AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION THROUGH PUBLIC POLICY INITIATIVESA GROWING PROBLEMToday our modern society is facing problems on so many fronts that it can be hard to pinpointsolutions. It is my belief that our interaction with the environment to create a balanced foodproduction system is the key. By creating a solution based on technologies that are availabletoday, we can solve a myriad of hurdles facing human life and the planet today.In a landmark work entitled

Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years

, published in 1942, DrW C Loudermilk of the USDA observed the hardships and falls (

redundant)

of civilizationsstretching back over an enormous time frame. He concluded that stewardship of the soil was thekey in the decline of civilizations throughout recorded history. Also, in Jared Diamond’s recentbest seller

Collapse

, he noted that a society's response to environmental problems is completelywithin its control and can be isolated as one of the most significant factors of a civilization’scollapse.Finally, in May of 2009, Jeff Rubin added

Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller

to the discussion and speculates that through the current economic malaise we are settingthe stage for a huge jump in the cost of oil, which will in turn create an entirely new phenomena,reversing the decades of globalization and creating again the local economies that can serve asthe building blocks to refocus our efforts on innovation in agriculture to ultimately change thegrim scenarios that we were marching towards.We are intimately intertwined with the global ecosystem and our failed stewardship has raisedthe stakes in our race to avert disaster. A generational change is necessary. By utilizing multipletools and technologies available today, we can avert repeating history and becoming anotherchapter in the book of past civilizations. This will require breaking the recent cycle of disregardfor the basic circle of life that has existed from the dawn of time.A FRESH SOLUTIONLet me describe a system that I believe can help to solve the problems revolving around food,waste, and the environment. The system will first start with all sorts of waste that we currentlydispose of in environmentally unfriendly ways; waste such as human wastewater treatmentbiosolids, animal waste, animal processing waste, agricultural production and processing wasteand excess human food waste. This waste would be the basic feedstock to production system toprovide a bio organic fertilizer and alternative bio based growing material that will allowhealthier and more efficient food production.This food production will be further enhanced by using new satellite technology and forecastingtechniques that will allow for the best use of land and resources when creating food both from alocal and global standpoint. We will create a system that will take the raw data and provideguidance to farmers as to what may be best grown in their locale.Farmers have always been driven on past practices and at the mercy of weather related vageries.By using the new technology both to guide them as to the best crops to plant and monitoring of soil conditions, many of the variables that made it such an art will be reduced to best practice

recommendations. This will lead to farmers more easily able to sustain their efforts and produceboth more efficiently and with greater impact to their economic success.There has also been extensive work done on the distribution side as new clearing houses haveemerged to promote local agriculture and return to the family based farms of old. These “cloud”or web based services provide the ability to aggregate production of many farms into a single sitethat enables consumers, stores or restaurants to purchase food that is locally grown in a singleplace. By taking this to the next logical step, we would aggregate the demand side byintroducing the entire vertical chain of consumption including exporters to provide feedback tothe farmers on what is the best crop or crops for them to farm to create efficient sales for theirefforts. By optimizing both the production and consumption of the farm we will use enableefficient and economically consulting advice to the entire food chain.A MYRIAD OF BENEFITSThe overall effects of adoption have multiple primary benefits, but it is the unintended orancillary benefits that truly yield impressive results. This unprecedented mash up of services andtechnologies will yield the following benefits upon adoption and implementation:

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Soil health

will be returned with the reintroduction of nutrients, organics, and microbesvia bio organic soil amendments from waste products. This soil healing can serve toremediate over-farmed land and even create new topsoil.

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Further use of the materials in urban sites can help remediate brownfield sites and allowimmediate implementation of both vertical and urban farming initiatives to blightedurban environments.

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The

plant growth nutrients

(Nitrogen & Phosphate) will both remain bioavailable to theplants, but will be non-leachable to the runoff from irrigation and rainfall (storm water)which will provide relief for many of the polluted waterways and large bodies of waterthat are becoming increasingly commonplace due to current agricultural fertilizationpractices and field spreading of manures.

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Wastewater treatment biosolids along with animal waste and manures will be used in theprocess as we remove another problematic current disposal practice.

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Organics added to the soil will enable more

efficient irrigation

through significantlyhigher water retention.

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Added organics and carbon sources from our bio organic media will increase the carbonsink characteristics of land that is being farmed, addingto the mitigation of climatechange by

reducing green house gases

. Couple this with the effect of growing moreplants in an environmentally friendly manner, our process provides a positive step in thebattle against climate change.

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Diversion of organics and other waste to landfills will

mitigate methane production

andtoxicity problems from current landfilling.

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Food production will be optimized

to promote the best return to the farmer and moreefficient distribution to the consumer. By utilizing data derived from new satellite sourcesand reporting from the field, farmers will increase their probability of profitable farmingalong with creating a far better utility to land use.

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The plants that are grown in our media will be stronger, have higher production levels,be more vital in content, and require less nutrients or fertilizers, herbicides and pesticidesas the plants will be more

disease resistant

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The food produced by farming using our amendments will benefit from

highernutritional values

, better vitality and less transportation to consumers.

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The loop from waste to food to distribution to consumption will be optimized and

sustainable

at every juncture.INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIESIn order to create this proposed system we need to examine multiple technologies that existtoday. We will combine:

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Invessal Composting System

that will use as feedstock organic waste matter, biosolidsfrom wastewater treatment, animal manure, animal processing waste, agriculturalprocessing waste combined with waste generated from the processing of food grown withthe help of our system. Add to this two additional amendments, one to bind phosphatesand the other to add carbon to the resultant product.

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Precision Farming

as proposed today that will target specific locations to isolate the bestuse of the land by profiles and data obtained to profile sites. In addition, a NASAsatellite and soon to be launched European Space Agency Soil Moisture and OceanSalinity, will provide extremely valuable data on soil moisture that will take the precisionfarming effort to a new level.

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Vertical farming

utilizing our bio organic media will serve to also remediate urban areasand contaminated soils. Urban farming to provide food in close proximity to populationwill be one of the aims of the urban renewal that local farming should produce. The urbanfarming along with the stimulation of small farm production will create a return to localfood production and the stimulus for the reverse globalization that is envisioned inRubin’s current book and provide one of the key components of food security for ourpopulation.

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“

Cloud” services

that have been developed by multiple parties involve the interface toprovide a clearing mechanism for customers (individual, retail stores and restaurants, anddistributors and exporters). We intend to extend the reach of this interface as a feedback mechanism that can serve to help the producers optimize their plantings accordinggeotechnical data and demand obtained through our clearing mechanism.

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Creating a

collaborative framework

for all stakeholders will provide benefits to thegroup, the consumers, and to society as a whole. We believe this move to a sustainablemodel that reverses many of the environmental and social ills will add not incrementallybut geometrically to the returns for the effort.STEPS FOR CHANGEInnovation can become reality by influence from public policy initiatives that address theenvironmental problems plaguing our society. There have been initiatives to stop field spread of manures which have been the source of agricultural nutrient runoff. With the mandate to stopfield spreading the action will create a further problem of what to do with this animal waste. Thethe intiative would then create the opportunity for the treatment by bioconversion of the animal