Production | Summer 2009
Crop researchers move sustainability to centre stage.
By Scott Garvey
As global climate change continues to be viewed as a cause of drought and other disruptive weather around the world, crop yields look likely to face downward pressure. But with rising input costs and increasing worldwide demand for resources such as petroleum and fertilizer raw materials, boosting inputs may not be the best way to maintain yields. So Bayer CropScience is working to help growers work their existing resources harder.
“We view it as our effort around sustainability,” said Paul Thiel, vice president, Industry Relations at Bayer CropScience. “We have to invest in the productivity of agriculture. It’s going to come down to trying to do more with less.” And that is reflected in the direction research has taken at Bayer.
Improved crop protection products have already brought farmers’ application rates down from pounds per acre to grams per acre. And research continues to develop new and more efficient products to reduce competition from weeds. As farmers need less product to do the same job, application and transportation costs decline.
To further minimize impact on the environment, Bayer CropScience has invested in a facility in Regina, SK, to process refillable bulk containers. That helps alleviate pressures on landfills, and reduces energy requirements to produce new containers. Thiel expects these containers to be in use for 10 years — a significant improvement over the disposables that previously dominated the marketplace.
Bayer’s plant biotechnology researchers are also looking for ways to keep food crops productive with minimum inputs. They’re developing hardier varieties of canola, corn, cotton and rice that are less affected by heat stress and drought, offer better yield potential and need less water to grow. That also means higher potential economic returns for growers.
Varietal improvement has been, and continues to be, critical for growers. “This is the research area that is perhaps most exciting for the future,” said Thiel. “How do we develop plants that are more productive, use less water and withstand frost, which extends the growing season?” Achieving those goals would indeed help farmers produce much more with much less.
