i, you know, or this, i know we are not afraid to have some delicate topic. african population is growing fast. and young people clearly have the solution to future loans. is 77 percent every weekend on d w. ah, ah, ah. we are losing the ground beneath our feet because our soil is in trouble. over the past century, we've treated it like dirt. we've abused it with ploughing,

tilling and too much fertilizer. now soil erosion is threatening our food production. how could tiny microbes help save the soil that our planet depends on more in that in a bit. and also coming up on the show, feeding fish with a phone, the tech company, promising bigger profits for fish farmers building better. the startup reinventing one of the world's biggest fuel to a mattress and robots, to the rescue. the helpers that could and the construction crisis. welcome to this addition of made d w's business magazine. for most of us, this rotten apple looks like it belongs and the trash worms are, and all that popular neither are mold and fung guy. and then there are all these other micro organisms that have long and complicated names. but microbes can be incredibly useful and not just in the lab where they can be cultured. tiny

organisms have been assigned a big task, bringing our soil back to life. thus, because microbes can be miraculous, they can help deliver new trans, the plans breakdown, waste and birth foil fertility was the ground beneath their feet and trouble. we have to make the most of microbes. we took a closer look. right now. these are living on your body, but don't worry, they're supposed to be there. they're micro and the planet is covered in them. and there are tons of them in the soil because they literally make fertilizer for plants. these are some of the only things on earth that can do this. we depend on soil for almost all of the food that we eat. and because 90 percent of the planet soil could be degraded by 2050 scientists and even agribusiness think microbes could be key to hurting a food crisis. so let's take a journey to the invisible world right under our noses and our feet. to see

what happens to soils when microbes the out of whack, we can look back to the 1930s in the united states that there's replace native grasses with farmland and then intensively tilt which killed microbes and degraded swell after a series of droughts. the damage soil was easily picked up by the wind and turn it to so called black blizzards. millions of tons of top swell just blew away in what came to be known as the dust bowl. although farming methods have changed, somewhat soil degradation is still a global problem. what we are doing basically is destroying the soil and no and not renewable resources. what we have been doing so far in the last 2 and the navy, east, you out at the strike to grow plan. we've been under valuing them and expecting them to stay healthy,

but tilling over using chemicals and climate change are harming our soil. this is a problem for growing food, as well as resources for clothing and construction. soil is also key to storing carbon and filtering water to make so else healthy again, we need to start seeing them as what they are. entire ecosystems, teaming with hidden life, all run by my groups. all this under our feet as top soil where most of the insects and microbes live along with plant roots and small animals. one gram of this can contain millions of microbes. and a few worms, healthy soil have a diversity of my groups. the most common ones are bacteria and fun guy. one of their most important jobs is transforming nutrients. every single nutrients, thoughtful on the planet, is mostly driven by microscope. none of these cycle that really exists in a vacuum. they all into one of those nutrients cycles. as with carbon,

plants and animals, i mean mostly carbon. and when they die, they're broken down. my micro know microbes, no decomposition. the microbes use some of the carbon to reproduce, storing it in the soil, and breathe the rest of it out, sending it back to the atmosphere. another nutrients cycle happens with the nitrogen, which makes most of the air around us, and is one of the main nutrients plants used to grow. plants can't get it from the air by themselves, so they partner with microwaves. and we can find evidence of the nutrients cycle by looking at certain plants like these beans, which are considered nitrogen. fixing the beans create these little root nodules that become home to a certain type of bacteria. in return, they change nitrogen into a form that plants can access microbes, specifically fund guy, also exchange other nutrients of plants. they have very fine routes called hifi. the intertwined themselves with the roots at the plant. the fungus is really good at releasing things like spots for the site from flow,

which is the plan to get up. so it does that n exchanges that with the plan in return for things like sugar, which the plant can make refers. and there's also some evidence this relationship makes the plant more able to withstand drought and disease in a degraded soil. these new chain cycles aren't working as well as they could be. climate change is one cause of degrading soils with drought and extreme weather, causing them to dry out in a road intensive. agriculture can be another cause. as pesticides in ur, besides kill off beneficial microbes and reduce their activity. the more degraded soil is the more chemicals are needed to grow stuff degrading the soil even further . this whole plot of land was intensively farm for 30 years. and you can really see it in the soil. it's super sandy, dry and degraded. degraded soils also lose their ability to hold and filter water

are more susceptible to erosion and have less of those beneficial microbes, meaning plans don't grow as well. but soil health is about more than just our food security. boyle community health is actually the foundation of all persistence, but natural and man. if the nation of something crumble, everything else comes tumbling down and agriculture might actually hold the key to making our soils healthy. again, the same plot of land, not so far from the degraded bit years of regenerative agriculture have brought back a lot of microbial activity. the soil looks completely different. this farm is a best practice example. no chemicals are you those fund guy hifi which are important for soil structure that can be a kilometer of them and a grams, soil and cover crops planted to leave in the ground by micros of carbon to chow, down on as well as producer rosen and nutrient las unfortunately,

this kind of farming just isn't possible everywhere. you can do it from best thinking of what we want, that the ballroom a vast amount of areas where the store and we sell this gravy. that the techniques on multi now to recover the soil in due time. here's microbes come in a larger scale. the most common use is bio fertilizers. they use like chemical base fertilizer if they contain fund guy or bacteria. soil degredation is a big enough threat that bear a company known personally, i will. cultural chemicals is also interested. they are always in countries by good, which is certainly certainly help to review can be converted to company is also investing in seeds

that have been infused with micro because delivering microbes along with seeds is the most targeted way to apply them. seats can also be planted with a coating of microbes, conservation organizations are using this approach to restore ecosystem. a problem with commercial microbial products is that the microbes are not specifically adapted to environment. non native microbes could find it hard to survive, rendering the process useless. and because these are living organisms, they could cause an imbalance in the micro biome. we see something we, we really have to, to taking concentration specially. we found a grad faster and they are more teaching science even better agrees because they doesn't necessarily need automatically. i'm not, i'm not since soils are different around the world when ideally develop microbial

products for specific regions. but that will take time and more research. unfortunately, our soil health is an emergency. we are going to need. we actually govern the cheapest way to recovery because we are covering them while we are maintaining the tv. so for large firms, bio fertilizers are a step above chemicals and where possible agriculture that relies on helping native my groups like on this farm is the way to go. my crops can help us feed the world for many years to come. but even though we are ready produce enough food to feed every one, it's estimated that $1.00 and $3.00 people are malnourished worldwide. at the same time, many who do have access to enough food don't eat the right things, and there's no house looked into how the world feeds itself. food we eat either too much or too little or the wrong kind. adequate safe and nutritious food

for every one. it's a fundamental right in a 162 countries. and yet, so many around the world have too little to eat. 800000000 people go hungry worldwide, especially in africa, asia, and latin america. and that number's rising, yet many people eat much more than they need. almost 2 thirds of the world's adults are overweight or even obese. overeating can lead to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer. in addition to the suffering these illnesses cause they're expensive and damaged the economy. one study suggests that obesity will cost china $10.00 trillion us dollars by 2060. it will cost the u. s. $2.00 trillion dollars and india some $815000000.00. it's often caused by eating the wrong food, something that's true for people living in poverty and the well fed alike. too many

bad carbohydrates, like white bread, white rice, sugar and too much animal fat. all found in popular ready made meals. the foods we eat don't contain enough fiber, protein vitamins or trace elements. and who are the big winners here worldwide? food giants like nestle as well as stock exchange, speculators who bet on basic commodities like rice in weeks. the clear loses of poor people in developing countries who have no choice but to pay those commodity exchange was pandemic. and climate change only add to the misery. and yet none of the world's 8000000000 inhabitants would have to go hungry. there's more than enough food to go round. global agriculture produces assert more calories than i needed to feed the entire world. if food were distributed fairly, everyone could have enough to eat. fresh fish can be part of

a healthy diet and the world has a big appetite for it. the fish farming industry is booming. it's the labor intensive process, but digital technology can help in our smartphone business series, we introduce you to an indonesian startup that wants to revolutionize how we feed our fish. with an app is providing realty surfaces that can help farmers to fit the fish so many can be disconnected to the center that can some of the fish appetite and incense the data to the cloud. and pharmacy can monitor it using the smartphone. hi, my name is gebrina's, eva, i'm c e o. in golf, under of a fishery using the data, we can sell the feet to the farmers and buy directly to ban feet. manufacturers, we provide financing and then we also stake and buy the fish from the farmers and sell it to the buyers. the reason why they use our product is not because this helped them at a very big and apd myself and one to help me. and then at the end of the day they

use it when i used to via catfish farmer. so that's my favorite fisher, a catfish. yeah. we'll saturday, we show it to us officially myself. and when i had the ideal to build the feeder, it was just about, you know, building the feeder for my fish farmers. so, so it's, it's a simple idea. small idea for a small business. most of the agriculture of pharmacy in indonesia, they don't have a good input. for example, the price is fresh up by the middleman. they don't have access to fight formal financing. it was definitely challenging. and the very beginning to farmers that don't have any mobile phone and they don't know the cloud. what, what is cloud cloud is, is in the sky the that for the rain. but what we did is not trying to sell about the technology itself, but tried to convince the farmers that had technology can help their daily basis.

so the very beginning we lent the pharmacy the smartphone, and we educate them on how to use the smart by using this week and replace the most labor intensive processes. the farmers do. we just the feeding and we can feed the fish like $5200.00 times per day. so eventually the fish will grow faster and we can save the feeding cost went to can frequently and all wilken w i th, with why it was born in written joke. i didn't, i hate to come to the top 50, for example, in the top 100 startups in indonesia. most of them are based in jakarta which shows quite a centralization of their talents and centralization of the capital itself. and london, is this a place to be efficient? don't need to be in japan because the wheel is all problems in a rural area. and west is always the biggest fish producers in indonesia.

but they the very beginning. the bird was not kicking off. we ran out of money for 9 months, and i said to my team, then hey, i couldn't pay this month if you still believe in the fishery, please come back next next month. but if you want to find out the work, please do that. what's interesting part of that story is that when i said that to, to my team the day after everyone went to the office and they were like, regularly as usual thing. all of the investors you did, you have me in indonesia and every single one rejected because i pitch this as a niche market. so it's really on scalable and unsexy for many investors. we were lucky enough that we met one investor of venture capital base in netherland that invest only in culture companies. we were their 2nd investment.

the 1st 7 years we only raised less than $5000000.00 we. we just raised like 19000000 to 20000000 over the past like 2 or 3 years. we've already leading the market right now. i like sport, sport is the only additional outside work that i that i do. then that keeps me not just healthy, but my mind a fresh because i started my date of working out. and then after that i have massive energy to then getting things done throughout the day. so my advice for the future funders is so fundamental and important problems, not just follow trends, follow the problems and software with technology. solving

a problem with technology is also the mancha of our next report, which is all about concrete concrete and the cement that goes into it are one of the biggest carbon emitters in the world. it's production alone releases much more c o 2 than the aviation industry. for example. at the same time concrete is essential for building housing. a tricky situation i called for creative solutions . start up in berlin has found an answer, using artificial intelligence to help cement and concrete gogreen. these small bits of rock have a big impact on the environment. they're being processed into cement, which involves heating them to 1450 degrees celsius. so cement and the concrete, it goes into produce huge amounts of c o. 2, they approach benner has developed a less environmentally damaging method of producing concrete. yep. and my renewal

with concrete and cement the industry is responsible for 8 percent of global c. o. 2 emissions, that's a major problem. and one i want to saw message also flows. most of the co founder of the startup alchemy comes from a family that has been making cement in concrete for decades. spinners plan is to fine tune the cement manufacturing process and to carry that forward into concrete manufacturing. good, and each concrete mixture is the product of many ingredients and variables. else me is developed a i based software to help optimize and de carbonized these recipes, planted with phone, look, the planet will be uninhabitable for our children, for my children on the it's in the next 5 to 10 years. there's a lot of leverage to change that illness. the cement and concrete industry is responsible for 8 percent of global emissions, but it's a lot of leverage. zachary gunners, i have the ai program has come up with an environmentally friendly concrete mix for this high rise building under construction in berlin. but just for to of it's

$37.00 floors because there's still one major drawback. because weaknesses god and also to for the time being low carbon concrete is relatively expensive one because a lot more. oh, can you talk about this? so the extent to which you can use it in a project of this size among is basically a question of money on the in between for this project on it's almost twice as expensive up to stop her to call. it also takes about 30 percent more time to dry with the building. that's 37 stories tall. that's a big financial and time investment. but li approach benner is confident that also me will make it possible to produce low carbon concrete at scale. and that has potential for the open coming green construction industry. one kind of there are favorable loans available for sustainable construction projects. you're more likely to secure property and, and investment. there are also property funds via specifically for sustainable buildings. so in that respect, there's growing pressure for change from now with more environmentally

friendly concrete. nothing should be standing in the way of building more housing. well, not quite. building costs are on the rise world wide and jobs in the construction industry often remain vacant. many parts of the world are facing a construction crisis, but a swift tech business is here to change that their autonomy. robots are helping make the construction industry more efficient. so we'll robots help us build the cities of the future. let's take a look. this ray lunch is lacking on a building site to stick to noise issues force the to have been significant advances in the technology on the digital platforms you time perform. they can work alone in elevator shafts. you've been beaten, we can be a lot quicker with the robot systems than when we drill the usual way. order. robots will transform the construction industry. it could make building less costly

. but what will happen to builders? experts say that simple, but physically strenuous tasks could soon be in the hands of robots. it's already becoming a reality in switzerland. i. robot is in charge of building this framework for concrete reinforcement. these are the last few tests before it goes to market. a completely new kind of robot with just the right touch for the job at hand, owns and puts it in our process, look to the robot presses against the framework, which creates a contact, well, the contact choice from cancer. so there's an algorithm that regulates the amount of force that is needed and load cells, so that the material is applied in a control manner, control you ah, it on its own building. so we're not necessarily trying to be faster or better than

a human down for the robot makes it possible to create a larger variety of shayla williams when, which gives us more flexibility in terms of design to form cable. the rise robot is having its debut in dubai. in skyscrapers it does the work normally done by fittest in elevator shafts. for example, the robot knows which drill bits to use. the hillside, the robot receives the configuration file, meaning a program that is specifically designed for the elevator shaft. it needs to be to recognize its dimensions. you know, how many holes it has to drill and where water? despite the benefits, few of the robots have been sold. the construction industry is conservative and tends to be slow to adopt to innovations everywhere in the world. it's been quite a slow process, but now it's getting underway. and there's no turning back the clock more and more

. robots said, going on the market like robots that can drill ahead. we'll get back to the robotic dog in a minute. robot. so say make building cheaper and faster because they also mean that more and more components can be made in factories. activity taking advantage and on the way we work, we'll change but the jobs won't disappear once all to see demand is high. so high can fairly be met and then until we're now in an interesting period of transformation in which we could reduce costs boy and make it possible for people in the construction industry to work in parallel with robots on science. flushed and often to work in jobs that are more pleasant helps in factories that handle pre fabrication for forecast to go to a hub and the dog is still a prototype. it scans the building site with a laser recording what's been done and spotting where the mistakes have been made.

the rainbow doke is the same. price is a mid range. com. building companies say that the price can be quickly recruit. for example, if it sounds the alarm because the safety fence is missing, another benefit robots can work 247, and don't clock off. at the end of the day. from reviving our depleted soils to reinventing one of the world's biggest polluters, it's been an episode filled with tech driven optimism and ingenuity. remember, you can find all of our reports at d, w dot com slash mate. you can also check out more business stories on the dw news youtube channel. i mother xena. thanks for watching from me and the me team here in berlin. you next time and take care a

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