The 5,354 MW Belchatów Power Station in Poland – one of the world’s largest coal fired power stations. Photo credit: Wikipedia
There is little question that coal is dangerous. It is dangerous to mine. Its emissions are a problem; coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste. Yet coal is cheap, abundant, and the demand for it is vast. As Justin Lin wrote in 2009 on the World Bank’s blog:
There are roughly 1.6 billion people in developing countries–700 million of whom are in Africa and 550 million in South Asia–who lack access to electricity. Because coal is often cheap and abundant, and the need for electricity is so great, coal plants are going to be built with or without our [World Bank] support.
The question that should spring to everyone’s mind is “how many died in China from cold or indoor pollution before the electrification that the coal plant brought with it?” The Manichaeistic, black/white premise of something being all good (e.g., Renewable Energy) or all bad (e.g., Fossil Fuel) is at best, uncritical thinking, and at worst, lying.
Greenpeace, the report’s author, is of course fretting about climate change, and its answer is to turn back the clock. I am a luke-warmer in regards to climate change; I think the climate is much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than the Global Climate Models (GCM) that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest. But even a full-throated supporter of climate change, such as Mark Lynas, sees the need for coal in places such as China and India:
The costs of poverty – which includes millions of preventable deaths of young children, lack of access to water and sanitation, reduced livelihood prospects, large-scale hunger and malnutrition, and so on… are clearly much greater than the direct costs of coal burning, and this equation probably still holds even when the future damages from climate change are factored in. – Mark Lynas, 2014, India’s coal conundrum
To be clear, the possible deaths of people due to the burning of coal are regrettable. Scrubbers would ameliorate the particulates that cause the health problems; as China and India get richer their people will become more vocal in their calls for cleaner air. At the moment, jobs, cleaner drinking water, sanitation, and food on the table appear to be of greater importance.
Over at the Serial Monography site, Jeff Benson (yes, the name is no coincidence) looks for an authentic experience: he wants a Flat White coffee like he had when he discovered it in Bali. He tries one at his local Starbucks…
…by the time I had finished drinking it at home, my enthusiasm had dissolved…Because although Starbucks made the same drink I remembered, they had utterly failed to replicate the experience I had when I first drank a flat white. This is, I admit, an unfair standard to hold a coffee chain to. They’re in the business of selling caffeine and sugar to overworked Americans, not reproducing a Balinese coffeehouse.
As I see it he is touching on at least two maybe three ideas here:
Authenticity. It is one of those ideas that has probably been around since people have been telling stories. No matter what the time or place, [insert place name here] always was more about twenty years before. It’s like Yogi Berra used to say, “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
Experience of the moment. It is not just the the act but who was around and where. A can of Safeway Select beer may have been the best beer you ever had in your life, if the place, people and the time was special. If you haven’t eaten for a week, a bowl of oatmeal will be an unforgettable feast.
Globalization. Globalization is often the bugbear of modern life. Trade brings with it the Walmartization/McDonald’sization of a place. Big Macs in Paris. Nike shoes in Zimbabwe.This goes back to Authenticity. Ever since humans learned to trade one thing for another thing (the first trade was probably between the sexes, men hunt and women gather, generally), we have been modifying our environment to make it better for our lives.Without globalization he would not have been able to get a Flat White (an Australian invention) in Bali.
Or maybe it’s none of those things, as Freud might have said, “Sometimes a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.”
Over at the Serial Monography site, Jeff Benson (yes, the name is no coincidence) looks for an authentic experience: he wants a Flat White coffee like he had when he discovered it in Bali. He tries one at his local Starbucks…
…by the time I had finished drinking it at home, my enthusiasm had dissolved…Because although Starbucks made the same drink I remembered, they had utterly failed to replicate the experience I had when I first drank a flat white. This is, I admit, an unfair standard to hold a coffee chain to. They’re in the business of selling caffeine and sugar to overworked Americans, not reproducing a Balinese coffeehouse.
As I see it he is touching on at least two maybe three ideas here:
Authenticity. It is one of those ideas that has probably been around since people have been telling stories. No matter what the time or place, [insert place name here] always was more about twenty years before. It’s like Yogi Berra used to say, “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
Experience of the moment. It is not just the the act but who was around and where. A can of Safeway Select beer may have been the best beer you ever had in your life, if the place, people and the time was special. If you haven’t eaten for a week, a bowl of oatmeal will be an unforgettable feast.
Globalization. Globalization is often the bugbear of modern life. Trade brings with it the Walmartization/McDonald’sization of a place. Big Macs in Paris. Nike shoes in Zimbabwe.This goes back to Authenticity. Ever since humans learned to trade one thing for another thing (the first trade was probably between the sexes, men hunt and women gather, generally), we have been modifying our environment to make it better for our lives.Without globalization he would not have been able to get a Flat White (an Australian invention) in Bali.
Or maybe it’s none of those things, as Freud might have said, “Sometimes a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.”
For most of humanity’s existence, our kind have worried about getting enough to eat. So we may see it as a good sign that now some of our species are worried about not getting organic milk in their lattes and frappes. “Where oh where shall I ever find a frappe made with organic milk?” one supposes they say. “If only Starbucks made their lattes and frappes with organic milk; it would be so healthy!”
Or as one over-achieving Organitrepreneur put it:
“Consumers are increasingly looking for organic milk. I stopped drinking Starbucks lattes once I found out the health implications of consuming non-organic milk.” Vani Hari, creator of FoodBabe.com.
Caffeine
Though its advantage is far from clear, for the sake of argument, let’s say that organic milk is healthier than conventionally produced milk.
Putting organic milk in coffee is akin to putting lipstick on a sow: the pig is still ugly (and with lipstick, quite silly looking) and the coffee is still full of (natural) chemicals with long and complicated names that should scare the mocha off any chemophobe’s lips.
If you’re someone who says that you won’t put anything in your mouth that you can’t pronounce, put down that cup. But if you’re someone who knows that dose makes the poison, well, bon appétit!
For more on coffee, its chemistry and physiological effects see the Royal Society of Chemistry’s, “Chemistry in every cup.”
For most of humanity’s existence, our kind have worried about getting enough to eat. So we may see it as a good sign that now some of our species are worried about not getting organic milk in their lattes and frappes. “Where oh where shall I ever find a frappe made with organic milk?” one supposes they say. “If only Starbucks made their lattes and frappes with organic milk; it would be so healthy!”
Or as one over-achieving Organitrepreneur put it:
“Consumers are increasingly looking for organic milk. I stopped drinking Starbucks lattes once I found out the health implications of consuming non-organic milk.” Vani Hari, creator of FoodBabe.com.
Caffeine
Though its advantage is far from clear, for the sake of argument, let’s say that organic milk is healthier than conventionally produced milk.
Putting organic milk in coffee is akin to putting lipstick on a sow: the pig is still ugly (and with lipstick, quite silly looking) and the coffee is still full of (natural) chemicals with long and complicated names that should scare the mocha off any chemophobe’s lips.
If you’re someone who says that you won’t put anything in your mouth that you can’t pronounce, put down that cup. But if you’re someone who knows that dose makes the poison, well, bon appétit!
This is from GettyImages. It is a circa 1920s photo by photographer Darius Kinsey (1869-1945). The GettyImages site says Kinsey, “was a photographer active in western Washington State from 1890 to 1940. He is best known for his images of loggers and all phases of the region’s lumber industry.”
Dickson Despommier shares his ideas about how “vertical farming” can help reduce hunger by changing the way we use land for agriculture. photography by kris krüg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Agriculture has one hell of a footprint, occupying 37.6 percent of earth’s land area, or about 0.7 hectares (1.7 acres) per person to feed our world’s current population. “There is no activity that humankind engages in that has a bigger impact on the planet than agriculture,” Jack Bobo, Chief of Biotechnology and Textile Trade in the Department of State’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs wrote. “This is true in terms of impacts on land and water resources [agriculture accounts for some 70% of our freshwater use (PDF)] as well as in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.” Dr. Pamela Ronald agrees, “The worst thing for the environment is farming. It doesn’t matter if it is organic [or conventional]…You have to go in and destroy everything.”
We humans have reduced our agricultural footprint; while both the world population and productivity have increased the area devoted to agriculture has decreased. Today’s agriculture’s land use of 0.7 ha./person is a monumental improvement on the land needs of hunter-gatherer societies of about 1000 ha./person.
The increasing agricultural productivity continues. According to Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, “From one hectare, an American farmer in 1900 could provide calories or protein for a year for 3 people.” By the turn of the 21st century, the top farmers could feed 80 people for a year from the same area. This has freed up agricultural land. In fact, Ausubel announced last year that the world may have reached (or nearly reached) “peak farmland.”
“Humanity now stands at Peak Farmland, and the 21st century will see release of vast areas of land [PDF], hundreds of millions of hectares,” Ausubel writes, “more than twice the area of France for nature.” The trend in the percentage of land in agriculture has been downward over the past five years. How redundant land will be used lies beyond the scope of this post. If it is not needed to grow food or fiber what will the land be converted into? (If in fact we can continue the trend)
Obviously, not needing animals to plow and produce manure, better targeted pesticides, irrigation, bioengineering, and synthetic fertilization of crops have had much to do with increased yields. The tradeoff is more impact on a yet smaller area to keep wild land from conversion to agriculture. But, yes, this system has meant problems, including runoff from the fields polluting waterways. It is a smaller footprint than it otherwise would have been. “If we were to try to feed the present population of 6.8 billion people using the methods of 1960,”Matt Ridley writes, “we would have to cultivate 82% of the land area of the planet instead of 34%…That would mean ploughing an extra area the size of South America minus Chile.”
Additionally, growing food and fiber where it grows best and trading for other food, fiber, and goods has also lowered the overall footprint. Certain areas have a comparative advantage for growing a specific crop; so the best practice is to grow food and fiber where it grows the best, usually a rural area, and then transport it to an urban area. Why grow bananas in Reykjavik when you can buy them for less from South America? This system of using an area’s comparative advantage for growing and then shipping has been around a long time. The Romans grew much of their food in North Africa and shipped it across the Mediterranean.Today huge container ships which lower the cost per mile of shipping goods have contributed much to the lowering of the carbon footprint.
Could our agricultural footprint be reduced even further?
Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier thinks so. He made his case in 2009 at ScientificAmerican.com, “Because each of us requires a minimum of 1,500 calories a day, civilization will have to cultivate another Brazil’s worth of land—2.1 billion acres—if farming continues to be practiced as it is today. That much new, arable earth simply does not exist.” He quotes Mark Twain: “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.” Additionally, he says, farming pollutes places with “fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and silt.” He envisions vertical farms in skyscrapers. The Economist magazine wrote about his ideas, “A wide variety of designs for vertical farms have been created by architectural firms. (The idea can arguably be traced back as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built around 600BC.) So far, however, the idea remains firmly on the drawing board. Would it really work?”
The idea so far works only on a limited basis (without high rises) for niche markets. For example, in Japan, “a plant physiologist,” writes Allison Floyd, “has turned a former Sony semiconductor factory into a farm illuminated by special LED fixtures made by GE. At 25,000 square feet, the farm is nearly half the size of a football field and, since the fixtures emit light at wavelengths that spur plant growth, already is producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day.” According to “Shigeharu Shimamura, the expert behind the farm…the farm is 100 times more productive for its size than an outdoor growing operation.”
Moving the growing areas of where food and fiber are produced from rural to urban could make redundant some or all arable land currently used for agriculture. The first to move indoors would be the fast-growing, high-value plants. “Obviously, it won’t be apple trees, but arugula, sprouts, basil, cilantro,” Dr. Kevin Folta told Floyd.
The appeal of moving growing food closer to where people live is obvious. As already noted, agriculture occupies nearly 40 percent of the earth’s land area, whereas cities occupy only 0.5 percent [PDF], and now hold more than half of the world’s human population. Demographers expect by the year 2050 that 80% of us will live in cities.
There is a feeling of déjà vu to all of this. “Perhaps the most celebrated past local ‘urban farmers’ were the Parisian maraîchers,” says Pierre Desrochers, co-author of The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet. “Through the use of about one-sixth of the city’s area, supporting technologies (from greenhouses to cloches and cold frames) and very long hours, they grew more than 100,000 tons of produce annually in the late 19th century.” They exported some of their produce to London. By the turn of the 20th century however, better transportation able to deliver food and fiber from places better suited to growing coupled with better paying job opportunities for the workers killed their market and made the Parisian truck farm system unsustainable.
Whether we build farms within old factories or stack them vertically, we still need to make the enterprise profitable. Economic sustainability, more than any technological problem, remains the highest hurdle for farming factories.
The technology of agriculture has proven more popular than hunter-gathering
Agriculture has one hell of a footprint, occupying 37.6 percent of earth’s land area, or about 0.7 hectares (1.7 acres) per person to feed our world’s current population. “There is no activity that humankind engages in that has a bigger impact on the planet than agriculture,” Jack Bobo, Chief of Biotechnology and Textile Trade in the Department of State’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs wrote. “This is true in terms of impacts on land and water resources [agriculture accounts for some 70% of our freshwater use (PDF)] as well as in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.” Dr. Pamela Ronald agrees, “The worst thing for the environment is farming. It doesn’t matter if it is organic [or conventional]…You have to go in and destroy everything.”
We humans have reduced our agricultural footprint; while both the world population and productivity have increased the area devoted to agriculture has decreased. Today’s agriculture’s land use of 0.7 ha./person is a monumental improvement on the land needs of hunter-gatherer societies of about 1000 ha./person.
The increasing agricultural productivity continues. According to Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, “From one hectare, an American farmer in 1900 could provide calories or protein for a year for 3 people.” By the turn of the 21st century, the top farmers could feed 80 people for a year from the same area. This has freed up agricultural land. In fact, Ausubel announced last year that the world may have reached (or nearly reached) “peak farmland.”
“Humanity now stands at Peak Farmland, and the 21st century will see release of vast areas of land [PDF], hundreds of millions of hectares,” Ausubel writes, “more than twice the area of France for nature.” The trend in the percentage of land in agriculture has been downward over the past five years. How redundant land will be used lies beyond the scope of this post. If it is not needed to grow food or fiber what will the land be converted into? (If in fact we can continue the trend)
Obviously, not needing animals to plow and produce manure, better targeted pesticides, irrigation, bioengineering, and synthetic fertilization of crops have had much to do with increased yields. The tradeoff is more impact on a yet smaller area to keep wild land from conversion to agriculture. But, yes, this system has meant problems, including runoff from the fields polluting waterways. It is a smaller footprint than it otherwise would have been. “If we were to try to feed the present population of 6.8 billion people using the methods of 1960,”Matt Ridley writes, “we would have to cultivate 82% of the land area of the planet instead of 34%…That would mean ploughing an extra area the size of South America minus Chile.”
Additionally, growing food and fiber where it grows best and trading for other food, fiber, and goods has also lowered the overall footprint. Certain areas have a comparative advantage for growing a specific crop; so the best practice is to grow food and fiber where it grows the best, usually a rural area, and then transport it to an urban area. Why grow bananas in Reykjavik when you can buy them for less from South America? This system of using an area’s comparative advantage for growing and then shipping has been around a long time. The Romans grew much of their food in North Africa and shipped it across the Mediterranean.Today huge container ships which lower the cost per mile of shipping goods have contributed much to the lowering of the carbon footprint.
Could our agricultural footprint be reduced even further?
Columbia University professor Dickson Despommier thinks so. He made his case in 2009 at ScientificAmerican.com, “Because each of us requires a minimum of 1,500 calories a day, civilization will have to cultivate another Brazil’s worth of land—2.1 billion acres—if farming continues to be practiced as it is today. That much new, arable earth simply does not exist.” He quotes Mark Twain: “Buy land. They’re not making it any more.” Additionally, he says, farming pollutes places with “fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and silt.” He envisions vertical farms in skyscrapers. The Economist magazine wrote about his ideas, “A wide variety of designs for vertical farms have been created by architectural firms. (The idea can arguably be traced back as far as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built around 600BC.) So far, however, the idea remains firmly on the drawing board. Would it really work?”
The idea so far works only on a limited basis (without high rises) for niche markets. For example, in Japan, “a plant physiologist,” writes Allison Floyd, “has turned a former Sony semiconductor factory into a farm illuminated by special LED fixtures made by GE. At 25,000 square feet, the farm is nearly half the size of a football field and, since the fixtures emit light at wavelengths that spur plant growth, already is producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day.” According to “Shigeharu Shimamura, the expert behind the farm…the farm is 100 times more productive for its size than an outdoor growing operation.”
Moving the growing areas of where food and fiber are produced from rural to urban could make redundant some or all arable land currently used for agriculture. The first to move indoors would be the fast-growing, high-value plants. “Obviously, it won’t be apple trees, but arugula, sprouts, basil, cilantro,” Dr. Kevin Folta told Floyd.
The appeal of moving growing food closer to where people live is obvious. As already noted, agriculture occupies nearly 40 percent of the earth’s land area, whereas cities occupy only 0.5 percent [PDF], and now hold more than half of the world’s human population. Demographers expect by the year 2050 that 80% of us will live in cities.
There is a feeling of déjà vu to all of this. “Perhaps the most celebrated past local ‘urban farmers’ were the Parisian maraîchers,” says Pierre Desrochers, co-author of The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-mile Diet. “Through the use of about one-sixth of the city’s area, supporting technologies (from greenhouses to cloches and cold frames) and very long hours, they grew more than 100,000 tons of produce annually in the late 19th century.” They exported some of their produce to London. By the turn of the 20th century however, better transportation able to deliver food and fiber from places better suited to growing coupled with better paying job opportunities for the workers killed their market and made the Parisian truck farm system unsustainable.
Whether we build farms within old factories or stack them vertically, we still need to make the enterprise profitable. Economic sustainability, more than any technological problem, remains the highest hurdle for farming factories.
If there is one thing we can all agree on it’s that food is a good thing. Food is what provides our bodies with the vitamins, nutrients, carbohydrates and proteins that fuel our daily lives. James Beard said,“Food is our common ground, a universal experience.”
Former cook, food writer and snarkicist, Anthony Bourdain says that knowing people’s food is a start to understanding them:
“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
On Saturday, August 9, 2014, I did more than get off the couch, I got out of bed early and moved, driving south on Interstate 5 to Monsanto’s research and development facility in Woodland, CA. I arrived right at 9:01AM. Their facility is a big place, the main building alone covers more than two acres. At the Woodland facility they have 6.7 acres of greenhouses and screen houses, 182 acres of land plus 200 acres of land that they lease.
They grow many different plants for markets all over the world at the Woodland R&D:
Solaneous – Eggplant, hot pepper, sweet pepper, tomato
We’re a company committed to creating holistic solutions to the big challenges facing agriculture. We currently provide seeds for fruits, vegetables and staples like corn and soybeans that can help fight off disease, pests and drought, which can wipe out harvests. We develop crop protection products to help keep crops safe from attacks. And we’re collecting and finding new ways to use data to solve day-to-day problems on the farm, such as tracking weather conditions in the fields and finding the optimal times for watering….
Monsanto began in 1901 as a company that created artificial sweeteners. Between the 1950s and 1980s, we pioneered many agricultural innovations including breakthrough fertilizers, crop protection tools and advances in plant genetics. In 2002, Monsanto Company was re-established as an independent agricultural company, with pharmaceutical business units forming a separate entity. Today, we partner with farmers around the world in order to sustainably produce more food.
That last sentence about partnering with farmers is an important one. You and I, the Joe and Josephine Public’s of the world are not the primary customers for Monsanto. Nor are we for their competitors: Syngenta and Bayer CropScience AG, nor for the dozens (perhaps hundreds) mid-sized seed companies worldwide. Monsanto, et. al., strives to meet the needs of their customers: farmers. There’s a huge difference between a hobby and a livelihood. Farming is a serious business. If I dink around in the garden on weekends, and a pest takes out my peas, beans, tomatoes, or other fruit or vegetable, I can shrug my shoulders and run down to the market. If I am a farmer, and that crop represents next year’s mortgage payments, clothing, transportation money, food, entertainment, and medical bills, such a loss to a farmer can devastate the family. That is not to say that companies such as Monsanto don’t care about looks, texture, or taste, but their customers drive their focus.
Bill Johnson, PhD, talked about squash breeding and the crops’ odd market.
Farmers need to have seed to meet their customers (again, it’s not you or me, it’s the distributors) needs, and they have dozens of seed companies to choose from. Monsanto is by no means the only company to choose from. They have to compete for the chance to sell their seed to a farmer. One fascinating bit of information I picked up on this is the cultural differences around the world for food crops. Different places around the world have different tastes and aesthetics. The company cannot have just one kind of squash variety but perhaps dozens. And then there are the size and shipping preferences. If Monsanto does not have the seed to meet the needs of the farmer in the U.S., Chile, Israel, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere, each farmer in those places will buy seed from someone else. And farmers will often buy from several seed companies depending on the growing season and their own needs.
After tasting incredible melons Alan Krivanek, PhD, tries to interest us in, my personal fruit fav, tomatoes.Janice Person positions herself for a photo.Jeff Mills, PhD, explained melon breeding.Greg Tolla, PhD, explains that cultures have differing wants in watermelons. Different cultures like different characteristics in their fruits and vag.Just a few of the watermelons (cousins of the cucumber) showing different characteristics.We ate at a great Mexican restaurant in Woodland. Thanks Janice and all the nice Monsanto folks.
Many critics think Monsanto wants to poison consumers, which is a very odd business model when you stop to think about it. The poisoning comes from the use of transgenic biotechnology–GMOs (according to critics). Yet of all the fruit and vegetables I and my fellow bloggers saw only one squash which had been created transgenically, twenty years ago to resist a virus. Resistance to GMOs, in my opinion, has forced Monsanto and others to revert to the far more cumbersome method of crossing and back-crossing plants rather than selecting and placing beneficial genes. Under the cross/back-cross system the fastest a product can get to market is six years, but there is no EPA or FDA hoop to jump through. Transgenic plants could be developed much, much faster but the regulatory hoops can add decades to the rollout to market.
Food is important. By 2050, the world population will be two billion more than today’s (after which it is projected to level out and then fall). If we want to create more wild places and not increase our agricultural footprint then we need to have more plants that can pull nitrogen from the air as legumes can; we need plants that are more drought and flood resistant. We need plants that can provide greater vitamins and minerals (since not everyone in the world will be able to eat or afford a balanced diet). Without the ability to use transgenic technology, our chances of bio-fortification are nil and the other needs very nearly nil.
“Civilization is running a race with famine,” soil scientist, Walter Clay Lowdermilk wrote, “and the outcome is very much in doubt.”
Monsanto shows that they take food race seriously. Why critics of biotechnology think we ought to run that race in the technological equivalents of gunny sacks makes no sense.
My thanks to Janice Person, Monsanto’s Online Engagement Entrepreneur, for inviting me. Also a big thank you to Holly Butka, Global Consumer Engagement Director, Tom Wofford, PhD, Brassica and leafy Breeding Director; Jeff Mills, PhD; Bill Johnson, PhD; Greg Tolla, PhD; and Alan Krivanek for taking time out of your Saturday.
Disclaimer: I was provided a travel stipend by Monsanto to offset transportation costs to and from the Woodland Monsanto blogger tour. No other compensation was received. All opinions expressed are my own.
If there is one thing we can all agree on it’s that food is a good thing. Food is what provides our bodies with the vitamins, nutrients, carbohydrates and proteins that fuel our daily lives. James Beard said, “Food is our common ground, a universal experience.” Former cook, food writer and snarkicist, Anthony Bourdain says that knowing people’s food is a start to understanding them:
“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
On Saturday, August 9, 2014, I did more than get off the couch, I got out of bed early and moved, driving south on Interstate 5 to Monsanto’s research and development facility in Woodland, CA. I arrived right at 9:01AM. Their facility is a big place, the main building alone covers more than two acres. At the Woodland facility they have 6.7 acres of greenhouses and screen houses, 182 acres of land plus 200 acres of land that they lease.
They grow many different plants for markets all over the world at the Woodland R&D:
Solaneous – Eggplant, hot pepper, sweet pepper, tomato
We’re a company committed to creating holistic solutions to the big challenges facing agriculture. We currently provide seeds for fruits, vegetables and staples like corn and soybeans that can help fight off disease, pests and drought, which can wipe out harvests. We develop crop protection products to help keep crops safe from attacks. And we’re collecting and finding new ways to use data to solve day-to-day problems on the farm, such as tracking weather conditions in the fields and finding the optimal times for watering….
Monsanto began in 1901 as a company that created artificial sweeteners. Between the 1950s and 1980s, we pioneered many agricultural innovations including breakthrough fertilizers, crop protection tools and advances in plant genetics. In 2002, Monsanto Company was re-established as an independent agricultural company, with pharmaceutical business units forming a separate entity. Today, we partner with farmers around the world in order to sustainably produce more food.
That last sentence about partnering with farmers is an important one. You and I, the Joe and Josephine Public’s of the world are not the primary customers for Monsanto. Nor are we for their competitors: Syngenta and Bayer CropScience AG, nor for the dozens (perhaps hundreds) mid-sized seed companies worldwide. Monsanto, et. al., strives to meet the needs of their customers: farmers. There’s a huge difference between a hobby and a livelihood. Farming is a serious business. If I dink around in the garden on weekends, and a pest takes out my peas, beans, tomatoes, or other fruit or vegetable, I can shrug my shoulders and run down to the market. If I am a farmer, and that crop represents next year’s mortgage payments, clothing, transportation money, food, entertainment, and medical bills, such a loss to a farmer can devastate the family. That is not to say that companies such as Monsanto don’t care about looks, texture, or taste, but their customers drive their focus.
Bill Johnson, PhD, talked about squash breeding and the crops’ odd market.
Farmers need to have seed to meet their customers (again, it’s not you or me, it’s the distributors) needs, and they have dozens of seed companies to choose from. Monsanto is by no means the only company to choose from. They have to compete for the chance to sell their seed to a farmer. One fascinating bit of information I picked up on this is the cultural differences around the world for food crops. Different places around the world have different tastes and aesthetics. The company cannot have just one kind of squash variety but perhaps dozens. And then there are the size and shipping preferences. If Monsanto does not have the seed to meet the needs of the farmer in the U.S., Chile, Israel, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere, each farmer in those places will buy seed from someone else. And farmers will often buy from several seed companies depending on the growing season and their own needs.
After tasting incredible melons Alan Krivanek, PhD, tries to interest us in, my personal fruit fav, tomatoes.Janice Person positions herself for a photo.Jeff Mills, PhD, explained melon breeding.Greg Tolla, PhD, explains that cultures have differing wants in watermelons. Different cultures like different characteristics in their fruits and vag.Just a few of the watermelons (cousins of the cucumber) showing different characteristics.We ate at a great Mexican restaurant in Woodland. Thanks Janice and all the nice Monsanto folks.
Many critics think Monsanto wants to poison consumers, which is a very odd business model when you stop to think about it. The poisoning comes from the use of transgenic biotechnology–GMOs (according to critics). Yet of all the fruit and vegetables I and my fellow bloggers saw only one squash which had been created transgenically, twenty years ago to resist a virus. Resistance to GMOs, in my opinion, has forced Monsanto and others to revert to the far more cumbersome method of crossing and back-crossing plants rather than selecting and placing beneficial genes. Under the cross/back-cross system the fastest a product can get to market is six years, but there is no EPA or FDA hoop to jump through. Transgenic plants could be developed much, much faster but the regulatory hoops can add decades to the rollout to market.
Food is important. By 2050, the world population will be two billion more than today’s (after which it is projected to level out and then fall). If we want to create more wild places and not increase our agricultural footprint then we need to have more plants that can pull nitrogen from the air as legumes can; we need plants that are more drought and flood resistant. We need plants that can provide greater vitamins and minerals (since not everyone in the world will be able to eat or afford a balanced diet). Without the ability to use transgenic technology, our chances of bio-fortification are nil and the other needs very nearly nil.
“Civilization is running a race with famine,” soil scientist, Walter Clay Lowdermilk wrote, “and the outcome is very much in doubt.”
Monsanto shows that they take food race seriously. Why critics of biotechnology think we ought to run that race in the technological equivalents of gunny sacks makes no sense.
My thanks to Janice Person, Monsanto’s Online Engagement Entrepreneur, for inviting me. Also a big thank you to Holly Butka, Global Consumer Engagement Director, Tom Wofford, PhD, Brassica and leafy Breeding Director; Jeff Mills, PhD; Bill Johnson, PhD; Greg Tolla, PhD; and Alan Krivanek for taking time out of your Saturday.
And, yes, I was provided a travel stipend by Monsanto to offset transportation costs to and from the Woodland Monsanto blogger tour. No other compensation was received. All opinions expressed are my own.
Nullius in Verba 