World Solve

High real estate costs and energy requirements hinder vertical farming and aquaponics from providing cheap, fresh produce to low-income urban populations.

Commercial seaweed farming faces high initial equipment costs and fragile processing supply chains, delaying its potential for carbon sequestration.

As young generations move to cities, historic mountain farming terraces are abandoned, leading to unchecked soil erosion and landslides.

Antibiotics are widely used in livestock farming to prevent disease and promote growth, contributing significantly to antibiotic resistance in humans. Reducing this use without harming farmers' livelihoods remains a persistent unresolved challenge.

Poor farming practices and deforestation are wearing away fertile topsoil faster than nature can rebuild it, threatening long-term food production. A scalable solution to reverse this trend remains unresolved globally.

In hot, dry climates, a significant portion of irrigation water is lost to evaporation before it ever reaches crop roots. Affordable ways to reduce this loss could ease water stress in agriculture-heavy dry regions.

Raising cattle and other livestock produces a significant share of global methane emissions, yet meat remains a major part of diets worldwide. A lower-emission farming method that doesn't require giving up meat entirely remains unsolved.

Various criteria like intelligence, capacity to suffer, or self-awareness have been proposed to justify different treatment, but none commands universal agreement. This unresolved question shapes debates over animal rights and factory farming.

Bee populations have declined sharply in many regions, partly due to pesticide exposure, threatening the pollination that much of global food production depends on. A farming approach that protects both crops and pollinators remains incomplete.

Soil erodes far faster than it naturally regenerates in many farming regions, threatening long-term food production capacity. Reversing this imbalance at a global scale remains an unresolved agricultural and environmental challenge.

Crop residue and animal waste could theoretically be converted into biogas or other clean energy sources, but the infrastructure needed remains too costly for many farms to adopt. Scaling this technology affordably remains an unresolved opportunity.

Tropical forests host a huge share of the world's biodiversity, and converting this land for farming, even when done for legitimate food needs, often results in permanent species loss. Balancing food production with biodiversity protection remains unresolved.

Conventional cotton farming uses significant water and pesticides, and while more sustainable methods exist, they remain a small share of overall global production. Scaling sustainable practices to become the industry norm remains unresolved.

Factory farming, animal testing, and habitat destruction all cause animal suffering for human benefit, but there's no consistent ethical standard for how much suffering is acceptable and why. This gap shows up in inconsistent laws and practices worldwide.

Droughts, floods, and shifting seasons are making traditional farming less reliable in many regions. Crops that can handle this unpredictability are essential to keeping global food supply stable.

Fish farming was supposed to relieve pressure on wild fisheries, but many farms still rely on wild-caught fish for feed. A truly sustainable seafood system would need to break that dependency entirely.

Modern farming often strips soil of nutrients faster than nature can replace them, threatening long-term food production. A farming method that restores rather than depletes soil could secure food supply for generations.

Even the best robots struggle with uneven terrain, sudden obstacles, or tasks requiring fine motor control that animals handle instinctively. Closing this gap would open up robotics for disaster response, farming, and elder care.

Develop indicators, incentives, and farming practices that preserve soil fungi, invertebrates, microbes, and structure while sustaining production.

Develop land-use, compensation, farming, and hydrological strategies that allow rivers to absorb floods without simply eliminating rural livelihoods.