Farmer-Centric Focus

Global sales of Adama increased by 4.7% to $3,221.3 million in 2014. This increase reflects growth in all of the main regions in which the company operates, and is one of the highest growth rates of the main companies competing in the crop protection sector. The strongest growth region for the year was Latin America, where revenues grew by 8.6% to $822.5 million. Commenting on the results, Mr. Yang Xingqiang, Adama's Chairman, said, Adama's 2014 results, which ranked among the best in our industry, reflect the ongoing execution of our strategic plan, the strength of our integrated platform and our ability to effectively serve farmers' needs in key agricultural markets across the globe."

Recently AgroPages also held a dialog with Mr. Shaul Friedland, Executive VP and Chief Commercial Officer, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd., further exploring how Adama is executing the development strategies in Latin America market.

Integrated platform supports sustained businesses

"Our global strategy at Adama is to move from a sales-focused organization to a marketing-focused one,” Friedland says. “This switch to a marketing-focused organization is a total change of mindset from a decade ago, or even five years ago, and it has been a real progression for Adama, and we see real benefits, for Adama and our distributors and the farmers that use our products.”

In Latin America market, this switch is reflected by establishment of the integrated marketing networks, sustained promotion and marketing programs, as well as the farmer-centric positioning of the products, and their design.

Friedland told AgroPages that the growth rate stemmed from the growing market, mainly in Brazil, Mexico, and to some extent, Argentina. In Brazil, Adama has two production plants, generating a production of 170 million liters per year. The company also has 15 regional sales units, and three distribution centers in Brazil, while in Mexico and Argentina, it has very established and long-standing activities and business relationships. Adama also established a new company in Peru approximately 18 months ago and acquired an existing company in Chile. Integrated marketing networks covering more markets in this region enables the strong growth in recent years.

Adama has strong presence in the field in Latin America via sustained marketing programs, with three business departments in Brazil aimed directly for the farmer. There are 112 technical sales representatives, 60 more technical assistants and agronomists in Brazil which is the result of company's partnership with local companies. In addition, it also features the presence of a strong team of market development and technical support that helps ensure correct product positioning and also to train the technical network of distributors and cooperatives. On average, around 3 thousand small events are performed with farmers per year including product demonstrations, sessions for clarification of doubts and technical lectures.

Adama has rich product lines to serve this emerging market. It can produce more than 120 varieties of active ingredients and 800 types of preparations, and has nearly 5,000 product registrations and over 6,000 trademarks worldwide. “Our hybrid portfolio is one of the widest and most complete product lines in the industry. It includes the very basic and commoditized products, as well as differentiated products, often based on unique mixtures and novel formulations that are proprietary to Adama, and everything in between,” says Friedland.

Furthermore, Adama integrates product positioning and design into marketing programs based on insights from different markets and fully understanding of farmer’s needs. “Our novel, proprietary nematicide, Nimitz™, will soon be available in Latin America and is in the registration process in relevant countries such as Brazil (expected 2017), Mexico (expected beginning of 2016)and Central America. Another of our proprietary products, Rimon, has already been commercialized in Latin America for several years, from Mexico to Argentina. Both of these products simplify the lives of farmers, which is the purpose of Adama as a company,” says Friedland.

Farmer-centric focus leads to customized products and services

Based on years of marketing experience, Adama’s vision is increasingly farmer-centric, in the sense that they understand farmers’ needs better. “We want to serve farmers properly and create simplicity for them, with the right products for the right crops. In the future, we may offer some services, not just products, to expand our business. We build our offering according to the needs of the farmers as well as trying to envision their future needs and future crop dynamics,” Friedland says.

From the day GM was introduced in Latin America, Adama thought it would have implications for resistance, and it did. In Latin America, it developed quite quickly, due to the weather conditions which results in rapid rotation of crops, since there is practically no winter. While resistance causes shifts in the weed and insect populations, for Adama, it is an opportunity to help farmers. And they developed formulations and mixtures to mitigate resistance.

"We typically look at the GM crop and try to predict what resistance problems will arise. In many cases, we have been very successful in identifying the challenges before they become apparent, and we have therefore been able to prepare solutions for farmers ahead of time. For example, it was clear to us that planting GM corn one season, and then rotating it with soybean the next, would create problems with the corn encroaching on the soybean as a weed. We therefore prepared solutions for farmers to overcome the weeds in the soybean fields using products that would overcome their resistance. Instead of glyphosate, we offered a herbicide called Arrow that kills the weed, but not the soybean. By alternating herbicides rather than using the same product over and over again, the farmer is able to combat the resistance issue. Since Adama has such a broad range of products, mixtures and formulations to choose from, we are uniquely positioned to help farmers overcome such resistance problems.”

Adama builds their offering according to the needs of the farmers as well as trying to envision their future needs and future crop dynamics. “For example, a few years ago, we knew that a certain product was in the process of being phased out, and we introduced Galil, a novel mixture of two different products, to replace it,” says Friedland. “Another example is in Colombia, we partner with a company that provides herbicide application services in sugar cane crops. Instead of purchasing crop protection products and managing the process himself, the farmer pays per treated hectare with everything included. We're looking at various types of services like this so that our relationship with the farmer will expand beyond agrochemicals into other ways in which we can bring simplicity to their lives.”

"We have an established presence in most countries in Latin America, and this is definitely one of the major growth engines of our company globally. Now our focus is on helping our company grow in that region,” Friedland told AgroPages at the end of the conversation.