Doing More With Less

Sustained Improvement, Sustained Innovation

The evolution of modern agriculture has produced astonishing improvements in both the success of annual harvests and the efficiency with which those harvests are produced. Incredibly, as farming has become exponentially more productive, it has also steadily decreased its impact on the environment.

Farmers around the world hope to sustain that improvement, and they are increasingly using integrated approaches to their fields to help do so.

Farming for a Changing World

While the basic formula for agriculture remains the same–growing crops with sunlight, water, and nutrients–the demands of the modern world continue to evolve. A growing population, a changing climate, and a decline in the amount of arable land all combine to place tremendous pressures on modern agriculture.

Fortunately, the farmers and the companies who support them are responding, with a generation of solutions that help farmers continue to provide the world’s food, while reducing their land and carbon footprint and increasing their efficiency.

Farmers are like everyone else: they care tremendously about the land. These tools help them make decisions. People talk about the 40 decisions a farmer has to make every year, that’s for each field. It can add up. That means figuring out where to start is incredibly important. It can be the difference between possible and probable.

–Nick Koshnick, Vice President of Soil Science at Climate Corporation

Efficiency Means Never Being Satisfied

Climate HydroBio

Water is a precious resource for all farmers, especially in regions where a changing climate alters rainfall patterns, in some cases reducing the total amount of water available for crops. Climate’s HydroBio technology was designed for exactly this scenario. The system analyzes crop irrigation data, helping farmers know exactly when and how to adapt to fluctuations in water availability.

Nitrogen Management Technology

Nitrogen is a key nutrient for crops, and some farmers need to apply it to their fields multiple times each year depending on their crops and soil types. The decision regarding how much nitrogen to apply and when can be affected by rainfall, which can be difficult to predict. Climate’s Nitrogen Advisor analyzes weather data to help farmers decide when to apply the nitrogen their crops need, at the times when it is best for the surrounding soil and water. Good for the crops, good for the soil, and good for the environment–that’s maximum efficiency.

“Using HydroBio to understand exactly how much water to provide offers three gains. The first one is reduced water use. The second one is fertility: too much water in soil causes leaching of nutrients, which can lead to nutrient pollution. This is a very important sustainable ag impact. With the right amount of water, you don’t oversaturate, and you can prevent nitrogen leaching. The third one is reduced electricity use. Irrigation uses a lot of energy, for pumps and sprayers, etc. That’s very expensive.”

–Demir Devecigil, Senior Manager of Remote Sensing at Monsanto

Fourth-Gen Herbicide-Tolerant Cotton

When herbicide tolerance was introduced as a seed trait over two decades ago, it helped accelerate a new generation of conservation tillage practices. These practices led to a pronounced reduction in soil erosion and an improvement in soil health. Today, advances like the Fourth-Generation Herbicide-Tolerant Cotton seed technology can help sustain those practices. This project  advances to Phase 2 in January 2018, and it provides an added environmental benefit by lowering the number of passes farmers need to make across their fields for tillage, leading to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Supporting Biodiversity

An important component of modern agriculture’s commitment to resource efficiency is biodiversity. Biotechnology has provided farmers with advances in insect control that benefit their crops while also minimizing the impact on beneficial insects in local ecosystems.

Products like Fourth-Generation Above-Ground Insect-Protected Corn, which advances to Phase 3, offer continued support for farmers facing insect pest pressures. As they offer targeted protection from the most devastating insects, they reduce the need for farmers to spray broad-spectrum insecticides. This provides two direct benefits to the environment. It reduces tractor passes in the field, leading to reduced greenhouse gas emissions. And it preserves the habitat for beneficial insects, maintaining biodiversity in the process.

Today’s Innovations, Tomorrow’s Solutions

The pressures of a growing population and a changing climate are here to stay, and so is our commitment to developing solutions that help farmers operate within those constraints.

One major part of this commitment is supporting farmers in their carbon smart farming decisions. Products like our Acceleron-B300 biological seed-applied solution, which launched in January 2017, offer tremendous potential for improving efficiency on farms.

Another key part is the efforts toward our goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2021. These efforts will depend in large part on our innovation pipeline. We believe the technologies of tomorrow can help support the next generation of climate smart farmers.