Key Thoughts:
- Expected to boost yields in dry environments by at least 6%
- Agriculture accounts for 70% of global fresh-water use, Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant says in an interview. Reducing irrigation not only contributes to more sustainable farming, it’s a “game changer” that will boost profits and help feed a rising world population
- Monsanto also is engineering crop seeds, including cotton, wheat and sugar cane, for drought tolerance, and the company and BASF are donating drought-resistant maize technology to farmers in sub-Saharan Africa through the Nairobi- based African Agricultural Technology Foundation.
- By expanding the maize- growing region, the technology can help grow more grain to meet government targets that call for tripling use of biofuels including ethanol, which is made from maize in the US, by 2022
