Today’s agriculture vs. tomorrow’s world: Ensuring the future of the essential

We all know the importance of food in our lives. Food is at the root of everything we do and are. It sustains not just our health and lives; it’s embedded in our cultures. We have an emotional, almost transcendent, connection with the food we eat, and it plays an intimate role within our families, friendships and communities. For all of these reasons, our faith in the systems that supply our food is indispensable — and never more so than today, in the face of the uncertainties wrought by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Farmers rank alongside healthcare workers and other frontline workers as the true heroes in this time of crisis. No matter what happens today, we depend on farmers for the food we will need tomorrow, next month and next year. Farming and farmers never cease to be essential, look no further than #plant20. I am incredibly proud to serve farmers through Oerth Bio’s mission.

For the last 15,000 years, farmers have been doing their best to keep faith with us and produce the food we need. They manage the land under biologically dependent and often unpredictable conditions, using the best tools and technologies available to raise food crops and protect them. Today, one-eighth of the world’s landmass, excluding Antarctica, is devoted to cultivated crops[1] and tens of millions of people worldwide are engaged directly or indirectly in the food crop industry.[2]

However, in the 21st century, our agricultural systems and food supply are facing unprecedented challenges — and current tools (while miracles of scientific advancement in their own right) are showing signs of stress — putting our global food supply system at risk. Left unsolved, the problems in our food system will have global implications, and they’ll leave us vulnerable on a human level, too.

What’s essential now is nothing less than the complete transformation of agriculture as we know it. The next revolution in agriculture is already overdue.

This is the first in a series of articles where I’ll frame the problems facing our global food system and outline Oerth Bio’s plans to develop the technologies that can address them.

I’ll start with a look at the two looming problems already pressuring our food system: one is the rising global population that will push the system to its limits; the other involves environmental instabilities and aging plant protection measures that are taking tolls on the supply side.

A global balancing act

The world’s population is projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, putting a strain on our food system like nothing we’ve ever seen. Feeding that many people isn’t just a matter of producing enough food. The reasons for hunger extend beyond that, to issues of access, quality and cost.

Unequal distribution of food around the globe creates a problem of access. Already there are regions, most notably sub-Saharan Africa, that cannot produce or access sufficient food, leaving many people chronically undernourished. It is also important to ensure the quality of the available food, because not all food calories are nutritionally equal.

But solving the access problem isn’t a matter of just redistribution and nutrition; we have to take down cost as a barrier. Right now, the cost of tapping into the global food system is high — prohibitively high in many places — making access to affordable food calories difficult. And the global population is growing fastest in places where people already have difficulty accessing affordable food.

Any solution for feeding 10 billion people within 30 years must involve all three components — access, quality and price — working together in balance. People must be able to access quality food at an affordable price. To do this, they need a system that is efficient, sustainable and durable.

Stressing the supply

However, today’s system isn’t sustainable. Even as population growth increases the demand for food, the system’s ability to supply it is subjected to increasing biotic (biological) and abiotic (physical) stressors that threaten its predictability and durability:

• Weeds, insect pests and plant infections are the primary biotic stressors on food crops. But most of the plant protection measures we’ve relied on for decades are showing their age. For example, weeds have developed resistance to many common herbicides. Plus, consumers are asking tough questions about the detrimental effects of herbicides and pesticides on their health and the environment.
• Environmental changes have shifted lines of demarcation — such as frost lines — that once imposed natural limits on the geographical range of pests and diseases. Now they are spreading to regions where they were previously unknown, putting brand-new biotic stressors on crops in those areas.
• Environmental changes have also contributed to abiotic crop stressors such as excessive rainfall, water scarcity, temperature extremes and reduced soil quality.

In short, today’s agriculture isn’t ready for tomorrow’s world.

At Oerth Bio, we aren’t just pointing out the problems; we have a plan to solve them. We are envisioning everything proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC®) technology can do to guarantee the health of our food system — and with it, our own well-being as a global community. We’re using our technology to develop the precise, flexible tools farmers need today to meet the challenges of tomorrow head-on.

In the next article, I’ll delve deeper into the biotic and abiotic stressors outlined above, and take a look at how Oerth Bio is uniquely positioned to lead the “next wave” in crop protection.

I’ll hope you’ll join us in bringing these ideas to the world.

#food #agriculture #farming #climatechange #startup

[1] Searchinger, T., et al. World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A menu of solutions to feed nearly 10 billion people by 2050. (2019). See chart on p. 8.

[2] World Resources Institute states 28% of the world’s population is directly/indirectly involved in agriculture (https://www.wri.org/blog/2013/12/global-food-challenge-explained-18-graphics) but doesn’t break out figures for food crops vs. animal husbandry, aquaculture, biofuels, etc.