Research has been pivotal to advances in agri-food production globally, with few champions mightier than the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. 

The FAO, which held its first session in 1945 in Québec City and now calls Rome, Italy its home, celebrates its 80thanniversary in 2025. To mark the occasion, the organization is building a global museum to illustrate the decades-long fight against hunger and malnutrition. 

FAO says the museum will bridge global food technologies and cultures, showcasing the rich traditions and innovative approaches that have shaped the story of agrifood systems over time and simultaneously recognizing traditional knowledge. It will serve as a permanent exhibition and educational space open to the public, dedicated to food and agriculture, to food culture and to FAO’s anti-hunger mandate.

That’s a lot to cheer about, especially if you believe in science. At his keynote address at the Borlaug International Dialogue of the World Food Prize 2024 opening ceremony in Iowa in November, FAO director-general Qu Dongyu said breakthroughs in genetic research have brought the world to “the dawn of a new era.”

He said tools such as gene editing technology can be tailored to improve plant and animal resistance to pests, diseases, and environmental stressors including high temperatures, droughts, floods, soil salinity and more. Such technology addresses a spectrum of inter-related global challenges including assuring food security, tackling the climate crisis and protecting biodiversity, he says. 

Indeed, today’s technology is about more than the glorious yields envisioned in the 1960s by the dialogue’s namesake Norman Borlaug when he took a lead in advancing the Green Revolution. But what’s the outlook for tomorrow? 

Heading into 2025, the horizon is teeming with uncharted waters. The promise of modern science, including agricultural research, is threatened by those who consider science an enemy, a frill, a waste of government money or an injustice imposed on the public – in other words, the suggestion that science is “woke.”

Producers need to push back. Trusted voices must be added to the chorus of scientists and others who believe research is vital for staving off hunger. In his Borlaug event address, Dongyu noted how gene editing technology accelerates breeding processes, acting faster and with much greater precision than conventional cross-breeding, mutation breeding and transgenesis methods. It’s a new day for science.

Farmers everywhere can benefit from genetic research that is shared widely and equitably, said Dongyu. He believes it’s essential that FAO members, which includes Canada and the U.S., invest in human and social capital needed to make optimal leverage of new technology. But in 2025’s world, that could be a hard sell.

Dongyu took the stage in Iowa a mere eight days after the U.S. election, well aware that the emerging U.S.-first, cut-spending culture may not be aligned with broader, global initiatives or humanitarian efforts driven by the FAO.

And as for science…well, remember how, in the fall, Trump confidante Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shook American grain farmers to the core when he accused them of poisoning the country with their modern production methods, specifically referring to pesticides?  

Pesticides, like vaccines, are a product of science. Kennedy likes neither. President-elect Donald Trump says he's going to let Kennedy “go wild on health…he’s going to help make America healthy again.” 

That is a warning to farmers everywhere, including Canada, if we too end up with a far-right government fashioned after Trump and the U.S. Republicans. Without science, without a champion like the FAO, without a global perspective, agriculture is back at square one.