Cases & Ideas

Biostimulants, A Marketing Challenge

Plant enhancement products (PEP), aka biostimulants, have a natural or a synthetic origin. They contribute to a more intensive and effective agriculture, thus enabling the progresses required to continue feeding and clothing a still growing World population without other arable surfaces being available. However, the use of such products is discretionary, which means that they are not indispensable.
This represents a considerable marketing challenge.

Here is why, as I explain in a recent Chinese publication.

Read more and download this article: Biostimulants Marketing Challenges

Agribusiness: evolution into indifference

Here we are, DowDupont, BayerMonsanto, ChemChinaSyngenta will be dominating the market of innovative seeds and pesticides

Three questions arise:

Will agriculture be better served by this concentration of suppliers?
What are the successes to expect from these chimeric giants?
What is going to happen in the challenge league?

Article also published on my blog: http://blog.mr-int.ch/?p=3259&lang=en

Read more or download this article.

Plant Enhancement Products

Plant enhancement products (PEPs) are better defined by what they are not: neither fertilizer nor pesticides.
They help the plant growing better by fostering nutrient assimilation, or by inducing resistance to biotic and abiotic stress, or by enabling other plant growth regulation effects.

As agricultural inputs they can be classified as in the following scheme:

Obviously, since different activities can be attributed to a given product and since products may show more than one effect, there are overlaps between these categories.

Many challenges must be met to develop and to put such products on the market:

1. 1. Understanding the underlying biological phenomenon
  2. Benefits for the growers or other stakeholders
  3. Product quality
  4. Application
  5. Regulatory requirements
  6. Marketing requirements
  7. Business attractiveness

Download a flyer on this topic or contact us to get more details

Predicament of Ag Inputs Manufacturers

Every decade or so, any industry seems to have to undertake a fundamental shake-out.
This is now the case of the pesticides-cum-seeds sector.
Large strategic, financial, regulatory, and political uncertainties cast a shadow over the big six, in alphabetical order BASF, Bayer, Dow, Dupont, Monsanto and Syngenta, now chased by other important global players such as Adama (ChemChina + Makhteshim Agan), Arysta, FMC-Cheminova, Nufarm and Sumitomo, and United Phosphorus.

The website MR's BioControl is now open.

Bio-control is an emerging methodology to keep plants safe and clean, and to manage crops in a more sustainable way.

Can bio-control products substitute entirely chemical solutions?
Are they the answer to ever more demanding registration requirements?

In this web site anyone involved at any stage of the food chain, input manufacturers, growers, distributors, regulators, investors, and – last but not least – consumers will gain insight in what these bio-control products are, what key features make them more or less attractive for a better integrated crop management, and what challenges must be met by companies willing to develop and to bring them on the market.

Download Flyer or Go to the site

Syngenta: good reasons to refuse the Monsanto offer

For the shareholders of both companies, two groups to which I don’t belong, the proposed merger may well be a bad deal. Neither will it be any good for the employees.

There are three reasons to this negative assessment –financial, operative, and strategic– that don’t point to valuable synergies.

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Challenges for Generic Manufacturers of Crop Protection Products

Generic manufacturers begin their career by producing an active substance and market it legally in countries where patent protection is not being enforced [and may be as a so-called pirate in other places], and then in the major markets after expiration of the relevant patents.

Beyond competion on production cost factors and on price the challenge needs to be met on market acces and on quality.

Download a paper on this subject by clicking here.

Monsanto's strategic divagations

Recently Monsanto announced an unsolicited offer to acquire Syngenta. The proposed merger raises quite a few questions, the least of which not being that of the company strategy, changing over from an almost biology only orientation to a pesticide-cum-seed conglomerate.

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Personal Re-orientation

One of the experiences that you may have to make during your professional career is to have to reorient it.

For whatever reason you lose your job or you want to quit. Is it a drama or a nice opportunity? This will depend on the circumstances and on your personality. It may be both at the same time.

Nobody likes joblessness, even if it is now becoming a positive item in a résumé. Having gone through such situation, you will have accumulated a rich experience, valuable in the eyes of a potential new employer.

This guide has not the pretention to offer a unique approach; some of what is proffered may be felt as trivial; and a lot has to deal with common sense. Nevertheless it may be helpful to someone who is exposed to the situation, without having had much time to get prepared for such exercise.

More details can be obtained by clicking here.

Bio-control Business Perspectives

At the Annual Bio-control International Meeting (ABIM) held Oct 21-23, 2013 in Basel, Switzerland, a presentation was made on business perspectives for bio-control.

The corresponding document can be downloaded here, it contains slides that for time constraint could not be discussed at the conference.

Gene Modified Crops: are there Output Traits in Sight?

Input traits serve the grower by providing him a more efficient way of managing his crops. So far insect resistance (multiple genes for different lepidoptra species stacked together), herbicide resistance, and refuge in the box are the seed products offered for various large field crops such as maize, soybean, canola, and cotton. Other input traits are in development to obtain disease resistance (against viruses or fungi), or drought and salt tolerance. It is not certain that such developments will be made by gene technology or by classical breeding techniques.

Output trait aim at changing the agricultural product itself, to enhance food or feed produces, or to improve biomass characteristics. This calls for a different game since the product itself is made to induce changes in the diet and in the metabolism of the consumer's body.

It seems that the development of such output traits is stuck, limited to few large agribusiness companies, and with low or no investment being made otherwise in the green biotechnology any more.

Technical, regulatory and commercial reasons may explain this slow development. Anticipated high regulatory costs and a relatively low competitive value of the modified crop reduce the attractiveness of such projects.