Mahogany Roraima, a Brazilian agtech specialized in forest planting, has the prototype of a solution to face one of the greatest challenges facing humanity today: climate change.
Science article says world needs 1.2 trillion more trees to curb greenhouse
According to a study published in the prestigious journal Science, planting 1.2 trillion trees, or four times the total of the Amazon, would be necessary to curb global warming. With the pace of current techniques reaching 42 million seedlings a year, the world would need 28,500 years to reach the goal. There is no wait.
For, according to the company, the Forest Planting Machine would have a planting capacity of 20 hectares every 3 and a half hours, so, in theory, with 100 machines it would be possible to reach 1.2 trillion trees in about 15 years.
The equipment prototype already reaches 13 km / h during planting and, in six months, will also feature Agro 4.0 technologies such as computational vision by satellite images, sensors and big data to, in addition to planting, generate data on “ new forests ”.
“We are working to improve performance on both speed and embedded digital systems. These include georeferencing, drone monitoring, fire alarms and the Arduino processing platform, ”said Marcello Guimarães, president of Mahogany Roraima.
Thus, the expectation is also to bring economic viability to the system with computer intelligence. That is, in addition to planting trees such as mahogany, jatoba or others, allow planning for sustainable exploitation of forests.
According to the executive, the machine can plant 16,000 trees in just 3.5 hours, with only three operators. “With 100 machines, it would be possible to plant 1.2 trillion trees in 15 years and contain the greenhouse gas emission problem. The key to the equipment lies in a tiller system that can fix the root of the seedlings in the soil, ”he adds.
However, the difficulty of mass planting would be to produce large-scale seedlings, which could be solved by setting up nurseries in several states at the same time, mixing production into 50% native species and 50%. of exotic.
“The natives would remain in place forming the new forests, and the exotic ones years after planting could be cut down for the timber industry. We would solve environmental problems and illegal logging, ”he concluded.
Devastated areas
The company works in partnership with rural landowners for large-scale reforestation in devastated areas for regularization of environmental liabilities in exchange for future splitting of timber.
Through CAR (Rural Environmental Registry), the company seeks funding from the Amazon Fund to carry out the work, enable producers to comply with environmental legislation and thus preserve the largest tropical forest in the world.
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