Congress highlights key challenges

Agriculture must provide more food, more feed, more fibre and now fuel to the world in the 21st century.

But it must face these challenges with a shortage of land and water while managing in a responsible way. To cope, agriculture will have to adapt. The sentiment was delivered by Dr Christian Verschueren, director general of Crop Life International at a recent conference.

He said that despite the industry’s commitment to change, there are obstacles in the way of investment in new technologies. Public opinion towards new technology is divided, regulatory control often hinders farmers’ access to that technology and inefficient approvals of new products results in complications.