By Nikhil Hutheesing

New drought-tolerant crops could mitigate the growing food crisis, according
to Syngenta CEO Mike Mack.

Almost a decade ago, there was a meeting of world leaders who agreed to the
U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which called for, among other things,
halving world hunger between 1990 and 2015. The percentage of the world
living in hunger had been in decline, but with attention now focused on the
global financial crisis and food prices much higher than in the past,
achieving that goal appears unlikely.

A number of companies - such as Basel, Switzerland-based Syngenta (nyse:
SYT); St. Louis-based Monsanto (nyse: MON); Indianapolis-based Dow
Agrosciences, a division of Dow Chemical (nyse: DOW); and Ludwigshafen,
Germany-based BASF (nyse: BF) - are trying to do something about this. These
companies have been developing innovative new technologies to enhance food
production.

We spoke with the chief executive officer of Syngenta, Mike Mack, to find
out exactly what his company is doing--and whether companies like his can
help to make progress against rising world hunger.

Forbes: Syngenta is playing a critical role in enhancing food production.
What kinds of innovative new technologies are you developing and how will
they contribute to alleviating world hunger?

Mack: World hunger is a serious problem, especially when you consider it
from the vantage point of limited land availability. When you look at land
already under cultivation, there are about 150 million additional hectares
of land that could be brought under cultivation. But that alone is not a
good idea from a sustainability point of view. Instead, we need to look at
enhancing a plant's potential life. We see limitless potential for crops and
for all kinds of vegetable seeds to create more food, more fuel and more
fiber. There is lots of innovation taking place here, but it is still an
area that needs to be more fully explored.

So what are some of the innovations under way right now that could help to
alleviate this pending food shortage crisis?

In the area of seed development, our ability to understand the genome of the
crops gets better all the time, and so the pace of innovation is speeding up
a great deal. We are increasing our knowledge of the plant so that we can
understand how gene reactions occur and incorporate that information into
seeds to come up with new varieties.

How is this done?

Traditionally, this has been done through breeding cycles. We would put
plants out on the field and would have to wait an entire life cycle to see
the results. But today we can tell about partial traits within a few days of
germination. We do this by using molecular markers. If you put something in
the plant that says, effectively, that a plant has some particular trait, it
will show by virtue of the marker. So when you cross two plants and look at
the offspring, you can see if you conferred a trait to that plant. So we
have put thousands of markers on many plants.

Give me a practical example of how this has worked for you.

We have created drought-tolerant corn crops. By 2013 when we start coming
out with these products, we will have corn that can be grown more reliably
in areas where corn could not be grown before. What that means is that now,
land that could not be used for corn due to heat and drought stress will
have much higher commercial value. To do this, we had to understand how
plants use water, when they use it and how efficiently they use it. For
example, we learned that depriving a corn plant of water in its first three
weeks of life had a very different outcome than depriving it in the last 30
days.

So did this discovery enable you to create a new product?

By learning about this drought-tolerance genome we were able to create a new
product called Invinsa. It's a spray chemical that can be applied to corn
plants and virtually any living material. When a plant is subject to drought
stress it gives off ethylene, and the leaf then curls to preserve moisture.
When it shrinks and curls, it shuts down photosynthetic material so it's no
longer growing. We, along with Rohm and Haas, came up with formulation that
blocks the development of ethylene so the plant continues to produce as if
it was not subject to the stress.

Another example of innovation is through the genetic manipulation of corn
seed itself and through high-quality breeding and fast breeding to come up
with corn seed that is more robust. We have had some innovative
breakthroughs in seed treatment where we can actually apply an active
pesticide ingredient to the seed itself and make the seed less susceptible
to disease in the soil. By combining these treatments in different
combinations, farmers can get improved yields.

What about the upfront costs? They must be significantly higher.

The farmers have to make a decision. It's like buying a car where you can
have air conditioning or not. You pay for the benefit. For every one of the
features we sell in corn crop protection chemicals, growers have typical
returns on investment of three to eight times. If you pay $1 your return is
$3 when finished, because yields improve. The sprayable formula I discussed
is new, and we have not yet sold any, but we expect that business to grow
all around the world. However, we are using that technology today for cut
flowers so we know it works. Now we are bringing that innovation to crops.

How are farmers embracing these new products?

In case of drought tolerance, the industry has been pushing for this. We
expect first production in 2012. But growers will not incorporate a new
product unless it provides at least 3%-per-year improvement in yields. For
genetic mutation products, we wouldn't even consider it unless yields were
at least 10% to 15% higher.

So which products have done well?

Already in the market is triple stack corn. The speed of the adoption of
this is evidence that farmers are willing to take new technology and pay
more. Triple stack does three things. It gives farmers more control for
their weeds, more efficacious control for pests?and control for corn root
worm--all of which can decimate yields.

While I can see the benefits in terms of improved yields, increasingly, many
parts of the population are wary of genetically modified seeds and of
chemicals and pesticides. They want organically grown foods.

People who say organic is better do so without any shred of government data.
There is no evidence that there is a health benefit from organic farming.
Conventionally grown food is safe, and organic farmers will tell you that
their yields are 30% to 40% lower than conventional farming yields. Organic
food is a first world luxury, and it should be remembered that some of the
most toxic products in the world are natural. Just because it's natural
doesn't mean its safe.

There is also a move toward using corn, for example, to create ethanol. With
a food crisis, does it make sense to be using arable land to grow crops
devoted to fuel alternatives instead of food?

It is possible that food and feed crops could someday compete with fuel
crops for arable land. But that is not the case today, and our job and
ambition is to never have that be a dilemma. With the right kind of
technology, we can grow so much oil seed rape, corn, sunflower seed on
arable land that we can use those crops for fuel because we have all the
food we need. Fuel is in its infancy.

We have new products, which we hope will be approved by the USDA, such as
corn amylase, which can reduce the annual energy needs of a plant in the
range of 5% to 10% by reducing how much water and energy is needed to
produce the same amount of ethanol. Thus it could dramatically improve the
carbon footprint of ethanol plants by 10% or more.

So corn as a fuel source could become very much like sugar today.

If you go back 100 years, sugar was a coveted commodity. Gaining access to
sugar was important. Today, people don't think of it as a food crop. Why?
The world is awash in sugar--it's available from a lot of places. You can
get sugar from corn, and sugar cane is no longer the sole source for food.
Today, the biggest use for sugar cane is for fuel, but no one makes an
intellectual argument that you shouldn't use a sugar crop for food. To paint
corn as exclusively a feed crop misses the perfect example we have today, so
we will eliminate that dilemma.

Ethanol from sugar cane is a very efficient product that comes from fossil
fuel. In 20 years people will laugh at the idea that we should not have used
plants for fuel--it's moral in view of the carbon footprint of fossil fuels.

In the U.S., using corn to create bioethanol is the lightning rod. This is
all about food versus fuel. Politics is infused in this, but can we make
corn in the U.S. more efficient for bioethanol? Absolutely. We are also
working on new enzymes for corn that can incorporate the husk so that the
corn crop itself will be of higher quality.

Do you find that farmers in certain parts of the world are more willing to
use your products than in other parts of the world?

Demand for the technology roughly paces the wherewithal of the grower. We
find there are certain conditions for growers to become high value. They
have to have access to credit and basic infrastructure to put a high-quality
crop in the ground. They need access to commercial markets. So while there
could be high-quality growers in the Congo, if you can't sell, you can't be
a grower.

Parts of the world are growing through this development phase. Sales are up
50% in eastern parts of Europe this past year because growers are becoming
more professional. They are going from being poor-quality growers to high
quality and getting bigger farms. We had made many investments here ahead of
our competition--in Brazil, China and increasingly in India.

What about the impact of the financial crisis?

The financial crisis has hit many countries right in the gut, so my answer
to you covers a broad sweep. One thing to realize is that population growth
has been steady, and the financial crisis has not put a dent in it. Feed is
the biggest driver--it's linked to prosperity. In emerging markets, there is
increased demand for higher calorie and higher-quality crops, so the market
has pushed down the price of soybean, for example, and demand will slow. In
fact, demand for grains will likely slow in 2009.

Our pipelines are eight to 13 years long, so for money being spent today,
products will come in 2017. The fastest-growing region has been Eastern
Europe in development of wheat crops. Next is Asia with rice crops and
Brazil, which continues to be a success story.

The food crisis is a global problem, yet surely not all countries are
equally willing to use your technology to increase yields.

The receptivity of different countries around the world to new technology is
absolutely different. I live in Europe, which lacks the political will to do
the right thing in tech. Europe is beholden to nongovernmental organizations
in counterproductive ways, and over time, farmers in Western Europe will be
worse off for it. The lightning rod is genetically modified seeds and very
rarely is that a well-informed conversation. Countries recognize the need
for regulatory framework for crops but often don't have one themselves.

The U.S., however, is the gold standard. The country has a process based on
good science. Countries like Brazil, Argentina and, over time, countries in
Asia will rely on the U.S. to pave the way for describing and defining the
regulatory framework for genetic modification and pest management. Then they
will be better able to incorporate that technology. The saddest story is in
Africa where they look to Europe for guidance. It's the wrong place to look,
and it's nothing short of tragic.

We can only hope that companies like yours will be able to make a dent in
the food crisis--which appears to be getting worse.

We are passionate about this topic, and we remain optimistic that the
industry can really serve the needs of food, fuel and for a more prosperous
world. We aim to make the dilemmas go away.
www.checkbiotech.org