The Nature Conservancy & RA Capital Management’s Planetary Health team systematically identify risks and opportunities in a hidden $15T global industry
BOSTON, May 27, 2025 /GlobalNewswire/ -- RA Capital Management’s Planetary Health Team and The Nature Conservancy have released a groundbreaking analysis that exposes agriculture as the most resource-intensive industry on Earth: it’s the leading contributor to methane emissions, a key driver of water pollution, and it uses roughly half of viable land on Earth. As agriculture is often viewed in silos, its $15T scale and opportunity are often overlooked. The just-released Agriculture Map by RA Capital Management’s Planetary Health team and The Nature Conservancy calls for a systems-level approach to address the urgent risks and transformative opportunities within agriculture through innovation, incentives to change, and direct investment.
The Agricultural Map highlights:
"Agriculture is the backbone of our global economy, but it’s also the most resource-intensive and environmentally demanding industry on Earth. If we are serious about tackling climate change, water pollution, and food security, we must rethink how we grow, produce, and manage our resources. Sustainable solutions are not just an option – they are a necessity to transform agriculture into a cleaner, more efficient, and resilient industry that can feed the world for generations to come,” noted Kyle Teamey, managing partner, RA Capital Planetary Health.
Details within the Agriculture Map provide decision-makers with the knowledge they need to navigate the future of agriculture, from sustainable investment strategies to policy reform and innovation in farming technologies. The findings challenge conventional wisdom and call for urgent and coordinated attention from businesses, investors, governments, and philanthropic organizations. The map is a culmination of extensive research led by RA Capital and The Nature Conservancy. It combines proprietary data analysis with a systems-level approach to visualize and communicate the scale and interconnectedness of global agriculture’s planetary impacts while highlighting a range of potential solutions for select problems.
"The environmental and human health challenges posed by the food system are well-understood in some circles but making this information material and actionable to stakeholders can be a real challenge," said Stephen Wood, Senior Scientist of Agriculture and Food Systems at The Nature Conservancy. "This map makes it possible for non-experts to quickly understand the scope and scale of the problem, as well as the solutions."
The full map is available for download at Agriculture: Hiding in Plain Sight.
About RA Capital Management
Founded in 2004, RA Capital Management is a multi-stage investment manager dedicated to evidence-based investing in public and private healthcare, life sciences, and planetary health companies. RA Capital creates and funds innovative companies, from private seed rounds to public follow-on financings, allowing management teams to drive value creation from inception through commercialization and beyond. RA Capital's knowledge engine is guided by its TechAtlas internal research division, and Raven, RA Capital's healthcare incubator, offers entrepreneurs and innovators a collaborative and comprehensive platform to explore the novel and the re-imagined. RA Capital has more than 150 employees and over $10 billion in assets under management.
RA Capital’s Planetary Health team focuses on creating and funding companies that commercialize scalable, profitable solutions to reduce emissions, increase resource availability, and restore environmental quality, because solutions that heal the planet will yield both healthy people and healthy profits.
About The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy is a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. Guided by science, we create innovative, on-the-ground solutions to our world’s toughest challenges so that nature and people can thrive together. We are tackling climate change, conserving lands, waters and oceans at an unprecedented scale, providing food and water sustainably and helping make cities more sustainable. The Nature Conservancy is working to make a lasting difference around the world in 81 countries and territories (40 by direct conservation impact and 41 through partners) through a collaborative approach that engages local communities, governments, the private sector, and other partners. To learn more, visit
nature.org
or follow
@nature_press on X.
Media Contact
Alex Banat for RA Capital
racapital@v2comms.com
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