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Introduction
Peter Drucker, one the main and more prolific thinkers of management during the
last decades, once noted that the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, and that it has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation.
Long-term economic growth is driven by innovation. Agriculture’s innovation
footprint is evident in developed countries. The payoff was considerable. Food
became more affordable. People became less likely to starve. And the increased
productivity from the automation of agriculture led farm workers to migrate to cities. There they helped the industrial economy develop and grow. New goods and
services were created and consumption increased. Productivity rose even more as
automation drove costs down at a global basis, making transportation, healthcare,
and education more affordable.
Despite such undeniable progress, innovation in agriculture did not have the
same impact globally. In many places, productivity increases are modest. Just like
in any other industry or human endeavor, most agricultural innovation efforts fail to
deliver the value expected to its intended users and fall short of expected returns on
investments to its funders.
Innovation plays a pivotal role in providing affordable, nutritious food, feedstuff,
and fibers to humankind. The need for increasing its success rate is even more pressing with the looming challenges of climate change. At only 1.2 °C of mean global
surface warming, many aspects of climate change are not just visible, they are
severe. The challenges agriculture faces to feed the world will rise with increasing
temperatures. Indeed, recent modelling work shows that a warmer world will reduce
global yields of wheat, rice, maize, and soybean
1
, crops that provide two-thirds of
human caloric intake. The consequences are widespread. “You can’t build peace on
empty stomachs,”
2
Nobel Laureate Lord John Boyd Orr, the great crusader against
hunger and the first director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization,
once said.
1 Chao et al., 2017. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 114(35): 9326–9331.
2 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture/
Introduction
Peter Drucker, one the main and more prolific thinkers of management during the
last decades, once noted that the purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, and that it has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation.
Long-term economic growth is driven by innovation. Agriculture’s innovation
footprint is evident in developed countries. The payoff was considerable. Food
became more affordable. People became less likely to starve. And the increased
productivity from the automation of agriculture led farm workers to migrate to cities. There they helped the industrial economy develop and grow. New goods and
services were created and consumption increased. Productivity rose even more as
automation drove costs down at a global basis, making transportation, healthcare,
and education more affordable.
Despite such undeniable progress, innovation in agriculture did not have the
same impact globally. In many places, productivity increases are modest. Just like
in any other industry or human endeavor, most agricultural innovation efforts fail to
deliver the value expected to its intended users and fall short of expected returns on
investments to its funders.
Innovation plays a pivotal role in providing affordable, nutritious food, feedstuff,
and fibers to humankind. The need for increasing its success rate is even more pressing with the looming challenges of climate change. At only 1.2 °C of mean global
surface warming, many aspects of climate change are not just visible, they are
severe. The challenges agriculture faces to feed the world will rise with increasing
temperatures. Indeed, recent modelling work shows that a warmer world will reduce
global yields of wheat, rice, maize, and soybean
1
, crops that provide two-thirds of
human caloric intake. The consequences are widespread. “You can’t build peace on
empty stomachs,”
2
Nobel Laureate Lord John Boyd Orr, the great crusader against
hunger and the first director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization,
once said.
1 Chao et al., 2017. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 114(35): 9326–9331.
2 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1970/borlaug/lecture/