 Professor Bruno Basso and I thank him a lot for having accepted our invitation. Bruno is a Michigan State University Foundation Professor in the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at Michigan State University and he is a pioneer in the use of digital agriculture technologies and his talk will be about pathways to sustainability with digital agriculture towards carbon negative crop production. The floor is yours Bruno. Okay. Can you see my screen and hear me okay? Everything is perfect go ahead. Okay great. Well thank you very much for the invitation. It's always a pleasure to have the opportunity to present some of the latest work that my lab and colleagues in this field have been doing. Digital agriculture plays a critical role when it comes to design but also one of the major question is how we scale technologies, how we scale sustainable agriculture such that we can have a carbon negative farming system. I have to start with some of the challenges are probably you may have heard already so I'll be really quick but it's just a paramount importance to understand the threat that we have. We have to feed more people even though we've been doing that at a rate you know yields complete to go up in some places but in others are stagnated or going basically not growing because of various reasons and majorly affected by climate, less water and in a changing climate. One additional component is that we still waste the significant amount of food. 70% of the water that we use is used in agriculture which basically poses a significant threat for the future in terms of expanding more land with less water available. Now the figures below are just really quick snapshot of what is happening in the context of agriculture in the sense of indirect land use. So we're losing some of the best land especially in the US but in many other places because of this urban sprawl and so cities come basically invading this very fertile soil. The city of Houston has about 5% organic matter outside and the city keeps basically taking this land away. We have deforestation that continues to occur. You can see that pretty dramatic picture both the Amazon, Southeast Asia and many other places who lose land by fires and land degradation. We lose about a pound of soil which is half kilogram per every bushel of corn that is produced in the US Midwest and a bushel is roughly about 60 kilograms. So it's significant amount of soil, top soil which means obviously fertility, soil organic carbon and so on and then water quality a few years ago even in the area exactly where I'm located in the region of the Great Lakes that's the kind of images that some of these lakes because of eutrification due to excess amount of fertilizer both nitrogen and fosters. Now curbing the emission is mandatory. We need to avoid warming and the animation here shows at the current rate we have about 6 years and 8 months 16 days or so before we reach 1.5 scenario of warming and we have 24 years before we get to 2 degrees. Well those are pretty serious and threatening type of images because again the thresholds and the tipping point planetary boundaries will be further exacerbated under these threats with more extreme events. It's not just about increasing temperature. This is also pretty well accepted by the majority of obviously all the scientists that warming is occurring both if you see the line going on the global but it is very important to pay attention to what happens. So this is a temperature compared to a baseline of 1950 to 1980 and so in the 90s starting from the 90s and 2000 as you before saw several blue collars. There isn't a single blue color happening and it's basically all pretty dire dark red occurring and this is on a global scale. Some places have already gone over 1.5 degrees as hotspot. In addition to the temperature we have had increases in precipitation both amount as well as intensity of the rain. The Midwest is receiving significant amount of greater rain which causes is not always positive. We have often the opposite problem. We got too much water that we need to get rid of and even though they are benefiting from a longer season because you have less plus frost three days so you basically could gain up to a week or more but that requires adaptation. So I'll be talking about that how important it is to link agronomics with genetics in order to adapt. The agriculture is none new to challenges. I've put it all together here. We know that these are some of the breakthroughs that we had and each of the breakthroughs unfortunately came with a level of major environmental disaster. We had the introduction of mechanization really allowed us to start producing food to feed the growing population but at the consequences of a dust ball we basically lost all the top soils of the prayers all the way that the soil reached Washington DC and that's when Roosevelt started the soil conservation service. After that you know the introduction of fertilizer and agrochemicals have allowed basically the green revolution be able to have improved genetics that were responsive to fertilizer and technologies to be able to have graded yields and feed obviously Norman Bullock received a Nobel Peace Prize for that. So that led to going from some conventional level of breeding to an incredible you know biotechnology breakthrough now all the way to gene editing and so extremely powerful and important and so there is a bright future in in that context but doing things in the laboratory have only they can only go so far they have obviously to be tested in the fields and field is dominated by uncertainties by different climate soils interaction with the agronomic management and so that's where data data you know collecting information over space and time and so in the last basically 10 years we've been witnessing data science and modeling satellite drones data analytics obviously the omics scientists continue to advance quickly microbiomes both you know soils and plants and so what is what is coming it's basically digital twins basically reproduction through artificial intelligence even in agriculture there is a major constraint that you'll see a little bit more that agriculture is often probably erroneously confused with a big data genetics generates a significant amount of data but the observation in the field are limited so AI may have not all the possibility but there are ways to do it with we link to crop simulation more validly validated crop models and then AI will have additional data to be trained on so a digital twin is simply a bridge between the physical and the digital world to promote innovation and performance to go all the way to the circular bio economy a crop simulation model fits the definition of a digital twin we grow plants on the computer be able to understand the genetic traits and be able to quantify all the different process that occur in the soil both from and you know soil water balance the soil carbon greenhouse gas emissions prolificio fairness in new traits of cultivars and so there has been quite a bit of advancement in simulation modeling linked to biogeochemical model all the way to basically have a cloud based analytics where the farm is completely you know digitized and now these are as anything that comes as new there are early adopters in all the way in implementing changes but in the research domain there is a significant amount of interest from funding agency to be able to link artificial intelligence and digitalization with agronomics and genetics the one of the critical thing again that the agencies the funding agency in the US the National Science Foundation DOE NIH or USDA have this common goal of one health so the healthy ecosystem lead with soil and water you can read soil carbon sequestration health ecosystem lead to healthy healthier food healthier food healthier farmer healthier communities there's much more demand from the consumers to basically generate improved products and traceability how was it produced even by accounting for biodiversity threats or civil rights that we exploit resources and so i'm heavily involved in the sustainability of food companies as well as big pharmaceutical in the context of agriculture so there is quite a bit of sensitivity on sustainability and gender and so that's I guess is a very promising thing in addition to having now voluntary but potentially becoming mandatory soon so Michigan State I call lead Regenerative Ag Center highly funded by USDA as well as matching fund from different food companies the agriculture is witnessing for the last I would say 20 years or more in in terms but it was even earlier but the quality of the data wasn't as important I mean as a good quality this occurred thing because the military allowed us to put GPS on tractor and be able to be used for civilian civilian news they removed the delusional precision so before it wasn't possible to know the exact location but there is a revolution and as you probably know agriculture is often in the media to be able to link again you know food quality food production food security with sustainability all the way not necessarily to show off here but to be able to have you know an editorial on Forbes which is never necessarily paid any level of attention to agriculture and so this level of technology is becoming much more integrated on the farm for example I mean we've seen robotics they're becoming much more on the commercial side you know drones spraying their commercial application already but even this center pivot that can apply water every single row of maze so the other thing is this is a cover of our basically an NDVI images on a weekly basis of our planet you know basically breathing and dying on a yearly basis you can see the movement and we've been doing that for a long time but this is a high resolution obviously to be shown at a global scale but we have now gone into the possibility of monitoring these are daily image there are 1200 images in this slide 1200 photographs snapshots at three meter resolution so there's very little that we can't see from the sky and be able to have additional ground truthing and linking that with crop against simulation system of different sorts is critical the the other critical piece is the geospatial sensing and so one of the things that farmers mostly associate with is the possibility of monitoring this yield across so this is a measured yield maps at every two square meter where basically is recorded across and you can see how much variability so 68 percent of the US corn is harvest with this level of machinery 45 percent so half 45 million acres are mapped and the problem is very little is implemented in variable lake we we define one of the most critical layer this yield stability when you have 15 years 20 years of yield monitor farmers have tend to have a short memory of what happened and they can visually integrate all these images so if you start we develop this procedure that you basically look at how different one pixel is from the neighbor and how different the pixel is from over time and so you'll see areas that they are constantly having ideals versus area that they're constantly underperforming or areas that they fluctuate from one year is good then two years in a row can be bad or vice versa so we we can't depend on yield mapping from farmers so I personally scale with several you know publication to be evaluated for if you have interest is basically you can now through remote sensing imagery you can now click on any single field and be able to get a yield stability map having the common land unit across all these with us is a very data rich Europe also so this could something be reproduced in Europe and so we learned that 48 percent of within field is constantly high yielding 25 percent is always underperforming having leading to nitrogen use efficiency obviously all the other resource use efficiency and then unstable is 27 percent with we did a mass balance with very heavy impact on co2 energy economics and fertilizer and we matched the number of the amount of fertilizer that ends up in the Mississippi River the big difference is now we know where it comes from the same news is that 25 percent of the land causes 85 percent of the pollution the other thing is we were able to quantify at scale areas within a field where they're more vulnerable to water deficit or excess water this is a typical image for people that have spent time in the midwest that you will see every at the end of the spring you can clearly see imagine that the yield of this field is not going to be uniform and so understanding both again this stability of yields and trying to match that and positioning the landscape is a critical thing that we've been helping farmers with and so these are the share of the crop land that is more prone to excess water versus the water deficit and yield time so once we know that where this land and land is located where how contiguous these pixel are these are the low yielding areas across 80 million acres so if we were to implement some action some level of alternative management we will have significant amount of benefits and obviously you we can propose this kind of thing in terms of policy or incentives and farmers will need to adopt but on the analysis you'll see immediately you have nitrate leaching reduction because you clearly see you clearly understand that you're not putting as much nitrogen since if for the last 10 years your dislocation has not been giving you a yield more than five tones why you knew it was a nitrogen when the rest of the field could have been at 12 with the same amount of nitrogen if it is low and stable and these are only the low and stable areas so you can see quest more carbon you can have biodiversity benefit so what are some of the implementation that we can do the first one I was invited to write this basically news of use of precision conservation and so the maps and the analysis is immediately to get the attention from any producer is a profitability map because it's we know pretty well the cost of production there is no secret as long we understand the management which is also relatively predictable I mean especially across the states we know how much nitrogen is applied you know some typical field of Iowa versus Michigan or you know Missouri and so on so the areas where they understand that they're losing money on some of these areas the variable rate technology allows again understanding where you could have basically a response and then you go with optimal fertilizer because we need to continue to produce the yield and continue to feed the world or whatever other use the system have been allocated to so on the other areas we can plant pollinators so this is a project that we recently got funded where we incentivize the removal of the low and stable zones in basically by planting prairie strip and pollinators and so you have speed lower effects you have a lot of benefits but the greatest thing is that the food companies are and you know embracing that because it incentivize you know carbon sequestration because you have perennial plants you know deeper roots and you sequest more carbon and you can both receive incentives for production as well as production in terms the areas next to are produced where biodiversity is present as well as carbon credits and so this is an example we send out prescription or precision conservation we monitor them and this is really resonating to the farmers we the power of the modeling allows us to run scenarios and so these are changes in soil organic carbon including all the zones together and so if we continue to do conventional nitrogen plowing we will continue to lose about close to 400 kg per hectare per year of soil carbon versus no-till and cover crop which are leading towards a sequestration of just organic carbon which is about 1200 CO2 equivalent so the carbon is between 300 and 400 so one of the example last year we sent 25,000 acres of prescription map this is some of the fields you have an imagery within season to to move from just not just strategic level of application but also tactical to capture what is happening in season that's an example of prescription maps but if you see the low and stable areas if comparing a uniform application versus the variable rate the yield there is no leakage in terms there is no reduction in yield compared to the uniform but there is a substantial amount of benefits in terms of nitrogen use efficiency so reduction again building ecosystem services and agriculture needs to become much more you know basically the provider as you know yield is a big ecosystem services along with now avoided emissions and reduction of nitrate leaching this is an example of a prescription map so the farmer they joined this program under 25,000 acres they have to return to us the as-applied map the as-applied map is basically physically a check for a farmer because they could claim to a registry avoided emissions because they if you go from again this is an example of one of the application of side dressing we also place boxes so that farmers if they need to see the the evidence of putting the high rate versus the and this is a very very large boxes you know half acre or so the the benefit of seeing that again is critical for farmer and they can claim the avoided emissions so that's an example of to show that if where you put a large amount compared to where it should have been low but the rest of the field was low you see that there are basically the yield was consistently low and so the benefit which is this point this point right here the inherent variability is much greater so the best predictor of yield is yield but you have to have an historical understanding and separating the unstable zones which they fluctuate they fluctuate given done you know the weather variability which can also be studied you cannot have analog analogy between years and you can capture position in the landscape but in many parts of the world where the field is flat and highly managed you will only have either high or you have much more stability if if the the variability is present in terms of instability is due to to soil depth which will be easy to detect by having hemogenesis so just to conclude you can click on any of this map and we send the prescription the the synthesis and so one other question would be for farmers you know they haven't adopted this technology yet they want to know what if can I move from conventional tillage to no-till and plant cover crop how much carbon how much humic form the slower carbon will I gain what are that you know the percent change in cumulative nitrate leaching those are all the dots where we have farmers data we fly over and and collect so it's um is becoming critical the um one of the things that I wanted to show as a very quick example so I'm not doing justice to that but we play we strongly believe that the understanding of future genetics and so in this case there is you know greater and kernel number kernel weight and the efficiency of our cumulating resources so there are several traits that we use that were improved within boundaries that could be possible and so the the impact of future climate in the ui this is strictly for the west midwest which is kind of a winner because of you know more rain in many places obviously you have extreme events which can be wiped out but the future the adapter cultivar would bring benefit and again the climate smart commodity is something that is happening in the u.s the u.s government has put three billion dollars in incentivizing farmers to do regenerative and climate smart practices and so one of the things that I work on is on mitigation as well as adoption adoption so you go from the stability map to the rx which is the prescription avoided emissions and in the in relation of the avoided emission there can be a premium like we have in italy new europe for pre a protein but now we can be in relation to reduction of emission now i know i don't have much time but i want i i like to invite you to read these two papers in p one is in pna s that i recently published in an egg system with some quarters in how we go from a linear system to a circular system that emphasizes on electrification um you know biola uh biologicals improved genetics partitioning you know more carbon to the roots creating energy on the farm with bio digest here and applying that by the state improving by diversities and and so on so with that i'm going to leave you obviously just to to show the talented group of people that helped me do this work and i wanted to thank the agency for funding it and again thank you very much for the invitation and especially michele for um suggesting my name thank you very much indeed thanks a lot bruno for the fascinating presentation we have time for questions we have two questions from the floor please thank you professor for a nice presentation i have a short question about uh can we move to climate smart agriculture like we we we conduct land suitability of crops and and we we predict that after 10 years the climate temperature would be this and precipitation every crop has a specific requirement so can we move that side which is the second side of the remote sensing data analysis thank you yes um that is that is correct i mean each each crop has particular you know characteristic and you know they will perform better under a different interaction between soil and climate the thing that i would suggest in terms of be able to analyze you know what if is is to be able to reduce the risk before implementing practices or new crop there is a role that science and you know digital system can play because you will say what if i plant this crop here what are my you know the possibility of the outcome you know the probability of obtaining something before implementing the reason i say this is because too often we have to move away from trial and error in agronomy to say you do one study okay you get a result and it was a particular year we can capture historical weather we can capture the interaction between management genetics soils so that's one contribution that this part of the science that i've introduced plays a critical role we have another question thank you sir for the talk that you've given please um haven't worked with uh many rural farmers for many years now i think one of the experiences i have is to try to bring down climate change to the understanding because you keep on saying climate is changing they say they can't see it you say the climate is watching away your soil they say my soil is there it's just a small portion that is to watch away so i i developed something for my institute with a couple of scientists that science information should be given to people that are not of your knowing in a very very low level so that they can imbibe and also i don't know what you say about these in in in the case of ai because i've tried to look at ai to solve some of these problems for me especially in rural areas but limitation of data has been a major problem because data is the food of ai and um what can you suggest in that way when i don't have data and also um i try to use carbon credits the benefit of carbon credits for uh my sensitization program for for farmers especially that if you go if you do afforestation or reafforestation that you will be able to invest carbon and that you get credit for it but most of the time they come back to tell me i applied for carbon credits using my afforestation farm or whatever i did i i didn't get a credit for it so are these sources that this credit can be a harness um i think i'll stop there thank you very much okay well you raised a very good point i want to just be immediate to one word that needs to start you know floating much more which is called techno diversity you cannot what you seem today here it's not transferable in you know immediately with the way you would say you know in a small holder farmers but some of the technology can generate information even we can run models and the imagery can be flown over anywhere but they need to be synthesized and be able to be discussed with local stakeholders and people then own the technology we cannot send technology imposing technology thinking that you know we know more than the locals and we're going to solve that problem so it needs to be more dialogue i'm a physical scientist obviously but there is a critical role for social science to work in in connection with scientists like you said in be able to synthesize information what works in one place may very well not work in another and that's again where the digital twin comes in so there is a level of science in in the form ourselves even of training you know some of the local scientists to be able to use these systems in order to have this risk analysis now on the carbon credits yes that is going to be an instrument i just came back two days ago from south africa and they're selling carbon credits there there are obviously different contexts they're very large farms in many places they're trying to push towards a small holder farmers but the carbon credit is not a panacea is not something that everybody says okay i'm gonna join you have to have a quite a bit of strict regulation in the sense you have to create additionalities you know you have to pool more sure to or build this sequestration you have to have some level of auditing and certification so it's not a simple thing but we i think i can tell you that the world is working towards the possibility of rewarding farmers even smallholder farmers to implement practices that they're more climate smart the the problem is that building carbon it's not necessarily easy in places like tropical soils where it's really you know warm you may not have often you know the conditions so it's a delicate thing and again before you embark on this technology a lot can be known ahead of time thank you uh do we have other questions no if not thanks a lot again bruno thank you again very much i wish you yes i hope to see you soon bye