[ 20 ] | COLUMN
SIMON WIEBUSCH
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, CROP SCIENCE DIVISION OF BAYER FOR INDIA, BANGLADESH & SRI LANKA
EMERGING CROP SCIENCE SCENARIO
Creating end-to-end crop value chains and strong linkages to farmers and farmer collectives will expand its global competitiveness
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have around 10 billion people, with India alone accounting for 1.73 billion, up from its current population of 1.38 billion (Source: United Nations). While the population is increasing, arable land is decreasing, and farmers are grappling with limited natural resources and climate change. Extreme weather conditions such as cyclones, floods, droughts and poor rainfall are lowering crop productivity and farmer incomes. This is especially detrimental to smallholder farmers. Access to safe, nutritious and affordable food is a basic human need and farmers work hard to grow their crops in ways that make the production of safe and nutritious food possible. To do so, they use seeds, fertilizers and, at times, crop protection to defend their crops against pests, weeds and diseases. Though modern science has helped develop innovative ways to manage agricultural pests over thousands of years, evolving threats still present an ongoing challenge for farmers around the world. The Indian Subcontinent is no different. Farming in this region is primarily rain-fed and that makes farmers dependent on favourable weather conditions. That’s why at Bayer, we are exploring new ideas that can help farmers with tailored solutions to protect their crops and develop in-built resistance to withstand varying climatic conditions.
he COVID-19 global pandemic and the resulting challenges have highlighted the role of farmers in providing health and nutrition for all and the importance of agriculture to ensure food security worldwide. The pandemic affected everyone but developing nations and rural farming communities faced far greater risks and challenges. While naBayer’s interventions in “Digital tions imposed stay-at-home quarantine orders, crop science tools in farmers across the world continued to go out Bayer offers a broad agriculture are and farm to enable adequate food producrange of hybrid seeds already helping farmers tion. Most of these are smallholder farmas well as chemical, produce more with less ers, who farm on less than 2 hectares of biological and dataresources and make land each, but together comprise nearly 80 driven digital soludata-driven decisions per cent of the world’s total food production tions to help farmers in real-time” (Source: FAO). safely and responsibly The Indian Subcontinent comprising of Inprotect their crops from dia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and a curpests such as weeds, disease, rent population of 1.78 billion is driven by smallholder harmful insects and fungi. Our farmers with limited access to resources and modern ag- diverse and growing portfolio provides ricultural inputs and technologies. By 2050, the world will farmers with the latest technologies
