Sustainable Crops

Sustainable Crops: Feeding Billions Without Feeding Climate Change

Today’s global food system is both a lifeline and a climate liability. Conventional farming feeds us. It also drives deforestation, depletes soils, pollutes waterways, and emits nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gases. With the global population expected to grow to 10 billion by 2050, agriculture will need to produce far more food while causing far fewer emissions. Enter sustainable farming, which empowers growers to be stewards of the land — aligning farm profitability with climate-friendly practices. Innovators are breeding plants that thrive with less fertilizer, engineering new crops that resist pests and heat, and creating varieties of rice that emit less methane. Paired with precision agriculture and green fertilizer innovations, these approaches could boost yields, cut emissions, and preserve soil health — ensuring that the world’s farms can nourish people and the planet for generations to come.

Innovation Imperatives

Climate Resilient Crops

Develop climate-tolerant crops to maximize yield

As climate change drives more extreme heat, drought, and pest pressure, crop losses threaten global food security. Advances in genetic engineering, epigenetics, and breeding can produce varieties that thrive in harsher conditions — maintaining high yields despite environmental stress. Resilient crops safeguard farmer livelihoods, stabilize food supply, and reduce the need for land conversion that drives deforestation and emissions.

Low-Methane Rice

Enable low-methane rice cultivation through genetic improvements or methane mitigation intervention

Flooded rice paddies are a major source of methane emissions, driven by anaerobic microbial activity in waterlogged soils. Developing rice varieties with traits that suppress methane production — or integrating methane-inhibiting water, soil, and microbial management practices — can sharply reduce emissions from one of the world’s most important staple crops. Low-methane rice preserves yields while cutting a potent greenhouse gas.

Nitrogen Innovation

Develop alternative production methods for nitrogen fertilizers that minimize manufacturing emissions and N₂O production

Nitrogen fertilizers are essential for modern agriculture — but they also drive significant climate impacts. Breakthroughs in microbial nitrogen fixation, zero-emissions ammonia production, precision application, and crop varieties with higher nitrogen-use efficiency can maintain yields while cutting both manufacturing and on-farm emissions. Scaling these solutions is key to reducing one of agriculture’s most potent greenhouse gas sources.

Soil Carbon Enhancement

Improve organic and inorganic carbon sequestration in soils through scalable solutions

Restoring and enhancing soil carbon can transform farmland into a powerful force for climate stability. Approaches include crop genetics that drive deeper root systems, microbial processes that stabilize organic matter, and mineral amendments like finely ground silicate rocks that accelerate inorganic carbon capture. For impact at scale, these approaches must be cost-effective, scientifically verifiable, and supported by supply chains capable of gigaton-level deployment.

Yield Maximization

Increase crop yield without increasing land use

Raising the maximum potential yield of staple crops can help meet rising food and fuel demand without expanding farmland. Innovations in genetics, crop physiology, and nutrient optimization can push yield ceilings higher while maintaining quality. By producing more per acre, these improvements reduce pressure to clear forests and grasslands, protecting natural carbon sinks and preserving biodiversity.

Moonshots

Enhanced Photosynthesis

Engineer row crops for significantly higher photosynthetic efficiency

Photosynthesis powers life on Earth, yet most crops convert less than 1% of incoming sunlight into usable energy. This moonshot focuses on redesigning that process — through C3-to-C4 pathway conversion, novel photosynthetic mechanisms, and optimized light capture — to create plants with dramatically higher efficiency. The result would be crops with far greater yields on the same land, reducing pressure to clear forests while producing more food and fuel and preserving vital carbon sinks.

Next-Gen Crops

Engineer new varieties of plants to limit climate impacts

What if we could redesign the very biology of our crops to make them active partners in solving the climate crisis? This moonshot envisions engineering plants with traits programmed for sustainability. Imagine corn optimized for biofuels, with just enough protein for fermentation — reducing nitrogen fertilizer use and cutting nitrous oxide emissions. Or crops that push stable carbon deep into soils, where it can remain for centuries. How about varieties that thrive on marginal lands, require fewer inputs, or produce biomass tailored for clean fuels? Together, these next-generation crops could become active partners in climate mitigation without competing with the food supply.

Tech Categories

Cluster Name	Readiness
	Fertilizers & Nutrients	Pilot
	Fertilizers and nutrients are added to soil to provide essential nourishment that helps crops grow. Unfortunately, their production and use generate greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing fertilizer use and switching to cleaner alternatives can cut emissions from both manufacturing and the release of nitrous oxide in fields.
	Precision Agriculture	Commercial
	Precision agriculture is a set of technologies that optimize farming inputs—water, fertilizer, pesticides—by using such tools as GPS-guided equipment, drones, and soil sensors.
	Regenerative Agriculture	Commercial
	Regenerative agriculture maintains soil health and optimizes crop production with such practices as crop rotation, tillage, irrigation, and cover cropping. Smart field management can enhance carbon storage in soils, reduce emissions from machinery and inputs, and improve farm sustainability, particularly in growing rice and other emission-intensive crops.
	Seed Editing & Breeding	Pilot
	Seed editing and breeding use genetic tools or traditional selection methods to develop crops that are more resilient, higher-yielding, or better suited to specific climates. These innovations can reduce the need for fertilizers and increase land use efficiency.

The problem with rice no one is talking about

Half the world eats it. One-fifth of our calories come from it. But rice has a dark secret: It pumps pollutants into the air and is vulnerable to extreme weather. So what can we do to improve the way we grow our rice?

Sustainable Crops