Molly Brown has been a analysis scientist on the College of Maryland since 2015, a job she took after leaving NASA Goddard House Flight Heart. Brown has 20 years of expertise in interdisciplinary analysis utilizing satellite tv for pc distant sensing information and fashions with socio-economic and demographic data to higher perceive meals safety and agriculture drivers.

sixth Grain believes that the direct utility of digital know-how and science is vital to establishing worthwhile and productive agriculture and meals methods. They’re a digital agriculture know-how firm which focuses on reworking farmer-provided information into data that can be utilized to extend success and uptake in crop safety companies, credit score provision and high-yielding seeds.

‍Machine studying, modeling and complicated, composite information are on the coronary heart of their know-how platform and units sixth Grain aside from the competitors. By offering companies each to the small farmer and huge agribusiness, sixth Grain’s digital agriculture options delivers high-quality, distant sensing and weather-based data to thousands and thousands of farmers the world over.

Camila Leal Girardo: Was your pursuit at all times following that educational pursuit, extra so than your mission for agriculture? What was your North Star all through these years, as you saved pursuing the tutorial facet?

Molly Brown: I am largely all for how local weather and climate have an effect on manufacturing and livelihoods for rural residents. So it is that entire climate-productivity connection, utilizing satellite tv for pc and distant sensing observations in a method that permits us to diagnose, perceive and predict the affect of modifications in climate and local weather on rural livelihoods throughout the spectrum. I studied meals safety for a few years, which is form of on the country-region degree. I then transitioned into particular person understanding and particular person outcomes, and the way local weather impacts the vitamin outcomes of youngsters below 5. I’ve 10 or 15 papers at this level utilizing satellite tv for pc information, along with vitamin information on the particular person degree to higher perceive how local weather pictures, large droughts, floods and scorching intervals, have an effect on vitamin outcomes. How do they have an effect on feeding choices? How do they have an effect on little one mortality and people underweight? And so I’ve a complete space with that. 

However that entire analysis space doesn’t assist you to truly do something in the true world. It is nonetheless six steps separated from precise decision-making from a person that impacts the true particular person in the true world. That is what’s thrilling about sixth Grain is that we are able to ship options immediately on the telephone. We will take the satellite tv for pc information, remodel it into related information merchandise and ship it. And sixth Grain permits me to have entry to that infrastructure, the entire, from soup to nuts. We’re truly delivering new information and knowledge to new folks with our know-how. So it is a completely totally different intervention.

Girardo: Earlier than I dive deep into sixth Grain, I do wish to ask you, what has been probably the most attention-grabbing discovering all through your analysis and your time learning this subject? What are some issues that you simply have been stunned to seek out?  

Brown: Yeah, I’ve achieved so many various issues. I am such an outdated particular person, it is exhausting for me to even determine all of the totally different papers I’ve written myself. What I am doing now could be I am doing a variety of new analysis on determination assist. For me, I am actually fascinated by how we are able to make data delivered to any individual salient, dependable and actionable. It is a lot more durable than you’d assume. It is so attention-grabbing to me to assume, how will we remodel an actual piece of data and ship it to any individual in a method which is smart, is well timed, correct and dependable, and is delivered in a method which might actually change the end result? That’s the place I am focusing a variety of my efforts proper now. I get funding from NASA to work with their group, to higher perceive how information is delivered and may actually change issues, and make an actual societal affect. 

How will we join these important messages to the folks on the occasions and the locations once they want them to enhance outcomes, cut back vulnerabilities and dangers, and be sure that folks thrive even in difficult occasions?

So the query is, how do you do this? You could possibly have an app, proper? You may Google one thing. However will that basically change your determination? How do you join with folks in a method which actually modifications the end result? This stuff are a lot more durable. For me, probably the most vital outcomes of my work is how darn exhausting that’s. It is like, who desires to check one thing apparent and easy, like determining what a drought is? Now, that is easy, proper? Determining what a drought is, anticipating that drought, understanding the impacts on society after which warning folks higher, in order that they make higher choices in agriculture house or within the well being house, infrastructure and all types of issues, ought to be affected by that biophysical occasion that we completely fail to attach. We simply say, “Hey, there is a drought!” and no one is like, “Yeah, yeah, there’s at all times a drought, Molly; cease whining on about it.” Proper? How will we join these important messages to the folks on the occasions and the locations once they want them to enhance outcomes, cut back vulnerabilities and dangers, and be sure that folks thrive even in difficult occasions?

Girardo: OK, I like that. From that, there are two large questions right here. So on one hand, what’s the largest problem over time, would you say, as we speak? After which the second query is, what’s your present largest problem in your function?

Brown: Proper now there’s stress between the quick and the long run. We might have an acceptable tradition if we valued the long-term acquire over the short-term reward. However I actually consider proper now we’ve a lot to study the way to steadiness the necessity to meet the wants of individuals as we speak with longer-term sustainability. And actually, the phrase sustainability is very squishy. What does that imply? Precisely! 

Meals and the meals system transformation is an enormous one. I am writing a paper proper now on meals system transformations, and we’re taking a look at, for instance, what is the affect if half as a lot beef was consumed globally. What impacts would which have on the worldwide meals system? So the short-term, “I am not gonna eat a hamburger as we speak” determination by each particular person may be pushed by coverage and by pricing and by tax, and all types of different issues. However it’s actually exhausting to steadiness that short-term response with the longer-term want. So how will we transition all these people who find themselves at present employed within the cattle trade, and you’ll think about all of these folks. There are a whole lot of 1000’s of them who’re concerned in cattle and producing beef and promoting beef and all the secondary and tertiary processing and packaging. Retail, eating places, promoting.

You may think about how many individuals that might be, proper? 

So once we’re transitioning away from one thing that we all know just isn’t good for the planet to one thing which is healthier for the planet, it requires so many shifting components, and this similar factor may very well be stated for fossil fuels and cheap power, chilly chain and the place the roads go. What about ports? All of these items are extraordinarily tough to steadiness between the quick and the long run, and I believe that is actually our problem proper now as a result of we see very clearly we can not proceed on as enterprise as typical. However how do we modify? What are the myriad choices that we have to make on the particular person degree, within the enterprise, at a societal degree, and what authorities and coverage financing do we have to transfer this gigantic financial juggernaut in the best course? In order that, I believe, is the massive problem. 

Girardo: Is there a possibility that you simply’re seeing as we speak that you have not seen over the previous 5, 10, 20 years, nonetheless lengthy you’ve achieved this work, that you simply assume is advantageous for sixth Grain, and the way are you leveraging that? 

Brown: Oh, there are big alternatives. So to begin with, we’ve a lot satellite tv for pc information we do not even know what to do with all of it. It isn’t solely extra usually, nevertheless it’s additionally finer decision, extra information varieties, and extra folks investing in agriculture and in data merchandise for agriculture.

I additionally assume that as we study extra about the way to use the knowledge to rework the way in which farmers are doing issues, we are able to then expose these modifications to deliver more cash all the way down to the individuals who at present have the least quantity of energy. From my perspective, these are farmers and rural establishments who’re extraordinarily impoverished in comparison with the enter suppliers or the merchants. The ability facilities in a variety of the meals methods are on people who find themselves offering these improved seeds, the chemical compounds or the fertilizers. They’ve all of the management and so they’re capable of cost what the market will bear and the farmers have had a flat earnings adjusted for inflation.

Most farmers, except for the highest 5 % of growers who’ve economies of scale, everybody else, 95 % of farmers in the US, haven’t gotten an actual increase since 1950 or so. You may lookup the statistics. After the manufacturing of the commodity, the merchants are those who’re reworking, processing and packaging; these are additionally vertically built-in. Frito Lay, for instance, there is a contract with a potato grower. They get an sum of money that permits them to make what? $20,000 a 12 months, actually, proper after all of the bills. After which Frito Lay makes use of that to make billions of revenue, proper? 

And they’re completely vertically built-in. They’ve every little thing from the storage, the trucking, the processing, the packaging, the promoting and the distribution of these merchandise. And in order that method they’re capable of seize all the revenue throughout all of these segments. If we are able to change into actually sustainable and supply data on to the grower, or to the trucker, or to all of these smaller components, we are able to contribute to the local weather. For instance, soil carbon credit, reductions of methane, modifications in fertilizer or modifications in product, the way in which these growers do issues in order that we can’t solely cut back the local weather footprint of growers however improve their profitability enormously. 

You may think about how data may vastly cut back independence on fertilizer and permit them to make higher choices: Which crop ought to they develop? Ought to they take that contract from Frito Lay, or ought to they develop artichokes and promote them on to individuals who need them? 

Should you reduce out all these middlemen, you might develop carrots, and you might shift the carrots on to all of the individuals who need carrots throughout the nation, utilizing direct farmer to client.

You may think about a completely totally different meals system utilizing cell phones. You could possibly think about that. The query is, how will we do it? And the way will we use know-how to modernize the agriculture system and improve the earnings of the agricultural livelihoods in a method which actually advantages all people as a substitute of simply the company powers that be? That is actually one in all our targets.

The above Q&A is an edited excerpt from the Bard MBA’s Might 6 episode of The Impression Report podcast. The Impression Report brings collectively college students and college in Bard’s MBA in Sustainability program with leaders in enterprise, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.