Monsanto sees climate change as major farming challenge

How farmers can increase productivity in the face of climate change is one of the biggest challenges for modern agriculture, according to Monsanto Asia-Pacific Vice President Juan Farinati.

Speaking March 23 at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) as the guest of its Institute for Agriculture and the Environment (IAgE), Farinati said this challenge was behind Monsanto’s move into precision farming and data analytics as well as biotechnology.
“Today farmers are making more than 30 decisions every season for each crop. Being able to help farmers make fewer decisions is going to be a huge benefit,” Mr Farinati said.

In 2013, Monsanto purchased The Climate Corporation, a Californian-based provider of hyper-local weather data analytics which helps farmers manage climate-associated risk.

Farinati said Monsanto was trialling the use of this “big data” in the US, and Australia, South America and Europe were being considered as the next locations where Monsanto would be offering climate analytics to growers.

“We see very important production changes in regions where we have farmers of the level here in Australia, (which) will generate the step changes going forward. We are looking at how to work in partnership here (to create) the Australian reality.”

“Today we are investing in biologicals, and precision farming or data analytics to provide better information to help farmers make more informed decisions.

“In the case of precision agriculture, we’re scratching the surface. We think there is a lot of potential going forward in this platform.”

Monsanto’s direction fits in with research already under way at USQ through a number of IAgE centres, and IAgE Executive Manager Kevin Norman said discussions held with Farinati and other Monsanto executives last week looked at potential areas of collaboration.

Norman said the capacities of IAgE’s International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences, National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture and Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development were of particular interest to Monsanto.

“Monsanto are visiting us while they are in the region and, following generally preliminary discussions USQ has had with Monsanto in the US, we are continuing to explore possibilities,” Norman said.

Farinati said Monsanto’s focus globally was to improve lives, and to help farmers increase productivity “metre by metre in the field” while using less, to feed the world’s growing population, which by 2050 will have an estimated 1,350 square metres of arable land to feed each person, one third of the 1961 figure.

In Australia, key crops Monsanto are involved in are canola and cotton. The company also has a non-GM vegetable seeds business, serving open-field and glasshouse customers.

In coming weeks, Monsanto will be opening a new cotton research centre in Toowoomba to complement its facilities in Narrabri and Melbourne.