In Part 1 of Agricultural Science in the 21st Century, we looked at the use of pesticides and the threat these chemicals posed to farmers, farm families and farm workers globally through overexposure.
Why do farmers find it necessary to take the risk of chemical overexposure? The “growing” pressure to produce, to up yields in the face of deteriorating environmental conditions, must keep farmers in a constant state of worry these days. At least, in the Global North, that is likely the state of mind. In the Global South, however, facing more crises with less may explain the rate of suicides in farm communities. In India, in particular, farmer suicide has been described as a national crisis.
We call this look at Agriculture Science in the 21st Century – Part 2, the Hopeful. Why? Because unlike the reactive technologies that have ugly consequences, the innovations from scientific discoveries and technology described here represent sustainable solutions produced through scientific discovery and innovation.
What are these hope-producing innovations? Super seeds and genetically engineered microbes. So, let’s begin.
Super Seeds
Super seeds are designed to survive drought, extreme heat, intense rainfall and flooding, plant diseases, and natural disasters. In India, breeding of climate-resilient staple crop seeds is big business. Rice is high on the list. Four different rice varieties have been developed to provide quality grain and high yields. One variety, Swarna-Sub1, can survive flooding for two weeks. Two other rice varieties, MTU-1010 and MTU-1140, are resilient in a range of extreme weather conditions.
Super seeds combine selective breeding with advanced genetic engineering. The latter uses gene-editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9. Genomic tools help predict the potential of different seeds and their performance in real-world conditions.
Selective breeding and genetic engineering in field trials are speeding up super-seed development and bringing the technology to farmers faster amid increasingly unpredictable climate conditions.
Super Seed Developers
Among the leading agrochemical companies working on super seeds is Bayer. In Part 1, we talked about Bayer and glyphosate and glyphosate-tolerant crops. Bayer is developing super seeds for rice, corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat.
Companies other than Bayer working on super seed development include:
- Corteva, developing drought-resilient corn hybrids,
- BASF, with a focus on corn, soybean, canola and cotton,
- Syngenta, with a focus on corn, sunflowers, melon, and peppers,
- KWS, with advanced breeding and genomic research into environmental and biological plant stress affecting corn, sugar beet, cereals and oilseed crops.
Overcoming the Added Costs for Super Seeds
The downside to this innovation: improved seeds are more expensive, a barrier to entry for farmers in the Global South. Climate-resilient seed subsidies are increasingly being offered by a number of governments in Africa and South Asia.
India’s Beej Gram Yojana is a government program organizing groups of small farm holders in rural villages by providing subsidies, training, and seeds to improve crop varieties and yields. The program covers 50% of cereal-seed distribution costs, and 60% of the cost for pulses, oilseeds, and green-manure crops.
Developing Super Microbes
Super seeds alone will not solve the farming challenge of maintaining higher crop yields in the face of climate change. That’s where genetically-engineered microbes come in.
Enter Switch Bioworks, a 2022 business startup from California that has been engineering “symbiotic microbes” to create “living fertilizers.” These Switch microbes are aptly named. That’s because they have an “on switch” once established in soil and root systems that turns the microbes on to scale exponentially. If successful, the microbes can replace fossil-fuel-based fertilizers.
Current Use of Nitrogen and Ammonia Fertilizers
Nitrogen fertilizers have raised farm yields across the planet, with more than 1 billion people dependent on importing them. These fertilizers are produced from fossil fuels, with more than 700 million people importing natural gas feedstocks to make them. This type of fertilizer production produces 5% of current global carbon emissions.
Why the Switch?
When introduced into soil, the Switch microbes establish themselves around the root systems of plants before activating their genetically engineered on-switch to begin converting atmospheric nitrogen into a soluble form that they and the plants feed on.
When deployed, the microbes not only can help to lower atmospheric carbon emissions for the agricultural sector, but they also mean:
- Less use of natural gas for fertilizer production,
- Nitrogen production moves to the farm and away from greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuel plants,
- Less need for ammonia and nitrogen fertilizers.
Switch estimates, when deployed globally, its microbes can replace 25% to 50% of farm nitrogen fertilizer requirements within five years.
To that end, the company has recently started field trials in six U.S. states with the immediate objective to:
- Measure overall microbe performance,
- Ensure the microbes activate correctly,
- Determine how much of the microbe-fixed nitrogen reaches the plants,
- Detect nitrous oxide emissions from soil that can be attributed to the microbes,
- Analyze the natural soil community microbiome to ensure it is unaffected by the Switch microbes.
