New York CNN — Tomato growers in central India have been increasingly worried about the volatility that extreme weather events have brought to the region. For much of the area, the last decade has been punctuated by severe droughts that led to significant crop loss, impacting the livelihoods of local farmers.
On the other side of the world, Silicon Valley startup ClimateAi is developing an artificial intelligence platform to evaluate how vulnerable crops are to warming temperatures over the next two decades. The tool uses data on the climate, water and soil of a particular location to measure how viable the landscape will be for growing in the coming years.
Maharashtra, India, was one of its first case studies in 2021. Farmers could go into the ClimateAi app and input what seed they were growing and where they wanted to plant it.
Enter your email to sign up for the Stress, but less newsletter.
close dialog
This story is part of CNN’s coverage of climate change ahead of the UN’s annual climate summit — how the crisis affects our lives, the global politics and the potential solutions.
Learn More
With that data, ClimateAi ran simulations and found that extreme heat and drought would lead to an approximately 30% decrease in tomato output in the region over the next two decades. It warned growers that they should change their strategy.
The results proved pivotal — tomato producers adjusted their business plans by switching to more climate-resilient seed varieties and shifting the times they plant tomato seeds. Finding new growing locations usually takes a while for farmers affected by climate change, but “now it can happen in a matter of minutes, and it also saves them a lot of cost,” according to Himanshu Gupta, who grew up in India and is a co-founder of ClimateAi.
R&I ~ MJM
Enterprise7
Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/26/tech/ai-climate-solutions/index.html