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A Growing Population: Opportunity or Armageddon?

April 15, 2010

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Jerry Steiner discusses the implications of a growing population at Fortune's Brainstorm: GREEN.

By R. Johnson, PMCM Staff

Nine billion people by 2050—is that Armageddon or an opportunity? Jerry Steiner, Monsanto Company vice president of sustainability and corporate affairs, and others addressed the topic during Fortune’s Brainstorm: GREEN on Wednesday, April 14.

The United Nations predicts by 2050, the world population will increase by 3 billion people. Steiner; Curtis Frasier of Upstream Americas, Shell Oil Company; Rich Lechner of IBM; and Glenn Prickett, of The Nature Conservancy were a part of a panel that discussed how the earth can support the growing population and what role businesses can play.

“We strongly believe [the population increase] is an opportunity, and we all must look at it as an opportunity,” Steiner said. “Because if we don’t look at this as an opportunity, this will be a disaster. We all need to make the investments necessary to have a planet that adequately feeds and houses people in an environmentally sustainable way.”

Poppy Harlow, anchor of CNNMoney.com, who moderated the discussion, asked Steiner how Monsanto can feed mouths more efficiently.

“I can think of two things at each end of our value chain,” he said. “On the front end, we’re fundamentally a research company, and we’re spending about a billion dollars each year on improving seeds.”

Steiner said because of our research we’ve seen significant improvements in various crops, including corn plants. “Perhaps the biggest difference that we’ve made in corn plants in the past decade, is we’ve put much better root systems on these plants than we had before,” he said. “Growing up as a kid on a Wisconsin farm, I could reach down and pull the roots out of the ground. I don’t know how much weight-lifting I would have to do to pull one out of the ground today – you can’t. That’s because they have much better root systems. And that’s from the investment in breeding and the Bt protein we put in there to protect them from bugs.”

Steiner also noted roots are now able to draw water out of the soil more efficiently, reducing the amount of nitrogen the plant requires.

“A bushel of corn that we produce today takes 37 percent less nitrogen than just 20 years ago,” he said. “And we have to go a whole lot further. Nitrogen is the single-biggest carbon footprint that growing the corn crop has. So seeds that produce more and use resources more wisely are at the front-end piece of it, and at the back end is poverty.”

He said addressing poverty is not only a big business opportunity, but is also a big business responsibility.

“It’s really sad that when you look at the food crisis of 2008, many of those people who were hungry had their principle occupation in farming,” he said. “They’re not even producing enough for their own families, so they couldn’t even take advantage of the fact that food was more expensive because they were net buyers, not net sellers. We have to help those people produce more.”

Steiner said Monsanto’s effort in Burkino Faso is a great example of helping farmers produce more.

“In Burkino Faso, the first farmers were able to plant the Bt gene in cotton that protects itself against insects,” he said. “We were able to work with the cotton gins and devise a cash-list business model that enabled these farmers, who don’t have a lot, to put that stuff in the ground. After the first year, about a third of the cotton contains the gene and income is up 80 percent.”

As the panel discussion closed, Harlow asked Steiner what needs to be included in the plan to meet the challenge of 9 billion people that currently isn’t from an agricultural perspective.

“Agriculture is a very diverse and decentralized business,” Steiner said. “It’s hundreds of millions of people, with different eco-systems, making individual decisions around the world. So this isn’t one of those things were there can be direction from on high on how to go ahead and do it.”

Steiner did however provide two areas he said need immediate attention.

“We need to step up extensions in many parts of the world, especially in the developing world. There is a knowledge gap. We need to have more policies that de-risk some investments, especially for the world’s smallest farmers. This could make significant improvements that would make a big difference in hunger and make a big difference in poverty. We also need to put more choices, real choices in the hands of farmers so that they can make more decisions locally that fit them.”

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