Print This PageAgriculture Can Help Keep Carbon in Balance
Issue Discussion: Climate Change
Conclusions of Monsanto’s Climate Change Panel
- Climate change is real
- Monsanto is reducing its carbon impact
- Our pipeline products focus on environmental stress
Climate change issues have occupied leading scientists around the world for many years. Monsanto’s scientists have recently taken a deeper look at the data, the trends, and the implications for agriculture. Monsanto created a panel of about 20 senior scientists to review studies and work with leading academics in this area. They spent the better part of a year researching existing studies and discussing the data. The panel’s consensus is that temperatures are rising and are expected to continue to rise, with related climatic consequences.
These consequences
include changes in temperatures and weather patterns in agricultural regions.
These changes have the potential to change crop productivity and cropping patterns.
Other impacts could include increases in the range and reproductive capabilities
of weeds, increased geographic range of insect pests, increases in the incidence
of mycotoxins (toxic fungi that form at the site of an insect intrusion into
the plant), and increases in plant diseases.
The panel’s analysis also concluded that Monsanto’s operations have been continuously reducing their carbon impact per pound of product. Current and future products add value in two ways: by mitigating climate change impacts and by helping plants adapt to increased stresses of changing climate conditions.
Roundup Ready crops, which promote conservation tillage practices, are one agent of mitigation. Conservation tillage results in improved carbon sequestration and reduced fuel consumption. Con-till practices can sequester as much as a half ton of carbon per acre a year. Less tillage also means fewer passes by tilling equipment, and less fuel. The combined biotech crop-related carbon dioxide emission savings from reduced fuel use and additional soil carbon sequestration in 2005 were equal to the removal from the roads of almost 4 million cars.8
The panel also found that Monsanto’s future technologies can help crops adapt to the climate and weather results of rising global temperatures. Through plant breeding, Monsanto is producing more resilient, better-adapted crops by continuous selection as local conditions change. The pace of change in temperature and climate in general is consistent with the pace at which Monsanto already adapts plants through its breeding programs.
Monsanto’s pipeline of biotech crops is focused on environmental-stress adaptation. Included in the pipeline are drought-tolerant crops and nitrogen-efficiency genes. Drought-tolerant crops are designed to provide greater yield stability in years when crops would otherwise suffer due to drought conditions. This product will take some of the risk out of farming, in both developed and developing countries. Nitrogen-use efficiency has the potential to contribute to a significant reduction of agricultural GHG emissions while maintaining high grain yield at lower nitrogen levels.
Sustainability has long been a focus of Monsanto’s efforts. Adoption of biotech products has already led to more sustainable and efficient agriculture. Decisions on future biotech products will take into account climate change implications.
