Nice interview: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2016/03/30/monsanto-ceo-hugh-grant
I particularly appreciated the commentary related to the convergence of big data and genomics:
What’s the next step for Monsanto? What will you be building next?
“We were a chemical business that became a biotech and biology
business that morphed into a seed business. I think the main transition
as you look forward is the application of data. It takes about 40
decisions, from right around now until harvest in August or September,
the grower takes about 40 decisions to produce a crop. Some of those
decisions are highly technified, and others it’s because of what his mom
and dad did or what he hears in the coffee shop or what he read in a
magazine. So we’ve been populating those 40 decisions with data and I
think by improving the quality of decisions, you increase the yield. I
think the transition for Monsanto is increasingly in the next 10 years
becoming a solutions-driven company, and coalescing the biology, the
more accurate application of chemistry and the much smarter use of data.
You know, these big green John Deere combines are streaming data off
the field, one yard at a time, and it’s how you use that biological data
and apply it back to the field to help growers with better insights, I
think that’s going to be the next piece.”
Do you ever envision a pesticide-free Monsanto?
"If I think about the next 30 or 40 years, I think through the use of
data we’ll be applying these chemistries much more accurately and we’ll
be applying them earlier, so applying them before diseases really take a
hold in these crops or bugs are tearing these crops apart, so I think
we’ll be more prophylactic, we’ll be more accurate and our selection of
these chemistries will be a lot more discriminating. That’s kind of my
vision of the future as through the use of data and bringing biology and
science together, we’ll get much smarter about how we use these things,
a bit like how the vision works for personalized medicine.”
See Also:
Big Data + Genomics is not your grandparent's monoculture
Big Data: Causality and Local Expertise Are Key in Agronomic Applications
Agritalk Discussion of Biotechnology, Big Data, and Genomics on Seed Choice
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