Integrating Technologies to Minimize Environmental Impacts

Laura L. McConnell, Iain D. Kelly and Russell L. Jones

ABSTRACT

Historically, synthetic agrochemicals have had a central role in increasing yields in agricultural production. Assessment methods and approaches towards monitoring and addressing the environmental impact of the technology were relatively simple. Agricultural production, however, is in a period of rapid transformation. Research and Development companies are transforming their activities to provide a more holistic approach that provides producers with integrated solutions. These approaches encompass biotechnology, synthetic chemistry, biologicals and biopesticides, all disciplines that are integrated with improvements in application technology, digital farming and the use of big data. While these developments may raise new questions, they also provide unique opportunities to reduce potential environmental impacts. This chapter provides an overview of the changes occurring in the agricultural industry and highlights ways in which we might address their effects, while pointing out some of the barriers to adoption of new technologies.

Introduction

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and 17 specific Sustainable Development Goals as a guide for global development designed to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Sustainable Development Goal number 2 is to "end hunger, to achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture" by 2030. At present, about 790 million people are undernourished; therefore, achieving this ambitious goal will require significant and rapid technological innovations in agricultural production systems across the world. Other UN goals, related to sustainable management of water and addressing climate change and its impacts, will also require major advances in agricultural technology in order to increase food production in a sustainable manner, while keeping pace with the demands of an expanding population.

The goal of ending hunger and achieving food security becomes more challenging considering that the current world population of 7.3 billion is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100. In addition, global life expectancy is projected to increase from 70 to 77 years by 2045-2050. Developing countries are expected to have the greatest rate of population growth, and average food consumption in developing countries is projected to increase from 2005 levels of 2619 kcal person-1 day-1 to 3000 kcal by 2050. With increasing consumption, there is an increase in demand for a more diverse and protein-rich diet including meat, milk, eggs and vegetable oils. Currently approximately 12% of the land surface of the globe is used for crop production. Recent estimates indicate that up to 34% of the world's land surface could be used for agriculture, although approximately 20% has been deemed marginal and unsuitable for rainfed agriculture. Therefore, careful management and protection of the most productive agricultural lands will be required, along with novel approaches to achieving increased production on marginal lands.

Climate change is expected to bring geographical changes in precipitation patterns and therefore will alter growing conditions and water availability in agricultural production regions both within the USA and across the world. Plant growth of both crops and weed species, will be affected by increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. While some agricultural regions may benefit from increased yields in a warming climate, northward expansion of insect pests and weed species is already being observed. Climate change will bring about additional challenges such as a general increase in extreme weather events which can damage crops and food distribution networks, a growing risk of food-borne illnesses and rising tropospheric ozone concentrations, resulting in damage to crop yields.

With increasing population and a warming climate, additional factors will also influence the global availability of food, possibly leading to water scarcity and decreased water quality. Approximately 70% of global freshwater consumed is used in agriculture. While domestic wastewater can be recycled, much of the water used in crop production is either incorporated into biomass or is transpired. As incomes in developing countries increase, greater demand for meat and dairy products will require more water for production compared with staple crops; it is estimated that agricultural production will need to grow by 60% by 2050 to keep up with this demand. Increased production on the same limited land resources will likely require a greater portion of cropland under irrigation, leading to increased water scarcity and the potential for decreased water quality. If increasing demand for food cannot be met with increasing yields, then more marginal lands will be pushed into food production, reducing habitats for native plants and animals along with other ecosystem services that these lands currently provide. This chapter seeks to summarize recent and emerging trends in the crop protection industry, to discuss the challenges facing the industry, the role of regulation in new technology development and recommendations on finding a way forward towards increased production and improved sustainability in agriculture.

2 Developments and Emerging Trends in the Crop Protection Industry

Over the last approximately 70 years, yield increases, particularly in the developed countries, have been significant. In the USA, for example, soybean yields have doubled and corn yields have increased by a factor of four, leading to increases in farm total factor productivity of 1.47% per year from 1948 to 2013. Much of this improvement was achieved through the use of more efficient and automated machinery, improved seed varieties and agricultural chemicals, including fertilizers and pesticides and, most significantly, herbicides. Increased yields have lowered the cost of commodities and have resulted in a more abundant food supply, while publicly and privately funded agricultural research has contributed to innovations and new technologies.

The pesticide consumption index in the USA increased steadily from 1960 to the mid-1990s but has now leveled off and begun to decline, while the total farm output has continued to increase (Figure 1). This leveling off of pesticide use coincided with the introduction of new genetic traits into the market, beginning around 1996 (Figure 2). Herbicide-tolerant soybeans achieved more than 80% adoption in the marketplace by 2003; use of herbicide-tolerant cotton increased more slowly but exceeded 80% by 2012. Insecticide-tolerant cotton, or Bt cotton, contains the gene from a soil bacterium named Bacillus thuringiensis, and produces a protein that is toxic to certain insect pests. Bt cotton use has increased to 84% of all acres of cotton planted, as of 2014.

Public investments in agricultural research, however, have slowed in recent years while private sector research and development has grown rapidly. Continued investments from both public and private sources will be required to achieve the increases in agricultural productivity required to meet global food demand. Within the private sector, the challenge of feeding an ever-increasing population in a period of changing environmental conditions will be accomplished by a much different industry, under the scrutiny of a civil society with near-universal access to smart phone technology, information and commentaries. Some have recently proposed that the global economy is entering a fourth industrial revolution, leading to extreme automation and connectivity. At a recent World Economic Forum, a new report on the Future of Jobs was published, describing changes in the economy expected by 2020:

"We are today at the beginning of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Developments in previously disjointed fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and genetics and biotechnology are all building on and amplifying one another. Smart systems — homes, factories, farms, grids or entire cities — will help tackle problems ranging from supply chain management to climate change. Concurrent to this technological revolution are a set of broader socioeconomic, geopolitical and demographic developments, with nearly equivalent impact to the technological factors."

The effects of these changes in economic forces are already evident in the structure of the agrochemical industry as it enters a period of faster consolidation and more diverse acquisition. In the period 1998-2002 the industry had a significant consolidation as the ten major research and development companies merged to create six (Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer CropScience, Dupont, Dow AgroSciences and BASF), each with total sales of over &8364;5 million in 2014 (Figure 3). As the figure shows, within these six companies there was a clear differentiation in the size of the agrochemicals business compared to the seed business. Monsanto and DuPont have greater than 50% of their sales in seeds while in Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences and Bayer CropScience, agrochemicals predominate. BASF focused primarily on agrochemicals.

The last five years have seen considerable acquisitions and penetration by the major agrochemical companies into the area of agricultural biologicals. In 2012 alone, Bayer acquired AgraQuest, Inc., Monsanto announced its BioDirect technology platform, BASF acquired Becker Underwood, Inc., and Syngenta acquired Pasteuria Bioscience, Inc. as each of these companies strengthened their position in this promising new area of agricultural technology. Definitions of the term "biologicals" vary but generally encompass microbials, plant extracts or other organic material, and beneficial insects that can be used to control pests and diseases or stimulate crop efficiency. The variation in definition of the market makes its size difficult to measure but one estimate put the market at approximately $3 billion, which included biopesticides at an estimated $2 billion and biostimulants around $1 billion, with the potential for continuing double-digit growth throughout the decade.

Another emerging area related to the increase in global connectivity that has seen acquisition by the major agrochemical companies is precision agriculture, enhanced by digital farming technologies. The most notable of these was the acquisition of The Climate Corporation by Monsanto in 2013. This purchase signaled the importance that ready access to real-time field data will have to the grower of the future. Advanced analytics, synthesizing local conditions including soil type, weather patterns, crop varieties and patterns of disease outbreaks and insect infestation will all be amongst the decision-making tools available to growers in their efforts to maximize productivity. Approaches to data access, data ownership and data security will be an integral part of the implementation and success of these developments, and equipment manufacturers are a key link in this digital development. Self-driving, highly computerized planters, sprayers and harvesters are either available now or in development, with the ability to respond in real-time to satellite, drone and ground-based robots. In 2015, Deere & Company agreed to acquire the Precision Planting, LLC equipment business from Monsanto's Climate Corporation Subsidiary to enable exclusive, near real-time data connectivity between certain John Deere farm equipment and the Climate FieldView™ platform as part of the innovation alignment within this section of the industry. In related activities, Bayer CropScience has recently acquired proPlant, Inc., and Syngenta has acquired Ag Connections, LLC.

Major factors that are impacting the future of the crop protection industry are the enormous cost of product development and challenges of increasing regulatory hurdles. The cost of development of a new agrochemical is currently estimated at approximately $290 million, with 11 years from discovery to commercialization, while a new plant biotechnology trait costs approximately $135 million, with 12 to 16 years from lab to commercialization. Clearly, in a few years the appearance of the industry will be very different from today and is likely to be more far-reaching than the developments that occurred at around the millennium. Consolidation within the large research and development companies will be accompanied by venture capital and niche market investments as new and potentially disruptive technologies continue to evolve.

3 Improving the Sustainability of Crop Production

Since the introduction of synthetic chemicals as a key contributor in protecting plants and increasing yields, concerns have been raised about potential environmental impacts. Assessing and reducing these impacts has been a multidimensional process and the pace only increases as agronomy continues to encompass new scientific disciplines and technology. Some of these will be expanded upon later in this book but an overview is provided here.

3.1 Improved Properties of Synthetic Pesticides

While pesticide use has increased over time, the properties of pesticide products have evolved to minimize their risks to humans and wildlife. Two basic trends in new compounds have occurred over the past 2 to 3 decades: new compounds are designed with more specific modes of action, which tend to limit effects to specific taxa, and are more highly active, facilitating lower use rates. While potential environmental effects can be similar for a sensitive species with compounds with broad or more specific modes of action, fewer species are at risk from compounds with specific modes of action. In the insecticide area, for example, the use of the non-specific acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors (organophosphates and carbamates) was 51% in 1999. Together, the AChE inhibitors and those insecticides acting on the voltage-gated sodium channel (vgSCh), in particular the pyrethroids, accounted for approx. 70% of the world market. By 2012, AChE-inhibitor use had dropped much further to 19%, while pyrethroids had remained relatively constant at 17% and neonicotinoid use (introduced in the 1990s) had risen to 24% to become the major classes of insecticides. Both the neonicotinoid and pyrethroid classes of insecticides have modes of action which are highly toxic to insects, but have low mammalian and avian toxicity compared to organophosphate and carbamate insecticides. Risk mitigation strategies can, therefore, be much more targeted, generally focusing on aquatic species for pyrethroids and pollinator species for neonicotinoids. Furthermore, use-rates in the 1980s were typically 1-10 kg ha-1, while many compounds today are applied at rates less than 1 kg ha-1 and average application rates of some sulfonylureas are as low as a few grams per hectare.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Economic Research Service conducted an exhaustive analysis of pesticide use on 21 crops from 1960 to 2008 and examined changes over time in environmentally relevant characteristics of pesticides on the market (Figure 4). The most dramatic trend observed was the decline in toxicity to humans, but declines in average annual application rate and persistence were also observed. Declines in pesticide consumption have also been accompanied by major changes in application techniques, as well as stewardship efforts (e.g. integrated pest management, nutrient management and conservation agriculture) to maintain the sustainability of changing agricultural processes.

3.2 Emerging Technologies

3.2.1 Genetic Engineering. This technology encompasses Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) produced by recombinant DNA techniques and, more recently, techniques such as gene editing and RNA interference (RNAi). As was mentioned in Section 2, the overall rate of pesticide use in the USA has leveled off with the rapid adoption of GMO crops in the late-1990s, while farm productivity has continued to increase (Figure 1). Initially a single gene was inserted, producing herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant plants. The technology has been very effective and has fundamentally changed farming practices in many parts of the world. However, the broad acceptance of the glyphosate-tolerant trait, coupled with use of the non-specific herbicide glyphosate, has, unfortunately, led to the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weed species. Herbicide-tolerant and insecticide-resistant traits can now be stacked in cotton and in corn, and use of these stacked trait varieties has increased over time. With these advanced GMOs, insecticide applications can be minimized and herbicide applications more targeted when weed pest pressure increases. Efforts are underway in academic, industry and government scientific circles to track weed resistance and to increase stewardship programs to educate farmers on how to manage resistance. Adoption of GMO crops has also led to increased adoption of conservation tillage practices, leading to beneficial effects on soil and water quality.