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Mark Edge

Water Efficient Maize for Africa Partnership Lead, Bayer Crop Science

Expert Bio

I lead Monsanto’s collaboration with the WEMA public-private partnership project to improve food security and rural livelihood among smallholder maize producers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The project develops new drought-tolerant and insect pest-protected maize hybrids and provides the technology royalty-free. I now work as Water Efficient Maize for Africa Partnership Lead at Bayer.

I grew up on a corn, soybean and livestock farm in Iowa.  Before joining Monsanto, my experience included biotech research, managing seed business development as well as the grain export business.  I received a B.S. from Iowa State University, a M.S. in Genetics from the University of California at Davis, and an MBA from Drake University.   

Studies, Articles and Answers

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Question

Q: How come GMOs are not used in most of Africas Continent? Shouldnt they be where they are needed the most?

Answered By Mark Edge - Mar 12, 2015

A: GMOs are grown successfully in South Africa, Burkina Faso, and Sudan.  South Africa grows GM maize, soybeans and cotton, while both Burkina Faso and Sudan grow only GM cotton.  Farmers in all three of these countries have experienced the benefits of reduced pesticides and increased yields and their adoption of the GM technology has grown rapidly.  It is therefore somewhat surprising that these same scale-neutral GMO benefits aren’t yet realized by the rest of African smallholder farmers.  The reasons and barriers for this are varied and complex.   To be able t [...]

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