Syngenta Crop Protection President Vern Hawkins Shares Plans for Future

BY DAN JACOBS
SENIOR EDITOR

AgriBusiness Global sat down with Vern Hawkins, President of Syngenta Crop Protection, at a Syngenta Media Summit late last year to get his thoughts on the industry, the state of the company, and his plans for its future. He also shared his perspective about the current challenges growers face with supply chain and inflation. 

“There are certainly a number of challenges for farmers related to cost, in supply reliability and logistics, but there is a supportive commodity price for those larger investments, which is really important. We’re hopeful that we can break through some of the supply-related things, but it’s still probably a couple of years away,” said Hawkins. “I hope we’ll begin to see material progress at the back end of this year, but that technology and innovation are really on display right now. With a strong commodity price, farmers who are able to bring more yield through technology have really good payback. So that’s healthy.” 

International 

As one of the world’s largest providers of crop inputs, Syngenta Crop Protection must be able to provide solutions for end users with varying levels of agricultural sophistication, equipment availability, and living under a host of different regulatory environments. 

“It’s interesting because digital specifically has a completely different utilization opportunity in smallholder regions versus developed countries,” Hawkins said. “In countries that don’t have a retail support base (and are) not very technical, a little bit of technology can provide a family with more food than what the family needs. 

“[But] there are very significant differences in digital (sophistication) around the world, which wouldn’t be obvious to everyone,” Hawkins said. “From a technology-in-the-core-business piece, we have a very good network, which is focused on understanding, first of all, what the local needs are in each of the countries and then looking for the aggregation of the opportunities to build the right use patterns, which we then register the product for.” 

Legal Issues 

Law firms are offering to represent individuals against chemical companies for a host of reasons. Late last year, for example, the Federal Trade Commission and 10 state attorneys general filed a complaint against Syngenta Crop Protection (and Corteva) for loyalty programs that allegedly raised prices for growers. Other complaints are focused on health-related issues. 

“We’re confident in the science, and that’s important,” Hawkins said. “We obviously have a number of people in our company that work with these products, make the products, buy the products. And so, we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t think it was safe. Any time you find yourself in a trial where there’s a jury, you can’t be overconfident. And so that’s the situation that these trial lawyers are advertising for, you know, $20 million, $25 million of advertising campaign to generate clients.”

Hawkins understands the expense required to defend the company against the allegations, but he also believes the it’s not just about the money.

“When you get into that situation [it takes] a lot of costs to defend yourself. You have to go into it with your eyes open related to the size of investment it takes to defend,” Hawkins said. “But we’re absolutely confident in science. You know, for our own benefit, we refresh studies for compounds that have the sort of length of age that a product like paraquat has. We test our manufacturing workers versus the norms related to Parkinson’s specifically, and there are no aberrations there, and those are the things that just give you reinforcing confidence. But [we] will need to present the facts and hopefully people will be compelled to listen to the facts, but, juries are hard to predict.” 

Looking Ahead 

Understandably proud of the company’s offerings, Hawkins knows that to stay relevant and continue to be a leader in the crop input community, Syngenta must continue to innovate.

“Syngenta is in a very good spot related to technology. Our pipeline is fantastic,” he said. “And we have a very strong portfolio and strong trusting relationships with our key customers. That gives a really strong foundation to continue to bring value through the channel. To our growers, we’ve got a global footprint, which gives us the ability to generate more research and development (R&D) dollars aggregate. One of the things about R&D is, when you’re doing discovery, oftentimes you find compounds that have a fit around the world. That’s an advantage for our company as it grows.”

In the last years, one issue that many companies are learning from is how to navigate supply chain issues. Syngenta is no different.

“We have a very strong sourcing network for supply, which, as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, is a real strategic advantage,” said Hawkins. “We have outperformed most of our competitors, if not all, and that’s due to the network that we have both in assets and the way that our people communicate and do tradeoffs related to seasonality of a market. And those things will serve us well as long as these challenges exist.”

For the next five years, Syngenta is planning to diversify its portfolio of offerings as a strategic response to the changes happening in the crop protection industry.

“Our next wave is an issue we call ‘Bold Moves.’ We’re looking at a handful of different technology areas, strategy areas, which will likely define part of our future. And they’re different in terms of fit from one part of the world to the next, which is okay. Things like biologicals, soil health, digital, and European Union regulatory impact the future of agriculture. So, these are the sort of things that we’re working on now. Five years from now, whatever our next leg of growth is, we’ve got a pretty good definition around it. We feel really good about that.” 

For Syngenta, Hawkins said, it’s about delivering solutions to end users.  

“We want farmers to know that we understand that they have needs, and [we] are committed to innovation and technology. We’re committed to serve that role in their business and ensure that there’s value for them and the things that we offer. We want to continue to see them be successful on the world stage,” he said.  •