Focus on the food chain:

Production of high-quality food

Bayer is one of the world’s major suppliers of crop protection products, seeds and plant biotechnology. The company helps its customers to produce the high quality expected by a growing number of consumers. The focus is always on observing good agricultural practice in the production of high-quality foods. These and the daily availability of fresh produce such as fruit and vegetables even outside regional growing seasons form the basis of a healthy diet.

Aureliano de Barros Cavalcante, Manager of Juagro Comércio e Representações Ltda.in Juazeiro, Bahia, Brazil

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“We are finding that our customers are farming more successfully when we advise them in detail about safety, responsibility and quality.”
Aureliano de Barros Cavalcante, Manager of Juagro Comércio e Representações Ltda. in Juazeiro, Bahia, Brazil

By the time a food product lands in a shopper’s basket it has already passed through many links in the food chain. Each of the stages on its journey “from farm gate to plate” helps to ensure the quality of the product; those involved include food producers, shippers, traders and processors. Bayer CropScience is initiating partnerships throughout the food chain; their aim is to provide the consumer with sufficient high-quality food all year round.

“We help the people who use our products to follow good agricultural practice in their efforts to produce the high quality demanded by consumers and food processors,” explains Sagar Kaushik, Head of Marketing and Development at Bayer CropScience Asia Pacific in Singapore, summarizing the goal of the food chain partnerships. “Bayer CropScience works on projects with partners in the food chain, providing them with innovative products and its specialists’ extensive knowledge of good agricultural practice, and also enabling them to collaborate with Bayer CropScience branches throughout the world.”

Safety for users

Innovative crop protection products make a major contribution to profitable farming and the cultivation of quality products. They protect harvests from pests, weeds and diseases, enabling farmers to cultivate a wide variety of fruits and vegetables profitably. “Without modern crop protection, over 50 percent of harvests would be lost,” Kaushik says.

Yet Bayer CropScience is aware that the correct use of crop protection products is crucial. “This is why we give top priority to providing our customers with product information,” Kaushik explains.

Sagar Kaushik, Head of Marketing and Development at Bayer CropScience Asia- Pacific in Singapore

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“We help the people who use our products to meet the wishes of the end users and food processors and thereby to maximize their sales opportunities.”
Sagar Kaushik, Head of Marketing and Development at Bayer CropScience Asia- Pacific in Singapore

Partnerships in all the world’s regions
Bayer CropScience has routinely been training farmers to handle crop protection products for years. Training programs are in place in practically every country in which Bayer products are sold, with the majority being held in newly industrializing countries.

In Latin America, for example, the “AgroVida” training program has been running successfully since 1995. It targets mainly small-scale farmers and agricultural workers, but also welcomes dealers, teachers and students.

“In another partnership, ‘Distribução Brazil,’ Bayer CropScience communicates to Brazilian farm-product dealers the basics of sustainable agriculture and the safe use of crop protection products,” explains Aureliano de Barros Cavalcante, Procurement Manager at JUAGRO, a company that sells farm products and services including crop protection products in Brazil.

The dealers act as multipliers and pass on their knowledge to their customers, the farmers. “In addition to information about new and innovative products and how to use them throughout the season until the produce is harvested, dealers are also taught how to use crop protection products safely and learn about the quality requirements that farmers have to meet if they want to export their produce,” he reports. Aureliano de Barros Cavalcante is convinced that the program is a good idea: “We find that our customers are farming more successfully.”

Another example is China, where experts are training a growing number of dealers every year as part of the “Bayer Key Retailer” project; the dealers subsequently pass on their new-found knowledge to their customers, the farmers. Bayer CropScience set up the “Green World” project in Kenya in the summer of 2006, and is now training local farm-product dealers to provide better support for small-scale farmers in their efforts to meet the strict requirements imposed by European food importers on agricultural produce from Kenya.

Trade with illegal crop protection products

Global agriculture and the food-processing industry is facing a major challenge that has been very difficult to overcome in the past: the proliferation of counterfeit and imitation crop protection products. It is estimated that in Europe between five and seven percent of the crop protection products in circulation are counterfeit or do not have regulatory approval; in Asia the figure is between ten and 20 percent. In Brazil, de Barros Cavalcante believes that counterfeit products “are one of the main problems facing producers and users of crop protection products today.” He estimates the proportion of counterfeit and smuggled products in Brazil at around 30 percent.

“The active ingredients in counterfeit products usually don’t comply with the exact, carefully optimized specifications of original products, or they contain substances which do not have regulatory approval and which may be highly toxic or completely ineffective,” Sagar Kaushik explains. In addition to quality problems that operators may encounter, counterfeit crop protection products may pose a risk to the health of farmers and consumers and a hazard to the environment.

Raising awareness of the problem

Bayer CropScience is expending major effort on the development of innovative products, particularly packaging solutions, which it is hoped will make illegal trade more difficult

. But the companies cannot solve this problem on their own. Kaushik wishes that the authorities would make a greater effort to help beat the people who manufacture and deal in illegal crop protection products. In many regions of the world Bayer is working with national and international associations which represent the crop protection industry to raise the authorities’ awareness of the problem. De Barros Cavalcante points to the partnership with Distribução Brazil, through which meetings, advertisements and press liaison work are organized to educate farmers about the risks associated with products of unclear origin. He is certain “that the number of counterfeit Bayer CropScience products on the Brazilian market has been declining since this project was launched.”

Partnerships between agriculture and the food industry can help to suppress the use of illegal crop protection products in the longer term.