Interview with Adriaan Verbeek, managing director and Arjen de Vos, director of R&D of Salt Farm Texel
With the world population expected to reach nine billion before 2050, agricultural production has to increase by 70 percent. At the same time, less fresh water will become available for agriculture so the challenge is to produce more food with less water. While everybody is focussing on fresh water for agricultural production, Salt Farm Texel has a different perspective. Worldwide about one billion hectares of land is salt affected and this number increases by three hectares every minute. In addition, the amount of brackish water is equal to the amount of fresh water. Up until now, these saline resources of the world have not been recognized as a way to increase agricultural production.
Now, Salt Farm Texel is demonstrating the possible ways these resources can be useful by means of cultivating salt tolerant crops. Salt Farm Texel specializes in evaluating the salt tolerance of conventional crops, performing large-scale screening of possible salt tolerant cultivars, and developing saline agricultural practices. They work together with NGOs, investors, breeders and farmers across the world.
In an interview with Adriaan Verbeek and Arjen de Vos, we explore what makes Salt Farm Texel so unique in combatting the issues surrounding salinization, i.e. the decrease in fresh water available for agriculture and the increase in saline affected soil – particularly in dry areas around the globe.