The American Seed Trade Association has officially kicked off this continent’s biggest seed industry event of the year, the newly renamed Field Crop Seed Convention. Here is a recap of the most notable parts of the day.
From Today’s Sessions:
- Phytosanitary Session
The first major session of the conference was the Phytosanitary Session, featuring USDA-ARS, Texas A&M, ASTA, Bayer and USDA-APHIS speaking on various phytosanitary issues of note, including high plains virus, tomato brown rugose fruit virus, and corn seed exports to Chile. The session wrapped up with a group discussion led by ASTA’s Martha Malapi and Ball Horticultural Co.’s Cheni Filios.
- Strengthening Connections Between Public and Academic Science and the Private Sector workshop
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) hosted a working group panel discussion to discuss partnerships between public, academic and private sector participants.
Panelists representing North Carolina State, Texas A&M, Iowa State, and the USDA together talked through how longer-term initiatives and partnerships between the public and private sector can help scientists more nimbly address the challenges facing the seed sector. From start-up incubators at universities to collaborative partnerships, there are a wide variety of ways to work together towards a successful future, speakers explained as they outlined some of their own organizations’ partnership efforts.
Several of the talks focused on examples where industry and the public sector collaborated to solve near-term, critical issues that required a sector-wide response. Panelists also spoke to industry-university cooperation in the context of plant breeding research using genomics, high-throughput phenotyping, and controlled environments, as well as efforts by industry, academic, and government stakeholders to respond to emerging plant pathogens.
FFAR, which was established in 2014, exists to foster public private partnerships via grants. In order to unlock Farm Bill funding, FFAR has to capture matched private funding. It has exceeded its matching goal, achieving $1.40 of matching funds for every federal dollar invested. Some of its efforts achieve even better returns. For example, one of their newest consortia – the Efficient Fertilizer Consortia – is expected to deliver a 2:1 return on the $4.5M State Department investment.
Partnerships are “a really powerful way to magnify the taxpayer investment,” said Saharah Moon Chapotin, FFAR’s executive director.
- Stewardship Best Practices
New this year, Corteva Agriscience is hosting five special sessions. The first, Stewardship Best Practices, occurred today. The session was hosted by Corteva Agriscience’s global stewardship leader, Bill Belzer.
As Belzer explained, one of the agriculture industry’s greatest strengths is its collective commitment to sustainability and “doing what’s right for farmers and society.” The session highlighted best practices, especially around innovation, that will continue to demonstrate responsible stewardship and reduce regulatory burdens.
“Product innovations are critical to contribute to grower productivity and to meet the needs of a growing population,” he said. “People across the seed industry share a role in stewardship to better enable delivery of product innovations.”
Specifically, he reminded that stewardship isn’t a once-and-done effort, or effort at a single stage in a product’s lifecycle. Rather, it’s critical that agriculture prove responsible management of every product from its inception, to launch, to use, and ultimately through discontinuation.
- Workshop: Leveraging AI and Language Learning Models
This workshop asked: how can today’s AI tools be leveraged to make the work of the seed industry more efficient? Speakers including Federico Bayle from GDM, Ron Wulfkuhle from Inari Agriculture, Elizabeth Fastiggi from Amazon Web Services and David Farnham from ClimateAi showed that, from marketing, to customer service, to quality control, legal, logistics and so much more, we’ve barely scratched the surface on the possibilities for AI.
In case you’re still wondering about the venue change:
This year Field Crop Seed Convention has drawn a strong gathering representing 27 countries and all aspects of the seed value chain. While the convention is always an excellent time to renew friendships and solidify business partnerships, this year’s new space makes connecting with colleagues easier than ever. The convention has moved to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Orlando, Florida. In addition to the seed industry’s enthusiasm for a warmer location, the primary reason for the move was to bring all of the various components of the convention — from networking to learning to exhibits and more— into one integrated, multi-functional, sunshiney space. Whereas in prior years convention activities were spread out over 30+ floors and two hotel towers, this year’s convention space offers large and small group meeting spaces, an exhibition hall and plenty of room for networking and private meetings, as well as easy access to Hyatt amenities and Orlando’s many activities.
What to Look Forward to Tomorrow
Dan Basse’s ever popular annual Agricultural Economy Report runs 8:30 to 9:30 am, followed by the Majors Panel. We’ll have a recap of that session in tomorrow evening’s newsletter.
The Communications Committee will be presenting Values-Based Communications on Gene Editing from 12:00-1:00 pm.
Corteva Agriscience will be hosting two special sessions: Engage Training: Conversations that Connect (1:30 – 3:00 pm) and Seed Applied Technology Messaging Workshop (4:30 – 5:30 pm).
Seed Expo Tradeshow opening tomorrow
The show will once again boast the largest seed industry tradeshow floor in North America. Companies spent much of today setting up their tradeshow booths, with doors opening to the tradeshow floor tomorrow. This year, the tradeshow will feature 114 exhibitors including a dozen brand new ones. The show will also feature not one or two, but six large field equipment displays.
Come say hi!
In between networking events and learning opportunities, make sure to find a few minutes to stop by the Seed World Media Centre, powered by Corteva Agriscience. Seed World Group President Shawn Brook, Seed World Group Director of Content Madeleine Baerg, and Seed World U.S.’ new editor, Aimee Nielson, will be hosting at the Seed World Media Center and would love to share a few minutes with you.
