Exciting times in ag research

We got word out of Copenhagen yesterday that Canada has signed on with a number of other countries, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, France, in a collaboration to research ways to reduce greenhouse gas emission from agriculture. Click here to read more about the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases.

If we're going to improve farming practices to reduce emissions and reduce nitrogen losses, for example, it would help to know which practices provide the largest benefit for the lowest cost meanwhile maintaining the productivity of the land. This global project is a great idea.

Then today my colleagues and I had a meeting with Novozymes BioAg (formerly Philom Bios). Trevor Thiessen, president of Novozymes BioAg, was talking about the large investment his company is making in research. Target products are herbicides, insecticides and fungicides derived from naturally-occuring microorganisms and compounds. The company has two new products already available to farmers: Met52, a bioinsecticide, is registered in Eastern Canada for fruit and vegetable crops, and Taegro, a biofungicide, will launch in California this year. One long-term target for the company, Thiessen says, is for nitrogen and phosphorus fixing "biofertility" products for legume AND non-legume crops.

Thiessen noted that many companies, including Bayer, BASF and Syngenta, are looking at the same "bio" solutions to pest management in particular.

"Companies are putting more money into ag-chem research than ever before," Thiessen says.

"Biotech is on its next wave of innovation," he adds. "In the past three or four years we've seen renewed energy in biotech for crops."