Agriculture’s way forward is to embrace science, says a professor from the University of Oklahoma.
Drew Kershen delivered that message Feb. 11 in the Harry Toop Memorial Science for Saskatchewan lecture at the University of Saskatchewan.
“Science – meaning genetics, agronomics, fertilization and technology in general – that’s the way forward to bring science back into farming and to enhance it and improve it,” said Kershen.
“Farming has faced intense competition for public funding and sort of lost out.”
Kershen said the public didn’t pay attention to funding and blamed that on the rise in prosperity, particularly in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.
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“The answer is people were so well fed, so well clothed, we had access to energy resources and I think people just sort of thought it doesn’t matter any more. Agriculture is so productive that the bounty will continue, even if we don’t pay attention to it. It was taken for granted. Who needs more food?”
Kershen, who grew up on a farm in the Texas Panhandle, said the World Development Report for 2008 shows how funding for science and agriculture, particularly from governments, tailed off in 1983 and did not come back until the last few years.
He also cited a 2008 report from the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development that stated small-scale farmers and the agro-ecological methods provide the way forward.
He said this report is contrary to science and technology and romanticizes agriculture.
“People have this … kind of bucolic sentimentalism about what agriculture should be. It’s not a sustainable system if you’re really going to feed all the people that don’t feel that way.”
Kershen said in the last several years producers have embraced the use of biotechnology in agriculture.
“They have been voting with their fields around the world that if they’re given the choice, they’ll vote with their fields to adapt the science of agriculture biotechnology.”
He said Saskatchewan is a world leader in adopting new science and offered canola development as an example. Wheat will need to play catch-up if it is to keep pace, he added.
“Wheat has really put itself into a position that unless wheat begins to adapt a positive attitude towards this newest science and agriculture, wheat is likely to simply decline more and more.”
Kershen said by about 2030, as the world’s population reaches nine billion people, the need for food will have risen by 50 percent from today’s production.
He said Saskatchewan can produce more per acre through biotechnology to meet world demand for food.
