Anastasia Volkova on how to monitor whole landscapes and watersheds from space

With Anastasia Volkova, the CEO of Regrow, we kick off our new series about the technologies needed to bring regeneration to a landscape scale. In this episode we discuss remote sending and how Regrow digital platform combines agronomy and scenario planning with monitoring, reporting, and verification.

LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION ON:

THIS EPISODE IS PART OF THE LANDSCAPE TECH SERIES. FIND OUT MORE ABOUT IT HERE!

Can we monitor the farming approaches of the whole midwest United States and see where regenerative agriculture is spreading faster or slower and what we can we do something about it? Regrow combines the industry leading expertise of FluroSat and Dagan to drive resilient agriculture adoption across the supply chain.

Mapping Regenerative Agricultural Practice

Regrow uses satellite imaging to monitor crop management. This drives a farmer’s planting and growing decisions which in turn boosts the field’s sustainability and yield. Remote sensing and soil monitoring enable users to understand how soils need to be parametrized.

“I believe that process models — the ability to simulate the entire plan to growth, including what is happening in the soil — is going to be that edge that will give our technology the ability to scale globally.” – Anastasia Volkova

Tracking Greenhouse Gases and Carbon Farming

Farmers find harder to focus and apply regenerative practices in carbon and greenhouse emissions, unlike water, where it is easier. Change needs to happen in the next 10 years to see a significant improvement, given that there are 51 billion tons of carbon that needs our attention.

“I think the more value we start transferring back to the farm for ecosystem services, the more we will change the environment, at least for that 19% of the greenhouse gases that agriculture contributes to.” – Anastasia Volkova

Aiming for National Scale

Regrow mapped the entire Midwest’s conservation practice adoption and its soil health outcomes. They are currently working with several farm organizations to help deploy their technology on a local and broader scale. The company aims to bring holistic approaches to understanding ecosystems.

“We are going to get it to the national scale this year, and we’re going to continue producing the national scale baseline.” – Anastasia Volkova

Improving the Technology

With the merger and acquisition of Dagan, Regrow is going further with remote sensing through the addition of new technology. DNDC (Denitrification Decarbonisation Model) focuses on soil microbes and understands which environments are going to produce more or less greenhouse gasses.

“We think soil carbon is only the tipping point of the iceberg. In the next few years, we will see more credits for water stewardship, biodiversity, for other things in the farm, for of course nutrients or application, for sparing application of fertilizer. So seeing that unfold is something that I’m really looking forward to.” – Anastasia Volkova

Other Important Points Discussed

Koen and Anastasia discussed these points in this episode:

● What Anastasia believes to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don’t believe? Inspired by John Kempf.

● What would Anastasia do if could wave a magic wand and change one thing the
agriculture industry from a sustainability point of view

● What Anastasia would do if she were in charge of a 1 Billion investment
portfolio tomorrow morning?

To know more about Anastasia Volkova and Regrow, download and listen to this episode.

Bio:

Anastasia Volkova is the CEO and Co-founder of FluroSat. Anastasia has her PhD in visual drone navigation with the Australian Defense Science and Technology Organization. She has 10 years of experience in academia, business & software development, is a 2020 MIT “35 under 35” Innovator and one of the BBC 100 Women.