Syngenta's Strategies to Increase Biologicals Adoption

The global agricultural sector faces an increasing demand for sustainable development, presenting unprecedented opportunities for the biological agri-input market. 

However, biologicals companies are challenged to differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded marketplace to expand the adoption of their bio-solutions. 

In this interview, Matt Pickard, Head of Biologicals & Seedcare Europe at Syngenta, will discuss how to differentiate products, train sales teams, and provide services for the farmers etc., offering valuable experience to the companies in the industry to increase biologicals adoption.

How do you differentiate your product offerings from competitors in the biologicals’ markets?

Our real point of differentiation is our passion for innovation. In Europe, we focus on having more products registered and agronomically positioned as ″ready to sell″ with the right sales route to the major markets in Europe. We also prioritize partnerships; our goal is to be the collaborator of choice and drive a collaboration ecosystem within the industry so that more biological solutions can get into the hands of growers faster, either helping partners develop, register and sell products or by commercializing already registered products with partners who don’t have the same global footprint. We recently announced a series of new biological partnerships, including with Gingko Ag Biologicals, to optimize a pioneering solution's secondary metabolite production, and with Intrinsyx Bio, to boost grower access to their proprietary endophyte formulations.

This combination of research-driven innovation and deep market understanding is what sets us apart from most biologicals players. In addition, we aim to go beyond the product and its benefits for growers, adding services, digital tools and agronomic advice to our offerings, which leads to a more precise use of the product and, eventually better ROI for the grower.

What training do you provide your sales teams to effectively sell biologicals products?

Training is one of the fundamentals for anyone working in sales at Syngenta Biologicals. Fortunately, most of our sales teams have strong agronomic and technical qualifications, but the sales approach for biologicals does require a broader understanding of the plant and crop environment, including abiotic and nutritional stresses, along with our traditional strengths in genetics and crop protection. Training is available in several formats, and we have amassed a huge online training library. I admit the best training still happens in the field within a growing season. For this, we have some internal expertise and, of course, many from our Valagro acquisition who can train sales teams before, during and after the season. 

What improvements have you made in your service or education for the farmers over the past years?

Syngenta Biologicals invests a lot in the support and education of our products worldwide. The investment varies depending on the market baselines and our commercial distributor partners in each market. In Europe, we support our sales teams and advisors with comprehensive training on the agronomic challenges (abiotic stresses, pests, weeds and diseases) and how our products can be used to solve these. Two significant improvements are happening to ensure this training is even more comprehensive; firstly, during the understanding and adoption of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program, which requires a different agronomic mindset; and secondly, using agtech tools, for example, digital pest prediction or decision support tools (Cropwise™) can help in matching recommended treatments against the predicted pest pressure. Both approaches still rely on a knowledgeable agronomist but help them efficiently check, confirm and justify any treatments. We are now testing support tools for stress management with biostimulants (identifying the heat stress likelihood in potatoes in northern Europe for application of QUANTIS^®).

Have you partnered with any grower associations, cooperatives or other influencer groups to expand the reach for biologicals?

Partnership is our standard approach in most European markets, and we usually work together to understand better local needs. Based on the need, we offer training and awareness sessions for biological product adoption. It is crucial to find partners willing to work together to understand the practical realities on the farm and gain valuable feedback from in-field product performance, so we can both innovate ahead of grower challenges and refine our advice for biological product use in varying environmental conditions. We are all learning a lot about the complex area of biostimulants and nutrient-use efficiency products, so we actively seek deeper-than-usual partnerships to help test and gather data in real farm situations. 

Can you share any successful cases where growers have seen significant benefits from using your biological crop solutions?

We have examples of growers seeing the benefits of our biological solutions. Here are some of my favourites with commercially available products in Europe. We are still expanding the market adoption of MEGAFOL^®, which is our champion bioStimulant offer for abiotic stresses. This season it delivered significant benefits in cereal crops in frost-stress situations ranging from France to the Baltic countries. Our market-leading nutrient-use efficiency product, VIXERAN^®, made many corn and cereal growers happy as they topped up nitrogen for their crops, either complementing a standard fertilizer approach and giving more yield or helping maintain yields where nitrogen applications were reduced. In biocontrols, we have TAEGRO^®, which complements conventional fungicides and boosts yield in crops like grapes, ensuring growers can meet residue standards whilst giving confidence in controlling Botrytis. Lastly, we are making progress in the big arable crops, where AQUICINE^® Duo was launched this season in France to control Septoria tritici in wheat. We were able to complement conventional technologies, meaning growers now feel confident to move to biological treatments or start to incorporate them into their programs.

This interview was originally published in AgroPages magazine 2024 Biologicals Special.