Quantum Computing and Agriculture. Optimization for our Food Supply.
Opportunities for quantum computing and the need for quantum governance
The first plant I ever had was a braided hibiscus tree. I just finished five years of sea duty aboard the USS Iwo Jima (LHD-7) and with my newfound and land-bound freedom, I wanted a plant. I knew nothing about caring for a plant, but my tree and I were off on a journey. I cared for the tree, repotting it, fighting an aphid infestation, putting it out on my balcony when it was nice enough, and generally caring for my herbaceous roomie. I made a lot of mistakes, but we got through it together and I’m happy to report that my tree had a long and happy life.
Around the same time, a friend of mine from the USS Iwo Jima bought me a birthday gift that would change my life. It was a copy of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Neither of us had college degrees at the time, but my friend had an interest in physics from high school. I never took physics in high school but found the subject endlessly interesting. When I read A Brief History of Time, I did so with a dictionary open on the couch next to me.
A birthday gift from the local Barnes and Noble and a potted tree would without hyperbole set my life on a trajectory that is still reflected today. It would also provide a wonderful perspective from which to write about the convergence of quantum computing and agriculture.
Decades later, I have a bookshelf full of physics books and a vegetable garden in my front yard. Tending my garden, I think often of the hibiscus tree that grew with me in my apartment while I pursued my undergraduate education. Quantum computing is a topic about which I am often asked and for which I have spent years building policy and strategy at the federal level. Many of the conversations I have about quantum are about the threats. I’m glad we talk about the threats because not enough people are. But I try to balance those discussions with highlights of the opportunities. I knew the answer to it back in my apartment in Virginia Beach before I understood quantum computing fully.
Sunflower in the author’s garden
The convergence of quantum computing with agriculture may be one of the most significant applications of quantum computing outside of its ability to break asymmetric encryption. Even though humans have been refining agriculture for over ten thousand years, the complexities and variables from the weather to the soil environment continue to bedevil us. The growth in global population plus the unequal disbursal of arable lands globally mean that we need to produce more food. Smart agriculture systems are helping us refine watering, fertilizer, and plant health but will pale in comparison to what a quantum computer do at scale. If ever there was a reason to prioritize quantum computing and build the right governance and risk management structures around it, it is agriculture.
12,000 Years and Still Making Mistakes
“I’m glad we don’t depend on the garden for our food.”
This is a frequent quote from my wife during the growing season.
I was telling her recently that every year can be classified as the year of something. One year we had the pumpkin plant that grew onto our front porch. This year we have a volunteer corn plant. Last year was the black death for brassicae.
Brassica is a genus of plants that includes kale, broccoli, and cauliflower. We’ve grown them before in our raised bed garden with unimpeded southern exposure. For reasons that are still not clear to me, we lost every brassica we planted. No signs of the usual suspects like cabbage loopers, just dead plants.
This is a familiar tale for anyone that has gardened casually or farmed commercially. Despite your best efforts, sometimes things just go sideways. There are entire university programs dedicated to mitigating agricultural issues that are the culmination and very bleeding edge of 12,000 years of human agricultural learning and practice. Why?
Agriculture is complex and highly dependent on local variables. It’s exactly the kind of problem that quantum computers will be perfect for.
Smart Agriculture is not the End
The specific reasons my wife is pleased that we do not depend only on our garden for sustenance are many and varied. Big problems are often preferable because they are spotted and sometimes mitigatable. Smaller problems are the ones that really get you. Things like an imbalance in macro or micronutrients or variances in microclimates. Not enough water is bad just like too much water is bad. Too much fertilizer will kill your plants quicker than a lack. There are also legions of pests and critters that are awaiting your ripest tomato.
I speak of course from the perspective of someone growing a small garden, but this illustrates the issues that exist and are magnified by multiple orders of magnitude for macroeconomically significant farming. The kind of farming we need to provide food for the world’s growing population while its arable land is decreasing in many parts of the world.
Smart agriculture is taking care of some of this.
But smart agriculture can’t cover it all. Smart systems are helping to pinpoint the right amount of water and fertilizer for a given plant and even rotate the plants for optimum sunlight. These are massive improvements in our ability to produce food efficiently, but there’s another wave coming.
Fertilizer from Another Century
Smart agriculture will improve our ability to deploy the right amounts of fertilizer, but we are still making fertilizer the way we did in 1909. It’s called the Haber Bosch Process and it is an artificial nitrogen fixing process that creates the vast majority of ammonia used for fertilization. One of the frustrating things about Earth is that its atmosphere is FULL of nitrogen, but that’s not where we need it. We need it in the ground for our plants. Legumes fix nitrogen in soil, but that’s slow and difficult to effectively execute at scale. Instead, we need to do it artificially so thanks to our German friends Fritz Haber and Bosch.
There’s a problem with this picture. We haven’t fundamentally changed how we produce fertilizer, which also means we are using fundamentally the same fertilizer. A quantum computer could help us create new fertilizers and new processes for nitrogen fixing using its vast computing power. Smart agriculture systems will be able to deliver the correct amounts of a highly optimized fertilizer that will result in a much higher and more consistent crop yield directly addressing part of my wife’s concern.
Want to really upset a local gardener? Start spraying with pesticides. Why do they get upset? Because those pesticides also kill important insects like ladybugs and bees. Future pesticides could be engineered to only harm the harmful and let our wonderful pollinators roam free. As a beekeeper, this hits my heart.
Optimization at the Atomic Level
Quantum computers are especially good at complex optimization problems and that’s exactly what agriculture is. Between the weather, the soil, the critters, and other maladies that befall our delicious produce, there’s a lot to worry about. There’s also a lot of data on crops going back centuries.
Smarter Planting and Harvesting: Quantum computers will be able to analyze a vast number of variables—including soil composition, weather forecasts, and market demand—to determine the most optimal planting and harvesting schedules.
Precision Resource Management: By processing real-time data from an array of sensors, quantum systems can dictate the precise amount of water, fertilizer, and pesticides needed for individual plants or small zones within a field. This "hyper-precision" agriculture will drastically reduce waste, lower operational costs, and minimize the environmental footprint of farming.
Streamlined Supply Chains: The journey from farm to table is fraught with logistical complexities. Quantum computing can optimize supply chain routes, reduce spoilage, and ensure that food reaches consumers more efficiently, leading to less waste and lower costs.
Entanglement
Gardening is a labor of love. Industrial farming is a necessity. Over 12,000 years of human history, our connection to cultivating plants for food production is a part of our DNA and a part of the DNA of the plants we’ve optimized. Most people look at healthy and prolific gardens and admire them as beautiful. Vast wheat fields with a huge combine driving down the middle is seen as a sign of bounty and excitement. These feelings aren’t modern. Humans have looked at agriculture this way for centuries, building festivals around the harvest. This connection is in our DNA. At the atomic level. We can’t escape it, so let’s take it to the next level.
While the conversations around the quantum threat to cryptography continue, we should discuss how quantum computers can help us. They will be able to analyze financial markets and global supply chains, but improved agriculture is something that impacts us all.
The full realization of quantum computing's potential in agriculture is still on the horizon, the journey has already begun. In the near term, we can expect to see the rise of hybrid quantum-classical approaches. These systems will leverage the strengths of both technologies, using quantum processors to tackle specific, complex calculations within a larger classical computing framework.
Collaborations between quantum computing companies and agricultural technology firms, like the one between D-Wave and Verge Ag, are already paving the way for practical applications. As quantum hardware becomes more powerful and accessible, the transformative impact on the agricultural sector will only continue to grow, ushering in a new era of intelligent, sustainable, and resilient farming.
It's funny what experiences set you down paths in your life. It is gratifying to grow some of my own food, and it builds community along my street. Industrial farming isn’t designed to build communities, it is designed for sustenance. Quantum computers will have the ability to optimize our crop yields beyond our current smart agriculture concepts. We need to get the governance and risk management for quantum computing right before we can entrust it to our crops.
Our connection to our crops and our food is at the atomic level and quantum computers will help us realize this connection in new ways. It’s like how a braided hibiscus tree and copy of a physics book helped me find my connection to these issues. Thanks, Pete.