President and CEO of Alltech, Dr Mark Lyons, has highlighted agriculture’s role in saving the planet.

Speaking at the Alltech ONE Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, he said, "the reducing is not enough; we have to do something different.

"Our belief is that agriculture has the greatest potential to positively influence the future of our planet, to provide nutrition for all and to help rural communities thrive and replenish our planet’s resources.”

He observed that governments and companies' reduction and continuous commitments will not get the world where it needs to go.

“…the reductions, the commitments, the governments and companies make, that is not going to get us where we need to go.

“We need to have intentional action to restore our environment. We have to think of ways of lowering environmental impact and at the same time we can provide enough of that nutrition that this growing planet is going to require”, he explained.

According to Dr Lyons, progress and doing something different should involve cultivating economic opportunities through this.

“I think that the negative message of doing less, not being able to have economic, entrepreneurial and even intellectual opportunities… that is not a path forward as we see it.

“We have to think of ways where we can truly capture what is being released (carbon), I think this is going to be the most exciting and the biggest economic opportunity that is going to exist in agriculture for the future”, he added, "How do we create carbon capture in a transformative way".

The ONE Conference is Alltech’s flagship event which continues to be an invaluable industry resource, providing innovative ideas, inspiration and motivation through world-class speakers and unmatched content.

This year's event welcomed nearly 2,000 international delegates to downtown Lexington in the USA, with an additional 5,000 participating virtually after two years of holding the event virtually.

Dr Mark Lyons, who welcomed delegates challenged them to think about what comes next as we look toward the future. 

“It’s been almost 1,100 days since we were last together and certainly, we know a tremendous amount has changed — from social turmoil to a global pandemic and beyond,” Lyons said.

“What is this all telling us? What can we step back and think about in terms of how we progress forward?”.