Meet the AgriBusiness Global Editorial Advisory Board

Bringing expertise from across the industry, the group will guide the brand’s content and strategy in the coming year.

For more than 85 years, Meister Media Worldwide’s upstream value chain crop input sourcing brand, AgriBusiness Global (ABG), has connected, informed, and guided the worldwide industry via its media and events.

ABG has been able to continue doing this in no small part due to the brand’s strong network of thought leaders. These partners regularly weigh in on potential story leads, allow us to bounce event and product strategy off them, and give us honest, sometimes brutal insight into the seemingly constant question of “what the heck is going on in the supply chain”.

ABG formalizes these relationships with our advisors, gathering a core group for a frank conversation about the state of the industry at this pivotal time of disruption and change. Each member brings significant experience in their respective fields, ranging from trend-setting biological development, to tolling and logistics, downstream distribution, regulatory navigation, and raw material trade.

The input from the board of advisors on these topics will lead ABG’s business strategy and editorial direction in the new calendar year in order to better serve our readers, delegates, and partners worldwide.

It is with great pride that we introduce our Board of Advisors. We extend our heartfelt thanks for their participation and insight, and look forward to working together in the months to come.


Guido Azzari

Guido Azzari

Guido Azzari

Guido Azzari has been Executive Director of Central America Toll & Logistics, S.A. from 2005 to date. He started his career as General Manager in Panifresh from 1991-1992 before he joined the agrichemical division of DISAGRO as general manager from 1993-2004.

Guido has been involved in a number of associations including serving as President of AGREQUIMA, Agrochemical Companies Association of Guatemala in 2003. Other industry involvement include serving as a members of the board of AGEXPORT, Exporters Association of Guatemala, on the Manufacturers commission, 2005-2008, and as vice president of ADENTRO Foundation, 2012-2018.


Jim Delisi

Jim DeLisi

Jim DeLisi

V.M. (Jim) DeLisi has been part of Fanwood Chemical Inc. (FCI) since joining his father, Vince DeLisi, in the business on 1 September 1976.

Jim has experience in the marketing of Organic Chemicals and Services in NAFTA, South America, and Europe. He was a founding equity partner in REACh ChemAdvice GmbH (RCA). RCA represents many firms as their “Only Representative” for REACh Compliance. RCA is now part of Chemservices GmbH.

Fanwood Chemical specializes in the monitoring of imports and exports of agrichemicals and agrichemical intermediates. The company also carefully monitors international trade issues as they impact the chemical industry. Jim remains very active in several associations. He is the Chairman of the Industry Trade Advisory Committee for Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Health/Science Products and Services (ITAC 3). This committee reports to the Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative on international trade policy. A longtime member of SOCMA (Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates), Jim also serves as Chairman of SOCMA’s International Affairs Committee.


David Li

David Li

Li Xiaoyu (David) is the Marketing Director of SPM Biosciences (Beijing) Inc., in cooperation with China Agricultural University. He is in charge of global third-party alliances, strategic procurement, promotion of novel adjuvants and innovative formulations. With advanced post-harvest technology and UAS crop protection experience, David is working toward value creation for global agribusiness.

As a contributing writer, David offers strategic sourcing from China’s agrochemical industry for Agribusiness Global along with the price trends for key herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides in the Chinese agrochemical market by monthly China Price Index.

He previously worked for Bayer CropScience China and Mitsubishi Corporation China Commerce.


CS Liew

CS Liew

CS Liew, Managing Director of Singapore-based Pacific Agriscience, graduated from Iowa State University in 1979 with a double major in Agronomy and Pest Management.

CS has had two summers of field R&D internships with American Cyanamid, in York, Nebraska in 1977 and Tifton, Georgia in 1978 prior to joining Ciba-Geigy in Malaysia in 1979. He moved to Singapore in 1980 and worked in various international roles from Market Research to Registrations and then to more senior management roles at Uniroyal Chemical. After 11 years with Uniroyal, CS worked for Nufarm, also based in Singapore, for seven years in senior positions. He then set up his own agchem trading and marketing company, Pacific Agriscience, in 1999.

Throughout his career, CS has been deeply involved in market development, sales and promotion of foliar fertilizers, micronutrients and biostimulants, in addition to proprietary pesticides. He has managed distributors and has been active in product training as well as developing and implementing marketing plans and strategies. Over the past 7 years, CS has been very active in mergers and acquisitions – putting together deals in the agricultural inputs space.


Melinda McCann

Melinda C. McCann

Melinda C. McCann is currently the U.S. Transformation Leader for ADAMA Agricultural Solutions and has responsibilities for leading and implementing change initiatives related to go-to-market and organizational transformation. Melinda has a B.S. in Chemistry and M.S. in Biology with an emphasis in Biotechnology. She has over 25 years in the agricultural industry and broad experience in agriculture regulatory processes for both crop protection and biotechnology products ranging from conducting the safety studies themselves through the process of submissions and agency interactions. She gained the first U.S. regulatory approval for Natural Refuge in Bt cotton products. Previous to her current role, she expanded her expertise in developing weed management solution strategies in row crops systems around the world before moving over to manage 3rd party relationships for dicamba and chloroacetamide herbicides at Monsanto and then managing business development for ADAMA NA.


Steve Pearce

Steve Pearce

Stephen Pearce

Stephen Pearce is recognized across a number of industries as an expert practitioner in strategic sourcing, global direct and in-direct procurement, business development, M&A integration, and alliance development.

Steve has spent more than 25 years in senior roles in life science, pharmaceutical, and biotech industries. For the last 10 years he has focused exclusively on transformational procurement, strategic sourcing, post-acquisition integration, and leveraging supply chain relationships to develop strategic alliances.

He has managed purchase ledgers of $1 billion to $3.5 billion with the associated global teams supporting these activities. His former roles have included Global Head of Procurement for Arysta Lifescience, Head of Global Sourcing Novartis AG, Director Biotechnology Research Business Development, Sygen PLC. Steve is one of the founding Directors of AWP Associates Limited, which is an organization with over 100 associates worldwide dedicated to enabling and supporting companies in profitability improvement and business transformation. Steve is also an investor and COO of Bancella Limited, a company dedicated to delivering crop solutions to growers and food companies across Africa and also leads supply chain alliance development activities.


Allister Phillips

Allister Phillips

Allister Phillips

Allister Phillips is a founding partner of AgbioInvestor, consultants, and analysists covering crop protection, seed and traits, and agricultural commodities. Allister began his career as an analyst at Phillips McDougall in 1999 while also studying for an honors degree in biotechnology. He progressed into a Senior Analyst position, specializing in the commercial seed industry, specifically GM seeds.

At AgbioInvestor, Allister provides data, insight, and opinion to the leading global crop protection and seed companies through AgbioInvestor’s subscription services, which covers conventional crop protection, biological crop protection, seeds, crop production and commodity analysis. The company has also developed a free-to-access GM seed data platform, GM Monitor, to provide a resource for GM crop cultivation information. In recent years Allister has taken a keen interest in agricultural commodities, as crop production, trade and ending stocks have a profound impact on agricultural input prices and crop demand.


Nicolas Potrie

Nicolas Potrie

Dr. Nicolas Potrie is the Director of TAFIREL, which is a holding of companies in agribusiness in main countries of Mercosur area, based in Uruguay, with branches in Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia.

TAFIREL is one of the leading companies in agrochemicals in Uruguay since 1991 and belongs to the Chamber of Industries of Uruguay (CIU), the National Chamber of Fertilizers and Agrochemicals of Uruguay (CANAFFI), and also to the Chambers of Industries and Commerce of Pando City, Canelones, Uruguay. Dr. Potrie is part of the Board of Directors of the Binational Chamber of Commerce Uruguay – China since 2007.


Piyatida Pukclai

Piyatida Pukclai

Piyatida Pukclai

Dr. Piyatida (Tung) Pukclai is an Asia-Pacific Director for Knoell, an independent service provider for Regulatory Affairs and Product Registrations. She  has worked in several technical and managerial positions within the Business Development and Regulatory Policy. As Asia-Pacific Director for Crop Protection and Industrial Chemicals, she is responsible for registrations, monitors and reviews scientific data, new regulatory policies, and guidance developments in the Asian region. As speaker, she is active in various international conferences and workshops. Piyatida specializes in plant pathology and biological controls that reduce the use of chemical agriculture and improve the efficiency of plants or microorganisms.


Diego Taube

Diego Taube

Diego Taube is Director of Chempro SA, a leading company in the international commerce of Agrochemicals based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His background includes a Master of Business Administration and several executive education seminars from Singularity University, Harvard Business School, and other universities.

Diego travels to always find the state-of-the-art off-patent active ingredients and formulations to register and sell them to the Argentinean importers. Apart from his work at Chempro, Diego is also the Chairman of the Board of the Argentinean Chamber of Chemical Products.


Daniel Traverso

Daniel Traverso

Daniel Traverso is Vice President of Anasac International Corporation and Director of Anasac Colombia Ltda. And has 27 years of career-related experience in the crop care market. He joined Cyanamid Chile as Product Manager in 1994, finishing as national sales director. After the merger with BASF, he decided to resign and join Anasac, a leading Chilean company in agricultural inputs, with the challenge of taking its operations throughout Latin America, which he has done since 2001. Since then, Anasac has developed and opened the markets of Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Central America, Dominican Republic, Mexico and Brazil. He has founded Anasac México, Anasac International in Panama as a growth control center in Latin America, and Anasac Colombia. He has created sales, development, and marketing teams in most countries in South America. He studied Agronomic Engineering at the University of Chile, has specialization studies in weeds at the University of Spain and marketing specialization courses at the Catholic University of Chile. He has been published extensively in weed science journals throughout the Americas.


Bob Trogele

Bob Trogele

Dr. Bob Trogele, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, AMVAC Corporation, a 100% subsidiary of American Vanguard Corporation (stock symbol AVD) has enjoyed a 35 year leadership career in Agribusiness, working for “large caps” such as Hoechst, Aventis and Bayer, and “mid-caps” such as Schering and FMC. He has a comprehensive working experience and a deep knowledge in Europe, Asia and the Americas at all levels of the Agribusiness (chemical, nutrient, seed, biorationals and precision agriculture). In addition, he has performed at the country, regional and corporate general management level. Further, Dr. Trogele has been an Adjunct Professor at the Berlin School of Economics & Law for 23 years, educating MBA’s as future leaders in global business and society.

Dr. Trogele is an independent director of Clean Seed Capital Group Ltd, the stock symbol: (TSX-V:CSX) and the Farm Journal Foundation. Further he is the Treasurer and board member of the CropLife of America Foundation and a board member of Agricultural Retail Association (ARA). In addition, he participates as an advisory board role in the Agribusiness Global Trade Summit and Pace Council. In the past, he was an executive board member of CLA, RISE, ARA and industry associations, in Germany, Denmark and Ireland. Aside from being an accomplished executive,  Dr. Trogele is also a two-time Olympian in basketball and played 126 international matches for Germany.

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