Yesterday, I gave a lecture at the University of Guelph about my vision of the new green revolution. It's stolen from the Brazilian sugar cane industry. In 1971, a lady named Johanna Döbereiner was tasked with developing Brazil's independence from importing oil. She did something so revolutionary that we in Canada would fall down just hearing it. She selected Brazilian sugar canes, which were brought into Brazil in the 1500s, and selected the varieties for production, based on virtually no fertilizer being applied to the soil. She went to the poorest farmers, took their varieties and tested them.
Today, Brazil uses about 50 kilos of fertilizer per hectare, versus the U.S., which uses 350 kilos per hectare. This is because they selected all their varieties based on high-energy inputs. This difference, of course, translated over millions of acres...you can calculate the value; it's enormous. Because of that, Brazil produces bioenergy at 10 units of energy coming out for every unit going in. In our case, we're lucky to reach one, two, or three ratios. In some cases, some people say that we put in 10 units of energy to get one out. This is what we need to change.
Globally speaking, one of the ways that people have improved crop yields in horticulture crops.... There are now 1.5 billion grafted tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, just to take advantage of these better root structures in these systems so you don't have to apply these really toxic fumigants to kill organisms in soil. Who would have thought that...? You know, we always had grafted trees and grafted roses and things like that, perennial plants, but never annual plants. The root systems are going to become a major component of the future productivity in agriculture and the reduction of inputs.