The Plant Defenders
Before it reaches our tables, the food we eat has to withstand many environmental challenges in the field such as invasive weeds, harmful insects, fungi, diseases, and extreme weather conditions. Without crop protection solutions, a lot of the food that farmers grow wouldn’t be able to thrive. In fact, right now, an average of up to 40 percent of crops grown for human consumption are lost each year to pre-harvest pests.
It’s a considerable number. These in-field losses not only threaten our global food security but also have the potential to limit food access due to unavailability or price increases. But this challenge is an opportunity to find new ways to help crops better withstand adverse conditions in a farmer’s field.
Why Crop Protection?
Everyone deserves access to nutritious and affordable food, and farmers work hard to grow their crops in ways that make that possible. To do so, they use crop protection, or the science of better enabling plants to defend themselves against pests, weeds, and diseases.
A healthy banana root and a banana root damaged by nematodes. Experts estimate that over 12 percent of crops worldwide are lost to nematode infestation, adding up to $437 billion ($157 billion USD) in damage.
The Battleground in Your Backyard
Insects and weeds are challenges as old as farming itself, and though we’ve made incredible progress in better understanding how to manage and mitigate their damage, they cause considerable damage to crops around the world.
If you’ve ever tried to grow a vegetable garden, you’re probably more familiar with these challenges than you might have thought:
Crop protection takes many forms. Even the act of clearing the ground and preparing your soil before planting is a method of controlling weeds so your plants don’t have to compete for space, sun, and nutrients.
The simple act of placing netting around your vegetable garden to prevent animals from carrying off your produce is also a time-honored crop protection method — as are scarecrows, which have been used to deter animals from plants for thousands of years.
Just like tilling the soil to uproot undesirable plants, pulling weeds by hand also is a method of crop protection. This time-consuming process is practiced on many farms around the world, which is why we’re working to provide all farmers with more efficient ways of addressing weeds so they can focus on other important aspects of cultivating their crops.
At any point in a plant’s life, it can become susceptible to pests — even when plants are well-established and thriving. For this reason, there are many crop protection solutions that support plants before they root, such as seed coatings that provide vital nutrients and keep underground pests at bay. Similarly, other solutions help protect plants from the challenges they might encounter above ground, like pests that damage leaves or other parts of the plant.
