Archer Daniels Midland’s Patricia Woertz suggests that reducing losses in the grain harvest is one of a four-part approach to ensure that agriculture remains part of a broader effort to guarantee agriculture’s sustainability as the global economic recovery occurs.


Because of improper or inefficient storage and handling, nearly 10-20% of the world’s grain harvest is lost each year. As a result, mitigating such post-harvest losses is critical to ensuring agriculture’s ability to fulfill the world’s increasing food and energy needs, noted Patricia Woertz, chairman, CEO and president of Archer Daniels Midland Co., Decatur, Ill.
 
Speaking in Davos-Kolsters, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which took place Jan. 27-31, Woertz, also a co-chairman of the meeting, suggested that reducing losses in the grain harvest is one of a four-part approach to ensure that agriculture remains part of a broader effort to guarantee agriculture’s sustainability as the global economic recovery occurs.
 
The other three parts are: making more efficient use of today’s crops, improving productivity on existing farmland, and bringing additional arable land into production.
 
Agriculture plays such a fundamental role in the state of the world, but in previous economic recoveries, agriculture has often been left behind.

“We’ve got to include agriculture this time,” she said.