Economic Stability For Farmers Must Come First
Jerry Steiner, Executive Vice President of Sustainability And Corporate Affairs
Economic stability for farmers is the key for sustainable agriculture, Jerry Steiner, Monsanto’s executive vice president of sustainability and corporate affairs, said in a speech at the opening day of the 91st annual meeting of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).
The event, held in Seattle, Washington, January 10-13, 2010, brought together members of the American agriculture community to network, attend seminars and exchange ideas.
The Challenge
Steiner opened his speech by describing a pressing challenge facing our planet.
“We see the need for an 80 percent increase in [food] production that the world is going to need to feed about nine billion people in 2050, versus the six and a half or so billion people we have today.”
He added corn and soybean production will likely have to double because of their linkage to animal protein.
“That’s premised on the fact that [people around the world] are increasing their incomes, and one of the first things people do when they increase their income is improve the quality of their diet,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been seeing out of Asia over the last several years.
“Our piece in this is that we feel we can invest money wisely and innovate to help each acre produce more with fewer inputs .”
First Things First
Steiner stressed sustainable agriculture starts with the farmer.
“With sustainability, the first thing that has to happen is that it has to work for the farmers,” he said. “And it’s absolutely true everywhere around the world that economic sustainability has to be first.
“When we’re competing to sell a seed that’s going to do something new, it’s got to make more sense for [the farmer], or we’re not going to succeed. That’s the mind set that we have.”
It’s a “Collective Challenge”
American agriculture has an exciting story to tell, and it is the industry’s “collective challenge” to keep modern tools in place for the benefit of society, according to Steiner.
He said Americans spend only 10 percent of their disposable incomes on food, which is the lowest percentage in the world. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), poor people in developing countries spend as much as 70 percent of their incomes on food. Steiner attributes this to the efficiencies of American agriculture compared to the rest of the world.
“The fact that we are able to put food on the table for the average family at about 10 percent of their disposable income means that people can still go on vacations,” he said. “It means that people can still send their kids to college and we can even talk about affording healthcare because we’re doing so well in producing food so efficiently.”
Steiner said this gets lost in the broader story.
“We’ve got a situation, and I believe this is what our collective challenge is. It’s that there have been elements that are calling for change in the whole food system, and their answer is organic, or their answer is small, or their answer is local. Any of those things are fine as choices, but I don’t think feeding society broadly will be sustainable if those are the only choices.
“The agriculture industry has a great story, but we’ve got to start working together. We’re too fractured.”
“Our Piece in This is Innovation”
“It’s the business we have chosen to be in, and it’s the business that we are making large investments in,” he said.
Monsanto has 4,000 scientists working around the world – about half of that in breeding and half in biotechnology – and spends a billion dollars a year on improving seeds, according to Steiner.
“We spend about half of our R&D investment in breeding, and we do all the things that have been done for a long time in breeding, which is you have these very skilled people who are able to look at seemingly identical plants and find differences, and they pick the winners,” he said. “That’s the back-end of the breeding process, and it’s still there.
“What we’ve added to the front end, with the advent of the tools that have come out of modern technology, is the ability to link those observations with genes” he continued. “We have a robotics system set up to take millions of seeds, slice off a tiny piece of [each seed], and from that tiny little piece be able to determine the genetic make up. Then we bar code that sample, plant all these seeds and see what all these genes contribute to the outcome – and each year you learn more.
“What we’re aiming to achieve is very much a designer approach with breeding that we can then complement with specific genes from biotechnology. We look at breeding as largely creating potential inside a seed.”
Steiner told the audience Monsanto has 27 projects in the pipeline. He highlighted a few of the most exciting ones, including Genuity™ Roundup Ready 2 Yield® Soybeans, Genuity™ SmartStax™ Corn and the first drought-tolerant corn product. He also mentioned Monsanto is working on increased nitrogen efficiency in corn.
“We are able to make the investment in research and development because we have intellectual property protection, and it allows us to make that investment knowing that we have a defined period of time to earn a return,” he said. “We’re very appreciative of the proactive position the Farm Bureau has taken in supporting intellectual property to support this kind of investment and these kinds of products.”
