The advancements in farming tech help keep grocery prices from going even higher.
SAN ANTONIO — When you’re in grocery stores over the new few weeks you may be busy preparing for a holiday party or gathering, and don’t have time to think about where that jar of beans may have come from. But with food insecurity at top of mind for so many this holiday season, finding novel technologies to grow that food becomes a must do.
Jess Christiansen from Bayer’s Crop Science Team told us, “The cost of groceries is still such a huge stressor for American families.”
With the population of Texas now flying past the 30 million mark, finding new and innovative technologies that farmers use to produce more on every single acre in the state, to help keep prices from skyrocketing, becomes so much more important.
Christiansen added, “If a farmer can produce more, there’s more supply that helps alleviate, hopefully, some of the burden at the end of the chain on the on the price.”
Christiansen says there are three buckets of technologies that have revolutionized farming, starting with seed technology.
“Whether it’s breeding technology to make them more resilient to, temperature fluctuations, varying degrees of water, for example, makes them resistant to certain bug pressures,” said Christiansen.
Next, crop protection technology.
Christiansen told us, “If farmers don’t have crop protection tools, they could lose 80% or more of their yields, which could impact our food price by up to $10 billion a year here in the U.S.”
And third, digital technology.
Christiansen said, “Whether it’s in their tractors and how they apply products, and they plant and they harvest.”
What would happen if agriculture innovation dried up?
“Not only will food production dramatically dip which means accessibility to food, let alone price, would be dramatically impacted, but it also would be very detrimental to our economy, said Christiansen.