Print This PageHow We Create "Yield" for Farmers
The best way we can improve farmers’ lives is by creating greater yield for their acreage. One of the goals to which we have committed through our Sustainable Yield Initiative, announced in 2008, is our plan to double yields in our core large-acre crops (see chart below). When we think of yield, however, it’s more than just greater crop production. It also includes greater value creation from cost-saving opportunities and other by-products on a farmer’s acreage.
Doubling Yield with Technology
This year, Monsanto pledged to double yields in our three core large-acre crops — corn, soybeans and cotton — by 2030, compared to a base year of 2000. This commitment applies to countries where farmers have access to current and anticipated seed products and technologies offered by Monsanto.
Of all the tools a farmer has at his or her disposal, the innovation unlocked from breeding and biotechnology has consistently delivered on the promise of more yield for a dollar invested. In fact, if you look at the period from 1996 to 2008, average U.S. corn yields have increased at a pace of about 2.6 bushels per year, creating about 32 bushels of new yield per acre for farmers. This means a farmer receives an average return of $1.50 to $3 for every dollar he or she is spending on seed because of the value of this technology.
For more than a year, the conversations we’ve had with farmers have been around how we create and share in the value. While fertilizer and fuel have seen little innovation over the past few decades, our seeds and traits have delivered significant innovation — and value — in the past decade alone. This provides the perfect foundation for continuing to explain our value proposition in a dynamic commodity price environment we expect to see in 2009.
The use of our current technologies and the rollout of our future, game-changing technologies will also create yield through cost-saving opportunities for farmers. They will require less water and nitrogen to support their crops; they can reduce tillage thereby saving fuel and the release of greenhouse gases into the environment; and they will require less labor to maintain their fields throughout the season. In 2008, we also established a new cost-saving opportunity for U.S. corn farmers who use our triple-trait products: lower insurance premiums. Total savings in 2008 for participating farmers in the initial four-state pilot area are estimated to be nearly $25 million.
We’re also looking to increase yield for farmers through stover, or the stalks, leaves and cobs of corn plants. By creating feed and energy products from crop by-products, we’re optimistic farmers can produce more products without farming more acres, increase the value derived from each acre, and do it in a way that does not further impact our precious natural resources.
