About

A few years ago as I was captivated by the beautiful and innocent smile of my firstborn daughter playing in a park, and I couldn't help but feel guilty about the broken planet we are leaving these children, and the responsibility that we all have to do something to try to leave this planet in better shape than we found it. Or at the very least, not contribute to make the problem worse. 

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For many years prior, I had already been extensively researching several related topics ranging from environmental problems to economics and anthropology and realized that the single most important economic activity that has the most significant impact on both our health, and the health of the planet, is food production.

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If you go to the U.S. EPA Website, it shows that Agriculture alone, is responsible for at least 10% of the total greenhouse gas emissions. But in my opinion that number is very conservative. If you look at other studies that factor in the total footprint of agriculture, especially when it comes to livestock production, the number is probably very much higher. The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), has reported that livestock alone accounted for at least 18% of greenhouse gases. Similarly, the defunct Worldwatch Instituted published a study that placed this number at around 51%. It all comes down to the measuring indirect costs and effects of our broken agricultural system. Whatever the number is, it is much higher than the mere 10% accepted by the U.S. EPA, which is already surprisingly high to begin with.

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The EPA figure, and many if not all of the studies and industry "white papers", that purposely whitewash the true impact of food production, fail to factor in the collateral damage of food production such as: the daily clearing of forests land to expand agricultural lands, and the residual effects of pesticides and artificial fertilizers and other chemicals we pour on the earth every single day. They also fail to mention the immense political leverage and the enormous amount of money that revolves in this industry, which comes in great part by government subsidies. Yes, your taxpayer money is being used to finance a huge collateral industrial complex that provides absolutely zero benefit to the farmers, the planet, nor the food you eat. Actually, quite the contrary. 

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These long-term effects on the planet and our health are not factored in because no one is currently willing to pay for them. But your children and their children will surely pay a heavy price, of us stealing and destroying their future. They will have to fight for the very basic elements of existence such as air, water and soil. In fact we already are.

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So I took all the knowledge and skills I have acquired in over the past 30 years of experience in high-tech, to find ways to produce better food in the smallest footprint possible, and in ways that made economic sense.

 

So in early 2015 I challenged myself to a really hard task:

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¿ What would it take to “Grow Rice on Mars” ? 

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Rice on Mars started out as a concept-ideal, or imaginary exercise to set an ambitious goal which would produce ideas help fix some of the problems of Agriculture here on Earth. 

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One day, as I was watching my daughter playing in a park,  asked myself what future are we leaving these kids? We are operating the planet at 1.5 times it's capacity and we plan to grow the global economy to about 3 or 4 times the total capacity of the planet before 2050. That means we are actually stealing the future from our future generations. 

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By setting an abstract goal such as "what would be the conditions and constraints to grow a critical crop like rice in a spaceship or another planet" I could start to imagine the very minimal constraints on water, soil, air and energy, which are the very same things we starting to fight for here on earth.

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Two years later many failures later,  we were finally able to grow rice consistently in completely controlled environment including temperature, lighting, humidity, irrigation wind and other variables. The crop was 11 grams of Basmati Rice with 6 plants, in a soil-less media using organic fertilizer, LED light and less than 200W of energy.

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It sounds simple enough, and 11 grams does not sound impressive, but for people that know how tough this plant is to grow in controlled conditions, it was actually very encouraging.  I realized that without resorting to GMOs and just by employing a technique known as "crop steering". Using this technique, I could get the plants to produce hormonal responses that could accentuate desirable phenotypes. For example, increase the total number of tillers and/or productive tillers, and control many other aspects of growth of any plant. I got hooked on the concept of crop steering and it's potential on Controlled Organic Farming, and that's how AgroMe was born, on the very first day of the Paris Climate Summit in 2015.

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During the rice experiments, I had no way of irrigating plants individually (in an exact and controlled manner) I realized that irrigation and/or feeding techniques had not evolved much since the Neolithic, hence our company motto became:

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Evolve Past the Neolithic™ 

Six years into product development and lab testing, we are now starting field trials during the rest of 2021 and well into 2022 when we'll start shipping actual units to strategic growers and after that to the market in general. During this time, we have done research, development and testing of different technologies and projects that range from micro-algae, to biodiesel, carbon capture and several other areas and we have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge and know-how in avant-garde technologies such as 3D printing, IoT, Neo-micro Electronics and Control (e.g. Arduino, Raspberry PI, etc.) and many other disciplines, which now I want to share with the world through this Website and blog, in the hopes of helping inspire other entrepreneurs to change the world with us.

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