Show Notes
In today’s episode: agriscience versus nature. The ability to farm land productively and profitably requires that farmers bend nature to their will on some level. But that doesn’t mean that farmers and scientists can’t find ways to work with nature, minimize off-target effects and conserve biodiversity. A great model species to think about these concepts related to farming and nature is the honeybee.
Jonathan Nixon is an entomologist at Corteva Agriscience who works within the insect management biology group in the crop health division. Not only are bees his full time job, beekeeping is also his hobby, his side business, and his PhD that he is completing in honeybee genomics.
“ What we want to do, first and foremost, is provide some better tools for our growers. Some better solutions for them. And a lot of that is focused on really reducing pest numbers out in the field. And you know, within our group, insect management, those target pests are insects. Honeybees are also insects, and it's a very fine line to walk between balancing that target potency on the pests so that your growers are able to protect their fields while also mitigating the off-target effects on our pollinators.” - Jonathan Nixon These are the complex realities being faced by farmers like Maryland producer Trey Hill. Over the last twenty years, Hill and his team at Harborview Farms have made several intentional decisions to make their large scale farm a more sustainable operation. After Trey found out there were some environmental groups in the area willing to pay for the costs of planting cover crops he decided to give it a try.
“ My life's a process. My life's a learning living thing… I always thought there was all this anti-farmer sentiment within the environmental community, and what I found is most people like us. You know, once you start getting in there and you take on a leadership role…people want to hear what you have to say.” - Trey Hill Some myths busted in this episode:
The myth that companies are only interested in the efficacy of their products and not at all investing in the impacts of these products. In the Bee Friendly Initiative you can see the care that is going into making sure pollinators and other beneficials are considered in the research and development process The myth that more sustainable farmers need to abandon modern tools altogether. Trey Hill is drastically reducing his environmental impact and moving in this more regenerative and biodiverse direction without taking chemistries or other technologies completely off the table. The myth that we can somehow just reach some sort of ecological balance in which we can let nature do whatever it wants and still farm sustainably. Farmers are stewards of the land, but they’re also running businesses - in some cases large businesses. It’s just not ecologically natural to produce the amount of food needed to feed eight billion people.
Agriscience Explained is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience and hosted by Tim Hammerich. This show is produced by Clint Pilcher, Rayda Krell and Ann Leonard. Jaime Hammerich and Grant Bolton edit these podcasts, and the music was composed by Dmitri Volkov. Subscribe for more Agriscience Explained: From Science to Solutions.
More from Agriscience Explained
Please send us your feedback on the podcast: [email protected] In this episode, we look back on the past 100 years, and highlight what will carry over into this next chapter in the company’s history. Corteva Agriscience chief technology and digital officer Sam Eathington and some really special guests discuss the past, present and future of agriscience innovation.
Dr. Carla Yerkes joins us to help us tell the story of Rinskor and explain the process of herbicide innovation and the persistence and creativity it takes to develop new solutions for farmers. Yerkes is a research biologist at Corteva Agriscience and has a Ph.D. in herbicide physiology. She has spent about half of her 30 year career in herbicide discovery research and the other half in herbicide trait discovery.
What is happening in agriscience today that we will be talking about 100 years from now? While it’s impossible to answer that question with certainty, there is a technology that has the potential to impact our industry in the next century as much or even more than hybridization changed the game over the past century. That technology is genome editing. The promise of this technology is very real and today you’re going to hear firsthand accounts of what changed in 2012 and 2013 to make all of this possible, what did it look like to test the technology in plant breeding, and what does the strategy look like to turn this science into better solutions.
In today’s episode, we’re following a molecule around the world, from being discovered in Japan to being developed in the United States to becoming a solution for farmers in the United Kingdom. Joining us is one of those farmers in the UK, Julian Gibbons. Julian has seen a variety of fungicide solutions come and go for important wheat diseases like Septoria tritici, or speckled leaf blotch. He’s really excited about the potential for a relatively newly registered product derived from a natural compound called Inatreq Active™. And the story of the need for Inatreq and the road to getting this product to farmers is the focus of today’s episode.
We celebrate the 100th year anniversary of Pioneer Seeds, and take a look back at the history of hybridization. The process may seem simple: to take two varieties or even species and cross them together to create more desirable offspring. But the concept of controlled hybridization, intentionally transferring pollen from a chosen male parent to a chosen female parent, is relatively new in the history of agriculture. But it has been nothing short of revolutionary.