“Food for all through appropriate plant protection”, this is the key phrase under which today the international plant protection congress 2015 opens its gates in Berlin.
Since the last time the IPPC took place in Germany, nearly 60 years ago in Hamburg, the World has changed drastically. In the last decades there have been many achievements in the area of agricultural science and crop protection, just to mention the “green revolution”, technical development in machinery, fertilizers and pesticides and last but not least the carving of Integrated Pest Management standards. Reporting about an international plant protection congress without mentioning future challenges in plant protection is like talking about pizza without mentioning Italy – thus we would like all of you to welcome to the first report of IPPC 2015.
With a continuously growing world population that already passed the seven billion mark comes a growing demand of food. Not only the pure number of humans contributes to this, also the change of diets to higher quality food and more meat in countries with rising life standards does its part. On the other side there are factors that impair the production of food such as continuous change of the climate, erosion and desertification of soils or the sealing of arable land with streets or buildings. This means that the production on the available arable land needs to be maximized. Here crop protection plays a major role as we still face average losses of 10 to 15% in yield alone due to diseases in plants as Prof. Clayton Hollier points out in the first talk of the day. If we add the losses caused by weeds and pests the overall importance of appropriate plant protection becomes even more evidend.
However appropriate plant protection is facing several drawbacks, for example there are decreasing numbers of students and PhD graduates in this specific area. Plant protection as an “Applied Science” links fundamental research with the development of new technologies for a better plant health. Within this respect, Susanne Weigand demands immediate action and cooperation between governments, companies and universities to ensure the education of young people to keep the area of “Applied Sciences” alive. This attention has to be gained if it is up to Per Pinstrup-Andersen. In his keynote speech, he pointed out three priorities for future action: Large-scale investments in rural infrastructure, expansion in public investment in agricultural research and enhanced policy incentives for the private sector to invest in sustainable agriculture. After finishing his presentation, he gave us the great opportunity to interview him.
Interview:
Junior Scientists: Dear Mr. Pinstrup-Andersen, thank you very much for your clear and highly informative talk. It gave a vivid overview about food security and what it takes to improve it. An often-discussed topic in this regard is food distribution, which you have also shown in your presentation. Is food distribution indeed a big challenge? From your point of view, is this issue increasing or decreasing?
Per Pinstrup-Andersen: The big problem is that many people have too food much and many people have too little. In theory but not in practice, food could be moved from those having too much to those who have too little. However, this does not solve the actual problems. The real problem is poverty and low productivity in smallholder agriculture. Farmer living in low income countries need to increase their yields and incomes to elevate their supply and improve their own food security. Higher productivity in poor countries will moreover decrease prices for food as the unit cost of production decreases. We already know this occurred during the green revolution - people could suddenly allow themselves things like sending their children to school or building houses. Production should therefore be increased wherever possible. This does not mean that we do not need trade. Some parts in the world just cannot produce what they need: It would for instance be ineffective for Denmark to produce bananas as they can be produced somewhere else more efficiently. On the other hand, Singapore imports virtually all its food. However, that is fine as they have other income sources. Whether it is feasible or not depends on the country and the situation in the country.
Junior Scientists: You have stressed the need for biotechnologies as part of a widespread solution to achieve food security. We are facing serious protest against new biotechnologies in European countries. How can we create a more open-minded, a less ideology-driven view on these techniques?
Per Pinstrup-Andersen: Europe will not starve if it fails to introduce modern techniques into agriculture. We can afford to pay what it costs to produce food using traditional means. Still, Europe is becoming non-competitive and both farmers and consumers are foregoing opportunities for economic and food security gains. It will be difficult to produce food at lower costs while protecting the environment if it refuses to adopt modern sciences. I recently discovered an advertisement for Himalayan salt. The label on it said that it does not contain GMO. Guess which salt was sold the most: Indeed the salt with the label. I am worried about the widespread ignorance about basic biology. GMOs in salt?? Not likely! We have to be careful that people do not develop a fear against anything modern used in agriculture. Using GMOs has been studied in detail. These results were recently described in a meta-analysis by my college Matin Qaim showing very strong positive effects using GMO. We need to get the media involved in our research in the upcoming years to inform the public.
Junior Scientists: In your life, you have achieved a lot of things young scientists can only dream of. What would you recommend to young people? What was your motivation back then when you were a student?
Per Pinstrup-Andersen: I don’t have a high school degree. I left school after seventh grade and worked on farms for a number of year. Then I went to the university. But it was never my intention to go into academia. My feeling is, that if you want to be a good scientist, you should spend time outside academia to accumulate experiences. One thing that helped me a lot was that I had mentors along the way- people, who believed in me and opened doors for me. I am very thankful for that and I try to open doors for young people. Equally important: You have to work like hell.
Junior Scientists: How much do you value the international exchange during a congress like the IPPC?
Per Pinstrup-Andersen: I appreciate the opportunity to sit down and to talk and discuss to people from all over the world. Of course, you can read a lot about the work of others in the journals. But networking and knowledge sharing in a personal context is much more convincing. Informal communication is very important. You can for example discuss new project ideas or collect information, which has not been published yet.
Junior Scientist: We’d like to thank you very much for your time and for answering our questions. We wish you an inspiring and pleasant stay in Berlin.
Note: The interview does not reflect Mr. Pinstrup-Andersen’s answer word-for-word but it rather summarizes the main statements of him.
During the afternoon, we attended several talks. We listened carefully and got an insight into interesting topics from diverse fields. Beginning with new insecticides over the use of CO2 as an attractant for wireworms, the applications of RNAi, pest and diseases in pastures Down Under, the influence of nitrogen on Fusarium in barley or the use of compost on soil borne diseases - plant protection offers a wide range of fascinating research areas.
We hope you enjoyed the first day of IPPC just as much as we did. Seeing people from all over the world learning from each other and discussing about current and future plant protec-tion appears to create a very productive and creative atmosphere. May this congress contin-ue as today with inspiring and informative talks, presentations, posters and, most importantly, fruitful discussion and personal conversations within the next days. Please find some impres-sions of the day looking through the pictures.
We hope you liked today’s report. If so, and for any other reasons, please leave a comment below. We would be more than happy to welcome you again tomorrow with Heike and Sabine reporting about Tuesday’s occurrences. Good Night!
Sebastian Streit & Alexander Pfaff
Pictures were taken by Philipp Jarkusch (Conventus) and Sebastian Streit (Student Reporter DPG)
