Germany: Bayer CropScience hosts inaugural Vegetable Future Forum

At Bayer CropScience’s first Vegetable Future Forum held today, approximately 200 representatives of the international vegetable food value chain and industry experts met to discuss key trends and challenges faced by the vegetable food value chain.

The one-day event aims at stimulating fresh perspectives on topics ranging from the development of fast-growth markets in Latin America and Asia Pacific, evolution of the biological market, to overall market trends and dynamics. Speakers represented companies such as METRO Group, Nestlé, Koppert Biological Systems, Rabobank and SAP.

"Our aim is to become the partner of choice in fruit and vegetables by working together with partners to drive innovation forward," said Dr. Rüdiger Scheitza, Member of the Board of Management of Bayer CropScience AG.

Enhancing nutrition through healthy vegetables, the company say, is one of their key commitments, underlined by long-term investments to ensure sustainable vegetable production. "We are able to offer growers integrated solutions - from vegetable seeds marketed under our brand name Nunhems, innovative chemical and biological crop protection solutions, to an extensive service backup - to help vegetable growers get the very best from their fields," says Frank Terhorst, Head of Strategic Business Management for Fruit & Vegetables and Insecticides.

In 2012, Bayer CropScience acquired the watermelon and melon seed business of Abbott & Cobb, USA, and the U.S. biological pest control company AgraQuest. Bayer CropScience is also investing heavily in R&D - EUR 5 billion from 2011 to 2016 for all crops and products in its portfolio - to deliver differentiated solutions to meet customers’ needs, leveraging the company’s expertise in seeds, small molecules and biologics.

Bayer CropScience’s Food Chain Partnership business initiative brings together growers, processors, exporters and importers, and retailers. Currently 240 projects in 30 countries are ongoing and spans 40 primarily fruit and vegetables crops. In these partnerships, Bayer CropScience offers customized solutions based on high-quality vegetable seed, effective crop protection, complementing services and expertise in environmental protection, efficiency and safety.

"Consumers today want to know where and how their food is being produced. Our Food Chain Partnerships facilitate partnerships along the food value chain worldwide for the benefit of all partners. The common goal is the sustainable production and supply of high quality fruit and vegetable crops for nutritious food," says Dr. Birgitt Walz-Tylla, Head of Food Chain Management.

For more information:
Utz Klages
Bayer CropScience AG
Tel. +49 2173 38-3125
utz.klages@bayer.com
www.bayercropscience.com