Next week in Southern California, a diverse group of political, not-for-profit organizations and business leaders are sitting down at Fortune Brainstorm Green to brainstorm ideas and approaches on how to work together to feed, clothe and fuel human activity and to do so in a sustainable way.
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 21st 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.
Reflection on Earnings
April 9, 2010
On Wednesday morning, I sat with my coffee cup in hand and listened via Webcast to our CEO Hugh Grant talk with investors and analysts about Monsanto’s second quarter earnings. At the same time, I had my Tweetdeck and Google Reader up to scan and follow the latest comments from our farmer customers. It was refreshing to hear what our execs said in that call, because it matched what I’ve been seeing online from our customers.
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.
After the USDA/DOJ Workshop…
March 19, 2010
We were pleased to participate in the March 12th workshop and provide more information about our business. It was a unique opportunity to highlight the investment that Monsanto and hundreds of other seed companies are making on behalf of U.S. farmers. With dozens of trait technologies available to farmers today and fifty new traits currently under development, it’s clear that competition within the U.S. seeds industry is growing. The fight to win the farmer’s business is intense. We remain committed to investing in new products for farmers, products that present another option on farm and offer them more value for their farm.
Monsanto Supports Independent Research on Seed Products
March 17, 2010
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?
What RR1 Patent Expiration Means for Farmers
March 5, 2010
The patent for the original Roundup Ready (RR1) soybean trait is set to expire in 2014. That fact has raised all kinds of interest and questions, starting first with what it means for farmers.
Late last year, Monsanto worked to explain our intentions. Lately, several groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, have asked about the regulatory issues involved, because the scientific and export regulatory “estate” for a genetically modified trait like this one has to be maintained. If the estate is not maintained, farmers won’t be able to use the trait. We said last fall that we’d continue to maintain the “estate” for RR1 for at least three years after the patent expired.
Recently, we sought industry leadership to develop a comprehensive process for patent expirations for technologies like RR1 (there are a number of them going off patent after ours does in 2014). Early in February, the Food & Agriculture section of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), a trade association, agreed to take this on. We presented a draft concept on how we thought this could be achieved, involving both how to maintain the regulatory estate for technologies post-patent and guidelines for adding or “stacking” new traits to ones whose patents have expired.
But it’s still very early in the process. We think it’s a great idea to involve both farmers and government in this process at BIO, for two reasons. They both have a critical stake in the outcome, and their perspective and involvement is vital to achieving a comprehensive and balanced solution.
Beyond The Rows (SM) - A Monsanto Blog 