Welcome to another week of Shaken Not Burned! 

The food system underpins our entire society. Its stability is crucial: when it starts to wobble, prices rise, availability becomes uncertain, and stress travels quickly from farms to household. 

Yet, much of modern agriculture still operates under deep uncertainty. Farmers spend tens of billions of dollars every year on crop protection chemicals, largely without being able to see how much of what they actually apply reaches the plant. 

When you don't have that visibility, the rational response for many is to manage risk with excess. However, overuse of pesticides has far-reaching impacts not only on ecosystems, but also on human health.

In this week’s episode, Felicia speaks to Vishnu Jayaprakash, founder and CEO of Agzen, an MIT spinout that has developed an AI-based system that measures and controls the amount of chemicals being sprayed on crops. Its technology helps farmers cut chemical use by 30-50 % without sacrificing yields.

The conversation explores the intersection of climate risk, food systems, and the role of technology in making agriculture more efficient and sustainable. Vishnu shares his personal journey into agriculture and what led him to develop Agzen.

Modern agriculture sits at the centre of several global environmental pressures.

Food production accounts for roughly one-third of global greenhouse-gas emissions when the full system is considered, including farming, land-use change, and supply chains.

At the same time, agriculture is the largest user of freshwater, a major driver of deforestation, and a leading cause of biodiversity loss and nutrient pollution. These pressures stem largely from the scale and structure of industrial food systems: large-scale monocultures, intensive livestock production, and heavy reliance on fertilisers and pesticides.

For policymakers and economists, the central challenge is therefore not simply producing more food, but reconciling food production with planetary environmental limits.

Sometimes, the fastest, deepest changes will not come from tearing systems down, but from seeing them more clearly and addressing them differently. Whether making industrial agriculture more precise is a bridge to something better, or a way of prolonging a model that ultimately needs bigger change, is an open question. What is clear is that visibility, accountability and better information shape what's possible.

Further reading:

• The Guardian: Synthetic chemicals in food system creating health burden of $2.2tn a year, report finds

• McKinsey: The agricultural transition: Building a sustainable future

• UNEP: Global Environment Outlook 7

• Earth.org: The Environmental and Health Impacts of Pesticides

• Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews: Environmental cost and impacts of chemicals used in agriculture: An integration of emergy and Life Cycle Assessment

• EEA: How pesticides impact human health and ecosystems in Europe

• American Farm Bureau: Declining Farm Economy Continues to Pressure Profitability

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