Let’s Celebrate Earth Day’s Unsung Hero

When agriculture gave rise to civilization some 11,000+ years ago, it put humanity – and our planet – on a long and winding path toward the state we find ourselves in today:

• A current global population of 7.3 billion people, projected to rise to nearly 10 billion by 2050
• Rapidly growing food, feed, and biofuel demand – projected now by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to increase by 50% from 2013 to 2050
• A changing climate, with potential for net negative effects on agricultural productivity
• Increasingly scarce resources – above all, fresh water

Yet as we mark Earth Day this April 22, there’s an unsung environmental hero among us that has not been sufficiently appreciated – the American farmer. Farmers have not only cared for the land and passed it on to future generations, but they have also consistently developed and adopted new agricultural practices over time to address civilization’s food needs and reduce, the amount of natural resources – water, land and energy – needed to produce it.

Here’s one way to think about the progress: in 1950, the average American farmer fed 16 people.  In 2010 that same farmer fed 155 people and by 2020 that number will grow to over 200. And with U.S. farmers representing less than two percent of the workforce today, they are tasked with feeding our nation of 322 million – and millions more around the world while simultaneously striving every day to improve and enhance their environmental footprint.

Here’s another important perspective: a Washington, D.C.-based organization called Field to Market (of which Monsanto is a member) compared what it took the average farmer to grow a bushel of corn in 2011 versus what it took in 1980.  In 2011, farmers needed 30 percent less land, 53 percent less irrigation water, and 44 percent less energy. Farming in 2011 also led to 67 percent less soil erosion and 36 percent less greenhouse gas emissions. Last year, corn and soybean farmers set records for crop yields and production which has even further accelerated the trend of producing more food – with less inputs.

While food production and food security are always appropriately top of mind, one of the often under-appreciated benefits of agricultural innovations has been the reduction in land used for farming.  As others have previously noted, cropland per capita, which expanded globally from the 1700’s to 1950, has been shrinking ever since. So since about 1980, our unsung farmer heroes have managed to put only a small amount of incremental land into agricultural production – even as the global population has climbed by 40 percent. 

That means the American farmer has nearly frozen agriculture’s footprint. And that’s excellent news, for two reasons. First, our planet’s arable acreage is finite and the unused capacity is small compared to the projected need. In other words, a 50 percent increase in suitable land devoted to farming is impossible – unless someone soon locates a lost continent. Second, we know creating new farmland by clearing forests, draining wetlands or tilling prairies releases large amounts of stored CO2 which contributes to increased greenhouse gas emissions and habitat loss.

What has put farmers on these amazing trend line has been an incredible set of innovations in agriculture – including advances in farm machinery, fertilizers, plant breeding and advanced biotechnology tools. And today, farmers are adopting new tools including digitization, precision planting, and microbials. Their toolbox also includes seeds improved through a variety of methods, ranging from increasingly sophisticated methods of traditional breeding to GMO technology. And in the not-too-distant future, farmers will have access to more sustainable and productive crops that were improved through advanced next generation techniques of RNAi and gene editing.  

Now let’s consider a specific example of how farmers are using some of these tools to help them face one of the most significant challenges in agriculture – the declining supply of fresh water that crops depend on.  

Using a new generation of sensors implanted in the soil and in satellites, farmers can now gather data on soil moisture at nearly the square centimeter level. With advanced software and analytics, that data can then be processed and, when appropriate, trigger precision-controlled drip irrigation, in which each plant receives exactly the amount of water it needs.  

In a program in Italy, farmers have used these digital techniques to cut their water usage since 2013 by 17 percent, while increasing their harvests by 27 percent. In a California almond tree orchard, as this story explains, the same methods have reduced water consumption by 20 percent.

Or consider energy. Digital technology enables farmers to model and determine their soil’s need for fertilizer. With precision equipment, farmers can apply fertilizer in just the right amounts, saving energy and minimizing the amount of fertilizer that runs off the soil into rivers and streams.

Microbial technology is another area of innovation. In recent years, scientists made major gains in understanding how different crops interact with the biological communities, or microbiomes, in the soil. We’re learning how to harness the helpful microbes to amplify their natural benefits so farmers can further increase crop yields while reducing chemical applications. And, with the goal of using science and technology to improve the productivity of the land used for farming as much as possible, The Ecomodernist Manifesto outlines new ways to think about environmentalism.

As Earth Day approaches, let’s celebrate the farmers who spend their lives adopting modern agricultural innovations to help them meet the daunting task of both feeding an increasingly hungry world and reducing and enhancing agriculture’s environmental footprint.