Though Davor Pisk, 56, completed his masters' degree in political science from the University of California, he pursued a career in agriculture chemicals. As the COO of the world's largest agricultural chemicals company, Syngenta, his exposure to liberal arts may come in handy as he grapples with the challenges of an integration exercise within the Basel (Switzerland) headquartered company.
In a conversation with 'The Economic Times', Davor Pisk said, "We are very pleased with the progress we made since we announced our new integrated strategy. And we have been able to build a very different set of connections with our growers and our stakeholders as a result of our integrated strategy."
He said, "We now have all of our organisations around the world operating as one team, across different technologies and we are able to bring together the benefits of seeds, seed care, bio-technology and crop protection chemicals under one roof."
We launched the Good Growth Plan (GGP) last year in recognition of the fact that we certainly needed to change not just the perception of Syngenta, we needed to change the way Syngenta views the world too. So, we have been very committed to improve agriculture productivity and that we still believe is a critically important message, said the expert.
The perception of disconnect is quite high in countries like India. We saw this disconnect, frankly across many parts of the world when we undertook research last year to get underneath the challenges of meeting the needs of the growing population with limited resources.
We found that the most opinion leaders, stakeholders saw the prime responsibility for providing food security was that of the government. It wasn't necessarily the agriculture industry, it wasn't business it was just the government and of course, the government has an important role to play.
But we, also as a company engaged in agriculture, want to play our role. And we have a lot of opportunities to present ourselves in India.
Davor said that he sees a great potential of growth in India. Because essentially Indian agriculture has a fundamental need to become much more productive and sustainable in the years ahead. But there are some real sustainability challenges, particularly around water, which is probably the most extreme challenge that agriculture has.
We are excited about our new products, which are in a position to be launched in India. We have received a number of new registrations for products in the chemicals area, fungicides, herbicides and insecticides covering the key crops in rice, soybeans, cotton and vegetables. So, we have a number of new innovations to launch in India in 2014 and yes beyond the chemistry area, said Davor.