By day’s end, she might be folding her 6-foot frame into the passenger seat of a rental car, balancing her laptop on her knees and trying to win over Silicon Valley investors on Zoom calls using skills she had picked up partly by watching YouTube tutorials. The next, she was sitting down with laconic apple growers with orchards planted generations ago, trying to convince them she could help them avoid wasted fruit.

One moment, she was trying to beam the sensor’s WiFi signal through the reception black hole of millions of apples, which cause transmission issues because of their high water content. In central Washington, it was an effort that required almost as much quick footwork as the épée squad she captained as a championship fencer in college. Sizov, 24, wants to eliminate food waste one fruit at a time. Anything that can be done to reduce waste and increase the productivity of existing agricultural land is a big win for the climate. The pressure to grow more food is leading to deforestation in the Amazon, the drying up of rivers and a greater demand for fossil fuel-based fertilizer. But every spring and summer, there are bad surprises when they slide open their massive warehouse doors only to discover that temperamental Honeycrisps have turned to mush.Īlready, agriculture contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than the total of all the cars, planes, trains and trucks in the world.

crop.Įvery fall, apple growers gather billions of apples, rush them into storage, seal the airtight doors and wait until harvest is a distant memory to reopen them. Now, three years later, Sizov had talked her way into the warehouses of most of the country’s biggest apple producers, and her devices monitor about 15 percent of the entire U.S. food system - a problem that by some estimates creates as much emissions as 33 million passenger vehicles. As a junior in college, Sizov started a company, Strella Biotechnology, to try to reduce waste in the U.S. A powerful fragrance hung in the air, mixing with the chill of the refrigerated rooms.įor the next eight months, the device she built - about half the size of a shoe box - was going to keep watch over the 5 million pieces of fruit jammed into that single room, making sure they didn’t overripen during their long stay in suspended animation. Trucks rumbled up to the warehouse, piled high with Ambrosias, Cosmic Crisps, Enterprises and all the bounty of Washington state’s densely planted orchards. Climate Visionaries highlights brilliant people around the world who are working to find climate solutions.įorklifts carrying crates sped through the passageway outside.

Health science interactive harvest app