Professor: Region will help fill a global demand for food

The unique richness of its farmlands combined with emerging technological advances will make Southeast Missouri "the most profitable, productive agricultural region in the world," said Dr. Michael Aide, chairman of the Department of Agriculture at Southeast Missouri State University, addressing the Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce First Friday Coffee at the Show Me Center.

"It's our lifeblood and it's one of the keys to our future prosperity," Aide said of the region's soil base. The combination of alluvial basin soils and "the most underground water for irrigation in North America" is unrivaled, he said.

Corn, soybean, cotton, rice and canola from Southeast Missouri are in high demand worldwide, Aide said, and investment in local agriculture business and education are important to keep the region competitive. The middle classes in China, India and Indonesia are growing and demanding higher quality food, he said. The Panama Canal is being widened to accommodate grain shipments to Asia that originate on the Mississippi River and by 2040, the United States will have to double the amount of food it produces.

"The demand for food is going to drive the world economy," Aide said.

In order to meet those demands, farmers are using technological advances such as putting cameras in crop fields so that herbicide application can be pinpointed to particular plants. New ways of baling cotton have been created so that it can be ginned -- the process by which raw cotton fibers are separated from the seedpods -- year-round instead of seasonally. Irrigation systems that reduce pollution runoff and preserve the soil are being studied in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the university's David M. Barton Agriculture Research Center.

Rep. Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, asked Aide to comment on the safety of genetically-modified plants, or GMOs.

"There are always risks," Aide said. But to produce food in enough abundance to satisfy the world demand, using plants that have been modified to increase productivity and decrease vulnerability, such as Monsanto Co.'s "Roundup Ready" crops, which are engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, is "the only way to do it," said Aide, who personally believes GMO crops were "completely safe."

"By and large, GMO crops are not going to go away," Aide said.

California's central valley, historically a leader in agriculture, is losing productivity due to the cost of doing business in the state and water loss to urban areas, he said.

"It is Southeast Missouri to Louisiana that will produce the new crop varieties that will fund and feed the world," said Aide.

The event was sponsored by MediCenter Pharmacy and ServiceMaster Professional Cleaning.

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