Shaping the future of farming
How Syngenta experts look for the next breakthrough technologies to benefit global agriculture.
Dave Hughes describes himself with a smile: "I'm a creature of the future."
As the Head of Technology Identification and Evaluation for Syngenta, Dave's job is to think about how the global food production might change over the coming decades, and the areas of new technology that could provide the biggest breakthroughs. “I remember we saw the impact of deep learning coming a decade ago", he says.
Dave Hughes, Head of Technology Identification and Evaluation, Syngenta.
Dave Hughes, Head of Technology Identification and Evaluation, Syngenta.
This kind of work means taking the long view – looking for new things that might be coming on the horizon. It's necessary to think long term for a number of important reasons.
"It takes a long time – around 15 years – to develop new agricultural technologies," says Dave. Another factor is that "our global food production system is unbelievably complex".
Dave outlines a few of the key elements necessary for maintaining and improving the world's food system.
"We have to keep producing more high-quality food on the smallest amount of land possible. At the same time, we need to ensure that agriculture helps protect environmental biodiversity, and restores soil health, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and minimizes pollution from agricultural inputs. All this requires multiple, complementary innovations and different technologies used together."
This quickly becomes even more complicated – there are multiple areas of technology that Syngenta works within, from the latest breakthroughs in predictive chemistry, to computer vision and new seed genetics.
"We have to assess the potential of different emerging science and technologies – for this we need technology foresight," explains Dave.
Technology foresight
Put simply, technology foresight is a contextual assessment of different scientific and technological areas to try and gauge which ones are most likely to positively impact agriculture.
Dave explains in more detail how it works: "Let's say there's a technology or area of science on the horizon that could make the global food system better in the future. Through good foresight we can identify actions we can take in the present that would make that positive future a little more likely. It's not that we're trying to predict the future – we want to shape it."
New technologies on the horizon could potentially transform how agricultural science is carried out.
New technologies on the horizon could potentially transform how agricultural science is carried out.
Technology foresight surveys make the most of already existing expertise. From across Syngenta's R&D functions, scientific experts regularly score dozens of new technologies by how likely they are to reach the required level of impact.
Looking back, Dave points out that this practice of technology foresight has yielded some important insights. "Back in 2014 we saw strong indications about the value and importance of cover cropping - and this has become far more widely adopted since then."
Cover cropping has become increasingly common throughout global agriculture thanks to clear signals about how effective it can be.
Cover cropping has become increasingly common throughout global agriculture thanks to clear signals about how effective it can be.
In the 2017 and 2018 surveys, long before ChatGPT was released to the general public, Syngenta experts were already well attuned to the possibilities of deep learning and neural networks.
Over the last decade, these transformative technologies have become integral to everything from how new chemical compounds are developed and tested to the latest innovations in computer vision.
Following the signals of innovation
The other key aspect to tracking the development of new potential technology is through what Dave calls the signals group. This is a select group of scientists and researchers across different specialist areas who pay careful attention to new breakthroughs, shifts in policy and emergent technologies.
The aim is to get an early idea of what might become a powerful driver that could impact Syngenta's work.
"Not everything is a signal, but shifts in policy, new technologies and even promising research can give us insight into how agricultural science and technology might develop" says Dave.
When multiple diverse signals all indicate the same trend the stronger the indication that a new breakthrough might be imminent.
Richard Currie is a Syngenta Fellow and expert in Product Safety.
"There are so many areas of research that could impact Syngenta across fields like biotechnology, computing, robotics and AI, or climate change," he says. "The signals group brings together a group of people with the diversity of perspectives needed to analyse the breadth of innovations that can impact us "
Signals of success
Paying attention to early signals of potential innovations helps keep Syngenta's experts on the cutting edge. As Richard says: "The value of the signals group is not only in the things we've seen coming but it helps us ask "did we miss something".
But signals don't just help ensure innovations haven't slipped by researchers. They validate the research already underway: "We were ahead of the game in picking up the signals showing the potential of agentic AI especially in how it can impact scientists," says Richard.
Bringing breakthroughs to farmers depends on catching early signals about possible innovations.
Bringing breakthroughs to farmers depends on catching early signals about possible innovations.
He says that the value of this kind of foresight is vital. According to Richard, it encourages creativity and imagination: essential qualities for bringing new breakthroughs to farmers facing complex challenges.
"If you don't know a possible solution exists, how can you use it to solve new problems? Looking towards the future horizon like this helps you think 'what if', and what needs to be true for this new idea to be successful?"
