In a career spanning over 30 years, Monsanto's Chief Technology Officer and World Food Prize laureate Robert Fraley says, "I can't remember when there's been a more important, a more interesting, or more challenging time in the conversations around agriculture."

On one hand, agriculture faces challenges like food security and making efficient use of resources like water. On the other hand, innovations coming into the industry will help meet these challenges, says Fraley.

With a projected world population of over 9 billion by 2050, the world food supply needs to double in the next three decades.

Monsanto Chief Technology Officer Robert Fraley says innovations coming down the pipeline will play a significant role in meeting the world's food security needs.

"That means over the next 30 years we have to produce more food than has been produced in the entire history of the world," he says. "And we know we're going to have to do that with less land, less water allocated to agriculture, and face the vagaries that a changing climate will throw at us around the globe."

It will take collaboration, sustainably intensifying agriculture on arable land, taking pressure off of marginal land, and reducing food waste. Fraley says it's possible to meet or even exceed these food security needs, due to the "tidal wave of new innovation coming into agriculture." In fact, because this innovation will make more efficient use of available land, he projects by 2050, 150 million acres may be able to be taken out of agricultural production and restored to nature.

Innovation opens doors

These innovations range from biotechnology to data science, including:

• In the next few years, Monsanto hopes to launch SmartStax Pro, a new stack including genes for rootworm, corn borer, and glyphosate tolerance in addition to the new DroughtGard trait. "This product is exciting because it utilizes RNAi to combat the corn rootworm pest," Fraley says. RNAi is a naturally-occurring process and toggles the activity and function of specific genes – in this case, genes in the rootworm.

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• RNAi molecules also have the potential to serve as a biological pesticide or as a new tool to assist in key global challenges like bee colony collapse disorder. This is work underway in Monsanto's new BioDirect platform. Fraley says the science may be a way to mitigate colony collapse disorder in honey bees. Although some argue colony collapse is caused by pesticides, many say it's due to varroa mites, which latch onto bees, drain them of nutrients, and inject viruses. "We've been able to create RNAi molecules that recognize key genes in the mite, but aren't recognized by the bee itself," Fraley explains.

• Thanks in part to collaboration with UNL biochemist Donald Weeks, who first identified the gene that makes broadleaf crops like soybeans tolerant to dicamba, 2016 will mark the launch of dicamba-tolerant Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans for use with Xtend, which Fraley notes has a lower volatility than older dicamba-based products. This, paired with education of growers and technology like smartphone apps to measure wind speed, helps ensure the herbicide is applied at the right time.

Communicating with consumers

Fraley notes although people have been genetically modifying plants for centuries through selective breeding, the capabilities of plant breeding have changed more in the last five years than the last 5,000.

Today, scientists can breed based on the knowledge of every gene in a corn or soybean plant and can map and tag genes from breeding programs around the world.

But there's another challenge – communicating to consumers the importance of innovations like biotechnology in meeting global food security in an efficient and sustainable way. A 2014 meta-analysis by German economists Klumper and Qaim concluded from 1995 to 2014, biotechnology on average reduced chemical pesticide use 37%, increased crop yields 22%, and increased farmer profits 68%.

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"If anyone would have told me in the early '80s, when we were first developing the methodologies to put genes into plants, I'd be standing in front of this audience knowing now that biotech crops are grown in almost 30 countries, imported in another 40, are touching almost 500 million acres of farmland, which is almost a quarter of the world's farmland, I never would have believed it," Fraley says. "On the other hand, I never would have thought we still would have the challenges we have on acceptance, on communication, and on the debate around our food system."

Recently, Fraley adds, Monsanto has stepped up efforts to communicate with consumers through social media and commercials. He says it's the responsibility of everyone in agriculture to have this dialogue.

"I see the vast majority of people in this country interested and open to that dialogue," he says. "That's a dialogue I think all of us should be able to engage in."

-Harris is editor of sister publication Nebraska Farmer