Our Focus Is On More Crop Per Drop

India is looking to double its farm income and output by 2022, and cut greenhouse gas emissions per calories. Davor Pisk, Global COO of Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta, shares his views with Business Today’s Anilesh S. Mahajan on why India must em- brace technology to reduce its carbon footprint while improving yield.

- Anilesh S. Mahajan

Indian agriculture faces dual challenges. It has to resist impacts of climate change as well as improve its yield. How can Syngenta help achieve this goal?

In the last few years, we have focused on making agriculture more sustainable and much more environment friendly. We succeeded in developing a new seed variety, which reduces the cycle time from plantation to harvest. Hence, there is less exposure to uncertainty and climate change. The growers require much less time to achieve his yields. There are rice hybrids that reduce the crop cycle from 140 to 110 maturity days. This also reduces water consumption. We are successful in developing technologies which can withstand climate change. We have a variant of watermelon, which growers in tropical and temperate conditions can grow around the calendar. So are veggies such as cauliflower, capsicum, hot pepper and tomato, among others. In most cases we have been successful in reducing the crops’ cycle by 10-15 days. The most important contribution we can make is by increasing the yield of the crop in a more sustainable way. If we can increase yield per hectare of land, which will result in using less water, less land and lower green house gases (GHG) per calorie of production. The world needs to have food security and meet its food needs – the more efficient we are in producing these calories, the more efficient will we be in reducing our carbon footprint.

About reducing water consumption in farming. How successful have you been in achieving it?