b"AN INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR INNOVATIONGarth Hodges, vice president of North American seed business at BASF, says one of his drivers is a need for continued innovation in seed.Seed World (SW): Whats the best piece of advice youve gotten in your career?Garth Hodges (GH): Throughout my career, Ive received a lot of advice. The bad news is Ive received a lot of advice! Twenty years ago, I had a manager named John Westridge. John taught me a very valuable lessonat the time I thought it was the worst piece of advice, ever. If you chase two rabbits, you wont catch either of them. I always thought if I can give John this long list of things, I can be really impressive. He kept saying relentlessly, whats the most important one? Whats the one piece thats really important, and then hed say, and what have you done about it. So, if I had to give advice, I think we as an industry have to choose where it is we want to focus. Whats the legacy that we as leaders are going to leave to the next generation? Its the next generation thats going to be the one thats going to take all this new technology thats out there, so how can we create an envi-ronment thats exciting for that generation? I want to apply all of this learning to the seed business, to breeding and to innovation. Its that little seed that has so much potential, and we need to generate that in the next generation as well.SW: Tell us about what youre doing with hybrid wheat.GH: Theres a good reason why hybrid wheat has been called the stepchild. In the past, because it's hard, it's a challenge. It's very much involved in trying to solve all the conundrums and all the difficult steps along the way. Weve been investing aour farmers and our growers. In addition, I think of innovation. lot in germplasm and trying to understand breeding differentWhen I started in 2002, it was a big deal for us to sequence the hybridization systems. Now, we're actually now going out to thecanola genome. But now that technology is routine, the leaps field tomorrow to have a look at some of our seed productionand bounds in innovation is amazing.seed production has always been a big challenge in hybrid wheat is. Were actually facing every one of these big challengesSW: Talk to us about some challenges in the industry.in the hybrid wheat process so it's exciting because in manyGH: Canada is a large export country. Canada is really so cases, you're actually breaking new ground and you're doingdependent on its export markets that it's almost as if the export something new.markets are dictating what kind of technologies and innovations you can use. Thats problematic. Now, there are also these SW: What excites you most about the seed industry? macro challenges. We are so fragmented as an industry, but GH: There's so much for us to be excited about in the seedyet the challenge of societal and environmental acceptance is industry. Were in a pretty awesome industryjust think aboutactually quite consolidated and unique. The question is how it. Were living in a world where we're making something, such ascan we consolidate some of that. Another challenge I see is the making food or fuel or fiber. Were actually doing something forsocietal challenges to the use of innovation. Think about the society. I cannot lie and say that the commodity prices are reallyGreen Deal in Europe. I really think that that's something that exciting right now. Its almost like society is saying thank you tothe industry needs to think about.SW50/ SEEDWORLD.COMSEPTEMBER 2021"