I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dan Jacobi, DuPont Pioneer VP for ACEA (Asia Pacific, China, Europe, Africa), about what's driving DuPont Pioneer's global seed business.
He said the familiar megatrend that says we're going to have 9+ billion people on the planet by 2050 is causing DuPont Pioneer to look at and adjust how they do business.
Between increasing urbanization, rising incomes and uses of crops for other purposes besides just food on a flat base of arable land, DuPont Pioneer believes one part of the solution to feeding our growing global population that they can impact is to double agricultural productivity.
"We see that of the population increases, 90 per cent will come from Africa and Asia," he said. "But today, food production doesn't match that - so in effect, populations are moving east, but food production has not. That's the prime challenge and opportunity we have in front of us."
As for doubling agricultural productivity, Jacobi said that doesn't mean we're going to see 600 bushel per acre corn in the US.
"I think it means we're going to see 100+ bushels per acre in Africa, and we're going to see 150 or 160 bushels per acre in China," he said. "We're going to need all that to get where we're going, plus we are going to have to address waste."
DuPont Pioneer doesn't believe that we can feed the world enough food, and the right kind of food in 2050, by simply improving our yields per hectare.
"We're going to have to increase yields, of course; but we're also going to have to improve infrastructure, sustainability and food quality; we're going to have to address food waste. The philosophical piece is that none of these are mutually exclusive. You have to do them all," he said.
Watch TheCropSite.com over the next several weeks to read my series of articles about DuPont Pioneer's global seed business. The series discusses DuPont Pioneer's opportunities in China, Africa and the Pacific Rim as well as global biotech acceptance.
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