Keynote: United Soybean Board, St. Louis – The Future of Agriculture and Farming

Essentially, agriculture is about science, and science is exponentiating. Essentially, agriculture is about science, and science is exponentiating. The result is that knowledge itself is exponentiating: in this keynote for 300 soybean farmers, I observed that we are in a situation in which 1/2 of what we learn in the first years of an agricultural degree is obsolete or revised by the time of graduation 4 years later. Soybean needs to continue to pursue big, bold ideas — better protein, more alternative material use (did you know that soybean is used as a material in seat cushions for cars?), bio-diesel and more. Why not solar cells grown from plants? They are researching that idea at M.I.T. – in an era of exponential science, no idea is too small!