Why You Should Care About Soil Health

Important, Not Important

What’s one big change we can make that can make our food healthier, make farming more lucrative, draw down carbon in the atmosphere, and reduce climate emigration?

That’s today’s big question, and my guest is Sasankh Munukutla, another fellow in our series with the 776 Foundation.

Sasankh is the Co-Founder of Terradot, a satellite and AI-based gigaton-scale, soil-carbon sequestration verification system.

Sasankh originally hails from Singapore and grew up across countries as a third-culture kid and a future global citizen attending international schools. Before college, Sasankh took two gap years and served as a Commander in the Singapore Armed Forces. Once at Stanford, he completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Science with distinction as a Terman Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, and with the Stanford Award of Excellence.

So, you know.

As you’ll hear, Sasankh is deeply passionate and thoughtful about the intersection of technology and social impact. He’s worked in the refugee space, on accessibility, and is a major force for organizing in the tech for good space. Something we can all get behind.

Here’s the deal:

Globally, soil has the potential to sequester up to 1.85 gigatons of carbon per year but soil degradation threatens our ability to feed a growing population, and soil desertification will result in 135 million soil refugees by 2050. Fun!

That’s where Sasankh and Terradot come in.

For farmers, Terradot will incentivize adopting sustainable agricultural practices that sequester carbon, improve soil health, and enable participation in soil carbon credit markets.

On the other side, for carbon buyers, Terradot can eventually provide high-integrity carbon removal credits while allowing them to verify and monitor the permanence of carbon removal – an essential piece of the puzzle.

-----------

Have feedback or questions? Tweet us, or send a message to [e-mail]

New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at importantnotimportant.com/podcast.

-----------

INI Book Club:

• Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
• How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
• Speed & Scale by John Doerr
• Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club

Links:

• Follow Sasankh on Twitter
• Connect with Sasankh on LinkedIn
• Check out CS+ Social Good and Tech Shift
• Check out the 776 Foundation

Follow us:

• Subscribe to our newsletter at importantnotimportant.com
• Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImp
• Subscribe to our Youtube channel
• Follow Quinn: twitter.com/quinnemmett
• Edited by Anthony Luciani
• Produced by Willow Beck
• Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com

Find our more about our guests here: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/guest-stats

Advertise with us: https://www.importantnotimportant.com/sponsors