News

Former RaboBank CEO addressing challenges facing agriculture

The co-chair of a new initiative that addresses challenges facing food and agriculture says he’s most concerned about soil health and water quality. 

Former RaboBank CEO Rajiv Singh says FoodShot is facilitating potential solutions to problems in production agriculture.

“The one on top of the list is soil, soil health. (it’s) a big problem.”

Speaking to Brownfield at the Ag Utilization Research Institute’s New Uses Forum in Minneapolis, Singh says the role of soil has been reduced to simply being the medium for chemicals and nutrients used in cropping systems.

“Soil used to have a much more broader and important role.”

He says decades of neglect has compromised the nation’s water too.

“Both water quality as an input to agriculture, but (also) water quality as an effluent from agriculture.”

Singh says FoodShot has received about 400 submissions to its first challenge, ranging from better sensing technology to products and practices that rebuild microbe activity in the soil.