Tag Archives: latin-america
Bayer CropScience Steps Up Investment Plans
Bayer CropScience September 9, 2013 Bayer CropScience is on track to grow annual sales toward EUR 9 billion in 2013 and toward EUR 10 billion in 2015. “Since 2007 we have continuously expanded our business with record sales, and we are optimistic about the future development,” said Bayer CropScience CEO Liam Condon at the company’s annual press conference in Monheim, Germany. Against the background of strong demand for its products, the company is adding EUR 1 billion to its investment program, bringing total capital expenditures for the period 2013 to 2016 to approximately EUR 2.4 billion. As a result of the accelerated investment program, the production volume of key active ingredients for crop protection products is expected to increase significantly. “Many industries today are facing overproduction. At Bayer CropScience, we are in a completely different situation: A growing global population, changing diets and increasing weather volatility are affecting food supply and need to be addressed today,” said Condon. “Demand from farmers for our products is increasing so strongly that we’re significantly stepping up our supply chain capacity to serve farmers around the world with much needed innovative agricultural solutions,” added Liam Condon, describing the challenge: “About 900 million people remain hungry today and the world population is growing strongly. We need to raise agricultural productivity and at the same time advance sustainability in farming and ensure protection of the environment. We aim to achieve this by developing innovative solutions and services that can help agriculture to contribute to the healthy development of society.” About EUR 380 million investment in new glufosinate-ammonium plant in the United States One integral element of Bayer CropScience’s investment plans is the construction of a new plant in Mobile/Alabama for the production of the herbicide glufosinate-ammonium, marketed in the United States under the brand name Liberty. The start-up of the new plant is anticipated probably for the fourth quarter of 2015, in time for the 2016 growing season. “With about EUR 380 million earmarked for this new facility, this is the biggest single construction project in the history of Bayer CropScience,” said Condon. Along with capacity expansion projects currently under way at other sites, this new facility will contribute significantly to the company’s target of more than doubling global product supply for this important active ingredient. The increased production of Liberty will help to fight weed resistance, a key challenge for modern agriculture. Liberty is the only non-selective herbicide that controls weeds resistant to the most used herbicide, glyphosate. About 50 percent of the farmers in the USA have experienced weed resistance on their fields, and the situation is worsening further not only in the United States but also around the world. Bayer CropScience is addressing this problem with its unique expertise in R&D, the most diverse herbicide portfolio in the industry, diagnostics and monitoring, and by promoting an Integrated Weed Management (IWM) approach. IWM techniques such as crop rotation, the use of herbicides with different modes of action – glufosinate-ammonium being one of the cornerstones – and rotation of herbicide-tolerant traits help growers to manage or delay weed resistance, as no single strategy will be completely effective on its own. “Diversity is the key to sustainable agriculture,” stressed Condon. Expanding the Seeds business – building up strong positions in soybean and wheat In addition to the ramp-up of its supply chain capacity in Crop Protection, another element of the company’s growth plan is the implementation of its Seeds strategy. Bayer CropScience plans to further strengthen its position in established crops such as vegetables, rice, oilseed rape and cotton, and to build up significant market positions in soybean and wheat. “We are continuing to invest in our soybean business, for example through strategic acquisitions in Latin America, contributing to a fast and focused development of distinctive traits,” explained Condon, who highlighted the soybean cyst nematode trait currently under development at Bayer CropScience. He also announced the planned launch of the global Bayer CropScience soybean brand Credenz for late 2014 in North and South America. “Credenz soybean seeds will help us to deliver improved varieties to growers. It will offer future traits that could protect soybeans against specific insects, repel persistent attacks by nematodes, and make soybeans tolerant to the most effective herbicides,” said Condon. The company intends to significantly expand today’s soybean-related sales within the next decade. A second seed investment focus for the company is wheat, the world’s most important staple crop. Here, Bayer CropScience is building a leading global wheat breeding network, with the objective of developing high-yielding varieties adapted to local growing conditions. First varieties are expected to come to market in 2015. “Our business strategy is aimed at addressing the pressing challenges farmers are facing worldwide,” concluded Condon. “We will further strengthen both our CropProtection and our Seeds businesses, continue to sharpen our customer focus and foster innovation to strengthen our leading market position.” Continue reading
Brazil’s Booming Farms Reap Benefit Of Weak Currency
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/aab8e412-0dae-11e3-9fbb-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2e0fynxYQ By Joe Leahy in São Paulo Carlos Piassi remembers the reaction from other farmers when he started planting a second annual crop at his farm near Uberlândia, in Brazil’s grain belt. No one believed it could be done given the semi-arid region’s relatively short rainy season and long dry winter. “If you had said you were going to plant a safrinha [the small harvest] here five years ago you were called crazy,” he says at his farm, Fazenda Campo Alegre. The naysayers were wrong. “The safrinha between last year and this has about tripled,” he said. That Brazil has risen in recent decades to become an agricultural power is no secret. It dominates the sugar, coffee and orange juice markets and competes with the US to be the world’s biggest soyabean exporter. What is less understood is that the transformation is not only continuing, it is gaining pace. Indeed, Brazil’s robust agricultural sector is promising to help Latin America’s largest country weather one of its toughest economic periods in a decade as a consumer-driven boom slows. And a recent 15 per cent plunge in the value of its currency, the real, against the dollar is set to give further impetus to the sector by reducing rising costs that were making its exports uncompetitive. “The devaluation of the real has been a complete game-changer,” said Giovana Araújo, an agribusiness analyst at Brazil’s Itaú BBA bank. Using new varieties of seeds that have allowed them to shorten soya and corn crop cycles, Brazilian farmers in the country’s centre-west savannah areas have moved from planting one crop to incorporating the second, the safrinha. In some areas where irrigation is available they are even contemplating a third harvest. The corn crop has benefited most from the safrinha. In the 2012-13 year, corn output is expected to total nearly 80m tonnes, up from about 56mt in 2011. Soyabeans, meanwhile, are estimated at more than 80mt compared with about 75mt in 2011. Brazilian agriculture output Agroconsult, a Brazilian consultancy, expects the safrinha to account for 56 per cent of total corn production in the 2012-13 season, and 58 per cent in 2013-14 – leading farmers to joke that the second crop should now be called a “safrão”, or “big harvest”. “The safrinha’s share of total production should continue to grow in the long term,” said Marcos Rubin, an analyst at Agroconsult. The new seed varieties mean that the first crop, typically soyabeans, can be planted and harvested in 90-95 days to make way for the second harvest, typically corn, before the summer rains end. After the rains, during the long dry period, some farmers are starting to experiment with a third crop using irrigation. “Brazil has the conditions to quickly double its production of corn, which today is about 80m tonnes to 160m tonnes,” said Roberto de Rissi, business director of Dupont Pioneer, one of the multinationals fighting for Brazil’s increasingly lucrative seed business. If you had said you were going to plant a safrinha [the small harvest] here five years ago you were called crazy – Carlos Piassi, Brazilian farmer Dupont, which is strong in Brazilian corn, has recently also invested in a new facility in the region near Mr Piassi’s farm with the capacity to produce 80,000 tonnes of soya seeds a year. It is fighting Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences and Syngenta for the country’s corn and soya markets. The companies have names for their products that range from Intrasect to Powercorn to Smartstax, a genetically modified insect-resistant variety. The dominance of the multinationals has turned Brazil into a stronghold for genetically modified crops, which account for 90 per cent of its soya-planted area and 76 per cent of corn, according to Jefferson Carvalho, an analyst at Rabobank International. “This year Monsanto launched the first soyabean that was developed specifically for another country, not the US,” he said. Challenging the rapid growth of Brazilian agriculture are the country’s poor logistics, which lead to bottlenecks at roads and ports and higher costs. In addition, recent falls in international prices for grains are squeezing farmers’ margins, though the weaker currency will be a big help. Brazil’s strong economy in recent years has also made it hard to find workers willing to toil in the fields when they could be doing a cushy service job in a city. “Today it’s hard to find anyone who wants to work. I can’t find a driver for the truck,” says Mr Piassi. “I’ve got two corn harvesters sitting idle because I can’t rustle up anyone to operate them.” Continue reading
Brazil And China Scramble For Agricultural Influence In Africa
Agriculture is central to Chinese and Brazilian development efforts – how trailblazing are their methods? Agricultural experts from China offer tips on rice planting to farmers in Dakar, Senegal. Photograph: Zheng Zheng/Xinhua[/color] China and Brazil have identified agriculture as central to their development efforts in Africa, confident in the belief that they can make valuable contributions based on their own agricultural success. China trumpets its ability to feed 20% of the world’s population on roughly 10% of the world’s arable land, while Brazil can boast of agribusiness-led commercial production of soya bean and ethanol as well as its promotion of smaller-scale farming. Last month, José Graziano da Silva, the director general of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, stressed the importance of south-south co-operation in advancing agricultural development in developing countries. “It is time for Latin America to increase its contribution to African development,” Graziano told African and Argentinian agriculture ministers in Buenos Aires, Argentina. What has been the experience of Brazil and China in agriculture in Africa; do they offer a new paradigm of south-south development co-operation? A collection of essays published last month by the Institute of Development Studies concludes that there is no single Chinese, Brazilian or African position. “China and Brazil have very different interests and priorities, and within these countries there are intense contests between different approaches, reflecting domestic political dynamics,” says the IDS bulletin China and Brazil in African Agriculture . “On the other hand, Africa’s 55 countries are hugely diverse, and any new development encounter arrives on the back of a very complex agrarian history and political economy.” The case of Brazil is particularly interesting, since it offers two distinct models. The first consists of large-scale farming for the production of soya and ethanol, backed by the ministry of agriculture, livestock and food supply, which describes itself as the ministry for agribusiness. The second emphasises integrated rural and social development in Brazil’s poorest regions through programmes designed to ensure the provision of technical support and credit for family farmers. Both approaches are evident in Africa. The ministry of agrarian development (MDA), a supporter of the family farm sector, has drawn on Brazil’s More Food programme, focusing on improving farmers’ access to equipment, machinery and agricultural technologies, including tractors, through the provision of concessional credit. Ghana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique have been given credit and signed a technical co-operation agreement. Shipping of machines and equipment will begin this year. The challenge, says the study, is to avoid subsidised technologies that end up benefiting wealthier farmers. At the other end of the spectrum is the involvement of agribusiness. In Ghana, for example, the Brazilian company Constran is building an ethanol plant, designated for export to Sweden, partly to get round European tariffs on Brazilian ethanol imports. So the $306m (£196m) project involves Brazilian technology and European investment in an African country. Competing visions such as these mirror Brazil’s complex agrarian economy, says the study, and the outcomes will depend on how African governments, farmers, entrepreneurs and civil society organisations absorb, shape and apply the models on offer. While Brazil is a new player in Africa, China has been involved in African agriculture for more than 40 years. Lila Buckley, senior researcher on China at the International Institute for Environment and Development in London, writes that Chinese agriculture co-operation tends to be heavily technocratic, reflecting China’s own experience. It has established more than 40 agricultural demonstration centres on the continent and provides agricultural assistance combined with infrastructure development. The latter includes dam construction with technical training, the provision of inputs and storage facilities, and facilitating links between agricultural ministries and communities. While the Chinese official line is that China’s agricultural experience can be of benefit to Africa, Chinese NGOs have offered more critical perspectives. A project officer at a Chinese NGO told Buckley: ” Aid is supposed to help local people develop by introducing China’s experience. But people forget to ask whether this is appropriate or not. Chinese people don’t understand African history or the development situation.” There is also concern about the suitability of China’s intensive agriculture model, which has achieved increased food production but only at the cost of the heavy depletion of water and soil, intense fertiliser use – which causes high pollution – and heavy energy consumption. The emphasis on technology transfer above other factors also worries some experts. “The Gates foundation is spending $1bn on agriculture technology,” an agriculture policy adviser at the Chinese Academy of Science told Buckley. “But not all technology is necessarily useful for Africa. In China, rural development started with land tenure reform, not with technology.” Buckley notes that, despite rhetoric of mutual benefit, China has generally taken the lead in designing and implementing agriculture projects, with only passive participation from African partners. This has led to frustration on both sides and project failures, as in the case of the Xai-Xai irrigation scheme in Gaza province in Mozambique. When the scheme failed, one Chinese participant complained: “We are here to help farmers, but the farmers are not interested in agriculture.” Kojo Sebastian Amanor concludes that south-south co-operation – though frequently framed as path-breaking – builds upon pre-existing forms of international development, neoliberal frameworks, and the expansion of capital in Africa.[/font][/color] Continue reading
