How we produce our food matters. Today, we are eating our planet to death, and farm communities are suffering. But if we can break past our own false imprisonment of beliefs and conventional wisdom, we can realign our production with natural systems and increase farm profits and resilience. We still stand a fighting chance. We have a real opportunity to eat our planet back to health, but we need to take action now.”
— Karn Manhas, Founder & CEO, Board Member, Terramera; 2021 Ag Innovation Showcase Speaker
KARN MANHAS
CEO and Founder
Terramera
CEO and Founder of Terramera, Karn Manhas is a leader in the AgTech industry, pioneering the application of revolutionary technologies that transform how we grow food and solve other world-scale challenges. A biotechnologist, entrepreneur, and environmentalist, Karn’s mission is to reduce global synthetic chemical loads in agriculture by 80% while improving global farm productivity by 20%.
Karn was inspired to start Terramera after winning a friendly argument over whether pests like bed bugs could be controlled using non-toxic, natural ingredients. What started as curiosity-fuelled research in the summer of 2009—exploring how a natural extract he’d read about, neem oil, could be used to control insects — evolved into a new area of science and the beginning of Terramera and their Actigate™ Targeted Performance technology. Today, Terramera is pairing its Actigate technology with digital innovations, such as data science and machine learning, to allow natural alternatives to become more effective, reduce global synthetic chemical loads, and revolutionize agriculture in the process.
Karn is an accomplished public speaker who has appeared at TEDx Vancouver, Unreasonable, and Singularity University. He is also a former MLA in the B.C. Legislature in the riding of Port Coquitlam-Burke Mountain. Karn holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from McGill University and a law degree from the University of British Columbia.
