Chairman of Syngenta's board high on modern agriculture

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

“Agriculture is sexy for the first time since the Bronze Age,” Taylor said and the debate about how to deal with a worldwide food crisis is running high. But world leaders aren’t talking about adopting modern technology as a means of solving it. “I don’t know if they are embarrassed by it (the technology) or politically opposed to it,” he said. “Maybe they don’t know about it.”

Yet for Taylor, modern technology’s role was apparent and crucial: “The world has to choose between technology, deforestation and hunger,” he said.

“I can’t see another way out.”

He decried “the move towards mediaeval agriculture, especially in Europe,” where he says hostility towards agricultural technology “is extraordinarily pronounced.” He predicted that genetically modified foods that are now banned will be allowed into Europe gradually, first as animal feed and then later as food for humans. He doesn’t see that changing in the short term as the European Union commissioners who have the power to bring changes won’t raise controversy until their terms are renewed in the next year.

The European attitude towards farmers is perverse, Taylor said. Their view is that “growers are a parasitic bunch as a whole. Individual growers are heroes who go out in the snow.”

The food crisis should have been foreseen, Taylor said. Agricultural productivity gains have slowed from the rapid in pace in the 1970s and ‘80s. For years storage stocks have shrank but price increases that should have sparked more production failed to take place. “Population growth is the steady drumbeat, behind this,” along with diet changes in China, the world’s most populous nation.

“On top of all this is the diversion of crops towards biofuel,” he added, noting he was “not one of these that believe biofuel is a wicked experiment. It is unfortunate this (perception) has gained so much currency.”

Taylor said Canada has an important role in solving the food crisis. It is one of five countries that can ramp up agricultural production to meet increasing worldwide demand for food; the other areas being Russia, the Ukraine, Argentina and Brazil.

On top of that, Canada, which has generally adopted new agricultural technology, is viewed as a reasonable country in Europe, where ideas are sometimes rejected simply because they come from the United States. BF