New Ventures Podcast

Seychelles is the richest country in Africa but as a small island country it is also being impacted severely by climate change. Sadly it is not just climate changed caused by humanity as a whole, it is the damage to the environment that is caused by the individuals living in and visiting the islands. The environment damage is making it hard to grow food and the island is becoming more dependent on...

A top down infrastructural project, in the Aral Sea area, goes terribly wrong. Instead of increasing cotton production and prosperity, the project leads to unprecedented droughts and poverty. The Global Green Growth Institute is implementing a project funded by the South Korean government to rehabilitate the region. Oyunchimeg Amartuvshin, Senior Program Development Officer, Central Asia of the Gl...

The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture helps small holder farmers access quality inputs and sell products at fair prices. To do that the foundation has developed the Farmers Hub, a franchisee based business model which helps both agri-entrepreneurs and businesses to invest in products that serve small holder farmers. This approach has helped farmers adopt new technologies for paddy, m...

Saran Song is the CEO of Amru Rice, Camobodia’s largest producer and exporter of organic rice from Cambodia. In this podcast he talks about the contract farming business model, the advantages that farmers can derive from growing organic and sustainable rice and peers into the future of rice. Sections Section 1 : First 10 minutes introducing Saran and his company Amru Rice Section 2 : Next 31 minut...

Heather Couture is an international consultant in computer vision (applying artificial intelligence to images). In this episode, she explains the different types of modern artificial intelligence and its use in  a variety of food-related applications. It is used for monitoring crops and trees in fields and automating activities such as harvesting and spraying inputs. Artificial intelligence is als...

Futurepump is a small company from the UK with a factory in India manufacturing solar pumps. One of its partners in Africa is Celfre Energy, an even smaller company, which operates in Zimbabwe. Celfre Energy started by importing one Futurepump and creating awareness among farmers. It raised grants and then used the money to import a container load of pumps. This was the first time that farmers wer...

Futurepump is a small company from the UK with a factory in the UK manufacturing solar pumps. It is distributing its product in Africa through Davis & Shirtliff, a large company with a 78 year old history. The partnership is bringing the pumps to small holder farmers across 11 countries in Africa. As climate change is having a “real negative impact” on farmers, solar irrigation pumps help farm...

Rice millers in the Central and East Java provinces in Indonesia are facing a shortage of paddy from farmers.  Production has been impacted by changing rainfall patterns, pest attacks and the occasional non-availability of pesticides and fertilisers. The industry association Indonesia Rice Millers and Traders Association -PERPADI has partnered with Preferred by Nature, an international NGO to impl...

Fishing methods of small-scale fishers are more sustainable because they capture less bycatch (fish that is discarded). Unfortunately, like in many places of the world, the livelihoods of   small-scale fishers in the Occidental Mindoro province in Philippines are vulnerable both to climate change and overfishing by large fleets. The fishing community supplies both domestic and export markets. WWF...

Description: Small fishing communities in South Africa (and many other parts of the world) have often been discriminated against. First there is colonisation and (in the case of South Africa) the apartheid regime. Then there is the interest of national governments to create an industrial fishing sector. And yet these communities live on thanks to the strong bonds to the ocean and age-old cultural...

Bangladesh is acutely vulnerable to the climate crisis. BRAC, the world’s largest NGO is implementing adaptation clinics in very vulnerable areas. The process involves understanding the specific problem the community is facing and then implementing a solution, while taking the community along. The results are extremely encouraging.  Sections Section 1: First 25 minutes about BRAC’s approach      S...

Cellular meat is not going to flood your supermarket shelves anytime soon. Across the world, only four companies have got regulatory approval. They are organising tasting sessions in restaurants and “pop ups” but it will take several years for companies to scale up manufacturing processes to produce sufficient volumes of  products at reasonable costs (even assuming that it is only the adventurous,...

A rancher in South America is worried about the condition of his land. He knows that improving the soil condition will help in growing more grass which his livestock can feed on. He wants to leave his land in a better state to his children so that they can inherit his profession as well and decides to more regenerative practices. A NGO in East Africa has been already working in improving the agric...

The Luangwa region and the Kafue regions in Zambia hosts some of the finest national parks in the world. Unfortunately, these forests and the wildlife are under threat. An average farming  family who lives near these areas cuts down 60 to 70 big trees in a year just to use as firewood for cooking food. Falling soil fertility and a growing population is forcing them to cut down more trees and conve...

Years of repeated tilling the same piece of land with a hand hoe has compacted the soil in Malawi into a hard layer. Plant roots cannot penetrate this “hard pan” and they grow laterally, instead of vertically. Rainwater does not penetrate the soil either but rushes along the furrows created in the land, washing away the top soil. This is drastically reducing agricultural production plummeting Mala...

The wine and the alcohol industry has been around for millennia and obviously is not the major cause of climate change. But then like every other industry it has to reduce its emissions and environmental impact. More importantly, the wine industry is being impacted by unpredictable weather events. Drought, sudden frost and wildfires are affecting the quantity and quality of grapes. Transporting wi...

In the last five years, plant based foods have started appearing on supermarket shelves, on restaurant menus and even on the assembly chains of fast food outlets. There is still skepticism however. Customer demand in the US and UK seem to be flattening out and there are no real entry barriers to new companies bringing out new products. It is not unusual for a new industry to stall after initial pe...

Extreme events occur not just because of climate change but also local damage to the environment. The effects are also sometimes hard to foresee. Not all events are well reported either. ClimateNode wants to scan websites, news reports, scientific papers to understand what type of climate events are happening, their causes and effects. ClimateNode has developed its technology on surface water floo...

There are 150 million mid-market companies across the world who do not have the resources to invest in measuring climate metrics. Software can help them understand what standards are applicable, pull out and validate data sitting at various places in the company systems, suggest and help manage personalised projects and then communicate results to stakeholders. Misio starts with what is important...

In the Sahel, farmers do not have the money to buy chemical fertilisers. They use organic methods of farming which works well when they do. Unfortunately, the temperatures in the Sahel are already more than global averages. Rainfall is scarce but when it does the downpours are heavy. The top soil is often carried away, making the soil infertile. People clear forests to grow food. Without trees the...

There are six subsectors to the alternative protein industry. Plant based meats, precision fermentation and cellular meat are the main ones. Plant based “mock meat” has been around in Asia for centuries. There are relatively less technological barriers to get products out but companies will still have to overcome taste, nutrition, cost and regulatory barriers before products reach mass markets. Pr...

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is driving the demand for AI software. Some companies also want to go beyond just meeting the standards and genuinely develop a nature strategy. Xylo Systems, helps energy and property companies understand baseline biodiversity data, analyse possible impacts and develop potential projects. They do so by integrating both open source data...

Transition Zero has used artificial intelligence to measure emissions from coal and gas power plants. It has trained software to learn from satellite images and verified published emissions. The trained software can then estimate emissions only from satellite pictures of power plants where the published data is not available or needs to be verified. It is now helping countries develop net zero amb...

Arnab Sengupta has worked with about six agricultural commodities and knows a lot about tuna. Tuna is consumed fresh and in canned forms. It is caught in the deep sea near some of the small island developing states and then processed in Thailand or Ecuador. The processing industry employs a lot of people because the fish has to be cleaned perfectly in a way that has not been mechanised. The indust...

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive are complex (climate is only one of the five pillars of sustainability) and that creates the need for software to manage the process of meeting the new standards. Metabolic a consultancy used its experience of working with clients to develop Link a product that enables users start with data that they have and identify hotspots and define projects wi...