"“We're going to take a leadership position in horticulture business"

At United Fresh trade show, Bayer CropScience reached out to the produce industry to show the commitment they have to being a market leader. They talked about the changes they've made to focus specifically on the produce industry, from growers all the way down the chain to the retailers and consumers.

“We're going to take a leadership position in the horticulture business,” said Rob Schrick, strategic business management lead for the horticulture division at Bayer. “We want to make sure we're acting as a market leader, and we want to give back to the marketplace.” That stance meant changing the way Bayer has approached the industry throughout its 150 year history. In order to be more in line with what growers, shippers and retailers need, Bayer took a step back to figure out how to approach the industry.

“We've been working on a different way to approach the marketplace,” said Schrick. “It involves looking at growers and making them more efficient; it's about meeting the unmet needs of growers.” The new way of thinking is based on an organizational principle called outcome driven innovation, or ODI. It's a concept many top companies in other fields have used to great effect, and Schrick said that the organizational shift they've completed based on ODI has put them in a better position to make an impact on the market.

“We're looking for growers to produce more with less, and we've applied our existing portfolio of products to that end, but we're also discovering new ways to do that as well,” said Schrick. “So we have technology that can extend the shelf-life of cherries, for example, and we're working on products to help with plant health.” But that kind of thinking doesn't just extend to growers, noted Bayer's Brian Hrudka, it applies to everyone involved in the growing, handling and selling of produce.

“We're the first to reach out to the entire food chain,” said Hrudka. “It's one continuum from growers to grocers, so we felt we had to reach beyond just the growers and address the downstream fate of what growers produce.” When viewed through that lens, Hrudka said it was apparent that retailers wanted something that could help with shrinkage. Offering growers a product that can extend the shelf life of a crop, seen in that light, becomes something that affects the entire production chain even while it's only applied at the grower stage. Making changes that affect the entire industry is what Bayer is now aiming for, said Schrick, and they wanted to use United Fresh as an opportunity to make that apparent.

“Bayer is in it for the long term,” said Schrick. “It's more than just crop protection and increasing sales; we want to help growers, retailers and the entire marketplace so that we act like the market leaders we want to be.”

For more information please visit www.cropscience.bayer.com