Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant and Executive Vice President Jerry Steiner will participate in two separate sessions to discuss agricultural approaches to the global food dilemma. You can watch their presentations and participate live via the Web.

Below is a preview of what you can expect to hear.

Earlier this year, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, companies, development organizations, ministers of agriculture and the environment, and environmental groups discussed  what agriculture in the 21^st century must look like in order to find solutions to hunger, poverty and environmental degradation – issues that affect not only our quality of life but can contribute to civil unrest.

The participants identified goals where agriculture must succeed to meet global needs:

• Improve food security
• Increase agricultural productivity in an environmentally sustainable manner
• Generate economic growth and opportunity.

The key is that the three goals are interrelated and must be pursued simultaneously to address the requirements of billions of more people in the coming decades.

Monsanto’s Contribution

We believe that Monsanto can be a key contributor to one pillar in particular—helping farmers worldwide increase agricultural productivity.

It’s a discussion Monsanto has been having for a couple of years now: the need to produce more and better quality crops while using less resources—all while ensuring farmers reap the benefits. Our goal is to help provide farmers with the necessary tools so they can keep up with the growing demands of society in a sustainable way. Tangibly, this means doubling yields – that’s the output per acre of crops – by 2030 in soybeans, corn, cotton and canola (using the year 2000 as a baseline).  And reducing by 1/3 (per unit produced) the key resources such as land, water and energy required to grow these crops.

When this is achieved, it will be the equivalent of putting an additional 145.5 million acres into production – an area about the size of Texas.

What does that look like?

Here’s what we think is possible in corn, soybean and cotton here in the U.S.:

To see what these numbers look like in other countries (and how farmers are making progress), check out our nifty global map on www.producemoreconservemore.com.

How can it be done?

Not through biotechnology alone. Though biotech gets most of the attention, breeding and agronomic practices have always played a crucial part in improving yields. You can think of it this way (using corn as an example):

• Breeding is mating different corn plants together to create a new corn hybrid that has the best genetic potential, whether that be for yield, disease resistance, etc.
• Biotechnology protects that potential from outside factors that would reduce yield. Those include insect damage and weed competition as well as weather factors. Some farmers think of it as insurance.
• Agronomic Practices – These are the elements within a farmer’s control to again protect and promote that yield (such as irrigation practice, planting population, etc.

Here’s a graphical representation of how those three elements will improve corn yields by 2030:

Historical yield trend would bring the endpoint of the corn yield trend line to approximately 200 bushels/acre on its own. The combination of biotechnology, breeding and agronomic practices will incrementally increase the rate of gain.

It can be done. For example, in the U.S., farmers are doing a great job of increasing their productivity.

• Since 1948, they have increased crop production by 137% by adopting innovative farming practices.
• Between 1970 and 2009, the average corn yield has doubled from approximately 75 bushels/acre to more than 160 bushels/acre in 2009.
• That has reduced the number of acres in production by 25% allowing society to divert the land to other uses.

We hope farmers around the world will have the same choices and access to the innovative tools that U.S. farmers use every day.

What Monsanto executives said this week—including CEO Hugh Grant—was the result of feedback they picked up from meeting with farmers across the U.S. for the past several months. What we heard consistently from these farmers is that they find value in our products and in our technology. But we also heard that our pricing methods on new products such as Genuity Roundup Ready 2 Yield and Genuity SmartStax can be an obstacle for customers who want to try new technologies.

This feedback is partly why we reset our financial goals yesterday, acknowledging that the goal of doubling gross profit from 2007 to 2012 was unlikely.

As Mr. Grant told analysts yesterday:

“We refuse to achieve our growth objectives to the detriment of our customers….we can either make a stubborn push for the targets we’ve set for ourselves and strain those valuable customer relationships – or, we can do more to work with our customers and let the growth come more naturally. That will change some things.  I’d like to say it’s pure altruism, but the reality is it’s the right thing to do for the business – today and tomorrow.”

Moving forward, we’ll be looking at ways we can provide customers with more options to evaluate the technology and then decide the right combination of products for their farm.

**Please note: The comments section has been shut down temporarily until Monday, April 12 due to some maintenance on the site. If you’d like to leave a comment on this post, please check back on Monday.

Tonya Ball stops from her busy schedule for a photo on her tractor.

They’re there from sun up to sun down, operating machinery, cleaning equipment—whatever needs to be done. Tonya Ball, said they work just as hard—if not harder—than most of the boys. They are female farmers, and their role in agriculture is more significant than some may think.

FAO estimates that women produce between 60 to 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world’s food production.

Ball’s husband introduced her to farming seven years ago. In Plainview, Texas, her family grows corn, wheat, milo and cotton.

“I do all of the financial work,” Ball said. “I drive the tractor. I help water. I help plant. I help with harvest. I do everything.”

Ball said women are underestimated in farming.

“People think a woman can’t get the job done, but actually we do it more efficiently,” she said.  “We tear up less equipment, and there are a lot of [male] farmers now that say so. They are hiring more women because we’re alert and pay more attention to detail.”

Ball said during harvest she is up at 8 a.m., helping to prepare the equipment—greasing and cleaning—and out harvesting sometimes until midnight.

“On just a regular farming day, I handle all of the financial things first thing in the morning,” she said. “The bills, banking, getting reports ready for loans, and making sure we can pay out—I take care of all of that. And by mid-morning, I’m on the tractor and I’m there until about 6 or 7 p.m.”

Just like Ball, Cindy Cunningham of Kempton, Indiana, said when the guys are in the field, she is in the field.

“My father was a farmer, and I married a farmer,” Cunningham said.  “My dad raised hogs, and we would help him with feed and stuff, but a lot of my experience came through 4-H. I used to show cattle.”

Cunningham said she currently doesn’t do any tillage work, but in the spring she hauls anhydrous (ammonia) tanks, chemicals, water, and seed during planting. She said she also keeps the tractors going. And in the fall, she runs the grain cart. She is also responsible for finances and keeping the books.

“I enjoy helping my husband with farming,” Cunningham said. “The hours aren’t always the same, and the tasks aren’t always the same. I like the variety.”

And even with the long days and the hard work, both women say they prefer farming over any 9-to-5 job.

“I think it’s great if a woman has an opportunity to be at home, and help their husbands in their farming business,” Cunningham said.

“The reason I do this is because I enjoy it,” Ball said. “It’s challenging, and it gives me some family time I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t involved in farming.

Raegan has worked on Monsanto’s internal communications team for the past two years. She has a bachelor’s degree in communications from Saint Louis University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia. She is currently pursuing a PhD in public policy. In her free time, she loves to volunteer with children.

Cotton emerging from the soil

The unofficial start of planting season got under way today, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its 2010 Prospective Plantings report. It’s an annual report that the agency issues each March 31 as its best estimates on what farmers may plant for corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and many other crops.

The quick highlights:

• A record 78.1 million acres of soybeans
• 88.8 million acres of corn (second-highest on record)
• 53.8 million acres of wheat (lowest since 1970)
• 10.5 million acres of cotton (15 percent higher than 2009)

According to Kansas farmer Darin Grimm, the Plantings report is one of the couple big reports that he follows.

“I pay a fair amount of attention,” said Grimm. “It moves the market. We look to see what affect it will have on prices, so we pay a fair amount of attention. In this case, the numbers are about as expected.”

Illinois farmer Doug Martin said the report gets the year going for farmers.

“I have always had my doubts about the USDA reports because I have always wondered about their accuracy,” he said. “However, it does set a benchmark for the year. I was able to attend the March report a few years ago in (Washington) D.C., and I think that they do their best to get an accurate number.”

The report isn’t swaying Grimm and Martin to change acreage intentions, as they expect their corn and soybean acreage mix to remain the same. The past couple days’ weather has kicked things into high gear on the Grimm farm. After a wet fall and snowy winter, the 70-degree days are just what the Midwest and South needed. Grimm said fall fieldwork has been pushed back to this spring.

“In my area, typically, we will have all our anhydrous (fertilizer) on corn acres in the fall and also do fall herbicide spraying,” he said. “Once we have those operations done, we’re committed to planting corn on those acres.”

That means the Kansas farmers could switch some acres to soybeans, which is why the report is an estimate.

“Right now, there’s a fair amount of nitrogen that needs to go on corn acres, which is unusual for us. It was so wet all fall and winter that we simply didn’t get it down. So if it stays wet, those acres can go to beans more easily.”

Down south, planting is underway from South Texas to South Carolina.  Texas was singled out as the state with the greatest move to cotton, accounting for an extra 600,000 acres of the 10.5 million forecast for 2010. The increase in cotton acres was something farmers have been discussing and optimistic about for months, according to Barry Evans who farms in Kress, Texas on the High Plains.

“Here north of Lubbock we’re cotton & grain so we can move easily how much we plant of cotton, corn and sorghum. I’ll be planting more cotton and expect that as you move north toward Amarillo there will be a greater movement into cotton,” Evans said. The winter provided good moisture on the High Plains and good weather now has lots of people doing field work. He adds that he looks forward to seeing more producers next week at the Plains Cotton Growers annual meeting.

In South Carolina, Thad Wimberly has been busy planting corn in a strip tillage system.  Early spring rains have delayed him a bit but this week has been productive.  “As far as out look we will take 200 acres out of corn and put in more cotton.”

This increase in cotton acres is something most states expect this spring according to the USDA, estimating that only Kansas, Louisiana and Arkansas will see drops.

There’s one common theme among all farmers on March 31 though: excitement for planting.

“We are really excited,” Martin said. “After the last two wet springs. we would like to ‘enjoy’ this planting season. Although with all of last fall’s work still left to do, it will probably be chaotic, unless it quits raining until the middle of May. We are hoping to get some field work started by the weekend, and if we miss Saturday’s rain we will be ready to go full steam ahead.”

“It’s always exciting,” Grimm said. “It’s easy to be optimistic in the spring.”

Planting takes specialized equipment on a small scale for research and development efforts.

Friday afternoon I was trying to reach a coworker.  I looked on the office instant messaging system and a rush came over me – there was an out of office message saying he was planting just outside of Corpus Christi, Texas. Immediate reaction? Pick up the phone and call to see how it’s going!

It’s a high tech version of what has happened for generations. It used to be conversations at the general store or maybe the church social.  It passed from neighbor to neighbor and town to town.  Now, the news gets out quickly & electronically – and for those of us on or connected to the farm, hearing it creates a rush of excitement.  Optimism strikes.

Kendall Bonds, western region testing lead for Monsanto cotton breeding, was the person who started the chain of excitement for me this year. Kendall is leading the effort as we expand our cotton breeding efforts in Texas.

He and his team were planting trials in South Texas where we announced a new testing center that will connect to the new megasite in Lubbock.  By running trials in the south, we can use additional environments to use in breeding and testing cotton varieties.

When I saw his message, shortly after I picked up the phone, I sent out a tweet.  A couple of hours later, I thought to check with a fellow tweeter, Kelly Whatley – @kelly_girl (twitter/blog) – whose husband Jon grows cotton outside of Corpus Christi.

Jon Whatley of J&K farms in Odem, TX takes his 24-row planter to the field.

She replied with “We are finished with grain and moved on to getting the cotton in the ground. Most guys are about the same.  It’s great to be back to productive work after the drought debacle of last year. Love seeing green in the fields!”

After a few more exchanges I found a few photos of Jon running his planter Saturday morning.  Yep, the optimism is there.  I caught it in the out of office mSessages,  read it in the tweets and definitely see it in the photos!

Luke Carpenter, Adam Chavez, Jared Pounds and Scott Tutle pause during planting for a smartphone photo to share.

Planting season is here!

If you are sharing your planting story on twitter, please use the #plant10 hashtag so its easily searched for and if you are blogging about it like Kelly, please share your link in the comments section.  We’d love to see how it’s going in your area.

From left to right; Marcia Craig, Dorothy Dilliner, and Tami Craig-Schilling. Three generations of farm moms and wives.

At a recent farm show, several farm moms came to the Monsanto booth and commented “that they weren’t deserving of Farm Mom recognition” because they weren’t very involved in the farm. When I heard that I smiled because I know all too well that the little things a farm mom does and shrugs off really do make a difference.

If I had asked my grandma if she was a farmer or deserved a farm mom award, she’d probably have smiled and said that my grandpa was the farmer. She was his wife and a mom and did what she could to take care of things. But like so many farm women around Douglas County, Illinois and the entire country, Dorothy Dilliner was a special farm mom.

Dorothy was not the principal operator of the farm or the farm equipment. She didn’t do the marketing or even keep the books…but she was the most important person in my grandpa’s life to ensure his corn and beans ended up at the elevator throughout harvest. My grandma was the regular grain trucker up into her early 70s, sitting at the edge of the field in a tandem truck waiting for my grandpa to dump the combine hopper and make another round. Then she’d be off to the elevator to dump and start the process over day after day each harvest. From the time she became a farm mom to three children, she had them enrolled in 4-H and was a regular fixture at the county fairs as they proudly showed their livestock (and she never missed one of her granddaughter’s show days either).

My mom, Marcia Craig, continued Dorothy’s tradition, but invested her time in keeping the farm records, feeding livestock of all kinds and offering encouragement to my brother and me around the amazing act of raising living things for ourselves and for others. Before my dad would leave for the Olney Livestock sale barn on Tuesdays, my mom would make cheeseburgers, slap them on a recycled Styrofoam tray and wrap them in aluminum foil. When she heard the truck start and livestock trailer doors clang, she would head out the door and down the driveway to lightly toss the sandwiches into the truck cab. For the extra efforts she took, my dad would have the nourishment to buy and sell livestock, working into the evening. It was the little stuff back then, and it still is. And without my mom making the effort, the farm wouldn’t have been the same. And I wouldn’t be the same either.

I’m a farm mom of a different category—one who decided she wanted to explore the off-farm working world for benefits and personal desire. There are many farm wives and moms these days in this category who probably don’t think they fit as a Farm Mom award candidate either. But, you’re a farm mom if…

• You’ve ever held dinner a couple hours after you planned to eat because a hose broke on the tractor
• You’ve ever picked up a crank shaft, gear box, planter part, disk blade or any other mechanical item from the local tractor dealer.
• You’ve ever hauled your kids to a 4-H or FFA meeting, telling them that this was an important part of growing up and knowing how to be a ag leader and good citizen.
• You’ve ever gotten ready to go to a party, dinner or outing with your husband, but had a change of plans once he heard the weather forecast.
• You’ve ever gone to bed wishing for the rain to come or the rain to stop so the seed planted yesterday could make it out of the ground.

If you’ve ever done those things and so much more around the farm and your community, you are a farm mom. There are no standard specifications for Farm Mom. We come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and backgrounds. We might work full-time on the farm with our father, dad, brother, friend or husband. We might work off-farm by day and come home to the farm at night or we might have retired and moved to town to let the next generation assume the role of farmer. Any and all of these Farm Mom categories or more are Farm Mom-worthy. They have made American agricultural the most productive in the world and built rural agrarian values into all those who they have impacted through their life.

Tami is a fifth generation agriculturalist who started her career at the age of three showing livestock and continues it today as Director of Technology Communications with Monsanto. She has served as a Monsanto sales rep and conservation tillage specialist and worked in customer operations. She is most proud of the three children that she and her husband Rodney raise on their corn, soybean and wheat farm in southern Illinois.

Every nine out of 10 years, Iowa farmer Dave Sieck expects the Missouri River to stay in its banks near his farmland in Glenwood, Iowa, about 15 miles south of Council Bluffs. But lately, it’s been a rough run. This is the third year in a run some Sieck and Midwest farmers are facing the threat of flooding.

“It’s a never-ending battle, especially on the bigger rivers,” he said. “We plan on losing a crop once or twice every 10 years.”

Heavy snow totals in the fall and winter and a quick rise in temperatures this spring are leading to massive snow melt. It’s more water than the river banks can handle along the Red River in North Dakota and Minnesota; the Missouri River in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri; and the Mississippi River in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri.

For Sieck, the possibility of flooding means he has to start thinking about his planting plans, even though planting is about 4 to 6 weeks away for west central Iowa (Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota might begin planting in the 6 to 8 week timeframe). He has 40 percent of his land in the river bottoms. Tillage options, fertilizer application, crop selection and hybrid seed selection are a few of the many variables that now come into play.

“I have a lot more costs insuring this ground than regular ground, so I have to manage my inputs better,” Sieck said. “I’m sitting here thinking ‘what can I do to manage risk?’ Do I put triple-stack hybrids on ground that has a high incidence of flooding? Probably not. I start to manage my hybrids now. I’ll plant cheaper hybrids on the ground that may flood.

Flooded ground presents other challenges, too. More than likely, Sieck is forced to abandon no-till farming in the floodplain because flooding brings new sediment, which means he breaks out tillage equipment like the field cultivator and disk.

The flooding just doesn’t affect the river bottoms. The water table also rises for the land just above the floodplain or behind the levees.

“For the ground in the first and second terrace, I start looking at what impacts does the high river have for holding water on the ground,” Sieck said. “In saturated ground, water starts to stack up in water table. There’s surface water sitting on ground that can’t get to river, and sediment sits on the soil and the crop can’t get up.”

The wet ground thus impacts Sieck’s crop mix and seed selection. Does he take a risk and plant corn, knowing there may be a chance of another flood in late spring (a “Father’s Day Surprise,” as Sieck calls it)? Or does he wait until the “Surprise” passes and plant soybeans? If that’s the case, then he needs a soybean variety that has some disease resistance.

“The timing of when you plant is critical,” he said. “Do you go out as soon as you can and plant it? But then you might have to replant if flood conditions arrive. If you plant it later, you take the risk you may not have as good of yields. Or you may have to switch from corn to beans.

“There’s so much money involved, you want to make sure you get it right.”

Getting it right is tougher, with seeds, fertilizer, fuel and land costs rising. Sieck sits on the board of the Missouri River Recovery Implementation Committee, a group that meets to discuss the goals of taking care of the needs of wildlife in the floodplain. Sieck and another farmer represent the interests of farmers in eight states.

“A farmer’s whole job is to manage and mitigate risks that Mother Nature throws at you and hope to get a high-quality crop that you can sell and make money,” Sieck said.

Monsanto currently supports, and has supported in the past, the freedom to conduct wide-ranging research with its commercial products. That includes research that compares Monsanto products to those of its competitors.

Last summer, Scientific American ran an editorial criticizing seed companies for inhibiting independent research of GM (biotech) crops. The editorial was prompted by public comments from university scientists to the EPA, who stated they felt the contractual agreements required for purchasing commercial seed prohibited them from conducting their research.

Not long after the article ran, I read many outraged comments on Twitter and received quite a few inquiries. I was surprised by the backlash because it was my understanding that Monsanto allows independent research with  products—and not just research that Monsanto believed would end with positive results. Heck, I’ve had to handle communications on studies where Monsanto didn’t agree with the conclusion. So what’s the deal?

In talking with scientists and seed industry counterparts through the American Seed Trade Association, Monsanto realized that there were misperceptions and misunderstandings around what agreements Monsanto had in place to support research.  We also discovered disparity between how each seed company in the industry handled research requests.

The bottom line: Monsanto currently supports, and has supported in the past, the freedom to conduct wide-ranging research with its commercial products. That includes research that compares Monsanto products to those of its competitors.

For nearly a decade, Monsanto has had blanket agreements with universities that enable university scientists to work with our products without contacting us or signing a separate contract. Some scientists weren’t or aren’t aware of this. They may have purchased seed, saw the grower agreement prohibiting research, and assumed that was the end of their line. The public comments to the EPA regarding industry practices made us realize that we needed to communicate more broadly, and clearly, how we handle these research requests.

In addition to improving our own processes, Monsanto employees spent time working with ASTA and our contemporaries on a set of principles across the industry that we have all committed to abide by. Monsanto has posted these principles in a web post entitled “Academic Research Agreements” in the “For the Record” section on the Monsanto Web site.