So we pivoted. It was clear that GreenAnt had to focus on empowering farmers and tackle this problem of risk more directly if we were to fulfill our mission statement. We turned to satellite monitoring—which we’d been using to analyze the efficacy of the ants as pesticide alternatives—realizing that environmental intelligence was a much more potent, more direct tool to mitigate climate risk.
We’ve come a long way since our first days in Thailand…
Much of the current climate crisis is driven by the simple fact that, at the moment, sustainable practices are less profitable than non-sustainable ones. There is more financial incentive to mow down a forest and create flat, “productive” land than there is incentive to protect its trees and its carbon absorption capacity. Like we found in Thailand, smaller-scale farmers often cannot afford to tend to their land in an environmentally friendly way, and must turn to pesticides or higher-profit crops that degrade the health of the soil. This is the basis of GreenAnt’s mission—to transform the health of an ecosystem (and the planet) into a valuable commodity. GreenAnt uses sophisticated satellite biomass data to create tools and resources that will not only make equitable climate action accessible, but also profitable.