Bayer CropScience CEO: Propelling the future of Agriculture

The private sector is ready to be a partner and driver of solutions for sustainable agriculture, said Bayer CropScience CEO Sandra Peterson at the World Agricultural Forum in Brussels today. The industry must continue to commit to innovation to safeguard food security, she noted, and will need to operate in a regulatory and political environment that facilitates trade flows and the transfer of technology and know-how.

In her keynote address, Peterson said partnership and collaboration were integral to address global challenges, such as food security for all. "These challenges can be solved only by connecting the dots and working across the entire food value chain," she said. Bayer CropScience is already strongly positioned for this role through its commitment in driving productivity of the world’s two most important staple crops, wheat and rice, and its ongoing efforts to foster food chain partnerships around the world.

Peterson further stated that innovation has a key role to play in addressing the challenge of world food security and poverty reduction. Citing wheat as an example, she noted Bayer CropScience is already actively investing in research to strengthen the crop’s tolerance to drought and disease, and to improve its nutrient uptake as well as yield enhancement. The company is already cooperating with the world’s premier wheat research institutes globally to build up a leading platform for research into wheat.

However, she noted that such innovation can make a substantial contribution to addressing global challenges to food security only with the appropriate regulatory and political frameworks in place. "Our industry is not concerned that we might run out of innovative ideas to safeguard crops, but we are concerned about the regulatory and political obstacles on the last mile to the market," she said. Peterson added: "Fostering a regulatory climate that facilitates trade flows, as well as the transfer of technology and know-how, is of the essence. We must base our decisions on science and keep in mind the requirements of the growers who need new tools to raise agricultural output."

In her speech, Peterson also stated that more support for smallholder farming is key to any long-term effort to ensure food security worldwide. Such support could be tailored to meet the specific needs of the farmer and his environment, and could range from training in good agricultural practices, access to modern agricultural input technologies, financing schemes, to improvements in water management, power supply, and post-harvest storage, she explained.

Noting that both the European Union and the United States are concurrently negotiating their respective farming policies, she pointed out that even a modest amount of harmonized reduction of trade barriers by these two trading blocs would have a positive impact on the economic development of poorer nations.

"I urge regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to seize this unique opportunity to deal with issues of sustainable and productive agriculture, infrastructure, and with the challenge of small-scale farming," she said.