:28had all to do with the planet and the challenges. Indigo. Indigo Ag is our company and that's right

00:33why I came to join the company. And what we do is really focus on the science and technologies

00:39that allow us to really bring the farmers to play a huge role in tackling climate change.

00:45Inside of there, what motivated me was we have six years left before we have to address the two

00:51degrees and it's climbing at this current rate. We have to put value on all these natural resources

00:57that we have inside the planet and that has an economic impact. Putting those two things together,

01:03it has been far and away the biggest personal challenge I've ever taken on in my career. And

01:07I've run a bunch of different companies. I've worked with open source early on in the Linux

01:11world. So I've seen a lot of different things. This one is the most complex supply chain that

01:16we have in front of us. So yeah, I just wanted, you know, we're going to edit this into a documentary,

01:20but I wanted to highlight that you're someone who could be, you're, you're in demand to run

01:26a lot of companies and you chose agriculture and you chose now. So AI is your intervention

01:36with farmers and with the land and with the planet. Does it involve AI? Is AI an afterthought?

01:44Is it core? And how's that going? Yeah, AI and ML are absolutely core to what we're doing.

01:52And what we see there and what our scientists, our data scientists and our physical sciences folks

01:57who work with the farmers are working on is really great, exciting technologies that allow us to

02:03actually measure for the first time true outcomes of what's happening in the soil when people make

02:09regenerative farming practices. So we actually have these scientific capability by using AI and ML

02:15to gather all the data, to put the data together using hybrid, hybrid model with

02:21sensoring, sensing, remote sensing, combined, combined with physical soil samples to actually

02:26go through a life cycle of what's happening as the practice changes get made to the farmer.

02:32Now, when this country was formed about 250 years ago, there were a lot of farmers.

02:36Yep. I think today less than 1% of 1% of Americans identify as farmers. I'm, I'm curious

02:44how can this idea scale to have impact by the end of the decade? Because if, if this is going to

02:51kick in 100 years from now, I feel like it's a nice to have, it's not going to be part of the

02:57solution. And I'm wondering, do you feel passionate about the strategy that you're developing that it

03:04can be one of the things that makes a real difference? Or is this just a vanity play that

03:11you can say you're trying to do something green, but it's not clear if it's going to go anywhere.

03:15So elaborate. It's a, it's a fun question. So yes, the number of farmers, there's less of them

03:20out there. And that actually creates one of the problems that AI and ML play a role in helping.

03:25They don't have as much time in their day to service it. If you focus on North America,

03:30there's about 2.2 million farmers we're down to, and they produce in about 200,000 of them produce

03:3580% of the crops in the US as an example. We're past actually just testing and doing that from a

03:42vanity perspective. We're actually able to deliver, and we've delivered now five classes of scope three

03:49work at Indigo Ag for the businesses. We've brought money to the farmer, five to 8% premiums are what

03:56the farmers are now seeing for taking on these practice changes. And we've also let the farmer

04:00monetize this another way with carbon insets and offsets. So there are two choices.

04:06All right. So last question. You see that camera over there?

04:10Yes, sir.

04:10I want you to look into that camera and say something counterintuitive that people don't

04:16realize or say something that you think is really important that people need to tell their friends,

04:23their spouses, their network about what you're doing as a way to help get it momentum, exposure,

04:32and mindshare.

04:35We have to valorize the farmer. The farmer is the person who does the work, and we need to pay that

04:41farmer. So we have to make sure the incentive structure that we're giving the farmers is a

04:46durable one, both in length of time, as well as that journey that they go on for regenerative

04:52farming. We can save four to six billion tons we can sequester of carbon into the soil by 2030

05:00using roughly the 38% of the land mass that's out there today for farming. Farmers can make

05:07the difference for us. We just have to put the system in place, and a lot of people want to do

05:11that.

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Transcript

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