Partnerships for good harvests

Bayer CropScience is addressing these challenges with intensive research and development efforts. “Our goal is to increase the yields of numerous crops and improve their resistance and stress tolerance against environmental factors,” explains Dr. Franz-Josef Placke, member of the Executive Committee and Head of the Development function at Bayer CropScience. “At the same time, we are working on boosting the quality of agricultural products, for example by extending shelf lives and improving taste properties and the quality of the fibers.” To this end, Bayer CropScience is investing some €650 million yearly – equivalent to 10 percent of sales in 2009 – in conventional crop protection research (Crop Protection Business Unit) and the development of improved crops through modern breeding methods (BioScience Business Unit).

Bayer is thus actively supporting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal of fighting hunger and poverty as well as providing a growing world population with sufficient quantities of high-quality food – an objective that all 191 participating countries at the 2009 World Food Summit in Rome reaffirmed in a pledge to the “human right to food.”

This issue is not just about providing sufficient quantities of food, however; it is also about changing consumer habits, which are further stimulating the demand for fresh, affordable food products. Consumer quality awareness continues to grow, and increasing numbers of people are placing value on transparent and sustainable production conditions.

A food product undergoes numerous production, processing and quality control stages before it lands on the plate. Bayer CropScience is working together closely with food chain players such as growers, transporters, dealers and the processing industry to ensure that consumers can always count on first-class goods. Food Chain Partnerships exist in more than 40 countries, covering over 125 fruit and vegetable varieties. “By cooperating with all partners in the food chain, Bayer CropScience helps growers around the world supply the highest quality agricultural produce,” explains Dr. Birgitt Walz-Tylla, Head of Food Chain Management at Bayer CropScience. “Through our range of modern and sustainable crop protection solutions, technical know-how and competent consulting services, we are able to offer producers and dealers high-quality goods for resale or processing. End consumers can ultimately look forward to a wide variety of healthy and tasty products all year long.”

Since 2009, Bayer CropScience has been focusing on sustainable vegetable growing in India with a lighthouse project entitled “Food Chain Partnership Vegetables.” One of the local growers is Yaseen Mohammed Shareef. “We are very pleased to have gained Bayer CropScience as a partner. The BCS experts assist US with sustainable cultivation; as a result, we now handle crop protection products much more prudently and use high-quality seed products. This in turn enables US to increase harvest yields and tap into new selling opportunities,” he reports. Increasing crop yields also helps to prevent the expansion of agricultural land to nature or forest areas. The project currently comprises 80 units with a total area of 8,200 hectares; by 2011 Bayer expects to expand the program to 125 project units with a total area of 50,000 hectares – equivalent to about 70,000 soccer fields.

To further stimulate demand for the products from the Food Chain Partnerships, Bayer CropScience signed a global cooperation agreement with Dutch-based company The Greenery in September 2009. The agreement with the international trading company, which specializes in the marketing of vegetables, fruit and mushrooms, complements the 30 existing Food Chain Partnership projects in Central and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

For the fifth time, Bayer CropScience exhibited at Fruit Logistica in Berlin, the world’s biggest trade fair for the international fruit trade. At its stand at the fair, which took place from at the beginning of February 2010, the company’s experts presented projects being conducted in more than 40 countries to facilitate the sustainable production of high-quality food. Bayer CropScience’s integrated solutions based on innovative crop protection solutions and comprehensive advisory services play an important part in securing harvests and maintaining the quality of harvested produce. “In addition, we support fruit and vegetable growers in their efforts to market their goods internationally,” says Walz-Tylla.

Bayer CropScience has also implemented its internationally successful Food Chain Partnership concept in Mexico and entered into important alliances with leading certification agencies such as Mexico Calidad Suprema. Mexico is one of the biggest exporters of agricultural produce in the world. The country’s most well known export goods include mangoes, melons, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, citrus fruits, bananas, coffee and cocoa. This branch of the economy is one of the most important sources of national income.

Another Bayer lighthouse project focuses on rice, one of the most important food staples in the Asia/Pacific region. More than 40 million people subsist on rice in Indonesia alone. Bayer CropScience launched a program in this country in 2009 that aims to lastingly improve the yield and income situation of rice growers. The program is based on a new method of cultivation – direct seeding. Unlike the customary wet rice cultivation, by which growers set young plants in flooded paddies by hand, direct seeding involves the dry planting of pre-germinated rice by machine. This increases yields, saves enormous quantities of water, reduces the need for fertilizer and also lowers by 30 percent emissions of the greenhouse gas methane, which is produced through fermentation in stagnant water. The program comprises an integrated mix of seed, sowing machines, crop protection products and training courses for growers.

In the development of new rice varieties, Bayer CropScience also cooperates with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. The Bayer researchers’ goal is to increase rice yields by between 15 and 20 percent and make rice plants more resistant to environmental factors. Building on the irri’s research results, Bayer CropScience is working on a variety of rice that can survive for up to 10 days under water without “drowning.” This resistance is important in coastal regions that are subjected to repeated flooding – a situation that will likely become increasingly frequent as a result of climate change.

“Rice is the food staple for the world’s less affluent populations. Since there is practically no space for additional growing areas, we have to work on increasing yields on existing acreages.” This is how Dr. Achim Dobermann explains the most important task of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

Bayer CropScience has been working together with the IRRI since April 2008 to breed new rice varieties and drive forward the development of ecologically sustainable rice production. Dobermann is optimistic about the future: “We have the potential to produce sufficient food in the world in an environmentally friendly manner. To achieve this, we need intensively managed agriculture: with modern technology that requires a low input of labor, water and energy. In most growing areas, we could harvest one to two tons more rice per hectare with better methods. This would provide enough rice for the next 15 to 20 years to keep pace with the growing world population.” At the same time, Dobermann stresses, new high-yielding rice varieties are needed in the long term – including plants that can withstand higher temperatures, require less irrigation and are resistant to pests.

His assessment of Bayer’s lighthouse project for direct rice seeding is positive: “Rice yields increase considerably with these newly developed cultivation methods. That is tremendously important – not just for Indonesia, but also for supplying rice to the entire world population.”

Bayer’s wide range of activities makes clear that the company will continue to focus intensively on the theme of nutrition in the coming years. The developmental pipeline for the Crop Protection Business Unit is well stocked: “Between 2010 and 2012 we plan to introduce six new crop protection active substances to the market. They will protect seeds against disease, weeds and pests. Some will also strengthen crops to enable them to better cope with weather- and soil-related stress situations,” explains Placke. In the area of bioscience, the company is currently concentrating on about 60 research projects in six different crops. Alongside the four traditional core crops cotton, canola, rice and vegetables, the BioScience Business Unit has expanded its research activities to include wheat and soybeans.

In 2009, Bayer CropScience further intensified its research activities by entering into more than 10 alliances with public and private research institutions, including the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia. CSIRO is among the world’s leading institutions in the development of new wheat varieties, which is a new research focus area for Bayer CropScience. The goal of this research alliance is to achieve higher yields, increased resistance and improved nutrient uptake by wheat crops.

In the context of international partnerships with institutes and organizations in China, Australia and the Netherlands, Bayer CropScience researchers achieved a key research breakthrough in 2009: they sequenced for the first time the entire genome of rapeseed (Brassica napus) and its constituent genomes present in field mustard (Brassica rapa) and wild cabbage (Brassica oleracea). This achievement will help Bayer CropScience to speed up its research and breeding programs, thus bringing new technologies and better products to growers much sooner. It will also enable research to be conducted into significantly more innovative ideas that will further improve the value of rapeseed as a crop. Rapeseed is the second largest oilseed crop after soybeans, accounting for approximately 15 percent of world production.

The growing world population’s rising demand for food stands in contrast to the increasing scarcity of arable land and natural resources (water, energy). Bayer CropScience has therefore aligned its research and development activities and its portfolio to sustainable agriculture. In doing so, Bayer CropScience is addressing all three cornerstones of sustainability – economy, ecology and society.
Through innovative products and services that are matched to the needs of farmers and the entire consumer chain, the company brings increased productivity into tune with the conservation of resources and the environment. To this end, Bayer CropScience is further expanding its business with crop protection agents, seeds and plant traits to meet the challenges of our time – from quality and profitability through to biodiversity and climate change.