Pioneer Hi-Bred International continues to work on increasing agricultural productivity to both feed and fuel the world.
Pioneer president Paul Schickler spoke on a panel at the World Food Prize symposium in Des Moines Wednesday and one of his points is that biotechnology can “address both the food availability issue as well as making a meaningful impact on our dependence on petroleum based products.”
“We can do that through a number of sciences in the market today and additional generations will be on the market in the years ahead,” Schickler said.
Listen to Schickler biofuels comment here:
[audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/world-food/wfp-08-schickler-biofuels.mp3]
You can also download the audio with this link: Paul Schickler on biofuels (mp3)
Schickler also took the first question to the panel, which was “How optimistic are you that the world can reduce hunger by half by 2015?”
Schickler stated that he was very confident that goal could be reached, simply on the basis of increased food production, using hybrid corn as an example. “If you look back throughout the development of hybrid corn, productivity has improved at about one and a half percent per year,” he said. “As we look to the future, we think we can double that, and that has already started to show up in the last 8-10 years through the use of biotechnology, plant genetics and improved agronomic practices.”
Listen to Schickler’s answer to that question here:
[audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/world-food/wfp-08-schickler.MP3]
You can also download the audio with this link: Paul Schickler at World Food Prize (mp3)