exploring ideas and views on all aspects of the seed industry.
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE
“These are the two words I hope you will take away: collaboration and planning,” says Joyce Cacho of Novus International, Inc about what seed companies need to do about taking things. It is about working with the people who have skin in the game; who have children on the farm; who will have grandchildren on the farm.”
“As difficult as this last selling season was, every rep that did have a good year told me that the number one reason for success was going after their sales increases early. Not a single success story came from someone who said they made their year by getting sales increase after harvest. Never before has the term early carried so much importance. It is the colostrum of the selling season. If you don’t start the selling season early, you can never catch up. The problem is that the word early has never meant much to seed sellers. However, to top seed sellers the word early means writing orders before harvest. It means getting current customers and all of your new customers to buy prior to harvest.”
– Rod Osthus, President of the RC Thomas Company,
from the SeedSeller Training Journal.
Responding to the Challenges of a Changing World
“Agriculture in all its breadth, including research and training, has been neglected for too long and the high food price crisis and decreased food security also in developed countries was a wakeup call that urgent measures are needed…this conference was clearly aimed at policy makers in trying to raise their awareness towards the importance of new plant varieties and high quality seed. We also discussed how governments could go about developing an enabling environment to encourage plant breeding and the production and distribution of those high quality seeds…the main message to governments was that if we want food security in these challenging times, urgent measures on seed are needed.”
– Marcel Bruins of ISF on the 2nd Annual World Seed Conference
“Plants survive in nature in a wide variety of environments such as deserts and marshes. If they can survive here but not in an agricultural environment, can we take that from them and insert into crops? We think so,” says Terry Culp of Illinois-based Precision Laboratories. The company has licensed technology from Montana State University for naturally occurring symbiotic endophytes, which are present in plants and whose stress tolerance could be put into crops. “If we can isolate an endophyte that helps plants manage water, we could produce crops using less water and bring additional land into play that couldn’t be used before.”
“If you don’t start the selling season early, you can never catch up.”
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