Quantum for Sustainability in Agriculture
QCentroid:
QCentroid is fostering a stakeholder ecosystem where sustainable transformation and prosperity are incentivized and aligned. We believe that science, data, and exponential technologies will be quintessential in realizing sustainable new ways of working, living, and driving sustainable industry transformation forward.
One of the focus areas of QCentroid is quantum computing for sustainability. In the previous article Quantum Against Climate change, we explored how quantum computing, a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technology that we believe will form the base layer of the future technology stack, can have an exponential impact on the fight against climate change. Please refer back to that article for an introduction to quantum computing and sustainability.
In this article, we explore how quantum computing can bring about sustainable transformation in the agriculture industry.
We hope to inspire collaboration on individual, academic, and industrial scales in this effort. Please reach out to us to inquire about how we can join forces.
Agriculture
Fertilizers play a vital role in sustaining the agricultural produce that is needed to sustain the world's burgeoning population. In fact, access to food, improved nutrition and food-production security is the SDG 2 – Zero Hunger. The approximately 120 million metric tons of fertilizers produced around the world come, however, with a huge environmental price tag: 1-2% of global energy consumption and 3-5% of the world’s gas consumption. The main reason for this is the antiquated Haber-Bosch process, which converts hydrogen and nitrogen to ammonia, that is used in ammonia fertilizer production. This process has not changed in more than a hundred years. The environmental damage due to this process stems from the reaction running at 500 °C and at pressures of up to about 20 MPa, amounting to around 1% of greenhouse gas production, more than all other chemical production processes combined.
To make ammonia fertilizer production and hence food production sustainable, less energy intensive ways of producing ammonia are needed. This is where quantum computing can help us understand and mimic how nature goes about fixating nitrogen from the air as done by many bacteria. Understanding how these bacteria fix nitrogen is a complex task that involves simulating enzymes and proteins that make up such bacteria. Several companies are working on realizing this problem using quantum simulation and quantum AI/ML.
Recognizing the potential of QC, in 2019 BASF invested in Zapata Computing, a quantum computing software maker.
Other uses cases of QC for making the agriculture industry more sustainable include:
· Improved planning and distribution of fertilizer
· Optimization of food warehouse sites
Let’s collaborate!
This article is the third in a series on quantum computing for sustainability. Here we have briefly covered the application of quantum computing to drive sustainable transformation in the mobility and aviation industry forward.
We look forward to feedback regarding this article and learn about further high impact applications of quantum computing in agriculture.
We hope this article inspires collaboration to leverage quantum computing to drive the sustainable transformation of industries. Please reach out to us if you're interested in joining forces.
To learn more about QCentroid, please visit us at www.qcentriod.xyz or by email at info@qcentroid.xyz