The Future Of Agriculture: Engineering Plants To Communicate With Farmers

Shely Aronov | InnerPlant "If you don't try, you fail. And if you want to succeed, you at least have a chance by trying. If you try enough times and have the right team to support you, the right attitude, and the right mentors, you might actually change the world.” - Shely Aronov   These are the kinds of knowledge bombs Shely drops in this conversation. Shely is the co founder and CEO of InnerPlant, a company combing AI, drone technology and gene editing to detect pest infestations on crops in real time. They genetically engineer the plant to fluoresce under certain external conditions (like a pest is attacking them), and this fluorescence is detected by drones in the sky which sends the data to the InnerPlant app to alert farmers immediently. With this approach, every single plant can be individually cared for, and specific nutrients, water, fertilizer and pesticides can be tailored to every single plant instead of entire fields.    In this conversation we talk with Shely about the importance of agriculture, and the big problems with our agricultural system that must be addressed to feed our growing population. We talk about Shely’s path to founding InnerPlant, and the technicalities of how InnerPlant operates. And we wrap up our conversation with Shely’s take on the mindsets of a changemakers, and skills all changemakers should equip themselves with if they want to make an impact in the world.