January 8, 2019
Liam Condon, president, Bayer Crop Science, offered what he called an appetizer of a tech update as he and colleague Bob Reiter, head of research and development, made a presentation to media Tuesday, Jan. 8. And while there were some familiar portions in this appetizer dish, there were also some new treats to tease farmers about this company’s combined future.
Bayer completed its acquisition of Monsanto at the end of August, and the teams are working on new tools and pulling together tech from both sides to aim for key global targets – mainly to boost productivity to meet a rising need for food. Condon references the growing demand for food as population rises another 2.5 billion by 2050, but he added that climate change is also part of the challenge.
“It’s getting warmer, dustier and this is having negative impacts on productivity and harvest going forward,” he observes. For the new Bayer, the key is pulling together a lot of technology in crops, crop protection, biologicals and digital ag to create that added productivity.
Late in 2018, Bayer announced its Climate Corporation group would launch Seed Adviser in a limited launch for 2019 expanding to more farmers in Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota; research will expand to include Wisconsin, Indiana and Missouri. This data-driven tool helps farmers target the right seed to specific acres on their farm based on a range of agronomic and farming practices. Just after the announcement, Climate released 2018 results from a limited trial of the tool and found a yield advantage of 9.1 bushels per acre versus what the farmer would have planted without Seed Adviser recommendations.
Condon has shared that the new company will also focus on sustainability and divide efforts into two areas:
smallholder farmers, working to enable more than 100 million of this group by 2030;
reduce the ecological footprint of farming.