Creating a Sustainable Bounty
Before the holidays, I sat down with Arian Aghajanzadeh, Head of Sustainability at Bountiful, to chat about what sustainability means within our current food systems. Bountiful is a data analytics company for specialty crops based in the Bay Area. Arian, a chemical engineer by training, left a career in semiconductors to work on an industrial research team at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab with a focus on industry efficiency. This is where he stepped into the big world of food and where our conversation starts…
Arian: I got involved in the ag[riculture] industry through an energy efficiency project. We were trying to see what the energy efficiency of ag [irrigation] pumps are. Through that project, I got involved in the whole world of agriculture, food, water and I realized it’s fascinating for a few different reasons.
It’s an industry that hasn’t been innovative in a lot of ways. When you talk about energy management, water management, a lot of focus has been on the agronomy part of things and not a lot of people were thinking about, “Ok what is the footprint in terms of energy and water in agriculture?” Then, what caught my attention as I learned more about ag, it is ripe for innovation. If you go beyond ag and look at our entire food system about 34-35% of overall emissions come from our food supply chain. A lot of my peers who were in cleantech and sustainability are so focused on renewable electricity, electric transportation, which is important, but, you know, is missing a much bigger piece of the pie.
I did ag water research for five or six years at Berkeley lab, and then it was a couple years ago that I made my mind up that I want to be in a startup related to food and agriculture. I started my search and came across Bountiful… and joined the team a little over a year ago.
My role kind of evolved throughout the startup, I mean, when I joined we were only five people and if you’re a part of a five person team your role doesn’t really matter, you do whatever needs to be done. And then I was given the title of Head of Sustainability, where I focused on water use and soil health and how to be better at optimizing inputs into the ag system.
Marisa: Could you describe what Bountiful does?
We are a data analytics company and our core product is yield forecasting for specialty crops. Grapes, walnuts, almonds are the three crops that we cover. Our goal is to cover the entire speciality crop portfolio, all the tree nuts, pistachios, pecans, cashews, cocoa, coffee.
How do we forecast yield? We do it entirely through remotely sensed data. So we use satellite imagery, we use weather and climate information and then geographical information: location of the field, soil type, slope of the field, and historical yields. This allows us to develop algorithms that, based on those proxies, will then determine what the yield on these fields are going to be.
What sets us apart from other ag tech companies, a lot of the ag tech companies are focused on a widget, a sensor, or something that gets installed in the farm... We [our team] all knew that because of the vast acreage of all these ag lands, if you want to have a drone or a sensor in your field, that’s not going to be scalable. We can’t put thousands of sensors in the field to get an accurate representation. But satellite imagery is scalable… We can forecast yield remotely without having presence in the field and we can do it more accurately. Existing ways of yield forecast require in field presence, you go into the field, take samples, and you scale up that sample. We’ve seen that that method comes with an error of 20% or higher, where our percent error is 10% or less.
Where does sustainability come into play with Bountiful’s work?
A lot of our early customers, they are mainly interested in yield forecasting and production forecasting from the business perspective. So if you know what your yield is going to be, you can better plan for your business. If you’re a vertically integrated grower that grows and processes and markets its own product, knowing how much product you’re going to have six months before harvest is very important to you. You can better plan your operations, you can sign contracts, you know what the realistic price in the market is going to be because you have the supply information.
If you look at specialty crop farming in a place like California, about 60% of the environmental footprint of these farms, I’m talking almond orchards, vineyards, walnut groves, is due to two factors. Irrigation, so moving water is very energy intensive and there’s carbon emissions associated with moving water, and fertilization. So it takes a lot of energy and a lot of CO2 emissions to create those fertilizers and a lot of growers tend to over apply fertilizers. When you over apply fertilizer, instead of that fertilizer, which is mainly nitrogen, being absorbed by the tree it will then oxidize into the air which is then a greenhouse gas emission. So in both of these two inputs, water and fertilizer, they are directly tied to the yield. And one reason a lot of growers do not optimize how much input they put into the field is because they don’t have an accurate yield forecast.
If you give that information to them early in the season, then they can better plan how much water they are going to put on their fields, and how much nitrogen they’re going to put on their fields. So instead of maximizing those inputs hoping to get the maximum yield, you give the trees the exact amount they need to produce the yield that’s forecasted early in the season.
That’s what we do in a nutshell.
“If you go beyond ag and look at our entire food system about 34-35% of overall emissions come from our food supply chain. A lot of my peers who were in cleantech and sustainability are so focused on renewable electricity, electric transportation, which is important, but, you know, is missing a much bigger piece of the pie. ”
Marisa: One of the things we are trying to do at Point of Origin is take your everyday consumer, and explain to them why understanding food supply chains is important. So how, as an expert in this, would you explain the role that carbon plays in agriculture and the role that sustainability plays along the value chain?
Arian: First thing that I think is very important for everyone to understand is their personal carbon footprints. There is a calculator called “Cool Climate,” developed by UC Berkeley. You put in your lifestyle, there’s some assumptions there but you can modify it. It will tell you what your carbon footprint is, actually break it down by transportation, food, travel, household and all that information. And, what I’m assuming, for a lot of people living in Bay Area, we don’t have a lot of air conditioning load, we probably don’t commute to work, we don’t have hours of commute, to me a lot of people in Oakland and San Francisco just walk or bike to work, or just drive five to ten minutes. And what I found, I did it for myself, is that food is the biggest contributor to my CO2 emissions. My biggest environmental footprint was not the car that I drive, or how much I travel, but was the food that I consume. So I think that’s the first step for everybody to understand that food could become a substantial part of their carbon footprint.
The second is, educating ourselves and that’s where we see a lot of tech companies and food companies playing a role in this. Because unless you’ve read that article about almond water use or you’ve seen some articles comparing dairy to plant based products, you won’t really know what product is better for the environment. And even then we don’t have a standardized way of benchmarking these products against each other. That’s where we need technology to estimate the lifecycle carbon emissions of our food products. And then we need food companies to partner with technology companies to then put those labels on their products.
Let’s say I’m at a store and I have different nut milks: cashew milk, almond milk, oat milk next to cow’s milk, How am I going to make my decision? And it might not be as simple as all plant based products are better because there’s a lot of other things involved like how much tillage has gone into cultivating that oat which was then turned into oat milk? What’s the carbon footprint associated with that and methane emissions that are associated with dairy milk? So we’ve got a long way to go, it’s not an easy task. In the interim there’s going to be a lot of misinformation. A lot of companies do put their carbon footprints on their products, Oatly is an example, a lot of European companies are leaders in this. You see a lot more carbon labels on their products than we have here [in the US]. I can’t think of any food product in the US that has a carbon label on it, but a few UK based companies have them.
Although it’s a great step, it’s tricky because a lot of these companies are paying consultants to come up with these numbers and there’s a lot of assumptions. If you’re not using the same methodology to do emissions from oat milk versus almond milk versus cow milk it might be misleading.
Marisa: As part of my environmental science undergrad, I took a class where we did a life cycle analysis of different brands of the same item. I found the scale of the variables you can include in a life cycle analysis is mind boggling. So how do you think about drawing those lines for food so you can come up with a standardized method? And what are the biggest players that are important to keep in mind when you’re trying to come up with a carbon footprint?
Arian: That’s a great question, I wish I had an easy answer for that. We are going through that, as we speak – what can we do to help? Because, as you said, where you draw the boundaries is very important. Do you want to do the entire food supply chain, which starts at the chemical plant that makes fertilizers, and then gets dumped into a farm, and then everything that happens on a farm: from the energy being used, to the tillage that’s happening, to all the equipment on the farm that use diesel powered engines, the harvesting, and storing in refrigerated warehouses. That’s why it’s a very complicated supply chain.
I think ultimately we need to have traceability through every step of the process. And it’s up to that individual entity to do their own part. You shouldn’t expect the farm to know the entire lifecycle assessment of the fertilizer they are purchasing, it should be up to that manufacturer to come up with that number because they have that information. At the farm scale, you should just focus on what happens on the farm: carbon emissions or sequestrations that happen on that farm from the activities that happen within that boundary. Then once that product leaves the farm then it’s up to the food company to have that visibility into the supply chain, to understand what was the distance that this food product was trucked, what was the mode of transportation, where was it stored, how much energy went into that processing? I think we shouldn’t expect one entity to do everything. If each entity does its own part, then at the end of the day, that number is additive. So we keep track of everything that goes into our food system, that will make it a bit easier.
Marisa: With this idea of everyone tracking their own outputs and inputs and emissions, what would you imagine to be the incentive system to have all these actors do this? How do you ensure, like you said, people are being honest and doing the reporting to the best of their abilities?
“Ag and food is the next frontier. There’s just so much room for innovation and the dissemination of information. As consumers we are completely disconnected from our food system. Most people don’t even know the entire supply chain of one food product, let alone all food products. When I tell my friends about how almonds are cultivated and grown, they’re surprised and shocked. We’re so disconnected that I would love to see more connection between consumers and where it’s coming from. ”
Arian: I mean the ultimate incentive system should come from the consumer, in the interim we could have either government funds or carbon tax or government grants to incentive these systems creations. But ultimately, it’s the premium that a consumer is willing to pay for a product that will make this whole system work. If we get these environmental labels on every single food product, we are assuming that naturally, consumers are gravitating towards the more environmentally conscious products. It will create this dynamic, because those products are receiving a premium because of what they are and the information that they are giving to the consumer, everybody else will be pushed to follow them. So ultimately, the best incentive structure is for the premium that the consumers are willing to pay.
Also, I recently heard that all consumers like sustainability but they just don’t want to pay for it. *laughs* So they might not be willing to pay twice as much, but maybe there is a right premium they are willing to pay.
Marisa: And how does that play into the larger issue of food equity when the more sustainably produced, and often healthier food, is more expensive? Do you ever see that evening out?
Arian: Ideally, the more sustainable way of food production is the most economical way as well. There are studies that show that if you are a regenerative grower, you are ultimately spending less money on inputs because the way your fertilizer is coming, maybe from livestock integration or compost application which is cheaper than buying chemical fertilizer.
Take this with a grain of salt because there aren’t a whole lot of studies on it, but there is a potential that if you increase your soil carbon and if you increase the biodiversity on your farm and improve the soil microbiome you’ll eventually get higher yields. One study out of Chico State, I think it was on row crops, showed that the yield has increased by 5 times once the grower switched to a regenerative practice. So ultimately these sustainable crops or sustainable farms should be able to produce cheaper food and that should address the equity problem. But in the interim, because it’s a new way of farming, there might be some premium that people might end up paying.
The example that comes to mind now is the first time I heard about Tesla, back in 2007, and they had The Roadster which was $175,000. In a class a professor was talking about battery technology and he said that people who buy the $175,000 Teslas are the ones subsidizing the people ten, twenty years from now buying the Tesla. So I would almost say the same argument could be true for sustainable food. People who are willing to pay the premium now, are the ones subsidizing cheap sustainable food for the future.
Marisa: What do you think the timescale is for pushing toward a more sustainable food system?
Arian: Well, instead of a timeline there is a deadline. We’ve got 30 more harvests before we lose the topsoil. And that’s also when the world population will reach 9 Billion people so we will need to feed more people with less arable land. The deadline is 30 years.
I am hoping that things will happen sooner rather than later. I’ve noticed, and I know that speciality farming like tree crops is different because of the higher margins and higher premiums, the growers tend to be more adventurous and try new things. It’s worth the investment to become more water efficient, to adopt regenerative practices, also because the demographic of people who are willing to pay for organic almond milk are the people who would like to see the farm they are buying their almonds from is innovative and regenerative. But from what I’ve seen just over the past six, seven years since I’ve become involved in ag, I’ve seen major, major improvements in this space. With all the technology that exists in a place like California, it’s just a matter of time before we figure out how to transition our agriculture to something that I would like to call “agri-facturing.” It would almost be precision agriculture, in which we can run a farm like a manufacturing plant. Where you know exactly what you need to put at each geospatial location to get the best outcome. I’m hoping once we get to that point we will have a truly sustainable agricultural and food system.
The other challenge is, I guess it’s a bit controversial, is the policy. As the world, or as a state, or as a country, should we come to the table and talk about what crops need to be grown where and how much? I know that makes a lot of people uncomfortable and it’s very controversial. We grow rice, which is very water intensive, in California. We also grow almonds which are also very water intensive in California. We also grow turf, which is mainly for exports. California exports turf to Saudi Arabia. Given that our resources are limited, our water is limited, our top soil is limited, what’s the best way to optimize what is grown in which location? We need to have a conversation like that, as controversial and uncomfortable as that conversation might be. We should have that conversation sooner rather than later.
Marisa: How do you see a conversation like that practically happening? Who has to come to the table?
Arian: The first step, I would like somebody or maybe Bountiful, to do an analysis of what’s the cost of these resources. Maybe do a heat map of cost of water, cost of carbon, cost of topsoil, across the state. And then, what’s the economic value that’s being generated from each of these crops that are grown in that specific location? So if the true value of the resources that are going into an acre of a specific crop is much more than the economic value then that crop is generating then once you put out that information it will start a lot of conversations. So instead of bringing people to the table, I would like to disseminate that information and have the market decide whether it’s still worth growing this specific crop at this specific location, or are we better off switching crops, or are we better off not farming there and freeing up that water to be used elsewhere.
Marisa: True cost of food really doesn’t exist at this time, so if the information is out there do you think that’s enough to change the market to make true cost be an effective incentive for growing in certain places?
“We’ve been told that two things are terrible, industrial agriculture and carbon. So maybe we need to reverse that because we need carbon for more fertility and more yield and maybe agriculture is our most cost effective way for carbon sequestration. Maybe we need to unlearn what we’ve been told in the 90’s and early 2000’s and think, “Oh no, these things could be our saviour, not the villain that we’ve been hating these last few years.”
Arian: That’s an excellent point, there might be a lot of subsidies that shift the scale in a different direction. There is a lot of farmland that on paper doesn’t make sense, but when you include the subsidies it will make sense or make it profitable. Same argument is true with water, I don’t think water is appropriately priced. Water is a much more precious resource than what we think of it and it should be treated like a precious resource. And, I think, to make that happen we have to see some policy changes about how we look at these resources. I understand the argument that water should be free because it’s a common resource for everybody, but it should be free only for human consumption. But if you’re making that water an input to your operation, to make it profit, I think you should treat that water just like you would treat electricity or like you would fossil fuels, as an input to your operation. Policy should be heavily involved in this as well. It’s one of those things, if you truly leave it up to free market you might not get the desired outcome. Maybe the free market will tell you the most economic value you will get out of that water will be by shipping it to Palo Alto or the City of Los Angeles because there is more economic value coming out of those places than the Central Valley.
Marisa: Before I let you go, are there any last points you would like to make to our audience about food sustainability?
Arian: Ag and food is the next frontier. There’s just so much room for innovation and the dissemination of information. As consumers we are completely disconnected from our food system. Most people don’t even know the entire supply chain of one food product, let alone all food products. When I tell my friends about how almonds are cultivated and grown, they’re surprised and shocked. We’re so disconnected that I would love to see more connection between consumers and where it’s coming from. That’s where your work at Point of Origin can come into play.
I would like to make a comment about our conversation about policy and where to plant what crop. It’s also very important, no matter what crop you’re talking about, whether it’s cocoa, coffee, or tree nuts… If we vilified one crop, like let’s say how almonds were vilified in 2015 and 2016, at the end of the day people reading those articles and people saying that almonds are bad are still going out and buying almonds. As long as there’s still a market demand for a crop or a product, that crop is going to be cultivated somewhere in the world. We are better off finding where is the best place to cultivate that crop rather than just vilifying that crop. That’s the argument that I make with almonds. Yes, a lot of articles came out in the drought years about how almonds are terrible for our water resources in California. But at the end of the day, the world still needs about 2-3 billion pounds of almonds because people are buying it. So somebody will grow those almonds and the question is where is the best place, or the most efficient place to grow those almonds?
Those places are California, Australia, Spain, and Portugal which all have the exact same climates and have the exact same water resource issues. Out of all those places California has the highest yield, meaning it’s the most efficient place to get the most crop return. That’s very important to think about, that vilifying a crop is not sufficient, at the end of the day it’s still the consumer that is buying the product. That’s true with coffee, that’s true with cocoa.
We’ve been told that two things are terrible, industrial agriculture and carbon. So maybe we need to reverse that because we need carbon for more fertility and more yield and maybe agriculture is our most cost effective way for carbon sequestration. Maybe we need to unlearn what we’ve been told in the 90’s and early 2000’s and think, “Oh no, these things could be our saviour, not the villain that we’ve been hating these last few years.”