Crops of the Future Collaborative

Keeping Farmers Competitive

Keeping farmers competitive and profitable requires developing products at an unprecedented pace. Yet, research and development can be financially risky. With industry consolidation, companies are facing greater investment in commercialization over research. This trend makes it challenging and expensive for companies to independently maintain cost-competitive research programs.

However, participation in research consortia allows companies to effectively address these issues. Crops of the Future Collaborative participants collectively explore multiple areas of research based on a common need while minimizing risk prior to pursuing the research internally. We established this Collaborative to address significant research gaps common across the industry.

The Collaborative develops resilient crops with genes and traits that allow them to thrive despite pests, pathogens and extreme weather. Additionally, the research focuses on increasing crop diversity and developing crops with higher nutritional content.

We provided Crops of the Future an initial $10 million investment, which the Collaborative participants matched for a total investment of $20 million to further crop science. Collaborative participants jointly define the research issues, pool resources and knowledge and use the research outcomes to compete in the marketplace.