NEWS
AGRISCIENCES
Open for innovation
CATH O’DRISCOLL
For decades, the ‘big six’ companies – BASF, Bayer, DuPont, Dow Chemical Company, Monsanto, and Syngenta – dominated the world’s agrochemicals industry. But soon their number will be reduced to the big four. And some of them will be even bigger. Bayer’s $56bn acquisition of
Monsanto will now likely complete on 22 January 2018, it was announced at the Bayer ‘Future of Farming Dialog [sic]’ event in September 2017, after the company’s request for a 10-day extension of the EC’s antitrust review process. It will follow ChemChina’s $43bn acquisition of Syngenta, completed in May 2017, and the $130bn ‘mega-merger’ that led to creation of DowDuPont (DWDP) at the end of August. Merger of Bayer and Monsanto will
lead to the creation of a combined seeds and agrochemicals company with an annual pro-forma R&D budget of approximately €2.5bn. Speaking at the Future of Farming event, however, Liam Condon, above, president of Bayer’s Crop Science Division, was keen to play down fears over reduced competition and possible price hikes. ‘What we do is based on open
innovation that’s open to solutions not just from Bayer,’ Condon said. ‘It could be, for example, that our digital platforms are making recommendations for competitors’ products in some cases. We’re firm believers in more open innovation because we think more innovation will come from that.’ The new company will not only
be a ‘faster engine for innovation’, Condon said, but will also be socially
responsible by making available its products to poor farmers in under- developed parts of the world. Digital and precision technologies
will continue to top the innovation agenda. ‘Digital farming allows you to do things in a more targeted and efficient way,’ Condon said, pointing out that such technologies will be critical to meeting important UN Sustainable Development Goals. He referred, for example, to a recent collaboration with Bosch to develop a ‘super-sensitive sensor’ that performs the difficult job of distinguishing weeds from crop plants, so allowing smart sprayers to deliver herbicide to the specific area of a field where it is needed. Every day, farmers around the world
make essentially the same 40 decisions when it comes to running their farms, Condon continued. The goal is to exploit digital technologies to develop tailored packages of recommended products and services, based around a slew of data covering soil type, microclimate and crop variety etc – to better inform farmers in their decision-making processes. ‘Monsanto’s platform is very
complementary to ours,’ elaborated Matthias Kremer, head of strategy & portfolio management: ‘Our plan is to work on customised agronomic solutions or total solutions that offer the right combinations of herbicide and insecticide and other services from our digital platform to increase the value for the grower. Farmers are entrepreneurs. If they can see they can generate more value from them, they will buy products.’ Importantly, however, he stressed
that they will have the option to buy only those products they prefer.
EDUCATION
Ignorance threatens progress
CATH O’DRISCOLL
The imperative to raise agricultural productivity has never been more urgent. Every year the amount of available land around the world on which to grow food is shrunk by a further 12m ha. Since 1950, the per capita land area for growing food has diminished from 0.52ha to around 0.16ha per capita today. Yet a growing public mistrust of science
threatens to railroad efforts to develop the very innovations needed to tackle this loom- ing crisis, say food and agriculture experts. ‘We live in a post-truth era,’ said
Bayer Crop Science Division president, Liam Condon. ‘Populism and political popularisation endanger modern science. Well established scientific facts are questioned by people who prefer to believe in rumours and emotional campaigns.’ A recent Bayer-initiated survey found that 92% of 10,000 people surveyed in 10 countries believe food innovation is an urgent issue, said global head of R&D, Adrian Percy. However, 62% and 73% think GMOs and pesticides, respectively, should be banned, while 67% are uncomfortable with the use of digital technology in agriculture. ‘Societal acceptance is key,’ Percy said.
‘The future of food depends on a stronger bond between agriculture and society.’ He pointed to initiatives like Bayer’s AgVocacy programme, which helps train industry stakeholders to explain their work to consumers, and to agriculture education programmes such as BayLabs and the global Youth Ag-Summit, as important platforms for engagement and dialogue with consumers. He also reiterated a commitment to make
safety-related study data publicly available online. Information used in the registration process for many of the company’s active substances will be posted on a newly created Bayer web portal from the end of 2017. In future, users will also be able to request access to full in-depth safety-related study reports. ‘We want everyone – from the general
public to members of the scientific commu- nity – to be able to access the information they want in a way that’s fast and easy to un- derstand,’ Percy said. ‘We also want the pub- lic to understand how and why we perform safety studies. This is a great opportunity for a beneficial dialogue with the public.’
08 | 2017 15
BAYER AG
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