Ernst Van Den Ende – Technology, Ecology, and Science Based Thinking can Solve the World’s Agriculture Conundrum

Between 1982-2015, the world’s population grew from 4.5 billion to about 7.5 billion while land under agriculture remained the same. More food was produced on the same amount of land but climate change and the resultant rise in the extreme weather events pose a serious challenge to the world’s food production. Is the time now ripe for a second green revolution?

Ernst Van Den Ende, a leader in dutch agriculture innovation, explains that there is no 'silver bullet' to solve the world’s agriculture woes but a focus on a combination of technology and ecology can make agriculture more productive, efficient and sustainable.

Based in the Netherlands, Ernst Van Den Ende is a renowned plant scientist and the managing director of the Plant Sciences group at Wageningen University, one of the world’s top agriculture educational, research and technology hubs. He leads a group of nearly 1,400 agricultural scientists, various corporate partners,  and hundreds of start-ups in the agro-food domain, to tackle the most pressing challenges facing the future of food.