The Green Revolution of the 1970s brought the largest yield increases in all three main food sources – wheat, rice and corn. This unique leap in productivity allowed the food and agriculture sector to keep pace with worldwide population growth.

Four decades later, we now live in a world that faces entirely different challenges that the Green Revolution is unable to solve. The unabated growth of the world’s population, the shrinking of arable lands due to rapid urbanization, continued environmental degradation, and the decline of natural biodiversity are today’s biggest threats to the agriculture and food sector.

As food demand rises and our farmers struggle to keep up, it’s time for a new green revolution. The Green Revolution itself needs to be revolutionized.

We need to start a “Doubly Green Revolution.” Apart from increased food production, we should seek a more efficient and ecologically friendly form of food production. Above everything else, we should underline sustainability and environmental protection.

The good news is that our capacity for innovation is as limitless as our appetites.

The key to improving productivity in all sectors, including and especially agriculture, is to step up our research and development (R&D) efforts. R&D is key to the long-term viability and productivity of agriculture. Biotech and genetics can improve both agricultural productivity and profitability, and at the same time ensure the earth’s sustainability.

This is an age punctuated by scientific discovery and driven by technological advancement. At a time when innovation is critical to prosperity and growth, both the public and private sectors face tremendous pressure to support research. History itself has powerfully demonstrated that R&D is the pacemaker of progress.

It takes strong will on the part of the scientists, as well as massive research investment and infrastructure support to make science and technology the core of our development.

While the timeline for translating scientific research efforts into tangible results is typically 15 years or longer, that cycle can be accelerated to solve today’s most critical challenges: Food, energy, healthcare, transportation, water supply, and climate change.

If companies committed a small percentage of their R&D budgets to pure research in exchange for incentives like tax credit, a new innovation ecosystem would quickly begin to take shape. It would also be much easier to attract top minds.

In the long term, R&D lays the foundation for much more imaginative, efficient, sustainable and effective solutions to the problems we confront and we may have to deal with in the future.

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