Regrow CEO Featured on Bloomberg Businessweek Podcast

“...when you start clogging up the food web that has been very resilient up until that moment, when you start closing ports or weaponizing food, you really start feeling the impact of how important that production was. For us to be in this fluid ever-balancing cycle of what felt resilient…... It's going to get more out of hand with the climate crisis really kicking in and wiping out harvests.”‍

Anastasia Volkova, CEO of Regrow, recently joined hosts Carol Massar and Madison Mills on the Bloomberg Businessweek podcast to talk about the current state of global food security, and what needs to happen to make agriculture more resilient. 

Even if you live in a country where you can get anything you want at the grocery store, you have likely noticed that the cost of food is going up. This is due to crop production and supply chain challenges brought on by catastrophic weather events or geopolitical conflicts, like the Russian war on Ukraine. 

Volkova, a native Ukrainian, provided some insights about what’s been happening inside her home country, which is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and sunflower oil. “The massive brands that you buy in a grocery store, they all were sourcing from Ukraine for one commodity or the other. Eighty percent of the world's sunflower, one of the main drivers behind vegetable oils, is produced in Ukraine. Eleven to fifteen percent of wheat.” As Volkova pointed out, the increased difficulty of sourcing these important commodities is hitting some countries harder than others, particularly in the Global South. 

Then, to add to the instability, “It's going to get more out of hand with the climate crisis really kicking in and wiping out harvests,” Volkova explained.

“...so how do we change the way that we manage agriculture by optimizing for what the planet needs to get from us, not only give us?”

That’s the problem that Regrow is trying to solve, by providing unprecedented access to environmental data about the current impact of farming, as well as modeled predictions about the potential benefits of adopting regenerative practices that build soil health and increase crop resilience. “We provide insights to large companies all across the agriculture and food supply chain to help them see their Scope 3 emissions, or the emissions on the farm, and help lower them so they can be part of creating a better future today,” said Volkova.

Listen to the full Bloomberg Businessweek episode here: Making Regenerative Agriculture More Accessible.