A senior Bayer CropScience executive is calling for a massive increase in public and private sector investment in agricultural research to meet the growth in demand and rising hunger.
It would require billions of dollars in new public and private investment to meet his call-to-arms.
Growing population, increasing world malnutrition, soaring food prices and new demand for grain feedstock for biofuel production have created a crisis of supply, Guenter Bachlechner, head of product technology in the Germany based Bayer research division, told an Ottawa CropLife Canada conference Dec. 3.
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“To meet the demands now and in the future, we need nothing less than a second green revolution,” he said.
Bachlechner said that means investing more in biotechnology and genetically modified varieties that increase yield, contain heat and drought-resistant traits and produce more nutritious food.
For opponents of genetically modified varieties, this is nothing less than an attempt to use a food crisis to promote a food-altering technology rejected by most consumers when polled.
Bachlechner said Bayer is planning to invest $3.4 billion in research and development by 2012 to develop new agricultural chemicals and plant varieties.
He called on other companies and governments to increase their research investment as well.
The Bayer executive said investment in product research and development has declined during the past two decades as companies were deterred by the increasing cost and time involved in developing and winning approval for a new product and governments turned their spending priorities elsewhere.
He said the costs for a company to develop a new product and then jump the regulatory hurdles to get it into the market can be close to $400 million and take a decade or more.
The majority of potential products researched do not make it to the commercialization stage.
Bachlechner said past government investment and subsidy sometimes led to overproduction and falling prices.
“With climate change, population growth and additional demand from fuel production, those days are over,” he said. “We need additional investment in agriculture now for the demand ahead.”
Bachlechner told the conference that the concern about high food prices and the descent of tens of millions of developing world citizens into food deprivation could motivate more public and private investment in increased food production, including GM varieties.
“The food crisis has reawakened the need to secure the food supply,” he told the conference. “This is welcome.”
But he said in an interview that private companies and private investment alone will not solve world hunger issues.
“Hunger in the world is a political question and a distribution question to be solved.”
