When thinkers from all over the world gathered last week for the 40th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland to mull over the global state of the economy, the role of agriculture was not an afterthought.

During a compelling panel discussion Rethinking How to Feed the World, DuPont's Chair and CEO Ellen Kullman put agriculture in the center of the global economic discussion in stating that:

Agriculture is a game-changer that can mitigate multiple global issues - hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, poor nutrition and subsequent effects such as civil unrest.

 

Recently, I participated in a meeting to invigorate and encourage brainstorm around the issue of food security. The meeting was co-hosted by Meridian Institute, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, The World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The objectives for the gathering were to:

1. Share information about key institutional food security priorities and activities and identify an efficient mechanism(s) for sustained, on-going information sharing.

2. Identify how the respective strengths of the participating institutions can be leveraged to take innovative concepts to scale in support of food security.

3. Explore how participating institutions could support the development of food security indicators for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

4. Explore how participating institutions could support efforts that better enable tracking of pledges vis-à-vis actual food security investments.

 

At the Global Harvest Initiative, the collective "we" are always thinking about and rethinking the way forward in our quest to close the global productivity gap by 2050. In that sense, on Monday I attended the Farm Credit Council's Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., where many in the agricultural industry and others, including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., gathered to offer their views on the way forward.

While each of the speakers offered interesting thoughts about agriculture's mission, I thought Monsanto's Executive Vice President, Sustainability & Corporate Affairs and GHI Board Member

Jerry Steiner's remarks were particularly enlightening in offering a prescription for the way forward for GHI's mission. In part, Steiner said:

GHI's success will depend on bringing together a diverse group of experts to develop, share [ideas]... and jointly advocate for policies that address six specific actions.

The International Conservation Caucus Foundation  recently joined the Global Harvest Initiative. ICCF is an association of U.S public and private sector representatives dedicated to international conservation. It aims to educate U.S. policymakers and the world's political and business leaders on the vital links between good natural resource management and sustainable economic development, poverty alleviation, and regional security.  ICCF shares in GHI's mission of strengthening public and private partnerships in building a sustainable future. We are so glad to have them join us and look forward to working with them toward our common goal.

In a notable illustration of public/private collaboration at work, a research team - including U.S. Department of Agriculture scientists - "has sequenced the majority of the soybean genome, providing an unprecedented look into how this important legume crop converts four critical ingredients - sunlight, water, carbon dioxide and nitrogen - into protein and oil, the basic building blocks for many consumer products."

 

Soybean and other legumes play a critical role in global food security and human health and are used in a wide range of products, from tofu, soy flour, meat substitutes and soy milk to soy oil-based printing ink and biodiesel, said Molly Jahn, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics. This new information about soybean's genetic makeup could lead to plants that produce more beans that contain more protein and oil, better adapt to adverse environmental conditions, or are more resistant to diseases.

 

Last week, Science published a series of papers related to the maize genome project, representing the culmination of the four-year effort to sequence the genome of corn. The results demonstrate the largest and most complex plant genome sequence to date and is expected to speed up the development of corn varieties that will help feed the world and meet growing demands. This is an amazing accomplishment in research. It provides much insight and will have a great impact on agricultural productivity, much like the human genome has had on human health. In addition, this project is a positive example of how public-private partnerships and strong government investment can benefit small and large farmers worldwide to close the productivity gap. The National Science Foundation, USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture and U.S. Department of Energy jointly funded the $29.5 million effort, which was led by a team of scientists from Washington University, Iowa State University, University of Arizona and Cold Spring Laboratory in New York. The effort also received support from Ceres, Monsanto, and Pioneer, who shared their corn genome sequencing data. Congratulations to the entire team on the success of this endeavor. We face a growing global agricultural productivity gap and must continue to stimulate innovations in agriculture just like these to close the gap.

Recently, the Obama administration announced an initiative that went relatively unnoticed amid the coverage of Afghanistan, health-care reform and the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet, the groundbreaking effort has the potential to fundamentally transform a field of science to improve human health and protect our environment, while greatly improving the foundation for global food security.

I'm talking about the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), which Congress established in the 2008 Farm Bill. Launched recently by Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack, he saw the promise of NIFA as rebuilding USDA's competitive grants program from the ground up to generate real results for the American people. It's a bold move. And, it's about time.

 

I had the opportunity to hear Bill Gates deliver remarks last week at the World Food Prize Symposium. He spoke about the importance of agricultural innovations to feed the world, particularly in Africa, and outlined his vision for the next green revolution. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Friday, Michael Gerson further described Gates' optimistic and results-driven approach to meet farmers needs and fill a growing gap through a partnership of sound science and philanthropy.

Yesterday I attended the World Food Prize 2009 Borlaug Dialogue Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa. Agricultural leaders, including Ellen Kullman, CEO of Dupont, and Patricia Woertz, CEO of ADM, opened the event encouraging stakeholders to work collectively to achieve Norman Borlaug's vision to develop and share meaningful agricultural innovations with farmers around the world. They praised the World Food Prize and urged participants to come together to meet the agricultural needs of a growing world.

 

The Farm Foundation announced yesterday the winners of its 30-Year Challenge Policy Competition. The competition challenged participants to submit entries focusing on innovative ways to meet the agriculture and food system challenges outlined in the Foundation's 2008 report. The top entry in the competition was written by chief economist of Informa Economics, William Motes. In his paper, Dr. Motes addressed global agricultural resource allocation policies over the past three decades and outlined critical principles in which he feels policy development must focus.