Mark Moore, Top Producer Contributing Editor and Sara Schafer, Top Producer Business & Crops Online Editor

 

The next wave of biotech advances for agriculture are on the horizon, with new and different modes of action to help bring appreciable value to producers, according to Bill Buckner, CEO and president of Bayer CropScience.

 

Buckner was a featured speaker at the Top Producer Seminar, being held this week in Chicago.

 

"The stakes for these new technologies are high,” Buckner says. "There are fewer companies conducting the research for different modes of action. And from discovery to product launch, it is a minimum 10-year process.”

 

Yet with these new technologies, new challenges also arise.

 

"Agriculture is not being viewed as being ‘green'” Buckner says. "What we see is the ag industry being defined by outside sources.”

 

Buckner says the voice of reason has really been thrown out the window. "The science-based approach is something people really don't want to resonate with, even though science is everything we do.”

 

Listen to Buckner describe the current communication challenges in agriculture: