At a time when world agriculture is faced with serious resource constraints as well as environmental and sustainability challenges, global agro-chemicals major, BASF has announced newer initiatives to further strengthen its holistic solutions to farming systems with focus on agricultural sustainability and farmer welfare.

These include Functional Crop Care, a new pillar for resource and stress management that seeks to improve marketable yield; and launch of AgBalance through a new strategic unit set up for creating and maintaining a global network that can drive sustainability and product stewardship concept.

AgBalance is BASF's holistic method of assessing sustainability in agriculture — a comparative lifecycle analysis that assesses sustainability in all its three dimensions covering economy, ecology and society.

COMPANY PORTFOLIO

BASF is a €64-billion chemical company with portfolio ranging from chemicals, plastics, performance products and agricultural products to oil and gas. Its crop protection sales covering fungicides, insecticides and herbicides aggregated €4 billion in 2010.

Addressing an international media conference at its headquarters here, the company announced a sales target of €6 billion by 2020 for its crop protection business, and asserted that stronger growth was expected from emerging markets, particularly Asia.

The company named India a core strategic market due to its recent business success and future growth potential. Sales in Asia are expected to increase to €1,000 million by 2020 from €400 million in 2010. The Indian Samruddhi advisory programme would serve as a blueprint for other Asian countries, the company emphasised, adding the program has more than 1,000 BASF farm advisors work with approximately 220,000 farmers growing mainly soyabean.

EXPANSION PLANS

This integrated approach is a blueprint for expansion plans in other crops (potato and onion), not only in India but also other Asian countries, especially China, asserted Markus Heldt, President, Crop Protection division, during a one-on-one meeting with Business Line .

Announcing milestones in new agricultural solutions strategy to international media here, Dr Stefan Marcinowski, member of the board of executive directors, said, “Our new strategic approach looks at the complex challenges farmers face and offers integrated solutions for greater productivity and profitability one the one hand and environmental as well as social compatibility on the other; and these solutions come from our crop protection and plant biotechnology pipelines”.

BASF's latest farm-related initiatives are the outcome of an international study conducted in four continents covering six countries including India, Brazil, the US, Germany, France and Spain wherein 1,800 farmers and 6,000 consumers were surveyed for their attitude to agriculture.

Farmers believe that industry and consumers should do more to support agriculture by generating more environmentally-friendly products and representation in public from industry, while consumers must have better grasp of farming and be willing to pay for environmental benefits, according to the study.

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