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October, 2008
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Bayer CropScience
editorial
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Securing food with less land
Of the approximately 13 billion hectares of land
covering the Earth’s surface, around 1.5 billion
hectares are used for agriculture, with a
further 3.5 billion hectares being used for
meadowland and pasture. This area of land cannot
be increased. Every year, around seven million
hectares of agricultural land are lost as a
result of building construction, erosion,
desertification and other causes. Without modern
crop protection measures and fertilization, we
would already need significantly more arable
land, namely around four billion hectares. As a
result of population growth, agricultural
production must increase by around two percent
per year in order to be able to safeguard the
amount of food required to supply all people.
This figure does not yet take into account the
increases in demand for meat. In China, for
example, meat consumption has doubled in the
last 15 years. For one kilogram of beef, it is
necessary to produce well over seven kilograms
of animal feed – this also drives up the demand
for animal feed, which increases the competition
for arable land for food production.
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While the world population is rising year on year, the
arable land available worldwide remains practically the
same. This means that the per capita area available for
safeguarding the supply of food is constantly
decreasing. As a consequence, significant increases in
yields are needed to ensure that an adequate food supply
can be maintained in the future.
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Stress reduces harvests
dramatically: cereals appear to suffer in particular
from abiotic stress caused by heat, cold, drought or
oxygen deficiency resulting from water stagnation or
compacted soil. Potentially record harvests (total
column length) are compromised partly by insect pests,
plant diseases and competition from weeds. Abiotic
factors are responsible for the lion’s share of harvest
losses, however.
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Defying climate change
Our numbers are growing! By 2012, the world population is
forecast to top the seven billion mark. In 2025, the number of
people is even set to hit eight billion, with this rapid
population growth taking place almost exclusively in developing
countries, where over 80 percent of all people already live. And
it is precisely these countries that are already hit by food
shortages. The World Bank estimates that the number of hungry
people in the world could shoot up quite soon from 850 million
at present to 950 million. United Nations forecasts, meanwhile,
show that only 30 percent of the land that was available for
growing food in 1950 will be available per capita for
safeguarding the supply of food in 2050.
On top of this, worldwide food reserves have now dropped to
their lowest level for 30 years. The main problem is that there
is hardly any potential left for expanding the growing areas for
wheat, rice or millet. In many parts of Asia, every last hill
which can possibly be used has already been covered with fields
and rice terraces. In many regions of Africa, it is likewise
almost impossible to expand the amount of arable land. This is
partly because the soils are simply not suitable, and partly
because intensive farming would lead to desertification.
Extreme weather phenomena threaten harvests
Another problem is that meteorologists worldwide are registering
extreme weather events with increasing frequency – the absence
or displacement of tropical rainfall as well as abnormal ocean
current phenomena. One well known example is El Niño: every
three to six years, torrential rains devastate whole tracts of
land in South America, while at the same time extreme weather
leads to droughts in South East Africa, Indonesia and Australia,
and frost in Florida, causing enormous harvest losses for
farmers.
But it is not just natural catastrophes that cause billions of
dollars’ worth of agricultural damage each year: persistently
unfavorable farming conditions such as water shortages,
increasing salination of arable soils and extreme heat and cold
are prime causes of enormous harvest losses. Corn, rice and
wheat are no longer able to withstand the extreme environmental
effects. Climate change is adding to the stresses to which
plants are subjected, with grave effects; even with the best of
care for their fields, farmers regularly lose 30-70 percent of
their harvests.
Stop the self-destruction program in cereals
“There is an urgent need for us not only to make agricultural
production more efficient, but also to do it in a way which is
sustainable,” says Professor Friedrich Berschauer, Chairman of
the Board of Bayer CropScience. A key objective of the crop
protection scientists is to increase corn, rice and wheat yields
and make the plants more resistant to severe heat, cold, drought
or intense sunlight. These factors put plants under enormous
stress, triggering a process which can even lead to
self-destruction: the plant increases its energy consumption and
can therefore no longer produce certain energy transport
molecules, which are however needed by the cells to survive. The
supply gap has dramatic consequences for the plant, which can no
longer supply leaves, fruit or stems properly with energy.
Individual cells gradually die, followed ultimately by the whole
plant.
Stress-tolerant plants are considerably better at coping with
climate fluctuations
Researchers at Bayer Crop Science are using a trick to protect
rice plants, for example, against a number of stress factors.
They have put the plants on a fitness program. “Our idea was to
get crops into shape,” says Michael Metzlaff of the Bayer
CropScience Innovation Center for Plant Biotechnology in Ghent,
Belgium. To achieve this, his team is pursuing two strategies:
firstly, the scientists incorporate genes into the plants which
should help them deal with excessive stress caused by dry and
wet conditions. Secondly, they quite specifically deactivate
individual genes which trigger excessive stress reactions in
normal plants and lower the yield. “Our goal is to enable plants
to produce high, stable yields over the longer term in spite of
fluctuating environmental conditions," Metzlaff says.
A “second green revolution” is needed
For Berschauer, biotechnology is a vital tool to safeguard the
supply of food for the world population in the future. “We need
a second green revolution. If we use plant biotechnology in
combination with crop protection solutions in a targeted manner,
we can achieve significant advances in productivity,” comments
Bayer CropScience’s CEO. Other experts share this view:
according to the estimates of the Consultative Group on
International Agricultural Research, only with biotechnology can
harvests be increased by around 25 percent.
Antifungal agents help wheat plants to grow
In Canada, Bayer CropScience researchers are already using
advances in seed breeding to increase canola oil yields by up to
30 percent compared with conventional varieties. In addition to
plant biotechnology, new crop protection agents can also
increase harvest yields. The latest example is the active
ingredient trifloxystrobin. Farmers all over the world have been
using this agent for years to protect cereal, vegetable and
fruit crops against harmful fungal diseases. But
trifloxystrobin, an antifungal agent belonging to the
strobilurin group of active ingredients, can do more: it also
increases the ability of plants to withstand stress. “Field
trials show that crops in which strobilurins are used produce
better harvests than those protected with other types of
antifungal agent,” says Dr. Dirk Ebbinghaus, a Bayer CropScience
research scientist. Crops protected with trifloxystrobin also do
much better than untreated plants under conditions of drought.
“Our active ingredient clearly triggers a number of different
positive effects in the plant which result in an above-average
increase in yield,” says Ebbinghaus. The latest research results
have also shown that certain active ingredients, i.e. the Bayer
CropScience insecticide Gaucho®, can even make rice plants more
resistant to fluctuations in the salt content of water.
Protecting biodiversity
Because the demand for high-quality food in adequate quantities
and at affordable prices must not be allowed to jeopardize
nature, Bayer Crop Science has committed itself to an important
principle: using state-of-the-art technologies, the company
wants to help both small and large-scale farmers achieve higher
productivity on land already used for agriculture. This protects
natural habitats from being converted into arable land. |
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