How The Nature Conservancy Maps the World’s Foodscapes

Julia Amato, The Nature Conservancy’s Associate Director of Communications, Global Food Systems, says that agriculture accounts for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, 90% of land-use change and 70% of water use globally.

“As a conservation organization,” she says, “it's pretty critical that we're working in food systems to meet our mission.”

In fact, The Nature Conservancy has created a new, interactive way to visualize what food is growing where. Julia Amato gave an overview to The Point Cloud at the AIM for Climate Summit in Washington, DC.

The Point Cloud is Agerpoint’s interview series featuring leaders at the intersection of climate, agriculture, nature, and technology. Watch and read highlights from the conversation below. You can also hear to the full interview as an audio podcast on your favorite platforms.

Showing What’s Growing

The Nature Conservancy came to the AIM for Climate Summit to show off its digital map of “foodscapes”. Starting with a map of the world, users zoom in to see different-colored squares representing the food that is grown on the land.

“The biophysical characteristics, the terrain, all of that combined with the food production management, those together create what we call a foodscape,” she says. “And so, after synthesizing the data, our team came up with about 83 different foodscape classes.”

The map is “meant to serve as a global planning tool,” for system-wide change, says Amato. Going forward, she envisions adding more data layers to the map. Potential sources include the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and locals who can report what’s happening on the ground in their area.

The map will be visible to the public in the summer of 2023 at nature.org/foodscapes.

—-

Please subscribe, like, rate 5 stars, tell your friends, and join the conversation with Agerpoint on LinkedIn and Twitter.