A message from Dr. Sam Eathington, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Digital Officer of Corteva Agriscience.
It’s a pivotal time in agriculture. The future of food production hinges on delivering new tools and technologies to farmers that help solve farm- and field-level challenges while improving overall sustainability.
My View on Agriculture is that sustainable innovation is the only path forward. When we think about the world’s increasing needs not only for food, but also to protect our natural resources and transition to renewable fuels – going into 2024 and beyond – we must innovate.
Sustainable innovation is the only path forward.”
Agricultural innovations, including those brought to market by Corteva Agriscience, encompass everything from more drought-resistant seeds to insecticides that better protect soil while still ridding crops of yield-robbing pests. We are making quantum leaps by using technology, like gene editing and AI, in meaningful ways to meet farmers’ needs today and anticipate the challenges of tomorrow.
Sustainable solutions
But the availability of these sustainable solutions is dependent on timely regulatory approvals, which remains a key bottleneck to accelerating their adoption and impact. It takes decades of research and testing and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to bring a new innovation to market. For example, a single crop protection product takes an average of 13 years to reach market, a biotech trait takes almost 16 years, and a new seed product can take seven years.
Corteva invests nearly $4 million every single day on research and development, and we plan to increase that investment in years to come. We aim to continue delivering innovations that give farmers more options to improve yield potential and minimize inputs to build whole-farm systems that are strong and stable.
Working together
As Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and father of the World Food Prize, said, “food is a moral right.” Protecting that right requires experts and entities around the world working together.
Corteva is committed to facilitating those conversations, aiding collaboration and delivering solutions for agriculture through 2024 and beyond. Solutions inspired by nature. Solutions that empower our world’s farmers to be more productive, sustainable, and resilient, season after season.