With farmers around the world facing unprecedented challenges from radical climate change while struggling to produce more food for a growing global population, they are resorting to prophylactic pesticide use, making crop yields become more unpredictable.

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Israeli agtech startup InnerPlant was founded in 2018 with the vision of revolutionizing farming by developing genetically adapted living sensors that would help farmers grow plants more sustainably, cutting their reliance on pesticides and fertilizer.

InnerPlant delivers this flow of data by tapping the natural defenses of plants, which have evolved sophisticated defense mechanisms to protect themselves from environmental stresses. InnerPlant piggybacks on these signals by adding a safe protein, long studied for human consumption, to plants' capabilities. When plants are thirsty, short of nutrients, or under attack by pests or fungi, they generate different optical signals that can be seen in daylight using common optical filters on devices ranging from an iPhone or tractor to a satellite.

On Friday, InnerPlant announced a successful $5.65 million seed + pre-seed funding round, led by MS&AD Ventures, the investment arm of the Japanese insurance titan MS&AD Insurance Group, with participation from Bee Partners, Up West, and TAU Ventures.

Farmers routinely see up to 20% of their harvests destroyed by pathogens that could have been controlled with earlier detection and more responsive, plant-specific interventions. InnerPlant's approach to collecting data directly from plants and its use of advanced algorithms to process the data provides plant-by-plant status that cannot be secured through external sensors.

"Enabling crops to express their needs finally brings the data revolution to the farmer's field in a way that fits with how they're already working," says Shely Aronov, founder and of InnerPlant.

"Rather than installing hardware across fields, farmers continue planting crops the way they always have and our platform pulls data directly from individual plants to provide farmers with insight into stresses so resources like pesticides and fertilizers are used only when needed," Aronov explains.

Nimrod Cohen, managing partner at TAU Ventures, said, "We are happy to support Shely and her exceptional venture from the start. InnerPlant has real potential to become a large company which will impact one of the biggest problems in the world. with Shely, the sky is the limit."

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The deal encompasses three large-scale projects to build irrigation systems based on the model of community irrigation, supplying 66 villages and a 50,000-hectare (123,500 acre) area in Karnataka.

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Irrigation communities make it economically feasible to carry out comprehensive and large-scale infrastructure projects, allowing each farmer to benefit from a technologically advanced irrigation system that suits his needs.

"Especially in these days of global crisis, this new mega-deal in India represents a vote of confidence in Netafim, its solutions and accomplishments. The uniqueness of these projects is in their community model, which along with local government involvement enables a huge number of farmers and villages to improve their livelihoods. The Indian government has always been extremely supportive of the agricultural sector, and now more than ever this support is important for securing the economic stability of local farmers and food security in the country," said president and CEO of Netafim Gaby Miodownik.

"These projects deploy NetBeatTM systems for digital farming, which enables real-time control of the irrigation systems using cloud technologies and allows access from any mobile device. Netafim intends to expand the community irrigation project model to other countries characterized by a large number of small farmers," Miodownik said.

Netafim joined forces with India's Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) to deploy the projects over a two-year period, and supply technical and agronomic support for an additional five years.

Netafim will also train the farmers to operate the advanced systems. Crops planned for the area include onion, chili pepper, corn, peanuts, beans, and sunflowers.

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Pressures from global warming could intensify political tensions, unrest and conflict, fuel violent extremism and break down government security systems, the experts said in a report by the Center of Climate and Security, a nonpartisan policy institute.

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War-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East were cited as most at risk, but industrialized regions are vulnerable, it said.

"Even at scenarios of low warming, each region of the world will face severe risks to national and global security in the next three decades," the report said.

"Higher levels of warming will pose catastrophic, and likely irreversible, global security risks over the course of the 21st century."

Concerns over the impact of climate change have led to calls to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow the pace of global warming amid instances of climate-related extreme weather such as wildfires and floods.

A United Nations report last year warned of dire consequences as well.

The research released on Monday warned of displaced populations driven from their homes by rising heat, drought and dwindling water and food supplies.

Disease would spread, and border security and infrastructure would break down as resources grow more scarce, fueling extremism, crime and human trafficking, it said.

"We're really looking at a bleak future if we see more and more countries become fragile," said Rod Schoonover, a former intelligence analyst and co-author of the report, who spoke at a briefing about the report.

Panel members included former US government security officials and climate security experts.

The experts assessed threats under two scenarios – if the planet warmed by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius or by 2 to 4 degrees Celsius – by the end of the century.

The UN has warned that if emissions are not drastically lowered, the average global temperature will increase by 4 degrees Celsius by then.

A global pact to fight climate change was agreed upon in Paris in 2015 that aimed to keep the earth's temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has initiated efforts to pull the United States out of the Paris pact.

"I don't mean to be a doomsayer, but this is bad stuff," said retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, a former US Army chief of staff, who spoke at the briefing but was not directly involved in the report.

"My question is, 'Is the US going to lead or are we going to stand around and watch?'" he said. "We need someone to step up and say 'I'll do it. Send me.'"

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But the good news is short-lived in this part of the world, where residents of the two countries struggle to cope with seemingly never-ending violence and turmoil amid Syria's civil war and attacks by remnants of the Islamic State group. Now, even in areas where conflict has subsided, fires have been raging in farmers' fields, depriving them of valuable crops.

The blazes have been blamed alternately on defeated ISIS militants who are seeking to avenge their losses, or on Syrian government forces battling to rout other armed groups. Thousands of acres of wheat and barley fields in both Syria and Iraq have been scorched by the fires during the harvest season, which runs until mid-June.

"The life that we live here is already bitter," said Hussain Attiya, a farmer from Topzawa Kakayi in northern Iraq.

"If the situation continues like this, I would say that no one will stay here. I plant 500 to 600 acres every year. Next year, I won't be able to do that because I can't stay here and guard the land day and night."

ISIS militants have a history of implementing a "scorched earth policy" in areas from which they retreat or where they are defeated. It's "a means of inflicting collective punishment on those left behind," said Emma Beals, an independent Syria researcher.

ISIS militants claimed responsibility for burning crops in their weekly newsletter, al-Nabaa, saying they targeted farms belonging to senior officials in six Iraqi provinces and in Kurdish-administered eastern Syria, highlighting the persistent threat from the group even after its territorial defeat.

ISIS said it burned the farms of "the apostates in Iraq and the Levant" and called for more.

"It seems that it will be a hot summer that will burn the pockets of the apostates as well as their hearts as they burned the Muslims and their homes in the past years," the article said. Hundreds of acres of wheat fields around Kirkuk in northern Iraq were set on fire. Several wheat fields in the Daquq district in southern Kirkuk burned for three days straight last week.

Farmers in the village of Ali Saray, within Daquq's borders, struggled to put out the blazes. The militants had laid land mines in the field, so when help arrived in the village of Topzawa Kakayi, the explosives went off and seriously wounded two people, according to the local agriculture department and farmers.

In eastern Syria's Raqqa province, farmers battled raging fires with pieces of cloth, sacks and water trucks. Piles of hay burned and black smoke billowed above the fields.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 74,000 acres (30,000 hectares) of farmland in Hassakeh, Raqqa and all the way to Aleppo province to the west, were burned.

Activist Omar Abou Layla said local Kurdish-led forces failed to respond to the fires in the province of Deir el-Zour, where ISIS was uprooted from its last territory in March, deepening the crisis.

Other residents accuse the Syrian government, which used to earn millions from the wheat trade in eastern Syria, of sparking the fires to undermine the Kurdish-led administration, which now operates independently of the central government.

Kurdish authorities acknowledge they have few capabilities to deal with the arsons.

In Raqqa, where most of the residents rely on agriculture, farmers were preparing for a good harvest. Ahmed al-Hashloum heads Inmaa, Arabic for Development, a local civil group that supports agriculture. He said rainfall levels were more than 200% higher than last year, causing many to return to farming.

But what promised to be a good year turned into a "black one," said al-Hashloum, who said western Raqqa was worst hit by the fires. All it takes is a cigarette butt to set haystacks on fire, he pointed out.

"It doesn't need a bomb or fuel," he said.

Estimates based on local farmers suggest that nearly 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) in Raqqa province were set on fire, valued at $9 million, he said.

In western Syria, a government military offensive against the country's last rebel stronghold has also left thousands of acres of farms in ashes, in what activists and experts say is a calculated move to deny the locals livelihood and force them to leave the enclave, home to 3 million people.

Beals, the Syria expert, said the government used similar tactics when it besieged Daraya and eastern Ghouta, other rebel areas outside of the Syrian capital, Damascus, eventually forcing the fighters to surrender as early as 2015 and 2016. Throughout the conflict, various warring parties have used food crops as a way of controlling the population.

Beals said crop burning in rebel-held Idlib province in northern Syria is likely the latest chapter in this playbook and "will impact food security and the ability to eke out a small living for some." She added that the scale of crop burning is much larger in Idlib than in other areas.

One Idlib activist, Huthaifa al-Khateeb, estimated that as much as 60% of 185,000 acres (75,000 hectares) of wheat and barley have been burned. Olive and pistachio groves have largely been spared, he said.

Satellite images provided by the Colorado-based Maxar Technologies show significant damage to crop fields in Idlib and Hama, calling it a "scorched earth campaign."

The U.N. said the fires are threatening to disrupt normal food production cycles and potentially reduce food security for months to come. Whether intentional or collateral damage, crop burning on this scale will damage soil and have adverse effects on the health of civilians in the province, where respiratory diseases are already high in the overcrowded western Syrian enclave.

Syria had suffered a dire pre-war draught that left the country and the region that traded with it in worsening food insecurity. The crop burning remains localized and can't be compared to pre-war devastation, Beals said.

"However, it is only the beginning of the summer and if the fires continue it could lead to a crisis," Beals said.

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