Concepts such as ICM, IPM, Sustainable Agriculture, organic and bio…  have been filled with various words and ideologies and it has become difficult to use them in a neutral and objective way. Crop Protection is just one activity around growing plants and cannot be separated from other agronomic practices.

Considering the long time lag needed to develop new agronomic technologies it is rather probable that no [green] revolution will be in sight.

Rather, steady improvements will continue to go on in various areas; here is a partial list of current and upcoming challenges:

Seeds: GM or not, new varieties will embed crop protection traits against biotic (insect, diseases, viruses) and abiotic (drought, salinity) stresses, as well as diversification of the herbicide resistance to get away from the overwhelming glyphosate.
However it is unlikely that all crop protection will be embedded into the germplasm by a stack of traits. Nature is more complex than that!
Enhancement of nutritional traits may also provide additional benefits.
But the fundamental controversy about GMOs is not going to be resolved easily, at least not in Europe.

Soil: preparation to enhance its biological life and to favor healthy root development, such as mycorrhiza and other microbiological components.

Fertilization: to maximize growth and to eliminate losses require more sophisticated application methodologies.
But in poor agricultural zones the major challenge is access to affordable fertilizers.

Water: an important upcoming issue, with local conflict situations capable of global escalation.
In many locations access to water and its price require more intelligent water management methods for whole watersheds as well as for single fields.

Prevention: plant preparation, field monitoring and anticipation of pest or disease development to avoid unnecessary treatments or to target better the necessary ones.

Treatment: there are few remaining problems for which the grower has no solution. The large markets are well covered and tighter regulation has also taken away old products in the USA and in Europe.
Existing products will be substituted by new ones with reduced risk profiles and, may be, by integrated methods involving less efficient but more environmentally compatible products (biopesticides).

Post-harvest: let’s not forget that post-harvest wastage, poor logistics, corruption and political unrest are the major causes for having still 800-900 million undernourished people in the World.

 

With high regulatory barriers and intellectual property protection it is quite probable that product oriented development will remain the playing field of few large R&D based companies as it is already today; and let’s remember that no generic seed or pesticide can exist without having been first developed by an original manufacturer .

But the larger room for improvement lies in the development of methodologies that integrate various agronomic areas: information tools, algorithms, products, machinery, education and training that are scattered among many players must be implemented as bundled systems. This is a complex task for which no clear leadership has been identified. Organic Agriculture is one of such systems, but probably a too narrow one to be applied everywhere.

The product oriented side will remain the profitable business that it is today. The methodology side still needs to find viable business models providing an attractive return on investment.

After approx. 10’000 years of existence as the primary organized human activity, agriculture is not yet old technology.

 

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