On June 15, I had the honor of presenting the annual AAAS Charles Valentine Riley Memorial Lecture at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Each year, one person is selected to address scientific thought leaders across all segments of the agriculture and food industry – academia, government, nonprofits and private companies – on how we can work together to ensure a secure and sustainable food supply for the future. I was humbled to be the first representative of private industry invited to share my thoughts on how to meet “the greatest challenge mankind has ever faced,” as it has been called by Dr. Kenneth Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation. How will we feed a population of nearly 10 billion people by 2050, while facing increasing land and water constraints and the uncertain effects of climate change – which can include shifts in rainfall patterns and planting zones, and increases in insect and disease pressure?
Estimates vary on how much more food we’ll need to produce in the next 33 years to meet that demand. Some say it will require a 60% increase in global food production; others say production will need to double. Some estimate that we’ll have to produce more food in the next three decades than we have since humans started farming. That’s a tall order!
At the same time, we need to consider agriculture’s impact on the environment and limited natural resources. Agriculture already contributes to roughly 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions…and we certainly won’t be discovering any new land masses to cultivate. By using new tools and technologies that help farmers grow more on each acre – like biotechnology, gene editing, and data science – we can meet production goals and convert more land to grassland and forests.
Between 1996 and 2015, productivity gains through biotechnology saved 430 million acres of land from plowing and cultivation. By reducing the need to till the soil, carbon dioxide emissions from farm operations in 2015 alone were reduced by an amount equivalent to removing ~12 million cars off the road for 1 year. And data shows that reducing the footprint of global farming by 300M acres by 2050 would have an enormous positive environmental impact, with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture by an additional 10%.
But that’s only possible with the help of science. Read more