Luxury fashion brand Balenciaga aims to raise awareness about regenerative agriculture through its Regenerative Agriculture Experience, which lets smartphone users farm crops in augmented reality.
The experience is available for free by visiting the Balenciaga website on an iOS or Android device. There, visitors can choose one of two playable characters and place a virtual farm into the AR world in front of them on their device’s screen.
Users can tap on the screen to move their characters throughout the virtual environment. The experience guides visitors through the process of planting seeds, watering crops and more while teaching them about topics such as intercropping and composting.
As part of this promotion, Balenciaga said it “will invest in eDNA, an innovative technology developed to measure and monitor biodiversity by detecting traces of DNA in the environment.”
The Balenciaga website reads, “Certain agricultural strategies can be used to sustain or improve a habitat’s health, but without accurate data and metrics, it is difficult to know if these strategies are in fact working. This is why eDNA technology plays an important role in restoring ecosystems.”
